While it may have had an all-star cast boasting the likes of Robert Redford, Meryl Streep, and Tom Cruise, Lions for Lambs appeared without a splash. In fact, it hit audiences with a dull and disappointing thud. Honestly, that partially surprises me, partially doesn't, and partially disappoints me. The film is by no means a masterpiece, nor is it a powerful and hard-hitting political thriller, action film, or drama. However, it does pack a punch against apathy and disinterest, and does so with a passionate and measured hand.

The film focuses on three main interactions – the journalist (Streep) and the politician (Cruise), the professor (Redford) and the student (Andrew Garfield), and the two soldiers and old friends (Michael Pena and Derek Luke), who are in Afghanistan. Each character provides a face to an aspect of today's current war-filled society -- one that brings it out of abstract thought and the printed word.

If you ask my mom about Robert Redford, she'll cite his dreamy blue eyes and his charismatic performances in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and The Sting. If you ask someone my age about him, though, I bet the Sundance Film Festival is the first thing that will come to mind. For a lot of us, the Sundance Institute has been so influential and important that it overshadows the earlier days, when Redford was "only" a movie star.

Variety reports that the industry convention ShoWest will honor Redford with the Visionary Award when it convenes next week in Las Vegas, a tribute to the Sundance Kid's extraordinary contributions to the world of independent film. Sundance is the largest, most influential film festival in the United States, and it has launched the careers of dozens of filmmakers, including Quentin Tarantino and Steven Soderbergh. What's more, the Sundance Institute's workshops for screenwriting, documentary filmmaking, and other crafts have helped countless individuals hone their skills.

This will be the first time ShoWest has given out a "Visionary Award," and Redford seems like a mighty fine choice to me. Those dreamy blue eyes have seen a lot of great things happen in the movie world.

With Sundance wrapped, it's time for Robert Redford to get going on his next movie. According to Yahoo/Associated Press, his next project will be an adaptation of Bill Bryson's bestseller -- A Walk in the Woods. He will produce and star while Barry Levinson is planning on directing. Nothing like Into the Woods or Into the Wild, this book focused on Bryson's return to the U.S. after 20 years in England, and how he decided to reconnect with his homeland by hiking the 2100-mile-long Appalachian Trail with a college friend. The account details their struggles with self-reliance, and the people they meet along the way.

Redford says: "It'll be fun. I don't know when I've read a book that I laughed so loud. Also, it's a chance to take a look at the country... The backdrop is pretty terrific, if you stop to think of all the visuals that are possible as they go along that trail." It's about flipping time, I say. The family favorite Charlotte's Web aside (he was Ike the Horse), Redford hasn't acted in a comedy since 1996's Up Close & Personal. The last time he was in a good comedy, well...

Of course, the drama master can't go without some heavier fare as well. After hiking the Appalachians, Redford says he will take on the story of how Branch Rickey helped Jackie Robinson get into major league baseball in 1947. "What Rickey had to do, what Robinson had to go through, and the partnership they had to form, that's a story nobody knows. It's just a fascinating story."

Sundance kicked off this afternoon with the Opening Press Conference, featuring Sundance Film Festival Director Geoffrey Gilmore, the President and Founder of the Sundance Institute, Robert Redford, and In Bruges director Martin McDonagh (not pictured). Redford's opening remarks spoke to the Festival as an agent of -- and subject to -- change. Redford cited the Festival and the Institute's efforts to "create product that is different," while Gilmore noted that in 2008, Sundance has "... more new film makers this year than any since our first."

Gilmore also spoke to the New Frontier and Midnight programmes of the Festival, noting how they, in many ways, represent "the most innovative aspect, the most risk-taking aspect of the Festival." The trio took questions from the audience, including Eugene Hernandez from IndieWire's point-blank question about whether the WGA strike will be putting an added focus on this year's Festival as a possible source of new films for distributors. Redford demurred to Gilmore, who noted how "the film people come to Sundance talking about isn't the film people leave Sundance talking about" and suggesting that over the next ten days, anything could happen. Redford was asked about the politics of the Festival, and if 2008's role as an election year would shine a new light on the films here. Redford pointed out the Festival's long-standing commitment to documentary films as an alternate form of political discourse, and when asked if he was endorsing any specific candidate in 2008, Redford simply answered with a drawn-out and slightly exhausted "Nooooo ..." And with that, Sundance began -- so keep it here at Cinematical during the next ten days for all the coverage you need from Park City.

Most of us are probably painfully aware of the stress of the holidays when it comes to familial relationships. Films about families tell the one story that practically anyone can relate to. So in the spirit of feeling better about ourselves I've compiled a list of some of the most dysfunctional families in film. Maybe after taking a look at some big-screen dysfunction, we can sit back and take a little solace in that at least none of us have to sit down to Christmas dinner with any of the people on the following list.

1. Spanking the Monkey

Before he was famous on You Tube for his demented freak-out on the set of I Heart Huckabees, David O. Russell was famous for making the unthinkable; a comedy about incest. Monkey stars Alberta Watson as Susan Aibelli; a lonely and depressed mother who develops a sexual relationship with her son after they are left alone together for the summer. Jeremy Davis stars as her son and the subject of this unlikely coming-of-age story. The film might not be for the weak of heart, but it did manage to win an audience award at Sundance in 1994, and was responsible for turning Russell into the megalomaniac we've all come to know and love.

2. Ordinary People

Besides going down in infamy as the film that beat Raging Bull out of a 'Best Picture Oscar', this 1981 drama about a family dealing with the loss of it's 'favored son' was the directorial debut of Robert Redford. Timothy Hutton stars as the younger brother who is readjusting to life after a botched suicide attempt. Donald Sutherland and Mary Tyler Moore also star as the parents to Hutton and Judd Hirsch as the prototypical 'earthy NY Jewish' psychiatrist. So for anyone who watched Mary Tyler Moore as the epitome of 'chirpiness' during the seven year run of her self-titled series, get ready to be blown away, because her performance as a cold and repressed suburban mom is one of the best there is.

I'm sure Jerry Seinfeld and the other people involved with his latest film had hoped it would BEE number one (oh God, that joke was a cry for help, please call my parents), but the top spot went to Ridley Scott's American Gangster. Seinfeld and company still can't complain too much about second place as $39 million is hardly chump change. Last week's number one movie Saw IV hung in there as well, shearing the limbs off the competition for the second week. Here are the final numbers:

1. American Gangster: $46.3 million.
2. Bee Movie: $39.1 million.
3. Saw IV: $11 million.
4. Dan in Real Life: $8.1 million.
5. 30 Days of Night: $4 million.
5. The Game Plan: $3.9 million

The holiday box office season is truly upon us with high profile releases and Christmas themed movies hitting theaters. Here's what's coming out on Friday.

Fred Claus
What's It All About: Santa's black sheep brother Fred gets bailed out of prison and comes to the North Pole to help make toys for the Christmas holiday. Vince Vaughn stars as Fred and Paul Giamatti plays Santa.
Why It Might Do Well: The teaser trailer that came out last year with footage that probably isn't even in the movie was hilarious. Vaughn seems to be playing a variation on his characters from Wedding Crashers and Old School, and he was pretty funny in those roles, and I'm dying to see what Giamatti can do as Santa. If nothing else, the sheer number of theaters this one is opening in will put it in the number one spot.
Why It Might Not Do Well: I tend to bristle when Christmas displays start showing up in stores right after Halloween, and I'm probably not the only one. Might it just be too early for Christmas cheer?
Number of Theaters: 3,400
Prediction: $34 million

Lions For Lambs
What's It All About: Tom Cruise plays a Senator on the rise who crosses paths with an idealistic professor played by Robert Redford and a reporter played by Meryl Streep. Redford directs this film, which is the first drama for Cruise in six years.
Why It Might Do Well: A cast this stellar will definitely get people's attention.
Why It Might Not Do Well: Rottentomatoes.com is only giving this a 38% rating, with critics using words like "talky" and "clunky."
Number of Theaters: 2,200
Prediction: $11 million

I don't have a subscription to ScreenDaily.com, so I can only read the headlines, but those headlines sure are handy. Here are three that caught my eye, all deals taking place in and around the American Film Market (AFM) in Santa Monica, California.

• Carlos Reygadas' challenging drama Silent Light sharply divided critics when it debuted at Cannes earlier this year, though everyone seemed to agree that certain scenes were indelibly beautiful. Tartan Films has picked up distribution rights in the US; they previously released the director's Battle in Heaven. Expect a limited theatrical engagement. It plays at AFI Fest in Hollywood next week (November 7 and 9).
  

• Blood Brothers (pictured), on the other hand, has united critics: no one seems to like it. Alexei Tan's reimagining of John Woo's A Bullet in the Head has been criticized for being too glossy and lacking substance -- none of which discourages me from wanting to see it. First Look Studios has acquired US distribution rights. First Look has handled genre titles before, often sending them straight to DVD, so a theatrical release is not assured, especially in view of its lukewarm reception so far.
  

• Sukiyaki Western Django, Takashi Miike's English-language Spaghetti Western, apparently confused everybody. Some were disappointed that it not as outrageous as from the versatile and prolific director. First Look has picked up US rights for this one as well, but it's a new, edited version that is 25 minutes shorter than what was previously screened at the Venice and Toronto film festivals. Given Miike's name recognition, this has a shot at a limited theatrical release before heading to DVD.
  

AFM runs through November 7. AFI Fest, which opened last night with a gala screening of Robert Redford's Lions for Lambs, runs through November 11.

[ Via ScreenDaily ]

Lambs just aren't enough for Robert Redford. On November 8, Lions for Lambs hits theaters, the Redford-directed/starring drama about a professor, journalist, and senator in Washington during the battle in Afghanistan (check out the trailer here). Now, because you can't be tired of war, mess-ups, and political drama yet, Variety reports that he's set for more with an adaptation of Richard A. Clarke's memoir, Against All Enemies. Clarke was the counterterrorism adviser for three presidents, and his book criticizes the Bush administration's actions before and after 9/11.

Jamie Vanderbilt wrote the screenplay, and the film is being produced by John Calley under Capitol Films. (Columbia Pictures used to have it, but they had slipped it into turnaround.) However, ol' Red's involvement depends on financing. I imagine they'll pull it together -- especially if they plan to get it out before the 2008 elections. While George W. Bush might not be running again, there's nothing like a little incendiary cinema to heat things up.

The memoir doesn't lack for troubling claims, although these days, many of them have become widely accepted. Clarke says there was a lot of terrorist "chatter" before 9/11, and that he kept making requests for meetings about his information. After the dreaded date, the ex-adviser claims Bush asked him to find evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved, and when he wrote a report saying there was no evidence to support that, he was told to "update and resubmit" the document. And the big one -- that the war on terror that led to the invasion of Iraq played into Osama bin Laden's hands, rather than hurting Al-Qaeda.

Unless you're a big fan of ET -- that is, Entertainment Tonight, not the extra-terrestrial -- you probably missed the first brief look at Lions for Lambs, Robert Redford's next film that has him directing as well as starring with Tom Cruise and Meryl Streep. Back in November, Chris Ullrich told us about Cruise's decision to take on the role, having been handed a whole selection of films to choose from. Was it the right choice? If you liked A Few Good Men and want to see him earnest in a suit, then probably. If you didn't, maybe not.

The movie is about 3 intertwined stories -- a senator debating a crisis in Afghanistan, the reporter who made his career and a professor who is teaching political science and trying to convince a student not to give up his studies and head there. As the clip shows us -- Cruise is the Senator, Streep is the Journalist and Redford is the Professor. In Tommy's first scene, he stands up to look more imposing and less teeny to the sitting Meryl, then she takes over to talk about how a "we" failed to connect the dots and Redford then says: "Rome* is burning, son." And man, that guy can put a lot of heat behind a few words, much more so than Cruise. You can't really go wrong with two of the three pieces, but I'm not so sure about the third which really seems to make for risky business. I've actually liked a lot of Cruise's work, and have enjoyed him as a vet, a vampire and even a disfigured man. But a senator? I'm not so sure.

*Thanks to Allison for the correction. Good ear! MB

82-year old Paul Newman apparently announced his retirement on Thursday's Good Morning America, declaring "I'm not able to work anymore as an actor at the level I would want to." He also added: "You start to lose your memory, your confidence, your invention. So that's pretty much a closed-book for me ... I've been doing it for 50 years. That's enough." Newman's last major role in a film was as an elderly Irish gangster John Rooney in Sam Mendes' underrated 2002 film Road to Perdition, and he had a role in the recent Pixar film, Cars, which is unseen by me. The host of the program didn't ask Newman about A Walk in the Woods, which was supposed to be his big reunion film with Robert Redford. The project, which would have been based on Bill Bryson's book, is about an author who hikes across some American wilderness with his pal. So scratch that, I guess.

I'm not sure what roles Newman will be most remembered for, but I do think that, as the years go on, The Hustler and Cool Hand Luke will continue to climb higher and higher on the list of critically-acclaimed films. The Newman performance in each film is as good, in my opinion, as any work Brando ever did. There's also Hud, which seems to be gaining in respectability as the years ago on. Sadly, his pairing with Hitchcock only produced the yawn-worthy Torn Curtain, and like every other actor, he had his share of real turkeys, but overall, I think Newman can hang up his spurs safe in the knowledge that his legacy is secure.

This was the scene before Thursday's opening night film at Sundance -- The Eccles theater filling with jurors, press and the public for the premiere of Brett Morgen's Chicago 10. There's more pictures from Park City -- including Sundance's guiding light and Robert Redford addressing the opening night crowd -- after the jump......

Apparently, Robert Redford wants 2007 to be the year of the shorts. No, he isn't referring to the ridiculously warm weather we've been having this winter. He means it is time for short films to get the kind of recognition feature films receive, and he's hoping this year to see it happen. Redford's Sundance Institute has always been a big supporter of shorts, and it showcases a number of them at the Sundance Film Festival, but unfortunately they tend to get overshadowed by the buzz of the better-publicized features. This year may be different, though, as many of the festival's shorts program will be distributed to iTunes, each for sale at the price of $1.99.

This won't be the first time that outsiders will have the chance to see Sundance shorts. For years the festival has streamed a selection of them for free on its website. But the Institute is hoping to reach a wider audience through iTunes, and it sees the deal as predominantly beneficial for the shorts' filmmakers. However, not all of the shorts' filmmakers will get the opportunity. The download service can only offer about half of the 71 films in the program, mostly due to rights issues.

This should be good news for fans of our "Eat My Shorts!" column, which will spotlight Erik's recommended Sundance shorts once the festival gets underway.

In late October (the 24th to be exact) I told you about Tom Cruise's latest dilemma between which new project, and multi-million dollar paycheck, he would choose for his next film. To refresh, his choices were a drama called The Ha Ha for Warner Bros., the horror-thriller Selling Time for director Spike Lee and Lions for Lambs, directed by and co-starring Robert Redford. Being the smart guy I am, I thought Cruise should join Spike Lee's film and make that his next project. They seemed like a good fit and I was looking forward to the kind of film a Cruise/Lee partnership would produce.

Of course, he decided to go a different way. According to Variety, Cruise has picked Robert Redford's Lions for Lambs to be his next starring vehicle. Not only that, but the pic will be the first film to go into production for United Artists since Cruise and producing partner Paula Wagner took over the studio from MGM a few short weeks ago. Lions for Lambs, scripted by Mathew Carnahan, features three interconnecting stories about a congressman (played by Cruise) who's pursued by a reporter (played by Meryl Streep), an idealistic professor (played by Redford) who attempts to inspire a wealthy student to action and a pair of American soldiers wounded in the Gulf war, one of them a former student of Redford's.

In the end, Lions for Lambs might actually be the best choice for Cruise to take on as his next film. It's been quite awhile since he was in an "important" film with a message like The Firm, A Few Good Men or Born on the Fourth of July. It will probably do him good to get back to his roots and to a time when people thought he actually had some acting talent instead of thinking of him as some pro-Scientology zealot who jumps up and down on Oprah's furniture. Plus, with UA financing the pic, the new Cruise/Wagner mini-studio could already have its first film ready to hit theaters next year. Maybe this Tom Cruise guy is smarter than I thought? At the moment, there's no other casting news to report, but production is scheduled to begin early next year.

In an attempt to make it seem as if they're once again revolutionizing indie filmmaking, The Sundance Institute and Robert Redford announced today at a press conference in New York a new program called The Global Short Film Project. What's happening is The Sundance Film Festival has teamed up with GSMA (described as "an association of mobile phone service providers") and commissioned six independent filmmakers (all of whom have presented work at the Sundance fest in the past) to create short films specifically designed to play on cell phones. Heck yeah, Sundance has officially gone mobile, folks!

The filmmakers involved are Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris (Little Miss Sunshine), Justin Lin (Better Luck Tomorrow), Maria Maggenti (Puccini for Beginners), Cory McAbee (The American Astronaut) and Jody Hill (The Foot Fist Way). The films will premiere at the 3GSM World Congress (which appears to be some sort of gigantic mobile orgy) in Barcelona this February. Following the event, they will most likely be made available to download on your phone. However, more details will be announced as the Sundance fest draws closer. We're not sure what Redford intends to do with this new project (aside from obtaining a ton of free minutes from his cell phone provider), but here's hoping The Reeler's frightening prediction of a "Mobile Phone Auteur Lab" does not come true. Even if its description as a "rigorous series of workshops dedicated to expertly lighting and framing your drunk, passed out friends for future laughs and/or blackmail" would be a hilarious scenario to poke fun at. Ahh, Redford -- what will he come up with next?

After delving into the world of high school basketball in Coach Carter, director Thomas Carter is switching gears and heading for the baseball diamond. Currently, he's tapped to helm an untitled biopic about baseball legend Jackie Robinson and, apparently, Robert Redford (in his first baseball-related role since The Natural) has signed on to play Brooklyn Dodgers general manager Branch Rickey.

The script will be penned by Ali scribes Christopher Wilkinson and Stephen J. Rivele, and the film will revolve around Robinson's struggles (which "include death threats, beanballs, abuse from fans, a rebellion by some of his teammates and the threat of a strike by the St. Louis Cardinals") as the first African-American in Major League Baseball. Production is expected to begin next March assuming Jackie Robinson himself is cast. Most likely that part with either go to Will Smith or Jamie Foxx, as they seem to be the go-to guys for these sorts of roles. Any other actors who you feel would be good as the legendary baseball hero?