The director Andre Gregory is turning 79 next month and still at work. Two plays will appear later this year; Jonathan Demme’s film of Gregory’s production of Ibsen’s The Master Builder is in the offing. Gregory is the subject of a new film, Before and After Dinner. The director of this documentary, Cindy Kleine, was granted what feels like unfettered access to the subject, who, in addition to being a fellow director, is also her husband. We spoke with her by phone the day after the film opened in New York.

"I didn’t want to make some kind of traditional biopic or television-style documentary about a great artist," Kleine [...]

Let’s start with my bias: I write comic book scripts for a living. As a kid, reading Batman for the first time, I was immediately drawn to the idea of a man dressing up as a Bat to prey on the superstitions of the wrong guy on the street. As bad as the bad guy got, Batman was worse. Like a living shadow, he scared his victims—and maybe me, too, a little bit.

It seemed a natural for the camera to try to bring him to the screen. And like a Frankenstein in tights, Batman was zapped to life in various states. First Adam West, with a game-show-host voice, fighting [...]

How many movies passed the Bechdel Test this year so far? Yes, sure, it's a black/white, pass/fail set of criteria, which means that plenty of unconcerned products pass. So this year: From Prada to Nada and Bridesmaids both pass, which… might be sort of besides the point, or might be a related but more capitalist point? Jane Eyre squeaks under the wire. Briefly, Red Riding Hood too, which, uh. On a technicality, Paul. And Sucker Punch—though it's also castigated as the most misogynist film in ages. Also The Last Lions, I think, if you count lady lions talking to other lady lions, I think, but maybe they are [...]

Natasha Vargas-Cooper: We need to talk about Harry Potter.

Dan Kois: EXPECTO CHATONUM!

Natasha: Clearly, we as Americans agree that HP7 is a FINE FILM. But as wizard nerds, like as a lady who, um, would really like to have been cast as Tonks, I have to say I was a little bummed out.

Dan: Pull out your shimmering strands of memory, drop them into your Pensieve, and explain to me why.

Natasha: Firstly, THE DARK LORD DOES NOT SIT AT A CONFERENCE TABLE!

Dan: Right, so this scene in the book is nothing but the purest malarkey.

HE: Good eventide, Pausanias!

SHE: Stop calling me that. So we can go if you really want to. What time does it start?

HE: Yes! We can be in Evanston just in time for the 7:15 showing.

SHE: (offering him a large book) Wouldn’t you rather read the second volume of this Verdi biography, instead of seeing this stupid movie?

HE: No.

***

SHE: So what is this movie about?

HE: It's about the culture.

SHE: Whose culture?

HE: Our culture.

SHE: Really.

HE: I really think so. I’ve read so many amazing articles about it I'm telling you everyone I follow has said amazing things. In pyramid [...]

So… basically The Artist is about this chick who meets a much older guy like three times for all of 30 seconds each and then she devotes her life to stalking/saving him, despite him being a married, entitled, pitiful, self-serving alcoholic, and despite her being a smart, savvy, talented, sexy professional, and then also the only black people in the film are literally carrying spears and wearing loincloths? And really hot French guys are actually made kind of ugly when they have gross tiny mustaches?

Right, that's what I thought, just checking.

As you may know, Ed Koch, New York's straightest living ex-mayor, has an email list and he regularly reviews movies. "You may enjoy the movie, but I was disappointed. It intended to unite the ballet with a Freudian or Havelock Ellis spin that would satisfy the audiences’ expectation of great art and its carnal desires. Neither worked, at least not for me…. I hope I will not be thought of as a coarse Philistine for not praising this film. I confess that I am not a devotee of the ballet; indeed, I have attended only a few performances. I once appeared on stage reading the narration of 'Peter and [...]

"The effect on the movie theaters is tougher to estimate, since most box office experts took into account a reduced turnout on Sunday as people hunkered down for the storm. Hurricane Sandy is expected to hit most of the East Coast on Monday or early Tuesday. Ironically, unseasonably warm weather on the West Coast could offset some of the losses in East Coast movie grosses as people head for the cool theaters."

I make my living as a CG artist and work on big-budget, big-studio special effects movies. I was going to work on Green Lantern, but ended up working on Thor instead…. Profit margins for visual effects houses are so razor thin that they WILL NOT say no to a client, just to get the work. In this sense, the work is actually often underbid and its true cost is eaten by the vfx house. There is a famous producer who once said "I'm not doing my job if I don't shutter a vfx house on my film."

What you end up with is a scenario where the [...]

The richly imaginative details of J.K. Rowling’s fictive world, it must be admitted, are pleasurable. The hot-rod brooms, the flowing robes and flying cars, the goth Heaven of the sullen Slytherins, the snake language and the magic wands enclosing phoenix feathers or unicorn hairs, the metamorphic potions, the leaping or fizzing sweets! All these have been fully and lovingly realized in the Warner Brothers movie adaptations of the Harry Potter books, including the most recent, which is a fine-looking but completely incoherent mess with a morally bankrupt and politically repugnant story at its core.