School may be out for the summer, but documentaries about teens may become a hot topic anyway. Nanette Burstein's American Teen, focusing on seniors at a small town in Indiana, was a smash at Sundance and will hit theaters on July 25. Caroline Suh's Frontrunners, about four teens running for elective office at a prestigious high school in New York City, had its world premiere at South by Southwest and has just been picked up for distribution by Oscilloscope Pictures, according to indieWIRE.

Distributor Paramount Vantage has been promoting American Teen like crazy over the past couple of months, so marketing Frontrunners as something different and worthwhile will be the challenge for Oscilloscope, which is the distribution arm of Oscilloscope Laboratories. The company was founded by Adam Yauch, who's best known as one of the Beastie Boys. Frontrunners will be just their third release (after Gunning For That #1 Spot and Flow); Yauch said in a statement: "I was taken by its Rushmore meets Spellbound meets Election quality."

Frontrunners will open at New York's Film Forum on October 15, well-timed to capitalize on election fever, followed by a national theatrical release before hitting DVD next year. Kim Voynar saw the film at SXSW and compared it unfavorably with American Teen, though she says she enjoyed the film overall despite her frustrations. We'll see how audiences react in three months. Until then, the official site has a trailer and more information.

It's hard to imagine the basketball junkie who won't fall madly in love with Adam Yauch's new documentary, Gunnin' for That #1 Spot, simply because it's a very sincere and admirably straightforward story about eight young men and their passion for the game. Sure, all eight of the high school basketball wizards have their dreams set on NBA fame, but at this early point in their career, these guys just enjoy the game that much. At this point it's not about money, contracts, or endorsements. It's almost time for all that jazz, but what's most important right now, in these formative years, are teamwork, dedication, and talent.

Easily the best movie of its kind since Steve James' Hoop Dreams, Gunnin' is a refreshingly basic affair: We're introduced to eight of the nation's finest high school basketballers, and then we accompany the kids on a trip to Harlem's legendary Rucker Park. It's there that the young players, most of whom come from very different backgrounds, will get together for the joyous experience of playing on a world-famous neighborhood court with some of the best players imaginable. Hell, what competitor wouldn't jump at a chance like that?

I guess the highest compliment you can pay Awesome; I Fuckin' Shot That! – a concert film made by distributing 50 cameras to fans at a Madison Square Gardens Beastie Boys show and aggregating the footage – is that when I walked out of the packed Sundance Film Festival press screening at the Holiday theaters, I was amazed my clothes didn't smell like weed and spilled beer.

And yeah, that is a compliment; as concert films become mass-produced for the DVD and cable channel markets, they grow more and more similar as they roll off the assembly line. With Awesome; … , The Beastie Boys are, at least, trying something new (even if I seem to recall a Bon Jovi video with the same methodology in my hazy MTV memories …). Directed by "Nathanial Hörnblowér" (also known as Beastie Adam Yauch), Awesome; … isn't just an experiment in collective creativity or a easy gimmick; Awesome; ... comes closer to recreating the concert experience than 99.9 percent of its peers in the field. That doesn't come from how well it captures the performance – a lot of the footage is grainy or distant or shaky, and a lot of the film is covered up by video effects – but rather in how well it captures the entire concert experience – beer runs, trips to the bathroom, arguing with security about whether or not you can, in fact, be allowed backstage. The film's mix of images starts as stunning and then goes over the top; every time you get used to the barrage, it kicks up another notch or drops another visual beat into the mix.

But the Beastie Boys have always loved collage – more, in fact, than their role as hip-hoppers and rappers would already suggest.  (If collage/deconstruction/sampling/re-mixing is the dominant artistic theme of modern pop culture – and some would suggest it is – then hip-hop is, then, the artform that embodies that idea.) The Beasties have always mixed and matched their obsessions, dropping references to action director John Woo, underground cartoonist Vaughan Bode, baseball icon Rod Carew and '70s action flick The Taking of Pelham One Two Three … all in one song, in fact. Awesome; … starts in similar fashion: The 'i's' in the ThinkFilm logo are dotted with xylophone hits from the single 'Girls," the Oscilloscope Laboratories production logo is styled like a '60s Cinemascope logo, and the film kicks off with the title crawl from an '80s trash-cinema masterpiece recreated verbatim. And then, you get to the good stuff. And it's all good stuff.

MCA, Mike D and Ad-Rock have gone from being rap's enfants terrible to eminences grise (literally), and it's not just Gen-X nostalgia, or how they brought rap to the White suburbs (if that were the case, Vanilla Ice and Snow would still be recording – which, thank God, they aren't.) The songs are great; the longtime anchoring support of DJ Mixmaster Mike and keyboardist Mark "Money Mark" Ramos-Nishita elevates the troupe even higher as songsmiths and performers. And the fact of the matter is that if enthusiasm and joy are contagious – which they are – then The Beastie Boys are having a hell of a time and it shows; check out how when it's time for the full band set, a lit-up Gazebo emerges with the entire band in retro-tragic Prom wear, or how the band definitively tackles the question of how to inject life into the tired ritual of the encore.

And again, it's a fun show. Awesome; … captures the illusion central to concert going; that you're part of a huge crowd but having an individual experience with the people you're watching. (Really, a rock concert is just like a Vatican mass, but with deeper base.) And that's here: From the sing-along jocks in backwards baseball caps, to the boys and girls dancing on chairs to the concessionaire liberated from her polyester shirt, nametag and visor for a second as she air-guitars the kickin' riff to "Sabotage" in a moment of  transcendence as pure as it is simple – Awesome; I Fuckin' Shot That! is an pure piece of pop/punk/funk/hip-hop moviemaking that manages to capture something wonderful while bringing it back alive.

Others on Awesome; I Fuckin' Shot That!: Variety's Dennis Harvey, though he found the "visual gimmicky" nearly overwhelming by the end of the film, ultimately described it as "One of the more exciting feature records of a single-act [performance]."