Today's New York Observer editorial page, as always, does not disappoint, in the form of this editorial in praise of movies and TV filming in New York City. READ MORE

The last Harry Potter movie is a pretty beautiful thing, just in terms of flickering pictures on the cave wall and tableaux. It's very good! As a non-Harry Potter book-reader, it wasn't even that confusing, despite its having to wrap up 10,000 plots, though I did realize halfway through that I literally had no idea why the guy with the scary face was trying to kill our hero, and vice versa. Why were they so mad at each other again? No clue! Also I was slightly frustrated that the minor characters weren't allowed to speak very much, if it all. You put Helena Bonham Carter in all that hair and corset and then she gets to grunt two words? That's like letting the snake out of the cage and not tossing it a rat. (Although perhaps that's just what she looks like now? Like maybe she wasn't supposed to be in the movie at all, and Mrs. Tim Burton just rolled up and kept wandering into the shots.) But even Hermione, at last, doesn't have that much to say, for once. This is quibbling! Things blow up, a Lord of the Rings siege is made, the Big Reveal occurs, people die, and the flummoxing inability of a wizard to use magic to dry out wet clothes is presented to us once again. (Sure, you can stop time and go invisible, but you can't remove water from fabric with a simple spell? Magicians, stick to thy casts.) So yes, A+++! And then there's the epilogue. Which: OH NO. We will now drop down some white space so that those who have somehow not yet seen the movie may run away. READ MORE

Sometimes I compulsively follow people on Twitter even when I rarely have any idea what they're talking about! You get one-half of various arcane conversations, some meditations on bagels and a lot of stuff about French films you haven't seen. Hence, Richard Brody, the Goings On movies editor of the New Yorker. Perhaps you remember Brody best for his mini-pan of Rush Hour 3? ("This is filmmaking by the yard, but Ratner perks up near the end and delivers a vertigo-inducing chase through the latticework of the Eiffel Tower. Only the pounding music and sound effects might keep a viewer awake to that point; such formulaic fare cries out for a director with Quentin Tarantino’s studious flair.") Well perhaps not. More likely you know his very attentive blogging at the New Yorker. But his Twitter! It's sort of like an oddly upper-crust sitcom, one that's set in this other New York, and it might be a better town than ours? He is constantly yelling at Glenn Kenny's Twitter (even while calling Kenny's blog "terrific"). I like to think of Brody and the rest of them all shuffling from the Sony screening room to the Magno, dodging Rex Reed and muttering all the while about Truffaut. It's so irritating and enjoyable! He is like the crazy uncle I never had.

Plus coworker banter!

I only follow this Twitter because I am a silly and unserious person and I enjoy being reminded of that fact.

Previously

Holy moses, here is an amazingly comprehensive list of, pretty much, all the moving-image culture you missed in 2010 and shouldn't have, according to many people! Still, the one cultural event we can agree upon with Josh Siegel, associate film curator at MoMA? Sky Mall Kitties! Miss you, Sky Mall Kitties.

What makes a movie horror? There are the obvious indicators: chainsaws, spurting viscera, genital smashing and other tricks in the bloody menagerie of unapologetic depravity. But some of the scariest films sneak in under the radar, infecting your thoughts and slaying your peace of mind without showing a single oozing polyp or rotting corpse. Think about it: The point of horror is that it's all metaphor-a pictorial display of the fears, anxieties, and disappointments that thrash and roil in our consciousness. Those flesh-devouring zombies and skull-munching monsters are just physical manifestations of the Inner Human Pain that can't be defined in language (except by David Foster Wallace) but still manage to crawl in our ears and tear our guts with corrosive acid-froth. It's THIS pain that's the real killer-after all, you can always bandage that severed arm or pop an antibiotic for that flesh-eating virus. Healing the ragged wound in your soul, the nameless chasm where Darkness gnaws on your psyche... well, that's a little harder. And so we have movies! Those fuzzy celluloids that take away the emptiness and lull us into complacency with their pulchritudinous stars and pat dialogue and flashy explosions. You pay your $11.50 and laugh at sweet-as-pie Kate Beckinsale or oh-so-funny-Jim-Carrey and then WHAM – without even realizing it, you're hit with a Nightmare, fed to you in the form of a bubbly romantic comedy. THESE are the real horror movies. They catch you by surprise. At least Saw is honest. READ MORE

Back in January, a Washington Post/ABC News Poll asked the following question: "Obama has said that under his administration the United States will not use torture as part of the U.S. campaign against terrorism, no matter what the circumstance. Do you support this position not to use torture, or do you think there are cases in which the United States should consider torture against terrorism suspects?" READ MORE

Choire Sicha: I have a question. At where did you see the new film by Quentin Tarantino? READ MORE