Salon.com > Kathryn Bigelow http://www.salon.com Fri, 04 Jan 2013 22:20:46 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 The “Zero Dark Thirty” debate isn’t really about torture http://www.salon.com/2012/12/29/the_zero_dark_thirty_debate_isnt_really_about_torture/ http://www.salon.com/2012/12/29/the_zero_dark_thirty_debate_isnt_really_about_torture/#comments Sat, 29 Dec 2012 17:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13156550 Art can be created with moralistic intentions, but it is inherently a ruthless and amoral endeavor, whose meaning always gets away from its creator. It can certainly be used to soothe the savage breast, lend succor in an hour of darkness, and so on. But let’s not forget that children in the death camps were made to play Schubert by murderers and torturers who believed themselves to be civilized and cultured men. That thread of civilization and culture is what saves teenage genius Wladyslaw Szpilman’s life in Roman Polanski’s “The Pianist” – but the ironic question posed by that film is whether that’s a good reason for one man to live while millions of others died. Because he could play the piano?

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/12/29/the_zero_dark_thirty_debate_isnt_really_about_torture/feed/ 98 “Zero Dark Thirty” is indefensible http://www.salon.com/2012/12/22/zero_dark_thirty_is_indefensible/ http://www.salon.com/2012/12/22/zero_dark_thirty_is_indefensible/#comments Sat, 22 Dec 2012 14:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13153078 AlterNet It's difficult for one filmmaker to criticize another. That's a job best left to critics. However, in the case of Zero Dark Thirty, about the hunt for Osama bin Laden, an issue that is central to the film -- torture -- is so important that I feel I must say something. Mark Boal and Kathryn Bigelow have been irresponsible and inaccurate in the way they have treated this issue in their film. I am not alone in that view. Senators Carl Levin, Dianne Feinstein and John McCain wrote a letter to Michael Lynton, the Chairman of Sony Pictures, accusing the studio of misrepresenting the facts and "perpetuating the myth that torture is effective," and asking for the studio to correct the false impression created by the film. The film conveys the unmistakable conclusion that torture led to the death of bin Laden. That's wrong and dangerously so, precisely because the film is so well made.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/12/22/zero_dark_thirty_is_indefensible/feed/ 72 Pentagon, CIA likely approved “Zero Dark Thirty” torture scenes http://www.salon.com/2012/12/20/pentagon_cia_likely_approved_zero_dark_thirty_torture_scenes/ http://www.salon.com/2012/12/20/pentagon_cia_likely_approved_zero_dark_thirty_torture_scenes/#comments Thu, 20 Dec 2012 14:54:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13150700 Through a scathing letter to Sony Pictures about its new film "Zero Dark Thirty," Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D), Carl Levin (D) and John McCain (R) have made national headlines by publicly chastising the studio for turning its film into a piece of revisionist history. The lawmakers note that while the film bills itself as "based on first-hand accounts of actual events" and as an act of "journalism," the truth is that it substantially deviates from the facts. Specifically, its narrative portrays torture as "effective in eliciting important information" related to the killing of Osama Bin Laden, even though CIA records prove this is not true.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/12/20/pentagon_cia_likely_approved_zero_dark_thirty_torture_scenes/feed/ 13 Bret Easton Ellis apologizes to Kathryn Bigelow for sexist tweets http://www.salon.com/2012/12/18/bret_easton_ellis_apologizes_to_kathryn_bigelow_for_sexist_tweets/ http://www.salon.com/2012/12/18/bret_easton_ellis_apologizes_to_kathryn_bigelow_for_sexist_tweets/#comments Tue, 18 Dec 2012 21:45:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13148961 Prickly author Bret Easton Ellis issued a lengthy apology to "Zero Dark Thirty" director Kathryn Bigelow yesterday for his series of sexist tweets earlier this month, in which he said that "Kathryn Bigelow would be considered a mildly interesting filmmaker if she was a man but since she's a very hot woman she's really overrated." What he really meant to say at the time, according to his letter in The Daily Beast, was this: "I hadn’t seen 'Zero Dark Thirty' but thought, in the Twitter-moment, can it really be that good? Marc Boal and Kathryn Bigelow and another war film?" It was meant in the spirit of one oppressed minority to another, you see: "[The tweets] ultimately revealed a much more layered sexism that, I guess I thought as a gay man, I could get away with since my supposed vitriol about Bigelow was coming from another 'oppressed' class. But in 140 characters it didn’t land that way."

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/12/18/bret_easton_ellis_apologizes_to_kathryn_bigelow_for_sexist_tweets/feed/ 10 How true is “ZD30″? http://www.salon.com/2012/12/14/fact_checking_zero_dark_thirtys_almost_journalism/ http://www.salon.com/2012/12/14/fact_checking_zero_dark_thirtys_almost_journalism/#comments Fri, 14 Dec 2012 16:06:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13124627 A number of film critics have already described "Zero Dark Thirty" as opening to a black screen and the haunting soundtrack of recorded phone calls from the World Trade Center towers as they collapsed on 9/11. It doesn't. The movie opens to white text against a black background: "Based on first hand accounts of actual events," it reads.

Debate over what the film does — the politics and ethics it might expound — are already fraught, not least because the project's pitch is steeped in truth claims about "actual events." "Zero Dark Thirty" (ZDT) director Kathryn Bigelow told the New Yorker's Dexter Filkins, “What we were attempting is almost a journalistic approach to film.’’ The text that opens the movie is carefully worded in line with this idea of a journalistic attempt. It doesn't present itself as "a true story" or a totalizing narrative. And in this much we can endeavor to hold "Zero Dark Thirty" to account; we can ask, at least, do the events it depicts have such a basis?

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/12/14/fact_checking_zero_dark_thirtys_almost_journalism/feed/ 5 Pick of the week: Kathryn Bigelow’s mesmerizing post-9/11 nightmare http://www.salon.com/2012/12/14/pick_of_the_week_kathryn_bigelows_mesmerizing_post_911_nightmare/ http://www.salon.com/2012/12/14/pick_of_the_week_kathryn_bigelows_mesmerizing_post_911_nightmare/#comments Fri, 14 Dec 2012 01:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13124337 I do not believe that Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal’s mesmerizing, operatic and profoundly troubling “Zero Dark Thirty” offers any apology or justification for torture, and certainly does not “glorify” it, to use Guardian columnist Glenn Greenwald’s term. But it’s important to recognize that the people who think it does are responding to the moral ambiguity of the movie, which pervades not just the question of torture as an instrument of American policy but its entire portrayal of the CIA’s obsessive and insanely expensive hunt for Osama bin Laden. Here’s the sense in which they’re not wrong: What “Zero Dark Thirty” has to say about torture and many other things is not entirely clear, and what you see in it depends on what you bring with you. That moral ambiguity will drive some viewers nuts, but in my view it is also the quality that makes “Zero Dark Thirty” something close to a masterpiece.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/12/14/pick_of_the_week_kathryn_bigelows_mesmerizing_post_911_nightmare/feed/ 76 Oscar’s ideological throwdown http://www.salon.com/2012/12/12/oscars_ideological_throwdown/ http://www.salon.com/2012/12/12/oscars_ideological_throwdown/#comments Wed, 12 Dec 2012 01:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13121870 Hollywood could be getting an unexpected gift this season: An Oscar race that isn’t completely boring. With an impressive number of high-quality and high-visibility movies in the mix, movies that offer markedly different worldviews, interpretations of human experience and dramatized real-world events, the Academy Award struggle of 2013 ought to be a heated cultural imbroglio with all sorts of ideological overtones, one that lays bare some of the fault lines in American society.

Kathryn Bigelow’s Osama-hunting thriller “Zero Dark Thirty” has already been proclaimed the year’s best film by several critics’ groups (including the New York Film Critics Circle, to which I belong), and become the object of a left-wing counterattack, all before its official release. Steven Spielberg’s “Lincoln” depicts our most revered president as a shrewd political manipulator, and has itself been mired in historical controversy about its presentation of the struggle to end slavery. Quentin Tarantino’s “Django Unchained” takes on our nation’s “peculiar institution” from a different angle, spinning an outrageous tale of a freed slave taking garish and bloody revenge on the antebellum slave-owning class, with the director’s usual indifference to accuracy, plausibility or taste. Michael Haneke’s “Amour,” a front-runner in the foreign-language race and a likely contender in other categories, tackles a subject that may be even more taboo than torture and slavery: The realities of old age and death that we will all face.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/12/12/oscars_ideological_throwdown/feed/ 10 “Zero Dark Thirty” writer says “it’s misreading the film” to say torture led to bin Laden capture http://www.salon.com/2012/12/11/zero_dark_thirty_writer_says_its_misreading_the_film_to_say_torture_led_to_bin_laden_capture/ http://www.salon.com/2012/12/11/zero_dark_thirty_writer_says_its_misreading_the_film_to_say_torture_led_to_bin_laden_capture/#comments Tue, 11 Dec 2012 22:30:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13121751 The critically acclaimed Osama bin Laden manhunt drama, "Zero Dark Thirty," hasn't even been released yet, but it has already opened up a sprawling, multi-tiered debate about the U.S. government's use of torture. On one hand, commentators like Joe Scarborough are using the film to argue that torture led to the capture of Osama bin Laden. On the other, columnists are attacking the film's director and screenwriter, Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal, for taking a pro-torture stance by even including a waterboarding scene that, as the New Yorker notes, "strayed from real life."

But in an interview with TheWrap, Bigelow and Boal stated that such political arguments are "preposterous":

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/12/11/zero_dark_thirty_writer_says_its_misreading_the_film_to_say_torture_led_to_bin_laden_capture/feed/ 5 “Zero Dark Thirty” doesn’t celebrate torture! http://www.salon.com/2012/12/11/zero_dark_thirty_doesnt_celebrate_torture/ http://www.salon.com/2012/12/11/zero_dark_thirty_doesnt_celebrate_torture/#comments Tue, 11 Dec 2012 21:09:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13121815 The American Prospect Zero Dark Thirty doesn't even come out until next week, but Kathryn Bigelow's much-hailed movie about the hunt for Osama bin Laden is already provoking outrage in some quarters for allegedly "glorifying" — OK, sometimes "celebrating" — torture. As all too bloody usual, the loudest howls are coming from people who haven't actually seen ZD30, some of whom — yes, Andrew Sullivan, I mean you — really ought to know better. Ginning up controversies about movies without bothering to watch them first is really more Bill Donohue and the Catholic League's sort of thing, and does Sullivan want to be in that company?

Since plenty of other folks apparently do, I hope you won't mind two cents from a lowly movie critic who admires the hell out of Zero Dark Thirty and isn't exactly big on vindicating Dick Cheney's worldview. There are really two separate arguments here, and people shouldn't confuse the two — though they already have. One is about factual accuracy, and worth taking seriously. The other's about Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal's attitude toward the very grim stuff they show us, which is an appalling thing to just guess at sight unseen.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/12/11/zero_dark_thirty_doesnt_celebrate_torture/feed/ 13 Is “Zero Dark Thirty” poised for an Oscar win? http://www.salon.com/2012/12/10/is_zero_dark_thirty_poised_for_an_oscar_win/ http://www.salon.com/2012/12/10/is_zero_dark_thirty_poised_for_an_oscar_win/#comments Mon, 10 Dec 2012 14:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13120160 It hasn't even been released yet, but Kathryn Bigelow's "Zero Dark Thirty," the intense drama focused on the CIA's 10-year hunt for Osama bin Laden, has already has swept best film awards from the New York Film Critics Circle, Boston Society of Film Critics, National Board of Review and New York Film Critics Online. And independent film critics agree. New York magazine 's David Edelstein, who picked "Thirty" as the best film of 2012, calls it "phenomenally gripping — an unholy masterwork." Salon's Andrew O'Hehir calls it "mesmerizing," arguing that its "troubling" depictions of torture prompt viewers to answer tough but "excellent" questions. Time's Richard Corliss wrote that it "blows 'Argo' out of the water."  It's even got the (dubious) honor of being hate-tweeted by famed writer Bret Easton Ellis.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/12/10/is_zero_dark_thirty_poised_for_an_oscar_win/feed/ 4 Bret Easton Ellis zeroes in on Kathryn Bigelow http://www.salon.com/2012/12/06/bret_easton_ellis_zeroes_in_on_kathryn_bigelow/ http://www.salon.com/2012/12/06/bret_easton_ellis_zeroes_in_on_kathryn_bigelow/#comments Thu, 06 Dec 2012 17:19:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13116952 Imagine what a blissfully unaware state Bret Easton Ellis must live in all the time. Imagine being a pot that black, swanning around calling any other human on the planet "overrated" and a maker of "just OK junk." Yet that's exactly what Ellis, who, when not loathing the memory of David Foster Wallace, browbeating Lindsay Lohan or cryptically tweeting apparent requests for cocaine, is a sometime writer, did on Twitter Thursday. And because he's Bret Easton Ellis, he threw in some old-fashioned sexism for good measure. At least the man who once opined of the Dominique Strauss-Kahn rape case that "just reinforces my theory that men are no picnic but women are fucking CRAZY" is consistent in his misogyny.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/12/06/bret_easton_ellis_zeroes_in_on_kathryn_bigelow/feed/ 19 Is feminism worth defending with torture? http://www.salon.com/2012/12/01/is_feminism_worth_defending_with_torture/ http://www.salon.com/2012/12/01/is_feminism_worth_defending_with_torture/#comments Sat, 01 Dec 2012 17:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13112161 None of us living today can know how historians of the future will judge the whole “war on terror” phase of American history. Will it remain a contentious point of ideological division, like McCarthyism or the 1960s, or will it become a national embarrassment to be swept under the carpet, like the Salem witch trials or the fulsome speeches in defense of slavery delivered on the floor of Congress? And then there’s the possibility that the terrorist-hunting mania of the years since 9/11 has driven us so completely nuts, and bankrupted us so thoroughly, that a balanced view of this age will only become possible after the whole edifice comes crashing down. To quote the most intelligent, most farsighted and most deeply hypocritical of our slave-owning Founding Fathers, I tremble for my country when I consider those future conversations.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/12/01/is_feminism_worth_defending_with_torture/feed/ 78 Pick of the week: The greatest war film ever made? http://www.salon.com/2011/04/15/armadillo/ http://www.salon.com/2011/04/15/armadillo/#comments Fri, 15 Apr 2011 00:30:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/andrew_ohehir/2011/04/14/armadillo Have things improved in Iraq and Afghanistan since we decided to gung-ho the hell over there and blow stuff up? Let's just say that expert opinion is divided on that question, but the movies have been amazing. You could curate a dynamite film festival out of post-9/11 war movies, both documentaries and narrative features, starting with Michael Tucker and Petra Epperlein's prescient "Gunner Palace" -- made in 2004, just as the Iraq conflict was going seriously south -- and moving forward through "The Situation" and "Iraq in Fragments" and  "Battle for Haditha" and, of course, "The Hurt Locker" and last year's Oscar-nominated, you-are-there documentary "Restrepo."

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/04/15/armadillo/feed/ 52 Oscars: Hollywood’s war against itself (continued) http://www.salon.com/2010/03/08/oscar_wrap_2/ http://www.salon.com/2010/03/08/oscar_wrap_2/#comments Mon, 08 Mar 2010 21:09:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/andrew_ohehir/2010/03/08/oscar_wrap I'm grateful to have been thoroughly and completely wrong about the best-picture race -- as were a great many other supposedly knowledgeable stooges -- for a whole bunch of reasons. First and foremost, Kathryn Bigelow's historic sweep was a genuinely moving and surprising capper to one of the most tedious Oscar broadcasts in recent memory. All that industry hand-wringing, a much-touted new production team, and what do we get? Interpretive dance numbers set to fragments of the nominated scores. Seriously? If they'd hired the Sparkle Motion dance team out of "Donnie Darko," it couldn't have been any lamer. (Actually, that would been a lot more fun to watch.)

Although I have mixed feelings about "The Hurt Locker" itself, and about the cultural-psychological reasons for its ascendancy, Bigelow herself is a genuine and strange cinematic genius who has paid her dues several times over and richly deserves her moment of triumph. (Is "Hurt Locker" her best film? Probably not. Her second-best? Not even sure about that.) I wish producer-screenwriter Mark Boal hadn't complicated Bigelow's big moment on the stage of the Kodak Theatre by persistently tugging on her elbow, like a kid in a department store who needed to use the john. That was odd.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2010/03/08/oscar_wrap_2/feed/ 18 Kathryn Bigelow is not a dude http://www.salon.com/2010/03/08/kathryn_bigelow_is_not_a_dude/ http://www.salon.com/2010/03/08/kathryn_bigelow_is_not_a_dude/#comments Mon, 08 Mar 2010 17:52:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/life/broadsheet//2010/03/08/kathryn_bigelow_is_not_a_dude "The time has come," said Barbra Streisand late Sunday night. And with that, Kathryn Bigelow, whose low-budget "The Hurt Locker" edged out the most successful movie of all time, became the first female in Academy history to win an Oscar for best director. (Moments later, she'd make a twofer by winning best picture as well.)

But like every historic first, Bigelow's dual victory was both a stunning personal achievement and resonant metaphor. And not everybody's been thrilled.

Just a few weeks ago critic Martha P. Nochimson wrote an essay here that lambasted Bigelow as "the Transvestite of Directors … masquerading as the baddest boy on the block." And after last night's ceremony, journalist Farai Chideya promptly tweeted, "Among Bigelow's best-known films are three male ensemble casts: 'Hurt Locker,' 'Point Break,' 'K-19 the Widowmaker'. … kudos to cast and to filmmaker and to topic. Gender matrix not so much." So before we bust the pink champagne, perhaps we should ask: Does Bigelow's victory still count for the ladies?

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2010/03/08/kathryn_bigelow_is_not_a_dude/feed/ 39 Best Oscar night ever? http://www.salon.com/2010/03/08/oscar_night_madness/ http://www.salon.com/2010/03/08/oscar_night_madness/#comments Mon, 08 Mar 2010 12:30:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/tv/heather_havrilesky/2010/03/08/oscar_night_madness How did they do it? As crazy as it sounds, this year's Oscar festivities were dynamic, funny and moved along at a good clip. Hosts Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin were hilarious, there were great jokes by everyone from Tina Fey to Ben Stiller, and the speeches were less long and dull than they've been in years. For once, no one rambled on forever and agents were rarely thanked. Not only that, but the usual endless tributes that serve no purpose whatsoever were gone, cut down to a great John Hughes segment and an entertaining horror-movie montage. Best of all, the best original songs were not performed, which means we weren't forced to sit through two more blandly upbeat tunes with those old familiar Randy Newman melodies you've heard on every Oscar night for decades now. And I think we can all agree that an Oscar night without a Disney ballad performed or a long, rambling Lifetime Achievement acceptance speech is a winner in anyone's book.

Here are a few of the highs and lows of the night:

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2010/03/08/oscar_night_madness/feed/ 91 Kathryn Bigelow: Feminist pioneer or tough guy in drag? http://www.salon.com/2010/02/24/bigelow_3/ http://www.salon.com/2010/02/24/bigelow_3/#comments Wed, 24 Feb 2010 21:20:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/film_salon/2010/02/24/bigelow In "The Hurt Locker," Sgt. 1st Class Will James (Jeremy Renner) is the second coming of John Wayne. Just not as cuddly.

What's the point of this metaphor? It's that I'm still coming to grips with how a woman could possibly have dreamed up this spartan American soldier in Iraq, who, while obsessively romancing death as a bomb-squad ace, outdoes the most extreme images of machismo ever produced by mainstream America. While Wayne set the testosterone standard in playing characters who lived to fight, his guys also found time to love women -- Ethan's Martha (Dorothy Jordan) in "The Searchers" and the Ringo Kid's Dallas (Claire Trevor) in "Stagecoach," to name two.

When they bonded with young, earnest boys, Wayne's men became meaningful mentors -- Gillom Rogers (Ron Howard) in "The Shootist" couldn't have grown up without the wit and wisdom of Wayne's John Bernard Books. But Will, with his Wayne-ian steely gaze, his laconic ease at the portals of death, and his patented hero saunter, loves "just one thing," as he tells his baby boy before leaving him, maybe forever, to return to the killing fields of Iraq. And it isn't women or kids.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2010/02/24/bigelow_3/feed/ 137 Kathryn Bigelow’s big BAFTA win http://www.salon.com/2010/02/22/bigelow_wins_big/ http://www.salon.com/2010/02/22/bigelow_wins_big/#comments Mon, 22 Feb 2010 15:23:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/life/broadsheet//feature/2010/02/22/bigelow_wins_big Continuing her hot streak, "Hurt Locker" director Kathryn Bigelow added few more accolades to her resume Sunday night. At the British Academy of Film and Television Arts awards, the tense Iraqi war drama won six awards, including best screenplay, best picture -- and best director.

Bigelow, who is set next to direct a pilot for HBO, bested ex-husband James Cameron and "Avatar" to become the first female to win a BAFTA for directing. Last month she became the first female honored with the DGA award. (She lost to Cameron at January's Golden Globes). Speaking to reporters backstage after her win, Bigelow said, "With Jim, we’re very good friends. I think we’re proud of each other and I think that’s there for a long time.”

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2010/02/22/bigelow_wins_big/feed/ 3 The Oscar nominations: Trying to please everyone http://www.salon.com/2010/02/02/oscar_noms/ http://www.salon.com/2010/02/02/oscar_noms/#comments Tue, 02 Feb 2010 17:03:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/film_salon/2010/02/02/oscar_noms So what was the inflated Academy Awards best-picture category, expanded this year from five to 10 nominees, going to bring us? More populism or more existentialism? Was it going to open the door to animated films, to fantasy and science fiction, to foreign flicks and low-budget indies -- or just to middle-of-the-road Hollywood sentimentality, calibrated to draw in heartland viewers who've increasingly tuned out the whole Oscar spectacle?

Given the Academy's catholic desire to please all its contradictory and overlapping constituencies, it shouldn't have surprised anyone that the answer was all of the above. And yet, somehow, it did. I think of the five extra nomination slots as the "Dark Knight" apology awards, but this year offered no exact TDK-cognate, i.e., no commercial-critical behemoth likely to be snubbed by the Academy members' peculiar blend of middlebrow snobbery. (Just to be clear: I didn't like "The Dark Knight" much, personally. But that's irrelevant when it comes to the Oscars. Given its alleged seriousness, cultural impact and box-office firepower, a best-picture nom should have been automatic.)

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2010/02/02/oscar_noms/feed/ 37 Box office report: “Avatar” hits $2 billion http://www.salon.com/2010/02/01/box_office_3/ http://www.salon.com/2010/02/01/box_office_3/#comments Mon, 01 Feb 2010 06:32:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/film_salon/2010/01/31/box_office any movie not by James Cameron]]> "Avatar" won the box office derby for the seventh straight weekend, taking the record for the biggest seventh weekend gross ($30 million) from "Titanic" ($25 million). Dropping just 14 percent, the unstoppable monster has now grossed $594 million, meaning it will cross "Titanic's" $600 million gross in the next two or three days, perhaps on Tuesday, when the Oscar nominations are announced. Early last week, James Cameron's amazing hit surpassed "Titanic's" worldwide box office gross to become the world's highest-grossing movie. This weekend it crossed the seemingly unfathomable $2 billion mark worldwide. You can babble all you want about inflation, 3D and IMAX ticket prices, and what have you, but check out this little statistic: When "Avatar" reaches $2.239 billion, which it will in the next two or three weeks, it will have doubled the worldwide take of every other movie ever made except "Titanic." It will also soon have a $1 billion lead over any movie not directed by James Cameron. There's not much more to say at this point than "wow" and "don't make a sequel," so let's move on.

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