Sundance Festival Going Back to Its Roots

Over the years the Sundance Film Festival has undergone many changes. Sundance began in 1985 when Robert Redford’s Sundance Institute bought the struggling U.S. Film Festival and moved the event from Salt Lake City to Park City, Utah. Redford also changed the focus of the film festival to concentrate on the work of independent film makers. In its first year under the Sundance name the festival screened 80 films including the low-budget thriller from producers Joel and Ethan Coen, “Blood Simple”, which won the Grand Jury Prize.

Many milestones have been made at the Sundance Film Festival. Steven Soderbergh’s film, “Sex, Lies and Videotape” made it’s world premier at the Park City festival in 1989 and went on to also win the esteemed Cannes Film Festival. The film was made by a then relatively unknown distribution company called Miramax. The festival officially changed its name to the Sundance Film Festival in 1991. Many unknown film makers have gotten recognition at the event and some have gone on to become some of the best-known film makers of our time.

In 1994, an unknown twenty-three year old film maker named Kevin Smith premiered his $27,000 film “Clerks” about two burnt-out, drop-outs at a convenience store. The film received rave reviews at Sundance and got picked up by Miramax and went on to make $3.1 million at the U.S. box office. The film “Shine” debuted at the festival in 1996 and went on to score seven Oscar nominations in 1997.

There have also been a few flops that were all the rave at the Sundance Festival. One film that didn’t live up to it’s festival “buzz” was “Happy, Texas”, which sold for over $10 million after it’s rave Sundance debut, but only grossed $1.96 at the box office. In contrast, the festival debuted three films in 2004 that went on to collect a combined $83 million in revenues at the box office. “Supersize Me”, “Napoleon Dynamite”, and “Garden State” were all low-budget films that scored big after getting good reviews at Sundance.

At the Sundance Film Festival in 2006, the films “Little Miss Sunshine”, and “An Inconvenient Truth”, received top honors and went on to gross a combined $104 million in ticket sales and snag a total of four Oscars between them the following year. But in 2007 the producers of the event began to get frustrated by of the event’s growing popularity. It seemed that the focus of the event was more about paparazzi and celebrity culture than good films; so the festival planners passed out buttons reading “Focus On Film,” The trend continued in 2008.

Entertainment Weekly Magazine reports that the 2009 Sundance Film Festival will be larger than ever and will, once again, be the industry standard for what movies will be big box office draws in 2010.
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The Top 10 Books to Film Adaptations

With the success of the Twilight series, it gets one thinking what were some of the best books to films of all time. Today we will start with the top 10. From thrillers to classics theses are just a few of the great movies that spawned form the bookshelves. Both can entertain us in different ways and now both will be celebrated.

First on the list and a personal favorite is a tale of a man-eater who ruled the ocean named Jaws. In 1975 Steven Spielberg took the words of Peter Benchley and kept millions of moviegoers from going to the beach that summer.

The Outsiders was the ultimate coming of age film. It had classic cars, guys growing up, and guys fighting and was based on a book written by a female. The film was released in 1983 and was directed by Francis Ford Copploa.

Who didn’t love Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory? This loveable, colorful film was based on the book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, by Roald Dahl. The film was so loved that they remade it in 2005 by Tim Burton.

Suave, rich and striking, Patrick Bateman was all of the above and in American Psycho, a film based on the book by Bret Easton Ellis, he was also a vicious killer.

Although not your traditional book, Frank Miller’s Sin City was an amazing comic book and an even more amazing film. It was brought to the big screen in 2005.

We were all introduced to the book To Kill A Mocking Bird in elementary school. This informative book gave very young minds their first look into rape, prejudices and societies lower points. The movie would star Gregory Peck and was released in 1962.

The strange and odd world of Chuck Palahnuik would come to life in both the novel and movie titled, Fight Club.

It was either the violence or the family bond that attracted so many to the Godfather movies originally penned by Mario Puzo in book form and brought to the big screen in 1972, by Francis Ford Coppola.

Giving birth to your first child is a special event, but it is even more unique when the child is secretly the offspring of Satan. In Rosemary’s Baby, written by Ira Levin and adapted to the screen in 1968 by Roman Polanski, that is the case.

“Listen to them, children of the night. What music the make.” This was a great line derived from the 1932 film Dracula that was a brainchild of Bram Stoker and given life in the book Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

Although a movie never truly does a book justice, there are a few adaptations that have succeeded and are worth checking out. Some will thrill you, others may make you scared stiff and some will just make you see society in a different light. No matter how they make you feel, they are sure to make you emote in some fashion. So whether it is a book or film, entertain yourself and fall into a new world.
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