Sundance fields Friends in opening slot
From Kirk Honeycutt

LOS ANGELES—“Friends With Money,” a comic drama starring Jennifer Aniston and Frances McDormand, will have its world premiere as the opening-night film at next year’s Sundance Film Festival.
The Sony Pictures Classics release will screen January 19 in Park City, Utah. The festival’s closing night, January 27, will see the world premiere of Nick Cassavetes’ drugs drama “Alpha Dog,” starring Bruce Willis, Sharon Stone and Justin Timberlake. “Friends With Money,” directed by Nicole Holofcener, revolves around three married couples and a single friend. Scott Caan, Joan Cusack and Catherine Keener also star.
“It’s Chekovian in its ability to talk about social issues and people, class and idiosyncratic personalities at the same time,” Sundance Film Festival director Geoffrey Gilmore said. New Line’s “Alpha Dog” is inspired by true events involving warring drug dealers in the San Fernando Valley and the murder of a young man, which caused Jesse James Hollywood to become one of the youngest men ever put on the FBI’s most-wanted list. He recently was captured in Brazil. Also in the large ensemble cast are Emile Hirsch and Anton Yelchin.
“Kinky Boots,” the directorial debut of Julian Jarrold, is the opening-night film for Salt Lake City on January 20. The production from the newly restructured Miramax Films is about the efforts to save a small-town British shoe factory by switching to more exotic footwear. The film stars Joel Edgerton, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Nick Frost and Sarah-Jane Potts. Festival organizers are scheduling fewer premieres at Sundance next year, hosting 17 compared with 24 in 2005. This is to have “more options in other areas,” Gilmore said. But there might be other reasons as well. The premieres section, showing highly anticipated films often from studios or their classics divisions, has begun to overshadow the indie sections of Sundance in recent years. A couple of years ago, stars and celebrities for the nighttime showings attracted so much media attention that screenings invariably ran late.
At the last festival, organizers moved the media photo line — the festival resolutely refuses to have an actual red carpet — from the entrance of the Eccles Theatre on the Park City High School campus to a side door to relieve congestion. Next year, celebrities and filmmakers will find themselves negotiating their way through a construction zone at the school because building is under way.
Nevertheless, acquisition execs will still jam the Eccles’ lobby for such films as “Little Miss Sunshine,” starring Greg Kinnear, Steve Carell, Toni Collette and Alan Arkin, one of the more highly anticipated offerings without distribution. The film, from Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, follows the adventures of a family on a cross-country trip to get its young daughter into a beauty pageant. Also, Jonathan Demme’s portrait of a musical icon in “Neil Young Heart of Gold” is certain to get Hollywood attention.
Another premiere film of interest to the film community is Kirby Dick’s documentary “This Film Is Not Yet Rated,” an investigation into the MPAA’s film rating system and its impact on American culture. The documentary, which will reveal who rates the films, might well upset officials at the industry’s lobbying organization.
The Weinstein Co. makes its Park City debut with “Lucky Number Slevin” from director Paul McGuigan. Gilmore describes the film, which stars Bruce Willis, Josh Harnett, Ben Kingsley, Morgan Freeman and Lucy Liu, as a “cerebral, self-conscious action film” involving mistaken identity and New York gangsters.
Terry Zwigoff remains in a “Ghost World” mood with his new film “Art School Confidential,” starring Max Minghella, Sophia Myles, Matt Keeslar, John Malkovich, Jim Broadbent and Anjelica Huston. “It’s that rarefied world Zwigoff loves to create, a very funny comedy — actually, maybe it’s playful more than funny — revolving around a murder in an art school,” said Sundance programming director John Cooper.