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2010 Sundance Day 4: Derek Cianfrance’s Blue Valentine
A love story that explores the beginning of the beginning and the beginning of the end of a relationship (with seamless transitions that reflect on the past and the present), Derek Cianfrance's debut might have taken more than a decade to make, but it was worth the wait.
2010 Sundance Day 3: Habib Azar’s Armless
So I grabbed a midnight showing to the second official screening to Habib Azar's Armless, and I've got to say that the NEXT section is what it is - small films that are a little rough around the edges but manage to deliver the goods. Here we have an original story idea, that takes on a disturbing subject matter with a generous dose of comedic strokes -- think Downloading Nancy with taboo comedy - I'm thinking daytime soaps certainly influenced Azar's approach.
2010 Sundance Day 3: Alex Gibney’s Casino Jack & The United States of Money
I'm dubbing Casino Jack & The United States of Money as a marathon-telethon, Jack Abramoff's track record of greed and raising money (greed is something that we also saw in the Enron doc) spans back a couple of presidents and is so extensive that Gibney takes 120 minutes to reveal the blueprint.
2010 Sundance Day 3: Debra Granik’s Winter’s Bone
Responsible for putting Farmiga on the map, Granik's ode to Missouri's backwood might just do the same for Jennifer Lawrence - I've identified the actress as someone to watch out for after seeing her in her breakout role from Guillermo Arriaga's The Burning Plain.
2010 Sundance Day 3: John Wells’ The Company Men
While I think Wells' The Company Men will have no problems in getting picked up (it isn't a complete downer and it will draw comparisons to Jason Reitman's film), I'm somewhat surprised that a commentary on corporate downsizing didn't provide more of an emotional whiplash.
