BCDF Pictures, Getty ImagesThe curtain is almost down on this year's Sundance Film Festival.
The illustrious Grand Jury Prize and other top honors will be handed out this weekend, but there's already been enough partying, canoodling, deal-making and oxygen-giving over the past week to last us all year.
But what did we particularly take away from this year's snowy cinematic extravaganza? Here it is:
1. Drink Plenty of Water: Hydration is key, especially at high altitudes, and Tracy Morgan and Julie Delpy learned that the hard way. Morgan, who's a tad on the fragile side after undergoing a kidney transplant in 2010, collapsed at an award ceremony where he was one of the actors being honored, and Delpy had to excuse herself from her own film's press panel when the pain of a migraine proved too much to bear. Let that be a lesson for all you celebs: Champagne and Red Bull do not equal water and protein bars. And just because you're awake doesn't mean you're not ready to pass out from exhaustion.
2. No Pants, No Problem: So it hovers around 20 degrees once the Sundance sun goes down—so what?! A bevy of actresses decided that if you layer a lot above the waist, you don't need anything more than the thinnest of fabrics between the bottom of your parka and the tops of your boots. Leggings were enough to protect the gams of Taylor Swift, Emma Roberts and Kirsten Dunst, while Ariel Winter went for sheer black tights. (Wow, our moms wouldn't even let us go outside with wet hair!)
3. Cherchez la Femme: "Always a bridesmaid, never a bride" will never carry the same stigma again. After the success of last summer's Bridesmaids, the first Judd Apatow-produced movie to be nominated for an Oscar (let alone two Oscars), studios are now more willing to bet on female-centric raunch-coms. Hence the dice rolled in favor of Bachelorette, starring Kirsten Dunst and Isla Fisher, and For a Good Time, Call..., starring Lauren Miller (aka Mrs. Seth Rogen) and Ari Graynor as roommates running a phone-sex business out of their house. Bachelorette was one of the most-hyped films heading into the festival, but reviews have been mixed—proving that a bunch of women in a movie doesn't necessarily equal comedic or satirical gold (ever see the remake of The Women?). Focus Features, however, plunked down more than $2 million for For a Good Time—so here's hoping it's fun!
4. Midnight Is the Bewitching Hour: When the clock strikes midnight, the suits don't sleep. At least three films that enjoyed one of Sundance's famed Midnight Section screenings will be coming to a theater near you—and they sound scary! Grown men reportedly had to leave the theater during parts of V/H/S, about a ragtag group sent to a desolate house to retrieve a VHS tape who find more hidden footage than they bargained for. Sold to Magnolia Pictures for more than $1 million and some anti-nausea meds! LD Entertainment had the domestic rights, but Elle Driver grabbed the foreign rights to Black Rock, starring Kate Bosworth and Lake Bell as friends who end up in a Deliverance-style fight for their lives during a trip to Maine. IFC Midnight, meanwhile, shelled out in the high six figures for The Pact, in hopes the chiller about a young woman facing off against unseen scariness in her childhood home makes a splash in limited relief.
5. 2013 Oscars, Anybody? Fox Searchlight, which paid a record $10 million-plus for Little Miss Sunshine, has a pretty impressive track record when it comes to plucking future Best Picture Oscar nominees out of Park City. Two of the films it bought at last year's fest, Terrence Malick's Tree of Life and Alexander Payne's The Descendants, are nominated for Best Picture heading into the 84th Annual Academy Awards. So, play extra close attention to the studio's picks from this year: The Surrogate, starring John Hawkes as a 36-year-old poet with an iron lung who's looking to lose his virginity, and the more fantastical Beasts of the Southern Wild. Fox paid $6 million for worldwide distribution rights to The Surrogate, so don't let the oddball subject matter throw you.