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Robert Redfords legacy and mission were always going to be a key component of the 2026 Sundance Film Festival, which will be the last of its kind in Park City, Utah. But in the wake of his death in Septemberat age 89, those ideas took on a new significance. This January, the institute that Redford founded over 40 years ago, plans to honor his career and impact with and a screening of his first truly independent film, the 1969 sports drama Downhill Racer, and a series of legacy screenings of restored Sundance gems from Little Miss Sunshine to House Party, festival organizers said Tuesday. As we were thinking about how best to honor Mr. Redfords legacy, its not only carrying forward this notion of everyone has a story but its also getting together in a movie theater and watching a film that really embodies that independent spirit, festival director Eugene Hernandez told The Associated Press. Weve had some incredible artists reach out to us, even in the past few weeks since Mr. Redfords passing, who just want to be part of this years festival. Archival screenings will include Saw, Mysterious Skin, House Party, and Humpday as well as the 35th anniversary of Barbara Kopples documentary American Dream, and 20th anniversaries of Half Nelson and Little Miss Sunshine, with some of the filmmakers expected to attend as well. Over the almost 30 years of Sundance Institutes collaboration with our partner, the UCLA Film & Television Archive, weve not only worked to ensure that the Festivals legacy endures through film preservation, but weve seen that output feed an astonishing resurgence of repertory cinema programming across the country, said festival programmer John Nein. The films weve preserved and the newly restored films screening at this years festival, including some big anniversaries, are an important way to keep the independent stories from years past alive in our culture today. Tickets for the 2026 festival, which runs from Jan. 22 through Feb. 1, go on sale Wednesday at noon Eastern, with online and in person options. Some planning is also already underway for the festivals new home in Boulder, Colorado, in 2027, but programmers are heads down figuring out the slate of world premieres for January. Those will be revealed in December. Theres a lot more to come and a lot more to announce, Hernandez said. This is just laying a foundation. Redford’s death has added a poignancy to everything. Seeing and hearing the remembrances took me back to why I felt compelled to go to the festival in the first place, Hernandez said. Its been very grounding and clarifying and for us as a team its been very emotional and moving. But its also been an opportunity to remind ourselves what Mr. Redford has given to us, to our lives, to our industry, to Utah. Lindsey Bahr, AP film writer
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E-Commerce
SpaceX has settled a lawsuit filed by the maker of the popular party game Cards Against Humanity over accusations that Elon Musk’s rocket company trespassed and damaged a plot of land the card company owns in Texas. Texas court records show a settlement was reached in the case last month, just weeks before a jury trial was scheduled to begin on Nov. 3. The card maker said in a statement Monday that it could not disclose the terms, and SpaceX did not return email and telephone messages left with the company and its Texas lawyer seeking comment. Cards Against Humanity, which is headquartered in Chicago, originally purchased the plot of land in 2017 as part of what it said was a stunt to oppose President Donald Trumps efforts to build a border wall. In its lawsuit, Cards Against Humanity alleges SpaceX essentially treated the game companys property located in Cameron County in far south Texas as its own for at least six months. The lawsuit said SpaceX, which had previously acquired other plots of land near the property, had placed construction materials, such as gravel, and other debris on the land without asking for permission to do so. Cards Against Humanity said in an email Monday to The Associated Press that SpaceX admitted during the discovery phase of the case to trespassing on its property. The company said a trial “would have cost more than what we were likely to win from SpaceX. The upside is that SpaceX has removed their construction equipment from our land and were able to work with a local landscaping company to restore the land to its natural state: devoid of space garbage and pointless border walls. The company has previously said 150,000 people had each contributed $15 toward helping purchase the land in Texas and that they had hoped to pay back those donors with proceeds from a settlement. Over the years, Cards Against Humanity says the land has been maintained in its natural state. It also says it displayed a no trespassing sign to warn people they were about to step on private property. The company was asking for $15 million in damages, which it says includes a loss of vegetation on the land. Were we hoping to be able to pay all our fans? Sure. But we did warn them they would probably only be able to get like $2 or most likely nothing, the company said. Sean Murphy, Associated Press
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E-Commerce
For most people, its natural to assume that if something is exclusive to the wealthiest echelons of society, it must be better. Asset management firms looking to access trillions of retail investor dollars explicitly reference this exclusivity when marketing private equity offerings. But investors should be wary when fund marketers talk about democratizing investing or opening access to areas previously only available to the elite. Reasons to be wary Investing is already democratized. The SEC eliminated fixed trading commissions in 1975, and innovation has made investing in publicly traded stocks cheaper and easier ever since. Online trading platforms allow people of modest means to easily buy shares in almost any publicly traded company. The advent of cheap, passively managed mutual funds and exchange-traded funds has made building a diversified portfolio easier and more affordable than ever. Moreover, public capital markets are a good thing. Investors who buy publicly traded stocks or bonds get transparency about their investment with ready liquidity. Meanwhile, private capital investments are often opaque and illiquid. There has been considerable debate about whether private investments generate higher returns. Measuring performance for private equity and private debt is not straightforward. Most industry benchmarks use internal rates of return, which arent really comparable to traditional performance measures like total return. Researchers have examined some of the findings related to this topic. A 2020 paper by Ludovic Phalippou, An Inconvenient Fact: Private Equity Returns & The Billionaire Factory, argues that net of fees, returns for private equity funds have been in line with those of the public equity markets since 2006. PitchBook, which is part of Morningstar, has also gathered data on public market equivalent returns for private equity. Based on those metrics, private equity funds with 2020-2023 vintage years did not generate positive excess performance returns, although funds with 2011-2019 vintages fared significantly better. Semiliquid private equity and venture capital funds Even if private capital had a performance edge in the past, theres no guarantee that this advantage will continue or that those managers will be the better performers. As Morningstars Jeff Ptaknotes, private equity funds typically have widely dispersed returns, meaning a large gap between the top and bottom performers. Your returns could differ wildly from those of benchmark indexes. As large private equity firms increasingly tap retail capital, the instruments available to average investors probably wont be the best. Investment sage Bill Bernstein stated: The first people who invested in private equity got the filet mignon and the lobster tails, and the Vanguards and Fidelities of this world are going to wind up with tuna noodle casserole. On the venture capital side, getting access to the next startup unicorn early in the game sounds appealing. But for every SpaceX, thousands of early-stage companies never take off, and there is additional risk from leveraged exposure to privately held companies. Final thoughts When you hear about the virtues of access to investments that were off-limits, its worth considering who really benefits. As passively managed funds with rock-bottom expense ratios continue to gain market share, asset management firms are pressed to find new sources of high-margin revenue. That new source of revenue, in many cases, is you. Amy C. Arnott, CFA is a portfolio strategist for Morningstar. This article was provided to The Associated Press by Morningstar. For more personal finance content, go to https://www.morningstar.com/personal-finance
Category:
E-Commerce
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