Thursday, December 1, 2011

Sundance 2012

So - the Sundance competition slate has been announced. Some of the titles that stand out are Smashed, Wish You Were Here, the Surrogate, Filly Brown, Nobody Walks and Save the Date.

Descriptions below:

Smashed — The Thing remake’s Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Breaking Bad’s Aaron Paul play a young married couple whose freewheeling life of party and drink comes to a halt when she decides to sober up. The Help‘s Octavia Spencer costars as her AA sponsor while Nick Offerman and Megan Mullally play a teacher and principal at the school where she works. “It starts off very un-dangerous. It’s about how easy it is to be in life this way until you realize you have a problem,” Cooper says. “The drama’s not hyped up. You realize how close you could be to being her — well, I did.” (Director: James Ponsoldt; Screenwriters: Susan Burke, James Ponsoldt)

Wish You Were Here — Australia. Four friends embark on a carefree holiday, but only three return home. Who knows what happened on that fateful night? Cast: Joel Edgerton, Teresa Palmer, Felicity Price, Antony Starr. (Director: Kieran Darcy-Smith, Screenwriters: Felicity Price, Kieran Darcy-Smith)

The Surrogate — Based on the true story of Mark O’Brien, a 36-year-old poet and journalist who lived most of his life in an iron lung after contracting polio at a young age. (His life was the subject of an Oscar-winning documentary, Breathing Lessons, in 1996.) In this film, O’Brien is played by Winter’s Bone Oscar-nominee John Hawkes, who decides he no longer wants to be a virgin, and seeks help from a sex surrogate therapist (Helen Hunt) and his priest (William H. Macy). (Director and screenwriter: Ben Lewin)

Filly Brown — A Mexican girl rises through the ranks of hip-hop while struggling with family issues, including the imprisonment of her mother. “It’s an L.A. story with a really good performance by Gina Rodriguez, who’s in almost every frame of this movie,” Cooper says. “She’s a girl with ambition trying to break into the music business.” Cast: Lou Diamond Phillips, Gina Rodriguez, Jenni Rivera, Edward James Olmos. (Directors: Youssef Delara, Michael D. Olmos, son of Edward James; Screenwriter: Youssef Delara)

Nobody Walks — Olivia Thirlby (Juno) stars as a New York artist who comes to Los Angeles and upends the lives of a hipster family by triggering new attractions and old resentments. “They don’t even understand where these impulses are coming from. It just sends shock waves through their lives.” The title, of course, recalls the song Walking in L.A. by Missing Persons, which declares “nobody walks in L.A.” “A little bit,” Groth laughs, as Cooper adds: “It also means nobody gets out of this unscathed.” Costars: The Office‘s John Krasinski, Mad Men‘s Rosemarie DeWitt, India Ennenga, Justin Kirk. (Director: Ry Russo-Young; Screenwriters: Lena Dunham, Ry Russo-Young)

Save the Date — “This is a story of young people trying to decide about relationships and marriage, told from two women’s points of view,” Cooper says. Party Down‘s Lizzy Caplan and Community‘s Alison Brie star as the sisters, one of whom is getting married while the other is suffering from a recent breakup. Costars: Martin Starr, Geoffrey Arend, Mark Webber. (Director: Michael Mohan; Screenwriters: Jeffrey Brown, Egan Reich, Michael Mohan)

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