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Sundance Film Festival 11 – Video Games In The Spotlight

It’s that time of the year again. What time you ask? The time of year when aspiring film makers get together at one of North America’s great indie scene movie festivals, the annual Sundance Film Festival to be more precise. Hosted in Salt Lake City, Utah, it’s every hopeful movie-maker’s dream to succeed at this event. Many of today’s biggest Hollywood film makers had their humble beginnings at this prestigious festival, amongst which are Steven Soderbergh and Quinton Tarantino. Some of the movies which gained fame at this festival are The Blair Witch Project, Little Miss Sunshine, Reservoir Dogs, SAW, and Napoleon Dynamite.

From 20 to 31 January 2011 we saw some truly inspiring work come from this popular movie outing, but for the purpose of this article we will look at a topic which is close to our hearts – video games. Yes, the 2011 Sundance Film Festival boasted with quite a few video game-themed projects and even a panel where members of the press (and public) could interact with the writers of such games as Alan Wake and Uncharted.

So it would seem that video games are really in focus for independent film makers. We have collected a trio of video game short films to show what talent we can expect from the future film-makers of Hollywood. Have a look at them after the jump.

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Movie Reviews Movies

Blu-ray Review: Cloverfield

Brace yourself and get the barf bag ready as Cloverfield is set to take you through a dizzying tale of escape and survival in a besieged post-911 New York city.

Cloverfield, by rookie film director Matt Reeves, is filmed from the point of view of a single camera. It starts early in the morning as Jason Hawkins (Mike Vogel) and his girlfriend Lily (Jessica Lucas) videotape their preparations for a farewell party for Jason’s brother Rob (Michael Stahl-David) who is about to leave for his job in Japan. As the party gets started, Jason entrusts Hudson “Hud” Platt (T.J. Miller) with videotaping the testimonials for Rob. As Hud goes about his duties, he tries (unsuccessfully) to flirt with his crush Marlena Diamond (Lizzy Caplan). The party is interrupted as the building shakes and suffers a power outage. Shortly thereafter, a huge explosion rocks Lower Manhattan and sends debris flying towards the building. As the partygoers escape the building, the streets become filled with panicked citizens, Hud records what seems to be a giant alien monster between the buildings…

More juicy details after the jump.