• Nikal Saval has an admittedly cranky but masterful takedown of I’m Not There at N + 1. Calling Todd Haynes’ pastiche the Worst Movie of 2007, Saval scratches particularly aggressively at Haynes’ habitual referencing and naked larceny: “Haynes is drowning in his film school education, just as his audience is drowning in allusions, and not a single original idea floats by to rescue him or us.”
• I still haven’t received my copy of Berlin Alexanderplatz (I know you’re concerned; right now, it looks like the problem is with UPS and not Amazon, and I’m working on it), so I’m going to avoid Ed Howard’s episode-by-episode recap of Fassbinder’s series, for the time being. Via The House Next Door.
• Erin at Steady Diet of Film has a helpful translation of what Jason Reitman, John Sayles, Adam Shankman and Joe Wright were REALLY saying on a recent episode of Sunday Morning Shootout. Useful information gleaned: Reitman, who “hates going to awards shows because he has to stop dressing like he’s homeless,” has a masterful death stare, but Sayles is not impressed.
• Lots to report today on the Berlinale front, including the news that Martin Scorsese’s long-delayed Rolling Stones doc Shine A Light will finally make its premiere at the festival–and on opening night, no less. David Hudson has two roundups.

This weekend, Peter Bart and Peter Guber devoted a segment of their AMC chat show Sunday Morning Shootout to the subject of bloggery. I didn’t catch it myself, but judging by the write-ups I’ve read, it was…exactly what you’d expect.

As usual, celebrity gossip blogs such as Perez Hilton and TMZ were spoken of in the same breath as industry blogs such as Defamer, and blogs aimed at producing serious, non-snarky commentary were pushed to the far margins of the conversation. Bart, of course, held down the hard-line anti-blog end of the argument (at this point, this guy’s qualified to write a “You Might Be A Blogger If…” joke book); his Variety colleague Anne Thompson intelligently defended her right to produce journalism in the format of an online journal frequently updated in reverse chronological order. Guber played interference, which apparently involved repeatedly using the word “perpetrate” when he probably meant “perpetuate.” But who knows.

Because I didn’t see it, and because I’m getting really tired of asserting my right to make a living in my chosen field, I definitely do not want to comment at length. Awards Daily has a partial transcription of the show, and some fierce commentary to boot. David Poland has solid analysis at The Hot Blog; by my count, he only strays from strong logic to dig at Nikki Finke once (weeeelllll, maybe twice). See also Aaron Dobbs at Out of Focus, who offers a simple suggestion: “I don’t have a problem with Bart criticizing online journalists and bloggers, pulling to some degree the same argument lots of “professional” media likes to claim to maintain a feeling or air of superiority, but Peter, if you’re going to do that, please stop having your own publication send out “Breaking News” alerts that are simply notices that you’ve posted a new column with nothing but your same old opinions? Thanks.”