BlackBook

In a little over a week from now, a huge slate of new and impressive films will hit Sundance—and we couldn't be more excited. Although a select few we've been lucky enough to screen already, there are plenty in the lineup we're anticipating—not only for ourselves but for audiences to get thrilled about. Hopefully, the festival's exposure will have distributors snatching up projects, but so far, the one's we're looking forward to are: The East, Upstream Color, The Necessary Death of Charlie Countryman, Fill the Void, Ain't Them Bodies Saints, C.O.G, Before Midnight, Interior.Leather Bar., and now, the latest from Michael Polish, Big Sur. Adapted from the Jack Kerouac novel of the same title, the film stars Kate Bosworth, Jean-Marc Barr, Bathazar Getty and will focus on:

“I’m prayIng that you buy On the Road and make a movie of it,” implored Jack Kerouac in a letter to Marlon Brando in 1957. The actor never responded, and it’s been more than half a century since, but the beat author’s seminal meditation on the youthful hunger for sex, kicks, and enlightenment has finally made it to the big screen.

Today the 65th Annual Cannes Film Festival kicks off, meaning gorgeous people are spending time watching movies and frolicking on French beaches while you sit in the office and read about it. Glamorous, no?

Whether you think Jack Kerouac was an American visionary or a self-aggrandizing ass in need of an editor, you've got to admit that he was a total bro. The Beats were basically a frat on permanent spring break, driving from coast to coast talking shit, slayin', chayin', and getting mighty messed up. For evidence, give Kerouac's livejournal-esque novel On the Road a quick look. Or better yet, check out the new blog On The Bro'd, a sentence-for-sentence re-imagining of On The Road translated into the language of the contemporary bro. Excerpt after the jump.

Shooting has started on the film adaptation of Jack Kerouac’s On The Road, directed by Walter Salles (The Motorcycle Diaries), and starring Kristen Stewart, Viggo Mortensen, Kirsten Dunst, and Amy Adams, among others. MTV.com has pics of Stewart on set, looking like her usual self, but in fifties hepcat garb. It’s an interesting decision to use the film’s wallet to fill the female roles in what is essentially a male-dominated story. The relatively unknown Sam Riley will play Kerouac stand-in Sal Paradise. Paradise’s best friend and object of homo-erotic obsession Dean Moriarty (based on Neal Cassady) will be played by the only slightly more known Garrett Hedlund, who starred opposite Brad Pitt on the movie Troy, but hasn’t done much since.