In case you don't know, the story revolves around an overweight, illiterate teen from Harlem who is pregnant with her second child and invited to enroll in an alternative school.

Newcomer Gabourey Sidibe plays Precious and Mo'nique plays her mother; Paula Patton and Mariah Carey also make appearances. In addition to a spectacular-looking trailer, the design geek in me has to give Lionsgate props for this poster:
…which is powerful and very much like some of the old posters designed by the great Saul Bass.


Precious premiered at Sundance in January and will be shown at the Cannes Film Festival (which started yesterday) but won't make its theatrical release in the U.S. until November (Oscar season!).

Precious Trailer [Trailer Addict]
Precious/Push: Based on the Novel by Sapphire [IMDb]
Related: Precious [Feministing]
Precious Trailer [Women & Hollywood]

Shawn Levy's Date Night is going to be star-studded! Tina Fey and Steve Carell were already on board to play a married couple out on their... um... date... night. But the cast will now include Mark Wahlberg as a buff dude who hits on Fey and James Franco as a low-level crook. Also in the cast are Common, Taraji P. Henson, Gossip Girl's Leighton Meester, and Kristen Wiig. Sheesh. [Variety] Speaking of star-studded. Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, John McCain, and Sarah Palin will all be memorialized in TV film form by HBO. The cabler has optioned the book Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime. A screenwriter (Charles Leavitt, who wrote Blood Diamond, cause, you know, Obama, Africa) is already attached but only one bit of casting has been announced. Sarah Palin will be played by Velma from Scooby Doo. [Variety, Ryan had some thoughts on this last night]

Fan of prancy, dancy figure skater nymphs? Good news for you then! Grand fashion fop of the skating world Johnny Weir will have his own reality series on Sundance. Be Good Johnny Weir will follow the fantasticat and his posse as they prep for the 2010 Olympics. Evidently launching a bid to become as geigh as Bravo, the net has also picked up The Day Before, about what fashion models do 36 hours before they do the world's hardest job, walking in clothes. [Variety] As if regular TV was even relevant anymore! Online audiences are growing by the bushel. Lost alone had 1.4 million unique online viewers last month. Total online video viewership was up 39% from last March. Remember the internet! [Variety]

Showtime has renewed its soft core period drama The Tudors for a fourth and final season. The series' final arc will follow King Henry Rhys Meyers and the last of his two wives, me and then me wearing a wig. We're all very excited about it. [Variety] Ugh, song of purple bummer. Vastly overrated musical Spring Awakening (gorgeous score, fairly limp everything else) might be getting the film treatment. From none other than prestigious director McG. He of the Charlie's Angels and the soon-to-be-seen SkyNet's Devils. The musical is about German teenagers fucking like a million years ago. They wear knickers. And sing pretty songs. And act very, very self-important. [THR]

Wait, I just said TV might not be relevant, right? I was wrong. Bravo, still number one in gaydom, has greenlit a new series that's like its dearly departed Project Runway, but this time stars... celebrities. Launch My Line will follow a bunch of grasping "famous" people (like Tia Mowry maybe, probably Vivica A. Fox at this point, that guy from your bus this morning, a small child [dwarf?] wearing a sailor's hat) who are trying to launch their own clothing line (think: Kathy Ireland ceiling fans). They'll get help from a professional design type. Dear lord I sort of can't wait. [THR]

Other bits: Book McMafia has been nabbed for a movie adaptation. [THR] The Daily Show has added a new correspondent. [THR] And Simon Cowell might leave American Idol. [EW]

THR provided an exhaustive analysis today of exactly how and when financier toes were stepped upon and moguls were made to cry like five-year-old girls, which we've broken down into a handy Get Your Hands of My Push Baby Timeline.

· January 16 — Push debuts in Park City. It built steady buzz over the week, wooing suitors, but accepting no official bites.
· January 24 — Sundance's closing day. In a few hours, Push would win both U.S. grand jury and audience prizes. Weinstein execs land in Park City to negotiate for a buy.
· January 25-27 — A series of meetings and conference calls between Push producer-financier Smokewood Entertainment Group, TWC, and Cinetic, a film financing advisory assigned with brokering the deal.
· TWC also explored two other options: one that would pair them with a private investor, another that would see them going halfsies with Lionsgate—a partnership that proved successful in the past with Fahrenheit 9/11.
· Lionsgate was interested, especially since their Chief Drag Officer and one-man money-making -machine Tyler Perry loved Push.
· January 27 — That morning, TWC and Cinetic reach a detailed agreement. A phone call with the Push financiers that day and one e-mail that evening later, TWC had made an official bid, accepting the filmmakers' terms and requesting paperwork from Cinetic. A Cinetic rep replied in an e-mail that he was "explaining every detail" to his client. The paperwork never came.
· January 28 — TWC tell Lionsgate the deal has closed. Lionsgate approached Cinetic and were assured Push was still theirs for the taking.
· February 2 — Lionsgate seals their own deal, with Perry and Oprah Winfrey's involvement secured.
· February 4 — TWC files complaints in New York Supreme Court against Cinetic, Lionsgate and Smokewood.
· Lionsgate fights back, filing a pre-emptive lawsuit asking a judge to declare Lionsgate the film's legal owner.

The crux of the case, then, lies in Cinetic's e-mails and the intention behind them. According to TWC's Scary Hollywood Lawyer Bert Fields, "The critical thing is that (TWC) sent an e-mail saying we've accepted your terms and we've reached an agreement, and when (Cinetic) writes back and says we're explaining the deal to the clients, that's an adoptive admission that a deal exists." A lawyer for Lionsgate retorts, "The material deal terms were not agreed to, and I think it's apparent on the face of their complaint. Some of those e-mails are deliberately authored in ways to suggest that there was a contract where indeed there wasn't."

• How 'Push' came to shove [THR]

Carey glams it way, way down to play a world-weary case worker that the film's heroine, Precious (Gabourey Sidibe) finally, almost offhandedly reveals her familial abuse to. Her performance is emblematic of the film itself: what could have been a campy stunt (and still might appear to be so in its broadest strokes) is actually weighed down with unexpected gravitas.

Oh, and that faint mustache we told you Carey sports? It's still there, we promise. See it in IMAX! (That is, if Harvey Weinstein ever lets you.)

The Weinstein Company and Lionsgate have now filed suit against each other, with each studio arguing that it came out of Sundance with the rights to distribute the movie. It's like Watchmen all over again, but with inner-city drama instead of blue wangs! Say THR:

"TWC reached a firm agreement for the rights to "Push: Based on the Novel by Sapphire.' Behind their backs Cinetic Media tried to make a better deal with Lionsgate. Lionsgate was well aware of the TWC contract but went forward anyway," said Bert Fields, who along with David Boies is repping TWC. Typically in breach-of-contract cases, a plaintiff would either want the contract honored or, in its place, monetary compensation.

Fields added: "We have just been informed that Lionsgate went to court today in Los Angeles to preempt TWC's lawsuit in New York. This is obvious forum-shopping by a party that knew TWC was going to sue. We will deal with it appropriately."

Then again, the New York Times is arguing that the film is going to be a near-impossible sell anyway. Well, we'll come back to Push's box office potential in just a bit, after we demolish the rest of the claims in this NYT article for being inaccurate and sorta dim.

First, writer Brooks Barnes amusingly makes hay about the fact that Lionsgate originally agreed to talk to him about the film's marketing and then suddenly had to rescind their offer at the last minute. Barnes speculates that happened because the film is so hard to sell that they didn't want to discuss it—uh, we're going to go ahead and say that they pulled out because of the impending Weinstein/Lionsgate clash that some reporting on the matter might have dug up. Bummer to have that story announced today, too, dude!

Oh, but then there's this:

Lionsgate's recent success lies almost entirely in the horror genre, particularly the torture porn franchise "Saw," although it has had some luck in a corner of movies condescendingly referred to by the industry as "urban." The studio, for instance, distributes Tyler Perry's comedies, which have sold about $248 million in tickets over the past four years.

Really, has Lionsgate had "some luck"? Because from where we're standing, it looks like they actually nurtured a major film franchise and locked it down (but maybe it was because their Sagittarius is rising?). Anyway, there are really too many errors in this NYT piece to correct, from the comparison of its fortunes to the barely released Spike Lee bomb Miracle at St. Anna, to the assertion that "the average marketing cost for this type of film is $25 million" (right, because that's what St. Anna had, isn't it?).

Defamer's seen this movie, so let's give you our own perspective: yes, the film is harrowing, but it's also sometimes explosively funny, and it's adept at building and releasing tension at the right times. Also, with the weight of Tyler Perry, Oprah Winfrey, and The View (Sherri Shepherd has a small role) behind it, this film is poised to hit its key money demographic: not black audiences, but women. There's no way this film won't be enormously talked about in the press, and Mo'Nique is a sure frontrunner for the Best Supporting Actress Oscar, which ensures that the film will stay in the public eye long enough to far exceed some industry watchers' expectations.

Also, Mariah Carey has a freaking mustache. Didn't we mention that before?

• Lionsgate, Weinstein Co. tussle over 'Push' [THR]

• Wrenching Film Poses Marketing Challenge [NYT]

You may remember that in our self-congratulatory post on An Education's sale, we signed off with "Emboldened, we'd now recommend that Lionsgate take a look at Push: Based on a Novel by Sapphire. Work that Tyler Perry circuit, get assured spots on Oprah and The View, and thank us later (a supporting actress campaign for Mo'Nique would be payment enough)."

Today (two weeks later), Variety brings this news:

Lionsgate has purchased North American distribution rights to "Push: Based on the Novel by Sapphire." Oprah Winfrey and Tyler Perry will support Lionsgate's distribution through their respective motion picture companies, Harpo Films and 34th Street Films.

Well, all right then! Shall we go three for three? Hey, MTV Films...still interested in making some pickups? How about acquiring Sundance's fun "high school threesome" vehicle Dare? If you need us, we're going to be in our acquisitions suite, sacrificing yet another virginal Jezebel commenter to feed the insatiable Defamer crystal ball.

• Lionsgate, Winfrey, Perry push 'Push' [Variety]

The honors announced Saturday night most aggressively singled out Push: Based on the Novel by Sapphire, the bleakarrific urban drama that claimed the Grand Jury and Audience prizes as well as a special acting honor for Mo'Nique — the film's evil-mother-from-hell who just last week was being asked to prepare her Oscar '09 speech. We could hardly believe it then, but knowing how the Academy has a new favorite farm team in Park City, the reality has sunk in: The plus-size star is one Weinstein endorsement away from an honest-to-God awards trajectory. Make it happen, Harvey.

• 2009 Sundance Awards Ceremony: 'Push' sweeps! [EW]

On the left is the very sweet Elisa Noel, a Salt Lake City native/teacher/massage therapist who had driven down to Park City to take part in an elaborate pamper suite touting an upcoming hotel. Thus far, Noel had not been able to make time to see any films, though she saw and loved the Jason Ritter vehicle Good Dick when it played in Salt Lake the previous year. While administering a chakra-balacning hand massage and a "cuti cocktial" ("Someone said it smells like nature's bubblegum"), Noel discussed this festival year's somewhat diminished star quality.

ELISA: So this is for your heart chakra, and I'll put this scrub on your arms as well. For your choice of scrubs, you have sugar with lavender, or salt with ginger...

DEFAMER: We're all about sugar. Have any stars come in?

ELISA: A couple, yeah. Kevin Sorbo. And then you saw Danny [Franzese], he was just here. We've had a lot of, like, agents.

DEFAMER: Is it hard to get agents to relax? How do you get them to put the Blackberry down?

ELISA: Nobody puts them down. They all set them up here and watch. [laughs]

For Sundance attendees who cared not for free boots or fake-bakes, there was always the Pet Pad, where celebs on Main St. could come in and hug a rescue pet (swag with no carbon footprint!). The face of the Pet Pad was Dr. Karen Halligan (above right), whose mission it was to talk up pet insurance. "People don't think about it," she told us. 'Like, Andie MacDowell came down, and I said, 'I'm promoting pet insurance,' and she goes, 'pet insurance?!'

DR. KAREN: I've been a shelter vet for the last ten years and it's changed my life. I'm in negotiations for my own talk show right now, I'm on Animal Planet all the time, Dogs 101, Cats 101, the hit show Groomer Has It, which is being premiered in Moscow as we speak...

DEFAMER: The same version?

DR. KAREN: You know what's really funny? You're right, it's [dubbed]! Like, who's doing me in Russian? Or Joey Villani, who's a Jersey guy. Jai Rodriguez is the host, and he's in Russia right now promoting it. I can't wait to talk to him when he gets back to get the scoop: "Did you have some good vodka?" That's the first question!

It was Dr. Karen's first trip to Sundance, but if she has her way, it won't be the last. The eye candy alone was stunning, she says.

DR. KAREN: Celebrity people have been so sweet. And, oh my God, so many good-looking men.

DEFAMER: Non-celebrity, good-looking men?

DR. KAREN: Yes. The odds are stacked for the girls here, OK? So that's the impression I'm coming away with.

Goldthwait is attending Sundance with the comedy World's Greatest Dad, his second festival entry in four years and a striking, pitch-black collaboration with old pal Robin Williams. The Oscar-winner plays Lance Clayton, a high-school poetry teacher with unrequited literary aspirations and one of the worst sons (portrayed by Daryl Sabara) in contemporary cinema. Similar to Goldthwait's previous film, the underrated, bestiality-tinged romcom Sleeping Dogs Lie, a macabre twist entitles Lance to pursue his life's ambition even as it endangers his job, relationship and pretty much every other facet of his life. Williams cunningly navigates both extremes, charting the outer limits of unconditional love with a cynic's eye and a comic's map, finally discovering himself in the festival's most batshit ending this side of Brooklyn's Finest.

And while we're loath to give much more away, there was no reason we couldn't ask the candid Goldthwait a few other questions about Dad, Williams, Sundance and his aversion to prime-time sellouts:

D: Knowing what we presume about a traditional "Sundance Movie," audiences might be blindsided by a dark comedy like this. How has World's Greatest Dad fit in so far?

BG: I don't know. I'm glad they've taken these last couple movies, but I don’t know where it fits in because I don't think of it that much while I'm making it. It wasn't until I was watching this one for the first time with a crowd that I thought, "Wow. This is really... dark." I know I sound full of shit, but I try not to think about it.

D: This is your second film here in four festivals. What appeals to you about screening here for this audience?

BG: This one's a little different. I think the people who were first showing up to our screenings were just blindly showing up because Robin was attached. Everybody who showed up the last time were people who didn't get into the other movies. That's not my self-loathing; that's just the reality. It's not a big ticket.

D: The logline sells itself, though.

BG: Yeah: "The dude from Police Academy makes a movie about a woman who fellates a dog." But I had this great thing where all these people who like movies showed up and they got past it. They seemed to kind of enjoy it. There was a woman who was trying to walk out, and her friend talked her into [staying]. And then I look over, and my daughter goes, "Look at her now." She was crying about an hour into it. And my daughter goes, "Yeah, you cry, bitch. You cry."

D: But ultimately both films share the themes of people hiding very dark secrets and explore the consequences of keeping those secrets. What about that appeals to you?

BG: I must be terrified about being exposed. Another thing that's similar in my movies is that people are always walking up to the other person and startling them. I'll try not to put that in my next movie. Strangers probably frighten me. But if I keep making movies, I want to make movies that explore these absolutes that don't hold water. Everybody and everything has to bend.

D: And yet these are comedies. What makes those absolutes funny to you?

BG: I think the comedy I'm interested in is the comedy that's awkward. I don't really care about the joke-driven comedies or the gag-driven comedies.

D: It walks a very fine line between humanity and total misanthropy.

BG: Even the characters I kind of have contempt for, I still see them as people. Even the person you might see as the villain in World's Greatest Dad. Kind of by the end of it, I felt bad for him. I feel like he got chumped. He's kind of full of himself, but I'm not sure he needs to be taken down a couple of notches.

D: Robin Williams is an inspired choice for the role of Lance, and it works out as one of the most dynamic roles of his career. How and when did he sign on for this?

BG: Robin's an old, old friend of mine, but I've never really pimped him or exploited him. He always acts like we're peers, which is really weird; it reminds me of Marlon Brando hanging out with Wally Cox. But I didn't write the part with him in mind. I was telling a mutual buddy about it over dinner, and he was like, "What about Robin?" Robin really liked Sleeping Dogs Lie, and he read this, and he said, "I'd like to be in your movie." [Laughs] It's so weird. I even had to rewrite it because the guy I had was younger.

D: What do you think drew him to it?

BG: This character winds up being kind of a hybrid of me and Robin. We even said that at one point when we were making it; we kind of laughed at how we really are.

D: Are your films autobiographical?

BG: Everything I make is usually autobiographical. The stories aren't, but all the people are if you poke around. Sometimes I don't even really know it. In this movie it's funny: There would be someone I don't really care for, and I'd hear them say something asinine. So I just threw it in the script while I was writing it.

D: We were reading your bio accompanying the press notes, which read in part: "As an actor he has appeared in innumerable embarrassing movies and was huge in the '80s. He greatly prefers directing." What is it about your comedy and these "innumerable" embarrassments that you think informed your films?

BG: I do think that all the stuff I went through kind of prepared me for this phase. And really, what's going on my life now — kind of like Lance — I just stopped five or six years ago and said, "You know what? I'm flattered that they're calling from UPN or the WB, but..." The real shame about being a comedian who's well-known is that you don't immediately become a has-been. They just keep dragging you out. Trust me. As soon as Howie Mandel hit pay dirt hosting a game show, I got a million fucking calls to host a game show.

D: Really?

BG: Of course! I mean, Hollywood? "Hmm, who else was an annoying '80s comedian? Oh, Bobcat Goldthwait! Let's get him!"

D: Don’t be so hard on yourself.

BG: But it's the truth. I had this character when I first started; I wasn't even doing stand-up. It was really abstract. And then I got to be a comedian, and I started performing, and I had an act. Now I realize that I stopped being a comedian and became an entertainer, you know? You'd book me in a comedy club in the middle of the country, and my working-class ethics would kick in. I'd do a good show for the people. But I was miserable, man. And I'll still go out and do stand-up. Now I don't mind it, because it affords me the chance to make indie movies. I'm not looking to get discovered. I'm just hoping to keep making these movies that are small and personal.

· Lest the 2008 Oscar nominations leave a sort of bitterly predictable taste in your mouth, look ahead to 2009, when Push co-star Mo'Nique — yes, that Mo'Nique — may find herself among the contenders for Best Actress. Not a terrible turn-out for a woman to whom the director's warning, "Mo'Nique, this could fuck up your career" only encouraged her to fight harder for her role as an abusive mother. Good luck, Mo'Nique; you'll need it opposite Carey Mulligan.

· Variety's Todd McCarthy gets even more specific about the Push vs. An Education counterpoints: "The two emblematic films of Sundance 2009 are about two 16-year-old girls who dedicate themselves to self-improvement in their own ways, one to speed her entry into the enticing adult world of art, romance and savoir faire, the other to simply survive and insure a future for herself and her son." And then something about Obama. Seriously, Todd, quit while you're ahead.

· McCarthy's colleague Anne Thompson deposits her own two cents into the Bank of Sundance Postmortems, nailing precisely what made 2009 such a lovely festival: Everyone stayed home.

· IFC Films made its second acquisition of the week, buying the terrific (and terrifically profane), mile-a-minute British comedy In the Loop.

· And finally, in the spirit of transition, we leave Sundance's last words to Loop co-star James Gandolfini, who yesterday pledged to do a Sopranos movie "if I was broke." But be encouraged, fans! Another few days in arm-and-a-leg expensive Park City might take care of that.

Sanders slavishly honors the genre, but unlike Grindhouse, he's created something far more than a film school exercise. In fact, we'd have to go back to classics like The Naked Gun and Airplane for a spoof that delivered this consistently. (And God knows David Zucker isn't making them anymore.) Via Movie City News, here's the redband trailer pulled down from YouTube for violating standards, where you'll taste just a couple of the dozens of quotable lines delivered by star Michael Jai White ("I thought I told you honkies from the CIA that Black Dynamite was outta the game!") and the rest of the dyn-o-mite Dynamite cast. You'll even get a sneak peek at Arsenio Hall's big comeback, playing a pimp with permanent below-the-nostril coke residue named Tasty Freeze. OK—maybe it's not exactly awards season material, but it was nice to see him nonetheless.

• Black Dynamite

Number of Publicists Pissed at Us: 5
Number of Publicists Pleased with Us: 4
Number of Publicists We're Pissed At: 3
Number of Celebrities Spotted: 48 (#48, John Cleese, is pictured here sitting a few tables from us at Taste of Saigon.)
Number of Celebrities Who Acknowledged Our Existence: 7
Number of Free Cocktails Imbibed: 137
Number of Movies Seen: 27
Movie to Free Cocktail Ratio: 1: 5.07
Number of Movies We Loved Unconditionally: 6
Number of Movies We Hated with a Passion: 2.5
Number of Times We Were Turned Away From a Party or Gifting Suite: 6
Number of Times We Talked Ourselves Into One: 11
Number of Fistfights We Witnessed: 2
Number of Times We Got Laid: 1
Number of Us Who Came To Park City with the Vicious L.A. Cold of '09: 1
Number of Us Who Left with It: 2

See you back home!

As he told MTV in Park City, Thornton has now added "agoraphobia" to his laundry list of maladies that includes manorexia, a resistance to orange-colored foods, and a terrible aversion to monogamy. We can understand how a resume that has recently included Eagle Eye, Mr. Woodcock, and The Informers could drive a person to stay indoors, but we're choosing to believe that Thornton is simply performing a public service to his fellow actors. Sure, it might be strange to costar with him on the upcoming Bad Santa 2: Santa Is Delivering All His Lines From Behind A Heavy Door, but the health benefits are unquantifiable.

• Sundance: Don’t Ask Billy Bob Thornton To Come Outside [MTV]

The creative team at Movie City News contributed this reenactment to the burgeoning legend, with Dowd as himself and White as John Anderson, the Variety critic who deflected Dowd's publicity advances on Wednesday with four softly placed blows to the shoulder and face. It's a flattering testament to Anderson's pugilism that a man who once played Mike Tyson went all Method-y in the simulated beatdown; not so much for Dowd, whose lumbering, laconic presence confirms a mismatch that anyone but him apparently could have seen coming. Publicity stunts aside, we'd much prefer a cameo by White's fellow Sundancer Tom Hardy, whose fist-flying turn in Bronson is precisely the kind of persuasion tactic that filmmakers need in this hyper-competitive environment. As opposed to Jackie Martling, another featured player whom we still can't believe is here despite the videotaped proof above.

• Anderson vs Dowd - The Re-Creation [MCN via Variety]

· Good news! Sundance's insidious freebie parasites avoided the swag cutback forecast for 2009, with Paris Hilton actually picking up 10 bags totaling $7,000 worth of shit from one lounge on Main Street. The economy is OK after all!

· Bad news! This year's documentary class isn't selling as swiftly as previous years'. Making matters worse, with nonfiction films quarantined mostly to the Temple Theater outside Park City, fewer audiences are seeing docs in 2009 than perhaps ever before.

· Good news! The consensus around town has 2009's fest selections as one of the best Sundance line-ups in recent memory.

· Bad news! Unless you made one of maybe 10 lucky films purchased to date, count on going home with your movie in one hand and a tin cup in the other.

· Good news! The festival's short-film juries announced this year's winners, led by Short Term 12 and followed by work from photographer Sam Taylor-Wood (Love You More) and actor Brady Corbet (Protect You + Me).

· Bad news! Without comment, we pass along the word that Peter and Vandy star Jess Weixler "is done with her days of playing a man-eating vagina."

Mo'nique should also be singled out—playing Precious's sociopathic mother, she's created one of the most terrifying and memorable screen villains in recent film. The abuse she heaps upon her overweight, pregnant (by her own father) teenage daughter eventually becomes too much to bear, however. By the time we meet Mongo— her first child played by an actual baby with Down Syndrome—we couldn't help but feel the film had taken a turn towards the exploitative.

At the post-screening Q&A, Daniels was asked what drew him to the material, to which he responded, "The truth. The light. And my own racism. I had [preconceptions] about people who were blacker than I was. And about obese people. I had prejudices against obese people—I assumed they were dumb, and smelled. But I can tell you now," and he gestured towards Gabourey, "Gabby is smarter and cleaner than I am."

Um—okay. Benjamin Bratt, meanwhile—in town for his own movie LaMISSION—sat next to us, and looked pretty devastated when the lights came up. He just sort of sat there, fingers pressed to his mouth, shaking his head for a good long while. We know the feeling.

Documentaries have sometimes managed to crossover from Sundance recognition for most of the last decade, with films like Born Into Brothels and An Inconvenient Truth winning Oscars among nominees including Capturing the Friedmans, Murderball and No End In Sight. But that trend exploded this morning, with three of the five Documentary Feature nominees having launched at Sundance, and two of them — Man on Wire and Trouble the Water — having won their respective sections at the fest in 2008.

Meanwhile, the dramatic award winners coming out of Park City are usually lucky just to find distribution and modest theatrical grosses before shuffling off to video and cable. Little Miss Sunshine broke out as a Sundance premiere in 2006 en route to four nominations and two wins, but it didn't have to drag the mixed blessing of Sundance's Grand Jury Prize — usually given to challenging films with Big Social Themes — all the way to Oscar night behind its ubiquitous yellow van.

This year, though? In addition to the doc nominees, Sundance's 2008 winner Frozen River will compete for Best Actress (Melissa Leo) and Best Original Screenplay (by director Courtney Hunt). The Visitor's Richard Jenkins is a Best Actor contender. Martin McDonagh earned his own Original Screenplay nomination for In Bruges, last year's opening-night film.

On one hand we're inclined to invoke the fluke quotient here, but watch what Sony Pictures Classics — whose unqualified commercial success with Frozen River will only improve after today's news — does with this year's Sundance acquisition An Education, which is roundly recognized as one of 2009's best films to date and features awards-caliber work by lead actress Carey Mulligan, supporting actors Peter Sarsgaard and Alfred Molina, screenwriter Nick Hornby and director Lone Scherfig. If Frozen River was SPC's Park City prototype, An Education may be its first sportscar off the line after tinkering with the awards-season machinery its co-presidents Michael Barker and Tom Bernard know so well. Wait and see.

Closing Night Party at Queer Lounge, 11:57pm
Journalist: You're leaving?
Screenwriter: Did you meet the actor from my film? We have to go; he's getting us some free stuff.

After the press screening of the "zombie baby" thriller Grace, 2:50pm
Devin Faraci: I had to laugh, or I would have thrown up.

On Park Ave., 10:32am
Bald Man: (into cell phone) No, I'm on my way to a meeting right now. And then what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna go home and crunch some abs, you know? I'm not gonna stop.

This press release (which just landed in our inbox) is a classic case of burying the celebrity lede. Enjoy!

Timberland is especially excited to report an excellent first-time sponsorship of the Sundance Film Festival as Official Footwear and Outwear Sponsor. While on site we scored great photos of celebrities such as Christie Brinkley, Tim Daly (“Private Practice”), Kim Zolciak (“Real Housewives of Atlanta”), Shar Jackson, Aubrey O’Day (“Making the Band 4”), Frankie Faison, and John Krasinski.

[Photo Credit: AP]

Anne Thompson found her best festival story to date on the police beat of all places, tracking down both parties from this morning's Yarrow Hotel Showdown for an item recently posted to her blog. While the original details remain largely accurate —- Dowd is pushing a crappy movie about dirt, Anderson hated it, Dowd harangued him, Anderson told him to "fuck off and get out or I'll punch you" — it's what happened next that has us wiring our floor-bruised jaws shut:

[Dowd] returned ten minutes later with Jackie "The Joke Man" Martling (The Howard Stern Show) to speak on behalf of the film. Anderson had moved to a table for four and didn't recognize Martling, and wasn't having it anyway. Dowd "starts berating me," Anderson says. "He's a big intimidating guy hovering over the table. I got really pissed off."

Anderson said, "I told you to get away."

Martling said, "I just wanted to tell you..."

Anderson said, "Are you a friend of Jeff's? Can't you see I'm eating breakfast?" Anderson got up and said to Dowd, "I told you I would punch you."

Dowd kept talking and Anderson got up and walked four steps, says Dowd, clenched up and hit him in the shoulder, chest and chin, and then his lip. Anderson remembers pushing Dowd away and says he "popped his nose." What did his friends do, he asks, "to deserve him?"

We don't know Dowd, but it's probably not unfair to assume Martling's other associations disqualify him from that particular insult. In any case, there was no blood, and Dowd declined to press charges against Anderson, whom he's known for more than two decades. He did, however, propose a Park City peace summit — "a panel with Anderson, journalists and the [Dirt! The Movie] filmmakers to talk about these issues." Like, say, never bring jokes to a fistfight. Anything else?

• Sundance Watch: John Anderson Pounds Jeff Dowd [Thompson on Hollywood]