Heeb

One sentence floated above the rest of the crowd noise every time it was uttered at Sundance this year, and uttered over and over again it was. It usually came out sounding something like this: "Mariah Carey? Was actually really good? In Push?"

The Glitter Girl made her big screen comeback in Push: Based on the Novel by Sapphire (and yes, that entire thing really is the official title). And the damn thing is, everyone you talked to who saw it had nothing but praise for her.

The movie, about a young girl in Harlem knocked up by her father for the second time, earned mounting buzz as the festival progressed. Saturday night it cleaned up with three awards in the festival’s closing night ceremony: A Special Jury Prize for Acting (to Mo’Nique), the Audience Award in the U.S. Dramatic category, and one of the top prizes of the festival, the U.S. Dramatic category’s Grand Jury Prize.

By the end of the festival, however, Push was one of several high-profile titles that still hadn’t been sold to a distributor. Sales at Sundance this year were up slightly over last, when Hamlet 2 was the largest of several big deals (including Choke, based on the novel by Chuck Palahniuk, and Henry Poole is Here starring Luke Wilson) that fell well short of expectations when landing in theaters.

Check out more Sundance coverage from Michael Liss.