Although it’s true that you never forget how to ride a bike, it’s also true that you can forget how to ride a bicycle well.

Earlier this afternoon, somewhere "in the middle of Ohio," groundbreaking indie director John Waters was found hitchhiking on the side of a road. We're trying to find out just what the Baltimore-based director of Pink Flamingos was doing begging for a lift in the middle of the Buckeye State—indie rock band Here We Go Magic says they picked him up! And he's currently riding around in their van.

It is with great sadness that we confirm that musician, rapper, activist and director Adam "MCA" Yauch, founding member of Beastie Boys and also of the Milarepa Foundation that produced the Tibetan Freedom Concert benefits, and film production and distribution company Oscilloscope Laboratories, passed away in his native New York City this morning after a near-three-year battle with cancer. He was 47 years old.

Christopher Nolan prefers film to digital, shoots with one camera, and doesn’t believe in 3-D. The director who resurrected Batman, made time go backward in Memento, and deconstructed dreams in Inception speaks his mind.

Does the success of Trent Reznor, Clint Mansell and Mark Mothersbaugh suggest that the days of the orchestral soundtrack are numbered?

There was nothing else even remotely interesting at Blockbuster — so we rented ATLAS SHRUGGED.

Well, after all,  I often talk about Ayn Rand and her passionate followers, who have effectively taken over the U.S. Libertarian movement, influencing much of the rhetoric we hear from the American Right… though none of the policies have ever been actually enacted during Republican rule. I’ve published both scholarly papers and popular articles about Rand’s fiction and philosophy.

So, I thought, why not give her acolytes one more shot at selling me on her biggest, most-central tale? An honest person does that. Whereupon, with a sigh, but opening my ears and mind, I slid the disk into the player….

On October 30, 1975, three days before he was murdered, Pier Paolo Pasolini was in Stockholm to present what was to be his last film, Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom, to Swedish critics. A roundtable discussion was recorded with the intent of turning it into a radio broadcast but news of the filmmaker's death oddly resulted in the withholding of the recording rather than, as would surely happen today, an immediate publication. Eventually, the recording was lost, but as Eric Loret and Robert Maggiori tell the story in Libération, Pasolini's Swedish translator, Carl Henrik Svenstedt, a passionate archivist, recently discovered his own private copy. In December, the Italian newsweekly L'espresso posted the audio recording and published an Italian transcript. Here, for the first time, is an English translation. After a couple of informal questions, the roundtable officially opens with "Ladies and gentlemen…"

I saw the Tin Tin movie last night, which was super. I think we have passed beyond the uncanny valley into the hyperreal.

On the line from San Francisco, Mike Patton has a lot to talk about. It's been a busy year again. In fact it's been it's been a frantic few months, what with the release of a new Fantomas DVD: The Director's Cut: A New Year's Revolution, his Solitude of Prime Numbers soundtrack just out and a recent appearance at the Hollywood Bowl alongside Beck and Jean Claude Vannier to play Serge Gainsbourg's Histoire de Melody Nelson and Vannier's lost-and-found cult classic L'enfant Assassin des Mouches.

While we're here to talk primarily about the DVD, he seems more interested in discussing Lou Reed and Metallica's Lulu, Dave Lombardo's new project and the death of Colonel Gaddafi. Anything, it seems, to not have to talk about the Fantomas live film, shot at the Great American Music Hall, San Francisco.

The world-renowned vocalist and musician scores director Saverio Cotanzo's latest horror drama, and offers an update on his own ever-growing slate of projects

With talk of a career renaissance being thrown around, the Sports Guy pays his respects to the funniest super-duper star he's ever experienced

Enough about Star Wars fanboys. The Jedi Council is adjourned until there's something new to bitch about. I'm here to talk about a rarer specimen: the Jurassic Park fanboy. We — yup, we — are out there. We have a tender-verging-on-deranged love for Steven Spielberg's dinosaur epic, which is just out on Blu-ray.

Exit Through The Gift Shop is not just a great movie, it’s a great movie to talk about. Is the documentary for real or is it a hoax? is Thierry Guetta a real guy or an elaborate construction of Banksy’s to punk the art world?

Pop artist and culture jammer Ron English (you know him from the fat Ronald McDonald featured in Supersize Me) weighs in with his own insider view: Exit Through The Gift Shop is real, but it began as something very different. It began as a hoax on Guetta in order to get footage away from him.

And 10 Things Learned From The Criterion Collection’s Release Of The Classic Film Noir

When you work "above the line" on a movie (writer, director, actor, producer, etc.) watching it flop at the box office is devastating. I had such an experience during the opening weekend of Conan the Barbarian 3D.

ZERO STARS (out of four)

What Rotten Tomatoes data tell us about the best, worst, and most bizarre Hollywood trajectories.

There has been a great deal of chatter this week about Sony 4K projectors, dim bulbs and “lazy” projection. I like the dialogue that it is sparking and I wanted to weigh in on the matter, particularly since Alamo Drafthouse Lamar and Village have standardized on the Sony 4K projectors in question.

As if rising ticket prices and chatterbox patrons weren’t enough, moviegoers in the Boston area are being left in the dark thanks to the regular misuse of the lenses on new digital projection equipment at many of the region’s major theater chains. But almost no one at the theaters or their corporate headquarters is willing to talk about it.

It was just yesterday that we brought you news that Jodorowsky's Dune, the documentary about the legendary making-of a movie that never happened, was currently filming around the globe right now. Today, we're happy to present you with this exclusive video clip from the upcoming production. What do you think? Are you as excited at learning more about this fever dream of a film as I am?

In the late 70s, while testing a video camera for Salt Lake City TV station, Trent Harris shot a piece of footage that would define his entire film career. In the video, “Groovin’ Gary”—a bell-bottomed teen from the truck stop town of Beaver, Utah—is photographing the station’s helicopter. When he realizes Harris is filming him, he unleashes a flurry of celebrity impersonations, hamming it up as Sylvester Stallone, John Wayne, and Barry Manilow. There’s nothing extraordinary about the impressions, but the kid’s gusto and desire for fame make it engrossing even in an era of narcissistic video blogging. When Gary invited Harris to shoot a Beaver community talent show where Gary was to perform a Olivia Newton-John’s “Please Don’t Keep Me Waiting” in full drag, Harris couldn’t refuse. He edited the pieces of footage together and called it The Beaver Kid. You’ve probably seen or at least heard about this masterpiece.

Atlas Shrugged Part 1 played to the hardcore Ayn Rand audience only. And that’s especially tough because these people don’t even have friends or dates to bring with them to the theater to pad the grosses.

This might end up lost to history, but I feel that the internet’s lead-up to the release of the TRON sequel could be characterized as a “nerd frenzy.” Breathless reports described every onscreen visual and audience sound during the comics convention’s high profile promotional screenings of test films and trailers. Websights covered every angle of every advertising gimmick, poster or still. They wrote about promotional “Flynn’s Arcade” tokens like they were frozen Jesus tears.

Maybe you got a new TV for Christmas. Or maybe you just got one recently. Maybe you are thinking of buying one. Whichever is the case, take heed: your TV will try very, very hard to make whatever you watch on it look not just bad, but aggressively, satanically, puppy-drowningly bad.

The Independent Film Festival of Boston (IFFBoston) announced today the films that will be featured at the 2011 festival. The ninth annual festival will take place April 27- May 4, 2011. The festival will take place at the Somerville Theatre in Davis Square, the Brattle Theatre in Harvard Square, the Coolidge Corner Theatre in Brookline, and the Stuart Street Playhouse in downtown Boston. The festival, complete with over 110 film screenings, filmmaker Q&A sessions, panel discussions, visiting filmmakers, parties and events will showcase the best in current American and International cinema.

Sony’s Grover Crisp understands the science and art of film restoration as well as anyone working in Hollywood today. As the Senior VP for Asset Management, Film Restoration and Digital Mastering for Sony Pictures Entertainment, he’s personally supervised scores of great film restoration efforts for the studio - both physical and digital - including such classics as The Bridge on the River Kwai and Jason and the Argonauts. Most recently, Crisp and his team have completed an effort to restore and preserve director Martin Scorsese’s acclaimed 1976 drama Taxi Driver. The result of that work will be released on Blu-ray Disc by Sony on April 5th. We’ve long admired his work here at The Digital Bits, and we’re very pleased to say that Crisp has been kind enough to answer some questions for us about the Taxi Driver restoration effort. We hope you enjoy it!

I read in the paper today that Conan O'Brien's documentary is out this weekend. The one that chronicles the purportedly healing journey/concert tour he went on after his messy divorce from NBC. I also read that Charlie Sheen is suing Warner Brothers for $100 million and the two of these things reminded me of one of the more character building experiences that I had in my career, many years ago.

Thanks in part to the ongoing JET's Most Wanted feature on Facebook, I've sort of been tagged as the Bits' resident advocate (or apologist, depending on your position) for manufactured-on-demand (MOD) discs. It's no secret that when the Warner Archive collection was first announced, I thought it was a tremendously cool, innovative idea. Still do, for that matter. Now that Sony, MGM and Universal have all jumped on the bandwagon, I think it's fair to say that MOD is here to stay, whether you like it or not.

I was on a flight this weekend and watched The Town with Ben Affleck. When Ben and Jeremy Renner were scouting Fenway Park for their big heist they were in the upper deck in right field and there was a game going on while they talked. The scene cut to the game and a play was shown. I remembered your Ferris Bueller post from a few weeks ago and it got me thinking about the game that was being played in this movie.

Unpacking the rumors around Lucy Walker's acclaimed garbage documentary

I asked Tim to develop some of his ideas for our readers, and he obliged by providing an experiment that takes off from my analysis of staging in one scene of There Will Be Blood, posted here back in 2008. The result is almost unprecedented in film studies, I think: an effort to test a critic’s analysis against measurable effects of a movie. What follows may well change the way you think about visual storytelling.

It was 1994, and Miramax, a New York company which had risen from nowhere to bestride the independent-film world like the proverbial colossus, was on the eve of its golden age. Founded in 1979 by the notorious Weinstein brothers, Harvey and Bob, Miramax had gained its footing in 1989 with the release of three films that were well received by both the critics and the public: Steven Soderbergh’s Sex, Lies, and Videotape, Jim Sheridan’s My Left Foot, and Giuseppe Tornatore’s Cinema Paradiso. The brothers were able to exploit the lure of the first film in particular to break out of the urban art-movie ghetto and into the mall-based suburban multiplexes, pushing the small film to a remarkable domestic gross of $25 million. Four years later, on the back of the even more successful Neil Jordan hit, The Crying Game, the Weinsteins managed to make themselves attractive to the Walt Disney Company, which bought Miramax in May of 1993 for between $60 and $80 million and gave it a huge infusion of cash.

No, Hollywood films aren't going to get better anytime soon. Mark Harris on the (potential) death of the great American art form

David F. Friedman, a pioneering producer of exploitation fare like Blood Feast and Ilsa: She-Wolf Of The SS and a blessed panderer to people’s baser desires, has died of a heart attack. He was 87.

Starting today, there are more than 150 of our most important films online on the Hulu Plus subscription service. Over the coming months, that number will swell to more than 800 films.

Happy Valentine’s Day!  I’ve provided some themed cards that you can give to your sweetie.

The 73-year-old Oscar-winning actor talks about everything from mortality to drugs to heartbreak

Well now. Look at this. Look at this. Seems that the shoot for stuntman/wheelman actioner Drive went smashingly as its star and director are set to reunite, taking the reigns on the long (very looong) in development remake on Logan's Run.

One of the points that was brought up by a number of people (most notably Al Yellon over at SB Nation Chicago) is that, although the game we see in the movie is clearly from June 5, the shooting schedule for the movie did not begin until September 1985 so it cannot be the date that the Wrigley Field scenes were filmed on. To some, I think, this means that the June 5 date is wrong.

On Ferris's agenda that afternoon was, naturally, a trip to Wrigley Field. After grabbing a bite to eat (as "Abe Froman, Sausage King of Chicago") at a snooty Magnificent Mile restaurant, Ferris and pals headed to the stadium to catch a ballgame.

[...]

It appears obvious now that this is a real ballgame that Ferris is at, not just something recreated for a film crew. The Harry Caray play-by-play and the Braves players on the field are pretty solid evidence of that. So what game, then, are they watching? Did the Cubs win, or did Ferris sing "Danke Schön" as a way to wash away the stink of a Cubs loss?