Films about Iraq, Hurricane Katrina and the environment are among a crowded lineup as the 2007 Sundance Film Festival swung into gear this week.
The 10-day snow-covered extravaganza formally got under way yesterday with a screening of the hard-hitting documentary Chicago 10, which depicts the violence that erupted around the 1968 Democratic National Convention.
The US movie is one of 122 feature films to be shown at the festival, which has steadily grown in size since its launch in 1981 and now attracts hordes of movie industry heavyweights, celebrities and media.
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Geoffrey Gilmore, the director of the Sundance Film Festival, said this year's event promised to offer a more global perspective, offering 82 world premieres with films from 25 countries.
While the festival is traditionally viewed as a marketplace for independent filmmakers to showcase their talent, several eagerly anticipated films premiering at the event feature established Hollywood stars.
Hollywood mainstays such as Samuel L. Jackson and Justin Timberlake headline Black Snake Moan while Michael Douglas gets festival top billing in King of California.
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Meanwhile, John Cusack offers a powerful performance in Grace is Gone, about a patriot father whose wife is killed in Iraq.
Queen Latifah has the leading role in Life Support, a film about drug addiction, while stars Nick Nolte and Roy Schieder lend their voices to Chicago 10.
Star talent helps but movie moguls will also be searching for the next commercial gem or innovative buzz film of the year such as Little Miss Sunshine, Napoleon Dynamite or Super Size Me.
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This year's films were selected from 3,287 feature submissions.
The Sundance Film Festival is the premier exhibition for US and international independent film.
The festival is the centerpiece of the Sundance Institute, a nonprofit cultural organization founded by movie icon Robert Redford in 1981. Held in and around Park City, Utah, the festival runs Jan. 18 to Jan. 28.
Meanwhile in Oscar-related news, nine foreign-language films are a step closer to an Academy Award nomination.
For the first time, the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences unveiled a short list of potential nominees from a record 61 qualifying films in the category.
The nine movies in the running: Days of Glory from Algeria, Water from Canada, After the Wedding from Denmark, Avenue Montaigne from France, The Lives of Others from Germany, Pan's Labyrinth from Mexico, Black Book from the Netherlands, Volver from Spain and Vitus from Switzerland.
From among the nine, a committee of voters in Los Angeles and New York will select the five Academy Award nominees.
Nominations will be announced Tuesday. The awards will be presented Feb. 25.
Singapore's National Library Board and the Asian Film Archive have inked a pact to preserve the works of the region's filmmakers, they said Tuesday.
The two Singapore-based organizations will set up a public reference library to house movies made by Asian filmmakers, they said in a statement.
"As Singapore aims to be an arts hub, media literacy of local and Asian cinema would no doubt play an important role in equipping our community with critical viewing skills," said Ngian Lek Choh, deputy chief executive of the National Library Board (NLB).
"The collaboration will also ensure that unpublished local films as well as rare and significant Asian-centric films can now be archived, preserved and shared among the community where it was not available commercially before," she said.
The NLB will facilitate access for the public and film researchers while the Asian Film Archive will collect and catalogue films, the statement said.
The collection "will consist of culturally important films from the region," it added.
Hong Kong comedian Stephen Chow (周星馳) has finished shooting his new movie, reportedly about an astronaut's encounter with aliens, a spokeswoman said.
Chow, who directed and starred in the movie, A Hope, wrapped up a three-month shoot at the end of last year, said Alice Chow, a spokeswoman for Chow's production company, Star Overseas.
Chow declined to reveal details of the movie, which she said was a co-production between Star Overseas and China's state-run China Film Group.
An earlier news report said Chow plays an astronaut who accidentally lands on a foreign planet and befriends a group of young aliens.
Chow's character also reportedly has a romantic relationship with a female robot.
She said A Hope is currently in post-production and is aiming for a release date later this year. Talks on distribution deals are ongoing, Chow said.
Chow's credits include Shaolin Soccer (少林足球) and Kung Fu Hustle (功夫).
Nothing like the spectacular, dramatic unraveling of a political party in Taiwan has unfolded before as has hit the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) over recent weeks. The meltdown of the New Power Party (NPP) and the self-implosion of the New Party (NP) were nothing compared to the drama playing out now involving the TPP. This ongoing saga is so interesting, this is the fifth straight column on the subject. To catch up on this train wreck of a story up to Aug. 20, search for “Donovan’s Deep Dives Ko Wen-je” in a search engine. ANN KAO SENTENCED TO PRISON YET AGAIN,
Despite her well-paying tech job, Li Daijing didn’t hesitate when her cousin asked for help running a restaurant in Mexico City. She packed up and left China for the Mexican capital last year, with dreams of a new adventure. The 30-year-old woman from Chengdu, the Sichuan provincial capital, hopes one day to start an online business importing furniture from her home country. “I want more,” Li said. “I want to be a strong woman. I want independence.” Li is among a new wave of Chinese migrants who are leaving their country in search of opportunities, more freedom or better financial prospects at a
When the Dutch began interacting with the indigenous people of Taiwan, they found that their hunters classified deer hide quality for trade using the Portuguese terms for “head,” “belly,” and “foot.” The Portuguese must have stopped here more than once to trade, but those visits have all been lost to history. They already had a colony on Macao, and did not need Taiwan to gain access to southern China or to the trade corridor that connected Japan with Manila. They were, however, the last to look at Taiwan that way. The geostrategic relationship between Taiwan and the Philippines was established
Sept. 9 to Sept. 15 The upgrading of sugarcane processing equipment at Ciaozaitou Sugar Factory (橋仔頭) in 1904 had an unintended but long-lasting impact on Taiwan’s transportation and rural development. The newly imported press machine more than doubled production, leading to an expansion of the factory’s fields beyond what its original handcarts and oxcarts could handle. In 1905, factory manager Tejiro Yamamoto headed to Hawaii to observe how sugarcane transportation was handled there. They had trouble finding something suitable for Taiwan until they discovered a 762mm-gauge “miniature” railroad at a small refinery in the island of Maui. On
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