It wasn't that long ago that documentaries carried the stigma of being educational first and entertaining second. As with foreign-language fare, an audience for them lingered on the fringe, and an industry was willing to offer them their very own awards, but they really weren't terribly high-profile box-office prospects... that is, until the '04-'05 summer successes of Fahrenheit 9/11 and March of the Penguins made it seem perfectly okay for audiences to see, and for studios to market, a film without so much as one measly explosion in it.

But then along comes American Teen: a film openly marketed as - and arugably assembled to be - anything but a documentary that finds itself underperforming in its current limited runs (it goes wide this Friday). Last May, I witnessed a group of young women leaving whatever indie they caught at Washington D.C's Landmark E Street Cinema as they approached the film's poster and wondered aloud if someone was remaking The Breakfast Club, with a tone that suggested neither horror nor concern, nor any great interest in the big, fat what-if scenario placed before them.

What I wonder now is, at what point did we begin to craft documentary filmmaking specifically to the masses, and then what happens when the masses simply don't show?

A Taiwanese filmmaker's tribute to a celebrated French short soared easily to the top of the indie charts this weekend. Flight of the Red Balloon (IFC Films), directed by Hou Hsiao-hsien, averaged $17,450 at the two screens where it played in Manhattan, according to estimates compiled by Leonard Klady at Movie City News. Jeffrey M. Anderson wrote: "Like Hou's more recent work, Flight of the Red Balloon moves a little more toward international accessibility and away from his early, uniquely Taiwanese stories." Juliette Binoche stars as a frazzled writer and performer with a troupe of puppeteers who hires a Taiwanese film student as a nanny for her young son.

Surprisingly, My Blueberry Nights (The Weinstein Co.) finished #2 for the weekend, grossing an average of $11,380 per screen at six locations. Wong Kar Wai's first English-language film met with lukewarm reaction at Cannes last year; the director tinkered with the editing, but the end result is still not very satisfying, according to Nick Schager. He wrote that the "lovelorn dilemmas [of the female characters] ... consistently come off as precious and trifling, which is dispiriting considering that Wong and [director of photography Darius] Khondji make everything look and feel so rapturous and enticing that one wants to believe the proceedings are of consequence." Nora Jones, Jude Law, Rachel Weisz and Natalie Portman are featured.

Concert films are constantly at war with themselves. If the musical act is transcendent, then a filmed document will never come close to reproducing the experience of seeing and hearing the act live, in the same way that an ordinary photograph can only serve, at best, as a reminder of a moment. Even a great, exact reproduction is still just a copy, not the original. If the act is merely average or worse, then why bother to record it?

The Rolling Stones have been captured performing in concert on film or tape numerous times, so the challenge that lay before Martin Scorsese was to do something different. After all, this is the man who redefined concert films with The Last Waltz in 1978, in which he eschewed the prevailing wisdom that a concert had to include generous allotments of time devoted to the concert goer's point of view. Instead, Scorsese kept the action tightly focused on the stage, allowing the audience to enjoy the interplay between the members of The Band and various guests who shared in the group's final performance. He balanced that with lively interviews; in the process, he helped to establish Robbie Robertson as a viable solo personality in the eyes of the film industry.

I should amend the previous paragraph to read like this: "The challenge that lay before Martin Scorsese was to do something different or so I thought!" As it turns out, my expectations for Shine a Light were far too high.

If you're a true movie geek, you probably refuse to dress up at Halloween in anything but a movie-related costume. I guess I'm not a true movie geek, because two years ago I went as Family Guy's Quagmire, who as of yet is not in any movies. Last year, though, I was Harpo Marx. I haven't decided what to be this year yet, but it isn't definite that I'll be something with cinematic reference.

Of course, if I was a real, hardcore movie geek, I wouldn't just settle for the basic, predictable movie-themed outfit. I'd go for the gold, and be an uber-geek. How? I would doubly dress up as a movie character who is dressed up as somebody or something else. To do so, I would pick one of my favorite non-Halloween costumes and disguises depicted on film (it isn't as fun dressing as a character who is dressed up for Halloween). However, most of these would be difficult to achieve -- or at least too obscure to wear to a common party, where the crowd isn't as film familiar as you. If you attempt any of these, good luck! And please, please send me a photo.

1. Harpo Marx and Chico Marx as Groucho Marx in Duck Soup (1933, Leo McCarey)

See, now if I had really wanted to be geeky (or pretentious), I would have not just dressed as Harpo last Halloween; I would have dressed as Harpo dressed as Groucho. In one of the most famous sequences in any Marx Brothers film, Pinky (Harpo) and Chicolini (Chico) each disguises himself as Rufus T. Firefly (Groucho) in order to steal some war plans. The real gem of the sequence, of course, is the "mirror scene" (watch it if you've never seen it before, please), where Pinky pretends to be the reflection of Rufus until Chicolini appears and ruins everything. Although historically it was only Harpo and Chico who were often mistaken for each other, or for twins, all three brothers look so alike here, that when they're all together, it is almost difficult to tell who is who. If you want to pull this double-costume off, it won't be hard -- Grouch faces are easy to do, and then you just need a sleeping cap and gown -- but I doubt you'll get much tolerance when you constantly correct everyone who thinks you're simply Groucho.

One of the most iconic actresses to grace the big screen, Audrey Hepburn, stars opposite Fred Astaire in Funny Face, a light-heartened romp about an oh-so-intellectual bookworm who unwittingly becomes the muse for a French fashion designer. Kay Thompson (best known as the author of the Eloise books) has an entertaining turn as Maggie Prescott, the editor of Quality, a fashion magazine. The film has a completely different plot than the 1927 musical of the same name, although it does incorporate four of the George Gershwin songs from the play.

Fred Astaire plays Dick Avery, the fashion photographer who longs for a fashion model who is both beautiful and intellectual, when he happens upon Jo Stockton (Hepburn) working at a bookstore where the magazine descends for a photo shoot. At Avery's urging, Maggie Prescott decides to make Jo the "face" for a new campaign for Quality magazine -- they seek to turn the decidedly unfashionable, book-wormish, headstrong Jo into a fashion icon whether she likes it or not. Before you can say, "how about a rousing song-and-dance number!" the trio are traipsing around the Eiffel Tower singing "Bonjour, Paris" and Dick and Jo are making goo-goo eyes at each other at a photo shoot.

I felt conflicted about reviewing Into the Wild, Sean Penn's new film chronicling the life and death of Christopher McCandless. Jon Krakauer's best-selling book of the same name -- published to wide acclaim in 1996 -- told of how McCandless took a journey across America seeking some deeply-held goal that ended with his death, alone, in an abandoned bus in the Alaskan wilderness. And the reason for my conflicted feeling was simple: For all of my carefully calculated professional cynicism, I don't like speaking ill of the dead. But then I realized that speaking ill of Into the Wild is very different from speaking ill of Christopher McCandless. A human death is a tragedy; a movie about death is a movie.

We meet McCandless, played by Emile Hirsch, as he's graduating from university. He's supposed to be coming home and figuring out what's next; instead, he sells the majority of his things, donates his life savings/college fund to Oxfam America, burns his social security card, and sets out across America -- re-naming himself Alexander Supertramp. We're supposed to see his decisions and actions as the birth of a free-spirited soul, but we're also seeing classic signs of suicidal ideation. From the outset, Chris doesn't come across as unfettered -- just unmedicated.

We follow McCandless -- meeting fellow free-spirits Rainey (Brian Dierker) and Jan (Catherine Keener) in his travels, working the fields in the heartland for the hearty and funny Wayne (Vince Vaughn), constantly working towards getting to his dream destination of Alaska, where he wants to live off the land. Even with voice-over drawn from real-life letters and documents, though, we don't get a real sense of McCandless -- he's supposed to be this pure, uncompromising seeker-of-truth; he more often comes across on-screen as a smug, unlikable narcissist, exactly the sort of anti-capitalist you can only become if you spring from an immensely privileged background.

Paramount Pictures shocked Hollywood this week by announcing it would no longer distribute its movies in the Blu-Ray format. Instead, Variety reports the studio would have an exclusive deal with HD-DVD, a partnership that would include films from DreamWorks Animation (like Shrek the Third). Since 2005, Paramount had been releasing videos in both formats while DreamWorks had not released any high-definition discs in either format. With a large consensus in the biz decidedly declaring Blu-Ray the winner in the hi-def war, it was definitely strange to hear about Paramount and DreamWorks' decision. However, according to the New York Times, the studios are receiving $150 million in incentives to stay exclusive for the next 18 months, or through Christmas 2008. The Times couldn't reveal where the incentive was coming from, though, only clarifying that Microsoft claims to have not been involved in such a deal.

One film that won't be released in HD-DVD is Indiana Jones IV, which Paramount puts in theaters next Memorial Day. The studio's deal with HD-DVD doesn't include films directed by Steven Spielberg. None of the Indiana Jones movies, nor Saving Private Ryan nor War of the Worlds will be put on HD-DVD disc. This isn't too unusual, as Spielberg actually favors Blu-Ray, though it took him a long time to jump aboard the hi-def wagon. His first hi-def video release is scheduled to be Close Encounters of the Third Kind, which Sony releases on Blu-Ray this November. According to Spielberg spokesman Marvin Levy (also a DreamWorks marketing exec), there are currently no plans for more of the director's films to hit either hi-def format. He also pointed out Spielberg's still-active support for Blu-Ray. However, a short film by Spielberg included as a segment of Twilight Zone: The Movie gets both a Blu-Ray and an HD-DVD release in October. Supposedly the Spielberg stipulation means that the director can put his Paramount and DreamWorks titles on Blu-Ray if he wants. As for his Universal titles (including Jaws, Schindler's List, E.T.), we probably won't see them on hi-def for a long time, because that studio is also HD-DVD exclusive.

You like Martin Scorsese, right? You're a fan of The Rolling Stones, correct? Well, get ready to have your "19th Nervous Breakdown." AOL is reporting that the release date for Scorsese's Stones documentary has been pushed back. Waaay back. Seven months, to be exact. Just a couple weeks ago, Monika told you the film would be released in both conventional and IMAX theaters on September 21st. But now we won't get it until "sometime next April." What's the reason? Why can't we get no "Satisfaction?" A spokeswoman says that more time was needed to set up the promotional campaign for the film, because the band is on tour in Europe until August 26th. Isn't that a "Bitch?" I've got serious "Mixed Emotions" about this. I mean, "I Know It's Only Rock n' Roll...But I Like It!" I'll stop.

The documentary is called Shine a Light (also the title of one of my favorite Stones songs), and its concert footage was shot over two nights last fall at the beautiful Beacon Theater in New York. Guest performers for the shows included Buddy Guy, the almost impossibly cool Jack White, and Miss Dirrrrrty herself -- Christina Aguilera. The film will intersperse footage from the shows with career-spanning documentary material. Hopefully it will be as fascinating as what Scorsese did with his Dylan doc, the excellent No Direction Home. Scorsese also directed one of the greatest concert films of all time -- The Last Waltz, which documented the final show of The Band and included terrific performances from the likes of Bob Dylan, Van Morrison, and -- with a hunk of cocaine visibly dangling from his nose -- Neil Young. Scorsese has used Rolling Stones music in nearly all of his films. I'm surprised he didn't have the monks in Kundun dance to "Start Me Up." Hell, he's used "Gimme Shelter" three times -- in Goodfellas, Casino, and The Departed!

When an innocuous-sounding nature movie called March of the Penguins smashed box office records two years ago -- to the tune of $77 million in the US -- you better believe Hollywood was paying attention. Distributor Paramount Classics was quick to snap up rights to another documentary about polar creatures in early November 2005. Call of the North was not some hurried project put together to capitalize on the success of Penguins, though. Filmmakers Adam Ravetch and Sarah Robertson had worked together on at least two Arctic-themed episodes of the long-running series Nature earlier in the decade. David Poland reported that they had been working on the film, shooting on location and thus often enduring sub-zero temperatures, for seven years. He also passed along the news that the film was "due out in mid or late '06."

Somewhere between then and now, the title changed to Arctic Tale (at one point it was The Walrus and the Polar Bear) and acquired narration spoken by Queen Latifah and written by Linda Woolverton (Beauty and the Beast), Mose Richards and Kristin Gore (Futurama and daughter of the former US Vice President). From a look at the web site, it's being marketed as a cute yet environmentally-sensitive movie for kids; for adults, the advertising mentions the film as coming from "the studio that brought you An Inconvenient Truth." Certainly it's the distributor's goal to get as many people as possible to see it. I just wonder if any of the harsh realities of the animal kingdom were softened for the sake of trying to replicate the success of Penguins, and if the result fully reflects what the filmmakers set out to make so many years ago. For now, you can watch the trailer at Moviefone and decide if you agree with The Documentary Blog, where Jay Cheel comments: "I don't mean to sound like an a******, but this trailer is s***." Paramount Classics has set a release date of July 25.

With only three feature films, Sofia Coppola has already roused supersize portions of both praise and disdain. I am firmly planted in the former camp; Coppola's Lost in Translation (2003), is the best American movie I've seen since the year 2000. It's only too easy to explain the latter camp: Americans have never been too fond of women in powerful positions, and because of her obvious connections her detractors believe that she doesn't deserve her position. To many, she's just "daddy's little girl," and is only allowed to play on the big boys' field because of his guidance and protection.

There are even rumors that Sofia's brother Roman (her second unit director) actually directed her movies, which is ludicrous given that Roman's own directorial debut, CQ (2002), is nowhere near as good as Sofia's three films (which also includes last year's misunderstood Marie Antoinette). Historically, women directors have had difficult times sustaining long careers in Hollywood. If they lose any money, they suffer the consequences, whereas men can spend and lose ten times as much without fearing for their jobs.

Even more difficult to explain and defend is that Coppola is not really a natural born storyteller like her father. But this is not necessarily a bad thing. It's a mistake to consider cinema as merely an agent for storytelling; it has so many other possibilities. And, indeed, filmmakers like Orson Welles, Ingmar Bergman, Luis Bunuel, Federico Fellini, Mario Bava, Monte Hellman, Robert Bresson, David Lynch, Jim Jarmusch, F.W. Murnau, Hou Hsiao-hsien and many others are likewise not necessarily praised or beloved for their ability to tell a clear, concise story. That skill is not required for one to be considered a great cinema artist.

In Mike White's directorial debut, Year of the Dog, Molly Shannon plays Peggy – a cube-stuck, quiet woman whose main source of joy is her beagle, Pencil ... who dies. White's best known for broad screenplays (he wrote School of Rock, and co-wrote Nacho Libre), but his scripts The Good Girl and Chuck and Buck have a smaller-wrought, more intimate feel to them. In many ways, Year of the Dog is a bridge between the two seemingly separate threads in his work. White, in person, is unassuming and mild; talking about his work, though, the level of thought he puts into his scripts becomes slowly and firmly apparent. Cinematical spoke with White in San Francisco. The technically-minded can download the entire interview here.

Cinematical: Year of the Dog came out of a pretty personal place for you -- The inciting incident being a stray cat had been living in your backyard literally dying in your arms. How long a relationship did you have with this cat?

Mike White: A couple years -- I had sort of inherited it when I moved into this house that I had bought. And I didn't have any animals up to that point -- I mean, when I was a little kid, I did -- I didn't even really realize how attached I had become to this cat. Over the years it sort of became my pet; it had come in, slept with me -- I was really just super-stressed, and kind of over-worked, and under-slept, and this cat's death just totally spun me out in a way that I totally did not expect. I just had a really emotional reaction to it, and it just gave me the idea – later, after the dust had settled – I just thought, "Well, that's an interesting idea for a movie premise – somebody who has a relationship with a pet, and the loss of that changes their life in away."

Cinematical: And you're not a psychologist, but obviously, you've thought about this to a certain degree – do you think that people put a lot of emotion into their relationship with their pets, because culturally, we're not supposed to it with work?

MW: Right. I think a lot of people do ... In the movie, people put a lot of their eggs in different ... I mean, Peggy's boss is really into his job, the parents with the kid, her friend at work who's obsessed with her boyfriend. ... Whether it's animals, or -- with animals, because they are a source of affection and because the relationship is relatively uncomplicated – there's not a lot of the bargaining that goes on in human relationships, and the needs of animals are pretty simple: being fed, and ...

Cinematical: Pick up the poop. ...

MW: Right. I think the movie – while it does sort of take her animal passion or animal love seriously, it also does gets into her projection on to the animals in her life and how some of it is a little absurd and kind of misguided at some points, too.

Almost every weekend I see people on the sidewalks of Brooklyn attempting to sell their used VHS collections. And I get sad -- not for these people desperately trying to make a little extra with their tag sale, but for the poor videotapes that have absolutely no place in the modern world of DVD. I'm often reminded of The Brave Little Toaster and my eyes well up for the poor obsolete items of yesterday. I too have a box of VHS in my closet, but I know there's no use trying to find people who will buy them. But at least I never got into the habit of collecting DVDs, because the currently popular video format will also one day be replaced.

The European chairman for the Blu-ray Disc Association claims that day will come within three years. While addressing the crowd at the CeBIT technology trade show in Germany, he also stated that Blu-ray, not its competitor, HD DVD, will be the format to succeed DVD as the home video standard. Of course, there is no definite front-runner in the hi-density disc format war, and representatives from HD-DVD argued that in terms of sales of movie titles, the two are about even. Blu-ray's reason for declaring a lead is based on sales of Blu-ray players, which include Playstation 3 consoles -- how many PS3 owners do you know who were primarily interested in its ability to play Blu-ray discs?

If you don't already have plans for Saturday, February 24, I have the best option for what to do -- provided you live near a participating AMC theater, that is. The cinema chain is offering an amazing deal to moviegoers on the eve of the Oscars: for the price of $30, you can see all five films nominated for best picture. Of course, you have to watch them in a row, from 11am to 11:30pm (or whatever time the 9:45 showing of Little Miss Sunshine lets out). In addition to the movies, though, you also get a large popcorn, a large drink -- with unlimited refills all day long -- and a "collectible pass."

Now, I can see if this is a little too much movie for most people to handle, but I can't express enough how good a deal it is. Plus, you could always leave before Sunshine (I would; I hate it), if you fear a numb butt (try to imagine 24 hours!). Considering I still need to see two of the nominees, it would be worth it for me to attend the whole marathon since at the participating megaplex in Manhattan two movies and concessions would run me about $30 anyway (unless I theater-hopped).

When was the last time a film won the Nobel Prize? More plausible, when was the last time a film led to someone's nomination for the Nobel Prize? The answer to the second question is ... today. Thanks to the documentary An Inconvenient Truth (and all his work to raise awareness of global warming), Al Gore is a contender for the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, the winner of which is announced in October. Sure, he probably could have been nominated without the film, but it is obvious that the film did help. In fact, Boerge Brende, one of the two Norwegian Parliament members who nominated Gore, mentioned the movie in his statement to Reuters.

This is great news for Gore, who has just increased his post-Presidential-loss status another huge notch. It was good enough that An Inconvenient Truth did so well in theaters and then was nominated for an Academy Award. But who cares about winning an Oscar when there's a chance to get a million bucks and the prestige of being a Nobel Laureate? Well, Davis Guggenheim probably cares, as he is the one who directed the film, despite so many people referring to it as Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth. Guggenheim isn't nominated for the Nobel Prize, only the Oscar, and worst case scenario is that because of the film's elevated acclaim in its association with the Nobel nomination, Academy voters will see no need to give the doc award to Truth.

After a week of high-power documentaries and wrenching dramas at Sundance, there's a strong chance I may have been extra-susceptible to the charm and sheer exuberance of Son of Rambow, the newest film from director Garth Jennings and the production team known as Hammer and Tongs. But I don't think so; the giddy, goofy and heartfelt creativity of Son of Rambow would stand out regardless of where, or when, one had the good fortune to see it. In 1980's Britain, young Will Proudfoot (Bill Milner) is a good-hearted, slightly burdened young boy, grieving his lost father, constrained and supported by the humble Christian community his mother finds solace in. The group shuns television and films; they live with simplicity, piety and grace. None of which, it seems, can compete with Sylvester Stallone....

After a spot of bother at school, Will winds up not-quite-friends with troublemaker Carter (Will Poulter), a scamp with slight troubles. In the storage shed at Will's family's business, Will is exposed to a pirated VHS copy of First Blood. Will's never seen a movie, or heard a story not taken directly from The Bible. It is, to him, a revelation of the highest order and leads to Will and Carter collaborating on a camcorder epic, Son of Rambow. The fact that Will seems to be working out some issues with his absent father is fairly obvious, as is the tension between Will's sacred teachings and his more secular desire to run through the English countryside pretending to commit acts of derring-do.