Any Guardian sit-down worth its salt has to include a not-so subtle evaluation of the star's interview habits, and this new one with Maggie Gyllenhaal is no exception. "She sits directly opposite me, her feet planted firmly on the floor," the interviewer tells us. "She asks for a camomile tea and coolly, in a tone that brooks no argument, requests that the assembled public relations people leave the room while we conduct the interview." After this evaluation, it's off to the races, with Gyllenhaal delving into everything from her trepidation about doing Secretary -- "in the wrong hands, in even slightly the wrong hands, even in just slightly less intelligent hands, this movie could say something really weird" -- to everything that went into her performance in Sherrybaby. She's especially frank when it comes to the movie's sex scenes. "I find those scenes hard to watch," she says. "But when I was making them, I was thinking how Sherry would be thinking: I've been in prison for three years, I want to c*me."

Gyllenhaal also owns up to some tussles with directors over the years, but she's too polite to name names. When asked about what her most difficult acting experience has been so far, she replies that she once "realized very early on in a shoot that I was at odds with the director, and I had to go through the whole shoot trying to figure out how to stay alive as an actress, when I was being squashed by the director." For the record, it wasn't Oliver Stone -- she says that she loved working with him, and describes him as being "nuts, but totally inspiring." As for the movie she's shooting right now, The Dark Knight, Gyllenhaal has nothing but praise for how she's being treated. "Doing Batman has shocked me at every turn. When I started, I thought 'Well, it's a huge movie, I'll just do my best to put what I can into it. But, in fact, they've been really hungry for my ideas, for my views. It's great! They've been asking for more!"

Here at Cinematical, we know there's nothing you like more this time of year than reading all about who's nominating whom for what critics' award. The latest nominations to come down the pike are from the Windy City, where the noms are lining up with nothing terribly shocking compared to other critics' groups.

Best Pic noms include Babel, Little Miss Sunshine, The Departed, The Queen, and United 93. In fact, the Chicago critics love Babel so much they nominated Alejandro González Iñárritu's little gem of a film for no fewer than nine awards, including Brad Pitt for Best Actor, Iñárritu for Best Director, Rinko Kikuchi for Best Promising Newcomer, and assorted other goodies.

Maggie Gyllenhaal is my type of actress. I started following her when she was an ever-lovable Satanist make-up artist in Cecil B. Demented. The film inspired me to make my only memorabilia purchase, fighting tooth and nail on eBay for her character's eyelash curler, beating out a girl who ultimately decided her money would be better spent on the branding iron she actually wanted to use. Since then, Gyllenhaal has picked some great films, has been forgiven for the not-so-great, and is now a two-time best actress winner, scoring the Best Actress prize at the Stockholm Film Festival.

Maggie received the top prize for her portrayal of Sherry Swanson in Sherrybaby, a film by Laurie Collyer that Jeffrey M. Anderson reports also grabbed the Best Film award from the jury. These aren't the first bits of praise to come for the film. Our own Kim Voynar gave a great review earlier this year during Sundance, and it gained nominations both there and at the Gotham Awards. Sherrybaby, in short, is the story of a woman trying to reconnect with her daughter after a prison sentence. However, it's also an incredibly serious and heart-wrenching film that made the Sundance Q&A a river of tears.

This just could be Maggie's ticket to an Oscar, although anything is possible in a ceremony that raises Brockovich above Burstyn. Nevertheless, I think it's safe to say that she's got a long career ahead of her. She's on a steady train forward, which isn't stopping for elevator shenanigans and party girl diversions.

[via Hollywood.com]

It wasn't all just snow and screenings at Sundance for the Cinematical; every chance we had, we were snapping pics as well. Here's a round-up of the best of our Sundance pics (more photos past the jump).

I don't think I've ever seen a Q&A where both audience members and casts started unabashedly crying - Sherrybaby is the first. Director Laurie Collyer told the audience tearfully the film was inspired by a friend of hers who was lost to addiction, and how she had tried to understand why her life went one direction and her friend's life in another, not-so-good direction. Then it got started with the first question: a woman in the front row stood and talked for quite a while about the film and how deeply it affected her. She started sobbing through her words, the cast started crying, then the audience got all teary - it was a regular waterworks there in the Racquet Club Theater. It speaks, though, to how moved people were by the film.

Collyer was asked a question about  Ryan Simpkins, the young actress who plays Alexis, Sherry's daughter. She discussed how Maggie Gyllenhaal (who played Sherry) became very protective of Ryan, in the same way that Sherry is protective of Alexis. She recalled how that created friction between herself as the director and Gyllenhaal as an actress, but in a very positive way that helped the film, and helped the tension between Sherry and Lynette feel very real and tangible.Then someone asked how everyone got involved with the film, and the cast did a round of pass-the-mic. Ryan said that she read the script "about 50 times", and that her favorite scenes were "the one in the car, and the birthday party". Ryan also offered her opinion that Laurie is a "very good director".

Maggie Gyllenhaal gives a heart-rending, Oscar-worthy performance in Sherrybaby, written and directed by Laurie Collyer. Gyllenhaal plays Sherry Swanson, a former teenage heroin addict coming off a three year prison sentence and trying to stay clean and get her life back on track. Sherry also wants desperately to be reunited with her young daughter, Alexis (Ryan Simpkins) , who has been cared for by Sherry's brother Bob (Brad William Henke) and his wife Lynette (Bridget Barkan) in her absence. Sherry checks into a halfway house, looks for a job, meets with her parole officer, goes to twelve-step meetings, and struggles to reestablish trust and love with Alexis, who has come to view Lynette as a mother-figure in Sherry's absence. A dark secret of sexual abuse lurks in the closet of Sherry's past, though, and she keeps tripping over the consequences of not resolving her issues around the past.

Sherrybaby is a superbly intense film - not in the thriller film sense, but in the way you come to feel so much for the characters: Bob, torn between his love for his sister, and his love for his wife, who resents Sherry's return; Alexis, torn between the mother-figure who has cared for her and her real mother, who wants her daughter's love so tangibly, you can almost reach through the screen and touch it, and most of all Sherry. You can't help but root silently for her, even as you want to smack her for some of the choices she makes. Gyllenhaal gives the best performance of her career to date in this film, and she's a superb actress, so that's saying a lot. When she stands up at the dinner table to poignantly sing The Bangles "Eternal Flame" to her daughter - a serenade of her love for the child she has never taken proper care of, and her own ardent desire to be a good mother, Gyllenhaal radiates maternal love and desperation.

Two things you can be sure to see at Sundance (well, besides rich celebrities loaded down with tons of free swag we mortals will never lay eyes on) are snow - lots of snow - and films. Lots of films. Over the next 11 days, each of us on the Cinematical Sundance team will be watching films until our eyeballs burn, and faithfully reporting on what we think about them, which films score the hottest buzz, and which ones have the biggest walkouts. I considered a couple ways of compiling this list, including choosing a film from each category, so as to cover a wide spectrum, and just randomly opening the film catalog with my eyes closed and pointing. Ultimately, though, although there are lots of films on my "want to see" list, these seven are the ones I'm really psyched about.

Come Early Morning - The directorial and writing debut by Chasing Amy's Joey Lauren Adams stars Ashley Judd as a woman in her 30s searching for love. The catalog description isn't terribly descriptive: Come Early Morning is about life transitions, the search for love, and the burdens we carry with us", which could describe pretty much anything from Brokeback Mountain to The Wedding Crashers, so I'm not really sure what to expect from this one. The film stars Ashley Judd, who can be a talented actress given the right material, with a supporting cast including Jeffrey Donovan, Tim Blake Nelson, Diane Ladd and Stacey Keach.

 (more after the jump)

Picking what films you want to see based on the Sundance catalogue is challenging. Frankly, I pick what films to see largely based on what people are talking about in the press room (the volunteers are a great source of information). The catalogue is written from a fans' perspective. In fact, it's written by the Sundance selection committee, so it's even more than a fans' perspective--it's the opinion of someone who pushed to have the film in the festival above thousands of other films. It makes sense that they would be glowing.

At the start of Sundance you're really picking films based on the talent, the director, the title, and the photo--that's the truth. It's impossible to know which first time directors will breakout, that's the majic of Sundance and that magic occurs over five days. No one would ever have selected Napoleon Dynamite as something they "had to see" based on the catalogue, for example.

That being said, here are my seven in no particular order.

All Aboard: Rosie's Family Cruise

Wow, a documentary about Rosie at Sundance--that's got legs (at the very least to base a drinking game on). The film was one of three films that still had tickets availble to the public today. The other two were the Shorts Selection and TBD. When your film is neck and neck with "TBD" on the available ticket list you know something is up. This film has camp written all over it, but who knows... I'll try and keep an open mind.

(more after the jump)