For veteran director/screenwriter Paul Schrader, seeing his film Adam Resurrected appear in this year's Israel Film Festival in New York is a little like coming around full circle. Originally released here almost a year ago, his strange surreal little black comedy of a film stars Jeff Goldblum as a concentration camp survivor recovering his sanity in an Israeli psychiatric hospital in 1961. Goldblum's character Adam has tried coping with surviving.

One of the great things about English actress Emily Blunt is that she carries no vestige of her characters beyond the set -- especially not when she’s playing the British Queen Victoria. At her roundtables for The Young Victoria, she showed no royal imperiousness, no contempt of the masses, no unwillingness to answer questions that didn't please her. But her characterization of the youthful Victoria was so dead-on in the award-worthy The Young Victoria that you’d have expected her to be a royal pain.

For a total newcomer like Gabourey "Gabby" Sidibe to find a starring role in any film was beyond comprehension. But to find one where her ultra plus-sized frame proved to be an asset was more than extraordinary. Nonetheless, this daughter of R&B/gospel singer Alice Tan Ridley and Senegalese father Ibnou Sidibe got the lead role in Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire and is now being touted as an Oscar contender.

In director Lee Daniels' devastating yet ultimately hopeful film, the adult Sidibe plays the 300+ pound,16 year-old Precious, who has been abused and raped by both her mother and father. Though she has two children by her father and is near-illiterate, several adults throughout this saga recognize her potential, and through hard work and a survivor's determination, Precious rises above her miserable situation to look towards the future.

The problem with interviewing Melvin Van Peebles is that you never know whether he’s truthfully answering your questions or if he’s just trying to be a baadasssss—something he excels at as evidenced by his string of irreverent films and the cap he’s fond of wearing that states so.

Either he’s the most modest successful filmmaker ever, or else he’s just plain ornery. For every inquiry tossed his way, Van Peebles throws back a shrug and a response that infers he doesn’t believe—despite all the accolades and awards—that he’s made much of an impact on the world of cinema.