Courtesy of our friends at FilmCatcher comes this interview with Zooey Deschanel on her lead role in the indie romantic comedy 500 Days of Summer.

Click to watch the flash video Q&A.

(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 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 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.