01.21.08: Sundance Proceeds with Caution, 'Cloverfield' Stomps to January Record

Sundance: Less Lust, More Caution
Sundance’s opening weekend was kind of a damp squib, with no headline-grabbing bank-buster deals to ridicule. So far it's the documentaries bagging the contracts: HBO locked up North American rights (and The Weinstein Company took overseas) to Marina Zenovich's doc Polanski: Wanted And Desired, which lifts the lid on events surrounding Roman Polanski's 1977 conviction for sex with a minor, having already snapped up The Black List: Volume One, a profile of big-name African-Americans like Sean Combs and Chris Rock. Barry Levinson’s What Just Happened?, starring Robert De Niro, played to muted reaction over the weekend, although Christine Jeffs' sister-act dramedy Sunshine Cleaning, starring Amy Adams and Emily Blunt, is on buyers' hot list. More at Variety and The New York Times

Stars Embarrassed to Grab Swag
Petrified at being snapped carting off big bags of freebies, celebrities are giving a wide berth to the acres of Sundance swag… More at Variety and USA Today

…except for Jack Black. And our own Glenn Kenny.

Cloverfield Munches Box Office Record
The J.J. Abrams-produced shaky-cam monster mash devoured $41 million over the weekend to take the record for best January opening ever, while the Katherine Heigl rom-com 27 Dresses snatched up $22.4 million for second place. With Cloverfield’s gnashing beasties shrewdly concealed in the film’s stealth marketing campaign, audiences turned up in their droves to watch Manhattan laid to waste. Droves, however, wasn't the word to associate with Mad Money, the Diane Keaton-Queen Latifah-Katie Holmes crime comedy limping into sixth place with $7.7 million. More at Variety

Stone and Brolin Target Bush
Oliver Stone has cast Josh Brolin to play the embattled US President in a biopic about George W's rise to power. The rabble-rousing filmmaker, who regularly spouts off about Bush's misguided adventures in Iraq, insists he's not setting out to pummel the president. "It's a behind-the-scenes approach, similar to Nixon, to give a sense of what it's like to be in his skin. But if Nixon was a symphony, this is more like a chamber piece." More at Variety