John Gushue . . . Dot Dot Dot

A card for unsure Batman fans

As seen on someecards.com, the e-cards for "when you care enough to hit send," this example seems appropriate for some movie fans this summer.

Superbad, with bunny ears

Superbad gets the 30-Second Bunnies treatment from Starz. (As always, these bunnies aren't for kids ... at least when the original source material isn't.) Click here to watch.

A thought on secrets

"We all live to a formula. Maybe the secret lies in keeping that formula secret."
- Peter Greenaway

Immortal, if not necessarily beloved

The Grim Reaper has appeared in countless films, TV shows, New Yorker cartoons ... but rarely delivers the giggles as in Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey, in which a Bergman-like Death goes shopping, plays Twister, etc. He's featured in a new Entertainment Weekly gallery about immortal characters featured in pop culture.

A thought on international relations

"The great nations of the world have always acted like gangsters, and the small nations like prostitutes."
- Stanley Kubrick, 1963 (while making Dr. Strangelove)

A Stan Winston gallery

Stan Winston's death is a loss to the movie industry; his sfx fingerprints were over a ton of pop-culture icons. (Item No. 1: above.) Click here for an Entertainment Weekly gallery on his career, right up to this spring's Iron Man.

R-r-r-rationalize like a pirate

From Joy of Tech.

Mr. Pollack

I learned of the death of the film director Anthony Minghella - one of the most articulate moviemakers I've ever read about - when I was travelling back from Florida in March. I remembered a quote in the New York Times obituary of Minghella (left, above) from Sidney Pollack (above, right), the American director who had struck a unusual production partnership with the very, very English Minghella.

The quote had even more resonance when I woke up Tuesday to learn that Pollack himself had died. Knowing that he had been fighting cancer some some months, it makes me wonder whether Pollack meant more than just Minghella when he said this:

“We both know what was junk and what was good,” Mr. Pollack said. “There were a lot of movies that we planned together and are now not going to be able to do. It’s sad for me, but it’s also too bad that people won’t see those movies.”

Pollack had spent his last months working on Recount, which aired just this month on HBO. When he became sick, he stopped work on it, turning over to another director.

Indeed, it's a loss that we won't get to see whatever movies they might have made.

Indy spirit

With a new Indiana Jones film in theatres ... something that doesn't happen every decade .. fans may want to drop into The Raven, a message board for comments on plot points, characters, spoilers and such.

Batman gets in a sing-song mood

A detail of an image on Dial B for Blog, for a piece that connects the darker movie Batman with the, well, sunnier TV version's theme music.