What's been going on over at Cinematical Indie the past few days? Let's take a peek ...

• In film distribution news, the provocatively titled Your Mommy Kills Animals (yeesh), which takes its name from a PETA brochure, scored distrib this week. The film played at HotDocs earlier this year to positive reviews from the likes of Variety and eFilmCritic, and sold out screenings at Montreal's Fantasia Film Festival. Congrats to director Curt Johnson.
• This week's Indie Film Blog Group Hug tossed some love around to lots of blogs writing about interesting things in the world of film. Highlights: Christopher John Stack's film An Exercise in Vigilance is screening at the Action on Film International Film Festival in Long Beach, Movie City Indie's Ray Pride interviews filmmaker Usama Alshaibi, Lost in Negative Space blogger Peet Gelderblom has seen Famke Jenssen's sister in her underwear, and guess who's dating indie-film darling Miranda July ... ?
• Been wondering what the members of The Fugees are up to? Even if you haven't, you might be interested to know that former Fugee Pras Michel is starring in a documentary about homelessness. In the film Skid Row, Pras lived as a homeless person for nine days, recording the results on video. The film has been picked up for distrib by Screen Media Films, and will open August 24 in a limited NYC-LA-Washington DC run. If it plays well in those cities, maybe it will get a wider open down the road and the rest of us might get to see it.
• The Guardian posits the question: What great filmmakers haven't had real bios?
• Jette tells us about Paul Verhoeven's Soldier of Orange being made into a musical in the Netherlands -- but she's holding out hope for Showgirls!
• Ryan Stewart reviews Dr. Bronner's Magic Soapbox.

After being part of the popular 90's trio, The Fugees, rapper Pras Michel has been building a name for himself. He's had a successful solo career, which included a single for Bulworth, and then jumped into acting. He had a cameo in Mystery Men, has starred in Higher Ed and plays Sandman in Abel Ferrara's upcoming Go Go Tales. He also spent time last year working on a documentary about homelessness called Skid Row. (This is the second Fugee-member doc this year, as Wyclef Jean appeared in the uber-excellent Ghosts of Cité Soleil.)

Skid follows Pras living as a homeless person in Los Angeles for nine days, recorded with a hidden camera. The Hollywood Reporter has now posted that the film has been picked up by Screen Media Films for North American distribution. The plan is to release the film in New York, L.A. and Washington D.C. on August 24 -- free of any festival runs for pre-buzz.

The documentary was directed by an interesting collection of talent. Niva Dorell wrote and directed the short film Kings, which was a university thesis script that Robert Zemeckis and John Singleton chose to mentor, Marshall Tyler's most recent work was acting as Michael Mann's assistant on Miami Vice and Collateral and Ross Clarke was a writer on a UK show called Shoreditch Twat. How each of them came together might be a story in and of itself.

According to Wikipedia, the production also inspired Pras to launch "prAsperity project" this past May -- a non-profit organization "that jump-starts awareness and solutions for intractable problems affecting the human condition." Now, that bit of news is followed by mention of an MTV Cribs episode, that featured his two houses and pricey car collection, so I wonder if his current non-profit pursuits prompted that addition. As for the film, if it's even half as good as his old partner Wyclef's, it'll be worth it.