Parker Posey, the ‘90’s “Queen of the Indies,” was back in Utah this year with her first screening at Sundance in five years, Price Check. She was all over Park City, helping Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s hitRECord: A Night at the Movies and was set to host the awards before falling sick.  According to her, the festival has changed since her heyday.

At the premiere of City Island:

Happy Tears - We grow old. It goes without saying, and yet, we don’t say it much. Happy Tears contends with this inevitability. Parker Posey and Demi Moore play sisters who return home to care for their increasingly delusional father (Rip Torn). Mitchell Lichtenstein, director of vagina dentata classic Teeth, honors his own father, late pop-art star Roy Lichtenstein, by crafting whimsical fantasy sequences that mimic his work. Posey and Moore aren’t always believable as kin and, poetically, it’s left to the old folks to steal the show: Torn’s peculiar brand of crazy -- unlike his character -- never gets old, while Ellen Barkin is downright resplendent as an aging sexpot who claims to be his nurse. (Think: Elle Woods in 30 years, rocking a prop stethoscope.) -- Eiseley Tauginas

You don't realize it, but throughout the course of a movie, actors contort their faces in all kinds of freakish ways. It lasts a split second, so blink and you'll miss it. But since we hear at BlackBook are committed to reducing the Hollywood glitterati into piles of stupid-looking rubble, here is our second round of Trailer Freeze, where famous actors make stupid faces. (That's Sigourney Weaver up top, who to her credit, isn't trying to hide it.)

Are you still holding onto that list of possible Batman replacements? Superb. Because we just may need to consult it, as Christian Bale stated that if Chris Nolan doesn't come back to direct the next installment of the superhero saga, then he won't return to star in it -- although the airtight legalese in his contract negotiations mandates it. But even if Nolan does back out, the franchise has a willing and able villain in Johnny Depp, who is interested in stepping in as the Riddler, a role previously occupied by Jim Carrey and initially by a guy that more recently played a character named Reverend Love on General Hospital.

Last year was all about death. Be it physical (R.I.P Bettie Page, Eartha Kitt, and Radar) or metaphorical (Joaquin Phoenix's acting career), America's social conscience resembled the cratered ruins of ancient Rome. But a few celebrities -- Barack Obama, say -- inspired hope through revival. This leaves the better part of 2009 for us to learn how to cope with the state of things from their examples, making this year all about Darwinism. Survival tips after the jump!

“Patti Smith is such a goddess. I could never talk to her,” Parker Posey confided at a small cocktail reception for the legendary rock ’n’ roll poet last week in the outdoor sculpture garden at the Museum of Modern Art. At said moment, Smith came lunging in for Posey, lavishing praise on the indie queen for her hilarious roles in Christopher Guest movies. It couldn’t have been a better-scripted scene if Guest wrote it himself. Luckily, Posey overcame her goddess-shyness and lit right up in Smith’s presence. The occasion was a screening of Patti Smith: Dream of Life, a poignant biopic from fashion photographer Stephen Sebring that hit theaters this week, after eleven years of filming.