Director Gus Van Sant is a lot like his new film "Restless" – smart, guarded and to the point. Being a longtime fan of his unusually off beat and quirky work, it was more than a thrill meeting the man notorious for such flicks as "Drugstore Cowboy," "My Own Private Idaho," "Milk" and "To Die For." And an eccentric Van Sant you might expect as the helmer of such atypical fare is exactly the person whom I met face-to-face recently one fateful afternoon. A sort of indie hipster with a palpably thick layer of caution (his disbelief when I stated that his underrated 2007 masterwork "Paranoid ...

As a former Portland resident, I'd gone into this film thinking that I was going to see the infamous downtown park crawling with bums and meth-addicts, and was a bit surprised to see instead Paranoid Park brought to us by way of Burnside (those of you familiar with the Tony Hawk video games will understand). With that out of the way, let me just say that director Gus Van Sant is owed a monumental debt of thanks by the state of Oregon. By himself, he quite literally is their movie industry.

If there's a person in the world who understands how to capture the tense awkward lives of young...

Dennis Hopper recreated his fearsome Blue Velvet villain for a skit at the Film Independent Spirit Awards ceremony, when he initiated first-time host Rainn Wilson.

The tough-guy actor beat The Office star up, became his pimp and turned him into a drug mule before binding him to an office chair and forcing him to hop down a street.

Indie actress Illeana Douglas also joined in the fun, beating up Wilson on the beach in Santa Monica, California - where the awards were held on Saturday-- as she chatted to Hopper about the event.

The hilarious film skit ended with a newly-toughene...

Juno was the big winner at the 2008 Film Independent Spirit Awards in Santa Monica, California on Saturday, claiming three of the five awards the sleeper hit was nominated for.

As well as the event's big Best Feature prize, Oscar nominee Ellen Page was named the Best Female Lead and Diablo Cody claimed the Best Screenplay honor.

Double winners at the Spirits were The Diving Bell & The Butterfly, I'm Not There and The Savages.

But the event belonged to the memory of late actor Heath Ledger, who was honored with tributes from his I'm Not There director Todd Haynes and co-star ...

Gus Van Sant hired almost the entire cast of his new movie Paranoid Park on social networking website MySpace. The film adaptation of a Blake Nelson novel follows the story of a 16-year-old skateboarder who accidentally kills a security guard.

Instead of taking on experienced young actors, Van Sant chose to pluck most of the cast from the world wide web.

Speaking at the Cannes Film Festival - where the movie is being launched - Van Sant says, "I think this is how all the casting agencies would go about casting high schoolers, especially now when MySpace is so prevalent. We were ...