Let the Sundance Film Festival Bloggage Begin!

Village Voice Media has launched a film blog featuring posts directly from the Sundance Film Festival, which runs through through Jan. 31. Yours truly will blog on Navel Gazing from Park City, Utah, as well--in the event I find something to plug into.

​If I do have the power, having both blogs up doubles the chances coverage will be given to One Too Many Mornings, a film by Mike Mohan, the pride of Chapman University's film school, that is premiering alongside six other pictures that are part of a new Sundance category called "Next," which showcases low- and no-budget films.

That was the same category former Santa Ana resident Drake Doremus was shooting for with his film Douchebag, but to the filmmaker's delight his low-budget road picture was instead one of 12 singled out in the Sundance drama category.

"Douchebag." No, not the guy. That's the name of the movie. Although the guy does play ... oh, never mind.

​Douchebag is about two brothers--one played by Corona del Mar actor and former video director Ben York Jones, the other by Andrew Dickler, the editor on Doremus' debut film Spooner that played at last April's Newport Beach Film Festival. The brothers barely know one another, have clashing personalities and yet set off on a search for one's fifth grade sweetheart to be a wedding date.

Doremus points out to the Weekly that Spooner cost more to make than Douchebag and had bigger names attached, with his cast headed by pride of Tustin Matthew Lillard and Nora Zehetner, the femme fatale from pride of San Clemente Rian Johnson's Brick. Doremus actually started shooting Douchebag, dropped it to crank out Spooner, and then finished his original project after a 1 1/2-year delay.

Mohan shot One Too Many Mornings, which is about two twentysomething guys who reignite their high school friendship, over two years of nights and weekends with a budget well under $50,000. according to this Los Angeles Times piece.

"A two-year sacrifice boiled down to a 78 minute experience for an unmeasurable audience. It's crazy if you think about it," Mohan writes on the One Too Many Mornings Blog.

"I'm thankful that I still love this story, and I'm thankful that Sundance is allowing us a forum to tell this story to a much larger audience than we would have otherwise," he continues, "but I'm extra thankful to all of my friends and family who I really didn't see enough of throughout this journey, and who still remained 100 percent supportive even if I was only there 20 percent of the time. The finish line is really in sight."

Here's the clip Mohan submitted to Sundance: