Today is: Gay Utah finds a new prom queen, Non-Gay Utah hates freedom, Sahara continues to hemorrhage money, Twilight newz!!, and frigging Octomom.

The Sundance Film Festival has a new director. John Cooper, a 20-year veteran of the festival who worked in programming, has been moved up to the top spot. Cooper is responsible for instituting many of Sundance's new technological pursuits, including releasing indie shorts on iTunes, Netflix, and for the Xbox 360. Asked how he feels about those particular initiatives, festival founder Robert Redford smiled strangely, nodded his head, and said "Well... sure. Those." [Variety]

Though it's been in the can for four long years, the movie Sahara is still losing people money. Clive Cussler, the author of the novel on which the tale of a swashbuckling adventurer named Matthew McConaughey who's looking for a Civil War warship in the Sahara desert with the help of a lisping Spanish lady and that dude from Out of Sight is based, sued the movie's production company, Crusader, awhile back, claiming that they didn't give him final script approval as promised. Crusader sued back saying that Cussler had lied about the sales figures for his series of books, which they had hoped to turn into a franchise. Crusader won the suit in 2007, the jury awarding them $5 million. Now Cussler has been ordered to pay for their legal fees as well. All summed up, the total cost of Sahara for Cussler? $27 million. A fair price to pay for foisting that film's miseries upon the world. [Variety]

Juan Antonio Bayona, a young apprentice of Guillermo Del Toro's, might be directing the third movie in the Twilight fuckmeplease vampire series, creatively titled Eclipse. It's about an enchanted Mitsubishi that a girl and her sparklenaif undead boyfriend dry hump in and then he gets mad at her and then she eats mushroom ravioli and then he smolders and jumps into trees and then she falls down because she's clumsy and then he smiles and then—I'm sorry little girl, would you like some coffee with that cream? [THR]

Like ants who keep crawling into your house every year to complain a lot, Mormons are once again angry with the current best show on television, Big Love. This time it's because the show is going to depict a sacred, and secret and magical, 'endowment ceremony' in an upcoming episode. It's a long held tradition that the particulars of the ceremony, which prepares you and other people for the eternal afterlife or some such nonsense, be heavily guarded. HBO states that "it was not our intention to do anything disrespectful to the church." Hah, really? Have you seen your show, HBO? Frankly, I don't give a shit what the Mormons are whining about. Actually, I'm going to start sending money from this state into their shitty, wasted desert of a hellhole in an effort to get MORE endowment ceremonies depicted on every TV show possible that has anything remotely to do with Utah. Then I'll laugh at them and ask them how it feels to be meddled with. [THR]

Oh angel Moroni, make it stop. We're just making Nadya 'Octomom' Suleman more powerful. Her two-part appearance on Dr. Phil's Program for Shut-Ins brought the daytime hamfest a 14% rise in ratings. Oprah Winfrey's show for secret alcoholics and lonely gay men living in Coral Gables saw a 22% bump when she showed up for an interview. Feeding off of and growing from this buzzing success, Suleman is next expected to destroy downtown Tokyo. [Variety]