Every time a DVD player breaks, we have a panic. How to watch the stack of movies I, Hef and Kid scavenge several times a week from the Mid-Manhattan and Brooklyn Central libraries? Without our movies, what have we got? A bunch of homeless guys with no more than a bag of clothes, some food stamps and dollar store toiletries each between us. There’s only so much shit-talking and communal daydreaming (typically about which beautiful celebrity we would treat to multiple orgasms) one can do in the downtime, the hours between 5pm and lights out. And we can’t bring women in here. And we keep forgetting to buy a cheap chess board. And the streets of East New York are no place to find non-lethal distraction. Gunfights every night.

I downplay my advantage, my notebook. The fellas don’t know I’m a writer, nor that I have no criminal or substance abuse history. Nobody pries. It’s understood that we’re all here because we fucked up in one way or another. But it’s the DVD player that helps me sort of love these guys. What comes out of that machine is real to them. And when it isn’t real, it gets ejected and tossed aside. That’s how I live, too. My film critic and filmmaker friends who tell me that movies can’t cut, kill or save lives… man, listen.

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One of the hardest things about being a young film critic is that it’s impossible to catch up to the older guys in terms of how many films I’ve seen. To think Roger Ebert was already reviewing films at the Sun-Times for ten years before I was born. And gee whiz, Andrew Sarris has been doing this forever. I mean, it’s hard enough seeing every significant film released in a year, let alone every significant film released in the 8 decades before my lifetime. But while it’s certainly in my best interest to see all those Ingmar Berman films I’ve avoided, and see everything else on all those “all time best” lists, and maybe watch Turner Classic Movies 24-7 for the rest of my life, there’s just no way I’ll ever be complete in the eyes of some of my peers or, more importantly, of my readers.

Last Sunday, SF Chronicle critic Mick LaSalle confessed to having never previously seen some “classics”, including 2001: A Space Odyssey. But he had finally just watched them and proceeded to review them. Some bloggers have responded, including Kevin Lee, who is disappointed in LaSalle’s low-level insight, and Jeff Wells, who admitted to his own unseen, none of which seemed too embarrassing. But then LaSalle ponied up a response to the responses:

“Of course, since I’ve written that article I’ve heard from people telling me that I’m an illiterate for not seeing the movies they’ve seen (although I’ve seen them NOW). Needless to say, I could name hundreds of worthy and significant films that probably none of them have seen. But hey, people need something to make them feel good about themselves, and they’ll find any excuse.

But that’s neither important nor interesting. However, the larger point this brings up, though, does interest me. Movies have been around now for about a century. Fifty years ago, we might have reasonably assumed (it wouldn’t have been true, but it would have been a reasonable assumption) that every film critic of significance had seen all the major movies.

But after a hundred years, do we really want our film critics to be generalists, all familiar with the same batch of pre-digested movies that everyone agrees are good? By now, you really can’t see everything, so do we want critics all to have seen the same narrow basic repertory?”

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When I was a kid, I assumed all third installments in a horror series had to capitalize on the ability to turn the “3″ in the title into “3-D.” Now, looking back, I only really remember (and can only find proof of) Jaws 3-D, Friday the 13th 3-D and Amityville 3-D. But that isn’t stopping me from assuming Hollywood will once again abuse the gimmick. And judging by today’s news from Disney that the third installment of Step Up will be in 3D (and is tentatively titled simply, appropriately and marketably Step Up 3-D), the integrity of digital 3D — as the hope for the future of exhibition rather than as another passing fad — is on its way down.

Of course, we’re in a big 3D trend right now, whether it continues as something more than that or not, and it at least makes sense for Hollywood to make decisions like this, and obviously it’s more logical as far as the title is concerned. I know that Toy Story 3 will be appropriately in 3D, too. Others will likely follow, and it’s better than the confusing mis-step that has been occurring lately with non-threequel sequels (and non-sequels).

Upcoming sequels Shrek 4 and Final Destination 4 will also be released in digital 3D, but titularly that’s confusing (especially because of DreamWorks’ direct-to-video release Shrek 4-D, aka Shrek 3-D). Fortunately for the former, it currently has a less-confusing title of Shrek Goes Fourth. As for Final Destination, New Line had once intended for the third installment to be appropriately a 3D film and be titled Final Destination 3-D. So it is fair that the studio had previously had the idea. But what will it be called?

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• With the fate of Heath Ledger’s final projects up in the air, Variety takes a look at some past films that were effected by the sudden deaths of their respective stars. Would Shrek have been as popular with Chris Farley as the voice of the titular ogre? Would Interview With the Vampire be better with River Phoenix? Should Jane Harlow’s final film, Saratoga, have been scrapped?
• WGA reps and studio execs enter a second day of informal talks today, which should be more exciting that it feels to me. Maybe it’s because I just read this detail of how badly the writer’s strike is effecting the economy, and now my head hurts.
• After confirming that Tony Gilroy had directed him to a second Oscar nomination, Tom Wilkinson has decided to reunite with the Michael Clayton director for the pharmaceutical company drama Duplicity. He is joined by Billy Bob Thornton and joins Julia Roberts and Clive Owen.
• Dave Eggers and Vendela Vida are now considered a “husband-and-wife team” for writing an original screenplay that Oscar-winner Sam Mendes will direct as a low-budget comedy. Currently untitled, the movie will be about a young couple trying to decide where in the U.S. is best to raise a child. It could be a very short film if the couple just reads the latest issue of Fit Pregnancy magazine.