By David D'Arcy

"Because the story has already been told in Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors, the 1974 best seller by Piers Paul Read, and retold in its 1993 screen adaptation starring Ethan Hawke, why again?" asks Stephen Holden in the New York Times. "The short answer is that in [Stranded: I've Come From a Plane That Crashed on the Mountains], all 16 of the survivors, now middle-aged, tell the story in their own words." And Salon's Andrew O'Hehir finds the resulting film "intimate, terrifying and positively riveting... One way of explaining Stranded is that [director Gonzalo] Arijon's after not just the objective facts of what happened and when, which are dramatic enough, but also the subjective reality, the psychological and physiological desolation of the experience."

David D'Arcy talks with Arijon about why he's retelling a well-known tale.

(Updated Note: Wray's documentary was not only finished but released and is now out on DVD. We're proud to say we both have the DVD and were following the film since long before it was finished. -- ed. 11/14/08 )

By David Hudson

Tara Wray had been writing stories and editing a literary journal when she decided one story would be best told as a film. Working with co-producer Michel Negroponte and a grant from the Anthony Radziwill Documentary Fund, she's now tackling her troubled relationship with her mother. David Hudson talks to her about Manhattan, Kansas.

By Cathleen Rountree

"Planet B-Boy considers the international resurgence of breakdancing and closely follows five of the most prominent teams from Korea, Japan, France, and the US as they prepare for the annual Battle of the Year (aka the 'World Cup' of b-boying) at its home base in Braunschweig, Germany, which is attended by 10,000 spectators."

Cathleen Rountree talked with director Benson Lee.  The film is now out on DVD.

By Jonathan Marlow [and his id]

"There is little precedent, cinematic or otherwise, for Synecdoche, New York," writes Michael Joshua Rowin in the L Magazine. "Sure, early on in his directorial debut, maestro screenwriter Charlie Kaufman namechecks Kafka to prepare us for the increasingly claustrophobic surrealism that engulfs author-surrogate Caden Cotard (a phenomenal Philip Seymour Hoffman), while the character's psychotic, Borgesian obsession with artistic fidelity to real life is approached with the same matter-of-fact bemusement as Buñuel - this isn't entirely unfamiliar territory, at least to begin with. But as it becomes more and more frustrated in its attempt to reconcile personal entropy with creative perfection, Synecdoche proves that even from the ingenious, hilarious and, clearly, tortured mind of the man who might be this country's greatest current contributor to the art of storytelling, it is like nothing else we've quite seen."

Jonathan Marlow talks with Kaufman about his journey into - and back out of - Synecdoche, New York.

By Sean Axmaker

"This is a very complex, convoluted story on so many, many different levels," Errol Morris tells Sean Axmaker. "I think it is, in many ways, a story about American women in the military. I think that's one of the things about the photographs that made the photographs particularly strange, particularly appalling, particularly perverse. I've often imagined, when [Charles] Graner was taking those pictures, of his 90-some-odd pound, twenty-year-old girlfriend, holding that leash on that the prisoner known as Gus, he was in some very deep sense reenacting American foreign policy."

Standard Operating Procedure is now out on DVD.

By Brian Darr

"Lance Hammer began his filmmaking career working with the art department, designing the architecture of Gotham buildings used in Joel Schumacher's Batman films. His feature film debut as a writer and director might be seen as an aesthetic laying down of a gauntlet: art thrives best when developed far from any Hollywood departments. Written, cast, set and shot in a wintery Mississippi Delta locale, Ballast emerged from its premiere at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival with top awards for Hammer's direction and Lol Crawley's cinematography."

Brian Darr introduces his interview with Hammer - they talk about nonprofessional actors, documentaries and some of Hammer's own favorite filmmakers. Ballast is currently playing at New York's Film Forum and opens in selected cities on October 17.

By Hannah Eaves

"Alex Gibney's Taxi to the Dark Side is the documentary that many of us have prayed for, the one that could break through even to people who relish the torture set pieces on 24 and will hear no evil about the War on Terror," writes David Edelstein in New York. "It's the equal of No End in Sight [which Gibney produced] in its tight focus on the nuts and bolts of incompetence, and it surpasses any recent melodrama in the empathy it evokes for both its victims and - surprisingly - victimizers. More important, it leaves you brooding on the human capacity for cruelty in a way that transcends the gory details."

Here, Hannah Eaves talks with Gibney about his previous work (The Trials of Henry Kissinger, Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room) and about the ways the US might regain the moral high ground.

Gibney's Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson sees its premiere at this year's Sundance Film Festival.

Taxi to the Dark Side is now out on DVD.

By James Van Maanen

"If you're lucky enough to have ever been part of a band of deeply close friends, then add writer/director Ferzan Ozpetek's new film Saturn in Opposition (Saturno Contro) to your must-see list immediately," wrote James Van Maanen when he caught the film as part of this summers Open Roads series of new Italian Films at the Film Society of Lincoln Center in New York.

It was then, too, that he got a chance to talk with the director about his work - and more than a little, too, about what the current administrations in the US and Italy are really after. Meantime, with Saturn in Opposition now coming out on DVD, you can take James's advice, too.

By Jeffrey M. Anderson

"What happens when a musical form associated with the dubious glamour of dying young becomes entwined with the less glamorous and far less dubious eventuality of dying old?" asks the New Republic's Christopher Orr. "This is the question implicitly posed, and movingly answered, by the documentary Young@Heart."

Under the direction of Bob Cilman, the Young@Heart Chorus covers tunes originally performed by the likes of Sonic Youth, James Brown and the Ramones. "It sounds dubious and cutesy," admits Jeffrey M Anderson, "but within minutes it reveals itself as the real thing and doubt gives way to unbridled enthusiasm."

Jeffrey talks with Cilman, director Stephen Walker and two members of the chorus.

Young@Heart is now out on DVD.

By Sean Axmaker

"Chris Cooper made his film debut in John Sayles's Matewan," writes Sean Axmaker, introducing his interview with the actor. "In the 20 years since, his career has been defined by a remarkable wealth and variety of interesting characters and intense performances in films as diverse as Lone Star, American Beauty, Seabiscuit and Capote. He won an Oscar for Adaptation and his unsettling incarnation of CIA traitor Robert Hanssen in Breach was mesmerizing. He takes another rare leading role in Ira Sachs' Married Life, an unusual genre mix that combines period style and a story of adultery and one man's plot to murder his wife with a comedy of manners approach and a serious conversation about love and desire and marriage and relationships. I had the opportunity to talk to Mr Cooper about Married Life, married life, and a career playing such a diverse and memorable set of characters."

In the Parallax View, Sean talks with Sachs as well.