SundanceJoseph Gordon-Levitt had Zooey Deschanel for 500 Days of Summer. We were lucky enough to get her for five minutes.
But that was enough for E! News to get the inside scoop on her new film and a whole lot more at Sundance this week.
500 Days follows a lovestruck greeting-card copywriter named Tom (Levitt) who falls for new coworker Summer (Deschanel), and according to the actress, the romance was easy to pull off.
"I've known him for so long and feel really comfortable with him. We have a great rapport, and he is such a talented actor. I love him," the 29-year-old said at the premiere party last Sunday as she was accompanied by her real-life fiancé, Death Cab for Cutie rocker Ben Gibbard.
"I think both Tom and Summer are archetypes," the thesp said. "We've all been Tom and we've all been Summer."
The film is expected to arrive in July, but in the meantime Deschanel is looking forward to getting back to music with her band, She & Him, which is currently working on a follow-up to their 2008 debut, Volume One.
Meanwhile, on the documentary side, a film addressing Hayden Panettiere's pet cause, saving the dolphins, has been making waves this week at Sundance.
The Cove, from National Geographic photographer turned documentary filmmaker Louie Psihoyos and producer Fisher Stevens, follows the director and his team as they launch a guerrilla mission to record and expose the slaughter of thousands of bottlenose dolphins in a hidden cove in a Japanese fishing village.
"I started out wanting to do the most beautiful underwater doc that was ever made, but instead we ended up on this sort of Stephen King horror-film epic," director Psihoyos told E! News.
The documentary also explores the actions Hayden and her cohorts took that subsequently led to their arrest as well as well as the story of Rick O'Barry, Flipper's old trainer who helped build up the multi-billion-dollar marine theme park business but has since spent the last 35 years trying to tear it down.
"Dolphins have become trained hacks for our amusement, and at some point I became an activist," said the helmer. "One of my good friends back in Colorado was [author] Hunter Thompson, and he said never be afraid to put yourself in the story. He made a career out of that. And we wanted to do something that was meaningful."
"This [movie] is a call to action. Once you know about it, you can't hide from it. You have to take a stand. . .we're trying to start a movement," Psihoyos added.