ComingSoon.net at Sundance

Some might be wondering why the Sundance Film Festival is so significant, and really, the most important thing about it is that the entire film industry descends on Park City this one time every year to see the newest movies from a variety of directors, including many first-timers, many of them looking for distribution. The better ones will have buzz even before they screen and have bidding wars from the second those screenings end. I hear it's also a great place to ski and party.

Some of the significant "Sundance films" in recent years include this year's hits Little Miss Sunshine and The Illusionist, last year's Hustle & Flow, and the year before that, Sundance spawned the likes of Napoleon Dynamite and Zach Braff's Garden State.

I've spent a good amount of time the last few days trying to plan out my schedule and what I want to see. It's pretty tough because there really are so many movies to see in one day--I've heard of people doing five or six... I think four might be my limit--but on top of that, I'm hoping to get a few interviews in there, which involves a special amount of planning and coordination which tends to screw everything else up.

Fortunately, I've seen a few movies already, a lot of really good movies, too, and things are slowly coming together so I'll try to offer a variety of coverage. I will say right now that as much as I love docs and foreign films, those probably will have to be secondary to the dramatic features, especially those with known actors, those in competition and those with distribution coming out later this year.

Since I'll only be at the festival for the first six days or so, there are a few movies that I'll probably be missing. The one I'm most disappointed about is Black Snake Moan, Craig Brewer's follow-up to Hustle & Flow, though that'll be out soon enough. I also probably won't be able to see Chapter 27, Jarrett Schaefer's drama about Mark David Chapman, Lennon's murderer, played by an unrecognizable Jared Leto, a bit of a bummer considering how much early buzz the movie has gotten. (I'm sure that one will be scooped up by a distributor pretty quickly, though I thought that about Leto's last movie Lonely Hearts, too.)

The actual screenings won't be starting until Thursday, January 18, but before then, I'll go through some of the movies I've seen and others I'm looking forward to, and while you wait, feel free to look over the Sundance guide (link below) and let us know what you're interested in knowing more about.

Sundance Film Guide.