• io9, a new blog from Gawker Media devoted to all things sci-fi, launched today. Posts relevant to our purposes so far include Six Reasons Why Star Trek Should Stay Dead, Back to What Future? and Diary of a Mad Black Trekkie.
• Vulture sends word that Deitch Projects will host an exhibition later this month built around Michel Gondry’s Be Kind Rewind. The installation will allow visitors to make and watch their own “sweded” films.  This will be the gallery’s second feat of Gondry art synergy; in 2006, they hosted art by Gondry related to The Science of Sleep.
• 21, directed by Robert Luketic and starring Kevin Spacey, will open the 2008 SXSW Film Festival. David Hudson has early details on the rest of the lineup at the link.
• Mike Jones reviews a few writeups of the Baghdad International Film Festival, which was apparently THE hipster event in Iraq last week. Yes, seriously.
• “Ego overmatches imagination in the work of the vast majority of critics, bloggers and editors,” sniffs The Reeler, who has once again declared war on Top Ten lists.
• Speaking of lists, the Village Voice/LA Weekly Critics Poll is out. Southland Tales, which placed high on the Best Film lists of the Voice’s J. Hoberman and Nathan Lee, also tied The Bucket List as the year’s Worst Film.

• While I was out, AJ Schnack wrote a couple of amazing, insightful posts about the minor tragedy that is the Academy’s Best Documentary shortlist. Those posts have produced a flood of generally well-thought out responses: see, for starters, Danielle DiGiacomo, Dan Eisenberg, and shortlisted director Tricia Regan on Agnes Varnum’s blog.
• Twitch reports the very good news that Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Syndromes and a Century, which was banned in its home country of Thailand, is coming to DVD in the US on January 15.
• The Reeler joins us in berating Variety for that stupid headline about “art films”: “It’s obviousness-stating time for Pamela McClintock and her headline-writing colleagues…And if you’ll kindly turn to page 10, editor-in-chief Peter Bart has the latest on Watergate.”
• At NewCritics, I’m a Lebowski, You’re a Lebowski, a new tome dedicated to the fan cult surrounding the Coen Brothers’ epic stoner comedy, has Dennis Cozzalio feeling a little like Garbo: “I closed the back cover wanting…to have been left alone with my own perceptions, about the movie and the cult. In this way, the Coens reticence to offer DVD audio commentary or any kind of ascension to the various theories floating around about their work, this film included, can be seen as the ultimate respect for fans of their movies—they are willing to let us do all the heavy lifting when it comes to assessing what those movies mean to us.”
• Death of a President, that terrible faux-doc about what hypothetically might happen if a hypothetical George W. Bush was hypothetically assassinated, just won an International Emmy. Sometime Spout Guest Blogger Chris Campbell accidentally ambled past the ceremony.

Way back in April, Spout partnered with The Reeler to bring you video coverage of the Tribeca Film Festival. Now S.T. VanAirsdale and friends have re-launched ReelerTV as a weekly show, and I had the honor of being a guest on this week’s installment. After a rundown of the week’s news and a man-on-the-street segment, I join The Reeler himself in the lobby of the Pioneer Theater, to discuss two films opening this week: Hairspray and Goya’s Ghosts. I’ve embedded the episode above; you should also be sure to check out TheReeler.com to watch and/or subscribe to past and future installments.

Open up your “Movies I Want to See” list at Spout and get ready to add these–indieWIRE’s top 10 from Tribeca. (If you were lucky enough to catch them at Tribeca or another festival, you can write some reviews and let us know if you agree with indieWIRE’s assessment.) Here are the films, and you can read the whole article here. The Reeler also reviewed many of these films for Spout, so check out the links.

1. We Are Together (directed by Paul Taylor)

2. The Gates (directed by Antonio Ferrera and Albert Maysles)

3. 2 Days in Paris (directed by Julie Delpy)

4. Shotgun Stories (directed by Jeff Nichols)

5. In Search of a Midnight Kiss (directed by Alex Holdridge)

6. Rebirth of a Nation (by DJ Spooky)

7. Chavez (directed by Diego Luna)

8. I Am an American Soldier: One Year in Iraq With the 101st Airborne (directed by John Laurence)

9. Half Moon (directed by Bahman Ghobadi)

10. Times and Winds (directed by Reha Erdem)

Paul and Kevin navigate the gauntlet of trying to watch movies at home. Stu Vanairsdale, The Reeler, reviews a lost gem from 1976, the newly restored and released film, Killer of Sheep. Kevin drops his two-cents on Will Ferrell’s Blades of Glory.

Download FilmCouch #14 or subscribe in the iTunes store (search for “filmcouch” or click here to launch iTunes) and a new free episode will download every Friday.