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Indie Roundup gathers a selection of indie film news from the past seven days and offers a peek ahead to what's coming.

Deal. Do not despair that the first month of the new year will be filled solely with the expansion of award contenders. Distribution rights in the US for Sweetgrass have been acquired by The Cinema Guild, according to indieWIRE, and the documentary will open at Film Forum in Manhattan on January 6, followed by a rollout across the country.

Directed by Ilisa Barbasch and Lucien Castaing-Taylor, Sweetgrass "follows the last sheepherders to trail their flocks up into Montana's Beartooth mountains for summer pasture," per its official synopsis. After debuting at the Berlin Film Festival last year, the doc played the festival circuit quite successfully, picking up positive critical notices. Check out the splendid trailer in all its quiet, chud-chewing glory after the jump.

Online / On-Demand Viewing. Debuting on demand next Sunday, Clarkworld paints a portrait of filmmaker Bob Clark. Best known for his perennial holiday favorite A Christmas Story, Clark also made the groundbreaking Porky's, which set the tone for all raunchy teen comedies to come, and the significant slasher pic Black Christmas, another flick that was a trendsetter (or at least ripped off at will). Director Deren P. Abram talked with Peter Billingsley (former child star turned filmmaker), Kim Cattrall, Jon Voight, Denise Richards, Mary Steenburgen, John Saxon, Scott Baio, and other people who weren't even in any of his movies! We have the trailer for this one after the jump, too, which makes for an interesting contrast with the one for Sweetgrass. Look for the movie on cable systems via Cinetic FilmBuff.

After the jump: box office talk; trailers for Sweetgrass and Clarkworld.

Indie Roundup: Your quick guide to what's new and upcoming in the independent film community.

Deals. Our friends at indieWIRE report that Cracks has been acquired by IFC Films, which plans to release it next year via its IFC in Theaters platform. The film is the feature directorial debut of Jordan Scott, daughter of Ridley Scott. Eva Green (The Dreamers, Casino Royale) stars as a teacher and diving coach in an Irish boarding school for orphaned girls; Juno Temple, Imogen Poots, and Maria Valverde also star. "The trials and tribulations, for both the students and their unorthodox teacher," writes Kurt Halfyard at Twitch, "gradually are brought to a boil that subverts many of the typical paths in either a coming of age story or a typical 'school-girl dormitory' tale."

Michael Caine stars as Harry Brown, a retired Marine who determines to clean up his neighborhood after his best friend is killed. Samuel Goldwyn Films picked up theatrical rights to the thriller; indieWIRE notes that the film opened in the UK last weekend, though the US release date has not yet been announced. Daniel Barber directed. UK site Pure Movies calls Harry Brown "a superior offering – albeit a gritty and bleak one."

On Demand / Online Viewing. Check out On Hallowed Ground, available exclusively this month on Babelgum. Andre Braugher narrates the documentary, which explores Rucker Park, a basketball court in Harlem where legendary future NBA players, and those who should have been famous, once played. Speaking of gritty players, if you're curious to catch up with Troy Duffy's The Boondock Saints, it'll finally be coming to video on demand in January.

After the jump: watch trailers for Cracks (absolutely gorgeous) and Harry Brown (dark and intense)!

She's about to open the second-biggest film of her career, so what better timing than now to point you to a new peek at Kristen Stewart's next non-Twilight film? Check out the new trailer for The Yellow Handkerchief, a Sundance entry that follows three strangers in post-Katrina Louisiana – Martine (Stewart), Gordy (Eddie Redmayne), and Brett (William Hurt) -- as they search together for life, love, and the perfect Southern accent.

Ok, so it seems the Southern slangin' is done primarily by Stewart, while Brit Redmayne goes American and Hurt rocks the ex-con handlebar mustache. As they embark on a road trip together, the two teens listen to Brett's tale of the woman who got away (Maria Bello) while they navigate the murky waters of young love. (Read Erik Davis's Sundance review here.)

Watch the trailer after the jump.

Shocker! Displaying a positive attitude that should warm the heart of any moviegoer who loves the female form, Eva Mendes declares: "If I feel it's appropriate to show some nudity in the scenes then I go for it." She told Fox News: "As much as I use my sexuality, I have never felt exploited. I feel like it's on my terms and I have no problem with it."

Speaking as someone who first noticed Mendes when Ethan Hawke opened a door in Training Day to reveal her lying naked on a bed, I say: "I have no problem with it, either." The actress is promoting her appearance in Werner Herzog's Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, which opens later this month (and prompted our own Jeffrey D. Anderson to wonder if the remake was a good idea in the first place.) Mendes has been willing to bare portions of her body for several films, but it's not like she's leisurely walking around naked in any of them. Instead, they're more like brief flashes, tantalizing glimpses that are either frankly sexual (We Own the Night) or fanboy flirtatious (The Spirit, pictured).

Mendes was open in talking about 'turning up the heat and turning up the sexuality' when appropriate, admitting that it's "no accident" that she appeared in an "amazing" Calvin Klein advertising campaign that caused American TV censors to tremble badly. I think it's refreshing to hear an actress admit that she uses all of her assets on her terms, rather than feeling ashamed or exploited. Good for her!

Indie movie lovers of the greater Los Angeles area, take note of a wonderful gem from this year's SXSW festival that's coming your way. Make-Out with Violence is an angsty teenage zombie horror comedy that I caught last year at the Oxford Film Festival, and tonight – November 12 – it screens in Los Angeles. For free!

Ok, technically it's screening in Alhambra. But this one-night only engagement will likely be your only chance to see the underappreciated indie film that our own Scott Weinberg called "pretty damn good" – and if I may add my own endorsement, Make-Out with Violence is original and gorgeously shot, a great alternative to mainstream (i.e. made with way more money) films about either teenage life or zombies. The best part? Make-Out with Violence is about both of those things. (It's also got the most attractive zombie hottie of the year, with apologies to Zombieland's Amber Heard.)

Indie Roundup is your guide to what's new and cool in the indie film world.

On-Demand / Online Viewing. Love him or find him irritating, he's practically a category unto himself now. Joe Swanberg continues to explore the endlessly fascinating topic of twenty-something romantic relationships in Young American Bodies, a web series now on IFC.com. Season 4 debuted on Monday at IFC.com, and future episodes of the five-part series will premiere on a weekly basis. If you're a Swanberg fan, you'll want to check it out: it expands on his vision of sex and everything that leads up to it and follows afterward: elusive, kinda real, kinda fake, pretty messy.

In honor of Veterans Day, SnagFilms presents a selection of films appropriate for the occasion, covering a national shrine in Arlington: Field of Honor, dangerous missions in Baghdad Bound: Devil Dog Diaries, remembering the Battle for Midway, and so one. Truly, there's something for everyone to discover among the documentaries showcases. Similarly, Hulu has two films of interest: Jerabek, the tragic story of U.S. Marine Ryan Jerabek, and When I Came Home, which covers the troubling issue of homelessness among veterans.

Also newly available online: the enchanting "banjo player goes to Africa" doc Bela Fleck: Throw Down Your Heart (on iTunes) and a close-up (sorry) view of artist Chuck Close (also on iTunes).

Deals. As always, our friends at indieWIRE has been tracking recent acquisitions. The latest: romance My Year Without Sex (Strand Releasing, due spring 2010); drama The Good Heart, with Brian Cox and Paul Dano, directed by the very talented Dagur Kari (Magnolia Pictures, due next year); and social satire The Joneses, with David Duchovny and Demi Moore (Roadside Attractions, due spring 2010).

After the jump: more than Precious at the box office.

Left to right: Hand painted movie poster, Peshawar, Pakistan, 2006 (photo by Jim Henry); The Odeon Cinema, Lahore, Pakistan, 2009 (photo by Rahat Ali Dar for Los Angeles Times).

You've heard of Bollywood, Nollywood, and even Dollywood, but what about Lollywood? Based in Lahore, the second-largest city in Pakistan (and home to the U.S. Consulate), Lollywood produced more than 100 movies annually back in the 70s and 80s. Today, however, "Pakistani cinema has all but vanished," writes Alex Rodriguez in Los Angeles Times. Reportedly, the number of movie theaters in the country has declined from 1,100 in 1985 to just 120 today, and local film production has shrunk to fewer than a dozen movies each year. It's gotten so bad, the theater pictured above has been playing the same movie for three years. The same movie, and evidently not by popular demand!

Most of the usual suspects are blamed, with one that is unique to the country: "VCR, cable television, President Muhammad Zia ul-Haq's Islamization of Pakistani society, and finally DVD piracy." (Emphasis added.) While film industries have weathered changes in viewing habits, it appears that government edicts played a big role in the collapse of the industry: "Many cinemas were shut down, the rest were heavily taxed. New laws that required producers to have college degrees thinned the ranks of movie makers. The message Zia ul-Haq's government was sending to society was clear, [theater owner Jahanzaib] Baig says: 'We were being told that filmmaking was a vulgar and bad business to be in.'"

Clockwise from upper left: Splinterheads, Ghost World, An Education, House of the Devil.

Opening. Amiable and pleasant, Splinterheads revolves around a romance between Justin (Thomas Middleditch), an aimless small town dreamer, and Galaxy (Rachael Taylor), a gorgeous grifter who (literally) bumps into him at a gas station. She's more interested in separating him from his money than getting to know the lunkhead within, while he quickly decides that he's met the love of his life -- or, even better, a reason to leave his upstate New York world behind and start living for himself instead of his mother and grandfather.

Brent Sersen (Blackballed) is a better director than writer; the characters hold few surprises and the plot's trajectory threatens to die of old age before it reaches its pre-ordained conclusion. Still, he takes advantage of a visiting carnival and the grifter's obsession with geocaching, a variation on treasure hunting, to string together several lyrical interludes and enough laughs to deserve a recommendation. Dean Winters, Lea Thompson, and Christopher McDonald provide reliable support. Splinterheads opens in New York on Friday and expands to other cities the following week; check the official site for theaters and showtimes. Also opening in New York the same day: Collapse, Chris Smith's latest doc (more from last week and the exclusive poster debut).

On-Demand / Online Viewing. Terry Zwigoff's adaptation of Daniel Clowes' graphic novel Ghost World departs from the source material quite abruptly, but still remains faithful to the dark spirit of loneliness that haunts the characters. Thora Birch, Scarlett Johannson, and Steve Buscemi star. It's now available on FilmBuff, Cinetic's cable on-demand channel; check local listings to watch this essential indie at home.

After the jump: Who educated the devil?

G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra
Here's my problem with the picture: a furiously-filmed chase through the streets of Paris should be spectacular and thrilling. Instead, it's incoherent, routine, even disappointing. Director Stephen Sommers (The Mummy, Van Helsing) turns in another by-the-numbers action spectacle, this time starring Dennis Quaid, Channing Tatum, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Marlon Wayans, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt. There are better ways to waste your time and money. Skip it. Also on Blu-ray.

Add to Netflix queue | Buy at Amazon

The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3
Tony Scott's remake is a higher-grade disappointment, coming achingly close to delivering an unqualified success. Derailed by John Travolta's unrepentant scenery-chewing, which goes far beyond the bounds of bad taste, and an unhealthy preoccupation with explaining everything, the film motors along reasonably well, fashioning a paranoid tale of post-9/11 terror and ticking time bomb suspense. Denzel Washington is eminently watchable, and James Gandolfini has a good turn as the Mayor of NYC. Recommended with reservations. Rent it. Also on Blu-ray.

Add to Netflix queue | Buy at Amazon

I Love You, Beth Cooper
As I wrote in my review, Larry Doyle's very funny book has been transformed into a dreadfully boring movie. Hayden Panettiere and Paul Rust are miscast as a rule-breaking dream girl and the boy who loves her from afar, respectively. The spend a night together that seems endless. Chris Columbus directed, without distinction. Skip it. Also on Blu-ray.

Add to Netflix queue | Buy at Amazon

Also out: Aliens in the Attic.

Indies on DVD, more Blu-ray picks, and Collector's Corner -- after the jump!

The Messenger opened the 12th Savannah Film Festival with a bang: a sellout crowd, international press, and Hollywood stars Woody Harrelson and Ben Foster in attendance to rub elbows all night. Even without the glitz, though, Savannah was a smart place to screen the Iraq drama. Oren Moverman's film is a character study about a soldier (Foster) dealing with the aftermath of war, but like Kathryn Bigelow's Iraq film The Hurt Locker, it's about the personal toll Iraq leaves on soldiers who survive and the families of those who don't; the politics of war are hardly an issue. And so, in a city that supports two military bases and the men and women who serve them, The Messenger played like gangbusters.

Foster stars as William Montgomery, a recent Iraq returnee dealing with serious leftover issues and a new assignment to play out his final three months of service: informing families that their loved ones have been killed on duty. As Montgomery's partner, Harrelson provides moments of levity, but there were plenty of sniffles throughout the film just the same.

While it was pretty easy to figure out what the general consensus was, there were three figures in particular I was watching for a reaction – the only three uniformed soldiers in attendance, who may or may not have been connected to the production. (The film has been screened for military personnel, and Harrelson and Foster personally met soldiers at Hunter Army Airfield prior to the night's screening.) When asked what military folk have thought of his film in the post-screening Q&A, director Moverman deferred to one of the officers in the audience to share his reaction with the crowd. What follows is the unnamed soldier's impromptu review of The Messenger.