By John Esther

What is a Sundance Film Festival without a Parker Posey movie? This year the unofficial Queen of Sundance starred in writer-director Ryan Shiraki's Spring Breakdown, about three women "holding on for one more day." At the festival, I caught up with Posey's co-star Jane Lynch, one of the funniest character actresses around; her previous credits include being part of Christopher Guest's ensemble -- Best in Show, For Your Consideration -- plus Role Models, The 40 Year Old Virgin and other scene-stealing roles.

For the most part an amusing movie performed by amusing women, and yet with no theatrical release to speak of, Spring Breakdown should see more life on DVD. (It arrives on disc this week.)

Lynch has also been doing some fine work on the small screen as of late, including the Starz Network's Party Down (about a catering company), and Fox's cheery new Glee. The film's director, former Saturday Night Live producer Shiraki, also chimed in on our conversation as we all drove together -- as will become abundantly clear at the end of the interview.

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.

Stranded is now out on DVD.

 By John Esther

Trouble the Water [trailer] looks deep and hard at America before, during and after Hurricane Katrina led to the flooding of New Orleans and, in particular, the Bush Administration's typical gross incompetence in responding to the catastrophes.

Directed by Tia Lessin and Carl Deal, the film was nominated for an Oscar for Best Documentary category this past year. "Save for some righteous indignation at the close," wrote Manohla Dargis in The New York Times, "Trouble the Water makes its points without didacticism. [The film] ebbs and flows like great drama."

A producer who has worked with Michael Moore (Fahrenheit 9/11), Martin Scorsese, Bob Dylan and others, Trouble the Water is Lessin's feature debut. A co-producer on Fahrenheit 9/11, Deal's other credits include being an archivist for Bowling for Columbine, God Grew Tired of Us and Murderball. The film premieres on HBO Thursday, April 23, before making its debut on DVD this summer from Zeitgeist Films.

In this exclusive interview, John Esther spoke to Deal and Lessin about Trouble the Water.

"Why are drunk chicks so funny?" asks Aaron Hillis, kicking off this lively interview with the extremely talented and hilarious actress.

[As my annual Austin adventure finally comes to an end tomorrow, I leave you with one last podcast. Stay tuned for my SXSW "Films of the Week" reviews later this weekend.]

Quickly becoming one of the go-to heroines of screen comedy, Anna Faris (Smiley Face, The House Bunny) handily and hilariously steals each of her scenes in writer-director Jody Hill's Observe and Report, which screened as the centerpiece film at SXSW. Like others who have pointed out the similarities, it really does play like the comic analogue to Taxi Driver, its disturbing "jokes" provoking mostly nervous laughter, with a doozy of a punchline.