• Chris Evans has become (correct me if I’m wrong) the first actor to play two different Marvel superheroes. There is clearly a loophole in the law Obama should think about closing. If not, Michael Chiklis will be the new Doctor Strange and nothing will makes sense any more.
• Free films! If you know, we’d like to know. But what do we know? Well… April sees the Southbank Centre organising Alchemy, a festival fuelled by Indian dance, poetry, film, song etc. The ultimate Bollywood-Spaghetti-Western (Westspagbol), Sholay, is the freebie part. Orson’s Well will be there. You’ll spot us easily because we’ll be looking almost exactly like this.
• Communist master-of-paradox Slavoj Žižek has been doing the rounds as a film critic lately. He takes on Avatar in the New Statesman and The Hurt Locker at the LRB blog. He’s not really at his best here – according to a comment in the former piece, he hasn’t actually seen Avatar – and both films deserve a more nuanced approach, as I think previous linklogs have attested. Whups, I mentioned Avatar again. I’ll leave it now.
• Shooting pro-quality video on a shoestring. And what to do with all that footage when you get home.
• If you’re bored enough to follow the progress of an out-of-hand and increasingly complex spat that dates back at least 12 years and involves the critic Armond White, the filmmaker Noah Baumbach, Baumbach’s mother Georgia Brown, Baumbach’s publicist Leslee Dart and Village Voice scribe J. Hoberman, you should really find something to do with your life. Alternatively, and in chronological order: What? Really? No! Oh, this is ridiculous.

• Quick disclaimer on this one: I haven’t seen Avatar, let alone seen it in 3-D. However, this seems like a very good analysis of the issues with current 3-D filmmaking techniques. I like having the ability to notice and focus on little background details. No-one’s going to take that away from me. Especially not James ‘fucking’ Cameron.
• “I stared with glazed eyes at The Bounty Hunter. Here is a film with no need to exist.” I love Roger Ebert and would happily civil partnership him tomorrow. Gerard Butler, on the other hand, is turning into a bit of a bad smell. Yes, 300 was fun, but since then it’s as if he’s kicked his ability to say ‘no’ down a well.
• Looks like The Wicker Man is set for another remake. Or re-imagining, which seems to be the in vogue term these days. Anything’s got to be better than Nicolas Cage’s “OH GOD NOT THE BEES” antics, right? Christopher Lee is also supposed to be on board. We’ll see.
• I haven’t watched this yet because I’m at work, so it’s more of a reminder to me to watch it once I get internet access in my new flat. Here are the opening credits of Gaspar (Irréversible) Noé’s latest, Enter The Void. UPDATE: I’ve watched it now and it’s brilliant, but I feel a bit sick and suggestible.
• Got a predilection for threesomes and a few hours to kill? Consult The Trilogy Meter.

• John Malkovich fans, ye gods! He’ll be starring in a one-man show about a ‘fictional’ Austrian serial killer at the Barbican, later this year.
• The greatest fan film ever made? Not so much dedicated to Lord of the Rings itself, more to what Peter Jackson did with it. If you haven’t already, you can still watch Born of Hope, right here. Based on Tolkien’s not-inconsiderable appendices (neglected by Jackson), it cost £25,000 to make.
• Tron Legacy.
• Ryan Gilbey fluffs it with Exit Through the Gift Shop. Jonathan McCalmont is more insightful. But, er, guys… Isn’t this so obviously a hilarious prank? Why is the reality or otherwise of Thierry Guetta up for discussion? It’s a fiction film, innit? Like Borat, y’know? It’s dead good, by the way…
• After Alice in Wonderland, maybe Tim Burton should be moving out of his comfort zone rather than squatting in it?
• Ian McKellan has booked his flights, but The Hobbit still doesn’t have a green light.
• Gossip, gossip, gossip. But scroll down, and you’ll find the real reason why The Hurt Locker, a film about bomb disposal, has a tense sniper sequence in the middle of it. (Ralph Fiennes couldn’t bear playing another stuffy Englishman, apparently.) I know this kind of negotiation is one of the film industry’s truest clichés, but I’m never less than astonished that this is how films get made.

• I’ve only just seen In the Loop, and – like most of the rest of the civilised world – thought it was bloody brilliant. But what does real-life Tucker inspiration Alistair Campbell think?
• Pacific, the long-awaited follow-up to Band of Brothers, is now within sight and has been generating some remarkable buzz. Should be a very exciting event, when it comes.
• I wouldn’t mess with Quentin Tarantino. This woman did. She probably regrets it now. Like she regrets that hat! Boosh!
• This is pretty old now, but I’m sharing it anyway: a 70-minute review of The Phantom Menace. It’s worth it. Trust me.
• Cuarón! In space! With RDJ!

• Christopher Nolan’s most informative statement yet regarding the third part of his Batman trilogy. Yup, it’s definitely a trilogy.
• I didn’t thrill to Philip Palmer’s debut novel Debatable Space, but he’s always been an interesting blogger. Here, a rebuttal to John Scalzi, who has lately been arguing that Inglourious Basterds is not science fiction.
• The 83 year-old Kenneth Anger, author of Hollywood Babylon and director of the Magick Lantern Cycle, is interviewed by The Guardian. The new exhibition runs at Sprüth Magers London until 27 March. Aesthetica blogs about it.
• A heroic take-down of A Prophet at Cinema Scope.
• An extensive (negative) review of Avatar from Daniel Mendelsohn in The New York Review of Books. I’ll try to give the Avatar links a rest now, promise.
• The film that bested Cameron at the Oscars was Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker, justly celebrated here at The Pinocchio Theory. Meanwhile, Armond White of the New York Press gives the Academy a thorough pasting. If you’ve never read White before, you are in for a world of fun and frustration. A little taster here.
• Variety has laid off, among other staffers, its film critic of 30 years, Todd McCarthy. Some possible reasons why are mulled over by Anne Thompson. Jim Emerson aggregates the reaction.

Tavs here. Thom’s on the other side of the pond this week, so I’m filling in for him on Links duty.

• I hated the idea of Disney’s Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland as soon as I heard about the bloody thing, so I’m delighted to see that CHUD has kicked the shit out of it.
• Instead of that dross, check out this brilliant work of electronica and video editing. Made by elusive YouTuber Pogo, his treatments of Hook and Up also come very highly recommended. Be aware that due to dodgy legal wranglings his remixes are subject to being yanked by the ‘tube without warning. But they’re so good that people keep uploading them again, so hah.
• Legendary critic Roger Ebert has launched a membership system for his rather excellent website. Five bucks for a year sounds eminently reasonable to me. Why didn’t we think of that?
• From Firstshowing.net via heyuguys: A first look at a new A Nightmare on Elm Street poster. Yeah, the poster’s cool, but I’m not holding out for anything earth-shattering from this franchise reboot. Happy, as always, to be proved wrong.
• With the Oscars looming over us like some kind of giant metal statue, I’m sure we’re all already quite tired of the constant twittering, bickering and twitter-bickering (twickering – it’s mine. No, you can’t use it).  In that vein, here’s a quick look at some of the worst – and therefore best – Academy gaffes over the years. Point and laugh and them. Hahaha!

• Those BAFTA nominees and winners in full. Go Christoph Waltz! Umm, go Kristen Stewart!
• Ever wondered what might have happened if David Lynch hadn’t been so badly burned by Dune (1984), and continued to make studio movies? Like, say… Disney’s A Goofy Movie?
• The story of Avatar has its roots in Cameron’s sylvan childhood, apparently.
• In summing the decade that’s now concluding, what do you figure we might look back as our presiding sensibility? A provocative series on ‘The Aesthetics of Stupidity’ starts here and continues here, at American Stranger…
• …which in turn led me to this. A bit old for a links log, I know, but it’s the defence of Richard Kelly’s Southland Tales I’ve been looking for ever since 2007. Laughed at in Cannes, ignored on release, I’d take an uncompromising, overburdened, chaotic shambles like this over any number of unambitious-but-able blockbuster-types.
• Logorama, a 15-minute animated film that uses only logos, is getting a lot of attention. There’s a review of the film from Mark Webster here.

• Jonathan McCalmont has used the UK release of Ponyo (after at least 18 months of delays) as an opportunity to write a brief visual history of Hayao Miyazaki’s Studio Ghibli films.
• David Lynch’s Interview Project reaches episode 088.
• Probably the first Brazilian sock puppet Nineteen Eighty-Four.
• Howard Waldrop and Lawrence Person discuss The Wolfman.
• What has Israeli blogger Abigail Nussbaum been watching lately? And why haven’t I seen The Box yet?

• While debating the merits of District 9, Avatar et al, know that science fiction at the cinema is dwarfed (in terms of spectacle and vision, anyway) by the three-minute music promo. Queen and Empress of screen SF is surely, surely Lady Gaga, whose best music videos rival those of Radiohead and Michael Jackson. Watch ‘Bad Romance’ and all the rest on Vevo/YouTube.
• Music videos and commercials are way ahead of the game, technically speaking, but we tend to ignore them when we talk about film. For other reasons, we don’t pay any attention whatsoever to Christian Cinema. I suppose I couldn’t make it through Dr Kent Hovind’s seven-part ’science’ series without submitting to suffocated strangle-noises, but the films on Islam and 9/11 look diverting. If you think this is all alien and a bit silly, The Blind Side is out in UK in March.
• Can film be philosophy? Well, yes, says Oxford don Stephen Mulhall. His case study is Blade Runner (1982), about which, incidentally, there’s this fantastic little essaylet by Adam Roberts.
• Friend of Orson’s Well Phil Raby has started his own film review site, Front Row Films. Go, go, have a poke around.
• Orson Welles in Ronda.

• Our profoundly non-obliging patron, Orson Welles, had a daughter, Christophe Welles Feder (one of three), who is now spilling the beans. But did he have a son?
• It’s a bit late for funny business like this, but I’ve only just spotted Ebert’s films of the decade.
• The Oscar nominations have been revealed. I’m usually pretty annoyed because I’ve seen precious few of the nominations (the ceremony is quite often before the UK release of some of the films, rendering speculation spectacularly pointless). This time, I have seen most of the films. And it’s not a stunning crop. Especially bemused by District 9’s nomination, but this is the madcap organisation that fêted Crash with ‘Best Picture’ five years ago.
• If you haven’t seen it yet, Sita Sings the Blues is still available for free! Watch it now!
• Jonathan McCalmont on brow-altitude.