“Coming into Sundance, we had a feeling the coming-of-age dramedy An Education would probably be pretty good,” Defamer‘s Stu Van Airsdale wrote yesterday afternoon. “But as 282 lucky ticketholders at Sunday’s premiere soon discovered, ‘good’ isn’t the half of it.

“An Education all but blew the marquee off the Egyptian Theater, where over 100 latecomers were turned away onto a swarming Main Street before director Lone Scherfig nervously announced not even she had yet seen her film outside the lab. She had nothing to worry about:

“Led by 23-year-old Carey Mulligan in a breakthrough that makes Ellen Page‘s Juno turn look like a Lifetime reject, Scherfig’s ensemble cast wrings a spry, otherworldly beauty from Nick Hornby‘s script and its corrosive glare at early ’60s London. We have no idea if it’s the festival’s best film, as some have said, but if there is a likelier candidate for life beyond Park City — as in awards-season, even canonical immortality — let’s have it.”

Variety‘s Anne Thompson is reporting that Sony Pictures Classics has paid $3 million for Western Hemisphere rights for Lone Scherfig‘s An Education “after a heated bidding war.

“The deal closed Monday night. Fox Searchlight tried to grab the film with an early preemptive bid, but the offer was deemed too low by sellers CAA, Endeavor and Endgame Entertainment, which financed the $12 million ’60s romance with BBC Films.

“Fox Searchlight came back into the negotiation on a second round but was unable to close; also bidding were The Weinstein Co., Focus Features, Lionsgate and Overture. SPC will launch the film in the fall with an eye on an awards campaign.”

Herewith Peter Sciretta‘s 15-word review of The Informers on /film: “Spoiled Rich kids. Drugs. Sex. Amber Heard naked. Aids. Infidelity. Kidnapping. Unconnected. Boring. Uninteresting. Horrible.”

Nicolas Winding Refn‘s Bronson, which I just stumbled out of, is, I must say, audaciously directed. A stark, blunt prison drama (with two brief episodes outside the slammer) that’s more of a performance-art piece than anything else, it’s about an incorrigible, mentally thick, ultra-violent career criminal who lives to strike blows and inflict pain and bang his shaved head against the proverbial wall.

Tom Hardy as Bronson

And there’s never any doubt throughout it that Refn is incapable of compromising on any front. This is in-your-face filmmaking, all right. Nor is there any doubt that Tom Hardy‘s performance as the semi-legendary Charlie Bronson, an actual criminal who’s been in British prison for the last 34 years, is quite the madman show.

But just as Bronson is described in the film as “pathetic” and “ridiculous” in his inability to do anything except rage and bellow and beat up on people, so is the film pathetic and ridiculous by way of sheer numbing repetition. The same note is hit over and over and over and over and over and over and over. Until the third act when Bronson develops a facility with the drawing and painting of violent images. The big growth moment happens when he finally decides to paint one of his victims rather than simply assault the shit out of him. Progress! The better angels!

But before this last bit Bronson is, all things considered, a bore. Surely the most boring prison film of all time. Refn’s direction is so fierce and single-minded that he makes you feel like you’re caged in solitary. Hardy’s performance is so repetitive — enraged , pulsing, blazing mad from start to finish — that you begin to wish that Bronson would kill someone, get caught and be sentenced to death because then, at least, there would be a merciful end.

The New York critics who went “apeshit” over this film need therapy. There is really and truly something wrong with anyone who comes out of Bronson with joy in his/her heart and smiling from ear to ear. Refn is certainly one fierce bird of a director, okay. Hardy gives the part everything he has, yes and yes. But the experience of watching the damn thing!

MSNBC runs prison docs in the off-hours, and every so often they profile one of those blood-beast psychopaths who revel in their monstrousness. Any one of these profiles, which I find myself watching from time to time, is more interesting — personal, realistic, disturbing — than Bronson.

The Chief Justice Roberts-President Barack Obama oath of office flubadub transcript.

Gregor Jordan‘s The Informers, based on Brett Easton Ellis ‘s 1994 book of the same name, is about as rancid and repellent as a movie of this sort gets. Set in 1983 Los Angeles, it makes you feel immensely sorry for the actors but mostly for yourself because you’re stuck watching it. I just came out of it; everyone I’ve spoken to about it (i.e, those who saw it with me at the Yarrow) looks pained and deflated — like they’ve got the flu.

I know that I will never ever watch another sleazy, poison-virus flick about a bunch of empty, drugged-up Hollywood zombies smoking too much, drinking too much, doing too much blow and boring the living shit out of the audience. That’s it — I’m done. The script, co-authored by Ellis and Nicholas Jarecki, is occasionally functional but more often flat and tedious; sometimes it’s repulsively stupid. It may be the worst Sundance movie I’ve ever seen — it’s certainly one of the biggest stinkers ever to show here.

I have to go catch Bronson now but this film made me want to puke. What a thing to watch after cheering Barack Obama‘s inauguration! Shame on everyone involved with this film except for Billy Bob Thornton, the only actor in this film who manages to exude at least a smidgen of dignity.

Barack Hussein Obama is now the President of the United States, and we’re all listening to the speech. But I was shocked, I have to say, that Chief Justice John Roberts managed to screw up the wording in the oath of office. The second stanza is supposed to go, “To faithfully execute the office of President of the United States,” and not “to execute the office of President of the United States faithfully,” as Roberts put it.

1.20.09, 10:01 am (Park City time)

A critic friend just told me I’m not missing very much by not being at this morning’s Eccles showing of Adventureland. But a producer friend who saw it last night said he “loved it…a more realistic version of 500 Days of Summer, which is much more stylized.”

N.Y. Times columnist/reporter David Carr (right profile, notepad), producer Albert Berger (Little Miss Sunshine).

Inside Spur Bar & Grill –1.20.09, 11:07 am

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Here’s a Twitter text post from last night: “Remember not to forget [that Steven] Soderbergh‘s The Girlfriend Experience sneak-screens tomorrow at Eccles Theatre at 6:15!” Well, maybe. But when I asked Soderbergh about the Girlfriend Experience rumor yesterday morning he said, “Where’d you hear that?” From everyone, I said. It’s just a rumor but it’s been passed all around. “Really?” he said. So what is going to happen on Tuesday? I asked. “All I’ve heard is showing some clips and my doing some talking,” he said.

Armando Iannucci‘s In The Loop played like gangbusters during yesterday’s press screening at the Yarrow. Here’s a link to my 1.13.09 rave and chat with Iannucci.

A portion of the Sundance critic and entertainment journo community will attend the Obama Inaugural breakfast viewing party that starts at 8 am. The invite said 8:30 but some of us leaned on publicist Mickey Cottrell to at least open the doors by 8. The gathering is partly in honor of Bill Benenson and Gene Rosow‘s Dirt!, a thoughtful, quietly stirring tutorial doc that I saw last night. Today, in any event, is the day. Here’s to a great speech and the turning of the page.

The gist of IFC’s breakfast news conference this morning was to announce the availability of day-and-date video on demand and festival premieres. There was also an announcement of a partnership with South by Southwest. Steven Soderbergh attended, partly to talk about Che going into video-on-demand and partly to discuss the basic viewing landscape out there. Here‘s part of what he said.