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Hmm, I don't remember any of this week's noteworthy indie DVD releases playing at theaters in my area, so why don't we catch up together and decide what to rent? Listed (roughly) in order of critical favor:

Chop Shop (pictured). Second feature by Ramin Bahrani (Man Push Cart) is a coming of age story set in a New York junkyard. Cinematical review (entirely positive): Kim Voynar. DVD features: audio commentary with director and actors, rehearsal footage, and trailer.

The Tracey Fragments. Ellen Page stars in Bruce McDonald's harrowing drama. Cinematical reviews (both positive): Erik Davis; James Rocchi. DVD features: behind the scenes footage and interviews with McDonald and Page, entries from the "Tracey: Re-fragmented" contest, a selection of images by photographer Matt Sullivan, and trailer.

Joe Strummer: The Future is Unwritten. Julien Temple's doc on the influential Clash musician. Cinematical reviews (both frustrated): Kevin Kelly; Jeffrey M. Anderson. DVD features: audio commentary with Temple, 100 minutes of additional interview footage, and trailer.

American Zombie. Grace Lee's horror comedy depicts the ordinary, day to day challenges of life as one of the undead. Cinematical review (disappointed): Jette Kernion. DVD features: audio commentaries, behind the scenes footage, deleted scenes, and trailers.

Sleepwalking. Family drama about a young girl dealing with life after her mother abandons her; with Nick Stahl, AnnaSophia Robb, Charlize Theron, Woody Harrelson, and Dennis Hopper. Cinematical reviews (both negative): James Rocchi; Jeffrey M. Anderson. DVD features: "making of," and trailer.

Nearly a year after its international premiere at Cannes, My Brother is an Only Child (ThinkFilm) opened at the top of the indie weekend box office returns, according to Box Office Mojo. Playing at just one theater in Manhattan, the film grossed $10,500. My Brother "follows two brothers through years of Italian history, with their personal and political travails echoing down the years," Cinematical's James Rocchi wrote last year. "Even with it's merits as a light-but-sentimental story of family in 1960's Italy, it also reminded me of the soaring, sweeping, astonishing La Meglio Gioventù (The Best of Youth) -- and wound up completely winning me over." The film will roll out to other cities over the next three weeks, per the distributor's web site.

Immigration family tale Under the Same Moon (Fox Searchlight / The Weinstein Co.) continues to perform well, earning $5,771 per screen as it expanded to 390 theaters in its second week. Leonard Klady at Movie City News commented that the film is "playing in a mix of Hispanic, art and mainstream locations but with rare exception is working best in the former venues." Also in its second week, Love Songs (IFC), Christophe Honoré's French-language modern musical, held onto most of its audience, averaging $6,800 at two Manhattan theaters.

Every year, as Sundance fires up in Utah , Slamdance slides in to slam the independent festival by providing a more accurate selection of independent film. The films selected for competition must be made by first-time filmmakers for budgets under $1 million, and many of them are quirky beyond belief, even the opening-night galas. Last year, the opener was Larry Clark's Wassup Rockers. This year, it's Weirdsville.

While that name might not ring bells, perhaps its director, Allan Moyle, does. He's the nineties teen cult movie guru who brought us Pump up the Volume and Empire Records, as well as the quirky The Gun in Betty Lou's Handbag and the more somber New Waterford Girl. I can't share its plot any better than Slamdance does, which they describe as the "story of two junkies on the run from a satanic cult, a cabal of midget knights, a vengeful drug dealer, and a mouse, in a little town called Weirdsville."

The rest of the Slamdance line-up slides into four film areas -- narrative features, documentaries, special screenings and shorts. (Their website also has short film content online, and is worth checking out.) The narrative battle includes a ton of world premieres and the topics range from American Zombie, which is about a group of zombies trying to gain acceptance in LA, to a boy willing to fight his rooster to win the heart of a young prostitute in Tijuana Makes Me Happy. For the docs, selections range from Noah Thomson's Children of God: Lost and Found, his account of growing up in a Christian cult, to Luke Wolbach's Row Hard No Excuses, a story about men attempting to row across the Atlantic . There seems to be a little something for everyone, so check out the full list of films on their website.