The Sundance Film Festival is always crammed with celebrities large and small, with striving up-and-comers making names for themselves in new films, veterans lending some much-needed starpower to small indies, and of course, plenty of hangers-on and wannabes trying to get a taste of the glamour in Park City, Utah. But while you can waste a lot of time trying to seek celebrities at parties and restaurants, you can almost be guaranteed to see some of them in a very simple way: going to the movies. Every year various luminaries are brought in to serve as juries for the six competition categories, everyone from actors to filmmakers to scientists charged with seeing all of the competition films, usually sectioned off in their own part of the movie theater.
This year's jury lineup was announced today and is just as prestigious as usual, with the likes of Fast Five director Justin Lin, New York FIlm Festival director Richard Pena, Contagion screenwriter Scott Z. Burns and actress Julia Ormond getting ready for the trek to Park City. The most interesting lineup of jurors might be in the Short Film category, where Beavis and Butt-Head creator Mike Judge, Pariah director Dee Rees (who premiered her film at last year's festival), and former Sundance shorts programmer Shane Smith will be collaborating. None of them will be in the spotlight quite like Parker Posey, though, who will be in charge of hosting the final night awards ceremony-- an event I usually refer to as "film festival prom," since it's held in a giant gymnasium and is the first moment in the entire festival where there aren't 100 other places to be at once.
I'll be heading to Park City next week to cover Sundance as best I can, so keep coming back here for all the news from high up in the mountains.
