Anthony Minghella, the British filmmaker who won an Academy Award for his direction of “The English Patient,” died Tuesday morning in London. He was 54.

Mr. Minghella’s films, which also included “Breaking and Entering” (2006), “The Talented Mr. Ripley” (1999) and “Cold Mountain” (2003), used a careful eye for cultural and historical detail to explore ways in which the dynamics of class often pushed people into corners that they had to fight or scheme their way out of.

Anthony Minghella, 54, Director, Dies

The New York Times offers a very cool interactive info-graphic.

Summer blockbusters and holiday hits make up the bulk of box office revenue each year, while contenders for the top Oscar awards tend to attract smaller audiences that build over time. Here's a look at how movies have fared at the box office, after adjusting for inflation.

The visualization technology bears a strong resemblance to ThemeRiver.

The Ebb and Flow of Movies: Box Office Receipts 1986 - 2007

If you have a milkshake, and I have a milkshake, then you have Hollywood's hottest catchphrase.

Every year, we seem to get at least one. "I see dead people." "I wish I knew how to quit you." Anything from Napoleon Dynamite.

This year's latest cinematic must-say comes from There Will Be Blood, the oil drama in which Daniel Day-Lewis delivers a crushing insult to a nemesis with the punch line "I drink your milkshake! I drink it up!"

'Blood' fans drink up milkshake catchphrase

Last month I made my picks, and tonight's the night. Let's see how I did. Correct picks are in bold.

Picture, Drama: "Atonement."
Actress, Drama: Julie Christie, "Away From Her."
Actor, Drama: Daniel Day-Lewis, "There Will Be Blood."
Picture, Musical or Comedy: "Sweeney Todd."
Actress, Musical or Comedy: Marion Cotillard, "La Vie En Rose."
Actor, Musical or Comedy: Johnny Depp, "Sweeney Todd."
Supporting Actress: Cate Blanchett, "I'm Not There."
Supporting Actor: Javier Bardem, "No Country for Old Men."
Director: Julian Schnabel, "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly."
Screenplay: Ethan Coen and Joel Coen, "No Country for Old Men."
Foreign Language: "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly," France and U.S.
Animated Film: "Ratatouille."
Original Score: Dario Marianelli, "Atonement."
Original Song: "Guaranteed" from "Into the Wild."

So, 7 out of 14, though I hedged a bit on Director and Screenplay. If I had seen "There Will Be Blood" when I made my picks, I definitely would have chosen Daniel Day-Lewis over George Clooney in "Michael Clayton." And if I'd seen "La Vie En Rose" before last week, I would have picked Marion Cotillard, too.

List of Golden Globe Award winners

About 1.41 billion movie tickets were sold this year, about the same number as last year. However, in 2002, 1.61 billion tickets were sold.

So, ticket sales are down 12% over the last 5 years.

The big macro story is that once upon a time, most Americans routinely went to the movies. Today, only a minority do. And that minority continues to shrink.

From here on out, Hollywood can -- and will -- continue to raise ticket prices to offset shrinking audiences. But that will presumably just cause the audiences to shrink faster.

Numbers numbers numbers, film industry edition

I recently met a young writer who, having decided he didn't know as much about movies as he wanted to, put together a film course for himself via his Netflix queue, a way to work through the likes of Godard and Chaplin, Fellini and Hawks, Hitchcock and Renoir. We talked about Netflix queues not just as lists of titles but as dream outlines of the people we'd like to be -- you, or I, might be a person who watched "Masculine Feminine" three times before returning it; who had every intention of getting through "Hiroshima Mon Amour" but ultimately sent it off in the pouch, unwatched; who is glad to have seen "The Passion of Joan of Arc" but also relieved at the prospect of never having to watch it again. Through movies, we collect bits of ourselves, and sometimes we reject parts of ourselves, too.

Movies that Mattered | Salon

The problem is that the art-house audience that supported the French New Wave filmmakers to whom “Reprise” owes an obvious debt can no longer be counted on to fill theater seats. Or maybe it’s overwhelmed. For a variety of reasons, including the glut of releases, movies are now whisked on and off theater screens so fast that it’s hard for the audience to discover them, much less build a popular film-going culture. In 1984 Jim Jarmusch’s “Stranger Than Paradise” hung around in theaters long enough for people to learn how to spell his name. These days too many cool movies are just passing through on the way to your Netflix queue.

Americans consume a lot of garbage, but that may be because they don’t have real choices: 16 of the top box-office earners last weekend — some good, almost all from big studios — monopolized 33,353 of the country’s 38,415 screens. The remaining 78 releases duked it out on the leftover screens.

I doubt that most moviegoers would prefer the relentlessly honest “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days,” which involves a young woman seeking an illegal abortion, over “Juno,” an ingratiating comedy about a teenager who carries her pregnancy to term. But I wish they had the choice.

A List, to Start the Conversation

My picks:

Picture, Drama: "No Country for Old Men"
Actress, Drama: Julie Christie, "Away From Her"
Actor, Drama: George Clooney, "Michael Clayton"
Picture, Musical or Comedy: "Juno"
Actress, Musical or Comedy: Ellen Page, "Juno"
Actor, Musical or Comedy: Philip Seymour Hoffman, "The Savages"
Supporting Actress: Tilda Swinton, "Michael Clayton"
Supporting Actor: Javier Bardem, "No Country for Old Men"
Director: (tie) Ethan Coen and Joel Coen, "No Country for Old Men" or Julian Schnabel, "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly"
Screenplay: (3-tie) Diablo Cody, "Juno"; Ethan Coen and Joel Coen, "No Country for Old Men"; Ronald Harwood, "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly"
Foreign Language: "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly," France and U.S.
Animated Film: "Ratatouille" (hands down)
Original Score: Michael Brook, Kaki King, Eddie Vedder, "Into the Wild"
Original Song: "Guaranteed" from "Into the Wild"

Update: Winners have been announced.

List of Golden Globe Awards Nominations

Despite what most products of the Hollywood comedy boys’ club would have you believe, it is possible to possess both a uterus and a sense of humor.

Seeking Mr. and Mrs. Right for a Baby on the Way

A fascinating immersion within a highly ritualized Stone Age oral culture that, at least according to tradition, existed almost unchanged for thousands of years before the European arrival.

It's common enough to describe a film as being like no other you've ever seen but in this case it may literally be true.

This film is available at Netflix WatchNow. It is based in large part on the work of Donald Thomson; read more here and here:

The Donald Thomson Collection is one of the most comprehensive and significant collections of Aboriginal cultural heritage material in the world.

A book, Thomson Time: Arnhem Land in the 1930s----A Photographic Essay, provides a rare look at a culture, a first-hand account of the lives of Aboriginal people of Arnhem Land in the 1930s, a time of rapid change.

Ten Canoes