Free Republic

By the end of April, the new home of the Sundance Film Festival should be public knowledge with the Salt Lake City/Park City combo, Boulder, Colorado or Cincinnati bid picked as the host for the next decade. However, a bill heading toward Utah Gov. Spencer Cox’s desk that would ban the Pride flag in schools and other state government buildings might be an eleventh-hour obstacle to the Beehive State’s hopes of keeping the Robert Redford-founded shindig past 2026. “What are they thinking?” a Sundance insider said late Tuesday of the bill to ban the LGBTQ+ flag after a virtual meeting...

E-mail Author Send to a Friend Version March 24, 2006, 7:45 a.m. Firing Blanks American Gun. By Louis Wittig Participant Productions — the film company that takes Ben & Jerry’s zeal for social change and makes it George Clooney sexy — had a great 2005. All the big name projects it touched — Syriana, Good Night and Good Luck, North Country, Murderball — turned that gleamy Oscar-nominated gold. Long in production, American Gun is set to be one of the first Participant-funded movies out of the gate in 2006, and, well, things change. The low-profile semi-tragedy is a tiring,...

January 6, 2006 - Hollywood has a richly-deserved reputation as an extremely liberal town populated by celebrities who rarely hesitate to assail their audiences with their political opinions. Between bluffing that they'd leave the United States if Bush was elected (Alec Baldwin), demanding that he be impeached (Barbra Streisand), hosting Air America radio shows (Janeane Garofalo, Al Franken), consorting with Fidel Castro (Danny Glover) and making romantic movies about Stalinist mass-murderer and t-shirt icon Che Guevara (The Motorcycle Diaries), Hollywood has gotten quite fat suckling at the liberal teat. But just as there may be a few Britney Spears fans...

SALT LAKE CITY - Robert Redford's Sundance Group will launch Sundance Cinemas, a movie theater chain for independent, documentary and foreign-language films as well as some studio projects. "Anything which helps new and interesting voices in the cultural realm reach more people can only enrich the experience of artists, audiences and communities," Redford said. Other programming will include shorts, filmmaker interviews and public forums. Sundance Cinemas will be operated by the theater management team of Paul Richardson and Vert Manzari. The pair has worked together since starting an exhibition theater in 1975. That enterprise was merged with Landmark Theatres in...