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).

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.

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.

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.