You know how when you discover a word you’ve never heard before and all of a sudden you hear it everywhere–in class, at the bank, carved on doors in bathroom stalls? That’s how it was with me and We Live in Public. Apparently Josh Harris was the “Worhol of the Web” in the ’90s with his creation of “living in public,” living for over a decade in an apartment rigged with dozens of webcams filming his and his girlfriend’s every move. But I only first heard of him through an episode of Errol Morris’ First Person I caught just last month. After that, some friends were talking about him. Then I heard about this documentary.

From Ondi Timoner (DIG!), We Live in Public won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance, making Timoner the only director in history to win the award twice. And it’s not just about Harris and the 5,000 hours of footage he recorded in his apartment; it’s also about the 100 people he got to live together in an underground bunker for a month in front of cameras. It’s about virtual reality, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, human behavior–the very notion of identity. Or, is “persona” a better word?

“Everything is free except the video we capture of you,” Harris says of those in his bunker–”that we own.”

We Live in Public’s distribution has been spotty, shown in museums and brought around from city to city one at a time. So if you get the chance to catch this on a big screen, jump at it. This one seems like it very well could define a generation–or at least a generation that might have been.

Youth in Revolt

What happens when “Mr Nice Guy” Michael Cera falls in love with a girl who only loves bad boys? He turns his life–and himself–upside down to win her affection. Talk about comedic hi jinx!

Two things excite me about this preview:

One, it’s great to see Michael Cera trying something new, breaking for awhile from the George-Michael/Paulie Bleeker/Evan from Superbad awkward shy guy thing. He’s great at it, don’t get me wrong, but it’s good to see him stray from the formula, see what else he’s capable of. And here we get both sides of him, some old and some new. So score.

And two, despite my bad impersonation of a Rob Shneider-esque movie pitch at the beginning, Youth in Revolt’s premise actually does ring pretty true, depressingly enough. I think it’s something every “nice guy” has dreamed of at least once: giving in and turning himself into the asshole, if for nothing else than to see what would happen. Start wearing shades inside, smoking cigarettes, acting all distant and unaffected. Hey, it works for Don Draper.

The cast lined up here is pretty interesting, as well: Justin Long, Steve Buscemi, Zach Galifinakis, Ray Liotta. I’m expecting a pretty good time out of this one.

Youth in Revolt will hit theaters early next year on January 8th.

Precious

Here’s one I’m not sure I’d have included on my list right-off because of the elements in it that feel Oscar bait-y. The underdog story, the inspirational figure, lines like, “People do love you, Precious. Your baby loves you. I love you!”–all those things are definitely here. But so is this great tragedy to the character that I really don’t see being too easy to wrap in a neat pre-credits sweater of warm fuzzies. Which I like.