Hangin' with Kevin Hart

So I had to ask Kevin Hart: "Is that a Z shirt?" He said no -- but laughed, because he, too, loved the Saturday Night Live sketch. You can read my IndieWire Q&A with this weekend's box-office champ here.

At last! SXSW 2012!

Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night shall keep a Variety film critic from his appointed rounds. But let me tell you: The kind of rain I encountered today while driving from H-Town to Austin -- a trip that took me nearly twice as long as it usually does -- can sure as hell slow you down a lot. Fortunately, I've made it to dry land, gotten myself settled, checked out the WiFi in my Extended Stay digs -- and now I'm already to start being festive here at SXSW 2012. A good thing, too, because it looks like some folks may be keeping an eye on me. (Thanks for the shout-out, IndieWire -- I think.)

But, really, I can't complain: After all, there are other festivals I could be covering right now.

Few choose to view Jodie Foster's Beaver

Sorry, but I couldn't resist the single entendre after reading this indieWire report.

Getting excited about Get Low

The lovely and talented Anne Thompson shares my high regard for Get Low, which opens Friday in New York and Los Angeles, and suspects, as I do, that it will be a credible contender for glittering prizes. ("I want to see how the movie plays at the Academy. It should be a soft lob down the middle for Oscar voters.") She'll soon post interviews with lead player Robert Duvall and producer Dean Zanuck (son of Richard, grandson of Darryl) on IndieWire. While you're waiting, here's another peek at my Cowboys & Indians piece on this marvelous movie and its mighty star.

R.I.P.: Peter Brunette

From IndieWire comes the sad news that esteemed film critic and historian Peter Brunette died of a heart attack this morning in Italy while covering the Taormina Film Festival as a contributor for the Hollywood Reporter. I would like to extend my sincere condolences to his family and friends. And I hope neither they nor anyone else will think me rude, or worse, to admit: This is exactly how I would like to go when the time comes. And if Peter saw one final movie last night, I hope it was great one.

Weekend B.O.: Iron Man 2 zooms, Metropolis towers

No big surprise: Iron Man 2 tops the weekend box-office chart -- due at least in part to my own purchase of three IMAX-screening tickets at inflated prices. (Hey, it was what The Long-Suffering Mrs. L. and our son wanted to see as we celebrated Mother's Day.) And I have to admit: I thoroughly enjoyed it, maybe even a smidge more than I enjoyed Iron Man. But what about the box-office performance of "smaller" movies this weekend? As usual, IndieWire delivers a detailed report. Glad to see the newly restored Metropolis is doing boffo biz in New York. Can't wait to see it on the big screen in my part of the world.

Yet another reason to read IndieWire

Great news for anyone who enjoys cogent film commentary: Todd McCarthy has a brand new gig.

A year-end prize for Summer Hours

Olivier Assayas' sharply observed and subtly affecting Summer Hours has been voted the best movie of 2009 in indieWIRE's annual poll of more than 100 film critics and bloggers. And while it wasn't my very first choice for top honors, I'd agree with my fellow voters that the film -- Assayas' best since Late August, Early September, a movie that, for various reasons, I've been thinking about a lot recently -- it's an altogether worthy choice. (As for indieWIRE's choice for best film of the decade... well, let me be diplomatic and say I didn't take part in that balloting, so I have no comment to make.) Summer Hours is a ruefully melancholy tale about three adult siblings (Juliette Binoche, Charles Berling and Jeremie Renier) dealing with their late mother's estate -- and, by extension, with their increasingly tenuous ties to their shared past, and to each other. As Roger Ebert has sagely noted: "[T]he film builds its emotional power by stealth, indirectly, refusing to be a tearjerker, always realistic, and yet observing how very sad it is to see a large part of your life disappear... The actors all find the correct notes. It is a French film, and so they are allowed to be adult and intelligent. They are not the creatures of a screenplay that hurries them along. The film is not about what will happen. It is about them."

Summer surges

Good news from IndieWire: As of this weekend, Marc Webb's delightful (500) Days of Summer is the top-grossing "specialty film" release of 2009. BTW: Another movie featuring Joseph Gordon-Levitt also made some money at the box-office this weekend.

Throw Down Your Heart

More than a year after its world premiere at the SXSW Film Festival, ticketbuyers finally are getting a chance to see Throw Down Your Heart, Sascha Paladino's engaging documentary about banjo virtuoso Béla Fleck's venturesome efforts to trace his favorite instrument's African roots. And according to IndieWire's Peter Knegt, they really are buying tickets.

R.I.P.: New Yorker Films (1965-2009)

Bad news about a legendary alt-film distributor, delivered respectfully by IndieWire here, here and here.

Live from Park City

On the newly revamped indieWIRE website: Sundance Film Festival director Geoff Gilmore talks about.... well, what else? Yeah, it's that time of year again.

More on Michael Moore

Indie movie maven John Pierson continues to attract impassioned responses to his IndieWire critique of Michael Moore. In the L.A. Times, however, Patrick Goldstein take a somewhat more respectful (albeit skeptical) approach to judging the incendiary documentarian. Speaking of Sicko, Goldstein writes: "At the center of the film, as always, is Moore. Like Bono, Spike Lee and George Clooney, he occupies that amorphous space in the pop culture given over to bold-faced names whose activism is indistinguishable from their celebrity. A walking inspiration for op-ed page pieces arguing the merits of his latest exposé, Moore has, as Clifford Odets once said of Orson Welles, 'a peculiarly American audacity.'"

Goldstein continues: "What makes Moore so compelling is that he has a cultural magnetism that seduces us while simultaneously arousing our suspicion. It's an unusually combustible equation: Infuriate + Inspire = Ambivalence. Bill Clinton's entire presidency was consumed by it. Courtney Love had it for a minute, as did Oliver Stone. Terrell Owens and Barry Bonds have brought it to the playing fields. Love 'em, hate 'em, often all at the same time."

True enough. Still, I'd be interested in seeing how the debate over Moore might be affected -- if at all -- if the documentary that has become Pierson's pet cause would get some theatrical play.

Slamming

IndieWire has the lineup for next month's edition of Slamdance, the upstart rival to the Sundance Film Festival. Sight unseen, two world premiere documentaries seem especially promising: Seth Gordon's King of Kong, an up-close and personal view of obsessive video-game competitors who evidently share my fascination with Pac-Man; and Jeremy and Randy Stulberg's Off the Grid: Life on the Mesa, a study of neo-"Wild West" life in a New Mexico desert community inhabited by survivalists, teen runaways and Gulf War vets.