I've got The Black Hole on in the other room right now - I love the Overture before the widescreen presentation.

I hoped it might be decent. Napoleon Dynamite was a very mixed bag but there was some good stuff in it so I hoped that given more money director Jared Hess might show something.

And so far, except for King Kong, I've been happy with Jack Black pretty much every time I've seen him.

I don't know why this thought came to me, but can anyone tell me what the dealio was with March of the Penguins?

I loved it, of course. It was beautiful, had wonderful script/narration, and there were penguins--how could it go wrong?

But at the same time, I've seen that documentary before. It's been done. So why all the hype with this one, I wonder?

I don't know. I was a little underwhelmed with it myself, but simple lifecycle documentaries have been done so many times that they are hard to make interesting.

I think there were three factors here that made it successful in English:

1) It was beautifully shot. That was definitely a step up from your normal Animal Planet/PBS life cycle doc.

2) It did expose a quirk of nature with which most peole were unfamiliar and it just seems so odd. Simultaneously it seems an argument against natural selection and intelligent design. In other words, it reminds people that the world is sometimes stupidly wacky.

3) When it was redone for the U.S. market they completely changed the narration to be straight narration. In the original French version the narrators were the voices of the penguins (yes, apparently the penguins talked). I haven't seen both version but know people who have; apparently the original is kind of lame because of that.

A quick update on my Hitchcock cycle. I've been watching all of the Hitchcock movies in chronological order and I'm up to Dial M For Murder.

Anyway, I had a "how the heck did I miss this one" moment last week when I saw Shadow Of A Doubt. Holy crap! What a fantastic movie!

OK... back to penguin talk.

ND was going to be my next question for you. I liked ND a lot. I can't really explain why. It was so silly and offbeat that it just made me laugh. Maybe it was the mood I was in when I saw it the first time. The brother cracked me up.

'Penguins'... I liked it. But after seeing the 'Making of', I liked it even more. It was a huge undertaking to make this film. I do not envy those filmmakers at all. I enjoyed 'Murderball' also.

I liked 'Dial M' a lot. Keep in mind that a couple of scenes in the film were shot in 3D. That was an added effect for people seeing it in the theatre back then...

My 12 year old and I are going to ditch the wife and finally see Dead Man's Chest tonight. I'm just a bit behind the times.

I agree that on the whole Nacho Libre was awful, but I loved the characters- just weird enought to keep my interest. Not Jack Black- he gets on my nerves a bit, but the others. I wouldn't pay to see it again, but I didn't dislike it as much as I thought I would.

Next on the list: Dial N for Nonsense. :D