Sundance Film Festival

While guests paused to watch the inauguration Tuesday, buyers and sellers at the Sundance Film Festival in Utah were busy wrapping up several deals. Fox Searchlight grabbed worldwide rights to "Adam," a dramatic competition entry about the relationship between a young woman and a young man who has mild autism. The film, starring Hugh Dancy and Rose Byrne, is scheduled to be released theatrically later this year. Magnolia Pictures acquired worldwide rights to "Humpday," a film also in the festival's dramatic competition.

Rapper Filly Brown (Gina Rodriguez) is tomboyish and politicized, spitting lines like "Do you even see the Latinos serving you Chinese?" over a flamenco-inspired beat. She's the sound of Los Angeles - and so too is her eponymous movie "Filly Brown," which even gives a key role to local Power 106 DJ Khool-Aid and her weekly syndicated Latin hip-hop show, "Pocos Pero Locos. " Fifteen months after its Sundance Film Festival premiere, this heartfelt drama from director-producers Youssef Delara and Michael D. Olmos is finally reaching theaters.

Colin FARRELL, with his playboy rep and tabloid infamy, essentially started his career as a Hollywood star. Now he would like to concentrate on something else -- being an actor. "It kind of happened in reverse for me," the Irish-brogued Farrell, 31, said recently in a secluded corner at a luxury-level Beverly Hills hotel. "Sometimes actors ply their trade, their craft, their art for a long, long time, and if they're fortunate enough the opportunity arises, they find success. But for me, I worked a little bit, did a little bit of theater, I did some TV in Ireland, and then all this [freaking stuff]

Apparently winning two of the biggest prizes at the Sundance Film Festival does not make a film immune from further tinkering, as it was announced Wednesday that "Fruitvale" will be changing its title to "Fruitvale Station. " The film won both the U.S. dramatic grand jury and audience prizes when it premiered at Sundance in January and will be released by the Weinstein Co. on July 26. The feature debut for writer-director Ryan Coogler, the film tells the fact-based story of the life and death of Oscar Grant, an unarmed 22-year-old who was fatally shot by authorities at the Fruitvale train station in Oakland on New Year's Day 2009.

'2011 Festival' Where: Sundance Channel When: 9:45 p.m. Friday; 9:25 p.m. Saturday; 9:35 p.m. Sunday; 9:35 p.m. Monday; 9:25 p.m. Tuesday; 9:45 p.m. Wednesday; 9:45 p.m. Thursday; 9:45 p.m. Friday; 9:40 p.m. Saturday Rating: Not rated 'White Lightnin" Where: Sundance When: 8 p.m. Sunday and 4:45 a.m. Monday Rating: Not rated 'Unmade Beds' Where: Sundance Channel When: 8 p.m. Wednesday and 1:35 a.m....

A roundup of entertainment headlines for Thursday. The 2012 Sundance Film Festival begins Thursday night. ( Los Angeles Times ) "Hugo" and "Moneyball" were among the best sounding films of last year, according to the Cinema Audio Society. ( Los Angeles Times ) Meanwhile, "Albert Nobbs," "J. Edgar" and "Dancing With the Stars" earned GLAAD Media Award nominations. ( Los Angeles Times ) For the third year in a row, Edgar Allan Poe's mysterious admirer has failed to make a birthday appearance at his grave site, so fans are giving up. ( New York Times )

Park City, Utah, may be an out of the way place in a not ordinarily glamorous state, but for 10 days in January, all roads in the cinema world lead there. Yet it's not simply the sheer volume of movies and fans at the Sundance Film Festival ? this year's 117 features were culled from more than 3,800 submissions ? that keeps up the momentum. It's also that the festival organizers, ever determined to solidify Sundance's position and expand its reach, are not averse to change. Faced with the loss of one of its key venues, the Park City Racquet Club, due to renovations this year, the festival has commandeered the Redstone Theatre a few miles out of town.

Bingham Ray, the co-founder of October Films, one of the top independent film distribution companies of the 1990s, and a former president of United Artists who was a leading force in independent films for more than two decades, died Monday. He was 57. Ray, who was named executive director of the San Francisco Film Society in November, died in a hospital in Provo, Utah, after suffering a stroke last week while attending the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, said Sarah Eaton, a spokeswoman for the family.

This year's Sundance Film Festival didn't produce a blizzard, but it did generate some strong flurries. Spending on movies at the Park City, Utah, film bazaar failed to reach the sky-high levels of 2011 or match the hype that preceded the annual gathering of filmmakers, executives and agents. More than a dozen deals had closed by Friday for an amount totaling about $20 million. Last year, the total dollar amount was upward of $30 million — believed to be among the highest figures in the festival's history.

Who would have thought a 50-ish Irish backcountry cop with a midsection as thick as his brogue and a toxic tongue would become the talk of the Sundance Film Festival this year? And yet that's exactly what "The Guard" has done, with its crime-solving, politically incorrect iconoclast ? played by the brilliantly understated acting veteran Brendan Gleeson ? the invention of writer-director John Michael McDonagh in his feature film debut. Or that a hauntingly improbable sci-fi love story of parallel universes and mind-bending possibilities would make overnight sensations out of its writer-director and co-writer-star?

Shane Carruth has been one of the independent film world's most interesting enigmas. After bursting on the scene with the time-travel head-spinner “Primer” in 2004, he disappeared for nine years, barely a word uttered about him save for the occasional whisper of a long-simmering sci-fi film called “A Topiary.” At Sundance this year he finally surfaced --  but with a different film. “Upstream Color,” starring Carruth himself (he also served as actor, editor, cinematographer and in numerous other capacities)

“The Company You Keep,” the new film directed by and starring Robert Redford, also features an impressive supporting cast including Julie Christie, Susan Sarandon, Sam Elliott, Chris Cooper, Brendan Gleeson, Stanley Tucci and Nick Nolte. In its story of a group of 1960s radicals who are being flushed out of hiding after decades living underground, the film provides a platform for a range of actors of a certain age and associated with a certain era. But with costars Shia LaBeouf, Anna Kendrick and Brit Marling, the film also makes a strong springboard for a younger generation of actors as well.

"Simon Killer" was among the most divisive entries at the Sundance Film Festival when it premiered there in 2012. While it struck some as a chilling, unblinking look at the descent into violence and madness of a young American in Paris, to others the film was hard to take. One critic recently called it simply "icky. " A boldly formal film that is deeply subjective, plunging into the murky head space of its lead character, "Simon Killer" is both engagingly direct and disturbingly diffuse.

Film critic Roger Ebert died at age 70 after a long battle with cancer of the thyroid and salivary glands. Best known for his witty movie reviews, Ebert was also a food enthusiast who, among the more than a dozen books he wrote, penned "The Pot and How to Use It: The Mystery and Romance of the Rice Cooker. " The book was published in 2010, four years after surgery that damaged his carotid artery left him with a hole in his throat and unable to eat, drink or speak. He was fed liquid paste through a tube in his stomach, but undeterred (the quality for which he was so widely admired)

EXCLUSIVE: Over the years, a number of film directors have taken their shot at “A Walk in the Woods,” Bill Bryson's popular travel memoir circa 1998. Chris Columbus was looking to make it at some point; so was Barry Levinson. Now  the project  looks to be getting new life with another veteran filmmaker: Richard Linklater. The director is set to come aboard and could shoot the independently financed movie as early as this fall, according to Robert Redford, who will produce and star in the film.

Looks like the Boston Globe's yearlong investigation into the Catholic Church's coverup of its pedophile priests in Massachusetts will be turned into a feature film. Dreamworks Studios and Participant Media announced Tuesday that they have acquired the life rights to the Boston Globe's "Spotlight Team" of reporters and editors who spent a year interviewing victims and reviewing thousands of pages of documents, discovering years of coverup by Catholic Church leadership. Their reporting lead to the resignation of Cardinal Bernard Law and led to other unveilings of church coverups around the world.

The documentary "Linsanity," about the Houston Rockets point guard Jeremy Lin, will open the 29th Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival. The festival, which takes places May 2-12 at various locations including the Directors Guild Theatre, will feature 140 films from 20 countries. The festival will feature world premieres and sneak previews of narrative and documentary films that shine a spotlight on Asian Pacific Americans as well as  the international Asian community. PHOTOS: Hollywood backlot moments "Linsanity," which premiered at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival, chronicles Lin's life from his basketball days at Palo Alto High to his magical run in 2012 with the New York Knicks.The film was directed by Evan Jackson Leong.

"How was Sundance?" a friend emailed me when I got back from Utah. "I continue to hope that you were surprised, delighted and never bored. " Up to a point, I replied, up to a point. For the truth about the Sundance Film Festival, which gave out dozens of awards Saturday night, is that it's inevitably a mixed bag, where excitement combines with frustration in a particularly Park City way. Those of us who return every year do so because we believe in Sundance's independent mission, and just enough small wonders appear to keep us hooked.