The Tournees Festival of New French Films returns to Northern Kentucky University each Wednesday (at 3:30 p.m.) and Thursday (at 7 p.m.) through April 28. Sponsored by the French American Cultural Exchange and nurtured to the area by Dr. John Alberti, director of NKU's cinema studies program, the fest opens this week with Philippe Lioret's Welcome, which is described as “both a study of budding friendship and a compassionate look at the perils faced by illegal immigrants.”

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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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The summer movie season kicks off this week with Iron Man 2, yet another sequel that seems to have succumbed to the Hollywood notion that bigger is better. Director Jon Favreau and lead dude Robert Downey Jr. are joined this time by a lengthy list of intriguing supporting actors (Gwyneth Paltrow, Don Cheadle, Samuel L. Jackson, Scarlett Johansson, Sam Rockwell, Mickey Rourke and Garry Shandling) and what seems to be a radically heightened set of expectation.

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The latest 48 Hour Film Project: Cincinnati rapidly approach. Founded by in 2001 by a pair of independent film producers in Washington, D.C., the project has now spread to 80 cities — I think this will be the eighth Cincinnati version — on five continents.

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I've yet to see any of the four opening films this week, which makes evaluating their merits kind of tough. But I can say that after three months of largely uninspiring fare we're finally beginning to get some intriguing movie-house options.

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The Academy Awards, Hollywood's annual self-congratulatory wankfest, take place Sunday night. Yet, in the Academy's defense, this year's batch of nominees is actually pretty discerning. Here are my predictions in the major categories...

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Who knew it would take a 75-year-old to make the best movie of the summer (so far)?

Woody Allen's 41st feature is his most engaging effort in years,a whimsical comedy that seamlessly melds moments of dreamy, nostalgic delight —its protagonist, played by Allen surrogate Owen Wilson, is somehow, each midnight, transported back to Paris' 1920s bohemian heyday where he hangs out with Ernest Hemingway, Pablo Picasso and F. Scott Fitzgerald, among others — with the filmmaker's longstanding themes of acute self-loathing, romantic longing and the role of the artist in society.

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Just in time to align nicely with our annual Green Issue comes the Do Something Reel Film Festival, which is described as a “collection of six provocative, character-driven films focused on passionate people making a world of difference.” Presented by Whole Foods Market in conjunction with and in celebration of Earth Month, the traveling festival will hit more than 70 cities through April, including our own Esquire Theatre tomorrow through April 21.

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Another calendar year has turned, and you know what that means — a smattering of awards season fare that already opened in larger markets in order to qualify for Oscar consideration (Derek Cianfrance's Blue Valentine, Sofia Coppola's Somewhere and John Cameron Mitchell's Rabbit Hole, all of which open here this month) mixed in with stuff that studios have jettisoned for one reason or another (the most obvious being that they suck) to the cinematic dead zone known as The Land of Misfit Movies (aka the months of January and February).

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A pair of new books centering on film critic Pauline Kael — The Library of America's lavishly rendered The Age of Movies: Selected Writings of Pauline Kael and Brian Kellow's incisive biography Pauline Kael: A Life in the Dark — have resulted in an avalanche of recent Kael appraisals and reminiscences a decade after her death in 2001 and 20 years after her retirement from writing in 1991.

I can't quite remember when I became aware of Kael, but it had to be in my late teens, which is when I began to move beyond the Hollywood blockbusters of my youth and into deeper, more adventurous cinematic waters. I do know that my initial Kael exposure occurred after she had retired from The New Yorker, where she rather famously wrote film essays and reviews for nearly 25 years.

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