Sundance 2011 Links: Day 7

Every day at Sundance, indieWIRE posts a rundown of news from our blog network as well as other outlets. Included today: Anthony Kaufman gives his verdict on the festival, Spout takes a look at “Another Earth,” Anne Thompson speaks to the director and star of “Cedar Rapids,” Cinematical talks to the lovely Eva Green, and “Margin Call” gets a lukewarm welcome from The Hollywood Reporter.

indieWIRE Blogs: Anthony Kauffman said goodbye to Sundance and gave us his parting thoughts on the festival. “Okay, it was actually better than half-bad,” he wrote. “I’d say it was pretty good.” Citing low expectations as a possible reason for his (generally) good experience with the line-up of films, Kaufman went on to divide the films he saw into categories of “Very Good,” “Good,” “Guilty Pleasures,” “Respectable Art-house Entertainment,” “Ambitious, Intriguing Mess,” and “Lame.”

Anne Thompson shared her two-part interview with “Cedar Rapids” director Miguel Arteta and star Ed Helms. In the interview, Helms described the film as being part of “an entirely new genre – this [film] is a Midwestern.” In her written introduction to the clips, Thompson herself called the film “hilarious.”

Spout’s Christopher Campbell was disappointed with “Another Earth,” a film he describes as “a super low-budget M. Night Shyamalan film without any of the suspenseful moments that have made [Shyamalan’s] films tolerable in the past.” Campbell noted the film’s divisive reaction, with audiences coming out either showing strong support or similar disappointment over the film.

Other Outlets: Noel Murray from the Onion’s A.V. Club interviewed “Kaboom” director Gregg Araki. Araki’s “Kaboom” stars Juno Temple, the young actress that was recently featured in our Sundance FUTURES series. Araki goes in-depth with Murray about his most recent film, the Festival circuit, and his career as a whole.

Jenni Miller from Cinematical sat down to speak with “Perfect Sense” star Eva Green. Green’s career has included high-profile roles in “Casino Royale” and Bernardo Bertolucci’s “The Dreamers.” Her latest role is in David Mackenzie’s “Perfect Sense,” which was recently picked up by IFC Films. Green described the movie as “a grounded sci-fi. You don’t have spaceships. It’s not like a typical end of the world movie. It’s a new angle on it, and it’s more focused on humanity rather than special effects.”

Stephen Farber from the Hollywood Reporter was let down by “Margin Call.” Farber was disappointed at the film’s few thrills and lack of accessibility. “At times one might feel in need of a Ph.D. in economics to be fully engaged with this movie,” wrote Farber. He went on to compliment the film’s cast and technical credits, but ended up recommending another set of recent films for audiences who are interested in the topic. “Jason Reitman’s ‘Up in the Air’ handled the subject of corporate downsizing with a biting satiric edge, and more recently, John Wells’ ‘The Company Men’ focused more directly on the human consequences of the financial meltdown. While that film was more conventional than ‘Margin Call,’ it was also more affecting, with better developed characters, and even so, it has struggled at the box office. Viewers who want a deeper understanding of the financial crisis would get more out of Charles Ferguson’s Oscar-nominated documentary, ‘Inside Job.’