Most sports movies will try to convince you that it’s not about winning, it’s about how you play the game. Not DOWNHILL RACER (1969). In fact, one of the primary reasons Robert Redford struggled to get this film made was because no one had made a sports movie with a protagonist whose amorality and arrogance had no effect on his winning streak. He chose to center the narrative around downhill racing pretty much because baseball and football were already taken.

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It’s a strange thing to reach adulthood and see, for the very first time, a film everyone else saw before they hit puberty. For me that film is PEE-WEE’S BIG ADVENTURE. I’m not going to lie; When I was a kid, Pee-wee really freaked me out. I thought he was creepy and weird and unnecessarily loud. But as part of Tim Burton’s retrospective, MoMA is screening all of his films, starting last night with PEE-WEE, his 1985 feature film debut. After Paul Reubens saw FRANKENWEENIE (a full-length remake is due out in 2011) he chose Burton to direct PEE-WEE’S BIG ADVENTURE, which had, until that point, been a stage-show at the Roxy in L.A. and of course, an HBO special.

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In watching Spike Jonze’s amazing film, WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE, I kept glancing at my five year-old son. Could it be true that we were actually enjoying the same movie on the same level of interest and engagement? That’s both fascinating and a little bit scary.

If you haven’t seen it yet, do. Unlike anything to cross mainstream screens in a some time, WTWTA is built on a series of purely visual, visceral experiences and interactions, and not at all on plot. Perrin Drumm made a similar point in her post on the film. (I won’t be giving anything away by telling you that the road to the climax hinges on one individual wanting to, like, build a really cool secret room out of sticks, and another individual being extraordinarily pissed and offended at the exclusivity of that conceit. The nerve!)

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Tim Burton fans came out in droves to the opening of his retrospective yesterday at MoMA. Dressed in red and black stripes and lace and crazy hats – even painted on stitches – they were hard to miss. And with the massive collection of drawings, set pieces and video I doubt they left disappointed. To get to the actual exhibit you have to walk through the mouth of one of Burton’s classic freak show creations, down a hallway lit only by TV screens playing his animated series “The World of Stainboy.” At the end of the hallway is a dark room lit by black-lights where some of his glow-in-the-dark pieces are on display.

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This video clip, of Paul Nicklen’s encounter with a giant leopard seal, is sweet and frightening all at once. Mr. Nicklen, a National Geographic photographer, tells the story of a 4 day meeting with the huge sea-going mammal. The images are shocking. Seals get that big! He stayed in the water! WTF!?

But the story is sweet too. The seal tries to share a meal, first a live penguin, with the photographer. When he does not partake in the meal she gets restless and brings him a half-dead penguin. Still no. How about a dead penguin? Nope.

Even the most frightening of animals help one another. Just as long as you’re not a poor little penguin.

The venerable NYC nightclub 1984 has been celebrating the 80s long before they became chic again. And it still offers a remarkable treat to those of us who spent our formative years in day-glo listening to Duran Duran. Resident DJ Chip Duckett, who also happens to be NYC’s biggest drag queen booker, curates a video show each week worthy of price of admission alone.

Last week he played 6 plus hours of all Kate Bush’s videos. Yes, Kate Bush is an acquired taste. And this week’s videos are even more so: Divine.

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Still from THE OCEAN WAIF (1916)

Alice Guy, as she was known, was not only the first female director, but the first director of narrative films – period. At a time when films were being made mainly for scientific or commercial purposes, Alice Guy had the bright idea to tell a story instead. Her first efforts were short experiments, clocking in under a minute. But as the head of production at Gaumont, she made her first feature-length films like the big budget, biblical epic THE LIFE OF CHRIST in 1906. She was also the first to use synched sound and special effects, like double exposures or running film backwards.

Over the course of her 25-year-long career, Alice Guy wrote, directed and produced over 1,000 films that spanned nearly every genre, from comedies and westerns to detective stories and remakes of literary classics. She has the longest list of credits on imdb.com that I’ve ever seen. To celebrate her work, The Whitney has rounded up an impressive amount of her films for the exhibit “Alice Guy Blaché: Cinema Pioneer.” See this week’s schedule of screenings.

A far cry from those mandatory educational videos we all had to watch in middle school, KOYAANISQATSI (1982) is a film without narrative or plot that BAM is screening specially for students in grades 8-12. And with a new score composed by Philip Glass (who will moderate a post-screening discussion) it’s a shame the rest of us can’t come. Presented by Francis Ford Coppola, KOYAANISQATSI is the Hopi word for “life out of balance.” The film itself focuses on the relationship between humans, nature and technology and uses only techniques like slow motion and time lapse to tell the story.

It starts off big, with images of ancient cave paintings, deserted landscapes and impressive aerial photography of every imaginable environment. There are the requisite sunsets in fast forward and rapid moving clouds and people and cars. There are also slow moving clouds and people and cars and long shots on a single person’s face. There are tanks and planes and explosions, buildings full of people and buildings abandoned by them. There are moments when lava bursts from volcanoes and the music is epic and there are times when the music stops altogether. The effect is like a two-hour long meditation on whatever those images mean to each individual viewer. I hope the 8th-12th graders appreciate the experience.

I think I am the only queer in the universe who is not going nuts over Glee. It’s not that I have anything against Glee, I just don’t have the time to sit down and watch TV, unless of course, you’re Larry David. I always make time for Curb Your Enthusiasm. But I am always online and the specialness of Glee, and its gayness too, is captured on the above YouTube video that has been circulating. In it three men with beards mouth the words to the Glee girls’ rendition of “I Say a Little Prayer”, the classic Dionne Warwick song.

The men, called The Full Silkwood, mouth the words. They’re butch on the outside. Only. Lead by Jason Whipple, a former BUTT cover boy, they’re adorable.

TINY RIOT PROJECT director Kris Lefcoe.

Sundance Channel recently sat down for an interview with Kris Lefcoe, the director of TINY RIOT PROJECT. What started as a music video for a small Canadian band ended up installed at some of the most prestigious art galleries and venues in the world suck as Art Basel Miami, Havana Biennale, and Galerie Tomas Schulte Berlin. Watch TINY RIOT PROJECT at Sundance Channel’s Digital Shorts.

What was the inspiration for TINY RIOT PROJECT?

Lefcoe : A few years ago I had a vision of an army of Care Bears and Coppertone girls attacking kids. I wanted to re-contextualize these sweet and cuddly icons as a bastion of corporate power. I ended up dropping the Coppertone girls and going for more of the Saturday morning cartoon plushies.

Why did you choose stop motion over other forms of animation, even live action?

Lefcoe : Stop motion is just so charming, so endearing. The viewer is drawn into this magical world, it’s irresistible. So it was the perfect medium, a surprising juxtaposition with the violence and political critique in the film. But it’s dangerously addictive. After shooting it, I wanted to shoot everything in stop motion.

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Finally, a film that lives up to the hype. Not only is FANTASTIC MR. FOX thrilling to simply look at, I think even hard-core Roald Dahl fans will appreciate the liberties Wes Anderson and Noah Baumbach (SQUID AND THE WHALE, MARGOT AT THE WEDDING) took with the story. While it’s not clear what they invented and what they took from Dahl’s original notes, the events in the book occupy the middle of the film with added backstory in the beginning and a more involved and complete ending.

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