Sundance opens door for 'Sunshine,' other Oscar contenders

PARK CITY — The nation's top independent-cinema showcase has become a fertile starting point for the biggest night of the Hollywood establishment: the Academy Awards.

As this year's 11-day festival reached its midpoint, stars of Sundance 2006 were back in the spotlight at Tuesday's Oscar nominations, including the makers of "Little Miss Sunshine" and its co-stars Alan Arkin and Abigail Breslin, "Half Nelson" star Ryan Gosling and "An Inconvenient Truth" documentary subject Al Gore.

They're all part of a growing number of films and performers whose strong start at their world premieres in Sundance carries through to commercial and critical success and, sometimes, Oscar glory.

"Little Miss Sunshine," which charmed audiences at the festival a year ago, earned four nominations: best picture, original screenplay and supporting honors for Arkin as a foul-mouthed but loving grandpa and Breslin as his adorable granddaughter, whose compulsion to win a child beauty pageant sends her dementedly messed-up family on the road trip from hell.

"Little Miss Sunshine" went on to gross $60 million domestically, a huge success for a quirky independent tale produced on a modest $7.5 million budget.

After Fox Searchlight bought "Little Miss Sunshine" for $10.5 million at Sundance, the festival's most expensive acquisition ever, the filmmakers felt they had reached the pinnacle.

"Basically, our hope, our fantasy was to sell the film at Sundance and get our money back," said producer David Friendly. "To us, we thought, we thought we'll never have another night like this. This was sort of the end of the journey. Well, in fact it was just the beginning of the journey. Everything that's come after that has been a complete surprise. A shock, but a beautiful shock."

Gosling earned a best-actor nomination for "Half Nelson," which cast the Sundance veteran as an inspiring inner-city teacher battling his own drug problem.

One of the biggest nonfiction film hits ever, "An Inconvenient Truth" earned a documentary Oscar nomination, as did "Iraq in Fragments," a portrait of the country under U.S. occupation that premiered at Sundance last year.

Melissa Etheridge received a best-song nomination for "I Need to Wake Up," written for "An Inconvenient Truth." The magician drama "The Illusionist," another 2006 Sundance premiere, had a cinematography nomination, while last year's Sundance entry "West Bank Story" is competing for the Oscar for live-action short film.