At a recent press conference for Kristen Stewart‘s latest indie flick, The Yellow Handkerchief, also starring Maria Bello and William Hurt, we squeezed a little extra juice out of the actress regarding her upcoming projects.  Stewart recently exploded into prominence after her multi-million dollar success with Stephanie Meyers’ Twilight intoxicated teenage girls all over the universe. Despite the constant tsunami of vampire frenzy, Stewart was surprisingly, well, normal and willing to talk about Twilight and more.

Check out the clips from the interview below…

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Being and knowing many indie filmmakers going into Sundance, I thought the same thing as everyone else, “they said they were going back to their roots but if so, why do so many of these films star celebrities? How the hell is the Indie filmmaker supposed to have a chance?” After being there, I learned that nothing is that simple. When studios no longer support filmmaking and technology gets to the point where you can make big films for little, things are bound to change, but we are not left without hope or quality films…

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Without the responsibility to objectivity (or at least the appearance of it) required by journalists, documentary filmmakers have the freedom to use the medium to express their beliefs on the matters of real world issues and events.  It takes a great deal of courage to challenge an enormous, ideological and litigious institution (Calm down, Scientologist lawyers, I’m not talking about you or your clients), and directors Reed Cown & Steven Greenstreet fearlessly do just that in 8: The Mormon Proposition.  It tackles head on the Mormon Church’s involvement in the funding and promotion of California’s Proposition 8, and observes the lives left in the wake of this repressive ruling.  Check out the review after the jump…

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Written, directed, and starring Josh Radnor (CBS’s How I Met Your Mother), happythankyoumoreplease is your standard romantic comedy with a bit of an edge. While watching this movie if you’re a guy you’ll think that all the women are over-emotional, if you’re a women you’ll think all the men are idiots, in other words the film is stereotypically true to life. Starring Malin Akerman, Kate Mara, Zoe Kazan, Pablo Schreiber and Tony Hale, the film is slightly more intelligent, real, and honest depiction of a romantic comedy — although it’s not completely free of cliches, it is an intelligent film for it’s genre.

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When you’re watching documentary after documentary, at the Sundance Film Festival, it seems like all these different filmmakers are trying to shock you into believing them. From the makers of An Inconvenient Truth, Davis Guggenheim and Leslie Chilcott comes Waiting for Superman, a documentary that isn’t filled with violence or horrifying images, but an important message: How can we solve all the other problems in the world — pollution, corruption, murder — when we can’t even come up with a system to properly educate future generations? At first the problem may seem simple, get better teachers, pay them more! But like many things, the education system is so wrapped up in politics that it seems to have lost its focus: the children.

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Oh, the humanity.  Restrepo, winner of the Grand Jury Prize for U.S. Documentary, is a documentary focusing on a battalion of U.S. combat soldiers stationed in the Korengal valley of Afghanistan in the summer of 2007.  There is no criticism or political angle here.  This is in no way an anti-war film, nor is it pushing any other sort of agenda. It is simply a wrenching tale of bravery, fear, camaraderie and sacrifice; sacrifice by the soldiers doing their duty, and more indirectly, the sacrifice of a nation sending its young men off to fight in its name.  Restrepo explores the human side of war in a way that truly honors the men deployed to Afghanistan’s most dangerous military outpost, and hopefully, changes audiences’ perception of war forever.  Read more about this powerful film after the jump…

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This will be the most “spoiler free” review I have ever written. The trick to reviewing Catfish is how to make you understand how great it is without giving anything away. Part of the film is the journey that both you and the filmmakers take together, and if I tell you too much, I would be destroying both the intention of the film and your experience of it.

I’ve been mulling over this “review” in my head for a little while now, worrying about getting the wording just right. Since the one thing this film and the Sundance Film Festival has taught me is that truth is so important, I’ll say exactly what I got on the phone and told my friend while walking out of the theater: “This film is amazing, it not only surprises you but effects you, it is what Sundance is about, it is what filmmaking should be about, it is one of the best films I have ever seen.” I think I then mumbled something about being both tired and inspired and it rhyming after that…

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Howl, the film whose premiere opened the 2010 Sundance Festival, is perhaps the most artistic and experimental storytelling displayed at this years festival. It is a presentation and exploration of Allen Ginsberg’s timeless poem of the same title, directed by Rob Epstein & Jeffrey Friedman and starring James Franco, Jon Hamm, David Strathairn, Bob Balaban, Jeff Daniels.  It manages to capture both a moment in time from the beat era of the late 1950s, and reflect on the relevance of the poems message of isolation.  It is told through firsthand accounts from different eras, and different visual styles and media. Howl delves into the concept of measuring the value of art, while standing apart from the other films of the festival as a true work of art itself.  Read more about this film after the jump…

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Despite nearly getting pummeled on their way in into the press room (something that is not very common at Sundance, but apparently if you use celebs, the fans will come) Ben Affleck and Rosemarie DeWitt walked in from the cold and sat down to a roundtable to discuss their roles in the A-list indie drama, The Company Men directed by John Wells. Both talked about their roles in the film, the recession, and Affleck even talked about how to make good films and how not every film he’s done has been great – he used Daredevil as his example and I think the entire table was in agreement.

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