1. SUNDANCE REVEALS SECOND SLATE OF FILMS FOR ITS FESTIVAL: Retaining its reputation as the cool parent of film festivals, the Sundance Festival revealed a notable second wave of projects that will be shown during the festival throughout Park City, held January 23 to February 2. Specifically, projects available for viewing will include documentaries about Hillary Clinton in Nanette Burstein’s Hillary and Lance Armstrong in Marina Zenovich’s Lance. Also showing will be the Mark Wahlberg-produced McMillions, which depicts the McDonald's Monopoly scam that defrauded Americans in the 1990s and the FBI’s work to take the crime ring down. The Hollywood Reporter: “‘It’s a more nuanced and much more personal [project], getting to know somebody as a person as much as their political life,' Sundance director John Cooper tells The Hollywood Reporter. ... ‘This year, we have a program that can be defined by its distinctiveness,’ says Kim Yutani, the festival’s director of programming. ‘I think there are films in this year’s festival that are wildly different from the film next to them. We have truly a range of films in this year’s program, and that is definitely by design.’”
2. FRONTIER AIRLINES WORKERS SUE CARRIER FOR DISCRIMINATION: In a pair of lawsuits filed yesterday by the American Civil Liberties Union, four Frontier Airlines pilots and four flight attendants are suing the carrier for pregnancy discrimination. In the complaint, employees write that Frontier failed to provide basic accommodations for pregnant employees, which forces pilots and flight attendants into unpaid leave before their due dates and prevents them from breast feeding. Women generally need to pump once every two to four hours but Frontier flights—which carry U.S. passengers from coast to coast, and to Central and South America—are often as long as five or six hours, and that’s before delays. The Lily: “‘If you’re prohibited from pumping while on duty, you are essentially prohibited from breast-feeding,’ said Galen Sherwin, a senior staff attorney with the ACLU women’s rights project. ‘You cannot physically go that long.’”
3. PARTY CRASHERS IMPERSONATE FASHION AND BEAUTY GURU DEREK BLASBERG: To gain access to top parties and events, a mysterious email imposter has been impersonating influencer Derek Blasberg, the head of fashion and beauty at YouTube. New York Post: “Over the past year, some eagle-eyed PR execs have said they’ve caught fishy correspondence from an impostor who’s created a false Blasberg email address. (The faux email is cheekily similar to Blasberg’s real one.) ... But industry execs are closing in on catching the identity fraudster: The faux Blasberg always asks to add the same two “plus-ones”—and PR people now suspect they’re the real culprits, or are in cahoots!”