It’s always nice when a favorite movie gets a little love, isn’t it? This week, it happened twice.

At The House Next Door, Robert C. Cumbow revisited Walter Hill’s majestic rock-and-roll fable “Streets of Fire”, which looks a little more like an unrecognized masterwork with every passing year … and over at the Onion AV Club, Scott Tobias inducted Bill Murray and Howard Franklin’s brilliant “Quick Change” into the New Cult Canon, rightly hailing it as the point where Murray began his transition from smartass comic hero to proper actor.

“Quick Change” is also the film that introduced the word “blaftoni”, which has remained in my vocabulary for nearly two decades now. Bless its pointy little head.

I’ve spent most of this week working on my computer. Or rather, I made a small tweak to one element of my computer on Tuesday, and one thing led to another, and the next thing I know I’m rebooting for three hours straight and opening up the CPU to check a SATA connection and Thursday evaporated in a puff of smoke.

Anyhow, the end result is that I have a lot of catching up to do today, meaning our regular Friday movie roundup will be slightly abbreviated. But not too much, I guess, since there are plenty of openings.

“The Baby Formula”: A mockumentary about duelling lesbian pregnancies. Susan kinda hated it at Inside Out, and hasn’t warmed to it much since then.

“Food, Inc.”: An actual documentary about the state of American (and, by extension, North American) food production and preparation, built around the work of crusading journalist and “Fast Food Nation” author Eric Schlosser. See it, and you will probably crap yourself — either in terror, or due to E. Coli contamination on the hot dog you bought at the concession stand. Susan explains.

“The Green Chain”: A mockumentary about environmentalists. Neither Susan nor Adam has much patience for it, though the presence of Tricia “Six” Helfer means it’ll have a long, long life on the DVD shelves.

“The Proposal“: In which Sandra Bullock plays an ill-mannered, intimidating Canadian book editor who blackmails her American assistant into marrying her so she can stay in New York and … wait, what? A Canadian? Ill-mannered? Seriously, we can only suspend so much disbelief before we pull something.

“Summer Hours“: Olivier Assayas’ melancholy family study — starring Charles Berling, Juliette Binoche and Jeremie Renier as globally dispersed siblings trying to divide their late mother’s estate — captures something really powerful about the meaning of objects. It’s one of last year’s best films; don’t wait for the DVD release, see it with people.

“Victoria Day”: The directorial debut of Toronto author David Bezmozgis reflects on Toronto teenage life in 1988; Susan and Jason admire it enough that I’m intrigued to see it — especially since it’s set at Newtonbrook Secondary School, just one year after I graduated from that particular institution. I bet that entranceway mural is as horrible as I remember.

“Wind Man”: The year’s second Kazakh feature is an absurdist drama about isolated villagers dealing with the arrival of an elderly, winged man in the town square. “Nice, but it’s no ‘Tulpan’,” say Rad and Adam.

“Year One“: Jack Black and Michael Cera blunder through a series of Biblical misadventures (Cain and Abel! Sodom and Gomorrah!) for our mild amusement in Harold Ramis’ very silly comedy. Remember “Wholly Moses!”? It’s like that, except there are actual jokes, and you won’t hate yourself afterward. My review should be up on the NOW site later this morning. UPDATE: There it is!

That’s going to have to be it for today. Time to update my graphics drivers … say a prayer for me, would you?

Olivier Assayas’ “Summer Hours” is one of the best films you’ll see this year, and it’s barely getting a theatrical run. So when it opens tomorrow, please make time to catch it on a big screen.

After missing both the movie and the man at Cannes, I caught up with Assayas at TIFF to discuss his film — and distilled that half-hour conversation into an online Q&A in today’s NOW. And in the paper proper, you’ll find a couple of very different reponses to a casual observation in my review of the “Taking of Pelham 1 2 3” remake.

Such a loaded word, “terrorism”. But then, I guess that’s the point.

Breaking news: The excellent documentarian Allan King has died, aged 79.

I’m working on an appreciation for Thursday’s paper, so I have to get back to that … but, you know. Crap.

UPDATE: The piece will still be running in tomorrow’s paper, but it’s online right now, if you’re curious.

“The Hangover” and “Up” retained the top spots at the box office with $33.4 and $30.5 million, respectively, forcing Tony Scott’s pointless “Pelham 123” remake to an ignoble third-place debut with a $25 million gross.

And though “Land of the Lost” placed fifth in its second week with just $9.2 million, that’s still better than the new Eddie Murphy-and-children comedy “Imagine That”, which tanked profoundly with a $5.7 million opening-weekend gross. Ouch.

Also: The Onion AV Club’s summer-hiatus television coverage reaches back into the glory days of the 1990s for some excellent running coverage; among this week’s columns are Donna Bowman’s appreciation of my very favorite episode of “NewsRadio”, “Arcade“, and over in the “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” section, Noel Murray’s reviews of the key third-season episodes “Lover’s Walk” and “The Wish” have launched a few truly awesome comment threads, including some great discussions of what it truly means to be an ensouled vampire.

Spoilers for “Buffy” and “Angel”, obviously:

For the record: Angel is a vampire who’s been given a brand-new soul as punishment for his evil deeds: He’s still Angelus, with all of the instincts and desires of a monster, but now he understands the pain he causes, and it cripples him into seeking redemption. (One of the commenters calls it a “moral shock collar”, which is something like genius.)

But Spike, having sought and reclaimed his original human original soul — the soul of William the bloody awful poet — is a different case; it’s suggested by the middle of season seven of “Buffy” that he’s found a way to reconcile the two selves, and in classic Spike fashion has simply decided that he bears no responsibility for anything he did in his soulless days, since he was a monster and operating under the appropriate monster rules.

Hey, it worked for Oz and Nina …

A good friend of mine got married yesterday, and as often happens at weddings, I reconnected with people I hadn’t seen in years. And in the course of the conversations, someone expressed surprise that I’d been able to land a job as a film critic, given the state of things in the industry.

“Yeah, tell me about it,” I said. “I’m probably the last guy who’ll ever get hired to do that full-time, given how many positions are being eliminated these days.”

Well, here’s more bad news: Jim Emerson and Glenn Kenny are reporting that Andrew Sarris is among the victims of an employee reconfiguration at the New York Observer. It’s not as bad as it sounds: Dave Kehr passes along a clarification from Molly Haskell, explaining that Sarris will still be writing for the paper, but he’ll be doing so as a freelancer — no benefits or status, and presumably a different pay scale. And he’ll still be teaching film at Columbia, which I’m sure he sees as his primary purpose anyway. (John spoke both fondly and with irritation of having Sarris as his thesis advisor there in the seventies — which, if you knew John, was how he spoke about most people he held dear.)

Still: In the trinity of American film writers, Sarris is unquestionably the father — Ebert would be the son, and Kael is the holy spirit. (And Michael Medved is the heretic who misinterprets their gospel for his own selfish ends.) What respectable publication wouldn’t want to have him on the masthead?

Come on, Post. Poach the guy. Class yourselves up a little.

Hey, everybody! It’s Friday movie roundup time! Apologies for having seen just a fraction of this week’s releases; between the Worldwide Short Film Festival and the film component of NXNE — about which more next Thursday — I just haven’t made it to that many screenings.

“Away We Go”: Just five months after “Revolutionary Road”, Sam Mendes delivers another tale of couplehood; this one’s a contemporary dramedy sort of thing, with John Krasinski and Maya Rudolph playing thinly veiled versions of screenwriters Dave Eggers and Vendela Vida. Susan liked it; Jason did too, though perhaps with less enthusiasm.

“Departures”: Last year’s foreign-language Oscar winner — about a cellist who moves back home to take a job as a mortician — finally lands a theatrical release; Susan calls it one of the year’s best films, though Jason is as underwhelmed as I was. (Really, AMPAS? Y’all liked this calculated life-lessons drama more than “Waltz with Bashir” and “The Class”? For shame.)

“Everlasting Moments“: At the press screening for Jan Troell’s latest intimate Swedish drama, Kevin Courrier told me this is Troell’s first feature to rate a Canadian theatrical run since something like 1982; otherwise, it’s all been film festivals and home video. This seems terribly unfair, but you can help buy seeing this at the Bloor and establishing a customer base for the next one.

“Imagine That”: Director Karey Kirkpatrick made “Over the Hedge”; screenwriters Chris Matheson and Ed Solomon gave us “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure”. And yet, somehow, this movie features Eddie Murphy pandering to children. I blame the government.

“The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3“: Tony Scott’s utterly unnecessary remake of Joseph Sargent’s 35-year-old thriller demonstrates that not all vintage properties need to be updated to the age of Final Cut Pro. Or maybe they just don’t need to be updated by Tony Scott.

And now back to work …

Fun fact: It’ll take longer to read my NOW coverage of the Canadian Film Centre’s 2009 Worldwide Short Film Festival than it takes to watch most of the movies.

But it’s totally worth it, surely. How else will you find little gems like “Heart of Karl” (pictured at right) amidst the sea of entries? Or Natalie Portman’s subtle “Eve”, or Olivier Hens’ tragic “Nous”, or Nick Park’s latest Wallace & Gromit entry, “A Matter of Loaf and Death”?

Okay, the last one was going to rise to the top regardless. But the other stuff needed a little push.