Sundance

Friday, January 12----What do you do when you have won every acting accolade there is, including the coveted Oscar for an iconic role (that people will still be talking about 100 years from now)....direct an independent feature, of course. That is the decision made by Anthony Hopkins, whose Oscar-winning turn as Hannibal Lecter in Jonathan Demme's THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, is the stuff of legend. After more than 100 feature and television films in a 40 year career, Hopkins (at the ripe young age of 70) has embarked on a new career tangent, as the writer/director of the feature film SLIPSTREAM, which screens as a special event in the New Frontier section of the Sundance Film Festival.

Hopkins has cast himself as an aging screenwriter whose reality becomes somewhat warped when he is hired to rewrite a murder mystery. Characters from his script start appearing in his life, as he finds himself moving lock, stock and barrel into an imaginary world of fiction and intrigue. Populating his active imagination is a cast of characters which include the acting ensemble of Christian Slater, John Turturro, Jeffrey Tambor, Stella Arroyave, Camryn Manheim and Lisa Pepper.

With sterling contributions by acclaimed cinematographer Dante Spinotti (L.A. CONFIDENTIAL) and celebrated costume designer Julie Weiss (FRIDA, AMERICAN BEAUTY), Hopkins takes the audience on an incredible journey inside the writer's feverish imagination and into the heart of the creative process. At times extremely concrete and straightforward, and then taking amazing leaps into hallucinogenic tangents, the film is an Alice In Wonderland fantasy for grownups....an intoxicating leap into worlds of dreams and streams of consciousness.

The film has its world premiere next Saturday in Park City. The film does not yet have a US theatrical distributor attached, so interest in building in acquisition circles, attracted by its high-wattage cast and the promotion-worthy bonanza of one of the most celebrated actors of his generation making the leap to the director's chair.

After a long and heralded career, which has seen him play everything from Merchant and Ivory stiff upper lip Englishmen to the disgraced President Richard Nixon, American independent's latest newcomer exhibits a true artistic vision and visual virtuosity that rivals the Sundance upstarts who are more than half his age. All hail Anthony....indie film's newest wunderkind.

Sandy Mandelberger
Sundance Online Dailies Editor