Talk about conflicted emotions! In a very fine article at indieWIRE, Anthony Kaufman reports on filmmaker Lance Hammer's recent decision to pull out of a distribution deal with IFC Films for his Sundance award-winning feature, Ballast. While I'm heartened that Hammer is willing to place creative control ahead of financial concerns, I'm also discouraged that there appears to be little room in the current distribution landscape for Hammer's critically-acclaimed independent drama to find its audience.

Ballast details the lives and connections between a man, a woman, and her son. It won praise from our own James Rocchi -- "Cineastes, looking for an American film that offers something on-screen other than glossy consumerist fantasies, will embrace Ballast with the ardent fervor of a drowning victim offered a rope" -- even though James acknowledged the challenges the film would face in drawing viewers from "outside the film festival circuit."

Paris-based sales outfit Celluloid Dreams nabbed nternational rights (outside the US) at Sundance, and then IFC made a deal for US rights in February. But Hammer told indieWIRE that, while he wasn't thrilled with the prospect of not even recouping his production budget from the deal, he was "particularly dissatisfied with the lengthy terms of the contract." All things considered, Hammer decided to walk away: "It becomes difficult to justify giving up creative control."

Yes, American women, you have your beloved Sex and the City, and you may or may not want your Friends in the future, but you have nothing to compare to the female population in Japan, who are singing, en masse, the praises of Boys Over Flowers!

Currently sweeping the nation, Boys Over Flowers: Final shoved old Indiana Jones and his silly old Crystal Skull out of the way, Box Office Mojo tells us, wresting the #1 spot away from the Spielberg-Lucas devil child, whose fridge has indeed been nuked. Crystal Skull is in its second week of release in Japan; playing on 788 screens, it averaged $7,810 per screen, while Boys Over Flowers: Final averaged more than three times that amount. What's the Japanese word for "ka-ching!"?

As you might suspect from its English-language title, the phenomenom is not new, beginning with a manga series (Hana Yori Dango) published from 1992 to 2003. Among other spin-offs, an anime series was broadcast (available on Region 1 DVD), as well as a hugely popular live-action television series that aired in two 11-episode arcs in 2005 and 2007, following the travails of a "working-class girl [Inoue Mao] at an elite prep school who must contend with a four-man clique of rich, gorgeous guys," as Variety summarized. The movie wraps things up. Kevin at Nippon Cinema has a good synopsis of the whole thing, along with a teaser and a trailer from the Japanese-language official site.

Boys Over Flowers: Final proved very popular with young women aged 16 through 19, who supplied 25% of the audience, according to lunapark6. Owing to its popularity, perhaps an enterprising US company will pick up DVD rights and make the movie available in the US.

You say you've got an indie jones? A desire to see something that's not playing on every single screen in America? Then you've come to the right place. "Indie Spotlight" is a new column that will appear each Friday at Cinematical, listing the films that are opening in limited release that weekend. We'll tell you what they are, where they're playing, and what the critics are saying about them, to give you something to see beyond the multiplexes.

This Fourth of July is a fine time to declare your love of independents, as these films are opening in art houses across the land: Diminished Capacity, Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, Holding Trevor, Kabluey, Tell No One, The Wackness, and We Are Together.

Diminished Capacity
What it is: Matthew Broderick plays a man suffering from memory problems who returns to his hometown to hang out with his uncle (Alan Alda), who has Alzheimer's. He connects with an old girlfriend (Virginia Madsen), too; not sure on whether she can remember things or not. Oh, and it's a comedy.
What they're saying: Cinematical's Christopher Campbell gave it a so-so review; boss man Erik Davis liked it better, but he's in the minority.
Where it's playing: New York City (Landmark Sunshine Cinema; Clearview's 62nd & Broadway), Chicago (Landmark Century Centre Cinema), and Los Angeles (Laemmle's Music Hall 3, Beverly Hills).
Official site: IFC Films.

Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson
What it is: Sadly, Gonzo is not the long-awaited biopic of the misunderstood Muppet. It is instead a documentary about the legendary writer/journalist/hallucinogen-enthusiast whose work you might know from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. The doc, by Alex Gibney (Taxi to the Dark Side, Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room), premiered at Sundance.
What they're saying: Cinematical's James Rocchi reviewed it favorably and interviewed Gibney. Our Nick Schager liked it, too.

Some of cinema's most iconic shots of Chicago appear in Ferris Bueller's Day Off, and the film is certainly Matthew Broderick's most iconic role. So, it's hard to watch the actor in the Chicago-set Diminished Capacity and not ask yourself, "is this what's happened to Ferris?" He is now relatively passive, paunchy and pitiful in the role of Cooper, a newspaper editor who has recently suffered a mildly debilitating concussion. And the character could be classified as yet another sad sack, one of three such parts he can be seen playing at present (Then She Found Me opened in April and is still in theaters; Finding Amanda debuted last week).

But is it fair that we most associate Broderick with Ferris, thereby continuing our disappointment in seeing him play one nebbish nobody after another? Couldn't we redirect our memories and accept that Broderick's modern roles are more like grown-up versions of Eugene Jerome, of Neil Simon's plays Brighton Beach Memoirs and Biloxi Blues, who he portrayed on Broadway as well as in the film adaptation of Biloxi? Were Eugene not the fictional incarnation of Simon and had he not therefore become a famous writer (and were he not from an earlier time period), the character surely could have gone on to be the pathetic teacher of Election or Then She Found Me or the absentminded editor of Diminished Capacity.

Ride 'em, cowboy! My pick of the week, Marquette Williams' Buckle Brothers, is not like any other Western you've seen. For one thing, it's a documentary. For another, it's about four young people from the mean streets of South Central Los Angeles and Compton, California, trying to make it on the modern-day Bill Pickett Rodeo circuit. They're an engaging, tenacious group, determined to rise above their surroundings and achieve something on their own -- and they love horses like nobody's business. The doc is compassionate but unflinching in showing the young bull riders' triumphs and failures. It's the antithesis of slick filmmaking.

The DVD is available from Indican Pictures. The film's official site has a gallery, trailer, and details on the featured riders: Lil Ron, Yah-Ya, Jazz and Mike. Director Williams and producer Marcus Franklin made the doc while working day jobs; the doc is truly a labor of love. The two filmmakers recently completed the thriller Unspeakable.

"Writer-director Jeff Nichols's Shotgun Stories is a tale of the South -- the flat fields and summer heat of Arkansas, where people struggle with the past every day," wrote James Rocchi in his review. "At heart, [it's] a film about people who discover what they have to let go of, and who confront the terrifying possibility of hope."

Jeffrey M. Anderson was slightly less enamored, but still quite complimentary of this tale of two families (with the same recently-deceased father) who come into conflict. Liberation Entertainment's DVD includes an audio commentary with Nichols, an audio track containing the isolated score by the band Lucero, production stills, and trailers. The film's official site has a trailer, stills, cast and crew information, and more.

After the jump: a family drama, and a John Sayles classic finally emerges.

A couple of weeks back, I wrote about the imminent release of three-quel Public Enemy Returns. Hopes were high that the Korean-made crime action comedy would enjoy a measure of success and thus buoy local filmmakers; Korean audiences have been avoiding local product for months.

Public Enemy Returns did indeed have a bountiful opening, grossing more than $7.2 million in its premiere weekend and smashing Get Smart, according to Box Office Mojo. In its second weekend, though, it fell victim to international action powerhouse Wanted, demonstrating that curving bullets and the even more curvaceous Angelina Jolie need fear no borders. Still, Public Enemy Returns has nothing to be ashamed of -- it made $4.7 million to Wanted's $5.4 million -- and provides hope that upcoming Korean movies such as The Good, the Bad, and the Weird, Sunny, and Eye for an Eye will find favor locally in the coming weeks.

Meanwhile, Kung Fu Panda has been warmly embraced by China, in the words of The Hollywood Reporter. With $14 million in box office receipts in its first ten days, the animated animal adventure has already been declared "the most successful foreign animated film in China," as claimed by a government news agency. If accurate, that gross would place the film practically neck and neck with Iron Man and the Chinese-made Kung Fu Dunk for the #3 box office position for the year so far. I haven't seen Panda yet; is this is a good thing or a bad thing from a cultural and/or cinematic standpoint?

When is the news of an actor you really like joining the cast of a high-profile new movie bad news? When you wish that actor were doing other things with his time, that's when. In the case of Thomas McCarthy -- whom you may remember from his masterfully detestable performance as weaselly reporter Scott Templeton in the final season of The Wire -- I wish he were writing and directing another film as brilliant and deeply moving as The Visitor, which at this halfway point is my favorite movie of 2008. I'd even settle for something with the wry, quiet charm of his lovely 2003 debut The Station Agent.

Instead -- ::sigh:: -- he's gone and taken a supporting role in Roland Emmerich's disaster flick 2012, playing Amanda Peet's boyfriend. C'mon, Tom: anyone can do that. Only a handful of people have your behind-the-camera chops. Quit messing around.

I'm being mean, and in this Hollywood Reporter piece McCarthy makes a valiant effort at defending the choice in terms of how working with directors who make different kinds of films helps him with his own work. (The article also mentions that McCarthy moonlights as an uncredited studio script doctor, which I didn't know, and which makes perfect sense given the natural, effortless flow of the films he's written.) Okay fine. But direct something else please.

Despite dropping more than 50% in its second week of release, Kit Kittredge: An American Girl (Picturehouse) outdrew all other specialty releases over the weekend, earning $21,200 per screen at five theaters, according to estimates compiled by Box Office Mojo.

Directed by Canadian indie veteran Patricia Rozema (I've Heard the Mermaids Singing, When Night is Falling), Kit Kittredge has clearly benefited from a devoted fan base that convinced thousands of their parental units to fork over $20 per ticket -- which, to be fair, includes a limited-edition t-shirt -- to see the movie in advance of its wide release tomorrow. That's a very good performance when you consider its main competition was not, actually, a French-language flick that skewed very adult, but actually a heavily-advertised animated film.

Catherine Breillat's The Last Mistress (IFC Films), starring Asia Argento, took in $17,600 per screen at two locations, which probably owes as much, if not more, to the name recognition of Argento as that of the often-confounding Breillat.

There seems to be no end to THINKFilm's monetary problems, which have plagued not only the company, but also the productions that have been picked up by the ailing business. But at least one of them has found a way out.

The Hollywood Reporter posts that Momma's Man has received a handy life preserver from the likes of Kino International, an independent film distributor. The film, which was acquired by THINKFilm back in March (an acquisition announcement was made, but producers say that negotiations were ongoing), had premiered at Sundance this year.

Momma's Man, which sounds reminiscent of Full Grown Men, focuses on a man (Matt Boren) who decides to escape from his life. During a business trip to New York, the guy visits his parents, "and decides to stay, leaving his wife and child behind." Filmmaker Azazel Jacobs even cast his own parents in the film -- underground filmmaker Ken Jacobs and Flo Jacobs.

The film will get a limited release in New York on August 22, and LA on September 5, before a DVD release in early 2009.* Now I can only hope the rest of the pictures find similar luck. The company might be in trouble monetarily, but they know how to pick interesting features.

*Assumed 2009, as THR says "early 2008 DVD release."

Frank (Shane Andrews) is coming back to L.A. after some time away. He looks into a job, where the supervisor Larry (Seymour Cassel) says he can have the position " ... on account of you came all this way and you ain't drunk." Frank goes to the apartment he shares with his girlfriend, Rita, but she isn't there. He leaves her a note every time he steps out, but she doesn't seem to be getting them. And as Frank gets from point a to point b riding the busses and walking the sunburnt streets of Los Angeles, we have to wonder where he's going and where he's coming from. ...

Written and directed by Ben Rodkin, Big Heart City consciously evokes the 'beautiful loser' cinema of the 1970s, from the unrepentantly conflicted nature of Frank's character down to the presence of longtime John Cassavetes collaborator Cassel. Shot on 16 millimeter film -- a rarity in the digital video age -- Big Heart City not only has the grit and grain of old-school technology but the grit and grain of old-school storytelling. Frank goes to work; he goes to the track; he rehearses the stories he tells Larry, although we can't be sure if he's trying extra hard to convince Larry or convince himself. And the longer Frank waits for Rita, the more we see him bend and break under the strain of cruel hope.