Sundance Film Festival

Ann Claire Young, of New York, NY, was married to John Wesley Frisbie, of Queens, NY on December 13, 2003. The bride is the daughter of Neil and Nancy Young, of Lutherville, MD. She is a 1995 graduate of Franklin and Marshall College in PA and earned a Master's degree at the Tisch School of the Arts at NYU. The bridegroom is the son of Ms. Barbara Frisbie, of Houston, TX. He graduated in 1991 from the University of Texas in Austin, TX. The couple honeymooned...

"I Used to be Darker," the latest movie from Baltimore's Matt Porterfield, will be shown at January's Sundance Film Festival, organizers announced Wednesday. "I was in a bit of a state of shock," said Porterfield, who was on a return bus trip from New York when he got the news. "I'm ecstatic. " The movie, Porterfield's third feature as a writer-director, tells the story of a runaway from Northern Ireland who moves in with her aunt and uncle in Baltimore, and the family crises that ensue.

Fred G. Sullivan Jr., 50, whose film "The Beer Drinker's Guide to Fitness and Film Making" acquired a cult following, died April 18 of heart failure in Saranac Lake, N.Y."The Beer Drinker's Guide" was a quirky self-portrait of the struggling filmmaker, his wife and four children. Released in 1988, it was first shown at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah.He was working on a sequel at the time of his death.Robert Rade Stone, 68, a former city council president and fund-raiser for Serbian causes, died Friday of a heart attack in Pittsburgh.

Harford County is hardly Tinsel Town. The closest places to Bel Air named Hollywood are in St. Mary's County on Maryland's very lower Western Shore and in Carbon County, Pa., not too far from Scranton, backdrop for the hit TV series "The Office. " Yet Bel Air, for the third year in a row, will be the scene of a film festival come the weekend of Oct. 21-23, and it will feature fare found at the Sundance Film Festival and other venues that specialize in celluloid offerings of a more cerebral timbre than the typical summer smashes and seasonal blockbusters.

Jan. 12: A tribute to commemorate the 70th birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Meyerhoff Symphony Hall, 1212 Cathedral St. 7:30 p.m. Tickets are free, but must be reserved by calling 410-783-8024.Jan. 14: Rob Tregenza, local independent filmmaker whose "Inside 1/8 Out" premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, will speak at a meeting of Women in Film and Video. Radisson 1/8 Cross Keys Inn. 6 p.m. Members free; nonmembers $10. Call 410-685-FILM.Jan. 16: The 13th annual Madhatters Ball. L'Hirondelle Club in Ruxton.

Critiquing American culture is tricky for people in the family newspaper business, especially this week as two controversial movies open at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. I shall try to be discreet. One film, Hounddog, starring 12-year-old Dakota Fanning, involves the rape of a child. The other, Zoo, concerns - how to put it - an "equine brothel" wherein certain activities lead to a curious death. Zoo is based on a real-life incident in Enumclaw, Wash., in 2005, and stars - oh, who cares?

Just which film (or films) may be a breakout hit from the 2005 Sundance Film Festival, now under way in Utah, remains to be seen. But the 2004 festival turned out to be a commercial, if not necessarily artistic, breakthrough. The highest grossing film of the 2003 fest was The Cooler at $8.3 million. Six 2004 films dwarfed that mark. Here's how several of last year's notable Sundance films fared (in gross box office receipts for North America): Saw: Lions Gate scored a whopping $55 million with James Wan's low-budget horror film and is preparing a sequel.

Harford County is hardly Tinsel Town. The closest places to Bel Air named Hollywood are in St. Mary's County on Maryland's very lower Western Shore and in Carbon County, Pa., not too far from Scranton, backdrop for the hit TV series "The Office. " Yet Bel Air, for the third year in a row, will be the scene of a film festival come the weekend of Oct. 21-23, and it will feature fare found at the Sundance Film Festival and other venues that specialize in celluloid offerings of a more cerebral timbre than the typical summer smashes and seasonal blockbusters.

Celebrate the beginning of June with a trip this weekend to the ninth annual Frederick Festival of the Arts. On tap are a variety of artwork and films, live music and theater, outdoor activities and good food. The work of 150 jury-selected fine artists and craftspeople will be on view and for sale. Two stages will offer live music, theater and dance. Performers include the music group Groovelilly, poet Michael Mack and the Shakespeare Project. Want to enjoy the outdoors? Kayaks and canoes are available for rent in Carroll Creek Linear Park, where the festival will be held.

Oh, what you missed, when Baltimore's "bad boy" filmmaker John Waters sat down for a chat with students at Baltimore School for the Arts! Waters was this year's guest as the Colgate Salsbury Visiting Artist series celebrated its fifth anniversary. And he proved, once again, he is as entertaining as his movies. A sampling of the Waters' wisdom that day: "It helps to be what you make fun of." "Why would you watch reality television when you've got Baltimore?" "Baltimore is a town where everyone thinks they're normal, but they're totally insane.

The Sundance Film Festival, which set up shop in Park City, Utah, this week, is more than a festival: It's a delicate balancing act. This is an institution that walks the line between two competing notions of what a celebration of cinema should be, straddling as best it can a gap that is especially evident this year. What Sundance is eternally caught between is the Scylla and Charybdis of commerce and art. Its proximity to Hollywood and its success at premiering audience-friendly independent films (for instance, last year's "An Education" and "Precious")

For five seasons, Sonja Sohn played Detective Kima Greggs on HBO's "The Wire," the gritty Baltimore crime drama. It was a breakthrough role for Sohn, who came from a troubled upbringing in Virginia and went from poet to actress. But on a recent weeknight, Sohn was not on a Hollywood film set. She was at the University of Maryland School of Social Work, speaking on a cell phone to the facilitator of a GED program, trying to figure out why 21-year-old Sean Hawkins hasn't been attending. She sat Hawkins down and crouched at his feet.

On a recent day, Emma Roberts is waiting for those fateful college admission letters to come in. It's spring, so they should be arriving any day now. And it's all very exciting and unnerving, but at least for the moment she has a press junket to provide merciful distraction. Instead of waiting at the mailbox, Roberts can spend the day talking about Lymelife, the melancholy independent film she made with Alec Baldwin, Cynthia Nixon and a couple of the Culkin brothers. And she can chat about how she doesn't want to be stuck in a pop-princess Nickelodeon box the rest of her life but also still loves those roles and loves the legions of little girls who love her. She is 18 and, like anyone reaching adulthood, eager to move forward, but loath to release the sweetest vestiges of her past.

Critiquing American culture is tricky for people in the family newspaper business, especially this week as two controversial movies open at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. I shall try to be discreet. One film, Hounddog, starring 12-year-old Dakota Fanning, involves the rape of a child. The other, Zoo, concerns - how to put it - an "equine brothel" wherein certain activities lead to a curious death. Zoo is based on a real-life incident in Enumclaw, Wash., in 2005, and stars - oh, who cares?

Oh, what you missed, when Baltimore's "bad boy" filmmaker John Waters sat down for a chat with students at Baltimore School for the Arts! Waters was this year's guest as the Colgate Salsbury Visiting Artist series celebrated its fifth anniversary. And he proved, once again, he is as entertaining as his movies. A sampling of the Waters' wisdom that day: "It helps to be what you make fun of." "Why would you watch reality television when you've got Baltimore?" "Baltimore is a town where everyone thinks they're normal, but they're totally insane.

Just which film (or films) may be a breakout hit from the 2005 Sundance Film Festival, now under way in Utah, remains to be seen. But the 2004 festival turned out to be a commercial, if not necessarily artistic, breakthrough. The highest grossing film of the 2003 fest was The Cooler at $8.3 million. Six 2004 films dwarfed that mark. Here's how several of last year's notable Sundance films fared (in gross box office receipts for North America): Saw: Lions Gate scored a whopping $55 million with James Wan's low-budget horror film and is preparing a sequel.

HOLLYWOOD -- Having played characters such as the Sundance Kid and Bob Woodward, Robert Redford knows what it's like to evoke real life on film. But nothing quite prepared him for the stomach-churning experience of screening The Motorcycle Diaries, the new film based on Che Guevara's youthful road trip across South America, for Guevara's widow, Aleida March, her family and Albert Granado, now 82, who was Guevara's companion on most of the trek. When Redford acquired the rights to Guevara's book about his journey of discovery long after the Cuban revolutionary's death, he promised Guevara's widow a first look at the finished movie.