The final episode of At the Movies aired last weekend, marking the end of an era that began more than 30 years ago.

Featuring a pair of geeky Chicago-based film critics — Roger Ebert from The Sun-Times and The Tribune's Gene Siskel — the long-running show debuted as Sneak Previews in 1975 before switching to At the Movies in 1977. The premise was simple: two people talking about that week's releases with passion, intelligence, wit and personality.

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As if rising with the temperature, the second quarter of the movie season is shaping up pretty nicely.

After months of stagnation, the Esquire and Mariemont theaters have finally mixed up their bookings in recent weeks, bringing in such worthwhile (if often little-seen) fare as Anvil! The Story of Anvil, The Class, Examined Life, Is Anybody There?, Paris 36, Sin Nombre, Sunshine Cleaning, Sugar, 12 and Tyson.

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Peter Biskind — a former Premiere magazine editor and longtime journalist who wrote the fascinating, endlessly entertaining book about the 1970s American movie scene, Easy Riders, Raging Bulls — recently published a biography called Star: How Warren Beatty Seduced America.

I’ve yet to read the book, which, among other things, apparently tells us that Beatty might have slept with more than 12,775 woman — a number that doesn’t include “daytime quickies, drive-by blowjobs, casual gropings, stolen kisses and so on.”

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The Golden Globes remain a guilty pleasure marked by fashion faux pas (Sandra Bullock’s uninspired dress looked like something my prom date wore back in the day), longwinded speeches (Drew Barrymore and Mo’Nique could learned a thing or two from the pithy Robert Downey Jr.), a few pleasant surprises (including Christoph Waltz’s supporting actor win for Inglourious Basterds), cringe-worthy moments (alcohol-imbibing host Ricky Gervais’ dis of Mel Gibson) and just plain oddities (what was up with Harrison Ford’s stunted delivery?).

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The Directors Guild of American today announced its nominees for “Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Documentaries” for 2010: Lixin Fan's Last Train Home; Charles Ferguson's Inside Job; Alex Gibney's Client 9: The Rise and Fall of the Eliot Spitzer; Davis Guggenheim's Waiting for Superman; and Tim Hetherington and Sebastian Junger's Restrepo.

There's no denying that the Guild had a tough job in narrowing the field — it was another stellar year for the ever-evolving genre — but only two of the final five would have made my list: Inside Job (read my interview with Ferguson here) and Client 9, both of which appeared on my top 10 list of 2010 films.

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What's up with David Fincher? After giving us only one film (2002's Panic Room) in the eight years following 1999's gleefully subversive, zeitgeist-capturing Fight Club, the notoriously meticulous filmmaker is back with The Social Network, his third effort in four years following 2007's excellent Zodiac and 2008's out-of-character — it's essentially a straight-up love story — The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. And he's not done yet: Fincher's American version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is currently in production and will be out by the end of 2011.

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The Academy has been trying in recent years to move its awards show into the 21st century without dissing its tradition-rich past. The results have been mixed.

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By now I typically unveil my favorite movies from the first half of the year. Yet looking back on the first six months of 2010, only two films —Lee Unkrich's Toy Story 3 and Banksy's Exit Through the Gift Shop —have discerned themselves as unqualified contenders to make my year-end list.

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In an obvious stroke of marketing synchronicity, it’s no coincidence that James Franco’s and Anne Hathaway’s recent films are being released on DVD/Blu-ray this week, just a few days after the duo hosted Hollywood’s biggest yearly extravaganza of pomp and self-congratulation.

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While we here at CityBeat World Headquarters are putting the final touches on our annual Year in Film in Music issue, I thought I’d check in to let you know that IndieWIRE’s annual Critic’s Poll has now been posted to the interwebs.

No surprise here: David Fincher’s The Social Network was the dominating winner, adding yet another piece of critical hardware to its already robust trophy case. The question now becomes: Can anything stop the Facebook origin story from stomping the competition come Oscar time?

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