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

If you’ve ever wondered about the intimate hell of finding financing for an independent film, Edward Epstein has written a strongly worded, easy to understand primer on the subject that should be required reading for anyone even remotely interested in making their own film through traditional channels. As a (frustrating) standard, his essay is incredibly compelling, but even though his points are all correct, his ultimate conclusions about the possible negative fate of indie movies is slightly off. It’s not independent movies that are endangered. It’s the corporately-sponsored brand most have gotten used to that’s really in trouble.

Every week, Landon Palmer and Cole Abaius log on to their favorite chat client of 1996 as NoWaveSurfer and KeatonRox2738 in order to discuss some topical topic of interest. This week, the purported death of indie films that’s reported upon faithfully every year (at least 4 times a year). In the face of the Independent Film’s best friend festival beginning this weekend, we tackle the real question: Indie films can’t actually be dead, can they?

It’s that time of the year again: that brief span of time in between Christmas and New Year’s when journalists, critics, and cultural commentators scramble to define an arbitrary block of time even before that block is over with. To speculate on what 2010 will be remembered for is purely that: speculation. But the lists, summaries, and editorials reflecting on the events, accomplishments, failures, and occurrences of 2010 no doubt shape future debate over what January 1-December 31, 2010 will be remembered for personally, nostalgically, and historically. How we refer to the present frames how it is represented in the future, even when contradictions arise over what events should be valued from a given year. In an effort to begin that framing process, what I offer here is not a critical list of great films, but one that points out dominant cultural conversations, shared trends, and intersecting topics (both implicit and explicit) that have occurred either between the films themselves or between films and other notable aspects of American social life in 2010. As this column attempts to establish week in and week out, movies never exist in a vacuum, but instead operate in active conversation with one another. Thus, a movie’s cultural context should never be ignored. So, without further adieu, here is my overview of the Top 10 topics, trends, and events of the year that have nothing to do with the 3D debate.

The top nominations for this year’s Indie Spirit Awards are no surprise. Winter’s Bone continues its march through the woods to find its father and an Oscar with 7 nominations (which is almost all it was even eligible for). In a close second, The Kids Are All Right finds itself with 5 nominations. If you’re a fan of female directors, this year is celebrating a number of them in the top spots, but it’s also incredibly important to point out that Samuel L. Jackson and Bill Murray are finally up for the same award. The Indepdenent Spirit Awards make a good primer for the films that might make their way into the Academy Award nominee pool. In recent tradition, the winner of the Best Feature prize goes on to be an Oscar contender (and occasional winner). Examples of that include Precious, The Wrestler, Juno, and Brokeback Mountain. The full list of nominees continues below:

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.