Second thoughts about the mission?

Artificial intelligence founding father, MIT professor emeritus, and voice-of-HAL-consultant Marvin Minsky will be taking questions tomorrow after the 7 p.m. screening of Stanley Kubrick's ''2001: A Space Odyssey" at the Coolidge Corner Theatre.

Back when Kubrick was developing the movie, which was released in 1968, he turned to Minsky for advice on making the talking computer accurate.

''Stanley just wanted to be sure that there was nothing absurd," says Minsky by phone from his Brookline home. ''He asked if a computer would be able to talk in 2001, and I said that it will be able to pronounce very well, but I doubt if it will understand anything. And he said, 'Well, that's my problem; the question is whether the speech will be good.' "

''He was an incredible perfectionist," Minsky adds. ''He had designed a fancy computer with these modules that had all sorts of color coding and so forth, and I said, 'That's very beautiful, but I think it will probably look much more boring, because the computer can tell what's going on from the inside. And so he scraped this big set and made the one you see in the movie, where there are just racks of little black boxes."

Minsky has recently finished a book he's been working on for 15 years called ''The Emotion Machine," about how to make thinking computers. It's scheduled for publication in August by Simon & Schuster. For information on the ''2001" screening and Minsky's Q&A session, call 617-734-2500 or go to www.coolidge.org.

IN TOWN: Algerian-born Merzak Allouache will be traveling from his base in Paris to attend a festival of six of his movies next weekend at the Harvard Film Archive.

Allouache's 1994 film ''Bab el-Oued City" was made during the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in Algeria and presented incredibly dangerous circumstances for the film crew. It won the International Critics' Prize at Cannes that year. His 2005 ''Bab el Web" revisits the same geographic pocket of Algiers 10 years later and involves cyber-connections, with a French woman traveling to the city to join a young Algerian man she has met online.

Allouache is this year's recipient of the Genevieve McMillan and Reba Stewart Fellowship for Distinguished Filmmaking, which was founded to bring African filmmakers to Harvard, and will be present (with a translator for Q&A) after each screening. Info at 617-495-4700 and www.harvardfilmarchive.org.

''BROKEBACK TO THE FUTURE": A brilliant two-minute film by local college students that exploded on the Internet two weeks ago is still making the e-mail rounds. The film is a fake trailer using clips from the ''Back to the Future" movies and the music and atmosphere of ''Brokeback Mountain" to hint at a love-that-can-not-be-named between Michael J. Fox's Marty McFly and Christopher Lloyd's mad scientist. The mash-up of images and music was concocted by an Emerson College comedy group called Chocolate Cake City. Watch the trailer (though skip a dopey short film the group posted last weekend about the derivation of its ''chocolate cake" name) online at www.youtube.com (search for Brokeback to the Future).

BRATTLE BARRELS ON: With $250,000 raised toward a goal of $500,000 to pay down its debt and boost its marketing, the Brattle Film Foundation announced earlier this month that it has signed a one-year extension on its lease and will continue programming at least through the end of 2006.

What that means for you: more Bugs Bunny. The 11th annual Bugs Bunny Film Festival began this weekend and runs daily through next Sunday. Call 617-876-6837 or go to www.brattlefilm.org for film schedules.

FOR-FEE SEMINAR: Women in Film & Video/New England is hosting a tax planning seminar for filmmakers and media artists next Saturday at 10 a.m. Beryl Denker, owner of ABR Associates, of Quincy, will cover changes in tax law and new federal and Massachusetts incentive tax credits for film productions. Men as well as women are invited. For location details and registration go to www.womeninfilmvideo.org and click on ''Programs & Events" and then ''Workshops."

BOOKMARK THIS: The WGBH website hosts a nifty collection of audio and video files of lectures and conversations about filmmaking. The files are free to access. They include Cynthia Close, director of Documentary Educational Resources in Watertown, talking about ''Defining Your Market Before You Make Your Film," author Tom Perrotta, whose novel ''Election" was turned into the movie of the same name, on his foray into cinema, and local filmmaker Ellie Lee moderating a panel discussion on the pros and cons of making films in Boston. Go to http://forum.wgbh.org and click ''Select Series." A link to the ''Filmmakers Series" is near the bottom of the page.

SCREENINGS OF NOTE: The Boston-based Chlotrudis Society for Independent Film hosts its sixth annual collection of live-action, animated, narrative, and documentary shorts from around the world at the Coolidge Corner Theatre through Feb. 23. Included in the series is ''Thug" by Boston filmmaker Geva Patz, who won the New England Emerging Filmmaker Award at the 2003 Woods Hole Film Festival (www.chlotrudis.org). . . . ''The Films of Charles and Ray Eames" (1989) plays the Institute of Contemporary Art on Friday at 8 p.m. in conjunction with the museum's current exhibition ''Living in Motion: Design and Architecture for Flexible Dwelling" (617-266-5152 and www.icaboston.org). . . . ''Mirrorball #3: Global Selection" is at the Museum of Fine Arts on Saturday at 4:15. Featured videos include Björk's ''Triumph of the Heart" directed by Spike Jonze and Johan Renck's prizewinning video for The Streets' ''Dry Your Eyes" (617-267-9300 and www.mfa.org). . . . The African Film Festival continues at the MFA this week through Feb. 26.

Leslie Brokaw can be reached at lesliebrokaw@yahoo.com.