Avatar: You loved it, now live it

The Na'vi People of Hometree, Wisconsin -- no, I'm not making that up (though maybe they are) -- engage in some L.A.R.P.: Live Avatar Role Playing. Money quote: "We're not doing this because it's cool. We're doing this because it's important." And I bet you thought Trekkies were weird...

Good news, bad news for Sandra Bullock

If Sandra Bullock gets an Academy Award tomorrow evening for The Blind Side, will she really be the first person in history to win, on the same weekend, and Oscar... and a Razzie?

Truer than fiction: 45365

At tonight's Independent Spirit Awards: The inaugural Chaz & Roger Ebert Truer Than Fiction Award goes to 45365, a quietly mesmerizing documentary that, as I wrote in my original Variety review from last year's SXSW Film Festival, "fashions a seductive, fascinating tapestry of small-town life by interweaving seemingly random glimpses of residents in Sidney, Ohio." Great choice. So now, maybe, it might open in a few theaters, so people who don't go to film festivals can actually see it?

Coming soon to SXSW: Kicking and grinding

OK, I have to admit: There are some movies I'm looking forward to more than others at this year's SXSW Film Festival in Austin (which, by the way, kicks off with Kick-Ass next Friday). Naturally, I'm eager to see The People vs. George Lucas, because one of the "experts" interviewed in the documentary is... well, me. And, of course, since I'm a New Orleans native, I can't help being intrigued by any movie titled The Canal Street Madam. (Who knows? If they display pages from her address book, I may see the names of old friends.) But American Grindhouse appears to be the SXSW offering most likely to redefine the term "guilty pleasure." Indeed, it may wind up being a great companion piece for another guilty pleasure from an earlier SXSW Fest: The Independent.

Horror Movie Rule No. 1: Don't look in the mirror!

Come to think of it, don't look in the medicine cabinet, either. (Thanks to John Guidry for the warning.)

What's this? Another shameless attempt to attract readers with an Oscars story?

Shamelessness in the pursuit of readers is not a vice. Shamelessness in the pursuit of Oscar is nothing new. Check out my latest Houston Culture Map essay here.

If you're dipping into an Oscar pool this weekend...

My predictions for the 82nd annual Academy Awards are up over at Houston Culture Map.Which is where, by the way, I'll be blogging Sunday during the Oscarcast. Please join me.

If you can't come to the Tribeca Film Festival, the Tribeca Film Festival can come to you

From IndieWire.com comes word that Robert DeNiro and Jane Rosenthal are ramping up Tribeca Film, “a comprehensive distribution and marketing platform for independent film” that will build upon the pair's annual Tribeca Film Festival in New York. To launch the new initiative, IndieWire's Brian Brooks reports, "Tribeca Film will release more than 10 titles on VOD under the Tribeca Film banner, with over half planned as day and date releases with the 2010 festival." Among the five: Road, Movie, an Indian-American co-production that I enjoyed last fall at the Toronto Film Festival. A festival, it should be noted, that does not have its own comprehensive distribution and marketing platform. (Well, not yet, anyway.)

The enduring fascination of a Nazi-era blockbuster

If Inglourious Basterds aroused your curiosity about what sort of films really got made under Joseph Goebbels' watchful eye during the heyday of the Third Reich, take a gander at this fascinating New York Times article tied to the New York premiere of Felix Moeller's Harlan: In the Shadow of Jew Süss -- a critically acclaimed documentary about German filmmaker Veit Harlan and his production of Jew Süss, the notoriously anti-Semitic 1940 melodrama that was a box-office smash in Nazi-era Germany.

Moeller's goal, Larry Rohter writes in the NYT piece, was to offer an accurate portrayal of German movies – and movie audiences – during the Hitler regime. “Though most people think of Leni Riefenstahl as the leading filmmaker of the Nazi era, because of the renown of Triumph of the Will and Olympia, that was not actually the case,” Rohter notes.

“‘If you want to understand the movies that people actually paid to go and see, Veit Harlan is the one,’ said Linda Schulte-Sasse, the author of Entertaining the Third Reich: Illusions of Wholeness in Nazi Cinema and a professor at Macalester College in Minnesota. ‘He was the Steven Spielberg or James Cameron of his era, and so you have to imagine Jew Süss as a movie with Meryl Streep, Jack Nicholson and Brad Pitt.’”

Moeller’s documentary, it should be noted, is by no means the final word on the subject: Depending on the venturesomeness of festival programmers and film distributors in this country, U.S. audiences may soon have a chance to see yet another movie about Harlan and his inglorious blockbuster.

Blast from the past: Geoffrey Rush talks about Shakespeare in Love

Geoffrey Rush and I talk about William Shakespeare -- or as Rush calls him, "Mr. Showbiz" -- and Shakespeare in Love in this 1998 interview. (BTW: At the start of the tape, we're joking about his fleeting appearance in Gilliam Armstrong's Starstruck, a razzle-dazzling 1982 Australian musical that fully deserves a fervent cult of some kind.)

Blast from the past: Harrison Ford -- really, that's him! -- talks about Sabrina

As I've said before, here and elsewhere: I realize my original rave review was (and remains) a minority report, but I was moved and amused by Sydney Pollack's 1995 remake of Sabrina. And in this November '95 interview, I'm not at all ashamed to say as much to Harrison Ford, who gave one of his most affecting and under-rated performances as the movie's male lead. (A role originally played, in Billy Wilder's original version, by Humphrey Bogart.) And before you ask: Yes, that really is Harrison Ford hiding behind that mustache. He grew it while preparing to play an Irish-American cop in The Devil's Own -- but, obviously, shaved it off before actually filming that Alan J. Pakula thriller with Brad Pitt.

Blast from the past: Gwyneth Paltrow talks about Shakespeare in Love

All went well during this 1998 interview with Gwyneth Paltrow about Shakespeare in Love... until I had to go ahead and remind her of.. the Barbie Dream Van!!!!!!! Damn.

Blast from the past: Clint Eastwood talks about Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

In this 1997 interview, Clint Eastwood has some nice things to say about working with Kevin Spacey and John Cusack (and scriptwriter John Lee Hancock) while we talk about his film version of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. And he's very gracious when I try to fit this offbeat project into the context of his entire career. But what I enjoy most about re-watching this archival interview: Eastwood's whole attitude. Like, yeah, he read the book, he liked it, he wanted to make a movie version of it, and that's that. And if anyone had a problem with his trying to film an unfilmable novel... well, screw 'em, he was already at a point in his career where he could do any damn thing he wanted to.

Blast from the past: Roberto Benigni talks about Life is Beautiful

OK, I'll be the first to admit that I wasn't exactly exemplifying the pinnacle of professionalism while imitating Roberto Benigni in front of the man himself before we got down to the serious business of talking about Life is Beautiful in this 1998 interview. But what the hell: By that point, I'd seen him so many times in Jim Jarmusch's Down By Law that I couldn't resist repeating his on-screen anecdotes about his character's "very strange" mother (and her relationship with rabbits). As usual, Robert Clark has done a throughly first-rate job of editing this archival tape.

Another momet of Zen

Whenever I make pop-culture references to my students, I have to keep in mind: When I was a freshman in college, Citizen Kane was 28 years old. For someone who's a freshman now... E.T. is 28 years old. And when I was a freshman, I thought Citizen Kane was this really great, really old movie.

Gone With the Wind With Vampires

From the folks who gave us the 1951 version of Raiders of the Lost Ark -- wink-wink, nudge-nudge -- we now have an epic drama of bloodsucking in the Old South.

A moment of Zen

On a day like today, when I have a long lunch with Robert Duvall, and we talk about everything from M*A*S*H  to Get Low, and everyone from Horton Foote to Bill Murray, and I know I'm getting paid for this... I thank God that my father left Ireland and moved to the Land of Opportunity.

And in the key role of John Edwards' mistress' other lover....

You know, I honestly can't think of a wisecrack worthy of this.

Who dat gonna buy them newspapers?

One reason why print journalism may yet survive. (Even in the digital era.)

Saints win! Saints win! Saints win!

Who dat? Not the Colts!