Today In Sundance Hell: 'Adam' Sells, 'Education' Stalls, Robin Williams's Best?
Wherein your loyal, frostbitten editors survey tomorrow's movie forecast today: Mostly cloudy, with strong industry winds and a 75 percent chance of cliché storms:
· As noted this morning in our roundup of Lame Sundance White-Guy Tropes, Fox Searchlight acquired the quirky drama Adam for low, low seven figures. Other buyers are not impressed, but Searchlight could probably make money out of a parking-garage surveillance video, so... Benefit of the doubt, etc.
· That said, the instant classic An Education was neither instant nor classic enough for Searchlight to bow on its reported $1 million offer, which co-sales reps CAA and Endeavor countered with a price tag of $10 million. Good luck with that, guys.
· And at least until someone opens a wallet wide for Education, this is the sweetest Sundance story we've heard all week.
· And the sweetest review we've read all day belongs to Spout's Karina Longworth, whose disapproval of the Michael Cera/Charlene Yi entry Paper Heart warns, "Put on your helmets, there’s falling meta in the synopsis tunnel." And that's being kind; the word "vile" has come up more than once in conversations with Heart survivors we've encountered in town. Can't! Wait!
· While we're parsing reviews, did Variety really just attribute "perhaps [Robin] Williams' best (at least largely) dramatic performance to date" to his Bobcat Goldthwait collaboration World's Greatest Dad? Huh! Our investigation forthcoming...