Disillusioned, out of control and marginalized young people have always been at the heart of the Sundance Festival with past Jury Prize winners including Welcome to the Dollhouse, Ruby in Paradise and Precious. But in some recent years issues such as poverty, the environment and the red neck menace have often threatened to crowd out the importance of teenage angst.

In their 2010 offerings, however, teenagers seem to have retaken their rightful place on the festival's throne. Among the films to be screened:

Nowhere Boy / United Kingdom (Director: Sam Taylor Wood; Screenwriters: Julia Baird and Matt Greenhalgh)–A teenage John Lennon confronts wrenching family secrets and finds his musical voice in late 1950s Liverpool.

The Runaways / USA (Director and screenwriter: Floria Sigismondi)–In 1970s LA, a tough teenager named Joan Jett connects with an eccentric producer to form an all-girl band that would launch her career and make rock history. Cast: Kristen Stewart, Dakota Fanning, Scout Taylor-Compton, Michael Shannon, Alia Shawkat, Tatum O'Neal.

Twelve / USA (Director: Joel Schumacher; Screenwriter: Jordan Melamed)–A chronicle of the highs and lows of privileged kids on Manhattan's Upper East Side involving sex, drugs and murder. Cast: Chace Crawford, Emma Roberts, Kiefer Sutherland, 50 Cent, Zoë Kravitz.

Bilal's Stand (Director and screenwriter: Sultan Sharrief)–Bilal, a Muslim high school senior in Detroit juggles his dysfunctional family, their taxi stand, and an ice carving contest in his secret attempt to land a college scholarship. Cast: Julian Gant.

One Too Many Mornings (Director: Michael Mohan; Screenwriters: Anthony Deptula, Michael Mohan, Stephen Hale)–Two damaged young men recover their high school friendship by awkwardly revealing to each other just how messed up they've become. Cast: Anthony Deptula, Stephen Hale, Tina Kapousis.

Enter the Void / France (Director and Screenwriter: Gaspar Noé)–A drug-dealing teen is killed in Japan, after which he reappears as a ghost to watch over his sister. Cast: Nathaniel Brown, Paz de la Huerta, Cyril Roy, Emily Alyn Lind, Jesse Kuhn

Poverty, environmental collapse and the red neck menace all continue to be represented. But in restoring the importance of gawking at teenages as central to the world of independent film, Sundance has taken a brave step forward.

"If you have questions, don't ask them," Redford joked, joining fest director Geoff Gilmore for his opening-day welcome. It wasn't much different than last year's or the previous decade's for that matter, Redford's rambling, optimistic oratory only mildly complicated by a Sundance marketplace that contracted by two-thirds between 2007 and 2008.

"For us it's always been a long term view, starting with the fact: Would we survive?" he said, reflecting on Sundance's 25th anniversary, the date of which he acknowledged he couldn't even remember. "Frankly, I didn't know if we would. It was a risk. It was a new idea. Independent film was pretty much exclusively in the hands of the National Endowment of the Arts in the '80s. ... I saw it as a category that we might feed and expand into something with more mass appeal — as an adjunct to what the film business was at that time, which was called just strictly mainstream. On a personal note, I liked the idea of independence."

Moreover, Redford liked the idea of having a launching pad for the work coming out of the margins of the Sundance Institute labs. It was the canny branding trick that captivated the mainstream as much as Soderbergh, Tarantino or anyone else who broke out of Park City. And with the mainstream attraction came the "ambush marketers," Redford complained today, happy to see their own numbers narrow with the recession. "I always believed they would exhaust themselves, and that's beginning to happen. The swag bags had nothing to do with us. And now that's starting to recede."

But is that coveted mainstream — of which Sundance is now the begrudging flagship — a casualty of itself? Too many films, not enough outlets? An imbalance between art and commerce? "It's an interesting question," Gilmore said, "We walk lines, but we haven't changed our agenda. My [colleagues] are always debating what's commercial. The most frustrating thing that happens at Sundance from year to year is that someone tells you how wonderful a film is, but they can't take it out into the marketplace. And what we want to make sure is that the wonderful films that are at Sundance get taken out into that marketplace."

Redford also addressed speculation that Sundance might accept Abu Dhabi's invitation — and money — to launch an extension of the festival there. After noting that the Institute had cultivated work from the Middle East for years and now wanted to extend its mission, Redford waxed skeptical. "When you have too many cooks in the kitchen you're going to slow down the parade," he said, noting that he wanted the annex but hadn't advanced beyond informal discussions. "Right now we have too many cooks in the kitchen. Whether it'll resolve itself or not I can't say." If ever it were to be said, however, this would be the week to do it. Developing....

The NYT today posits the outside likelihood of that doomsday situation, in which studios and their art-house affiliates are forbidden from distributing Sundance selections that were cast and produced after securing guild waivers. The waivers were supposed to allow indie producers to enlist SAG talent in the absence of a new contract with the studios; now, with no contract yet signed and none in sight, they potentially prohibit the likes of Fox Searchlight, Focus Features, Miramax, Sony Classics and other mini-majors from distributing — and perhaps even purchasing — their multi-million-dollar prizes.

Again, it's a worst-case scenario. Not likely. In other words: Don't get your hopes up, Harvey.

• A Sundance Chill [Carpetbagger]

· Last night we got a chance to see I Knew It Was You, the short, Brett Ratner-produced documentary about the life, work and untimely death of Godfather/Dog Day Afternoon actor John Cazale. The film announces Cazale's impact in the most reductive possible terms ("He was in only five movies. Each was nominated for Best Picture") before getting to some pretty revelatory stuff: Al Pacino and Francis Ford Coppola explaining Cazale's technique as hangdog Fredo Corleone; Meryl Streep on their star-crossed love affair; and... Ratner himself, effusing some vague endorsements soon whacked aside by Sidney Lumet. But! We loved you in The Grand, Brett. Stay after it. Patrick Goldstein has much more at The Big Picture.

· The gang from /film is already in Park City, where it appears tickets aren't going fast for the festival's usually competitive public screenings. "Just for the heck of it, we decided to head over to the Sundance Film Festival Box Office in Gateway Center and were surprised to learn that tickets were still available for more screenings than not for most of next week." Great! Someone save us a seat at the Bronson premiere.

· We've called out shot for the Brosnan/Sarandon weepie The Greatest being among this year's bidding-war beneficiaries. Not so fast, sniffs one prognosticator, whose careful scientific calculations suggest the film has a 98.66% chance of sucking. Show your work, infidels.

· As we also alluded to earlier this morning, buyers are planning extra rounds of tire-kicking for this year's Sundance models. In response, sales-rep godfather John Sloss is handling half as many films as he did in 2008. That would be called preparing for a recession.

· And for the low-lying filmmaking horde with their own Sundance lottery tickets? Look on the bright side: At least you can keep 100% of what you make screening your labor of love on a bedsheet in your garage.

Amid the contraction and pocketbook panic gripping the independents and mini-majors this winter, predicting a Sundance bear market seems a safe, obvious choice for 2009. But it also seems relative — especially following a year when sales of festival films reportedly plunged 66 percent from their collective 2007 high of $45 million, and eight-figure buys like Hamlet 2 (and its subsequent seven-figure gross) signaled a reality check that had little or nothing to do with an imploding economy. Distributors need content; they just don't need to walk away with one film to show for $11 million.

So what will they be spending on — and for how much — over the next 10 days? We scoured this year's selections for a few intrepid predictions:

· I Love You Phillip Morris. Jim Carrey is a cop who turns to crime, goes to prison and winds up falling in love with a fellow inmate played by Ewan McGregor. Adapted from a true story by the guys who brought you Bad Santa, Morris may not be the first film that goes (it doesn't premiere until Sunday), but it's already commanding the highest going rate at the fest and could tempt a Miramax or Fox Searchlight — the latter of which is one of the few potential suitors with the proven alacrity and class to successfully sell a film like this — to write a $9 million or $10 million check in the wee hours of Monday morning. If it's not this year's What Just Happened?, languishing overhyped, unfunny and out of place in Park City.

· An Education. Nick Hornby adapted his novel about Jenny (Carey Mulligan), a 16-year-old London girl whose coming of age is kick-started after meeting an older man (Peter Sarsgaard) in 1961. She's on her way to Oxford, he's on his way to a nightclub, holy Christ what will she choose? Word is that An Education is a starmaker for Mulligan, aided by another anticipated film at the fest (see below) and a supporting cast — Sarsgaard, Emma Thompson, Alfred Molina, Sally Hawkins — that will attract the likes of Sony Pictures Classics, Miramax and Focus Features for at least $4 million.

· The Greatest. Setting itself up as an In the Bedroom without the undercooked revenge subplot, The Greatest thrusts Pierce Brosnan and Susan Sarandon into grief over the loss of their teenage son in a car accident. Mulligan appears as the dead kid's girlfriend, lessons are learned, Oscar clips ensue — again, if it's any good: Sundance's bead on middle-class white mourning is growing tired, and Brosnan's executive producer credit whispers "vanity project." But to the extent they even show up with any money at all, the Weinsteins and Paramount Vantage are suckers for this kind of stuff. It may not leave Park City with a deal, but we'll probably hear numbers between $4 million and $5 million throughout the week.

· Cold Souls. Paul Giamatti plays himself in the story of an actor, tormented by his forthcoming role as Uncle Vanya, who turns to a futuristic soul-freezing enterprise as a means of assuaging his anxiety. Which works great — until his soul is stolen and enlisted for use by a Russian soap star. On one hand, the quirk potential here is kind of skin-crawling. But on the other, director Sophie Barthes blew us away with her 2007 short Happiness, which skimmed similar themes with warmth and sincerity. Sony Classics won't want anything remotely Kaufmanesque after Synecdoche, New York, but IFC Films and Magnolia Pictures will probably fight over this in the $2 million range for its potential in both the theatrical and VOD arenas.

· Bronson. It may turn out to be this year's Wrestler — not for any stirring actorly comebacks but rather for an edgy tour de force take on crime, celebrity and class as seen through the psychotic eyes of Charlie Bronson (Tom Hardy), Britain's most notorious prisoner. Hardy will pull out an Eric Bana-style prison-saga breakthrough thanks to director Nicolas Winding Refn, whose Pusher Trilogy endures as one of the decade's great (and greatly underrated) cinematic achievements and whose style fuses hyperrealistic violence with Scandinavian chamber drama. It will polarize Sundance and stimulate salivary glands around the Fox Searchlight and Magnolia condos, from one of which (probably Searchlight, who's seen genre risks like Night Watch pay off before) will come a $3 million buy late next week. Bet on it.

· While the festival itself is as cutthroat as it's ever been — this year admitting only 32 American films to competition out of 1,900 submitted — founder Robert Redford acknowledged to THR that he can foresee a day when Sundance runs its swag-choked, over-hyped, deflated-market course: "[W]hen we're no longer providing the mission we started with — not creating something new for audiences, not creating opportunities for new artists to have a place to come and develop — then we shouldn't be here, and we won't."

· And if/when the sponsorship pool recedes to near-wading levels, symptoms of which are apparent this year after festival partners Volkswagen and Adobe have backed out and party budgets have been slashed by millions of dollars? "What might be a positive is that if there is less hoo-ha," Redford says."Less of a circus atmosphere." Meh. "Get off my lawn" sounds so much better coming out of Clint Eastwood's mouth.

· Worst-case scenario, we can export Sundance to Abu Dhabi, where investors are in talks to introduce their own version of the fest — surely at an 600,000 square-foot indoor mall inside which Park City's Main Street will be rebuilt, five feet of man-made snow will line the street, and puddles of fake vomit will greet filmgoers exiting midnight screenings at the Egyptian.

· Again, 1,900 filmmakers vied for spots in this year's American competition. Less than 2 percent of them received this phone call from Sundance programming chief John Cooper. Show-offs. [via /film]

· As assumed, the Michael Cera-Charlene Yi potboiler Paper Heart will screen in Park City, where it's one of the few competition features expected to find an immediate distribution suitor. A couple others: John Krasinski's directorial debut Brief Interviews With Hideous Men, an adaptation of a novel by the late David Foster Wallace starring Krasinski, Julianne Nicholson, Rashida Jones and Timothy Hutton; and Cold Souls, starring Paul Giamatti as a "famous American actor" who, "in the midst of an existential crisis [...] explores soul extraction as a relief from the burdens of daily life." So basically it's about joining CAA.

· Chris Rock crosses over to the gritty nonfiction world with Good Hair, a documentary about barbers.

· Pierce Brosnan will attend the world premiere of his drama The Greatest, prompting a burst of confetti and showgirls upon some unwitting attendee's 1 millionth grudging complaint that Sundance is "so fucking over."

· Complement your mid-January American Idol saturation with Afghan Star, about the nation's TV talent-competition hit Pop Idol; "this film follows the dramatic stories of four contestants as they risk their lives to sing." All that, just to succumb in the end anyway to Afghanistan's equivalent of Priscilla Presley. Heart-rending.

· Robert Siegel, former Onion editor and an Oscar-nomination lock for his Wrestler screenplay, makes his directorial debut with Big Fan, starring Patton Oswalt as "a parking garage attendant who happens to be the New York Giants' biggest fan." He life is "turned upside down after an altercation with his favorite player," whom we really, really hope isn't Plaxico Burress.

· It's a three-way tie for best synopsis, as far as we can tell:

The Cove — Dolphins are dying, whales are disappearing, and the oceans are growing sick. The horrors of a secret cove nestled off a small, coastal village in Japan are revealed by a group of activists led by Ric O’Barry, the man behind Flipper.

Dirt! The Movie — The story of the relationship between humans and dirt, Dirt! The Movie humorously details how humans are rapidly destroying the last natural resource on earth.

Humpday — A farcical comedy about straight male bonding gone a little too far.

Tough call, though we think we've already seen that last one. What do you think?

• Sundance Film Festival

• Sundance Sets Slate: 64 Films To Compete In Park City [IW]

And with that, Sundance (and the media, in particular) will face its first real and direct challenge... as Cinemark owns the Holiday Village Cinemas, where many of the press screenings are during Sundance. In fact, it is the only real theater - the rest are built in ballrooms for the purpose - used for press screenings during the festival.

So now we have something real on the table. Are those of us in the media who are supportive of the constitutional rights of gays in Americsa [sic] obliged to pass on any screening in the Holiday Village Cinemas (where, ironically, I once saw liberals enraged because the great neo-Nazi doc, Blood in the Face, was not clear enough about being anti-Nazi). What about the indie publicists, most of the male species of which are gay? Do they work that cinema? Do their cliients [sic] just say "no?"

Yes, those poor gay publicists — whatever will they do?! The idea of boycotting the Holiday Village gives protesters (and the festival itself) a tangible objective, even if the HV is typically seen as the "afterthought theatre" where movies not big enough to play at the Yarrow 1 and 2 typically end up. Still, think of the plush stadium seating that will be lost! Can the Sundance press corps afford that sacrifice?
[Photo Credit: AP]

• Cinemark CEO gave $9,999 to anti-gay Prop 8 bigots [Americablog]

• And Now, Prop 8's Direct Challenge To Sundance [HotBlog]

The boycott talk is coming from outside the industry, not inside. So far, calls for a boycott are mainly coming from bloggers, not influential directors, producers, and actors. We don't see that changing, unless the cash-poor Harvey Weinstein decides to make a dramatic nonattendance statement as a way to save face (and plane airfare).

A boycott big enough to matter is unlikely. The young filmmakers accepted into the festival would crawl over their own mothers to be there, and the Sundance hangers-on like Paris Hilton have never been bastions of activism. Without enough straight allies who could bear to part with their tickets to Park City, there's no chance to make a big dent, because...

The gay presence at Sundance has waned. Back before your associate editor took up blogging and adopted the royal "we" at Defamer, I held a regular gig as The Advocate's film critic and attended several Sundances working the gay beat (not as hustler-ish as it sounds!). Though the film festival has a deservedly gay-friendly rep, it's gone through some pretty sparse queer years as of late. At the 2007 festival, the gay slate had so little on it that the centerpiece was a Chad Allen movie. If Sundance was boycotted by gay filmmakers and queer-themed films, the lineup wouldn't change that much.

We're all about new and novel ways to protest (what's this we keep hearing about "A Day Without a Gay"?), but the Sundance idea seems DOA to us, especially when everybody's already got their plane tickets set for January. Next year might be a different story — there'll be a lot more lead time — but let's hope there won't be reason to protest then, OK?

[Photo Credit: AP]

• Gay Activists vs. Utah and Sundance [Variety]

"Why aren't more white people in the film?," an exec apparently asked back in Park City. I've heard similar versions of this story from a few different people connected to the movie.

But, those involved with the film have hesitated to say much more about the film's distribution prospects. After Sunday's New Directors/New Films screening [in New York], filmmakers Tia Lessin and Carl Deal told me that they are hoping for a late summer release of their film, while another insider specified that an August opening is to be expected.

This is the second time in as many years that a Sundance Grand Jury Prize winner has experienced marketplace resistance for issues reportedly related to ethnicity; last year's acclaimed Dramatic champ Padre Nuestro found itself on the outside looking in when its tale of immigrant intrigue was in part designated "too Mexican" for art-house audiences in urban centers. (IFC will release the film — retitled Sangre de mi Sangre — next month.) Its cast of Mexican A-listers, as well as their marquee value among Latino audiences, meant little to domestic buyers.

Nuestro's foreign-language status probably didn't help, but it has something in common with Trouble the Water: With rare exceptions like Tyler Perry-backers Lionsgate or Picturehouse's Bob Berney, a word-of-mouth genius who knew exactly where to target the crossover smash My Big Fat Greek Wedding, supposedly progressive indie distributors have no clue how to market to ethnic viewers.

Sources close to Water tell me that a primary sticking point for buyers is the producers' grassroots marketing plan, which, like Wedding's, could take months to build in African-American communities across the country. (It's worth noting that this is proven experience they have as former associates of Michael Moore.) A similar problem is said to afflict Water's fellow Sundance alum Sugar, the as-yet-undistributed Dominican baseball picture by the makers of the Oscar-nominated Half Nelson. Padre Nuestro's frustrated producers considered self-distribution to build their own word-of-mouth. The general movie glut affecting cinemas, where more than 600 films came and went in 2007, won't allow that kind of timetable, no matter how strong its potential.

We don't know the potentially open-bar-swilling context of the anonymous exec's "white people" comment at Sundance, and we're confident that Water will, if you'll pardon the pun, eventually find its own level. But as far as the festival's safe harbor for tired thinking, we'll take a swag epidemic any day over a gang of rich assholes passing racism off as caution.

• What's Up With Water? [eugonline]