If I Had Known I Was a Genius, the screenwriting debut of actor Markus Redmond (who also plays the lead in the film), starts out with promise. Michael (Redmond), breaking the invisible "fourth wall" -- a technique used throughout the script -- informs us that he's going to tell us the story of his life, starting from when he was about six years old and his older sister pushed him down a flight of stairs. The interesting technique here is that Redmond, the adult actor, plays himself at various ages, from six (cramming his adult body into a first grade school desk) all the way to present day (in his uniform for the Costco-type warehouse store he works in, present day), and for a while, at least, that novelty entertains.

It's 1974 and Dvir (Tomer Steinof), just about to turn twelve and entering his Bar Mitzvah year, lives on a Kibbutz in Israel with his mother and older brother. His father died some years earlier, but no one will tell Dvir anything other than that it was an accident. Kibbutzim, which began in earlier forms in response to oppression of Jewish population in Russia, was flourishing as a social system in the 1970s in Israel. The kibbutzim were founded on principles of socialist equality -- each person giving as much as he or she was able, and taking only what he or she needed. The members of the kibbutz provided everything the kibbutz needed to survive as a whole, and in return the kibbutz as a whole took care of the individual needs of its members. Kibbutzim were seen by many as social uptopias, and many seekers, both Jewish and not, came to the various kibbutzim looking for models on which to found similar communal intentional communities.

During the recent Sundance Film Festival, Summit Entertainment had bought the worldwide distribution rights to Once, the Irish musical that premiered at the festival. Now Summit has sold the film's North American distribution rights to Fox Searchlight. The price was under $1 million -- not bad for a movie that cost about $100K to make. Fox hasn't publicized a possible release date yet, except to say it will be released in 2007.

Once was written and directed by John Carney, and won the World Cinema Audience Award for a dramatic film at Sundance this year. James Rocchi caught the film at Sundance and said it "isn't just the standard-issue struggling artist story it could have been, but, rather, a symbol for moving on, daring to be happy, daring to reach out." Once sounds like a charming love story, and hopefully, since a larger distributor like Fox Searchlight has the film, more of us will get the opportunity to see it later this year. Other movies Fox Searchlight bought at Sundance include the Adrienne Shelly film Waitress, Joshua and La Misma Luna (partnering with The Weinstein Company).

Because you just can't know too much about horse sex, filmmaker Robinson Devor and his writing partner Charles Mudede, who collaborated on 2005's critically acclaimed narrative film Police Beat, have joined forces once again, this time to tackle the difficult task of exploring the death of a man who had sex with a horse. The idea for Zoo came from a real news story: In July of 2005, in the town of Enumclaw, Washington, outside Seattle, a man died of a perforated colon as a result of having sex with a stallion. The case was widely reported on both within Washington and around the world, and as a result bestiality, or sex with animals, was made illegal in Washington.

Prior to the death of this man (whose identity was protected by most Washington media, who referred to him only by his online moniker, "Mr. Hands," the name under which he posted videos of himself engaging in sex with stallions), sex with animals -- while not something that most people who engaged in would go around talking to their friends and neighbors about -- was perfectly legal. Mr. Hands and his friends in the zoophile community (and really, I could have lived the rest of my life without knowing much as I know now about this particular form of sexual deviancy) weren't doing anything wrong, strictly speaking.

If the tone of No End in Sight, one of the latest in a slew of docs around the Iraq war, feels a little familiar -- hard-edged reporting, decisive point of view, insider perspectives and razor-sharp editing -- there may be a reason. The film was exec-produced by Alex Gibney, who directed last year's Oscar-nominated Enron: Smartest Guys in the Room. The two films, although they have different subject matter, have key similarities at the core. Both are about men abusing power and privilege, the inherent dangers of trusting those in authority without questioning their motives and motivations, and the consequences of blind arrogance and willful ignorance. No End in Sight is about war, Enron about business, but both structurally and in overall message, the films have much in common.

Former policy wonk Charles Ferguson, who made a killing in the business world when he sold his software company off to Microsoft for a cool $133 million, decided he wanted to make a film about the Iraq war. The resulting film, No End in Sight, does three basic things: Shows the decision-making process that has led to the post-invasion situation we are currently in with Iraq, paints a picture of the giant hole the administration has dug us into there, and explores what (if anything) it might take to get us out. If the film's title strikes you as a bit negative, well, Ferguson clearly doesn't have the most optimistic outlook on the Iraq situation, but with deliberation and aforethought, he shows the viewer exactly why.

Horror movies: You know the drill. Oversexed, nubile, blond teenage girls cavort shamelessly with horny teenage boys until the bad guy murders them -- often with with a phallic weapon and abundant fake blood. Although the boys are in pretty much equal danger of being dead before the final credits, it's almost always the girls who are portrayed as most vulnerable and in need of protection. Why? Well, because girls have vaginas, which puts them at danger of being attacked by the male half of the population. Therefore, we must costume them in the most revealing ways possible, make them aware of their own sexuality, and then punish them for it with death. That way, when we kill the girls off, it'll kind of be their own fault for being such sluts. It's not just horror films, of course; from thrillers to romantic comedies, women are endlessly at the mercy of their vaginas. And therein lies the appeal of Teeth, a different kind of horror film, which just played the Sundance Film Festival.

At this year's Sundance FIlm Festival, Cinematical had the chance to talk with Festival Director Geoffrey Gilmore -- about the past, present and future of the Sundance Film Festival, about its challenges and its perils.

J.J. Lask's first feature film sounds like Charlie Kaufman from another universe. Lask adapted his own book, 'On The Road With Judas' into a feature film, but he changes the story in major ways, and makes the movie -- about the making of the book -- into a movie, almost like Adaptation. Still with me? Okay, in this movie an actor (Aaron Ruell, better known as Kip in Napoleon Dynamite) portrays the "real" Judas, and another actor (Eddie Kaye Thomas) plays the actor playing Judas in the movie. This is the same for all of the characters in the film, and to confuse things even more, the whole story is told in a talk-show format, with Lask himself playing the host of the show and interviewing everyone involved in On The Road With Judas. Of course, he doesn't play himself in the film, so the part of J.J. Lask is played by Kevin Corrigan.

For the Bible Tells Me So, a documentary showing at the Sundance Film Festival, explores the issue of religion and homosexuality through personal interviews with five families whose spiritual lives collided with their real lives when they learned a loved one was gay. Director Daniel Karslake and Bishop Gene Robinson, the first openly gay man to be elected Bishop of the Episcopalian Church, were on-hand for the fest, and sat down with Cinematical for a chat about the film.

Upon hearing that someone will make a documentary, chances are you think of some shocking story, or perhaps something politcally charged that reflects modern society. You probably wouldn't think of crosswords, which was the subject of Patrick Creadon's latest documentary Wordplay -- the one that gave our James Rocchi an incessant feeling of deja vu. However, after delighting in some nerd love pasttimes, the director wants to tackle the U.S. federal debt with partner Christine O'Malley. Their hope: "that we can again take a potentially dry story and make it cinematic, revealing and entertaining."

Well, the latter is yet to be seen, but at least this theme will have more social relevance. The duo is teaming up with Open Sky Entertainment to make the doc, which will be roughly based on writing from The Daily Reckoning, a financial newsletter. To cover all their money bases, the team plans to bring together a nonpartisan advisory committee, consisting of business and government leaders. They better hurry, as they plan to start filming immediately and release the documentary next year. Creadon is quoted as saying: "America's federal debt is $8.6 trillion and growing at a frightening pace." I guess he's seen that billboard in New York City -- the one that has a bunch of little white lights manically flashing as the debt continues to mount.

It's never really fair to add to the million woes of the indie filmmaker by mentioning the troubles stirring around them pre-release. After all, it's what's on screen that counts. But there comes a time when the fuss is irresistible to watch, especially after a look at Cinematical's Kevin Polowy and Kim Voynar's reviews of Hounddog, as well as Monika Bartyzel's earlier anticipation of the trouble to come, from that now notorious Sundance film best known as the "Dakota Fanning rape movie."

The LA Times's Robin Abcarian did the pro-Hounddog piece on Jan. 20 , taking the high road as she described the 21 credited producers, the usual horror stories of money dropping out and director Deborah Kampmeier hocking her car. S.T. VanAirsdale of The Reeler took a significantly lower road, reproducing, in all of its misspelled glory, the ad Kampmeier wrote for the Sundance newsletter which describes trying to avoid the unions while she made Hounddog. As a reward for this small act of union-avoidance, Volkswagen presented her with a VW Touareg. It's interesting to note in Neil Gabler's book on Walt Disney, by the way, that unionized newspaper critics refused to attend the screening of Pinocchio because of Disney's well-known labor troubles. Other times, other morals. Warmly heralding the director's "exploitative, racist piece of s--t," VanAirsdale links to Manhola Darghis' by now famous Sundance screed calling Hounddog "overinflated rubbish ... as sincere as it is stupid."

While waiting for someone to find the tongs with which to handle this movie, you can sign (sight unseen) either the "block Hounddog petition" or the "support the movie Hounddog" petition.

The third and final Cinematical video roundtable from the 2007 Sundance Film Festival is more than just a wrap-up of this year's movies; it's a pretty rollicking discusion of the Sundance state of the union, with myself as your host, Cinematical Indie Managing Editor Kim Voynar, Rotten Tomatoes Editor Jennifer Yamato and Chicago Tribune Film Critic Michael Phillps; here's the second installment ...



... and the third.

To most movie fans, Sundance is this far-off and distant place they can't visit because, well, it's a pretty damn expensive trip -- and who the heck wants to spend a week on a mountain in January and not ski? The second question I'm always asked upon my return home from Sundance (after "What good movies did you see?") is "What famous people did you meet?" But the third question is usually something like "So when will I actually get to see these movies that everyone's been chattering about for the last two weeks?" And so I decided to collect all the acquisition news from this past festival and offer it all up on one convenient platter. I'll keep the chatter to a minimum, but if you want more info on a particular film, please do partake of all the links below.

• Clubland -- Warner Independent Pictures -- $4,000,000
• Crazy Love -- Magnolia Pictures -- n/a
  
• Grace is Gone -- The Weinstein Co. -- $4,000,000
• How She Move -- Paramount Vantage -- $4,000,000
• In the Shadow of the Moon -- ThinkFilm -- $2,500,000
• Joshua -- Fox Searchlight -- $4,000,000
• King of California -- First Look Pictures -- $3,000,000
• La Misma Luna (The Same Moon) -- The Weinstein Co. & Fox Searchlight -- $5,000,000
• My Kid Could Paint That -- Sony Pictures Classics -- $1,500,000
• Nanking -- Fortissimo Films -- n/a
  
• Once -- Summit Entertainment -- n/a
  
• Protagonist -- IFC & Netflix -- Under $1,000,000
• The Signal -- Magnolia Pictures -- $2,300,000
• Son of Rambow -- Paramount Vantage -- $8,500,000 (some say even higher)
• Teeth -- The Weinstein Co. & Lionsgate -- $1,000,000
• The Ten -- ThinkFilm & City Lights Home Entertainment -- $4,500,000
• Waitress -- Fox Searchlight -- $4,500,000
• Weapons -- After Dark Films -- $1,000,000

Thanks to Variety, Movie City News, THR's RiskyBiz Blog, and our own Cine-maniacs (particularly Jette and Karina) for all the info. [Have any updates, additions or corrections? Leave 'em in the comments section please!] Added Bonus: After the jump you'll find a list of movies that already had North American distribution set up before they arrived at Sundance!

"The Bible is the word of God through the word of human beings, speaking in the idiom of their time,and the richness of the Bible comes from the fact that we don't take it as literally so that it was dictated by God." -- Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate

The last few years have brought some important documentaries: Alex Gibney's Enron: Smartest Guys in the Room, Amy Berg's Deliver Us from Evil; and Davis Guggenheim's An Inconvenient Truth, just to name a few. 2007 is young, but Sundance is always a great opportunity to sample the documentary waters, and my favorite doc at Sundance this year was For the Bible Tells Me So, an exploration of the religious right's use of the Bible to justify shutting homosexuals out of the faiths in which they've grown up.

When MTV stopped airing Liquid Television many years ago, I lost an outlet that let me see groundbreaking animation that I'd rarely get to see anywhere else. With the rise of the internet, and the birth of networks like The Cartoon Network, animation finally has more places to be seen, but it's tough to find quality stuff that pushes the envelope. Like the different shorts programs, this is where Sundance steps in. I've made it a point to book tickets to the animation spotlight before anything else, and I've always enjoyed the different films they choose. This year was no different, and the program was chock full of different types of animation and genres. From serious to comedic, and CGI to paintings on glass, there was a little slice of everything.