The Sundance Film Festival has a new director. John Cooper, a 20-year veteran of the festival who worked in programming, has been moved up to the top spot. Cooper is responsible for instituting many of Sundance's new technological pursuits, including releasing indie shorts on iTunes, Netflix, and for the Xbox 360. Asked how he feels about those particular initiatives, festival founder Robert Redford smiled strangely, nodded his head, and said "Well... sure. Those." [Variety]

Though it's been in the can for four long years, the movie Sahara is still losing people money. Clive Cussler, the author of the novel on which the tale of a swashbuckling adventurer named Matthew McConaughey who's looking for a Civil War warship in the Sahara desert with the help of a lisping Spanish lady and that dude from Out of Sight is based, sued the movie's production company, Crusader, awhile back, claiming that they didn't give him final script approval as promised. Crusader sued back saying that Cussler had lied about the sales figures for his series of books, which they had hoped to turn into a franchise. Crusader won the suit in 2007, the jury awarding them $5 million. Now Cussler has been ordered to pay for their legal fees as well. All summed up, the total cost of Sahara for Cussler? $27 million. A fair price to pay for foisting that film's miseries upon the world. [Variety]

Juan Antonio Bayona, a young apprentice of Guillermo Del Toro's, might be directing the third movie in the Twilight fuckmeplease vampire series, creatively titled Eclipse. It's about an enchanted Mitsubishi that a girl and her sparklenaif undead boyfriend dry hump in and then he gets mad at her and then she eats mushroom ravioli and then he smolders and jumps into trees and then she falls down because she's clumsy and then he smiles and then—I'm sorry little girl, would you like some coffee with that cream? [THR]

Like ants who keep crawling into your house every year to complain a lot, Mormons are once again angry with the current best show on television, Big Love. This time it's because the show is going to depict a sacred, and secret and magical, 'endowment ceremony' in an upcoming episode. It's a long held tradition that the particulars of the ceremony, which prepares you and other people for the eternal afterlife or some such nonsense, be heavily guarded. HBO states that "it was not our intention to do anything disrespectful to the church." Hah, really? Have you seen your show, HBO? Frankly, I don't give a shit what the Mormons are whining about. Actually, I'm going to start sending money from this state into their shitty, wasted desert of a hellhole in an effort to get MORE endowment ceremonies depicted on every TV show possible that has anything remotely to do with Utah. Then I'll laugh at them and ask them how it feels to be meddled with. [THR]

Oh angel Moroni, make it stop. We're just making Nadya 'Octomom' Suleman more powerful. Her two-part appearance on Dr. Phil's Program for Shut-Ins brought the daytime hamfest a 14% rise in ratings. Oprah Winfrey's show for secret alcoholics and lonely gay men living in Coral Gables saw a 22% bump when she showed up for an interview. Feeding off of and growing from this buzzing success, Suleman is next expected to destroy downtown Tokyo. [Variety]

"One day in prayer, all by myself, I asked myself the question: What if it's all not true?" Dutcher recalled. "It was an earth-shaking moment of spiritual terror, such a profound experience. It was such a sense of loss. I felt my faith leaving me and never coming back."

..."At the beginning, I was proud to say, 'Yeah, I'm a Mormon filmmaker' because then, I was defining what a Mormon filmmaker was," Dutcher said. "It quickly got completely out of my control. Now, no one wants to call themselves a Mormon filmmaker because you're associating yourself with a genre that's fallen into disrepute. It's like having porn on your résumé."

In fact, Dutcher is so intent on leaving the genre behind that he penned a blistering "farewell address" to the Provo Daily Herald, excoriating other Mormon filmmakers:

A few parting words: I urge you to put the moronic comedies behind you. If you're going to make comedies, at least make them funny. Perhaps you should leave the mockery of Mormons to the anti-Mormons. They've had a lot more experience and, frankly, they do a better job.

Damn, Richard! Wait, can we say "damn" around you now? In all seriousness, Falling (playing right now at a one-week engagement at Laemmle's Music Hall in Beverly Hills) just shot up to the top of our screening lists, or at the very list, our Netflix queues. While we can't yet attest to Dutcher's skill behind the camera, he's at least nailed the next most important part of being a filmmaker: causing controversy.

[photo credit: Lori Shepler / Los Angeles Times]

• Richard Dutcher leaves the Mormon church and a genre [LAT]

"I did not feel that I was given the material this season to warrant an Emmy nomination and in an effort to maintain the integrity of the academy organization, I withdrew my name from contention," [Katherine Heigl] tells Gold Derby.

"In addition, I did not want to potentially take away an opportunity from an actress who was given such materials."

Well, isn't that rich? Just one year after her astounding Emmy win, Heigl has basically given the entire staff of Grey's a giant, nicotine-stained middle finger. While we give her publicist kudos for attempting to spin her client's disenchantment with her television career into some sort of pseudo-stand for the integrity of the Academy Of Television Arts & Sciences, we didn't fall off the turnip truck yesterday. This is a Master And Commander-esque cannonball shot at the writers and show-runners of Grey's for failing to give her enough scenery to chew this season. While we don't watch the show, O'Neil reports that "one of the few dramatic turns she had on the show this past season involved rescuing a deer that had caused a string of car accidents" (which, actually, sounds kind of hilarious). Call us crazy, but if Izzy doesn't pull a Dr. Doug Ross by the middle of next season and skedaddle the fuck out of Seattle Grace Hospital, we'll eat our hat and liveblog it for you all to watch.

[Photo credit: INF]

• KATHERINE HEIGL TO STAR IN 'ESCAPE' [Var]
• Emmy champ Katherine Heigl quits the race, blaming 'Grey's Anatomy' writers [Gold Derby]