A good movie is about something, and also about something else.

And a great movie can be enjoyed even if you only get part of what it’s about.

They’re standing with one of the single most enduring icons of popular culture, but nobody knows it yet.

Imagine being one of the actors who was to become an enduring icon of popular culture.

Update: NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day is this 2003 photo of the earth from the International Space Station, looking much like it might have looked to Yuri Gagarin:

Commenting on the first view from space he reported, “The sky is very dark; the Earth is bluish. Everything is seen very clearly”. His view could have resembled this image taken in 2003 from the International Space Station.

Via email: All day today, you can watch streaming internet video of the Concert for George that was performed at the Royal Albert Hall on the first anniversary of George’s death. It’s an excellent show, and a fine tribute to a great soul.

All you can take with you is that which you’ve given away.

This appears in the movie right before George Bailey gives away his entire life savings to keep the Building and Loan from falling under the control of greedy Henry Potter.

Join us next time, when I’ll tell you exactly how you should think for yourself.

But Randall Munroe’s webcomic xkcd makes an excellent point:

More harm has been done by people panicked over societal decline than societal decline ever did.

By George, he’s got something there. You can click the image to see the complete comic.

Those who aren’t already familiar with xkcd might be startled by the crude stick-figure drawings, or by the crude language sometimes present in the comics. I think those things are simply evidence of society’s decline and inevitable collapse, but I could be wrong.

He might have attended Barack Obama’s inauguration tomorrow in person. As it is, he will be unmistakably present in spirit.

I’ve posted this video before. It seems appropriate now. Martin Luther King in Montgomery, Alabama, on March 25, 1965:

Stanford has the full text of the speech.

The video is from the film King: A Filmed Record… Montgomery to Memphis, which was shown in theaters as a “one-time only” event on March 24, 1970, and was later aired just once on network television. A truncated version of the film was once available on home video, and now the full film is being made available on DVD by A Filmed Record, Inc., a non-profit company. The DVD is pretty expensive, but it’s been awaited for a very long time.

Since that time, I have not complained about the weather one single time. I’m glad there is weather. I’ve not complained about traffic. I’m glad there’s people around.

One of the things that I did when I got home, I went down to shopping centers, and I’d just go around there, get an ice cream cone or somethin’, and just watch the people go by, and think: “Boy, we’re lucky to be here. Why do people complain about the earth? We are living in the Garden of Eden.”

(This is from the documentary In the Shadow of the Moon.)

I enjoyed the first two Spider-Man movies. I cringed through both Fantastic Four movies. I’m eager to see Iron Man when it comes out on DVD — probably around Thanksgiving time.

I didn’t know what to make of Ang Lee’s Hulk movie. Frankly, it left me baffled. I didn’t enjoy it, but I thought maybe I could see it five years later and say, “Are you kidding? It’s brilliant!”

Now, five years later, it looks like they’re trying again. Universal is promoting another Hulk movie, scheduled to open June 13th.

Unfortunately, the computer-graphics Hulk still looks like a character from a video game.

Who knows? Maybe in another five years…

People unfamiliar with those old shows will find themselves saying, “That’s a door?”

Update: This must be Dalek day on the prestigious internet. Boing Boing found a voice-changing Dalek helmet. But what if you already sound like a Dalek?

I don’t think anybody in the Daily Show audience has seen The Grapes of Wrath.

Wildly Popular ‘Iron Man’ Trailer To Be Adapted Into Full-Length Film

Hollywood ruins everything.

I used to watch The Adventures of Robin Hood, a weekly TV show starring Richard Greene. I enjoyed it then, but I was very young, and now I don’t know whether it was any good or not.

We shall see.

Amazon.com is offering the complete first season on DVD for only $5.49. It’s 39 half-hour episodes on three discs. Even if my memories are wrong and the show is terrible, that might be a fair price for three shiny coasters to put under a drink.