You're kidding, right? Arnold Schwarzenegger turns 63 today? Is such a thing even possible?

Apparently so. The clock stands still for no one, not even one of the toughest action stars in cinema history. As such, and in the man's honor, I list the top 10 films of the California governor's career.

1. “Hercules in New York” (1969): It passed by without much notice at the time. And, to be honest, it makes you question whether Schwarzenegger should have been given another movie role. Seen now, though, this bit of muscle-mass exploitation is one campy view.

2. “Pumping Iron” (1977): This so-called documentary first showed the inherent, irreverent charm that Mr. Universe (and five-time Mr. Olympia winner) Schwarzenegger could bring to the big screen.

3. “Conan the Barbarian” (1982): He swings the sword well, our anti-hero does. Great quote. Conan is asked what is the best in life? “To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women.” Yeah.

4. “The Terminator” (1984): It may not be the best of the series, but it established not just the idea but the careers of both Schwarzenegger and writer-director James Cameron.

5. “Predator” (1987): The first of another series, though this one went downhill pretty quickly, John McTiernan's sci-fi thriller cast Schwarzenegger in the role that came to define him - that of the tough but fair leader of men.

6. “The Running Man” (1987): Though what's most memorable is Richard Dawson doing a satiric take on his “Family Feud” success, this is actually a thinking-man's action flick (with lots of asplosions!).

7. “Total Recall” (1990): He's never been much of an actor (hell, he can barely speak English), but Schwarzenegger fit perfectly into Paul Verhoeven's adaptation of Philip K. Dick's short story as a man who steps into a “real” life of virtual reality.

8. “Kindergarten Cop” (1990): Schwarzenegger had shown a touch for comedy in Ivan Reitman's 1988 farce “Twins” (in which his “twin wasDanny DeVito). But this film is arguably better, especially when he delivers the line, “It's not a toomah!”

9. “Terminator 2: Judgment Day” (1991): Cameron's followup to his 1984 film was important in a number of ways. Top two? It was a CG marvel, and it changed Schwarzenegger's cyborg character from the ultimate villain to the ultimately trustworthy good guy.

10. That's … about it. Schwarzenegger made films throughout the 1990s, including a third “Terminator” (“Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines”). But none of them had the fresh qualities of his earlier work. So here let's put his first election as California's governor in Oct. 7, 2003.

In so many ways, playing a poltician has been Schwarzenegger's biggest, and most memorable, role of all.

Below: The great Arnold Schwarzenegger, in action.

As some brainy scientists are discovering, there is some truth behind the notions explored by Christopher Nolan's new movie “Inception.” According to Forbes.com, research in the field of dreams (heh-heh) has shown the possibility that dreams can be manipulated.

As for actually planting a thought that could actually take root, well, that's probably not possible. Not for the moment.

But, really, if the government, say, could actually do something like that, would the men who fly black helicopters be likely to reveal it?

Talk about a nightmare …

I was just running some errands, and I just happened to tune into an editon of NPR's “Fresh Air.” The segment featured film director Jay Roach and actor Steve Carell, both of whom were shilling for their new film, “Dinner for Schmucks.”

Here's what's amazing: I listened for nearly 15 minutes, the time it took me to drive from my house to the Spokane Valley Lowe's. And during that time, while being interviewed by Dave Davies, not once did Davies, Roach or Carell mention the fact that “Dinner for Schmucks” is an adaptation of French filmmaker Francis Veber's 1998 comedy “The Dinner Game” - which I happened to see during that year's Seattle International Film Festival.

It was too hot to sit in the sun and continue with the program. But I'm fairly confident that, ultimately, someone did mention Veber's film. I say that because the original source is mentioned on the NPR site. And, in fact, on the site Roach addresses how he changed Carell's character “to express who he is a bit more.”

Whatever. If you're like me, who turned off the show without listening to everything, you missed any mention of the original movie. And you got the impression that “Dinner for Schmucks” - hardly an improvement over how the 1998 title was translated - was entirely the creation of the Hollywood journeyman Roach.

That's Hollywood, though, right? It's all a game of credits, and how much you can pad your filmography, no matter what the truth might be.

Below: A sequence from Francis Veber's original “The Dinner Game.”

One of my former Spokesman-Review colleagues is a sick little puppy. Which is the main thing that I like about the guy. He's a big fan of David Lynch and boasts a particular fondness for “Lost Highway.” He likes David Cronenberg, too.

So when he sent me a copy of a little film titled “Deadgirl,” I was of two minds. On one hand, I like anything that smacks of sickness. On the other, reading the IMDB description - “Two high school boys discover an imprisoned woman in an abandoned mental asylum who cannot die” - I wasn't sure this was something I was, uh, dying to see.

So I held off. For months, actually. Until last night, in fact.

Big mistake.

Look, I've seen some sick films. You don't have to search very far on the Internet to find some of the sickest stuff imaginable. Stuff that makes film series such as “Saw” and “Hostel” seem almost tame by comparison.

But there is something particularly nasty about “Deadgirl.” It combines a bit of teen angst (one of the boys is an alienated stoner who carries a troubled torch for the girl he knew in the 9th grade) with some standard horror conceits (the mental asylum is filled with dark corridors and at least one toothy Doberman). Even so, the result is more exploitation than full-fledged storytelling.

Oh, and the girl? Lots of nudity. Lots of graphic rape. Even a bit of cannibalism, which gives a whole new meaning to the term “knob gobbler” (if you catch my drift).

So, I'd like to say that I enjoyed “Deadgirl” (not to be confused with “The Dead Girl” or “Dead Girl”). That I saw what the filmmakers were trying to do in terms of social commentary and irony and everything that takes film beyond what shows up on the screen. But … no. I didn't.

Think I'll go back and watch something far more tame. “Blue Velvet” should do the trick.

Pabst Blue Ribbon!

Below: The trailer for “Deadgirl.”

Those interested in David Fincher’s forthcoming American adaptation of Stieg Larsson’s “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” should find this news item interesting. Turns out Fincher has offered the role of Mikael Blomkvist to Daniel Craig (and James Bond has reportedly accepted), while narrowing the search for title character Lisbeth Salander to four different actresses.

In case you forgot, the Swedish version of Larsson’s novel came out last year (and played recently at the Magic Lantern). Look for the sequel to play some time in the next few weeks.

Below: The trailer for the Swedish version of “The Girl Who Played With Fire.”

People can commit crimes for the best of reasons. It all depends on your perspective.

For example, how do you define “crime”? Or, for that matter, how do you define “best of reasons”? The documentary “The Art of the Steal,” which plays for one more day at the Magic Lantern, explores those questions as they apply to one of the most valued art collections in the world.

The film tells the story of the Barnes Foundation, a privately owned collection of Post-Impressionist and early-Modern art situated just outside Philadelphia, and how it was appropriated - now there's a neutral term, some would say stolen - by the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Seems the collection was amassed by a Philadelphia-born physician, Dr. Albert Barnes, in the second decade of the past century. To house his collection, which included dozens of works by Cezanne, Matisse, Van Gogh and others, he established a school in Merion, Pa., barely five miles from downtown Philadelphia. Being born out of humble origins, Barnes was no fan of that city's gentry, So he did everything to alienate the powers that were, including the owner of the city's newspaper, the Philadelphia Inquirer, Walter Annenberg.

He also was determined to keep his collection out of their hands. So he drew up a will that stipulated his collection would never be sold, loaned or moved from its Merion estate.

So what is the movie about? It's about how the whole collection came under the control of organizations, including the Pew Charitable Trust, that decided to move the whole thing to Philadelphia. To the very museum that its founder, Dr. Barnes, hated.

Irony, eh? The film, which was directed by Don Argott, makes somewhat of a case that Barnes wasn't the most likeable or easiest guy to work with. And, ultimately, the art may end up in a better place - by moving in 2012 to Philadelphia.

But it also stresses that the folks who forced the move, many of whom were movers and shakers in Pennsylvania politics, were less interested in art than in this particular art collection, which is worth an estimated $25 billion - billion! And they were interested because of what the collection could do for them.

Which brings us back to my beginning paragraph. These people can say that they were acting in the best interests of both the collection and of the art patrons who long to see it. But not only did they act in defiance of Barnes' wishes as outlined specifically in his will, but they all - in one way or another - stood to gain personally from the move.

But then that is the history of America, if not the world. People doing what they want, for their own self-interest, and hiding behind an excuse of working for the public good.

In the film, no less a person than Julian Bond calls these people “vandals.” And he, based by the evidence presented by “The Art of the Steal,” has a great point.

Below: The trailer for “The Art of the Steal.”

A few years ago, a friend of mine used a feature story that I'd written to work up a concept for a feature film. We both ended up going to the family of the boy I had written about and asked them if we could design a development deal. Since we had no money, dollars didn't change hands, though there was a contingency for remuneration just in case something did get made.

Problem was, my friend was a lot more attuned to what Hollywood wants than I was. He immediately began pitching a story line that had little to do with reality. And I freaked. Ultimately, nothing happened. Such stories are a legion unless you have a really interesting twist, and that wasn't the case. Unless, of course, we made stuff up. Which I really didn't want to do.

All of which is my way of introducing this story about the making of the forthcoming film “The Social Network.” Apparently, the screenwriter, Aaron Sorkin, had no compunction whatsoever about inventing stuff about Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.

I guess that's what it takes to be a Hollywood success.

I like to make fun of French films. That's mostly because the people who love French films absolutely loooooooovvvvvve French films. As in the woman I overheard a few years ago at the Seattle International Film Festival who was telling her friends, “If it's not in French, I don't want to see it.

Quelle horreur.

Anyway, I recognize the greatness of some French cinema. And I admit to liking a number of French films that I've seen over the past several years. One of the most recent is a little film carrying the English title of “Let it Rain,” or in French “Parlez-moi de la pluie” - which translates more as “Let's Talke About the Rain.”

This is a charming little film that follows a group of people, all of whom are in a difficult place in their respective lives. Karim (Jamel Debbouze) is working as a hotel clerk, though he entertains hopes of becoming a filmmaker. His mentor, Michel (Jean-Pierre Bacri), is a former TV journalist who is now making a living filming baptisms, etc.

The two get the idea of interviewing the politician-hopeful Agathe (Agnes Jaoui), a best-selling feminist writer who is running for political office. Karim knows Agathe because he grew up in the same rural village with Agathe and her sister Florence Pascale Arbillot); in fact, Karim's mother still lives with Florence and her family, working as a nanny/maid. Agathe has her own problems, revolving mainly around trying to maintain a career and relationship with her partner Antoine (Frederic Pierrot). Florence, who is married, is a woman still marked by the fact that her mother seemed to prefer Agathe over her.

And so on. Nothing much happens in “Let It Rain,” except that is for the normal circumstances of life. Agathe and Florence tapdance around each other. Karim, also married, becomes infatuated with the young woman who works at his hotel. At the same time, he starts to become disenchanted with the self-absorbed Michel, who is carrying on his own affair with, of course, Florence.

What I most like about “Let It Rain,” which I saw on Comcast's IFC On Demand service, is that it just ambles along, letting each character work out his or her situation. As written by Jaoui and Bacri, and directed by Jaoui, the film doesn't end happily so much as leave open the possibility of happiness. These may be flawed characters, but they do show growth.

And while Jaoui's film isn't a laugh-out-loud comedy, it does have its share of funny moments. That adds to the overall effect, and it makes the characters and their world well worth spending time with.

Even if they are French.

Below: The trailer for “Let It Rain.”

You may have seen the extremely cool trailer for Aaron Sorkin's forthcoming movie “The Social Network,” due out Oct. 1, which tells the story of the founding of Facebook. If not, check the embed below.

But if you're like many of us who still like to read, you might want to check out this review of the book that inspired the movie. The book, “The Accidental Billionaires,” was written by the same guy who wrote the book that became the movie “21.” And we know just how much similarity that film had with reality (in a phrase, not much).

Anyway, in related news, the Los Angeles Times is reporting that the guy who invented Facebook is going to star as himself in an episode of “The Simpsons.” Wow. Think he'll post something on Facebook about it?

Below: The trailer for “The Social Network.”

OK, it’s taken me a while to get my sumer movie-going legs underneath me. Several reasons for that, not the least of which is I haven’t been turned on by much. Except, of course, for “Inception” (see below).

But though you probably have seen it already, if not in theaters then on other Web sites, the trailer for the forthcoming Disney production of “Tron: Legacy,” which is due in theaters Dec. 17, just might excite you. It certainly has me humming with anticipation, even if I wasn’t all that big a fan of the 1982 original - even given the then-state-of-the-art EFX.

Can’t wait to see this new one in IMAX 3-D.

Below: The trailer for “Tron: Legacy.”

Over the weekend I was in Ketcham, Idaho, walking the aisles of Iconoclast Books, and I picked up a copy of Philip K. Dick short stories. Titled after one of the stories, “Minority Report,” the book shows Dick at his best: strange, offbeat, uncomfortable, yet always accessible.

My favorite Dick book, “Ubik,” was one of the first books I’d ever read that involves characters interacting through their dreams — though Dick takes his time letting you know what is happening.

“Ubik” comes to mind because of “Inception,” Christopher Nolan‘s blockbuster and followup to his 2008 hit “The Dark Knight.” Let me see if I can give a short synopsis (but watch out for spolers).

Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) washes up on a remote beach. He is taken to the lair of an elderly man. We discover that Cobb is capable of entering the dreams of others, the purpose of which is usually “extraction” of some secret. Cobb works for whomever will pay him for that secret information. On a mission to extract information from a Japanese businessman, Saito (Ken Watanabe), Cobb and his team — which includes Arthur (Joseph Gorden-Levitt) — end up being hired by Saito to help foil a rival’s attempts to corner the energy market.

When one of his team proves unreliable, Cobb looks for a new “architect,” a person talented and imaginative enough to create dream worlds for the extraction targets to navigate. With the help of his former teacher (Michael Caine), he recruits Ariadne (EllenPage). Only this time the task is more difficult: Instead of extracting information, the team’s charge is to do an “inception” — that is, to put a suggestion in the subject’s mind in such a way that he believes the idea is his own.

Which is how the new team comes to kidnap Robert Fischer (Cillian Murphy), the son of Saito’s dying rival. What they want to do is convince the younger Fischer to break up his father’s empire, giving Saito and others a chance to break the energy monopoly.

To do this, however, involves an intricate plan whereby the team has not only to go inside Fischer’s dream, but to go down two more levels. In other words, they have to go in a dream within a dream within yet a third dream. Each stem becomes more perilous, with the result being  psychologically dangerous: In ordinary circumstances, dying in a dream causes the dreamer to awake. But inserted more deeply, the dying dreamer falls into a deep psychological fugue, where he (or she) can linger for what may be only minutes in real life but can feel like decades in dreamland.

The complicating factor — which, of course, has to exist — is that Cobb is a haunted man. His former wife, Mal (Marion Cotillard), haunts him, showing up during his jobs in a way that proves problematic to everyone. In the Fischer job, only Ariadne knows what is troubling Cobb. But for various reasons, she says nothing.

Overall, “Inception” owes a deep debt to Dick. In the sense that no idea is unique, Nolan doesn’t exactly steal from the author, who died in 1982. But the difference between reading one’s mind (and, in the process, altering reality, which is the basis for “Ubik”), and doing so in that person’s dreams is relatively slight.

Still, Nolan is a singular talent. He proved as much with his 2000 film “Memento,” in his two Batman films (2005’s “Batman Begins” and “Dark Knight”) and, now, with “Inception.” Dream stories are easy because you can cover a gaggle of plot problems by just resorting to the whole “dreams don’t make sense” argument. But Nolan keeps things moving so quickly, powered by Hans Zimmer‘s pulsating musical score, that you don’t have time to ask nagging questions.

It’s unfortunate that “Inception” so closely follows Martin Scosese’s “Shutter Island,” in which DiCaprio stars as a federal agent who falls into a similar kind of psychological purgatory. But Nolan’s story, while more fantastic, is nevertheless more successful at creating a world that feels authentic — instead of pop-psychology hamhanded, the way “Shutter Island” came across.

Spokane Public Radio film critic Bob Glatzer loves to call the films he loves “delicious.” Well, “Inception,” as a film is pure bubble gum. But it’s really delicious bubble gum.

You need to bite off a chunk.

Below: The trailer for “Inception.”

Film festival movies are different from mainstream films in a number of ways. Whether we’re talking about plot, characterization, style or what have you, festival films are usually the opposite of what Hollywood has trained us to expect.

They may have little or no noticeable plot. Characters may be more anti than hero, as opposed to antihero. Style could be slo-mo, out of focus, framed so that we can see only the corners of characters’ chins … and so on.

But even the most offbeat of festival films must have at least one of several things. They must have characters about whom we care. OR those characters must live in worlds we find intriguing. OR those characters and those worlds must be portrayed in WAYS we find intriguing. And so on.

A week ago I went to see a little festival film at the Magic Lantern. It’s titled “The Exploding Girl.” And while I ended up liking the movie, I had a difficult time getting there.

The film stars Zoe Kazan (yes, of those Kazans) as Ivy, a young woman home for the summer from university. With her is Al (Mark Rendall), her best friend - “Oh, from maybe eighth grade” - who ends up crashing on a couch at Ivy’s mother’s house. Here is the story that writer-director Bradley Rust Gray follows: Ivy comes home, she mopes around a lot, she tries to call her boyfriend, she and Al go to a party, he gets stoned but she gets bored, she tries to call her boyfriend, she teaches kids how to act, she eats lunch in the park with Al, she finally hears from her boyfriend, she has a seizure, Al tells her that he likes her, her boyfriend breaks up with her on the phone, she can’t take a bath because her mom is working late, she tells her boyfriend that they can’t be “friends,” she mopes a bit, she heads back to university, and she holds hands with Al.

For much of its running time, “The Exploding Girl” bored me. I didn’t like the characters (who seemed to take themselves waaaay too seriously). I didn’t like their world. And I didn’t like Gray’s style, which seemed to be in serious need of some caffeine. I ended up liking the film, mostly because I liked Kazan, but I never got the title. Still don’t.

I’ve read the work of critics who love the film, who wax on and on about Ivy’s explosion of emotions. Uh … what? Yeah, she has a seizure. One seizure. Which even while it hovers over the entire film like a dark cloud is hardly a major scene (even if it is a major plot point). But if a slightly tart tone on the phone or a slow groping of two thumbs are signs of emotional explosions, then a cherry bomb (ch-ch-ch-ch-cherry bomb) is a small nuclear weapon. So are we meant to be stuck by irony?

Well, I liked the movie. Didn’t love it. In fact, “The Exploding Girl” is exactly the kind of film that make people mistrust critics. When they drool all over such a small little feature, people think … what the hell? And, at least in this case, they’re right.

I’d have changed things, beginning with the title. I’d have titled it “The Imploding Girl.” That, at least would have been factual.

Voice mail is still a novelty for those of us who grew up before there was any kind of phone-messaging technology at all. Which may be why I laughed out loud at a voice mail that I received this morning.

It came from my friend Speedy Rice, an attorney whose work with on international projects takes him to the farthest corners of the Earth. Here is what I heard:

“Hi, Dan, this is Speedy. I’m waitin’ for you here at the Zanzibar Film Festival. Call me and tell me where we can meet up.”

I had to look up to see if there actually is a Zanzibar Film Festival. And, of course, there is.

Now where’s my passport?

There’s an aspect about “Predators” that’s reminiscent of “Lost.” It involves a group of people who find themselves, suddenly, mysteriously, stuck in the wilds of an unknown jungle. They have no idea why they got there, not even memories of plane crashes - which the characters in J.J. Abrams’ television creation lived through again and again.

No, the characters in “Predators” know only that, as we see through the eyes of the one played by Adrien Brody, they are falling from a great height.  Brody’s character is lucky enough to, one, wake up in time and, two, to get his parachute open before he hits the tall jungle trees. He still hits hard, but this being the movies he bruises only his ego.

Pretty soon he begins running into others: a Mexican killer (Danny Trejo), a Russian soldier (Oleg Tartakov), a couple of Americans (Topher Grace, Walton Goggins) and various others, from an AK-47-carrying African soldier to a samurai-sword-waving Japanese Yakuza and a shapely Latina sniper (Alice Braga). And once they unite, they find that they are being hunted.

This, finally, is something we understand better than they do. At least those of us who have seen the other “Predator” films understand it. Beginning with John McTeirnan’s 1987 original, and proceeding with at least four sequels now, the “Predator” films run on a simple conceit: an inordinately ugly breed of extraterrestrials loves to hunt down residents of other worlds just for the sport of it.

In the original, of course, the bad-ass alien runs into a mud-and-blood-spattered commando played by Arnold Schwarzenegger. This time Arnold lives in the California governor’s mansion, so we’re left with Brody and co. And while Brody’s acting abilities may be far superior to Schwarzenegger’s, his physique can’t compare. And director Nimrod (yes, that’s his name) Antal is no McTeirnan.

The script is no “Lost” either. Despite the fact that Laurence Fishburne shows up for a brief time, the mystery of “Predators” pretty quickly devolves into a one-by-one kill-fest, with the only question involving how much of each character’s story we will learn before they exit, stage right. Grace’s story is strung out the longest, though the payoff is hardly surprising.

Not much about “Predators” is surprising, in fact. Except that at the screening I went to a guy brought with him three young boys. No, the movie doesn’t offer any sex nor any real profanity. But the violence was pretty graphic.

Hope those boys won’t have nightmares tonight. I’m likely to. But I doubt my dreams will do much more than bore me witless.

Below: The trailer for “Predators.:

While visiting my friends Holly Hope and Ken Sands in Washington, D.C., I sat down with them to watch the romantic comedy “Leap Year.” I'd passed on the chance to see the film in the theater, or even on a recent plane trip, but I thought I'd give the movie a chance.

And why not? It was the perfect opportunity, in the comfort of my friends' home, on an evening that required nothing of me but to sit back and enjoy.

And there had to be something to enjoy, right? I mean, the movie stars Amy Adams, the perky star of such films as “Enchanted” and “Junebug” and “Doubt” and “Sunshine Cleaning.” Her costar is Matthew Goode, the costar of such films as Woody Allen's “Match Point,” the “Brideshead Revisited” remake and “A Single Man.”

The director, too, seemed to be a good indicator. Anand Tucker is the director of, among other films, “Hilary and Jackie,” “Shopgirl” and the final installment of the powerful “Red Riding” series, “In the Year of Our Lord, 1983.” So, I told myself, how bad can this film be?

Pretty dammed bad, it turns out. Written by the team of Deborah Kaplan and Harry Elfont (“A Very Brady Sequel,” “Josie and the Pussycats” and “Made of Honor”), “Leap Year” is one of those predictable romances in which two polar opposite characters suffer hate at first sight, stumble into a ridiculous situation that throws them together (in this case a storm and financial necessity) and end up falling in love.

It's the kind of film where, in the process of pulling a bed away from the wall, the stuck-up American (Adams) doesn't just wreck the room or throw the circuit breaker of the tavern in which she is staying or even fry her Blackberry, but she causes the whole village to lose power. It's the kind of movie where every cliched Irish reference (except maybe for leprechauns) is drummed up. And it's the kind of film where, when both characters jump out of a car, you just know that they're going to forget to set the break, which likely will lead to disaster.

I say “likely” because I don't really know. It was at that point that I made my apologies and went upstairs to bed.

You might say that I, uh, leaped at the chance to escape the horror called “Leap Year.”

Below: The trailer for “Leap Year.”

Regarding my review of “The Last Airbender” below, a good question might be, “Why didn’t you see the film in 3-D, Dan?” Hey, I’m glad you asked.

This Salon.com story has the answer.

Spent not quite two hours this afternoon seeing “Eclipse.” And here is where you would expect me to list a few would-be clever quips about how what a waste of time it was, etc., etc. But, really, what would be the point?

After seeing the second part of the trilogy (a two-film adaptation of the fourth novel is due in 2011/2012) on an airplane, and mistaking it for a comedy, I approached “Eclipse” with muted expectations. And I’ll say this much: I ended up liking it somewhere between “Sex and the City 2” and “The Last Airbender.”

Yeah, that much.

If you want to go and aren’t sure how you’re going to react, follow my advice: Access your inner high-school sophomore. Can’t miss.

One thing I was taught, many years ago as a student journalist, was this: Never use a question lead. If I were to use it here, though, it might go something like this:

What the hell is wrong with M. Night Shyamalan?

That question presupposes something, of course. It assumes that there once was something right with Shyamalan. And with the way the guy began his career, it was only natural to think that way.

Consider: After a couple of lightly regarded starter movies - “Praying with Anger” and “Wide Awake,” neither of which I’ve seen - he became an instant success with “The Sixth Sense.” This film, which introduced us to what we’ve come to know as the Shyamalan style, is the ultimate parlor trick: a film that hides its obvious ending behind a blend of deliberate pacing, somber tone, understated acting and gorgeous cinematography.

It’s been that blend, the Shyamalan style, that has overshadowed what many saw as an essential vacuity in Shyamalan’s screenplays. The man writes his own material, but he owes large debts to other sources, “Twilight Zone,” for example, and in the case of his latest, “The Last Airbender,” a Nickelodeon kids’ television show. And at the heart of all his films is melodrama: the heart-tugging pull of a boy afraid of dead people, a normal guy coming to grips with his super powers, a failed holy man regaining his faith, a group striving to protect its long-held traditions … and so on.

Meld that melodrama with a gimmick - a character who doesn’t realize that he’s already dead, the fact that a normal guy actually does have super powers, alien and crop circles and people dressing up in scary monster costumes - and you have Shyamalan’s formula. Thing is, until now it’s been a formula that functions pretty well, especially when you compare it to most of the rest of the crap that Hollywood spoon-feeds us.

But the cracks in the Shyamalan style have been showing for a while, now. “The Lady in the Water” had no point (or maybe it tried to make so many points that none of them registered). “The Happening” was, in a word, absurd (and for the first time, it felt … sloppy?) And in “The Last Airbender,” the flaws are almost too many to count.

First of all, for those of us who haven’t seen the television show (or read the based-on-the-movie graphic novel), “The Last Airbender” doesn’t make a lot of sense. There are so many references to a larger history, etc., that they all tend to get mixed up. And what’s with the casting, at least of the kids, which seemed to depend a lot more on mainstream tastes than any attempt to find some actual talent?

Also, I stopped counting at a half-dozen the many other movies that Shyamalan borrowed from. Here’s a short list: “The Lord of the Rings,” “Star Wars,” “The Neverending Story,” “Batman Begins,” “The Karate Kid,” “The Chronicles of Narnia.” And that’s just where I stopped.

Finally, Shyamalan’s personal style, based so much on quality filmmaking, seems to have deserted him. Or maybe a better way of putting that is that he has left that trademark style behind. Since it hasn’t been working for him of late, you can’t blame him. But what if he has nothing to take its place? That’s what “The Last Airbender” feels like: nothing less than an imcomprehensible mess. Not even 3-D can help that.

One thing, though. We saw the non-3-D version yesterday at the Village Center Cinemas in Airway Heights. And as we were walking in, and later out, I could heard the groupls of 8-year-old boys talking about how “cooooooollll!” the film was. All those fights, you know.

Seems Shyamalan has found his new audience. And a solution to his problem, which clearly has much less to do with his overall legacy than it does with his continuing to have an actual career. As of this morning, “The Last Airbender” had made a solid $16 million in ticket sales.

Introducing the new M. Night Shyamalan, Nickelodeon genius.

Below: The trailer for “The Last Airbender.”

In music they call it sampling. It’s when one artist “borrows” from another’s work, incorporating it in what sometimes is a whole new context. This is, arguably, theft when the borrowing is done without credit, much less royalties, being paid to the original artist.

In cinema, the term is mashup. And in this era of YouTube excess, the borrowing of other’s work is different from, say, Vanilla Ice using a David Bowie bass line. It almost always involves taking images, sometimes whole scenes, of one film and re-editing them to make something wholly new. Take, for example, the mashup that makes Stanley Kubrick’s horror film “The Shining” into a mild family entertainment. That’s clever.l

There are times, though, when someone with real talent, not to mention perception, takes someone else’s work and creates a new work of art. In the case of Leandro Braga (aka Copperfield), that’s exactly what happened when he combined 34 Kubrick and Martin Scorsese films, finding similar themes, imagery and perhaps even meaning.

But don’t take my word for it. Click on the embed below and judge for yourself. Thanks to my friend Dan Fratini for passing it on.

Kubrick vs Scorsese from Leandro Copperfield on Vimeo.

If you look below, you’ll find the 100 Greatest Movie Insults. But I’m not sure that anything there is more insulting than the YouTube embed below, which is one of the strangest combinations I’ve ever experienced: the classical musical and one of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s “Conan” movies.

Yes, it’s a musical version of “Conan the Barbarian,” complete with a spot-on impersonation of the great Arnold doing the singing. Damn, does life get any better than this? As I did below, I need to thank my friend Ryan Pitts for passing it along.

I know a couple of guys who will love this post. They’re the kinds of guys who love insults, and nowhere is the insult more celebrated than the movies. Unless, of course, you’re in Vegas listening to Don Rickles.

So here I give you, the 100 Greatest Movie Insults. Thanks to my friend Ryan Pitts for passing it along. And be warned: There is some strong language coming.

There may be a couple of reasons why I woke so early this morning, just after 6 a.m. One is that I’m still dealing with jet lag. My body is confused, thinking that it’s really 3 in the afternoon.

But another, more believable reason, is that I watched an IFC On Demand movie last night titled “The Killer Inside Me.” The film, which was directed by the British director Michael Winterbottom, is based on the 1952 Jim Thompson novel of the same title. And it is a disturbing exercise in cinema.

Thompson was a bit touched. As one of the many writers who churned out pulp crime fiction in the 1940s and ‘50s, he wrote about strange characters who were fueled by murderous impulses they so often found impossible to control. “The Killer Inside Me” is a perfect example, focusing on a small-town Texas sheriff’s deputy who ends up going on a killing spree.

In the film, the deputy, Lou Ford, is played by Casey Affleck, younger brother of Ben Affleck and now a movie actor in his own right. He played Patrick Kenzie in “Gone Baby Gone” and Robert Ford in “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford.” Affleck, who may be the most improbably movie star since, say, John C. Reilly - though he is, arguably, better looking - is perfect in the role, playing Ford as a seemingly mild-mannered guy who is torn by deep and disturbing tendencies toward violence.

He visists those tendencies on both a small-town prostitute (Jessica Alba) and her rich-boy boyfriend, setting in motion a series of crimes that ultimatly return to snare him. He says his intent is to get some payback for past wrongs, but it becomes fairly clear that he gives about as much thought to what he’s doing as a shark would to a baby seal served up on a surfboard.

In Thompson’s novel, Ford talks to us in first person, and Winterbottom’s screenwriter, John Curran, does employ some narration. But mostly we just watch things unfold as Winterbottom’s camera follows Ford through rural New Mexico (passing for the fictional Central City, Texas), capturing well the look and feel of the 1950s.

And, yeah, the violence and sex are prevalent and creepy, involving Affleck both with Alba and Kate Hudson. Winterbottom doesn’t give us any full nudity, as he did so famously in his 2004, uh, romance “9 Songs.” But the sex is portrayed graphically enough. And Winterbottom blends it so well with the violence that you may have trouble telling where one stops and the other begins. Which is the point.

“The Killer Inside Me” is not a film you’re likely to embrace, even if you wanted to. Like the novel upon which it is based, it’s a disturbing trek into psychological areas most of us would rather avoid. But it’s well made, effectively acted - especially by Affleck - and something just serious enough both to rouse the ire of self-appointed cultural censors and provoke the interest of those who love the art of challenging cinema.

Oh, and as I discovered, it has at least one added benefit. It’s a better sleep-stopper than caffeine.

Below: The trailer for Michael Winterbottom’s “The Killer Inside Me.”

There’s no question that Tom Cruise is a decent action star. He’s always had that blend of decent acting skills, good looks and athleticism that all the better Amerian stars, from Harrison Ford to Bruce Willis, boast. Think “Top Gun.” Think “Minority Report.” Think the “Mission: Impossible” films.

Of course, Cruise has, from the beginning, had more ambition than to be just another guy chasing exploding cars. And his resume, from “Rain Man” to “Born on the Fourth of July” (for which he received one of his three Oscar nominations), proves just how successful he’s been.

All of which is one reason why I was so interested in “Knight and Day,” the comedy-action film that pairs Cruise so improbably with Cameron Diaz.

Diaz, in her own way, has a resume similar to Cruise’s. From “Any Given Sunday” to “Gangs of New York,” she has worked with some of the best directors (Oliver Stone and Martin Scorsese, respectively). Yet she has her action credentials, too, most notably in the “Charlie’s Angels” films.

So “Knight and Day,” directed by the capable James Mangold (“Walk the Line,” “3:10 to Yuma”), does have decent action bloodlines. Why, then, does the film feel so … ordinary?

The problem is not the two leads. Yeah, Cruise these days is hampered a bit by his Scientology beliefs, making him seem a bit of a too-intense-to-believe flake. And Diaz seems to have crested in her career, the freshness that she showed in “There’s Something About Mary” having long ago dissipated.

But that means only that “Knight and Day” can’t depend on its two main stars alone. It needs to back them up with a decent plot line, cinematic narrative and supporting cast. And here is where the film fails.

The plot is average. Cruise stars as Roy Miller, a strange guy who may, or may not, be some sort of good-guy secret agent who chances upon (?) Diaz’s hapless June, who happens to be on the way to her sister’s wedding. Cruise’s rel-life miscues (jumping on Oprah’s couch, his Scientology tapes) give his performance a boost, and playing the airhead with a good heart has become Diaz’s trademark. What happens, though - their teaming up to foil the would-be theft of a McGuffin shaped like a perpetual-energy battery - never develops into something unpredictable. “Knight and Day” offers no real surprises.

In terms of Mangold’s filmmaking techniques, there’s better news. Despite using too many closeups, which don’t always do Diaz any big favors, Mangold resorts during a number of optional sequeces to a shorthand method of storytelling. What that means is that he avoids recording every little ridiculous action and, instead, gives us glimpses of time passing, easing us through slow sections or just another collection of shootings/explosions. The conceit: one or another of the main characters sees life through the haze of a drugging. Whatever the concenience of such a device, it works.

Finally, though, the main problem that Mangold can’t overcome is a script that doesn’t provide enough of a villainous presence. It’s one thing to see the bad guys and a mysterious collection of murderers, etc. It’s quite another to, as John McTiernan did in the original “Die Hard,” cast a good actor as the chief evil presence … namely, the incomparable Alan Rickman. In “Knight and Day,” Peter Sarsgaard and Spanish actor Jordi Molla just don’t have the screen charisma to make much of an impact.

So, overall, “Knight and Day” has some entertaining moments. And Cruise can still smile with the best of A-list movie stars. But the movie has too many slow moments, which makes it feel as if there’s a hole in its center. It ends up being as effective as a watered-down Diet Coke — momentarily refreshing but ultimately forgettable.

Below: The trailer for “Knight and Day.”

Returning home after an extended vacation is never easy. Especially when you have to deal with clogged drains, leaky faucets, overdue bills, sluggish vehicles and dying pets. Such is our lot after enjoying five weeks in Italy.

Which is why I am so glad that my friend, and former student, Brian Chausmer sent me this little YouTube film. It is a must-watch, a bit of philosophy - based on the work of the late, great Carl Sagan - that tends to put everything we think about this thing called existence in a special kind of relativistic context.

Take a minute and watch it. And then send it on to those you care about. It’s all the spirituality that I think I’ll ever need.

It used to be a whole lot easier to blog from Italy. In the days before wireless Internet, that is. In those days, which date back just to 2003, I used to be able to find an Internet cafe on just about every corner. Now, though, it's hard to find any Internet businesses at all.

And when you do find one, as we did a few days ago in Orvieto, you're likely to encounter five people hovering over three PCs, only two of which are functional. Which is why it took my wife, uh, a half hour to get on. The American teens before here were making important Facebook updates. If that's not being redundant, that is.

Anyway, we're in Rome, having traveled here by train from Firenze, by way of Orvieto. And after a couple of days touring such sites as San Pietro, the Trevi Fountain, the Pantheon and taking a walk through the Trastevere neighborhood, we're preparing to head back home.

One note about the Trevi Fountain: This year is the 50th anniversay of Federico Fellini's film “La Dlce Vita,” a movie that helped define a post-World War II Italy - and thus redefine the country, period - and in the process gave us a whole new vocabulary (paparazzo, for example) along with a new new language of cinema.

The most enduring image from Fellini's film, that of Anita Ekberg wading in the Trevi Fountain, can be found on any number of refrigerator magnets, calendars or posters, all of which are for sale in the many shops situated in and around the fountain.

I passed on purchasing any. But I'll leave you with the image in the YouTube ebed below.

BP’s mishandling of the Gulf oil spill has caused untold ecological damage. The good news is that it’s wrought a fair amount of comdey from a variety of sources, and not just from late-night comics. Below is a video put out by UCBComedy that shows how BP officials would attack a cup of spilled coffee. The whole thing is equal parts hilarity, equal parts sadness.

Thanks to my friend and colleague Ken Sands for passing it on.

Even now, in my sixth decade of moviegoing, I sometimes walk out of a theater - stumble might be a better verb - without a clue about what I have just seen. That happens during Tim Allen and Michael Bay movies, for sure, but it can happen with works by some of the world’s most talented filmmakers.

Take Alejandro Amenabar, for example. The Chilean-born director of, among other things, “The Sea Inside” (which earned Javier Bardem an Oscar nomination), “The Others” (a great ghost story starring Nicole Kidman), the original “Abre los ojos” and a little stunner titled “Tesis,” is a talented guy. But even talent can’t make something as unfocused as “Agora” seem the slightest bit intelligible.

I saw “Agora” last night at another one of the English-language screenings at Firenze’s Odeon. And while I can say that I’ll always enjoy sitting in the grandeur of that stately movie house, I can’t say as I enjoyed Amenabar’s film all that much.

Amenabar, who coworte the film with his longtime writing partner Mateo Gil, gives us the story of Hypatia (Rachel Weisz), a philosopher/mathematician/astronomer from 4th- and 5th-century Alexandria. According to Wkiipedia, among other sources, Hypatia was a fascinating character - someone who broke barriers that even modern women have trouble denting. She taught, she lectured, she researched and she wrote, all during a time when the world was turning toward the kind of fundamentalist religiosity that would shape history up to the present day.

There’s a great story here, but Amenabar can’t help but sentimentalize it. He takes at least two real-life people from the time - the Bishop of Ptolemais (Rupert Evans) and the Imperial Prefect Orestes (Oscar Isaac) - and makes them pupils of Hypatia. He adds in a third, likely fictional character, the slave Davos (Max Minghella), just to make the story even more confusing.

The movie is set at a time of great change, when religious fervor is fueling trouble between the growing strength of Christianity, the old-school pagan worshippers and the Jews. The Christians, backed by the firebrand Patriarch Cyril (Sami Samir), respond to force with even greater force. And, sensing their growing power, they push out the pagans, brutalize the Jews and work hard at making the declining Roman officials - namely Orestes - bow to their will.

As Amenabar and Gil tell it, their bargaining chip is Hypatia, the woman the Christians call a witch. And you know what early Christians tended to do with witches.

All this is well and good. But Amenabar directs his film as if it were an HBO miniseries that had been edited from a seven-week run to a two-hour-seven-minute, feature-release running time. Periods of years are glossed over with on-screen narration. And whiloe some characters grow up to become Imperial leaders, others - Weisz’s Hypatia to be specific - look as if they don’t age a day.

Particularly strange is the film’s insistence of confusing her various disciples’ ardor with that of romance, so much so that if feels as if all these great changes in history are caused by little more than aborted adolescent lust.

And then there are the scenes that end with Amenabar drawing his camera high into the heavens, as if he were trying to capture the eye of God - or the apathy of the larger universe - staring down on the pathetic movements of all these little characters, strutting like so many army ants with just about as much understanding of the larger realm around them. Groovy.

Weisz doesn’t help. While the role of Hypatia needed the strength and glamour of someone such as a young Helen Mirren or Emma Thompson to work, Weisz plays Hypatia as some sort of breathless Middle-Eastern Ms. Wizard, coming to conclusions about the working of heavenly bodies that folks such as Kepler wouldn’t figure out until a millennia later. Weisz deserved her Oscar for “The Constant Gardener,” and she was decent eye-candy for the first two “Mummy” films. But she feels here as if she’s auditioning for the lead in a middle-school production of “Annie Gets Her Gun” meets “Evita.”

Amenabar clearly wants to make a statement about how early religious leaders of all stripes, but particularly Christians such as Cyril, squelched as much as they could the teaching of Classic Greek thought. To his credit, he does show that the battle for supremacy wasn’t all one-sided when it came to using violence (the pagans, in this film, actually wield the first blade). And if history didn’t back him up in this, then we have virtually every religious movie ever made - from “The Kings of Kings” to “The Passion of the Christ” - to use as reference points.

“Agora” debuted at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival. It’s opened all around the world, though only on a limited basis in the U.S. Hard to say when, or if, it will ever play Spokane. But if it does, you might be interested in going.

If nothing else, it’s unique to see a film where the early Christians are depicted as the villains. I don’t think Mel Gibson’s going to be any too happy about that.

Below: The trailer for “Agora.”

I went to Firenze’s legendary movie house, The Odeon, on Tuesday night to see - I’m finding it hard to admit this - “Sex and the City 2.” It’s taken me this long to debrief.

Why is that, you may ask? I blame it on the Intervallo.

If you’ve never seen a film in Italy, you may not know about the Intervallo. It marks a spot somewhere in the middle of the film where the theater, often in mid-scene, simply stops the movie. A big announcement splashes across the movie screen as the house lights come up. And then for the next five or so minutes, moviegoers are invited to go to the concession stand and buy, buy, buy.

I wonder why American movie theaters don’t do something similar. Of course, at The Odeon you can purchase alcohol. And when it comes to something such as “Sex and the City 2,” the more alcohol the better.

If I’d had a couple of drinks, I might not have suffered the attack that hit me just after the house lights came back up. It was during the scene where Charlotte (Kristin Davis), in tears because though she is rich and privileged beyond belief, questions how women who don’t have any money manage to cope with all the problems that child-rearing poses.

It was at that moment that I grabbed my temples and cried, “Oh, God, I think my head gonna asplode!”

That, folks, is my review of “SATC2.” Hope you enjoyed it.

Below: The four “girls” in all their splendor.

Here’s something my food-writer friend Leslie Kelly would appreciate. And maybe even agree with. It’s the notion that restaurant guides are advisories, not exact arbiters of taste - as if there ever could be such a thing.

Taste, after all, is almost by definition a personal reaction. Sure, there can be widely accepted tastes. Grace Kelly was a beautiful woman; that’s something I’m sure we can all agree upon. That she was a decent actress, though, is bound to cause some argument (her Oscar notwithstanding).

And so it goes with restaurant guides. The guidebook that we used to tour the northwestern tip of Sardegna, The Rough Guide to Sardinia (they use the anglicized spelling), pointed us toward three different eateries in the scenic port city of Alghero. I’ll talk about each of our experiences separately.

1. Ristorante Andregas. I typically stay away from restaurants that sit near piazzas, waterfront walkways or any place else where there is pedestrian congestion. But this was our first night in Alghero, on Thursday, and I wanted to enjoy the ocean as the sun set. So we took a table for two, which was easily procured, and were treated to a decently chilled bottle of dry white wine, friendly service (the waiter spoke English, but he was happy to endure our broken Italian) and a pair of meals (Mary Pat had suckling pig, I had a ricotta-filled ravioli in red sauce) that were far better than I had expected. As an experience, I rate it three and a half out of four.

2. Trattoria Cavour. Friday night our friends Karen and Allen, who have lived the ex-pat life in Italy for the past five years, joined us. And while we had no reservations, we headed into the centro storico looking for someplace to eat dinner. We were turned away from our first choice, Al Tugari, because they were booked up. Trattoria Caovur, though it didn’t offer any outside seating, looked good. And while the head waiter wasn’t sure he could accommodate, he quickly found us a table. And after that first seeming bit of disappointment, he couldn’t have been more inviting. Even cheerful, which flies in the face of the Sardegnean reputation for melancholia. We had varying plates of seafood (I opted, again, for pasta), and it all went down easily, with our waiter and another engaging in fun banter about why my friends had cut the fat off their meat appetizer - something they said was a delicacy. Again, this was three and a half out of four.

3. Al Taguri. On Saturday, we returned to this place, having made sure to book a reservation for “around 8 p.m.” And, look, it’s a fancy place. No doubt. The Rough Guide, among others, gives it a high recommendation. But from the moment we stepped into the place, and were ushered upstairs to a loft-style secondary dining room, we were treated as if we were fortunate to have been granted access to greatness. The smiles on the waiters, not to mention the bussers, were about as rare as finding an Italian who obeys the speed limit. Or who even know what the speed limit is. Even our “grazies” were returned with looks that said, “Well, if your thanks actually meant something, I might even answer you with a slight twist of my lips.” And while the wine (again chilled, white and delicious) flowed, the food was … well, only OK. The others had a couple of types of fish, and mussels as an appetizer, and they were moderately satisfied.

I, though, had two dishes of pasta, one of which was delicious (smoked cheese and penne) and another that, if the waiter had taken the time to explain, was nearly the same thing. Huh? That’s not how it was described in the Italian menu. I know, I should have asked, because especially in regions outside of Tuscany the dialects can mean something completely different from what your standard Italian dictionary can tell you. But in a fancy restaurant, you look for directions from the knowledgeable staff. You want guidance from them about what dishes (and wines) go best with everything else. Our waiter, who spoke perfect English - and who insisted on speaking his perfect English, even when we tried to ask questions in Italian - never said a word. He just looked at me, as if I were some sort of strangely irritating problem he had to deal with, and commenced to write in his little book. And so when all was said and done, the meal eaten and sitting heavy in my stomach, I left Al Taguri with a definite sense of letdown.

Here’s one thing that Leslie taught me: A meal is a complete experience. I don’t care how good the food is, the overall effect can be spoiled with poor (or arrogant) service, lame atmosphere and inferior presentation. For me, Al Taguri deserves barely two stars on a four-star rating, and that’s being generous.

Hell, enough white wine and I’d even begin to talk about Grace Kelly the actress.

Below: One of Grace Kelly’s starring roles, “Dial M for Murder.”

It can be an exhausting pain to run an independent theater. Just ask Joe Davis at the Magic Lantern. Yet it’s possible to do. And if this story from the Boston Globe is any indicator, it’s possible to do it with a measure of success. The key: Show movies that do something more than thrill you with CGI.

The other key: having access to an audience that actually wants to see those movies. That, my 30-year Spokane moviegoing experience has told me, can be an insurmountable problem. A lot more people love to complain about the lack of quality movies in Spokane than actually seek them out when they play here.

I can’t begin to count the number of phone calls that I received when I was working at The Spokesman-Review from people who asked why this or that foreign/art/independent film wasn’t playing locally. I used to sigh audibly before telling them that the film had played for a week the previous month.

“But … but …,” the person would stammer, “how was I supposed to know?”

Well, when I worked at the SR, we did a pretty good job of getting the news out. I think the reporters and editors who work there now continue to do what they can. And there are other news sources, including the Pacific Northwest Inlander, as well as various Web sites.

Ultimately, though, the committed film fan will do his or her own research. Call AMC’s River Park Square Theatres. Call the Magic Lantern. (I won’t list the other chain and independent theaters because they seldom play anything other than mainstream fare.) Check the Internet. Go to the theaters and ask questions.

Yeah, it’s a pain that AMC usually plays its Select series often only a week at a time. But if you really want to see interesting cinema, you have to jump on it. Go during that first week. How else will film bookers ever come to believe that something other than “Avatar” or “Iron Man” will play to a Spokane audience?

Easy answer there. They won’t.