Part Two of the Sundance 2008 slate just arrived. As with yesterday’s announcement, I’ve pasted the meat of the press release after the jump; first, here’s what I percieve as highlights right off the bat:

• Be Kind Rewind: I kind of expected Michel Gondry’s latest to show up here, just because January 25 would have been a *really* weird release date otherwise. Plus, Gondry’s The Science of Sleep was one of the fest’s big sales in 2006, although it’s actual US release didn’t get as much attention as I would have liked to have seen.
• Baghead: Jay and Mark Duplass’ long-awaited follow-up to The Puffy Chair, co-starring Hannah Takes the Stairs‘ Greta Gerwig.
• Goliath: Is the David Zellner who wrote and directed this the same David Zellner who makes short films with his brother, including the much-beloved Aftermath at Meadowlark Lane, which played before Low and Behold at Sundance last year? IMDb offers no help, so shout if you know the answer. UPDATE: Yup, same Zellners. Thanks, Matt!
• Momma’s Man: Directed by Ken Jacob’s son Azazel, starring his dad as (wait for it) “Dad.”
• Funny Games: Michael Haneke’s English-language remake of his own 1997 film. It’s a Midnight selection, which could be good or bad.
• Blind Date: The second of three planned films based on the work of slain Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh (the first was Steve Buscemi’s Interview). Stanley Tucci directs himself and Patricia Clarkson.
• Towelhead: This was called Nothing is Private when it premiered at Toronto to hugely divisive reviews. Directed and written by Alan Ball, it became known colloquially as The One Where Aaron Eckhart Has Sex With the 13-Year-Old Arab Girl. It has the questionable honor of uniting Roger Friedman and The Reeler in mutual hate.
• August: A period piece about the end of the first dot-com boom (!), featuring a cameo from my former boss as himself.
• The Black List: A documentary about Black America, written by and starring sometime film critic Elvis Mitchell.
• Made in America: A “first-person look at the notorious Crips and Bloods,” via Dogtown and Z Boys‘ Stacy Peralta.
• The Merry Gentleman: Michael Keaton (yes, the “I’m Batman” Michael Keaton) directs himself and Kelly McDonald in this drama about a woman who “stumbles into a curious relationship with a depressed hitman.”
• Savage Grace: Tom Kalin’s telling of the Barbara Daly Baekeland murder case, starring Julianne Moore. A Cannes 2007 leftover.
• Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden?: I missed this one on first-skim. It’s Morgan Spurlock’s long-awaited sophomore effort. IMDb still ha it listed as Untitled Hunt For Osama Documentary; this new title seems to be pretty self-explanatory.

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If you don’t listen to Elvis Mitchell’s radio program on KCRW, The Treatment, you should start. A while back he interviewed Todd Field about his new film, Little Children. As Field laments how taxing it is to direct a film involving so many characters, Mitchell compliments Field on how attentive he is that each character act differently around each of the other characters. It’s a subtle nuance in Field’s films, but it’s one of the things making Little Children and his earlier film, In the Bedroom, so distinct. And, unfortunately, it’s a rare thing to see in cinema.

We all act differently around different people. We naturally gauge things, like how intimate we are with somebody, what their education is, if we share things in common, if they scare us, bore us, excite us, and whether or not they’re somebody we want to impress. All these little processes happening beneath the surface influence how we act around a person.

In most movies, though, the protagonist walks through life acting the same way around everyone they see. (Maybe it’s one of the things we admire in a hero, their ability to be unwavering–something we wish we were better at.) But these characters who don’t alter which parts of themselves they present to different people are..well…unbelievable. They’re caricatures.

“We go to the movies to watch people,” Field says. Regardless of how beautiful the cinematography or music may be, most of us are there to watch people. Todd Field provides some of the best people-watching out there. For that, I think he’s one of the most distinct–and hopefully influential–filmmakers of our time.

(I was able to have a very brief conversation with Field at Telluride, where I also wrote a post about Little Children.)