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According to a detailed manifesto on its website, the Oxford Film Festival began in 2003 "as a project of the Yoknapatawpha Arts Council... committed to celebrating the art of independent cinema." What the festival actually is, however, is so much more: a four-day celebration where filmmakers, industry professionals, critics, and cinephiles gather together, get to know one another, and share in a community's collective appreciation for film in all of its forms. Cozily entrenched in the businesses and residences of Oxford, Mississippi, the town that the picturesque college Ole Miss calls home, OFF is a modest, maturing sibling of mainstay festivals like Sundance and South By Southwest whose smalltown charm bypasses superficial spectacle in favor of more substantial rewards.

The festival runs four days and features more than 80 different offerings, including narrative features, documentaries, short films, animated works, and experimental projects. I was enlisted at the last minute to serve as a member of OFF's documentary jury, so I was unfortunately unable to attend the Opening Night screening of director Joshua Goldin's Wonderful World, but took a break from some 20 hours of verite filmmaking to attend a party at Oxford's Southside Gallery. In attendance were several of the filmmakers who brought their movies to the fest, as well as an array of other participants and locals without whose presence the festival simply wouldn't have its singularly intimate feel.

It's a bird, it's a plane ... it's Warner Bros. asking Christopher Nolan to pretty please resurrect their Superman franchise and do something cool with it! According to Deadline Hollywood, Nolan has been asked to come in and sort of "mentor" the next Superman movie, and it won't be a sequel to Superman Returns, but instead the beginning of a brand new franchise. Furthermore, DH says Nolan probably won't direct -- especially since David Goyer, Jonah Nolan and Chris Nolan are all busy planning and writing the next Batman installment as we speak -- so what will he do, exactly, when it comes to the new Superman? That's not clear yet, and DH stresses that the film is still in its real early stages of development (ahem, I think they're bringing him in to lay the groundwork for a Justice League movie, but we'll see ...)

Still, knowing Nolan is somehow involved in the rebirth of Superman should at the very least breathe some excited life into a franchise that a lot of folks have kinda lost faith in because, let's face it, the fans feel Warner Bros. had lost faith in it, too. One insider told DH, "We know what we don't want to do. But we don't know what we want to do. We learned a lot from the last movie, and we want to get it right this time." Obviously Nolan has success in rebooting a DC Comics franchise, as evidenced by the work he's done with Batman. But Superman is a different beast all together, and one imagines they'll start with trying to ground the franchise a bit more with a freakier set of villains and perhaps a more relatable, down-to-earth storyline. Not that we need Clark Kent making MySpace references for 120 minutes, but I could see them focusing more on the burden Superman is carrying -- that "weight of the world" angle -- and less on his little romance with Lois Lane.

What do you think? What would you like to see them do with the new Superman?

Sometime in the early '90s, my young adolescent existence went from nerdy and tomboyish to boy-crazy, nerdy and tomboyish. Once it happened, I started noticing cute boys everywhere and I found that my girl friends did, too. We would have sleepovers and hang outs and talk for hours about the objects of our obsessions, pick which ones were our favorites (making sure to choose diplomatically, in case two girls picked the Justins and nobody picked the Lances), and replay particularly swoon-worthy scenes in our heads (i.e. "Remember that time Jonathan pretended to be a girl to get on the soccer team!?"). Only these boys weren't the cootie-carrying classmates we went to school with; they were the dreamy, pretty, charismatic nice boys the likes of which could only be found in fantasy land. These were our movie crushes.

To kick-off this new column celebrating our collective childhood movie crushes, I'm taking it back to the first onscreen boy that ever made my heart beat with (innocent!) romantic palpitations. (Check out Jessica Barnes' Michael Biehn post for a much more respectably nerdy first crush.) The year was 1992, his name was Michael Treanor, and he was one of the young stars of a major motion picture that had girls the world over swooning while simultaneously asking their parents to sign up for karate lessons: 3 Ninjas.

While all thoughts were swarming towards Superbowl showdowns and commercials, the lovely and venerable James Spader celebrated his 50th birthday. I'll let that sink in for a moment. 50 years... Half a century. To the younger folks that might not seem like such a shocker, Spader being nothing more than that overly talky, whisky-drinking dude from Boston Legal, who got particularly kinky with Maggie Gyllenhaal not too long ago. But to those whose first forays into cinema included the likes of Pretty in Pink, Mannequin, Less Than Zero, Wall Street, and Sex, Lies, and Videotape, it's a pretty big thing to wrap your head around.

What might be most impressive or surprising, more so than Spader's age, is that he is such an absolute and quintessential part of '80s Hollywood for only a very small handful of films. There are many men and women who graced the screen over and over during that decade, but it took exactly one role to make him famous: Steff in Pretty in Pink -- rich, suit-wearing, and holding enough charming sleaze to fill a football stadium. He ruled the high-school-jerk legions, and even if you weren't a fan of John Hughes' Molly Ringwald world, you knew about Spader's sleazy slick nature.

Following rumors from last November, The Hollywood Reporter posts that Sam Worthington will star in The Fields (previously called The Texas Killing Fields). Ami Canaan Mann -- daughter of Michael -- will direct Don Ferrarone's script, which is based on a true story. Worthington will play a "Texas homicide detective who joins with a New York detective to investigate unsolved murders in the Texas bayous." Pre-production has begun on the project, but the Manhattan law is yet to be cast.

With this latest confirmation, it's clear that all of those Worthington rumors aren't just blank, rumor-mill hype whipped up because of Avatar. His name has been batted about for Mad Max 4, he's said to be attached to American Crime, there have been questions about playing savior of the universe Flash Gordon, and maybe even Dracula.

The man is definitely a hot commodity, and with all due respect (I swear!) I ask: why? He's got the looks and the build to play the tough guy, that's for certain. He's an okay actor too (although we should look for more than okay), but he's lacking that OMG Next Big Thing! charisma. Or the I really like this guy! charisma. Or the He's so damn cool! charisma. Even fluffy action movies (could Flash Gordon be anything but?) need that winning presence to pull you in and fuel a franchise. Imagine Han Solo and Indiana Jones without Harrison Ford's charm... Or more applicably, the old-school Mel Gibson who led Mad Max and Lethal Weapon. The classics we love are iconic because of that magnetic, irresistible pull the stars possess.

Meanwhile, over at CHUD, Devin Faraci learned that The Invaders will be Cap's costars. The Invaders were a WW2 superhero team that boasted Cap and Bucky as members, but the Marvel movie version will be a European team that fights alongside them. The goal is to make First Avenger more of an international film instead of a purely American spectacle. It's not yet known who among the Invaders will be gracing the silver screen, but Johnston hints that they'll be six members strong. If I was a betting woman, I'd put my money on Union Jack being a lock for the team. He's English, he has a cool costume, and he'd be perfect for a spin-off.

Welcome to Cinematical's new On Demand, where we review the latest in home entertainment -- on demand, on disc, on the web -- and detail the must-sees, maybe-sees, and never-sees available from the comfort of your own home.

Pontypool is the best recent film you haven't seen.

Adapted from Tony Burgess' novel by Canadian filmmaker Bruce McDonald, Pontypool arrived on the scene during the Toronto International Film Festival of 2008. It slowly hit markets and enjoyed a limited release last Spring, while slipping onto IFC Midnight, Canadian DVD last July, and finally U.S. DVD just last week. It dances just out of reach of the mass movie-going conscious, but it's a terrible shame. This psychological thriller offers thrills and bloody viral chaos for the horror folks, verbal banter and literary cues for the linguists and English fiends, tensions and oddities for those who like to think and question, and the irreplaceable Stephen McHattie to entertain us all.

With each passing year I grow to hate finalés and endings more and more. It used to be that an ending was an actual conclusion -- stories would wrap up for better or for worse, and we'd have a sense of closure. The End. But as the sequel train picks up more and more steam, few films get to keep their endings.

We all know that the "happily ever after" idea isn't real. It's a nice little delusion to make us forget about life's many ups and downs. If life were perfect, we'd be living in a Disney fairytale. But wait -- even those aren't free of repeats. As Elisabeth pointed out with the Enchanted sequel, "I see no reason for a sequel. The point of Enchanted (and any fairy tale, modern or medieval) is that it ends happily ever That's it! They've overcome their drawbridges and dragons, and now they get to chill out."

"Ever after" seems to only mean "until the sequel." And at this point, do any of you actually feel satisfied at the end of the movie, or do you wonder how long the happiness will last before the sequel sets in?

We know a lot of our readers (and even some of our writers) like to partake in AMC's annual tradition of showing all of the best picture nominees on one day, which is why every year we like to give you the details on it when they become available. Of course, the whole 10 best picture nominees thing has thrown a small wrench in the usual one-day marathon, and, as such, this year AMC has decided to break it up into two days: February 27th and March 6th, both Saturdays.

The exact schedules haven't been announced yet, but AMC is currently asking you to vote on which four movies they should show alongside a 3D version of Avatar on February 27th. (If it was up to me, I'd vote District 9, The Hurt Locker, Inglourious Basterds and Up, this way you start out with fantasy, move toward sci-fi, and then back-to-back war films, capping it all off with a nice, sweet adventure story. The perfect program, in my opinion ... but what do you think?)

Details can be found over on the AMC website. The tickets for this event will run you about $60 for a two-day pass (if purchased online; $50 at the box office), and $30 for a one-day pass. That ticket gets you entry to the theater, as well as a free large popcorn and unlimited refills. Not a bad way to spend your Saturday, no?

So who's going this year?

Let's face it: The only reason most of us are actually watching the Superbowl this Sunday is because of the commercials. Unless you live in Indianapolis or New Orleans, and/or you're a die hard fan of one of those teams, you could honestly care less about the outcome of the actual football game. Instead, we're more interested in who is spending millions of dollars in an effort to sell us on their product in under a minute.

Good news is at least Fox doesn't have the Superbowl this year, so we won't have to spend four hours staring at that stupid robot football player dancing on the left side of the screen. But we still need to deal with the same old game coverage, and wouldn't it be nice if for just this one day (and game), some of Hollywood's most prolific filmmakers could get behind the camera? The folks over at SlateV imagined just that -- and they've put together a pretty hilarious video showing us what the Superbowl would look like if Quentin Tarantino, David Lynch, Wes Anderson, Jean-Luc Godard and Werner Herzog directed it. The only thing that's missing is a nod to Michael Bay, though something tells me they couldn't find enough Superbowl video with helicopters, explosions and half naked drugged-up dancers.

Check out the video after the jump, then let us know which famous directors you'd like to see helm the Superbowl.