Taking a step (or two) that is new, the team behind James Franco’s installation Three’s Company: The Drama premiered a cheekily re-enacted episode from the beloved 70s sitcom at last night’s opening party for New Frontier at the Sundance Film Festival. The four-wall projection installation normally features doctored and sonically remixed footage from the actual show, but this special screening featured Franco and company in slapdash drag, reinterpreting the show’s broad comedic dialogue as a breathless, self-serious soap opera. A small crowd crammed into a shoebox replica of Jack Tripper’s living room, spilling into the adjoining exhibits to complement the haphazard, impromptu spirit of the film, which stars an asymmetrically blonde Franco as Jack, a bearded man (Tyler Danna) as short-shorts-wearing Chrissy, and Franco’s own assistant, Dana Morgan, as Janet.

British comedian and filmmaker Richard Ayoade is perfectly aware how sappy and indulgent some coming-of-age films can be. Submarine, his first narrative feature, is a coming-of-age movie, set in Wales. “Often coming-of-age films tend to be based on the filmmaker or author and there’s this tendency for the character to be sainted,” Ayoade says.

The opening to director Kelly Reichardt’s film Meek’s Cutoff sets a grim scene—a group of pioneers arduously carries their belongings across a river, while a man carves a message into the bark of a dead tree: “LOST.” Meek’s Cutoff is based on the true story of the pioneer group led by Stephen Meeks, a guide who promised to lead them through a shortcut on the Oregon Trail in 1845. A Sundance Film Festival veteran, Reichardt (River of Grass, Old Joy) applies quiet atmospheric shots of the barren plains to illustrate the loneliness and fear of the pioneers (played by Michelle Williams and Bruce Greenwood).

Director (and hard working actor) Michael Rapaport premiered his documentary Beats, Rhymes & Life: The Travels of A Tribe Called Quest to a pumped audience at the Temple Theatre on Saturday night, followed by an emotional Q&A. Rapaport brought up Phife Dawg, a member of the pioneering hip-hop group, and shared the mic with him.Rapaport made sure to acknowledge all the film’s producers, insisting he did not make the film alone.

Saying that Tom McCarthy’s moving new film Win Win is a wrestling movie would be like saying that The Wizard of Oz is about a pair of red sequined shoes. There may be a lot of wrestling in it, and nail-biting turns of the plot may take place on a wrestling mat, but Win Win is really about the modern American family and the sometimes strange and unexpected ways a family becomes itself. Paul Giamatti plays a strapped New Jersey attorney who agrees to become the guardian for an elderly client, but he moves him into a retirement facility just as his client’s abandoned grandson has fled his drug-addled mother in Ohio and plopped himself on his grandfather’s doorstep.

As I gear up for another Sundance Film Festival, it brings back memories of my time at the 2007 Composers Lab (this year more than the previous years I’ve been to the Festival because Circumstance, the film I worked on during the Lab, is a U.S. Dramatic Competition entry).

What’s the most casual, intimate, stimulating, and surprising setting to have a conversation with the people behind the films of the 2011 Sundance Film Festival? Each morning at 10:00 a.m. at Filmmakers Lodge, Cinema Café Presented by Chase Sapphire gathers up a couple of interesting folks to chat about interesting things.

The great (and rough) thing about the Festival is the total immersion of films and events over 10 days in the sun and snow. Great for your soul, rough on the body. Here’s some stuff from what I think was the last 24 hours.

An effective film score moves seamlessly with a film’s images, imitating the ebb and flow of a film’s tone, or offering a restless, vibrant counterpoint to it. We usually think that a film score goes about its job without thrusting itself to the forefront—except for when it does, and even then, it’s still augmenting the story, involving the viewer more deeply in the experience of a film. But music can often be overlooked at a film festival.

You may be aware that the Sundance Film Festival couldn’t operate without the army of volunteers who make it possible to produce the Festival every year. Anyone who’s been uncertain about which shuttle bus to board, which line to stand in at a Festival venue, or attended a Festival screening has been helped by a Festival volunteer.
The numbers behind the Festival’s volunteer operations are impressive, despite the ubiquity of the volunteers during the Festival: there are 1,650 volunteers at this year’s Festival, about 350 different kinds of jobs those volunteers need to do, and approximately 5,000 shifts that need to be filled during the 10 days of the Festival.

Although Sundance Film Festival Director John Cooper explained at yesterday’s Day One press conference that 2011 is the first year that films from all of the Festival’s competition sections kicked off the 10-day celebration, Thursday night was more bustling than ever, with films from the U.S. and World Cinema Dramatic and Documentary competitions, along with one program of shorts.

The movie geeks were out in force Friday morning at the Filmmaker Lodge, drawn there by the irresistible siren song that was the inaugural Cinema Café of the 2011 Sundance Film Festival. Sure, the couches are comfy, and the good folks at Chase Sapphire are providing coffee and snacks all Fest long, but the real draw was two icons of outsider cinema. We’re talking legendary writer-producer-director-impresario of the insane Roger Corman — subject of the documentary Corman’s World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel — screening in the Park City at Midnight showcase, and peerless actor-human dynamo Rutger Hauer, who appears in two films at this year’s Festival, Hobo With a Shotgun and The Mill & The Cross.

A veteran of both the Sundance Film Festival as well as Sundance Institute’s Feature Film Program, accomplished short filmmaker Moon Molson marks his return to the Festival this year with the world premiere of Crazy Beats Strong Every Time. This hefty character study follows a night in the life of an African-American twenty-something suddenly saddled with the burden of dealing with his deadbeat stepfather who has abruptly come back into his life by way of passing out drunk in the hallway of their housing project. Molson credits the inspiration for the subject matter “from some of the people I grew up with.

In the moments before the 2011 Sundance Film Festival officially launched with the annual Day One press conference at the Egyptian Theatre in Park City, two Festival employees stood sentry at either side of the stage, anticipating the arrival of Sundance Institute President and Founder Robert Redford, Executive Director Keri Putnam, and Festival Director John Cooper. Framed by the theatre’s neo-Egyptian proscenium and dressed in the Fest’s chic, Kenneth Cole-designed royal blue ski vests, the microphone-toting gentlemen inadvertently embodied a Festival preceded by a rich history, outfitted for the future, and eager to get on with the present.
With a record six films in this year’s U.