The news out of Sundance this year was that business is once again booming. We could tell that things were hopping well before the festival too because the online ticket system was showing many shows as sold out. We may have compounded the effect by shifting our attendance to the opening week of the festival. For the past couple of Sundance’s we had attended the less populated second half. This year, for the first half anyway, it was just plain hard to get tickets. Using the online system during our allotted time slot, weeks in advance of the festival, there were many movies already sold out. Red State, the new movie from Kevin Smith (Clerks) sold out in all time slots in 1 day, including a showing at 8:30 am on a Monday morning.

Tags: Film | Movie | Sundance

Passes were nearly sold out at this year’s festival but getting around and getting into movies seemed a quite a bit easier than in past years. This might have been dumb luck or it might have been that a bunch of people were trying to see James Franco in person at screenings of 127 Hours. Usually we get five movies per day...don't miss the Telluride presentation about the past and present of 3D.

Tags: 3D Movies | Dolby Digital | Film Festivals | Movie Making

Attendance was reported to be down a little at this year’s Sundance. It seemed that way but since we attended for the second half only it wasn’t perfectly clear. There were still sold out movies but in general the lines seemed a little shorter. This is still an industry festival and so it’s a great place to take the pulse of the industry. The pulse is a little weak. One of the great things about Sundance is that directors, cast and crew are usually in attendance and available for Q&A after their film plays. A common question is ‘What is next for all of you’ and this year more than in the past the common answer was ‘I don’t know, do you know where I can find work?’

Read about this Year's Sundance Film Festival in the CAVE.....

Tags: Film Festivals

The year before last was the last year that longtime Telluride Film Festival founders Bill and Stella Pence were part of the festival organizing team. The rumor last year was that the crop of movies at last year’s festival was diminished somewhat due to their absence, the idea being that they had pull in Hollywood to bring the block buster films to Telluride.

Tags: Film Festivals | Movie Reviews

The Sundance festival is very much an industry festival compared to most others that I’ve attended. Films are selected with the expectation that there will be some interest from film distributer and it seems like most of the attendees are somehow in ‘the business’.