Tag: Award

PARK CITY, Utah —  Welcome to a special Sundance Daily edition of the Wide Shot, a newsletter about the business of entertainment. Sign up here to get it in your inbox.

Good morning! It’s Saturday, Jan. 25, and today’s forecast is for light snow, with 2 to 6 inches expected for Park City, according to the National Weather Service. The high temperature is expected to be 23 degrees. Early reports from our crew on the ground warn that it’s not just chilly but very slippery out there, so be careful.

In this edition of our Sundance Daily newsletter, we recap Friday night’s Sundance Institute gala, share our tips for seeing live music in Park City and unveil the first batch of photos and videos from the L.A. Times Studios. Plus, the latest movie recommendations from our team of film buffs.

The movies worth standing in line for

“The Stringer” (The Ray Theatre, 7:30 p.m.)

In June 1972, after South Vietnamese planes dropped napalm on the town of Trảng Bàng, a photographer captured the image of grievously burned 9-year-old Phan Thi Kim Phuc fleeing the attack, completely nude, arms akimbo and wearing an expression of agony. “The Terror of War” — more colloquially known as “Napalm Girl” — swiftly became one of the most famous war photographs ever produced, fueling antiwar sentiment and earning a Pulitzer Prize for Nick Ut of the Associated Press. Except, Bao Nguyen’s engrossing investigative documentary alleges, it wasn’t Ut who snapped the picture.

Crisscrossing the globe from Arles, France, to Ho Chi Minh City to Southern California, Nguyen follows VII Foundation Chief Executive Gary Knight as he follows up on a former AP photo editor’s accusation that the image came from a Vietnamese stringer, whose work he says was falsely attributed to Ut. (After learning of “The Stringer’s” existence, the AP conducted its own six-month investigation into the image and released a 22-page report stating, “In the absence of new, convincing evidence to the contrary, the AP has no reason to believe anyone other than Ut took the photo.”) Whether the documentary presents enough “new, convincing evidence” to change the history (and future) of “The Terror of War” will be in the eye of the beholder, but it culminates in a forensic analysis of still images and video from that day in Trang Bang that left this viewer gobsmacked. — Matt Brennan

“Rabbit Trap” (Jan. 30 and Feb. 1, Library Center Theatre)

Folk horror isn’t supposed to make a lot of sense and writer-director Bryn Chainey’s feature debut, set in an unusually eventful Welsh forest, won’t disabuse you of that notion. But a mood is brewed — dank and laced with hints of fantasy — and if Peter Strickland and Alex Garland got to these ideas sooner, those guys are swell company to be in. A too-modern-feeling couple (Dev Patel and “Blue Jean” breakout Rosy McEwen) live in the mid-1970s in a cottage with more analog synth equipment than Pink Floyd’s attic. He records field sounds while she makes threatening experimental music. They smoke a lot of cigarettes, take a lot of baths and seem to be avoiding something. Then a nameless local 12-year-old arrives (the arresting Jade Croot), glomming onto their vibe, and the movie tips deliriously toward something pushy and tension-filled. The weirdness, beautifully designed and elliptical, is welcome. — Joshua Rothkopf

Movers and shakers from around the fest

No one represents the resilience of Los Angeles and its film community quite like Michelle Satter. Little more than a year after her son, Michael Latt, was shot and killed in his home, Satter’s family home was destroyed in the Palisades fire earlier this month — and yet the Sundance Institute founding director, honoree of this year’s Sundance Institute gala, found notes of hope, even humor, in her speech Friday.

“As some of you know, we recently lost our family home in the fire that burned down most of the Palisades,” a tearful Satter told attendees at the annual fundraiser, held at the Grand Hyatt Deer Valley. “It’s a deeply devastating time for us and so many others, a moment that calls for all of us coming together to support our bigger community. As a friend recently noted, and I have to listen to this, ‘Take a deep breath.’ Take a deep breath. We lost our village, but at the end of the day we are the village.”

On a night that also celebrated Sean Wang (“Didi”), Julian Brave NoiseCat and Emily Kassie (“Sugarcane”), Cynthia Erivo (“Wicked”) and James Mangold (“A Complete Unknown”), it was Satter who inspired the loudest cheers and longest standing ovations, aided by stirring tributes from filmmaker Marielle Heller, actor Glenn Close and Sundance founder Robert Redford, who penned a letter in tribute to Satter — part of the Sundance family since its founding in 1981 — read by his daughter Amy.

In her remarks Satter also remembered her late son, joking that he didn’t like waking up early when he volunteered on the crew at the Sundance Lab and asking the audience to embrace the Sundance mission he grew up with.

“Let us take this moment to celebrate the collective impact that we can all have when we come together as an inclusive community,” she said. “[Michael] would want to say to all of you, ‘Leading with love, building community and fostering equity and cultural change through art and storytelling, it is our essential way forward.’ ”

In addition to the event’s support for the institute, organizers also encouraged donations to L.A. fire victims and first responders via the Entertainment Community Fund and the Los Angeles Fire Department Foundation Emergency Wildfire Fund. —Matt Brennan

Where you’ll find us in Park City today

Ben Harper, who appeared in the documentary “It’s Never Over, Jeff Buckley,” surprised the sold-out crowd after the film’s premiere at the Ray Theatre on Friday evening.

“If there ever is a college dissertation about how to turn a song into a hymn, Jeff Buckley and ‘Hallelujah’ is the intro,” Harper said before performing the song and participating in a short Q&A with director Amy Berg.

You never know who might show up in Park City — including plenty of musicians, unlike Harper, playing outside of the festival. If you need a break from screenings this weekend, Insomniac Events, which puts on the biggest EDM festivals in the U.S. (think Electric Daisy Carnival and Nocturnal Wonderland) is putting on the High Altitude series with top electronic artists, including Kaskade on Saturday and Dillon Francis on Sunday. (The Marquis Park City, 427 Main St., 9 p.m. Tickets required, 21 and older only.)

And if EDM is not your speed — or you remember the ‘80s hit “And We Danced” — Eric Bazilian, one of the founding members of the group behind it, the Hooters, will perform with fellow singer-songwriter James Bourne on Sunday (5:20 p.m.) and Monday (2:20 p.m.) at the ASCAP Music Café at Acura House of Energy, 550 Swede Alley. —Vanessa Franko

Inside the L.A. Times Studios

John Lithgow and the cast of “Jimpa” stopped by the L.A. Times Studios on Main Street fresh off their well-received premiere Thursday night. Once Lithgow finished posing for solo portraits, he turned the tables on staff photographer Jason Armond and borrowed his camera to snap his own photo. See more photos of the stars who dropped by on Friday.

WATCH: “By Design” at L.A. Times Talks @ Sundance presented by Chase Sapphire Reserve

WATCH: Marlee Matlin on why she decided to do a documentary about her life

WATCH: Alia Shawkat on her ‘screwball romantic comedy about the military industrial complex’

WATCH: Dylan O’Brien on playing twins and Lauren Graham on trying a new kind of role

WATCH: The kids of ‘Speak’ aren’t cowards like many of us