Variety 1/17/2023

The last time we all dusted off our down jackets and made the mass trek into the mountains of Park City was in January 2020. The breakout films at that year’s Sundance Film Festival were “Minari” and “Promising Young Woman,” but the story that was overtaking everything was the new virus spreading worldwide. The films out of Sundance that year, eventually released in hybrid formats or on streaming, barely made a dent at the box office, and for the next two years, Park City lay empty, the “applause meter” gone silent. Great films came out of the past two virtual Sundances, but something was missing. That’s why we’re so excited to return to Sundance and to experience all the dizzying emotions that accompany discovering a brilliant new work of movie…

Senior entertainment and media writer Matt Donnelly and Julia Louis-Dreyfus ate protein bars and spoke about brutal honesty in relationships. Both were rewarding. Executive editor Brent Lang has been braving the snowdrifts of Sundance since 2015. He’s excited to see great indie movies again, and less enthused about the shuttles. Reporter Addie Morfoot, who wrote about the Sundance documentary market, is looking forward to returning to Park City to celebrate the impressive collection of docs being screened. Photographer Ryan Pfluger captured Julia Louis-Dreyfus in Los Angeles on Jan. 3. Pfluger, who shot Variety’s 2020 Sundance photo studio, is happy to be returning to the festival and anchoring our studio once again.…

In February 2022, a battle was brewing between two Sundance factions over the documentary “Jihad Rehab,” a film that earned critical raves during its run at the virtual festival a month earlier but was being targeted by a small group of vocal detractors. The two sides — festival programmers and non-programmers — converged to discuss the spiraling controversy over the Meg Smaker-helmed film, which depicts a handful of Guantanamo detainees who have been released from the U.S. prison into a 12-month Saudi de-radicalization program. “If you look at what happened to me, look at ‘UnRedacted,’ ‘woke’ is silencing artists of color and women.”–“Waking Up Dead” director Terracino Sources describe a knock-down, drag-out showdown between programming director Kim Yutani, defending the film, and some members of the institute, who hadn’t watched…

“HE WAS IN THE TOP ROCK RANKS LIKE A JIMI HENDRIX OR VAN HALEN OR JIMMY PAGE, BUT ALSO UNIQUELY HIMSELF.”—VERNON REID Few fellow guitar heroes were more visibly affected by news of Jeff Beck’s Jan. 10 death, at age 78, than Living Colour’s Vernon Reid, whose first social response consisted of profanity and in-comprehension. He followed that with a whole tweetstorm’s worth of appreciation for the man who helped shape him. Variety spoke with Reid about what made Beck one of a kind. “The guitar community is blind-sided. We’ve had many bad days in the world of guitar, but this is undoubtedly one of the worst. “He was one of those rare prodigy people who actually kept developing. He wasn’t stuck with the Yardbirds. He heard jazz and he…

That Lisa Marie Presley named her 2003 debut album “To Whom It May Concern” says a lot about the budding singer-to-be she was at the time. Until that point, she was known for being the daughter of Elvis Presley and onetime wife of Michael Jackson. For most of her life, Presley, who died Jan. 12 at age 54, was tabloid fodder. At 35, Presley was a little smug and very self-assured, as if to convey: Take it or leave it, this is me. From the album’s grungy opening track, unapologetically titled “S.O.B.,” to the reflective, rollicking, undeniably hooky single “Lights Out,” Lisa Marie dropped her guard and let the world in. She even agreed to interviews, which allowed junior music journalists like me to take in the Presley presence while…

AWARDS CIRCUIT All signs point to “The Fabelmans” dominating the Oscar noms. It would be the third Steven Spielberg film — after “Raiders of the Lost Ark” and “Schindler’s List” — to lead the nomination tally in a given year. On Jan. 24, AMPAS will unveil its nominees for the 95th Academy Awards. The season has been marked by the return of the blockbuster, and a love for old-fashioned movie extravaganzas will play a crucial role in how the nearly 9,600 members rank their ballots. Spielberg and Universal’s movie is predicted to rack up 10 nods, including best picture and a surprise acting nom for 20-year-old Gabriel LaBelle. Close behind is Baz Luhrmann’s “Elvis” with nine, including one for star Austin Butler. Martin McDonagh’s “The Banshees of Inisherin” could follow…