It began in France. In 1895, the Gaumont Film Company (the oldest continuously operated film studio in the world) debuted their “Marguerite” logo, the iconic daisy named after founder Léon Gaumont’s mother. The daisy’s design has evolved since then, and so has the art of “bumpers”—those petite vignettes that announce a production studio’s involvement in a project. Universal and Paramount, the respective second and third-oldest studios in the world, swiftly followed Gaumont’s lead; the latter’s “Majestic Mountain” logo is Hollywood’s oldest surviving bumper, the byproduct of Paramount founder W.W. Hodkinson’s doodle of the Ben Lomond Mountain near his childhood Utah home.

Rarely are they consciously paid attention to, [...]

What are you going to see at the movies this weekend (if you're not being held all weekend by the LAPD for exercising your First Amendment rights): the one with the dude with the giant schlong or the movie about the girl who gets paid to be unconscious while old dudes fondle her? USA! USA! Or have you seen Melancholia yet? Apart from the first five minutes, which are A+, and maybe the next 45, which are sinisterly hilarious, it's pretty much like these nine things, which include but are not limited to "overdosing on cement mix and diet tonic water" and "listening to a radio play [...]

You’d be forgiven for thinking it the height of silliness to try and tease out some deep cultural truth from the contemporary action movie—an art form in which Sly Stallone mentioning that some kind of vague bad political and/or drug stuff sometimes goes on south of the border passes for trenchant political commentary. But then you may not be a fan of the action movies of one Jason Statham and you may not have had his most recent punch-fest, The Mechanic—an otherwise well paced, competently shot affair, with no wince-inducing dialogue and with plenty of stoic Statham ass-kicking—marred by the fact that the only gay character in the movie [...]

Mary HK Choi: Let us make discussion! First Q: did you read the books?

Natasha Vargas-Cooper: I did not! On principle! I was like, “Make it work for me, Lionsgate."

Mary: RIGHT. Interesting. I did read the books! Second Q: did you read any reviews?

Natasha: NO. Mary, I wanted to love this, love it with my whole big heart I wanted to join a team, a district, pick a teen-lit boyfriend. I DID NONE OF THOSE THINGS. Q for you! Have you seen Battle Royale?

Mary: Of course! Racist.

Mary: Have you read The Lottery?

Natasha: Of course! Racist.

Mary: See, I liked it but that logline [...]

Natasha: Did you love Breaking Dawn? Did you die during it? I DID.

Mary: I mean… CAN YOU EVEN? Because I maybe cannot. I went to a midnight showing on Court Street in Brooklyn with all of the Eighties babies. And we all DIED.

Natasha: !!!!!!!

Mary: We were STARING at each other like we weren't COMPLETE strangers.

Mary: Let's begin with the wedding as this movie does… QUE CELLO.

Natasha: This is the wedding every young girl pictures, right?

Mary: Yes. Outside. With all those plants I can't name.

Natasha: Let me just say, I SWOONED.

Mary: OH IDK what this swoonage refers to because ME TOO 360.

Natasha: [...]

It's only in the last ten years or so that we in the US began seeing commercials before the movie. The exotic and bizarre cinema-going experience in the UK, which once included not only the opportunity to buy cocktails in the lobby and to smoke (usually in the balcony) during the movie (I know, gross, whatever, I am just saying-it was a lot worse on the plane, believe me), has featured commercials for about forever. I had a special fondness for the hallucinogenic Babycham ones ("Nothing sparkles like a Babycham!").

February marked the twenty-first anniversary of the publication of a book of poems by the gifted actor Ally Sheedy. It was called Yesterday I Saw the Sun, and she was famously excoriated for it. Sheedy was then 28 years old and coming off a very bad patch, including a stint at Hazelden; she had picked up an addiction to Halcion during an ill-fated fling with Bon Jovi guitarist Richie Sambora, and her friend Demi Moore is said to have scooped up the remains of Sheedy and posted them to rehab by way of an intervention. Terrible business, but the braying press went after her anyway. "Ally Sheedy from bad to [...]

What is the actual future of going to the movies? Anthony Lane asks, as "video on demand" begins to bully the poor besieged theater-owners of America. "Showmen like James Cameron, I suspect, will continue to haul us off our couches for the grand, marquee events, but smaller fare may be streamed to us direct, and new films whittled down into just another channel on TV"—and this is a bad thing, he thinks. His argument is unusual, and it's not one that has ever crossed my mind before.