The notion that nobody walks places in Los Angeles is one of the biggest L.A. clichés, right up there with the belief that Southern California is populated by beautiful sunglasses-wearing people who spend most of their time doing cocaine when they’re not driving around in their convertibles, loudly yammering about the biz. Still, based on my limited experience there (and City of Angels dwellers, feel free to correct me), the aversion to walking is actually kind of true. At the very least, the idea provides an interesting way into the cross-coastal, gender-driven culture clash at the center of Nobody Walks, a film from New Yorkers Ry Russo-Young (director and co-writer) and Lena Dunham (co-writer), about a New York filmmaker named Martine (Olivia Thirlby) who arrives in L.A. to work on a movie with married sound designer Peter (John Krasinski) and to stay with his family at their home in Silver Lake, in part because she doesn’t drive.

Nobody Walks is the next project from Lena Dunham, the writer/director/star of last year’s ultra-low budget indie film Tiny Furniture. It tells the story of a Los Angeles family that takes in an artist and has their lives changed by the experience, presumably because of her free wheeling quirkiness. Dunham is one of those young filmmakers whose voice is so specific and whose films are focused so intently on the struggle of modern youth that they get derided as naval gazing and narcissistic. Kind of like a proto-Sofia Coppola. Given that criticism of her work, warranted or not, she has at least picked three actors who are well experienced working in said hipster genre for her next feature. Rosemarie DeWitt has already been in one of the last decade’s big unlikable white people movies with Rachel Getting Married, John Krasinski worked with Sam Mendes when he took his stab at hipster ennui in Away We Go, and Olivia Thirlby is known for almost nothing but playing in movies about quirky, self obsessed youths, starting with Juno. If you are one of those people who rolls your eyes at movies about upper class, faux artsy white people, then be sure you don’t roll them right out of the sockets while you’re reading this. But if you’re a person that sometimes enjoys them, like myself, then this is already an interesting looking project. Source: Variety

Tiny Furniture brings me to an impasse that few films have, and I think this in part results from the fact that it arises from a peculiar situation in contemporary American independent film from which it would be judged. Since around 2004 or so, the “Andersonian” “trendy indie” has been a visible part of American cinema culture. Films ranging from Juno to Garden State have ramped up soundtrack sales for hip bands, added slang to the lexicon, and given us initially brisk low-scale entertainment that quickly escalated to a level of annoyance once critical and audience praise reverberated a bit too loudly.

After seeing Tiny Furniture at SXSW, Neil Miller called it “the single most adorable movie I’ve ever seen that involves characters who I’d otherwise like to see get hit by a bus.” That summation is entirely accurate despite not mentioning that it feels like a self-conscious Diablo Cody wrote a Woody Allen script and then decided to direct and star in it. It’s visually engaging and upbeat despite its idiosyncratic shortcomings, but unlike the bait and switch marketing, the trailer says it all in crystal clarity. If you dig it, then you’ll probably enjoy the film. If it hits your ears like a navel-gazer questioning whether they should even, like, bother to scratch their nails on the chalkboard, the film might not be for you. [Apple]

Too often we’re made to feel as if we might root for characters who we’d otherwise want to smack, if they were real. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. And in the case of Tiny Furniture, it doesn’t quite work. However, I will concede that it is the single most adorable movie I’ve ever seen that involves characters who I’d otherwise like to see get hit by a bus.

In a ceremony last night at the Austin Convention Center, the Jury and Audience Award winners for the South by Southwest (SXSW) Film Conference and Festival were announced. Hosted by comedian Eugene Mirman, the ceremony ran a bit long — and even caused a bit of a ruckus on Twitter, as Variety and other publications released the winners before they were actually announced at the ceremony — but in the end, it was a celebration of an excellent year for SXSW.

I’m less of an anti-Monday person and more of an anti-Tuesday person. That’s a little-known fact about me. So it’s wonderful that today’s SXSW 2010 preview piece happens to fall on what appears to be one of the more charming and (at least from the trailer) funny films in competition at this year’s festival.

There aren’t many chances that you get to watch an artist progress in front of your eyes. How many of us would love to see David Fincher’s first productions in a festival? We get that chance with Lena Dunham’s Creative NonFiction, which was selected for screening at SXSW as part of the fest’s Emerging Visions category.