Eric Lavallée

The Spotlight section (replacing the awkward Spectrum sidebar) is a place where the festival will showcase some great finds on the festival circuit. And let me tell you, there is some great stuff here especially with TIFF/Venice titles such as I am Love, Lourdes, Mother & Child, A Prophet and Women Without Men.

Tons of Park City alumni are bringing their latest films, but I'm a bit surprised that March-pegged releases of The Weinstein's All Good Things and Focus Features' Greenberg aren't getting a Park City push. Instead, as expected, Sony Pictures Classics will show up and they get to showcase Get Low and A Prophet (Spotlight section) once again, and they'll preem Holofcener's Please Give. Overture will introduce Philip Seymour Hoffman's directing debut (Jack Goes Boating) and Fox Searchlight will preem Duplass Bros.' untitled comedy, which I'm calling Center of Attention - because its a great title considering the subject matter.

The lucky inaugural eight include: Habib Azar's Armless, Linas Philips's Bass Ackwards, Sultan Sharrief's Bilal’s Stand, Katie Aselton's The Freebie, Barnes Bros' Homewrecker, Adam Bowers's New Low, Michael Mohan's One Too Many Mornings and Eyad Zahra's The Taqwacores - which has nothing to do with the docu film Taqwacore: The Birth of Punk Islam: (same subject, different film).

I guess we're moving forward in time with the whole "I am a false prophet. God is a superstition" discourse. Paul Thomas Anderson must have liked Philip Seymour Hoffman take on the priesthood in Doubt, as he is putting his faith in him. Universal studios would be doing the same with a 35 million dollar faith based, period drama probably not of the Kirk Cameron kind, and despite the similarities in choice of year circa 1952, probably not the Jimmy Jones kind either.

As we wait for tomorrow's selections in the non-competitive categories, I figured I'd further explore/familiarize myself with the sixteen titles (Blue Valentine, Douchebag, The Dry Land, Happythankyoumoreplease, Hesher, Holy Rollers, Howl, The Imperialists Are Still Alive!, Lovers of Hate, Night Catches Us, Obselidia, Skateland, Sympathy for Delicious, 3 Backyards, Welcome to the Rileys and Winter's Bone) selected for the U.S Dramatic Competition.