Sundance releases its full slate of films

Posted Thursday, December 2, 2010 at 4:28 PM Central

by John Couture

The film year is much like the four seasons in that its very predictable and cyclical. While December is the height of awards season, January starts 2011's festivals season.

Beginning with the Sundance Film Festival in Utah in January continuing through France's Cannes Film Festival before concluding with the Toronto International Film Festival, the holy trinity of film fests provide a pretty good barometer of any given year's film offerings. The film fests are to smaller, indie movies what the trailer season is for the loud, smash 'em up Summer blockbusters.

The film fests allow these films to get seen by the movers and shakers in Hollywood as well as to build a crescendo of buzz that will trumpet them to their art house (mainly) openings or awards season accolades. You only have to look at a list of previous film fest winners and entrants to see just how important these film festivals are for the majority of films brought to market each year.

So perhaps we should give more ink to each festival's announcement of its slate. Yesterday, Sundance announced the "in competition" portion of its slate of 115 feature=length films.

Today, Sundance completed the slate by the naming its Premieres section and its other categories that will comprise the "out of competition" portion of its fest.

One thing is certain, Park City, Utah will again be the epicenter of Hollywood come late January as numerous big stars and directors debut or make their return to Sundance. Among those is writer/director Kevin Smith whose new movie Red State is debuting out of competition in the Premieres category.

Smith launched his film career with the Sundance debut of his first film Clerks.

The Sundance Film Festival runs January 20-30, 2011.