The second guest on Charlie Rose's talk show yesterday was one Guillermo del Toro. Ostensibly, he had come to talk about "The Strain," the vampire novel he's written with Chuck Hogan. Del Toro discussed the book, which I'm reading now and which, so far, is like reading a creepy print-out for the genetic coding of one of his movies. He also talked about the philosophy of monsters, notions of pleasure, and how long he'll be filming "The Hobbit" (answer: forever).

To Charlie's bewilderment, del Toro is totally cool with his girth. And while, Charlie was being Charlie (hostus interrupt us), he was also in good, borderline European form, a feat all the more impressive for a man who clearly had not read his guest's book. At some point, he asked del Toro about what hurts more, pain or love (or something like that), and del Toro went off into a lyrical consideration of both. I was waiting for Conan and Letterman reruns to heat up, and as much fun as del Toro would be with either of those two, he was a deeper, truer version of himself on "Charlie Rose." Regardless of what one thinks of Rose (I like him), his is still the only show anywhere on television where a conversation like this can take place.

You can watch the interview here.

I'm on vacation at the moment and really supposed to be keeping away from the blog, but, I'm sorry, the man deserves our respect. All rise. Hold your snap-brim fedora over your heart. One of the finest character actors of all has passed.

Malden was 97 years old, and I probably wasn't alone in expecting him to make it to 100. Underneath the nice guy exterior was the soul of a hardass survivor, born Mladen Sekulovich (what a name! I wish he'd kept it) to Eastern European immigrants and raised among the farms and steel mills of Gary, Indiana. And he survived them all: Marlon Brando, his good friend and co-star on stage and in films; Elia Kazan, who directed the two in their greatest roles, almost everyone he worked with. (Well, not everyone: Eva Marie Saint is still going strong, and that sidekick kid from Malden's 1970s TV show "The Streets of San Francisco," Michael Douglas, ended up making a name for himself.)

By the time he became a star, Malden was nobody's idea of handsome, but decency and a canny intelligence shone through even when he was playing a louse. He had thinning hair, a bizarrely penile nose, eyes that probed and found you solid or lacking, a forceful manner of speaking, as though time was shorter than we all thought. If I had to explain him to a young moviegoer who'd never seen one of his performances, I'd say think of John C. Reilly -- Malden got similar sorts of roles, sad sacks left holding the firecracker -- but with a steel core. Actually, I'd say just rent the following, or catch the first three when they show up at the Harvard Film Archive's Kazan retrospective later this summer:

"A Streetcar Named Desire" (1951) Yes, it's Brando's show and Vivien Leigh's, but Malden won a supporting Oscar and deserves every bit of it as Mitch, Stanley's poker buddy who takes a shine to Blanche DuBois but isn't the sensitive suitor either she or we hope he is. It's really an amazing little performance: Malden gives us a man who knows he's smarter than his friends but doesn't understand that still makes him dumb.

"On the Waterfront" (1954) With Kazan and Brando again, taking what was even then a cliche role -- the tough inner-city priest, no matter that the part was based on a real person -- and investing it with not just force but startling desperation and fury. Malden's Father Barry is the movie's conscience, and he wields his moralism with the force of an Old Testament prophet.

"Baby Doll" (1956) Absolutely outrageous assault on all that was holy and decent in 1956, written by Tennessee Williams as if he'd just mainlined about five Nabokov novels. Malden, in one of richest, ripest performances, plays the dirty old mill owner who marries thumbsucking Carroll Baker but can't sleep with her until her 15th -- um, 20th -- birthday. Enter Eli Wallach as the snake. This is as dirty as the movies got back then (condemned by the Catholic legion of Decency and everything) and Karl is right there on the film's vile, hilarious pulse.

"Fear Strikes Out" (1957) Malden plays the sports dad out of your worst nightmares in this not-quite-faithful biopic about Jimmy Piersall, the Red Sox center fielder who struggled with mental illness throughout his career. The movie lays all the blame on Piersall Sr. (one reason the real Jimmy Piersall disowned it), but Malden takes that and runs with it, creating a figure of such maddening, needling patriarchal pressure that you may feel like getting the bat yourself.

There are other fine Malden performances ("One Eyed Jacks," "Birdman of Alcatraz," "Patton," those old American Express commercials), but this is the starter kit. God bless you, Mr. Sekulovich, wherever you are.

The mourning over Michael Jackson, dead of a heart attack at the absurdly young and weirdly old age of 50, can be said to have started on Thursday, June 25, 2009. Let’s be honest, though. It began when “Bad” was released 22 years ago.

That was when Jackson embarked on his long journey from born genius to all-American freak. We need both in this culture: we revere the first and dish endlessly about the second, and the King of Pop fulfilled both by virtue of his immense talent and tragic, inscrutable insecurities.

But the shift was still awkward and sad, from the pop artist possessed with grace to the mercurial figure of deepening tabloid headlines. Which Michael was the real Michael? Which face his real one? How do we reconcile the artist-changeling of “I Want You Back” or “Billie Jean” or “Off the Wall” with the sideshow that came after: the buyer of bones, the keeper of chimps, the dangler of babies. The (alleged) molester of boys. The man who thought himself a Lost Boy.

You don’t reconcile. You synthesize. You understand that Jackson was – and remains – a quintessential example of modern pop culture, the doomed superstar naif. The brilliant baby. The kid from nowhere whose high, clear voice cut through the white noise of the late 1960s, reminding us that pop could matter as much as politics. Michael was the centerpiece of the Jackson Five because Joe Jackson knew that a preternaturally gifted child (a few years shaved off to make the miracle complete) was a show biz staple. Money could be made. Security could be bought.

How many young prodigies have sacrificed childhood to be their families’ breadwinners and then gone on to stable adulthoods? The anomaly – the truer miracle – came when Jackson appeared to fulfill his childhood promise. 1982’s “Thriller” was the album that moved a bazillion units and seemingly the earth itself, but this writer was always more stirred, more warmed, by the album that came before it.

Released in 1979, the year the singer turned 21, “Off the Wall” was Jackson’s statement of purpose, an avowal that he could do it on his own. He had help from new friend and mentor Quincy Jones, but even the songs Jackson didn’t write flow from a unique place of confidence and comfort. “I Wanna Rock with You” is one of the sweetest come-on songs ever produced, and “Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough” lays out every promise of energy and groove he would keep for the next few years. The message of “Off the Wall” can be found in a line in its title song – “just enjoy yourself” – and the greatness of the record is that Michael Jackson was doing just that and only that, on his own terms.

This is not how things are supposed to go in this culture. In 1923, the poet William Carlos Williams wrote “the pure products of America go crazy,” and in this he predicted Judy Garland, Marlon Brando, Elvis Presley, Phil Spector, Brian Wilson, Kurt Cobain – any public figure whose inability to handle stardom becomes an inherent facet of their stardom.

So it was with Jackson. The demons were there but invisible in “Off the Wall.” With “Thriller,” the anxiety starts creeping in. The lyrics are tinged with defensiveness and paranoia – “Billie Jean is not my lover, but she says that I am the one”. “Beat It” is a song about fleeing an angry mob (and about self-pleasure, too, if you want it to be). “Thriller” came with a famous 14-minute horror movie, directed by John Landis, in which Jackson becomes a pale-faced, wide-eyed ghoul.

The album was one of the great pop moments in 20th century culture, yet how much does “Thriller” the video predict what Jackson would become? Here is where the strangeness starts, the facial surgery and the skin lightening – was it vitiligo, as was claimed, or a renunciation of self? Who was he turning himself into? Or what was he turning away from?

We don't know, since we only saw the headlines and never knew the man. Jackson became more globally loved, more famous, more controversial the odder his behavior got. Bubbles the Chimp, the building of Neverland, the 19-month marriage to the seed of Elvis, the impregnation follies of Deborah Rowe, the court cases and settlements and ugly rumors – this is not the life of someone who lives in the world but behind a wall of adulation, rhythm, money. Who built the wall – him or us?

It was a collaboration. The more bizarre Jackson got, the more we responded to the behavior and not the music, and the further he ran from the world. The records still sold, especially overseas, but did anyone buy them with the same thrill they did “Thriller”? With the feeling that an artist who had the gift of conveying such uncomplicated joy might rock with us once more?

No, never, and now he’s dead at 50, on the eve of a comeback that might have revived his career or just prompted more cultural gawking. You are forgiven if you felt this coming a long time ago, in your bones – the early death of another uneasy mass idol. Maybe even congratulations are in order, since Jackson did manage to live longer than Elvis (42), Garland (47), and Cobain (27).

What happens now? What always happens: The great industry of pop-culture mourning cranks up, the end-stage of every superstar career. Jackson’s music is currently flying off iTunes and a public grieving site has been set up at Legacy.com. Somber quotes are offered from those who loved him and profited by him while he was alive. Newspaper writers like me wonder what it all means. Every media outlet has a page where you, too, can share your memories of what Michael Jackson meant.

So who are we grieving for? The star he carved himself into, or the person we wanted him to be?

"I'd like to thank the Academy..."

The Wrap website reports that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has announced that next year's Best Picture category will be doubled to include ten nominees. In a press release, AMPAS head Sid Ganis, “Having 10 Best Picture nominees is going to allow Academy voters to recognize and include some of the fantastic movies that often show up in the other Oscar categories but have been squeezed out of the race for the top prize.”

In other words, more critically-acclaimed blockbusters like "The Dark Knight" and the Pixar films, not to mention the kind of indie favorites ("Memento," "Being John Malkovich") that end up exiled to the screenplay categories, will make it into the inner circle of nominees. This should mute criticism that the Academy is out of touch with both mainstream audiences and and hipsters and -- this is crucial -- hopefully increase viewership to the big show. Now the question becomes: Can they find ten 2009 movies that are worthy?

A good overall weekend at the movies -- total box office was up three percent over last year -- but, honestly, the most compelling, inspiring, horrifying human drama wasn't on the big screen or TV screens but in the news blogs and video sites covering the historic standoff in Iran. I spent Saturday in a surreal looking-glass double existence, glued to the updates of the ongoing street battles between demonstrators and police as reported by the HuffPo and other sites, then coming up for air into a lazy weekend America that didn't seem to care about what was going on on the other side of the planet other than that Obama should say something stronger about it. (He shouldn't have, actually.) Why the disconnect? Is it because so many of the amateur street videos and photographs of the violence are long-shot and low-res, denying us the close-up heroes we need to sit up and pay attention? Is it because there's not one figure to root for here but merely the majority of a nation? A single figure is drama; a crowd is just current events? If so, the uprising may have finally found the human face it needs in Neda Soltani, but the horrifying video of her murder in the streets of Tehran was, ironically, too extreme for mainstream consumption. Make no mistake, though: that video is to the Iranian revolt of 2009 what the man and the tank were to Tiananmen Square: a governing image through which all the event's meanings implacably stream. RIP, Neda.

Back to the shallow end of the pool. "The Proposal" won the weekend race with an estimated $34 million -- a career peak for both Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds and proof that the former isn't just the queen of in-flight entertainment but can still take the box office with the right (high) concept and the right (younger) co-star. A dullish $20 million for "Year One," by contrast, hints that Jack Black's appeal is fizzling out and that Michael Cera's not quite there yet, if he ever will be. Really, though, this is one movie where the trailers made it look just as bad as it actually was.

Among limited releases, Woody Allen swung like a champ, with "Whatever Works" taking in $281,000 at nine theaters for a big old $31,000 per-theater-average. That's a lot of egg creams. I'm guessing Larry David in the lead (i.e., the Woody role) raised the movie's profile, but Allen is coming off one of his better films, "Vicky Cristina Barcelona," and a much-read New York magazine cover story on director and star sold "Whatever Works" to the core New York/Los Angeles constituency. It opens in Boston and other cities this Friday.

The more interesting story is how well some of the summer's previous releases are holding up. "The Hangover" ($153 total gross to date) off only 18% from weekend two to weekend three; "Up" ($224 million) off 30% from weekend three to weekend four; "Star Trek" ($239 million) and "Night at the Museum" ($156 million) keeping their drops under 25% while movies like "Land of the Lost" and "The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3" slump over 50% from the previous weekend. That's four films with legs -- rare beasts in the unforgiving summer shuffle.

More weekend numbers from Box Office Mojo and Leonard Klady.

Thinking of seeing either of the two new studio releases, "The Proposal" or "Year One"? Spare yourself and your loved ones. You don't have to believe just Wesley and me (links above) -- almost everyone has joined the pigpile on the Sandra Bullock/Ryan Reynolds rom-com and the Jack Black/Michael Cera caveman "comedy". Even my 12-year-old found "Year One" actively painful to sit through, and I think she's the target demo.

Instead, I direct you to the Kendall Square and/or the Coolidge to see "Food Inc." and "Burma VJ." Oh, I know, two documentaries: how boring. How good for you. How totally non-summer-tastic. Oh, spare me. "Food Inc.," directed by Rob Kenner, is a brutal and thorough takedown of the American food industry (see photo above), a film that dabbles in trendy Michael Moore-isms but mostly serves its outrage cold and straight. See it before your next trip to the supermarket, if only to gauge your own concerns about what ends up on your plate. It's the rare film I wish had been longer, the better and more thoroughly to state its case.

"Burma VJ" is absurdly relevant in this astonishing week of Iranian social dissent. The film follows the popular uprising in Myanmar in August and September, 2007, as captured through the illegal video-camera lenses of reporters for the Democratic Voice of Burma. The footage of Buddhist monks and average Burmese on the march is inspiring; the eventual crackdown by the country's military dictatorship is heartbreaking. Forget about the Globe's troubles; if these journalists are captured doing their job, they are dead men.

Also opening: Francis Ford Coppola's glorious mess of a family epic, "Tetro," beautifully shot and increasingly, operatically bonkers. I mean that as a compliment. Coppola, in his own words, is in a pretty good place at the moment, and this film finds him stretching in fascinating ways. "Treeless Mountain" is a spare and moving story about two Korean girls abandoned by their mother; it's been slightly overpraised on the festival circuit but I have to admit I was a wreck by the final scenes. "Moon" is a neat, small-scale sci-fi conundrum with multiple performances by the always welcome Sam Rockwell. It plays like "2001" shrunk to the confines of a "Twilight Zone" episode. "Departures" won the best foreign language Oscar this year, but it dilutes an interesting subject (Japan's burial customs and the social taboos surrounding death) with a slick, sentimental style. Which is doubtless why it won.

Classic gangster flicks at the Brattle all weekend -- made it, Ma, top of the world! Monday night, the Coolidge is bringing in the rarely-seen 1996 film version of "American Buffalo," starring Dustin Hoffman and Dennis Franz, in partnership with the David Mamet festival of plays over at the American Repertory Theatre. Director Michael Corrente will be at the screening for a Q&A. But, seriously, see "Food Inc." and "Burma VJ" first.

This morning I was having a conversation with my friend Mark about something that had nothing to do with anything. We could have been talking about the elections in Iran, but alas we were talking about the limitations of perfection. Actually, we were mentioning it. We never got around to a full-blown discussion, but what we getting at was the idea that a certain raggedness can be much more exhilarating than a work of perfection. This was a digression upon which Mark added another digression: "Better to be perfect than 'Perfect.'" I knew exactly what he meant, except I don't think I entirely agreed. Mark doesn't know this, but I like "Perfect," partly for its badness, party for its baldness. Here is a movie that managed to combine magazine journalism, the fitness mania of the early 1980s, and the synth-soul of Jermaine Jackson in one John Travolta-Jamie Lee Curtis vehicle.

When either of these two - or, for that matter, any two people in this movie, especially Rolling Stone editor Jann Wenner more or less as himself - speaks, it's a travesty of language. But when Curtis teaches her popular class and Travolta attends it (he's writing a cover story), the movie crosses over from ridiculous to sublime. In this scene, Curtis, who has always seemed asexual to me, comes on to Travolta. He can't take his eyes off her - and not because she's the instructor but because, like the handful of people of who dared to see "Perfect" when it came out in the summer of 1985, he probably can't get over how attractive the Scream Queen is when her volume is turned down.

The pelvic thrusts, hula-hoop gyrations, and waist bends are a joke. But watch how the director James Bridges lets the scene go on for over four minutes of longish takes of closely framed movement (the cinematographer Gordon Willis takes his job her very seriously) until the joke turns into something else, something ridiculously but inarguably hot. Travolta wants her bad (look at his shorts). There is more in "Perfect" where this came from, and such scenes are often are suggestive enough to obviate the need for much other dialogue.

I was talking to Mark (yes, him again) the other day about how the 1980s were an interesting decade for commercial Hollywood moviemaking. The films weren't always good, more rarely were they deep. But the surfaces had their pleasures. At that time a revolution was underway. The soundtrack, in tandem with the music video, had changed the movie musical so that the songs told the story without the actors having to sing. The bodies on the other hand - they wouldn't shut up. In this scene from "Perfect," the song is "Shock Me" by Jermaine Jackson and some whippersnapper named Whitney Houston, and it would be a totally obvious choice of music were the sexual connection bogus or the and aerobi-dancing not so dirty.

It's impossible to imagine Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds getting into anything like this.

Stop by to talk film with Ty Burr Friday at lunchtime.

Here's a bit of sad, gossipy schadenfreude for Boston movie lovers: Bo Smith, who ran the Museum of Fine Arts' film offerings for two decades before being wooed out west, is out of his job as executive director of the Denver Film Society after the group's board was forced to choose between him and a staff in full mutiny. Indiewire has been reporting on the events as they've evolved, as has the Denver Post. Twenty-one members of the festival's staff turned in their resignations last week, forcing the board's hand; festival director Britta Erickson has been named temporary exec director.

I'd been hearing rumblings about Bo's rocky landing back at Sundance in January, and a couple of folks with the festival have emailed me over the months saying, in effect, why didn't you warn us? Why did you people say such nice things about him when he left? Well, because he did a perfectly fine job in Boston, was well-respected, and built a terrific film program at the MFA over the years; why Denver didn't work out is a mystery to many of us here. (I could speculate, but not knowing the details and most of the players, I won't.)

You enjoyed "The Hangover," right? Thought Jon Lucas and Scott Moore wrote a pretty good script? As always in Hollywood, it's more complicated than that. Nikki Finke has the nitty-gritty, including the fact that the germ of the idea came from a movie producer's real bachelor party fiasco.

BOX OFFICE UPDATE, and a general note to self about treading lightly on Monday morning weekend estimate figures. Once the actual receipts were counted, it turns out that "Hangover" came in at No. 1 with $44.98 million, squeaking by the $44.14 million pulled in by "Up" in its second weekend. My bad (and everyone else's), and congratulations to "Hangover" for getting bragging rights.

And J.D. Salinger loves "Terminator Salvation." Or so says "The Onion."

Carl Frederickson's got pretty good legs for an old guy: The second-weekend take for "Up" was only 33% off its mammoth debut. Not only that, but the film's $44.2 million estimated weekend gross squeaked past the $43.2 million opening weekend for the heavily promoted and very well reviewed "The Hangover." Of course, each movie theoretically plays to a completely different audience, but how do you explain the legions of 20-somethings I saw at the Fenway last night when I took the family to see "Up"? And how do you explain that my wife (age unspecified, but let's just say she's not in the target demo) loved "The Hangover"? Both films, it turns out, have the strength to play far beyond their already sizeable niches of "family movie" and "guy flick."

And then there was "Land of the Lost" -- ostensibly a Will Ferrell youth comedy based on a 35-year-old Saturday morning TV show. In other words, a movie with no discernible audience. It performed accordingly: $19.5 million, Ferrell's weakest since "Semi-Pro" last year.

"Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian" dropped another 40% in its third weeekend, clearly impacted by the success of "Up," and "Terminator Salvation" clanked down a sharper 50% -- its run is pretty much over here although, not surprisingly, "Salvation" opened like gangbusters overseas, with a further $67.5 million in foreign grosses. "Star Trek," by contrast, is holding up nicely in its fifth week and is closing in on a $250 million total gross.

Among limited releases, Sam Mendes' bohos-look-for-America dramedy "Away We Go" opened strongly in four theaters -- $35,000 per-theater! -- on the strength of a good cast and some glowing reviews (not, notably, the Times' A.O. Scott, who was roused to an unusually high dudgeon for him). It opens in Boston this Friday.

More box office info can be found at Box Office Mojo and from Leonard Klady.

A true wild child of Hollywood, Carradine was a member of a performing dynasty, a 60s survivor, a legendary hellraiser, and a consistently underrated actor. His death at 72 in a Bangkok hotel room -- there are now conflicting reports that he either committed suicide or died of natural causes -- robs us of a chance to see where his comeback in the "Kill Bill" movies would have ultimately led.

His father was actor John Carradine, and the son strikingly resembled the father in gaunt, sinewy, laid-back intensity (much more so than half-brothers Keith and Robert Carradine). David was born John Arthur Carradine but changed his name when he started seriously pursuing acting, sometime after dropping out of San Francisco State College and following a two-year army stint. He did Broadway (261 performances as an Incan king with Christopher Plummer in "The Royal Hunt of the Sun") and landed the lead in a short-lived TV series remake of the classic western "Shane," both of which prepped Carradine for his breakout year of 1972. That was when a young Martin Scorsese cast him as the labor leader-turned-bank robber love interest of "Boxcar Bertha," the director's first Hollywood film, and when Carradine signed up to play Kwai Chang Caine, the half-Chinese Shaolin monk hero of the seminal TV series "Kung Fu."

The show, which ran until 1975, made him a star, further popularized Asian martial arts, and introduced the word "Grasshopper" as a term of endearment. It also arguably put Carradine's career in a box, despite a fine and cryptic performance as Woody Guthrie in Hal Ashby's 1976 "Bound for Glory". (Carradine and "Bound" cinematographer Haskell Wexler recently mixed it up at an L.A. screening of the film; in later years, the actor provided as much entertainment offscreen as on.)

He also appeared in such classic drive-in junk (a term of praise in this case) as 1975's "Death Race 2000," starred in one of Ingmar Bergman's very few English-language movies, 1977's "The Serpent's Egg" (a notorious bomb at the time, it may be due for reappraisal), and in 1980 appeared with Keith and Robert as the Younger Brothers in Walter Hill's "The Long Riders," a majestic neo-western that easily transcends the gimmickry of its casting.

But "Kung Fu" kept paying the bills, and Carradine returned to play Caine in a 1986 TV movie and Caine's grandson in the TNT series "Kung Fu: The Legend Continues," which ran from 1993 to 1997. The success of the original show allowed him to intermittently direct labors of love like the little-seen "Americana" (shot as time and money allowed from 1973 onwards, it was finally released in 1983), in which Carradine plays a troubled Vietnam vet obsessed with rebuilding a merry-go-round.

He wrote the music for that movie, too. In truth, the guy did a little bit of everything: composing and performing music, sculpting, painting, kung fu exercise tapes, voice-over work for shows like "King of the Hill," TV cameos, writing his autobiography (it's called "Endless Highway," and at 600 pages he wasn't kidding). He played himself in a "Lizzie Maguire" episode and directed a few, too. Man's gotta eat.

And then came "Kill Bill" volumes I (2003) and especially II (2004), in which Tarantino called upon all the hard living, rattlesnake menace, and Zen cool Carradine had accumulated over the years. The climactic scene lets the actor summon the spirit of Caine and give himself up to the dreaded Five Point Palm Exploding Heart Technique without giving up an inch of his lethal, insolent dignity. It's a mark of Carradine's ongoing work-ethic that he appeared in an astounding 37 movies after the second "Kill Bill," few of which have received or will receive any respect, all of which paid, and some of which he hopefully enjoyed.

Another thing Carradine did a lot of was get married: Five times in all, with three children: daughters Calista and Kansas and, with then-girlfriend Barbara Hershey, a son named Free (he now goes by Tom). If you count "Stretch," the film he was working on when he died, Carradine appeared in around 145 movies. That's not even close to the 229 his dad made, but it's still the stuff of a working actor, and I truly hope that gave him more pride than being an A-list star. He was too weird, too ornery, and too tapped into the ghosts of the 1960s and the modern American West to sit comfortably atop the film industry's complacent heap. That's what made him a keeper.

The AP has reported that actor David Carradine was found found dead yesterday, an apparent suicide, in a Bangkok hotel room. The star of TV's "Kung Fu" and Quentin Tarantino's "Kill Bill" films was 72. Wikipedia has the basic biography; details and appreciations will be forthcoming.

The terrifically readable (if inherently morbid) webzine Obit has a new piece on "the 10 Greatest Movie Death Scenes." Any list that covers both Fredo Corleone and the Wicked Witch of the West is okay by me, but the comment section acknowledges that writer Kevin Nance has barely scratched the surface here. Off the top of my head (I've got a "Hangover" review to write), here are five movie farewells I find it impossible to forget:

"The Last of the Mohicans" (1992) Jodhi May, as Alice Munro, takes a header off a cliff rather than be taken prisoner by Magua (Wes Studi). Her calm expression of acceptance and his stoic look of bafflement is the movie's eeriest moment of drama.

"Peter Ibbetson" (1935) Long-forgotten (although you can find it on DVD) but visually arresting fantasy-romance in which Gary Cooper and Ann Harding play lovers who meet beyond death in a privileged alternate-world Eden. Cooper's final scene is a masterpiece of lighting, sorrow, and joy.

"White Heat" (1949) Jimmy Cagney makes it to the top of the world. After a career playing criminals, the star finally lets us see the screaming big-baby id beneath the tough guy.

"Munich" (2005) The houseboat scene in which Jeanette the Dutch assassin (Marie-Josee Croze) gets taken out by the Israeli avengers. Intentionally creepy and more than a little misogynistic (what are those phallic zip-guns the killers use?), the sequence also daringly uses quiet and duration to confront the notion of a person confronting her own death as it happens. Spielberg used this tactic in "Saving Private Ryan" too -- think of the agonizingly slow demises of the characters played by Adam Goldberg and Giovanni Ribisi -- but here he blurs the moral lines in provocatively heinous ways.

"Psycho" (1960) Fifty shots that cut film history in half.

What are yours?

Yikes: $68.2 million in one weekend for Pixar's "Up" -- that's the third highest launch for one of the company's films (behind "The Incredibles" and "Finding Nemo"). The grosses are slightly qualified by A) rises in ticket prices (if you adjust for inflation, "Up" comes in fifth, with "Toy Story 2" and "Monsters, Inc." ahead of it too) and B) the release of the new film in 1,534 theaters equipped with 3D projection -- which means that 23% of the 6,700-theaters playing "Up" could charge more for admission and ended up taking in 51 percent of the movie's weekend total. That's a solid vote for 3D and for Disney's marketing machine, not for any intrinsic 3D-ness of the film itself.

The other major new release of the weekend was director Sam Raimi's very well reviewed return to horror, "Drag Me To Hell," but since the average multiplex-goer has no idea who Sam Raimi is, the love translated to a solid but not stellar $16.6 million third place opening. If audiences cotton to the director's patented fusion of gore and slapstick, the movie may show some legs.

Second place went to "Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian," which declined 53 percent from its opening weekend, obviously impacted by "Up." In fourth place was "Terminator Salvation," which dropped a sizable 62 percent, evidence that the latest in the franchise won't play much beyond its fanbase.

Box Office Mojo has more numbers, while Leonard Klady has more analysis.

the cast of "Summer Hours," at the Kendall; see below for details. See the movie, too.

The Dardennes brothers come to Cambridge and the Harvard Film Archive on Sunday, accompanying their 2002 film "The Son," about the shifting, mysterious relationship between a carpenter and his young apprentice. That and the brothers' appearance with 1999's "Rosetta" on Monday is the feather in the cap of the Archives' splendid Dardennes overview.

If you're not in the mood for quiescent French profundity, there's a new Pixar in town: "Up." As expected, it's wonderful. No, really. You don't need to have a kid in tow. Just go. Wesley, meanwhile, says "Drag Me to Hell" is a successful return to "Spider-Man" director Sam Raimi's schlock-horror-comedy roots, although it takes a while for star Alison Lohman to get up the gumption and play along. (Where's "Evil Dead" star Bruce Campbell when you need him?)

If you're A Merchant-Ivory/Miramax devotee and you're having cold-turkey withdrawal symptoms from the general lack of upscale period movies in theaters at the moment, "Easy Virtue" will get the monkey off your back for an hour or two. It's a pleasant Roaring 20s confection, no more, and star Jessica Biel will never be a Noel Coward heroine no matter how hard she tries. But the clothes and the cast are pretty, and it beats getting hit on the head repeatedly with heavy machinery. Or, as I like to call it, "Terminator Salvation."

The Brattle is premiering the coolly furious "Katyn," an epic history lesson from 83-year-old Polish filmmaking legend Andrzej Wajda about the WWII massacre of the title. And Wajda should know; his father was one of the 22,000 Polish officers and POWs killed by Soviet troops.

The MFA has a mixed bag of films over the weekend, highlighted by the return of "Noodle," an audience favorite from this year's Boston Jewish Film Festival.

A shout-out, too, to the translucent, transcendant "Summer Hours," which goes into its second week at the Kendall Square. Wesley reviewed the new Olivier Assayas movie last Friday -- and liked it fine -- but I was bowled over when I caught up with the film over the weekend (it's available On Demand as well). A story about (and a study of) three grown children dealing with the emotional and fiscal demands of their late mother's estate, "Summer Hours" doesn't sound like much on paper, but it turns out to be incomparably moving, especially if you've ever been in the position of those grown children. Charles Berling plays the oldest brother, settled and prosperous and certain that all his mother's artworks, and even the rambling country house itself, should and will stay in the family forever. Juliette Binoche and Jeremie Renier play his less committed siblings -- she's an artist in New York, he's a businessman with a family in China -- and they want to sell because for them their mother's belongings meant everything to her and nothing to them.

The film's about value, in other words: The prices we put on memories versus the prices we put on things,and what happens when the two get muddled, as they always do. (To a slightly lesser degree, it's about the unraveling of families and nations in the new global economy.) The acting is deceptively naturalistic but smart and full of feeling; in the early scenes with the great French actress Edith Scob (long, long ago the star of the art-horror classic "Eyes Without a Face") as the mother, Binoche shows you exactly what personality traits her character has inherited (self-absorption, quick-wittedness, an eye for beauty) and where she differs. The final scenes, with a teenage granddaughter (played by the striking Alice de Lencquesaing) briefly and powerfully glimpsing exactly what she has just lost, is a killer.

I don't know; maybe "Summer Hours" won't speak to you as loudly if you haven't put a parent and his or her world to rest, as I and a number of my friends have done in the past few years (we're that age). Maybe it will. It's worth finding out.

Variety reports (subscription required, I think) that the Tokyo-based Ryukoku University, in partnership with Kurosawa Production, has finished digitizing 27,431 artifacts from the files of the late, great filmmaker Akira Kurosawa. The items, available at a gateway site maintained by the university, include scripts, photos, storyboards, and other materials used in the making of the director's 30 features. There's a catch: You have to be able to read Japanese to navigate the holdings, and while you can download the offerings into a basket, there's no way that I can suss out to get them to your computer. But so what? Randomly surfing the site's folder hierarchy results in serendipitous discoveries from "The Seven Samurai," "Throne of Blood," "Rashomon," "Kagemusha," "Madadayo," and much more. A fun way to while away some office downtime and look like you're doing impressive research at the same time, and if you don't really know who this man is, for pity's sakes, go rent "Seven Samurai" right now.

"Uh-oh. I think we broke Christian Bale's concentration."

Given the choice between a noisy, fast, very silly Ben Stiller sequel and a grim new entry in a beloved sci-fi action franchise, Memorial Day audiences went for the comedy. Of course, "Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian," which made an estimated $70 million from Friday through Monday, was on 7,000 screens at 4,096 theaters, while "Terminator Salvation" ($54 million) premiered on "only" 6,400 screens at 3,530 venues. And if you factor in the Thursday opening-day take for "Terminator," its weekend haul becomes $67 million, so it's almost a draw.

Still, I think the showdown proves two things. One: Never underestimate the drawing power of a promised good time. "Night at the Museum" may have been a sequel, but it was a sequel to a huge popular hit and not a bad one at that, and trailers made the new film look like much more of the same. Two: Don't over-estimate the mass appeal of a fundamentally cult property like "The Terminator". Yes, the first film (and its sequel) are pop touchstones but the series doesn't have the durable history of, say, the "Batman" brand. More damagingly, "Salvation" doesn't have a breakout performance on the order of Heath Ledger in "The Dark Knight" -- even if he'd lived, he would have put the movie over the top commercially. Christian Bale on autofocus and a decent performance from newcomer Sam Worthington can't haul "Salvation" to those heights. In any event, "Night" was the safer bet if you were taking the family, while the testosterone-heavy "Terminator" isn't exactly a date movie. Taking all that into account, "Terminator Salvation" actually did quite well under the circumstances, with a $15,000 per-theater-average that's close to "Night"'s $17,000 PTA.

Understand that all these first-weekend numbers reflect only a movie's marketing draw and have very little to do with its actual quality or lasting commercial appeal. That's for weeks 2, 3, and 4 to prove. For instance, "Star Trek" held the #3 spot in its third week of release, dropping 31% from last weekend to take in $29.4 million for a total gross of $191 million. "Angels and Demons," by contrast, is already making less its second week in release, with $27.7 million reflecting a 40% drop from its opening. One movie's got legs, the other not so much. The only other new studio movie this week, the dumdum parody "Dance Flick," made $13 million, not bad considering the genre and lack of stars. This is where the teens too old for "Night at the Museum" and not into "Terminator" went.

In limited-release land, where per-theater-averages tell the story more than grosses do, Noel Coward period-comedy "Easy Virtue" banked on the name of star Jessica Biel to average $14,600 at 10 theaters (it opens in the Boston area this Friday), while Steven Soderbergh's "The Girlfriend Experience" managed a reasonable $6,667 PTA at 30 moviehouses. (Is theatrical business for "Girlfriend" hurt by its simultaneous availability on cable on-demand? Probably; that's how my wife watched the movie Saturday night. Either way, distribution company Magnolia gets the money.) The real story, though, may be con-man comedy "The Brothers Bloom" broadening its base from four theaters to 52 and averaging a strong $10,000 at each one. I knew this movie had a cult waiting for it, even if I'm not a member.

More box office stats at Box Office Mojo and Movie City News' Leonard Klady, the latter's numbers reflecting only the first three days of the four-day weekend.

Last Saturday, I left Jacques Audiard's "Un Prophète" with a sense that I'd just seen the winner of the Palme d'Or. I won't drag out the suspense: I was wrong. Audiard's movie couldn't be better or more excitingly made. It also couldn't be more problematic, at least for me (racial regime change in the French criminal underworld? Cool!). But come the Cannes film festival's closing ceremony, the movie had to make do with runner-up, the Grand Jury Prize, which is like being Roger Federer the trophy ceremony of the French Open, watching Rafael Nadal raise up the bigger cup. (Actually, Quentin Tarantino has said, not laughingly, that Cannes is the "cinema Olympics," and he's right.)

The Federer in this scenario would the Austrian Micheal Haneke, who won the Palme D'or for his black-and-white parable about the cruelty of German patriarchy, "Die Weisse Bande" or ("The White Ribbon"). (It's his fifth prize at Cannes, his first Palme d'Or). I left the screening last Wednesday night with the feeling that this might be the competition movie to beat -- and not because the jury president was Isabelle Huppert, whom Haneke directed in a landmark piece of acting in 2002's "The Piano Teacher." It was the first movie in the competition that felt like more than the sum of its many parts.

A 2-hour, 40-minute film about a small German village beset by strange, violent acts is a hard sell, but the stressful sensation it produces is one of the things I want in a movie. It's nearly flawless, mysterious, damning, funny in its own way. Yes, there isn't a hair out of place with this film (meticulousness being warning sign for madness). And, yes, there was a certain wildness and spontaneity in a lot of the bigger entertainments in the main competition (the Audiard, Marco Bellocchio's Vincere," Park Chan-wook's "Thirst," even Lars von Trier's "Antichrist). But Haneke's skill a visual and narrative storyteller elevate the movie a level about those of his peers. I'm more immediately partial to the psychosexual audacity of "The Piano Teacher" or the political bulls eye he hits with "Caché." Still, this is an achievement.

During the festival, I didn't think much about what the jurists would go for. To each their own. But looking at the winners, the selection make sense. Two of the women on the jury of 7 - Huppert and Asia Argento - epitomize occupational fearlessness. If you want a double feature that bound to make you glad you're well adjusted (carnally, psychologically, whatever), watch a movie starring each back to back. The other two women - Shu Qi and Robin Wright Penn - have loads of professional integrity (Penn's acting is getting better with age).

It's possible to see how these women, and the jury's four men - the filmmakers Lee Chang-Dong, Nuri Bilge Ceylan, and James Gray, and the screenwriter and novelist Hanif Kureishi, and the filmmaker could arrive at "Kinatay"'s Brillante Mendoza for the directing prize. The movie immerses us in one awful night for a Manilla prostitute, who's thrown in a van, beaten up, and driven what feels like all night to a house to undergo more brutality. Mendoza has talked about how the movie captures something that's really happening in Manilla.

That explanation is fine if unhelpful as a balm against the experience of watching the movie itself. and surely the jury was briefed on how its unstinting (unsteady) camerawork was an instrument of exposing great social tragedy. But I had no use for this this movie. And despite what I said earlier about this cast of jurors could agree on Mendoza, this is actually puzzling. Nonetheless, I'm happy for him, if only because his other work is so full of life that it's hard to imagine that he'll keep up with these grueling pseudo-tracts forever.

Lou Ye was given the screenwriting prize for "Spring Fever," the first movie I saw this year. Its visual ambiguities were frustrating (Lou has styled his actors to seem interchangeable; it looks they all have the same haircut). But screenwriting teachers should use the movie's emotional intricacies to demonstrate how to prevent your sex drama from becoming a soap opera.

The acting prizes were more predictable. The jury named Christoph Waltz, who plays the Nazi colonel in Quentin Taratino's "Inglourious Basterds," best actor. Waltz's white-gloved approach to this evil man is familiar. But Tarantino's movie has a farce in its blood, and there's some Mel Brooks madness just beneath the surface of this performance. I have two first choices: Filippo Timi for giving us a volcanically sexy young Benito Mussolini in "Vincere," an exciting movie that didn't make a dent in the closing ceremonies; and the great Song Kang-ho who put a lot of anguished comedy into the vampire priest he played in "Thirst." (Song was sexy, too.)

For actress, the jury went for Charlotte Gainsbourg in "Antichrist," which is a kind of empathy vote. Huppert and Argento have suffered as much on screen. And Ceylan, in "Climates," wrote a rough sex scene that makes that might have sprung to mind as he watch Gainsbourg undergo a psychosexual meltdown for von Trier. I thought they might have gone for Giovanna Mezzogiorno as Mussolini's little-known baby mama in "Vincere" or Katie Jarvis, a troublesome would-be hip-hop dancer in Andrea Arnold's "Fish Tank."

Arnold actually shared the Jury Prize with Park Chan-wook. It's a kind of honorable mention. Park's acceptance speech was humble and frank.

"I think I still have a long way to go before I become a true artist. I must admit, I have yet to experience the pangs of creation. All I have experienced is the joy of creation. When my first two films bombed at the box office, it was a long time before I could make this third feature. So this is an immense pleasure for me, from the conception of the film to its release – except for the interviews. It's the last step for a film, to be screened at the Cannes Festival. I'd also like to express my sincere thanks to the members of the Jury. Please allow me to share this honor with my great friend and longtime partner in filmmaking, Mr. Song Kang-Ho."

The jury also gave a shout-out to 87-year-old Alain Resnais, who graced the competition (and befuddled me) with his latest movie, "Les Herbes Folles." The award had less to do with the film than with his body of work. It' was a special Lifetime Achievement Award for "his exceptional contribution to the history of cinema." He bounded on the stage, looking like Karl Lagerfeld's snappier, preppier non-vampire cousin. He bounded onto the stage and accepted the award in a manner that suggest he's prepared to outlive his movies.

The festival ends on Sunday afternoon, and sadly, I'm leaving town before I get to see new movies by Gaspar Noé and Tsai Ming-liang. More sadly, my last film this year was "The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus," which is Terry Gilliam's latest attempt to be Terry Gilliam. It's a sludgy affair about a seemingly immortal English wizard (Christopher Plummer), his brushes with death (Tom Waits), and his traveling fun-house wagon.

Things are enlivened somewhat by Heath Ledger, who plays a shady fellow in a nice suit. The actor died during the shoot and his charisma, misused here, will be dearly missed (the first time we seem him he's hanging under a bridge). Gilliam, meanwhile, had a movie to finish. So in a surreal burst of improvisation, Johnny Depp, Colin Farrell, and Jude Law timeshare Ledger's part. I wish I could say it helped. Many of the strangers sitting around me slept for stretches. The man to my left snored. Rather than sleep, I thought about what else I saw earlier in the week but failed to report.

For instance, my last film on Tuesday night was the new Alain Resnais. The movie, “Les Herbes Folles,” caused me a lot of aggravation. My eyes rolled for the first 45 minutes. His camera is as light and nimble as ever, swirling around what, for me, was a trivial comedy, cuter than I need the great Resnais to be. He applies generous helpings of cinematic felicity to a story about a married Parisian (André Dussolier) who falls in love with a dentist (Sabine Azéma) whose wallet he finds (it’s taken from a novel by Christian Gailly; the story, not the wallet). Dussolier calls Azéma up, sends her love notes, and slashes the tires on her sporty yellow Smart. She tells him to get lost and calls the cops. But this being the start of l’amour fou, she finds herself stalking him in kind.

Generously narrated, "Les Herbes Folles" is a movie in love with both its movieness and its literariness, and, at 87, Resnais can do as he pleases. (He still dresses as he wants – chicly, like it’s still 1966.) But “Les Herbes Folles” loves cool and luxury as much it is does the films it alludes to. The camera takes undue interest in the production design of the lovers’ homes and their well-appointed good taste. (Azéma for her first 15 minutes is photographed from behind, her trademark coif of scarlet frizz teasing us as she buys a pair of Marc Jacobs shoes. When she turns around, I half expected the front to be more of the back: that walking haircut.)

The movie is too joyful to be completely insufferable, although Azéma (together, yet again, with Dussolier and Resnais) has been a taste I’ve never acquired. After 70 minutes or so the dentist’s plane gets in on the act (it’s part of what attracts Dussolier to her; he sees a pilot's license in her wallet), and the movie tries to take off. Resnais gradually begins to upend the cuteness with the occasional subversion of the matters at hand. It's a looser side of the master dream-weaver who made “Night and Fog,” “Hiroshima, Mon Amour,” “Last Year at Marienbad,” and “Mélo.”

The movie also concludes at least twice, which was also admirably unexpected, but by that point Resnais had long lost me. And yet the packed house was really with this movie. They laughed at everything Dussolier and Azéma said. Even so, its creamy romantic pretensions smack of Pepé Le Pew by way of Alan Rudolph - or as close as Nancy Meyers is likely to get to Cannes. The title means “Wild Grass,” which is what I presume Resnais smoked during the production.

I left the screening fully expecting to commiserate with others. Imagine my surprise when, the following morning, a friend and I started to catch each other up on the previous day’s events, and she mentioned that she “flipped” for the Resnais. (“You did?”) And off she went, dancing in a reverie, enraptured by Resnais’s whimsy and how he captures something very true and specific about a certain kind of French literature (my friend is American, but she knows) and cinema – non-narrative, fantastical, romantic.

Her face beamed for our entire talk, and when I asked about the movie, her hands flew immediately over her heart. It’s one of the very few films in the festival with an appreciable bright side. That I didn’t care for it seemed to sadden and perplex her (“huh, another person I love didn’t like it”), but not enough to bring her down. Eventually, we went our separate ways. I, by foot. She, by cloud.

My preferred work of artistic preciousness in the main competition was Elia Suleiman’s “The Time That Remains, “ which screened Thursday night. It’s a movie whose loveliness grows on you. The film provides a brief, comic history of modern Middle East history, eventually from the perspective of Suleiman’s childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. For the first third, it’s all overdetermined, with combat sequences surreally orchestrated for farce. Israel bullies the witty, dourly despairing Palestinians.

The latter going is better. A small speechless Nazareth child grows into a skinny speechless teenager who grows into Suleiman himself, a middle-aged man in fabulous clothes who stares at his sad old mother in his modest, lovely childhood house. The film’s politics are playful but pointed – see the director pole-vault, with the help of the effects department, over a section of giant concrete partition. (That sequences is even better than his unexpected “Matrix” tribute from “Divine Intervention.”)

Scenes are repeated or slightly revised, and the geometric shot composition is as exquisite if less foreboding as Michael Haneke’s in “The White Ribbon.” Suleiman’s eyes remain popped throughout. He moves from room to room like something animatronic. It’s unclear that anyone can really even see him. But his detachment gets at a kind of otherness and division he must feel when he's at home. The soullessness that might mark another director’s attempt to treat his life, family, and Arabness so dreamily is never a factor. This is a fanciful, funky movie with a supernatural kick. Suleiman is the filmmaker as limbo ghost, directing a movie while simultaneously dead and alive.

Yikes, it's almost 1 p.m. and I'll be hosting an online Q&A session. Come back in a few and play.