And now I have a document that should clear up quite a bit with respect to Kubrick's desires and intentions: a letter to projectionists signed by Kubrick. It came to me through the courtesy and kindness of screenwriter and critic Jay Cocks, who writes: "I knew Stanley pretty well for a while, but at the time of the Time Barry Lyndon cover I was in LA beginning preliminary work on Gangs of New York. So I had no hand in the Time  cover, but still managed to let Stanley know how great I thought the movie was. He replied with his usual gracious, funny note and enclosed this letter, because he thought I'd be interested. Bet you will be too."

The concept of “rarity” has become obsolete. A previously “rare” CD or movie, once it’s in the iTunes store or on the torrent networks, is, in theory, just as available as the biggest single in the world.

If I have a criterion for choosing the greatest films, it's an emotional one. These are films that moved me deeply in one way or another. The cinema is the greatest art form ever conceived for generating emotions in its audience. That's what it does best. (If you argue instead for dance or music, drama or painting, I will reply that the cinema incorporates all of these arts).

IN WHICH NOVELIST David Foster Wallace VISITS THE SET OF DAVID LYNCH'S NEW MOVIE AND FINDS THE DIRECTOR BOTH grandly admirable AND sort of nuts

However, the first several years of [Woody Allen's] career are rarely discussed. It is a fascinating period. Comedy devotees swear by the recordings of his stand-up act. At the time of his 1963 debut comedy record, Woody was a smart up-and-comer who'd already logged ten years in the business. But he was far from the personality we think of today.

By constantly saving the previous few seconds of video before you hit record, Precorder lets you wait until something interesting happens to start recording, and you'll never miss a precious moment or get stuck with hours of boring video to painstakingly edit down.

There are, at least, 36 separate days shown in the movie including his multiple death scenes. There could be more, but it's hard to verify if some moments are simply later in the same day or an entirely different day. Additionally, in the scene where Bill Murray revealed he's a god, he stated, “I have been stabbed, shot, poisoned, frozen, hung, electrocuted, and burned.” Of those the movie only showed electrocution, so that brings it to a base line of 42 accountable days. However, there were many days not shown. We know from the scene when Billy Murray and Andy MacDowell are throwing playing cards into a top hat that it would take, “Six months. Four to five hours a day, and you'd be an expert.” So, we have a bare minimum of six months.

As odd as it sounds, “edgy” these days seems to mean creating characters for kids that are unabashedly smart. Phineas and Ferb put their energy into building things—a lot of highly imaginative and complicated projects, actually—like their own backyard beach or a teleportation device that sends people to Mars. Phineas and Ferb’s world is wild and inventive, more like a Boing Boing post than a Saturday morning cartoon. In other words, they’re geeks. They just don’t know the word for it yet.

Sometimes, studios change their minds about releasing a movie, even if it has already been completed. Films with big stars such as Matt Damon, John Cusack, Eddie Murphy and Mel Gibson have all been there.

Recognized by animation fans as the nadir of Disney's post-Walt dark days, The Black Cauldron's flop marked the end of the studio's old way of making animated features. A new regime, led by Michael Eisner and Jeffrey Katzenberg, did away with the robust budgets and production schedules that had allowed, for example, animators to airbrush every single cel of Pinocchio by hand. Instead, Disney moved the animation department out of its cushy digs in Burbank, Calif., into a warehouse in Glendale and focused on pushing out features faster and cheaper. The result was a series of classics (The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast) in the next decade—and a long stretch of non-classics (Treasure Planet, Chicken Little) since.

Wes Anderson is, in my estimation at least, one of the more important filmmakers of our current era stateside (Tarantino, Kevin Smith, and Judd Apatow being the others). His first feature came out of nowhere almost fifteen years ago, and he’s produced a series of films comparable to Robert Altman’s in terms of their stylistic unity, unique subject matter, and cast of recurring supporting players (Bill Murray being the most obvious). But what’s interesting to me is how he’s managed to inject adult-themed films with adult-themed material with some measure of childlike wonder and naivety. If I had to choose whether to classify his films as “for adults only” or “for adults and certain sensitive, ahead-of-the-curve-emotionally-and-intelligence-speaking kids,” I’d have to go with the latter.

Yes, indeed, The Godfather is masterful. The Sopranos? We never missed an episode. But you want to talk about a movie that leaves a mark? Twenty years after the release of GoodFellas, the good people behind it—Scorsese, Liotta, De Niro!—re-create the making of the truest, bloodiest, greatest gangster film of all time

Sallust, the Roman historian who made his name by connecting great events to the moral outlook of the people involved in them, said it more than 2,000 years ago: “The golden age is before us, not behind us.” Twenty centuries later, we still don’t seem to have learned his epigrammatic lesson: We—both the critical we and the popular we—spend an inordinate amount of time looking backward and mourning a golden age of culture that is likely irrecoverable, while looking at the present day as either approaching or having already arrived at an utter nadir.

It was March 2005 when the Oscar-winning movie star called me. He had read an article I had written - something about how the celebrity magazines make up lies - and had tracked down my number. He wanted to meet over lunch. He asked me if I could be trusted. The last thing he wanted to see in the papers, he said, was some story about my lunch with Russell Crowe. I told him not to worry. I wouldn't want to read that story either.

RT @ebertchicago: What the Japanese director is saying to Bill Murray in "Lost in Translation." http://j.mp/bB5JDR

Spike Jonze's I'm Here is strange, funny, beautifully sad and worth 30 mins of your time: http://www.imheremovie.com/

RT @longformorg: Bill Murray grants @fierman a rare interview, explains philosophy of multiple retirements: http://bit.ly/dAhDmF (new @G ...

The BIg Lebowski is one of my favourite films - and I'm delighted that Ebert loves it so much.

"n many ways, the men who made The Godfather—director Francis Ford Coppola, producer Al Ruddy, Paramount executives Robert Evans and Peter Bart, and Gulf & Western boss Charles Bluhdorn—were as ruthless as the gangsters in Mario Puzo’s blockbuster. After violent disputes over the casting of Marlon Brando and Al Pacino, they tangled with the real-life Mob, which didn’t want the movie made at all. The author recalls how the clash of Hollywood sharks, Mafia kingpins, and cinematic geniuses shaped a Hollywood masterpiece."