This is a great week to catch up with a few indies that came and went quickly in theaters. Craig Zobel's Great World of Sound burst out of Sundance last year with positive notices -- check GreenCine Daily's roundup -- and our own James Rocchi named it one of the ten best of the year. The basic premise is that two music scouts go on the road in the American South to look for acts to sign. In James' original review, he described it as "funny and vital and tough." Magnolia's DVD includes an audio commentary and deleted scenes.

If Feast of Love had nothing else to recommend it, it would deserve recommendation as director Robert Benton's latest work. As Jeffrey M. Anderson commented, Benton's melodramas (Kramer vs. Kramer, Places in the Heart, Nobody's Fool) "almost always hit home." Feast of Love "focuses on several couples in a Portland college community," he wrote. "These characters may live in a college town, but in love, everyone has something to learn." Morgan Freeman, Greg Kinnear and Radha Mitchell star. MGM's DVD looks bare, with just one feature evidently on board.

Director Allan Moyle returned to his roots (Pump Up the Volume, Empire Records) to make Weirdsville, in which stoners, Satanists and drug dealers commingle. In her TIFF review, Monika Bartyzel called it "fun, endearing, and quite fluid for a stoner comedy. It's also recognizably Canadian (the drug dealer is into curling), but still completely palpable for wider audiences." Wes Bentley and Scott Speedman star. Magnolia's DVD includes an audio commentary and 14 featurettes: behind the scenes, making of, and interviews.

With the writer's strike in full swing, I thought I'd pay tribute to a few of the writers who currently have films in theaters. Quite frankly, you really have to admire some of them. Take Allison Burnett, who adapted Feast of Love (2 screens) as well as this year's earlier Resurrecting the Champ. Burnett received very little love for either movie, but consider how hard it must have been to cut down a novel and expand a newspaper article at the same time? It makes my head spin. It's also quite impressive that Burnett was able to work again after his earlier script was turned into the universally panned film Autumn in New York (2000). But the thing that impressed me most of all about Burnett is his first produced script, Bloodfist III: Forced to Fight (1992), a vehicle for "Z" level action star Don 'The Dragon' Wilson. This is from a guy who studied playwriting and has published a novel. I can only imagine what it must be like to sit down and actually write something like that. Do you tape the paycheck on the wall next to your desk and keep staring at it? Good for Burnett that he made it out of that hole.

Then there's The Simpsons Movie (96 screens), which has at least eleven credited writers, and possibly more who added material without credit. Among them we have David Mirkin, who directed one of my all-time favorite guilty pleasures, Heartbreakers (2001), and James L. Brooks, who won an armload of Oscars for Terms of Endearment (1983). Most of the others are from TV, and I'd like to think they wrote this movie the way they might have written a half-hour episode: by sitting around a big table and throwing out ideas and laughing a lot. Those writer rooms are usually decorated with stuffed animals and novelty items, as well as plates of donuts and other snacks -- perhaps some kind of air freshener as well. It makes me all warm just thinking about it.

If you love movie awards and dog shows, there's a new event that's perfect for you: the Fido Awards, which recognizes cinematic canines. Presented in conjunction with the London Film Festival, these awards were presented Sunday night with the top honor, "Best in World", going to five corgis -- named Poppy, Anna, Alice, Oliver and Megan -- that appear alongside Oscar-winner Helen Mirren in The Queen. The same dogs also won another award, "Best Historical Hounds for a dog/dogs in a film set in bygone days", beating out dogs from Control (I don't even remember a dog in this, which means it makes sense it didn't win) and Molière. Other winners include Travis, a Welsh cardigan corgi named "Comedy Canine for smochiest pooch in a romantic comedy " for his "method-acting" in Year of the Dog, Logan, a "Bernese Mtn English Mastiff X" named "Blockbuster Bowser -- best canine achievement in an action flick" for sharing a beer with Mark Wahlberg in Shooter, and dogs from the short film Dog Flap and the London Film Festival entry Far North. In addition to those from Control and Molière, losers included pups from The Holiday, Feast of Love, Shoot 'Em Up, The Savages (for some reason listed in the action category) and Paddy Considine's short Dog Altogether. Hopefully none of them were Old-Yellered because of their failures.

Isn't that cute? The Fidos are technically considered "the world's first-ever international awards ceremony for canine screen stars," but this isn't the first time awards have been given out to animal performances in film (I would be shocked if it were). Since 1939 -- after a horse was accidentally killed on the set of Jesse James -- the American Humane Association has honored animals in cinema and television with the PATSY Awards (yet apparently the first actual PATSY went to "Francis the Talking Mule" in 1951). Some of the obvious past winners include Lassie, the pig from Green Acres, the dog that played Benji (name: Higgins), Gypsy the horse (from Gypsy Colt) and Orangey the cat, who appeared in Rhubarb and Breakfast at Tiffany's. Unfortunately I can't seem to find a full list of the winners through the years, just this spotlight from TCM.

What is your favorite animal performance, canine or otherwise?

No director alive can make family melodramas as brilliantly as Douglas Sirk once did, but I'd suggest that Robert Benton comes the closest. Though filmmakers continue to grind out weepies by the truckload, it's extremely difficult to find that exact thread between heavy and hammy, perhaps even more difficult than making a funny comedy. Weepies generally tell depressing stories, about death, disease, failed romances, unrequited romances, estranged romances, etc. The trick is not to make the film itself depressing. Most directors make the mistake of shooting the material head-on, which has the effect of bludgeoning the audience rather than coaxing them in. Part of Sirk's genius was his timing; he made his best films in the 1950s when you couldn't show everything. He used his skills, his palate of colors, space and the elements, to suggest, rather than tell, his stories.

Admittedly, Benton isn't as visually astute as Sirk, but he's a good writer, good with words and characters. He has lots of different kinds of films on his resume -- he's often attracted to crime stories -- but his melodramas almost always hit home: Kramer vs. Kramer (1979), for which he won a Best Director Oscar, Places in the Heart (1984), and Nobody's Fool (1994). Even his previous film, The Human Stain (2003), worked on a basic, emotional level, though critics generally dismissed it because of its failure to live up to Philip Roth's novel and its mismatched casting of Wentworth Miller as a young Anthony Hopkins. Benton's new movie has less of a pristine literary pedigree, and so perhaps it will go down easier.

Cinematical has just received an assortment of exclusive images from the upcoming indie drama Feast of Love. This is one of those ensemble pieces in which the lives of a community of friends in Oregon (don't see many flicks set in Oregon) intertwine to form a narrative about love, romance, loss and redemption. Feast of Love arrives in theaters on September 28, and here's the straight synopsis in case you're interested (then check out the gallery below, or click here):

From venerable Academy Award® winning director Robert Benton (KRAMER VS. KRAMER), comes a kaleidoscopic ode to life and love in all its funny, sad, sexy, crazy, heartbreaking and life sustaining facets: FEAST OF LOVE. In a coffee shop in a tight-knit Oregon community, local professor Harry Stevenson (Academy Award® winner Morgan Freeman) witnesses love and attraction whipping up mischief among the town's residents. From the unlucky in love, die-hard romantic coffee shop owner Bradley (Academy Award® nominee Greg Kinnear) who has a serial habit of looking for love in all the wrong places, including with his current wife Kathryn (Selma Blair); to the edgy real estate agent Diana (Radha Mitchell) who is caught up in an affair with a married man (Billy Burke) with whom she shares an ineffable connection; to the beautiful young newcomer Chloe (Alexa Davalos) who defies fate in romancing the troubled Oscar (Toby Hemingway); to Harry himself, whose adoring wife (Jane Alexander) is looking to break through his wall of grief after the wrenching loss of a beloved . . . they all intertwine into one remarkable story in which no one can escape being bent, broken, befuddled, delighted and ultimately redeemed by love's inescapable spell .

In case you're interested, here are some casting tidbits from the past couple of days:

• Talk about lining up a decent cast for a first-time director, Sissy Spacek is set to join Ian McShane in the comedy Hot Rod, SNL writer Akiva Schaffer's directorial debut. Also starring in the film will be Schaffer's SNL buddies (and Lonely Island partners) Andy Samberg and Jorma Taccone. The film, which we've previously discussed, reminds me of that Simpson's episode where Bart attempts to jump Springfield Gorge in order to impress his friends. Pam Brady, who occasionally writes for South Park, penned the script. Hmm, could a South Park writer be borrowing from The Simpsons?
• Damn, Feast of Love is turning out to be some feast all right, having recently added an additional eight people to its cast. Pic, which already stars Morgan Freeman, Greg Kinnear and Radha Mitchell, has tacked on Jane Alexander, Alexa Davalos, Toby Hemingway, Selma Blair, Stana Katic, Billy Burke, Fred Ward Erika Marozsan and a Partridge in a Pear Tree. Davolos will play the lead role; a sensual free spirit who interrupts the lives of a group of friends from Oregon and changes them in unexpected ways. Geez, and here I didn't even think that may people lived in Oregon.
• Emmy-winning actress Tammy Blanchard is currently in talks to star opposite Brittany Murphy in The Ramen Girl. Director Robert Allan Ackerman will make his feature film debut with this story about an American girl stranded in Tokyo who decides to survive by learning how to be a ramen noodle chef. Blanchard would play a drug-addicted American escort who befriends Murphy's character and, hopefully, the two will share stories over a wonderful dish of warm noodles. Yum.

As Erik reported earlier this month, Morgan Freeman recently signed on to star in Feast of Love, an adaptation of Charles Baxter's well-reviewed novel of the same name. According to this morning's Hollywood Reporter, Freeman has been joined in the cast by Greg Kinnear. Alongside Freeman's philosophy professor, Kinnear will play Bradley Thomas, "an all-around nice guy who owns a coffee shop and paints on the side." Unfortunately for Thomas, like many other cinematic nice guys, he's had some issues with love. Issues like losing one wife to another man, and a second to lesbianism. Doh! Not to worry, though, he's getting back on the horse. Or I assume he is, what with the movie being about "an exploration of the magical, mysterious and sometimes painful incarnations of love" and all.

And about that summary -- it sounds horrible and cloying, doesn't it? The novel, however, sounds complex and witty and actually quite good, so there's a chance that, if the screenplay is somewhat faithful, the movie will be about more than schmaltz. Granted, it's small chance, but still. At least it's there.

Feast of Love starts shooting in August in the capable hands of Robert Benton (who, among other things, directed Kramer vs. Kramer and Nobody's Fool); he'll be working from a screenplay by Allison Burnett, whose stellar writing for Bloodfist III: Forced to Fight surely made her him the obvious choice for a subtle film about love.