All the somewhat doom-and-gloomy films about environmental collapse were getting me down, so I moved all films with a socio-enviro-conscious message to the bottom of my Netflix queue. Unfortunately, I missed one and over the weekend got treated to this cheerful title: "The End of Suburbia: Oil Depletion and the Collapse of The American Dream (2004)."

As a huge fan of the graphic novel Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi, I fully expected the lines to the animated film adaptation to be pouring out the door around the block. "I better get out here and stand in line," I told my husband as soon as we hit the nearest corner to the theater.

"The fate of people depicted in a photograph and bringing up photographic memories for me is a kind of prayer and sighing." --Jerzy Tadeusz Lewczynski My birthday was earlier this week and I received a number of e-cards and a trickling of snail mail cards. Thus, my lifelong habit of taping my b-day cards to the wall – so that I may bask in the love every day – has been drastically altered.

Thursday, December 6, from 8:00 – 9:45 pm ET/PT, HBO will screen a documentary by Paul Freedman about Darfur, Sand and Sorrow. If you don't have HBO, like me, you can watch a live stream of the full film on the HBO web site December 7-9. George Clooney is the film's narrator and Executive Producer.

American film director Wes Anderson: that dude’s got a knack for visual style coming out of his nose, and probably other orifices, too. I love movies that can transport you to another world for a couple of hours. Give me bright colors and bad hair and a quirky soundtrack anytime, because I freely admit that I am to shiny media as a raccoon is to tinfoil. What are these men up to? Should we care? So I eagerly saw Wes Anderson’s newest movie, The Darjeeling Limited, last weekend and I walked out feeling kind of “meh” but also uneasy. I loved Bottle Rocket and Rushmore and even The Royal Tenenbaums, which provoked critics into slamming him somewhat for being in a rut with his style and themes. What was bothering me about this movie, exactly?

Sixty years ago, very few people would have seen the connection between peace and hydrology, but today that connection is clear to the foresighted. If we do not deal with the water problems on a global scale, I believe we will see conflict on a global scale.--UNESCO in the Spotlight

“[My photos of] the sky full of smoke, or all those soldiers going through the sandstorm in Baghdad, or just a body wrapped in a white sheet. These things are very strong -- they have got a real impact and also they tell about the environment, the place and what it is there. They tell about death very quickly. They tell about war in daily life, which is more than the war as you can imagine it. You can show a war without showing a gun, and that's interesting – in only one photograph.” --The late Alexandra Boulat

If you could have just one wish and one wish only, what would it be? Better yet, what if you knew that a thousand of the world's most innovative thinkers just might back you up if your wish inspired them the way it inspires you? What would you wish then?

Jane Austen wrote some of the most beloved novels of all time, so it is only natural that the buzz surrounding the upcoming movie, Becoming Jane, is already stirring passionate debate about authenticity and presumption on the part of the film makers. Melissa Silverstein sent me the following synopsis, which has me intrigued: