Did you hear there are like a million new films opening in wide release today? Well, there are. Some of them are pretty good, too. But just in case that's not enough to keep you occupied, here's the Indie Spotlight with several more titles that might interest you, most of them in limited release and a bit under the radar.

Now, "indie" can be a hard thing to pin down. Bill Maher's Religulous (opening today on 500 screens) might qualify, but you've probably already heard about it. Same goes for Blindness (1,700 screens). You don't need me for those. Instead, here are the five that we're shining the indie spotlight on: Allah Made Me Funny, An American Carol, Ballast, Kidnap, and Rachel Getting Married.

Rachel Getting Married
What it is: One of the big hits at the Toronto International Film Festival, it's a naturalistic drama about an addict (Anne Hathaway) who gets out of rehab just in time for her sister's wedding.
What they're saying: Cinematical's James Rocchi had almost nothing but good things to say about it in Toronto, particularly with regard to the screenplay and Hathaway's performance. (There's a bit of Oscar buzz around both.) At Rotten Tomatoes, the film stands at a solid 76%.
Where it's playing: New York City (Lincoln Plaza Cinemas, City Cinemas, Regal Union Square), Los Angeles (ArcLight Sherman Oaks, ArcLight Hollywood, Laemmle Playhouse in Pasadena, Edwards Westpark in Irvine, The Landmark), and International Falls, Minn. (Cinema 5).
More info: Sony Classics' official site.

Ballast
What it is: A bleak drama about life and death among the lower classes on the Mississippi Delta.
What they're saying: Cinematical's James Rocchi praised the film at Sundance (and interviewed the writer/director, Lance Hammer, here). At Rotten Tomatoes, 75% of the critics agree with The Rocch. It won prizes for its directing and cinematography at Sundance, too.
Where it's playing: New York City (Film Forum).
More info: The official site says it will expand to "select cities" in two weeks.

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."

For those who live in and around the New York City area, tonight the Sundance Institute launches their very popular series at BAM (Brooklyn Academy of Music), in which they'll screen a whole bunch of films (22 features, 36 shorts) from this year's festival over the course of the next eleven days. Yours truly will be in attendance this evening for American Teen, followed by a prom-themed after party. A doc about teens? The prom? I'm soooo there!

Other films of note that will be screening include Man on Wire, Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, Choke, Frozen River, Captain Abu Raed, American Son, Anvil! The Story of Anvil and Ballast, among others. This Sunday, Cinematical's Eric Kohn will be on hand for Sundance Shorts Sunday, featuring 12 hours of short film programs, Q&As with filmmakers and more. He'll report back on what he sees, hears, learns, etc.

They're screening some excellent films this year and I believe tickets are still available for most, so definitely swing by the official website and check out the scene. Sundance Institute at BAM runs from May 29 through June 8. (And if you make it down there tonight, do say hello!)

Bunches of "B" news for you:

• When trying to bring together many years of life, one will often focus on a certain aspect that links it all. For the 80-year-old French filmmaker Agnès Varda, that is beaches. Variety reports that she has a new documentary feature on the way called Les plages d'Agnes. She says of the film: "If you open people, you'll find landscapes. In my case, you'll find beaches." How sandy! Roissy Films has picked up the doc's overseas rights, and the film will screen at Berlinale this year.
• Meanwhile, Variety has posted that Toshiaki Karasawa is going to head up Toho's science fiction trilogy 20th Century Boy. With a solid $57 million budget (which sounds much more impressive as 6 billion yen), the film will shoot in a number of countries, from the US to China, with the first flick to be released on August 30. Based on the comic by Naoki Urasawa, Boy focuses on the creepy premise of "a store manager (Karasawa) who wrote a prediction about the end of the world when he was a teenager, which seems to be coming true." The project also features Etsushi Toyokawa and Takiko Tokiwa.
• To wrap things up, there's some more Ballast news for you. It already got a solid review from our James Rocchi at Sundance, and an international deal with Celluloid Dreams. Now, according to The Hollywood Reporter, the stateside rights have been picked up by IFC. With a deal in the six-figure range, the company will give the film a day-and-date release through First Take, IFC network, and VOD. It may be a dark and heavy piece of cinema, but it still looks worth the time. However, there's no word, yet, on a release date.

It is winter in the Mississippi Delta, and the fields are fallow under dead skies and barren trees thrust up stark from the muck. If it were summer, the sky would be clear and the crops would be green and the soil would burn with life, but summer is far away. A boy moves across the mud and water, and he runs toward a flock of resting birds, making them jump to frightened flight tilting through the gray light, just to make them do it, just so something else knows he's alive.

Lance Hammer's Ballast, premiering at the Sundance film festival, is already earning comparisons to the work of European filmmakers like The Dardenne Brothers and Christian Mungiu -- the camera is hand-held, the emotions are at arm's length. Working with non-professional actors, using available light and actual locations, Hammer shows us a world and the people who live there. In time, we figure out how these people are connected, and how they fail to connect. Lawrence (Micheal Smith, Jr.) sits in a darkened home, silent, as a neighbor checks in because Lawrence and his brother haven't been seen in a while, while Marlee (Tarra Riggs) works hard to provide a life for her son James (Jimmyron Ross), even as he drifts towards trouble. There's a link between these three characters, but we are left to figure it out over time, just as they have to figure it out for themselves.

People mock 'Sundance films,' or joke that "'Sundance' spelled backwards is 'massive depression.'" The reality of the matter is that if mainstream film offers us escape, independent cinema offers a necessary escape from escapism. Movie characters don't seem to worry about paying the bills; most moviegoers do. But films like Ballast -- concerned with struggle, loss, poverty and wounded hearts -- are easily ignored and dismissed. Bruised from a fight, Marlee gets fired from her custodial job because her appearance would upset customers. She rages and despairs at the loss of a bad, low-paying job, because it's all she had, her firing literally adding insult to injury: "Like the motherf***ers even know that I'm there! I'm invisible to them." And she is invisible to them; Ballast doesn't just confront us with her howling pain, but also with our role in it.

Set in the here-and-now Mississippi Delta, Lance Hammer's Ballast follows a trio of characters -- a man in crisis and a single mother trying to keep ahead of disaster and her rootless son -- in a very American setting with a very European sensibility. It is one that evokes the Dardenne brothers, where the camera is hand-held but the emotions are kept at arm's length. Hammer spoke with Cinematical at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival about his decision to work with non-professional actors, the news that Ballast will be playing at this year's Berlin Film Festival, and what drew him to the Mississippi Delta for his debut: 'There's a sadness that lays upon the land (in the Delta) that's very moving to me. "

This interview, like all of Cinematical's podcast offerings, is now available through iTunes; if you'd like, you can subscribe at this link. Also, you can listen directly here at Cinematical by clicking below:

After toiling for years in the studio system as a digital design associate (Batman & Robin), visual effects art director (Practical Magic), assistant art director (The Man Who Wasn't There) and, probably, a host of other jobs not yet recorded at IMDb, Lance Hammer completed his first feature film. Ballast will have its World Premiere at Sundance as part of the Dramatic Competition; its first screening is Saturday morning.

Hammer enlisted the assistance of Hollywood veterans like Andrew Adamson and Mark Johnson, who both serve as executive producers, and William Morris Independent is representing the film for US rights. Now indieWIRE reports that Celluloid Dreams has grabbed all international rights outside the US. The Paris-based sales outfit, which advertises itself as "The Directors' Label," has several other titles at Sundance, including the high-profile remake Funny Games, from Michael Haneke, and Alan Ball's Towelhead, as well as Dennis Gansel's The Wave, also screening in the Dramatic Competition.

Ballast is set in a Mississippi Delta township, where a man's suicide "radically transforms" three people and their respective relationships: a single mother (Tarra Riggs), her 12-year-old son (JimMyron Ross), and a man (Michael J. Smith, Sr.) on whose property they seek "safe harbor." The mother and the man have been feuding for a dozen years so, I imagine, sparks will fly.

One more piece of good news for the fledging feature director: Ballast has been selected for the competition at the Berlin festival next month. I'm sure we'll hear more about the film this weekend, after it starts screening at Sundance.