Sandra Bullock in The Blind Side (top); Taylor Lautner, Kristen Stewart in The Twilight Saga: New Moon (bottom) With $20 million, Sandra Bullock’s The Blind Side did indeed lead the pack at the domestic box office last weekend, earning nearly $5 million — or about 30% — more than The Twilight Saga: New Moon. Robert Pattinson’s vampire, Kristen Stewart’s teen, and Taylor Lautner’s werewolf had to settle for the second spot after three weeks at the top. Among other box-office news were the results for five new movies: Brothers, starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Tobey Maguire, and Natalie Portman in a love triangle that is an indirect result of the war in Afghanistan (Now, get real. Don’t expect any...

Ulrich Tukur in John Rabe (top); City of Life and Death (middle); Lebanon (bottom) A record 69 foreign language films are in the running for the 2010 Golden Globes, Philip Berk, president of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, has announced. Among the films in the longlist are Pedro Almodóvar’s Broken Embraces, starring Penelope Cruz; Costa-Gavras socially conscious drama Eden Is West; Xavier Dolan’s I Killed My Mother, one of the Toronto Film Festival’s best Canadian films of the year; and Marco Bellocchio’s Vincere, about Mussolini’s first wife (Giovanna Mezzogiorno) and child (Filippo Timi). Some of the titles, e.g., A Prophet, The White Ribbon, are also in the running for the best...

Ronald Colman in The Prisoner of Zenda: Never a dull moment, whether fighting Douglas Fairbanks Jr. or romancing Madeleine Carroll Celebrating Douglas Fairbanks Jr.’s 100th birthday, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will screen The Prisoner of Zenda (1937) on Wednesday, December 9, at 8 p.m. at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills. Oscar-winning visual-effects supervisor Craig Barron and Oscar-winning sound designer Ben Burtt will examine the photographic and sound effects used in this Ruritanian classic directed by John Cromwell, and also starring Ronald Colman, Madeleine Carroll, and Mary Astor. As a plus, the evening will feature rare behind-the-scenes color footage...

The Most Beautiful (1944). For Donald Richie DB here: Cinephile communities aren’t free of peer pressure. Sometimes you must choose or be thought a waffler. In postwar France, the debate within the Cahiers du cinéma camp often came down to big dualities. Ford or Wyler? German Lang or American Lang?...

Somers Town (2008) Direction: Shane Meadows Screenplay: Shane Meadows, Paul Fraser Cast: Thomas Turgoose, Piotr Jagiello, Elisa Lasowski, Kate Dickie, Ireneusz Czop, Perry Benson � Thomas Turgoose, Piotr Jagiello in Somers Town � The happenstance friendship central to Shane Meadows’ Somers Town buds within a small black-and-white world, an environment populated with aesthetic lines, distinct or unseen, that stretch retrograde towards an urban horizon. Convergence is not merely suggested through contrast and forms, but is realized as ubiquitous in the neighborhood around the film’s young men. A district of London in the shadows of St. Pancras railway station, Somers Town is at a point of...

For those so inclined, I remind them that an interview with Peter Jackson, featuring reader-generated questions, and conducted by myself, is up now at The Auteurs' Notebook, here. I've mentioned this before, but I think it bears repeating: I was...

Remember summer camp? Remember how fun that was? Now imagine going back to camp as an adult, but instead of making shoddy arts and crafts, you get to watch a few dozen mind-blowing musical performances. That’s what All Tomorrow’s Parties is– a series of festivals often thrown at off-season summer...

The final leg of my assessment of the lesser Polanskis (and "leg" seems apt, as we were only assessing two) is up at The Auteurs'. It's the Foreign Region DVD Report on '86s Pirates, which, while not exactly good, is...

Patricia Clarkson in Cairo Time (top); Joel Bissonnette, Adam Scott in Passenger Side (middle, upper); Danse Macabre by Pedro Pires (middle, lower); Five Hole: Tales of Hockey Erotica by Cam Christiansen (bottom) The Toronto Film Festival has announced the lists of the top 10 Canadian features and shorts of 2009. They are: FEATURES Cairo Time – Ruba Nadda Carcasses – Denis Côté Crackie – Sherry White Defendor – Peter Stebbings La Donation / The Legacy – Bernard Émond J’ai tué ma mère / I Killed My Mother – Xavier Dolan Passenger Side – Matthew Bissonnette Polytechnique – Denis Villeneuve The Trotsky – Jacob Tierney The Wild Hunt – Alexandre Franchi SHORTS The Armoire – Jamie Travis The Cave...