With five nominations, it looks like Superbad will be the star of the 2008 MTV Movie Awards, and its three jubilant male leads -- Michael Cera, Jonah Hill, and Christopher Mintz-Plasse -- deserve the kudos. But one major talent behind the whole affair has stayed relatively anonymous while these young up-and-comers bathe in the spotlight: Director Greg Mottola. The erstwhile independent filmmaker, responsible for some of the best installments of Arrested Developed and Undeclared, launched his career a solid decade before the rise of Judd Apatow with a charming little low budget comedy called The Daytrippers. Starring Stanley Tucci, Hope Davis, Liev Schreiber, Parker Posey and a host of other fantastic character actors, the film follows a wildly dysfunctional family over the course of a single day, as Davis, playing a worrisome housewife, tries to track down her unfaithful husband (Tucci).

Mixing warm humanity with pitch-perfect screwball timing, Daytrippers marked the sort of debut that told you a filmmaker had a big career ahead of him. After a modest premiere at the Slamdance Film Festival, it landed at Cannes, barely got a theatrical release and promptly vanished thereafter. Mottola turned to TV work, and slipped out of the film scene for a good ten years. These days, it's no easy task to track down Daytrippers on DVD -- you can nab second-hand copies on Amazon for decent rates, but not a single retail outlet carries it. Aside from the occasionally airings on cable, the movie has vanished.

My favorite part of attending a film festival comes when you discover a smaller film that hits you in a way that almost forces you to throw up everything you know about the flick whenever someone asks. They could be, like, "So, how ya feeling today?" And then you can't help but answer, "I'm good ... but you HAVE to see this friggin' film. It's called (insert the title) and it's unbelievable -- easiest the best thing I've seen in the history of best things I've seen ... times a gabillion!"

Okay, maybe you don't flip out like that -- but you get the idea. So far this year I've hit up Sundance, Slamdance and SXSW, with plans to soon visit the Gen Art Film Festival here in New York, as well as Tribeca soon after. Thankfully, I've seen two films that absolutely rocked my world, and if I could use every other post just to write about them -- in the hopes all of you will go see these films, and champion them -- I would. But I can't. So from time to time, I will pop in, mention the titles and hope something sticks. As of right now, these are the two films I am championing this year: The Hottie and the Nottie and ... just kidding. Kidding, people. I'm KIDDING! God! Chill out.

AnyWAY, here are the two films: Dear Zachary: a letter to a son about his father (Slamdance) and The Promotion (SXSW). The first is a gripping, tear-jerker of a documentary from a very cool dude named Kurt Kuenne. Alex from First Showing went to see Zachary at SXSW on my recommendation and it blew him away. It will blow you away. Fingers crossed a deal comes soon ... and you bet I'll be back telling you all about it.

The Promotion, on the other hand, is all the way on the other end of the spectrum. It's a comedy. A dry comedy ... where Seann William Scott plays the straight man -- go figure. Not sure if the Weinstein Co. know they have a little gem in their basket; hopefully Kirk Honeycutt didn't scare them stupid. This one is set to come out on June 6, so make sure you're there.

Which films are you absolutely nutty about this year -- to the point where you stop random strangers in the street to tell them all about it?

Prior to coming out for the Sundance Film Festival, I had always wondered about Slamdance -- held at the same time, in the same snowy town. Where was Slamdance? How did you get there? Was it as spread out as Sundance? Luckily, I was fortunate enough to take in a few Slamdance films this year, and the best way to describe the fest is that it's like the indie version of Sundance -- the fest that doesn't try to impress, doesn't have a big budget; the fest for the common man. Not that Sundance isn't a treat in and of itself, but Slamdance is a tad more personal.

Everything is held in one building (Treasure Mountain Inn), and like any smaller festival, you have fliers and posters everywhere -- on boards, on tables, on chairs. People hand out pins, hats -- anything they can do to push themselves through the crowded Sundance marketplace to say, "Hey, check out my film too! It's just as good." Honestly, my favorite film from this entire week was a Slamdance documentary called Dear Zachary. I had a chance to meet the director of that film last night, and he thanked me profusely for my review of it. He said, "It's funny, but that will probably be the best review I get for any film I ever make." He also noted that because of my review, they managed to get a bunch of buyers into a screening for the film taking place today.

While we may all be ants running around a major festival like Sundance, it's times like that -- when our words truly impact the future of a film -- that make these sorts of trips all the more worthwhile. If you can connect with one film, and subsequently have a hand in getting that film in front of millions more people -- then nothing else really matters. The snow, the cold, the lack of sleep, the a**hole who wouldn't let you into a party, the high-priced meals ... the everything. It all just goes away. And you can fly home with a smile.

Check out our Slamdance gallery below to get a sneak peak out how they roll here in Park City.

(Note: Cinematical is not officially covering Slamdance this year, but when we have the chance to catch a film from that fest, we'll definitely bring you a review.)

I don't know how to review this film. It's so personal, so emotional and so powerful that if I dedicate a paragraph to a few technical issues, it would completely take away from the fact that this was one of the best documentaries I have ever watched in my entire life. Following the Slamdance premiere of Dear Zachary, I asked my friend if the director had also submitted to Sundance. Apparently, he did. How or why Sundance did not accept this doc is beyond me. And here's a note to any programmer from any fest reading this review: Play this film. And here's a note to anyone looking to purchase a doc to distribute and whatnot: Buy this film. I don't work for a studio, thus I'm not keen on all the politics involved, but I guarantee if this doc was picked up by, say, HBO, it would change lives immediately.

Matt Dentler made a good point over on his blog. While briefly talking about the film, he said, "I'm not going to link its Web site for a reason: this is a documentary you need to experience with as little advanced knowledge as possible. You just need to know it's worth seeing, and will probably grip you tight from the very beginning. But, like so many festival films, it hits you hardest when you go into it knowing very little." And I completely agree, which is why I won't go into too many details after the jump.

Wow. That's all I have to say about this one. Scrolling through Spout.com today, I came across the following semi-trailer for I Think We're Alone Now, a documentary about extreme fans/stalkers of 80s teen pop sensation Tiffany that's debuting at Slamdance. It's without a doubt one of the creepiest things I've ever seen in my life. One guy in particular, who looks about 50, earnestly tells the camera that "Tiffany and I have known each other most of her life and we are in love with each other. And she's a great singer!" We later learn in the clip that Tiffany already filed a restraining order against that guy at one point, but that hasn't slowed him down a lick. We see him reading a document: "As a 16 year-old, Tiffany was forced to get a restraining order against Jeff Deane Turner -- they've got my whole name in there!"

Then there's another guy, who will remind you of the killer from The Silence of the Lambs -- seriously, he's maybe the scariest-looking guy I've ever seen. He has black and white glossy headshots of the singer all over his wall and we see him telling someone, in a very serious tone of voice, "My destiny is that I'm supposed to be with Tiffany." By far, the topper is a video clip of 30-something Tiffany at one of her sparsely-attended outdoor retro concerts, trying to get the crowd to sing along with "I Think We're Alone Now" and guess who is in the audience, singing louder than anyone else? Shudder. I think this might end up being one of the best horror films of 2008.

The Slamdance Film Festival may have been conceived as a response to Sundance -- it's held in the same small Utah town during the same week each January -- but it has come to be respected in its own right now that it's been around for almost 13 years.

One of Slamdance's many activities beyond the film festival itself is the screenplay competition, and the winners of the 12th annual contest were announced last week. Taking the top prize was Anthony Meindl's The Wonder Girls, about the German women's Olympic swim team in East Berlin. Meindl, who runs an actor's studio in L.A., gets a $7,000 cash prize with the award.

Rounding out the top 10 finalists -- out of more than 2,000 submissions -- were: Ezzy Fish by Tamar Halpern; An Entire Body by Bryan Wizemann; Child in the Dark by Damian Lahey and Ian Ogden; Mighty Oaks by Adam Lowery; Kidney by Stephen Lancelotti; The Falling Sky by Greg Weed; The Atomic Avenger by Ryan Landels; Porkchop & Slim by Seth Schader; and My Name is Sue by Lisa Cole and Mark Monroe.

The press release notes that past Slamdance Screenplay Competition winners include The Woodsman by Nicole Kassell and Stephen Fetcher and Maria Full of Grace by Joshua Marston -- both of which, once produced, skipped Slamdance to premiere at Sundance instead. That's gratitude for you!

Last year, Slamdance added a new screenplay competition specifically for horror films. The first winner, called Slaughter, just started production and is expected to debut at Slamdance in January. That's an awfully short turnaround, but I guess they work fast in the indie world. Anyway, the deadline for this year's Horror Screenplay Competition is Nov. 12, so check out the rules if you have something ghoulish you'd like to enter.

It was a great Simon & Garfunkel song, and now Little Miss Sunshine producers Albert Berger and Ron Yerxa are teaming with director Seth Gordon on a feature film titled The Only Living Boy in New York for Columbia Pictures. Berger and Yerxa have had a successful year in indie land; they also produced Little Children which, along with Sunshine, combined for seven Oscar nominations and two wins (both for Sunshine). With a script from Allan Loeb (Things We Lost in the Fire), pic is being described as a coming-of-age drama about a recent college graduate who is seduced by his father's mistress.

As a director, Gordon crashed onto the scene this past January when his documentary King of Kong was all the rage at Slamdance. Picturehouse will distribute the pic, while New Line snatched up the feature remake rights to produce the film as a narrative with Gordon attached to direct that as well. The Simon & Garfunkel flick (which is what I'm calling it, because I'm sure that song will be all over this bad boy) sounds interesting (if you like stories about a father and son shacking up with the same gal), but I am dying to see King of Kong. I don't know, there's just something about watching a group of video game fans fighting to break world records that gets me all fired up to dust off the old Playstation 2 and take on a new adventure.

Who doesn't love Screen Media Films? Without them, we wouldn't be able to rent The Karate Dog, featuring the voice of Chevy Chase, or the spoof Disaster! The Movie, with the voices of all of Mötley Crüe. Okay, so they don't just distribute bad straight-to-video titles -- they also allow us to see the mediocre directorial offerings of Kevin Bacon and Chazz Palminteri. And they must be doing something right, because they have a great distribution deal with Universal Home Entertainment, and now they also have enough money to expand.

This week, at Sundance, Screen Media will debut its new theatrical division. The company has distributed films to theaters before, such as Bacon's Loverboy, but never on a big scale. Their first release will be Bickford Shmeckler's Cool Ideas, a comedy that Scott saw at SXSW last year (he called it "one of the more colorful surprises" of the fest). They apparently will also be distributing Weirdsville, which premieres next week at Slamdance.

Anyway, this is mostly important news for any filmmakers out there in Park City who can't seem to find a good deal. Look for the Screen Media reps. You could be in the same library as The 12 Dogs of Christmas! And if you think you're better than that, just remember the photo above, because surely Jon Voight once thought he was better too.

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.

We had intended to cover Slamdance - you know, that other film festival tucked away in the bowels of Sundance - during our 12 sleep-deprived days in Park City. Really, we did. I had my credentials info all together, ready to take to the Slamdance office to get my press pass and everything. And then somewhere in between Man Push Cart and Quinceañera, we just ran out of time and energy. But never fear, dear readers.

Culturepulp's Mike Russell not only covered Slamdance, he drew cartoons about it! And just like you, we love to get our film festival breakdown through cartoons - after all, how many whining essays on how Sundance has really gone downhill in the last 20 years, and how bad the parking sucks, and how jam-packed it is, can you really stand to read? Mike saw 16 films in a few days, fueled by sleep deprivation and altitude sickness  (so keep that in mind when you read his capsule reviews, eh?), and he's documented all of it. So pop on over and enjoy his take on this year's Slamdance films and parties. It's almost like being there, only without the free beer and sushi.