Redford: ‘Fever’ surrounds Sundance Film Festival

New York – Robert Redford says his Sundance Film Festival, which last month wrapped its 25th season, is “almost to a breaking point.”

“It’s gotten to the point now – almost to a breaking point – where there’s a fever that has taken over the festival that creates an enormous amount of chaos and excitement and tension,” the 68-year-old actor said in a recent interview with The Associated Press. “It’s gotten a little bit harder on me.”

Though the festival has become a larger spectacle over the years, Redford has long refrained from criticism about the changed nature of Sundance.

He created the independent film festival in 1981 to bring attention to small-budget films and new talent. Redford named the festival, held annually in the snowy mountains of Utah, after his breakthrough role in 1969’s “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.”

“The festival that we do is the same one as we did the first year,” he said. “We program it exactly the same every year, which is for new voices and more experimental films.”

The difference now, Redford said, is everything surrounding it.

“Once the merchants come, then the celebrities come. Once they come, the paparazzi come. Once they come, fashion comes. So suddenly you’ve got a party … where Paris Hilton’s there and all the attention goes there and she’s got nothing to do with anything.”

Will Smith helps launch movie channel in India

New Delhi – Chicken tikka masala and Bollywood leading lady Aishwarya Rai top Will Smith’s list of favorites in India.

Smith, a best-actor Oscar nominee for 2001’s “Ali,” was in India this week to launch Sony Entertainment’s English-language movie channel, Pix, and to be a guest on “Indian Idol,” the country’s version of “American Idol.”

It was the 37-year-old actor-rapper’s first trip to the South Asian nation. His first impressions?

“Just recently I got to know the number of films Bollywood makes a year – a whopping 800. And each with its share of song, music, dance and drama,” he was quoted as saying in the Hindustan Times. “I am simply enticed to be part of it.”

Smith said he’d like to explore a possible collaboration between Hollywood and Bollywood, as India’s film industry is known.