The last few days of Sundance are always eerily empty and pleasant: The high rollers have gone home, the lines to get into movies become manageable, you can get a table at a restaurant without a wait. And, lo and behold, the back half of this year's festival delivered the goods in the form of a handful of dramas and documentaries that had me actually feeling positive about the state of cinema again. One was "Winter's Bone," which I've already written about and which won two key trophies (What do we call these things? Sundancies? Bobbies?) at the award ceremonies tonight. (I tweeted the event live and have posted the full list of winners below.)

"Bhutto," from directors Jessica Hernandez and Johnny O'Hara, is a bio-doc with an epic sweep and intimations of Shakespearean tragedy. It tells the life story of the late Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto with clarity, sympathy (too much so, her detractors would probably say), and an eye to both personal and political drama. More than anything else, the movie's a feat of archival research and painstaking editing, putting 60 years of complicated history into a coherent and fascinating narrative. Bhutto emerges as a surprisingly life-size legend: The daughter of a fallen icon who herself died trying to coax her country back towards democracy and away from fanaticism. Some good and unexpected talking heads here, including Condi Rice and dictator-in-exile Pervez Musharraf, who swears he had nothing to do with Bhutto's 2007 assassination. Show this one to your daughters as an example of what a woman can do in this world.

On the fictional side, Lisa Cholodenko's "The Kids Are All Right" is an almost flawless comedy of LA bourgeois manners, so attuned to the crunchy therapy-speak of Left Coast Boomers that every line of dialogue is deliciously delusional. ("I know I haven't been my highest self lately," says one character here, as if self-actualization might be on sale at Whole Foods.) The cast is in clover: Annette Bening and Julianne Moore as a self-satisfied Silver Lake lesbian couple whose teenage children (Mia Wasikowska and Josh Hutcherson) rock the apple cart when they decide to locate the sperm donor who's their biological dad. He's played by Mark Ruffalo as a sexy slacker restaurateur (local produce only, dude) who decides he digs being a dad, and the ways in which these characters manage to drive each other crazy is the stuff of very funny observational comedy. Cholodenko landed on the map with "High Art" back in 1998 and followed that up with 2002's "Laurel Canyon"; "The Kids Are All Right" may be her best, most confident work yet. Focus Features, no fools they, snapped the film up for US distribution; when it's released, it's going to play like gangbusters to the very art-house demographic it so lovingly skewers.

There's more to talk about, but you know what? It's 1 a.m. and I'm toast. See you back in Beanworld. Here are the awards:

Special Jury Prize for World Documentary: "Enemies of the People"

World Cinema Cinematography Award for Documentary: Kate McCullough, Michael Lavalle, "His and Hers"

Editing Award for World Documentary: Joelle Alexis, "A Film Unfinished"

Directing Award World Documentary: Christian Frei, "Space Tourists"

Jury Prize for World Documentary: "The Red Chapel"

Special Jury Prize for World Drama: Tatiana Maslany in "Grown-Up Movie Star"

Cinematography Award for World Drama: "The Man Next Door"

Screenwriting Award for World Drama: Juan Carlos Valdivia, "Southern District"

Directing Award for World Drama: Juan Carlos Valdivia, "Southern District"

Jury Prize for World Drama: "Animal Kingdom"

NEXT Award: "Homewrecker"

Audience award for World Documentary: "Wasteland"

Audience award for World Drama: "Contracorriente"

Audience award for US Documentary: "Waiting for Superman"

Audience award for US Drama: "Happythankyoumoreplease"

Special Jury Prize for US Documentary: "Gasland"

Special Jury Prize for US Drama: "Sympathy for Delicious"

Excellence in Cinematography Award for US Documentary: Kirsten Johnson, Laura Poitras, "The Oath"

Excellence in Cinematography Award for US Drama: Zak Mulligan, "Obselidia"

Editing Award for US Documentary: Penelope Falk, "Joan Rivers -- A Piece of Work"

Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award for US Drama: Debra Granik and Anne Rosellini for "Winter's Bone".

Directing Award US Documentary: Leon Gast, "Smash His Camera"

Directing Award for US Drama: Eris Mendelsohn, "3 Backyards"

Jury Prize for US Documentary:  "Restrepo":

Jury Prize for US Drama: "Winter's Bone"

The Temptation of St. Tony

Another day, another five movies. The high point for me may have been offscreen, when I bumped into Aimee Gonzales on a shuttle. She's a star of "Catfish" -- well, not really a star, more like a very, very featured player. You have to see the movie to get why it might have been ultra-strange to suddenly come across her in the flesh; I told her I enjoyed her performance, and we both got a mordant meta-chuckle out of that one. The effect was a little like seeing the Cheshire Cat's grin hovering opposite you on a bus.

None of the other films I saw today topped "Winter's Bone" (see previous entry) for all-around impact, but "The Oath" came pretty close: a documentary about Al Qaeda members and the US government's prosecution of same that becomes more maddeningly complex the longer it runs. (And a little complexity in a black-and-white world is extremely welcome.) Director Laura Poitras tells the tale of two cousins: Salim Hamdan, a one-time driver and mechanic for Osama bin Laden who rotted in Guantanamo Bay for seven years despite all evidence that he was a low-level grunt with no inside knowledge or pull whatsoever; and Abu Jandal, Osama's one-time bodyguard who most certainly was plugged in and remains free, driving a taxi in Yemen and working to bring bright young boys into the jihadist cause.

Hamdan remains unseen in the film aside from letters read in voiceover. Jandal, by contrast, welcomed Poitras's cameras to the extent of installing one in his cab, and he's a fascinating subject: an intellectual firebrand, media ham, and family guy who doesn't want us to know he disapproved of 9/11 (don't let it get out, but he thinks killing innocent people is a bad idea) and who's both thoughtful and manipulative as hell. "The Oath" follows the progress of the 2006 Supreme Court case that ultimately freed Hamdan, but its larger drama is the paradox between the imprisoned pawn and the free radical.

Earlier today I tweeted a drive-by review of "Douchebag" to the effect that it's a mumblecore 'Sideways', and is "short, cheap, sharp, forgettable." That's not entirely fair; I forgot "funny". In the title role,  Andrew Dickler is impressive as a character type the movies don't often give us: The control-freak Vegan blowhard, complete with old-man white socks under his sandals and a raging superiority complex toward anyone who isn't as macrobiotic as he is. When Drake Doremus' movie begins, you're not sure which brother is supposed to be the butthead: Dickler's Sam, engaged to be married to a surprisingly patient woman (Marguerite Moreau, charming) or his kid bro Tom (Ben York Jones), at first glance a layabout artist sponging off mom and dad. The two hit the road in search of Tom's fifth grade girlfriend (don't ask) and Sam's true colors emerge in a pre-wedding panic attack that veers into casual sex and carnivorism. It's bright stuff even if the characters at times behave in ways that just don't make sense. So why did I barely remember the movie five minutes after it was over?

A word about "The Temptation of St. Tony": Weird. Actually, three words: weird, weird, weird. But, my goodness, it's nice to find a good old fashioned art-movie at Sundance -- black-and-white, dreamlike, riddled with impenetrable symbolism. The only thing missing is a dwarf. Writer-director Veiko Ounpuu's heady drama opens with a funeral and a car crash, and it apparently represents 50% of the annual film output of Estonia. Now I'm really curious to see the other one. There are borrowed elements of Bergman, Bunuel, Herzog, Greenaway, David Lynch, and many more in this epic nightmare about a holy fool (Taavi Eelmaa, with high "Eraserhead" hair) staggering across a muddy moral wasteland, but there's also a welcome sense of humor, and, say what you will, Ounpuu doesn't hold back. "St. Tony" takes its cue from a passage in Dante's "Inferno" wherein the narrator becomes lost in "a forest dark" and the film's a convincing vision of hell on the Baltic. Just don't expect the Estonian Tourist Board to sign on for this one.

Tomorrow's the last full day of the festival -- they hand out the awards starting at 6 pm -- and the town is clearing out. Good for getting into movies; less good if you still haven't sold yours. There has been some action in the last few days, though: Weinstein bought "Blue Valentine," a well-regarded romantic downer starring Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams, and Focus paid $5 million for Lisa Cholodenko's "The Kids Are All Right," which I'm catching tomorrow. The harrowing abuse doc "Family Affair," from Boston filmmaker Chico Colvard, was snapped up by Oprah Winfrey's new cable outlet OWN, and Hanover House (who?) bought Joel Shumacher's "Twelve," about pot-dealing New York rich kids. Shumacher himself has been seen striding about Sundance with flyaway scarf and wraparound shades, looking for all the world like the Ghost of Festivals Past. Like it or not, it's Aimee Gonzales, the virtual star grinning her Cheshire grin, who represents the future.

Some quick hits before I run into my next movie.

Just came from "Winter's Bone," easily the strongest drama I've seen here yet. Director Debra Granik was last seen here with 2004's "Down to the Bone" (what's with the ossified titles?), which introduced Vera Farmiga to the mainstream. With luck -- if the movie gets picked up for distribution, which it richly deserves to -- the same could happen to Jennifer Lawrence (in photo above), who's completely believable as a backwoods Ozark teenager desperate to find her daddy before the bail bondsman takes her house away and leaves her family homeless. Told with a minimum of Hollywood touches, the movie's gripping and occasionally horrifying, as Lawrence's Ree works her way through a society of vicious, drugged-out men and hardfaced women. The obvious comparison, if you're looking for one, is to "Frozen River," but halfway through, it struck me that I was watching a Sam Spade detective film set in hillbilly country with a resourceful 17-year-old sleuth willing to keep asking questions and maybe take a beating in order to burrow down to the truth. Few Sundance movies sustain their vibe all the way to the very end, but this one handles it with confidence. Terrific film; hope that it gets bought and makes its way to you.

Saw the much-lauded "Catfish" last night and it's all that and both more and less. A documentary about three New York professional 20-somethings who make the acquaintance of a midwestern family online and then start questioning whether their new friends are all they say they are, it's told with breezy, confident cybertouches throughout: When people get on a plane to travel cross-country in this movie, we track their progress via Google Earth zoom. "Catfish" is fascinating for what it uncovers about identity games in the internet age and it eventually settles in to contemplate a situation both bizarre and deeply moving, but I couldn't shake the sense that the three filmmakers were more shallow than their own film. The midsection, as they chase down the  truth, reveals a casual youthful cruelty I don't think they copped to in themselves, and the last act wades into deeper waters than seem prepared for. And then there are the audience members convinced the whole thing's a put-on -- a Sundance con of unparalleled proportions. I think it's real -- when I asked him after the screening, co-director Ariel Schulman wondered in disbelief how anyone could think they could make this up --but I also feel that there's a wiser movie in here that remained unmade. What did get to the screen is well worth seeing and arguing about; at the very least, you may want to screen your Facebook friends a little more closely.

"The Taqwacores": stylish, in-your-face debut drama about Muslim punks in Buffalo, based on a novel I now want to read. Lots of fun and truly eye-opening -- the characters are both devoted to Islam and totally hardcore, and as such are rejected by both their Muslim brethren and American punkers. Too bad director Eyad Zahra blows the ending with a confusing climactic sequence and a limp lead-out. Keep an eye on him, though, and keep an eye on actor Dominic Naderi as the smartest and most ferocious of the crew -- the kid burns with star charisma.

 

(Aaron Johnson as John Lennon and Anne-Marie Duff as his mum in "Nowhere Boy")

There's something unreal about arriving midway through a film festival that has steadfastly refused to take off. Everyone seems to be walking around Sundance 2010 holding a party popper that won't pop; the impatient are growing desperate and the philosophical are shrugging their shoulders and going to the documentaries, which are terrific as always. On the other hand, the lowering of expectations -- matched by a lowering of skies and a slow, constantly weeping snowfall -- has resulted in late-festival sprouts of buzz poking through the freeze like spring shoots.

Yes, it's a transitional year, with new festival director John Cooper taking over for the long-serving Geoff Gilmore. Yes, Sundance has announced that it's going back to its indie roots again. Yes, the economy and the specialty film distribution business are in the dumper, even if the Ryan Reynolds-in-a-coffin movie "Buried" sold to Lionsgate. Miramax died today and in Park City -- the town the film company arguably put on the map -- there wasn't a sound.

But things weren't all that different last year and we got "Precious." This year the buzz keeps landing on individual films and flying off again. Case in point: "Animal Kingdom," a brooding all-in-the-family crime drama from Australia that won a few online raves after its first screening and left audiences scratching their heads after the second. Writer David Michôd has a strong premise -- an orphaned high schooler (James Frecheville, suggesting an Aussie Channing Tatum) comes home to a nest of bank-robbing uncles and a loving psycho grandma (Jacki Weaver, giving the film's best performance) -- but he directs his own script with a portentousness that slowly but surely saps the momentum. Bursts of shocking violence can't keep this from playing like the old Sean Penn film "At Close Range" at 16 rpm. The lesson: Beware the genre filmmaker who doesn't trust pulp. 

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Ty here, taking the Park City baton from Wesley, who is winging home as I speak. Man, he looks tired. Or dispirited. This year's tepid dramatic festival entries seem to be taking a toll on everyone, or at least everyone on the shuttle bus I rode to my first film. Which was a documentary, thankfully. My usual modus operandi upon arriving at a festival is to
pick a movie more or less at random and then, halfway through the screening, realize I've chosen wrong.

Sooner or later I had to break that first-movie curse, and with the marvelous "Exit Through the Gift Shop," it finally happened. The thing's a conceptual Chinese box that works: A doc about a filmmaker that's directed by the subject the filmmaker was too hapless to actually make a film about. Still with me? Translated: Banksy, the mysterious/anonymous British street artist (or graffiti punk, depending on where you sit) got so fed up with a manic, eccentric Frenchman named Thierry Guetta following him around with a video-camera for years that he (Banksy) decided to make a movie about him (Thierry) instead.

What starts as a caustic, if kindhearted joke on the part of Banksy ends up blowing up in the face of the entire global street-art scene. Guetta, a clothing boutique owner in L.A. who obsessively taped everything, documented the major names in the movement as they plied their trade (or defaced private property; again, depending). He was buddies with Shepard Fairey, who's interviewed here, as well as a lot of one-monickered artists like Zeus, Dotmatrix, Swoon; his footage of guerrilla art in the making is genuinely remarkable. Trouble was, Guetta just tossed the tapes in a box and when Banksy asked him to turn it into, like, a real film, came back with an unwatchable mess. Fine, says Banksy, I'll be the filmmaker and you go be the artist. And that's where "Exit Through the Gift Shop" really takes off.

I'll say little more other than to note that A) the difference between those with actual talent (Banksy) and those with none (Guetta) turns out to be minimal once the hype machine cranks up, and B) if you hate everything these guys represent -- if you're one of those people who cheered when Fairey was arrested at his Boston art opening last year -- you just might want to see this movie, because everyone involved ends up on the wrong end of the exploding cigar except, ironically, the daft, clueless Thierry Guetta. The mortified look on Shepard Fairey's face as he contemplates the monster he has created is absolutely priceless; Banksy, who holds forth as photographed above with hooded face and digitally altered voice clearly understands the whole cosmic joke of it, but he's still appalled. And he knows that makes it even funnier.

It"s one of those documentaries that should play equally well to audiences who think the street art scene is the real deal and those who think it's all a giant fraud. As "Exit Through the Gift Shop" (what a great, weary title) makes clear, it's more than a little of both.

If the Twitter feeds are to be believed, Kristen Stewart is everywhere. She's posing for pictures with ski bunnies. She signed a poster for Muscle Milk (and, presumably, will take home a case for Taylor Lautner). Unlike Paris Hilton, who infects this town like a cold, Stewart is a celebrity with movies in the schedule. They just screened opposite each other. While half the town tried to get into "The Runaways," I went to "Welcome to the Rileys'," with Stewart as a sloppy, shaky New Orleans exotic dancer who winds up in the care of a grieving owner of a plumbing supply company (James Gandolfini). 

So far, the calm here in Park City is eerie. I'm told that things are placid when there is no film festival. During the festival, however, when the energy hasn't quite ignited, you get nervous that it won't. This could be a matter of the Haitian earthquake, the coming winter Olympics (there are qualifying events nearby), or the ascension of Scott Brown (even over here people are talking). But right now the mood matches the serenity of the freshly powdered roofs. This is great news for skiers. Dana Williams, the mayor of Park City, thanked us tonight for bringing to town some desperately needed snow. 

Most of the screenings here are completely full. But almost never does the need to see a movie rise to the level of desperate pandemonium that occurred this afternoon before a screening of "Hesher."  The lobby of the massive school auditorium where the movie was soon to premiere was mobbed by throngs of people standing virtually still. Outside, a young woman broke into sobs after she failed to reach her parents who were inside with her ticket. (This town's cell towers are besieged, rendering service dial-up slow or non-existent.) 

Two upcoming movie events are bringing Hollywood legends (and legends-in-the-making) to the Boston area.

Tomorrow evening (that's Friday, Jan. 23) starting at 5:30, Boston University's Tsai Performance Center hosts a screening of the 1970 anti-war classic "M*A*S*H" and a panel discussion on director Robert Altman that will include stars Elliott Gould, Sally Kellerman, and Michael Murphy; Altman's widow, Kathryn Reed Altman; BU professor and author of "Robert Altman: The Oral Biography" Mitchell Zuckoff. I'll be moderating the panel; details of time, place, and admission can be found here. The university's house organ BU Today rounds up the usual suspects.

If that gets your Altman freak going, head to the Brattle on Saturday, where an all-day "Celebrating Robert Altman" shindig will unfold with appearances by the actors and screenings of four Altman films -- including the not-on-DVD, ultra-rare "Brewster McCloud," the "M*A*S*H" follow-up that almost killed Altman's career. (Don't let that stop you; it's an endlessly fascinating movie.)

Next up: On Saturday, February 6 at 7 p.m., the Boston Society of Film Critics will host its third annual awards ceremony at the Brattle; among other guests, Jeremy Renner, star of "The Hurt Locker," Golden Globe nominee and -- if there's any justice -- future Oscar nominee, will be present to accept his award for best actor of 2009. Advance tickets can be picked up at the Brattle's website.

And as long as we're putting tacks in calendars, don't forget this year's Coolidge Award, which will be presented to director Jonathan Demme on March 1 and 2. More on that as we get closer.

 

In retrospect, one of the most brilliant masterstrokes surrounding "Avatar" was the decision to release the movie the week before Christmas. Not earlier, not later, but precisely so that that wave of its box office and pop culture appeal would crest just in time for the Golden Globes. And because Cameron has taken the Globes, he's now a lock for the Oscar.

I know, I know, the studio heads only wish they'd planned it that way. But that's what playing blockbuster checkers is all about: making your best move and hoping it works out. A week or two earlier, and the wave might be just past its crest and heading toward a trough; as it is, "The Book of Eli" beat out "Avatar" in theaters last Friday night before the 3D epic came around and took the rest of the weekend. Make no mistake: the "Avatar" wave is a huge one, the sort that comes around once a decade or so, and the movie looks almost certain to break the box office record held by "Titanic." But I don't see the sort of repeat business in the offing that kept "Titanic" in the No. 1 spot for three solid months in 1998: No Leo for the teenage girls and -- admit it -- the story is a retread (fine, call it iconic and timeless) and the characters are plastic action figures. But it sure is a heckuva place to visit...

So congrats to Cameron et al (although I'm with Wesley, who tweeted last night that if there was no living with the director before, the next few months might be unbearable) but congrats as well to 20th Century Fox for helping -- by careful strategy and dumb luck -- to make this movie the event it now is.

I can't improve on Matthew Gilbert's take on the Globes telecast, but allow me to note that Mo'Nique, Christoph Waltz, and Jeff Bridges are now dead-certain locks for Oscars (I'm sorry, Anna, honey, I was rooting for you), and that a world in which Meryl Streep wins best actress, musical or comedy, and Sandra Bullock wins best actress, drama, is a world I no longer recognize as comfortingly familiar.

Here's the weekend box office report from Box Office Mojo: No surprises other than a stronger than expected showing for "Eli" and an official burial ceremony for "The Lovely Bones," which went wide to the sound of crickets.

From my pal Mark Feeney.

Over the past few decades, Tim Burton has carved out a unique and paradoxical niche for himself. He's a mass-appeal misfit, a much-loved loner, and his movies -- the good ones, anyway -- resonate with our inner freaks even as they exert their own freaky-deaky spell. A Burton film invites empathetic gawkery: Were Edward Scissorhands and his tormentors both, drawn to stare and staying to share.

In other words, we're in love with the dark even as we're afraid of it: On that tension, Burton has built a career. It also explains why the "Tim Burton" exhibition that runs through April 26 at New York's Museum of Modern Art is usually a mob scene. Timed tickets to the third floor galleries are necessary for weekends; when my family I went shortly after New Year's, the lines were longer than airport security. There's something disconcerting about dozens of museumgoers craning their necks to look at works that channel so much pain into so much profit.

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Has there been another director more simultaneously hot and cold than Éric Rohmer? His death today, at 89, leaves behind a long trail of movies whose characters think with their libidos and make love with their brains. The experience of watching his films -- until the 1990s it hardly matters which one -- is unique. Rohmer kept his distance. The style of his films was loose yet exacting, almost uninflected. He didn't invent cinéma vérité, but he perfected its illusion of transparent intimacy.

If you couldn't locate him in the personal details of his characters, it was OK. They weren't drawn that specifically. He could, at times, be a stingy scenarist, always sketching too lightly for distinguishing details. His men and women and their moral dilemmas (springing mostly from desire and temptation) were largely interchangeable from one film to the next. But that sameness spoke to a universal ache of sorts. From "My Night at Maud's" (1969) and "Claire's Knee" (1970) to his Tales of the Four Seasons quartet in the 1990s, we came to see in his moviemaking an elemental philosophical wisdom: What made you part of the human condition was a penis or vagina, a heart and mind, a maybe and pied-à-terre or summer house.

Which brings us to the "hot" part of his movies. He could be acutely, OK, agonizingly literary. But he was also unfailingly devoted to sex. In fact, his characters' urge to have it is sometimes what induced both their cerebral sides and the movies'. As he aged, namely by 1983's roundelay, "Pauline at the Beach" (part of his Comedies and Proverbs sextet in the 1980s), he'd discovered affection for the innocence of his nubile young characters. Fifteen-year-old Pauline, in the third film of the series, was meant to be the wisest person on the sandy premises. Of course, the loving closeups of her derriere in a wet bathing suit cast the director in a new light: Botticelli as a dirty old man. But, again, he was more affectionate than his movie was prurient, with its scheming, jaded adults and vestal children.

Rohmer was a critic at Cahiers du Cinéma. He came to filmmaking in the 1950s but is still most famous for "My Night at Maud's," a film about a Catholic engineer (Jean-Louis Trintignant) and devotee of the religious existentialism of Blaise Pascal who considers cheating on his fiancée. "Maud's" was one of his Six Moral Tales (number 3 to be exact), a suite of movies he began in 1962 and completed a decade later with "Chloe in the Afternoon." Those were the kinds of pickles in which Rohmer's men found themselves: with love on one hand, sex on another, and neither hand entirely capable of shaking the other. 

His plots for those movies were variations on F.W. Murnau's lyrical 1927 romance "Sunrise. And part of Rohmer's vérite style involved long discursive swathes in which the characters philosophize and make allusions to great minds and great books while the camera often watched. (On several gorgeous occasions, the director of photography was the legendary Néstor Almendros.) In the latter half of his career, Rohmer committed himself to women characters. In his last decade, he was almost as artistically vigorous as he had been when he started making movies. He shot 2001's "The Lady and the Duke" on high-definition video and used obviously artificial rear projection, technical specifications that are all the more interesting since the movie is a love story of sorts set during the French Revolution. He never stopped trying to grow. Even if by his final film, 2007's "The Romance of Astrea and Celadon," he seemed to be taking it easy.

It's hard to overstate Rohmer's lasting influence, which often amounts to heady verbosity, steady desire, or some conflation of the two. You could see him, platonically, in "My Dinner with Andre" and completely in the mumblecore movie of your choice. He managed to inspire, among many of other variations, Noah Baumbach's "Margot at the Wedding" and Chris Rock's "I Think I Love My Wife," which had nothing specific to do with "Chloe in the Afternoon" and yet everything to do with it. Rohmer is in the air. If you think you love your wife, then, to some extent, you're thinking like a man after Rohmer's heart.

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Art Clokey 1921 - 2010 

I didn't realize Art Clokey, one of pop culture's true originals, had passed away on Friday until I read it in today's Times. Yes, he created Gumby and Pokey, but also -- and I'd forgotten this was him -- "Davey and Goliath," a claymation series that decanted gentle Lutheran moral lessons into young ears in the 1960s. (As a kid, I used to watch it while getting ready for Sunday school -- "Community Auditions" was always on when I got back -- and I still occasionally hear Goliath in the back of my brain telling me "I don't know, Davey -- God doesn't like that" when I'm committing a minor trespass.)

Clokey was, for all purposes, an outsider artist who somehow made it inside the door. The reason Eddie Murphy's profane SNL riff was always so funny was that "Gumby" was a series both serene and surreal, unhinged from commonplace notions of kiddie entertainment in a way that has influenced Pee-wee Herman and other alt-family purveyors but also informed with a quiet sense of purpose somewhere between Martin Luther and Zen. It's no coincidence that a 2008 documentary on Clokey is called "Gumby Dharma." It's also no coincidence that Clokey studied under avant-garde filmmaker and montage artiste Slavko Vorkapich while he was at USC. Yet the inspiration for Gumby came from a much more personal place: Clokey always said he modeled his most famous character after his father, Arthur Farrington, who died in a car accident when young Art was nine. He wasn't kidding, either:

Probably the best way to appreciate Clokey's wayward genius is to take a look at his 1953 claymation breakthrough (and USC graduate project), "Gumbasia":

 Again, it's the loopy handmade funkiness -- the visible and psychic fingerprints, the care in every frame -- that endears. What I love about Clokey's body of work is that it's unique yet within the reach of anyone with a lump of plasticine and a camera. Any kid could do it. Any kid does do it: Below is a video a friend's ten-year-old son made the other day of horror writer H.P. Lovecraft's eldritch god Cthulhu juggling a ball. (The kid hasn't actually read any Lovecraft, I hear, but I guess mom's been telling bedtime stories.) In childlike wit and patient enthusiasm -- if not exactly Christian spiritual underpinnings -- these 12 seconds are rife with all that was and is Clokey. 

Admit it: Now you want to make your own. Go for it. Art would have wanted it that way.

The Boston Festival of Films from Iran begins today at the Museum of Fine Arts, bringing 12 films that include new work by Abbas Kiarostami, Samira Makhmalbaf, and others. (Stills from Kiarostami's "Shirin" are above.) Tomorrow (Saturday) night filmmaker and journalist Maziar Bahari will receive an award for excellence in Iranian cinema and premiere his new film An Iranian Odyssey: Mossadegh, Oil, and the 1953 CIA Coup. A discussion will follow. Bahari was jailed in Iran last year for 118 days after reporting for Newsweek on the post-election protests; he can no longer return to his country. Given the threats to human rights and free speech in Iran and the courage of filmmakers in confronting them, this festival is more necessary than ever. Mark Feeney has a Q&A with Barani in today's Globe.

Two of my reviews today describe the movies in question as "familiar" -- in one case it's a compliment and in one case it's a slap. Why the difference, and in what situations does familiarity breed (my) contempt?

"Crazy Heart" gets the thumbs-up, both in spite of and because of the rut Scott Cooper's film finds itself in. The mini-genre it belongs to -- country singer hits bottom -- is practically gospel by now (I reference the great Rip Torn movie "Payday" in the review, and if you haven't seen this hellacious 1972 dirtball classic, Netflix it now, baby), but it dovetails naturally with the music itself. C&W is about licking old wounds until they bleed anew and making sure the scar never forms: Each song is damnation and redemption in one gloriously self-pitying package. Everyone involved in this movie is on the page: writer-director Cooper; original novelist Thomas Cobb; Jeff Bridges in the lead, at surreally mellow peace with his self-destructiveness; Maggie Gyllenhaal as a weary woman who tumbles for a bad boy again; the songs by T-Bone Burnett and the late Stephen Bruton that fall right into the sin-rinse-repeat rhythms of classic country. The movie is actually about the familiar: How we hammer our lives into cliches and how we have to pull the nails out ourselves from time to time and start from scratch. So, no, I don't mind that I've seen this movie before. All I care is that it's done right.

We come to indie teen comedies for different reasons: To be struck by the freshness of young and impatient sensibilities, to be shocked out of our comfort zones, to see the rotten beams of cliches upended and replaced by new timber. And as snarky and studiously hip as "Youth In Revolt" is -- even as occasionally laugh-out-loud funny -- I'm sorry to say that I just don't need another cleverly turned angry-young-man-in-love farce. Not after "Adventureland" and "Igby Goes Down" and "Rocket Science" and "Garden State" and "(500) Days of Summer" and all the rest, all the way back to "The Graduate" and Coppola's "You're a Big Boy Now" and, in its sense of privileged alienation, "Catcher in the Rye". Maybe you need this kind of movie, especially if you're young and still looking for a film that speaks directly to you and for you, but for the rest of us, watching Michael Cera amusingly dweeb his way through "Youth" is like watching a show dog being put through tricks we've seen hundreds of times before. And that's not the kick in the pants we need from this genre. (That said, if you must, the supporting performances by Ray Liotta, Jean Smart, and the ever-reliable Fred Willard are quite wonderful.)

Wesley likes the new vampire movie so much that now I'm sorry I missed the press screening. Stay away from "Leap Year," though, unless you like watching Amy Adams' career develop engine trouble. The romantic comedy you're looking for about a headstrong girl stuck in the backcountry of Greater Britain for is called "I Know Where I'm Going" and it's still terrific after all these years.

"The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus" will attract a lot of rubberneckers curious to see Heath Ledger's final performance and the interesting sight of Johnny Depp, Jude Law, and Colin Farrell fulfilling their colleague's earthly contractual obligation. It's the usual Terry Gilliam slumgullion stew, though, and similar to "The Brothers Grimm," in which Ledger also appeared. If you're feeling indulgent (I was), you'll find some sweet and sour sustenance here; if not, stay away.

I already blogged about the great improv dramedy documentary at the Somerville tomorrow night. If you can't get into the Bahari event at the MFA, this is your next best bet.

One of the highlights for me of last year's Independent Film Festival of Boston was a documentary called "Trust Us, This is All Made Up" about the high-flying improvisation team of TJ Jagodowski and Dave Pasquesi. The duo, both Second City vets, doesn't do improv comedy but rather improv farce, creating multi-act plays on the fly with developed characters, themes, cliffhangers, and moments of pure, blissful insanity. They play all the roles as they make them up, and when they paint themselves into a corner -- when, say, there's a scene between two characters created by Jagodowski -- Pasquesi will step in and take over one of them, improvising on the other man's improvisation. This is highwire work and it's jazz and it's marvelous. The film's directed by Alex Karpovsky, who may be better known as an actor in mumblecore movies like "Beeswax," and the reason I'm gassing on about it is that you actually have a chance to see "Trust Us" on Saturday at the Somerville Theatre, when the film and Karpovsky show up for screenings at 7 and 9:30 p.m. Highly recommended: The first 20 minutes are a somewhat tedious talking-heads set-up; the rest is one of their improvs in its entirety, a bent saga of corporate intrigue in which the two play the entire staff of a midsized company as it goes sailing down the tubes.

You want more? Here's the film's website, and here's a trailer that doesn't really do these guys justice:

This is how I know I'm doing my job properly: When right-thinking "educated, cinephiles" break out their typewriters and White-Out to assail me for liking a movie they despised. You think they'd at least have the courage to sign their name though. Damn passive-aggressive New Englanders.  

The National Society of Film Critics (of which both Wesley and I are members) met in New York City Sunday and voted to award the following films and performances:

BEST PICTURE

"The Hurt Locker"  (runners-up: "Summer Hours," "Inglourious Basterds")

 

BEST DIRECTOR

Kathryn Bigelow, "The Hurt Locker"

(runners-up: Olivier Assayas, "Summer Hours"; Wes Anderson, "Fantastic Mr. Fox"

 

BEST ACTRESS

Yolande Moreau, "Seraphine"

(runners-up: Meryl Streep, "Julie & Julia" and "Fantastic Mr. Fox"; Abbie Cornish, "Bright Star")

 

BEST ACTOR

Jeremy Renner, "The Hurt Locker"

(runners-up: Jeff Bridges, "Crazy Heart"; Nicolas Cage, "The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call - New Orleans")

 

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

Mo'Nique, "Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire"

(runners-up: Anna Kendrick, "Up in the Air"; Samantha Morton, "The Messenger")

 

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

TIE: Christoph Waltz, "Inglourious Basterds" and Paul Schneider, "Bright Star"

(runner-up: Christian McKay, "Me and Orson Welles")

 

BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM

"Summer Hours"

(runners-up: "Everlasting Moments," "Police, Adjective," "35 Shots of Rum")

 

BEST NONFICTION FILM

"The Beaches of Agnes"

(runners-up: "Tyson," "Anvil! The Story of Anvil"

 

BEST SCREENPLAY

Joel and Ethan Coen, "A Serious Man"

(runners-up: Olivier Assayas, "Summer Hours"; Quentin Tarantino, "Inglourious Basterds")   

 

 BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY

"The White Ribbon," Christian Berger

(runners-up: "The Hurt Locker," Barry Ackroyd; "Everlasting  Moments," Jan Troell)

 

BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN

"Fantastic Mr. Fox," Nelson Lowry

(runners-up: "Avatar," Rick Carter; "Coraline," Henry Selick

 

FILM HERITAGE AWARD

Restoration of "Rashomon" by Academy Film Archive, the National Film Center of the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, and Kadokawa Pictures, Inc.

Bruce Posner for restoration of "Manhatta".

"Treasures from American Film Archives, Vol. 4:  Avant Garde 1947-1986"  (National Film Preservation Foundation).

Warner Archive Collection.

UCLA Film &Television Archive for its restoration of "The Red Shoes".

Kino International "Avant-Garde Volume 3 (Experimental Cinema 1922-1954)".

There's further coverage in the LA Times and elsewhere. It was a pretty uncontentious get-together, with only the best supporting actress category turning into an unspoken referendum on Mo'Nique and going on for five ballots before the "Precious" mama rested victory from upstart Anna Kendrick. Streep came within two votes of pipping Moreau for best actress. "Hurt Locker" was pretty much a slam-dunk in every category in which it seriously contended. Is this the dark horse of Oscar 2010? It's looking less and less dark with each batch of awards.