‘Action!’ Sundance Film Festival kicks off in Park City

The 2016 Sundance Film Festival began with its annual kickoff press conference this afternoon, and founder Robert Redford was asked about the criticism levied on this year’s Academy Award nominations regarding their lack of diversity.

The criticism comes at a time when TV viewership has flourished and movie audiences have fallen.

There’s also The Lure, a musical about a pair of pop-star mermaids who are hungry for love and also human flesh.

Of course this year the NAPTE buddies and avowed mutual admirers were here for the debut of Norman Lear: Just Another Version Of You on opening night 2016.

Continuing the ongoing dialogue, Christopher Nolan (Interstellar), Colin Trevorrow (Jurassic World), Rachel Morrison (Fruitvale Station) and Alex Ross Perry (Listen Up Philip) will address this topic during the “Power of Story: Art of Film” panel at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival on January 28 at 2:30 p.m. MST at the Egyptian Theatre. With so many films on offer – and majority lacking a Hollywood-scale publicity machine – the selection can seem overwhelming.

The Sundance Film Festival kicks off today, and there’s a lot to look forward. His last film, Margaret, might have been largely unheralded at its release, but many critics came to feel it was the best film of 2011.

“They’re just not afraid to take insane chances”.

Paul Dano and Daniel Radcliffe lead this quirky drama about a man who becomes strangely attached to a dead body he finds in the wilderness and embarks on a surreal quest to get him home.

“We are very proud to be headed to Sundance this year with “Antibirth” in the highly sought after Midnight Madness screening”, he said, in an email to NorthernLife.ca. As You Are turns on the gay relationship of two teenage boys. If a reward comes from that, then that’s great, but I don’t think about that.

Another wild combo is the singing mermaids of The Lure, a film by Poland’s Agnieszka Smoczynska that’s competing in the World Cinema Dramatic Competition. The two women are topless for much of the film, another novelty for a movie that courts mainstream as well as midnight audiences.

It’s described in the Sundance program book as “four tragic yet comic interconnected stories” of Muslim men and women who are seeking to pursue both romance and lust without breaking any of the strict rules of their religion. And it will show all seven hours and 42 minutes of ESPN’s documentary series “O.J.: Made in America”, which places the celebrated murder trial in the broader social context of race, sports and celebrity. Based on the stories of Malle Meloy, it promises to be another interesting and intimate case study of the human condition.

This year’s panelists include PETER GOLUB, Director of SUNDANCE INSTITUTE’s FILM MUSIC PROGRAM; FILM MUSIC COMPOSERS LAB advisors GEORGE S. CLINTON, MIRIAM CUTLER and BLAKE NEELY; composer KRIS BOWERS and director HEIDI EWING, composer T. GRIFFIN and director ROGER ROSS WILLIAMS; composer FIL EISLER and director KIM A. SNYDER, among others. It is ALL about the films, but it’s also about the people there for the films. It was clandestinely filmed by Johnson at NASA facilities and also at the London film studio used by the late Stanley Kubrick, whose 2001: A Space Odyssey factors into Apollo hoax theories.

That’s the kind of surprise Johnson enjoys. Participants will post their guess of the highlighted movies and be entered-to-win a pair of Blundstone boots for themselves and a friend. Not to be left out, all Sundance attendees and shoppers will be given a 20% discount on all purchases of Blundstone boots at Park City Clothing Co., along with a special gift-with-purchase of a Blundstone beanie for the duration of the festival.