​To say that only Harvey Weinstein could land a Best Picture Oscar for a silent film, as he is expected to do Sunday for The Artist, is more than just a reflection of the mogul's resurgent power of persuasion over Academy members -- it's actually true. A silent film has not taken top honors since the very first Academy Awards, held in May 1929 and honoring movies released between Aug. 1, 1927, and July 31, 1928, and at that first ceremony, there was no prize called Best Picture. The prize won that night by William Wellman's silent war film Wings was called Best Production, while F.W. Murnau's silent Sunrise took home the Best Unique and Artistic Picture trophy, an award conceived by the Academy's founding body to be just as exalted as Best Production, but to specifically honor creative innovation. That art-over-commerce prize was dropped immediately.

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The Paley Center for Media

The faces behind Justice League: Doom, which screened at the Paley Center last night

​Nearly every seat was filled inside the Paley Center for Thursday night's screening of Justice League: Doom. The latest in DC's string of direct-to-DVD releases, Doom will hit the streets on Feb. 28. Fans can also catch it on-demand beginning Feb. 21.

Loosely based on Mark Waid's JLA story Tower of Babel, Doom is significant in that it is the final script from Dwayne McDuffie, the comic book and television writer who died last year at age 49. McDuffie previously scripted All-Star Superman and Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths. He also wrote for the animated series Justice League, among many other projects.

During the panel following the film, voice director Andrea Romano commented on McDuffie's work, stressing that he made comic books "actable," that he had a gift for turning "thoughts into dialogue." It's a special ability to turn comic books into scripts, she added.

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Courtesy of the artist

Ming Wong's film Making Chinatown

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Two exhibitions with Chinatown in the title top this week's list, and both are remakes. One further twists Roman Polanski's already twisted classic film about where incest meets corporate corruption. The other is a sequel to an exhibition that never actually happened.

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​Women clearly have an ambivalent relationship with Disney characters. In question 12 of our sex survey, UCLA vs. USC: Who's Sluttier?, we asked about the worst date movies, and Disney films were named again and again by our female respondents: The Little Mermaid, The Princess and the Frog and "anything Disney" were frequent answers.

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Does this turn you off?

​For the second year in a row, statisticians from LA Weekly have performed studies on a carefully selected representative group of local college students to answer questions of important social significance such as: What's the best movie to watch on a date, and what movie should I avoid like the plague if I want to get laid afterward?

Appearing on all four best/worst/male/female lists this year is Nick Cassavetes' 2004 tear-jerking romantic drama The Notebook, starring Rachel McAdams and Ryan Gosling as not so much star-crossed lovers but mildly inconvenienced soulmates who meet, fall in love, break up, are kept apart by the machinations of her snobby parents and eventually find their way back to one another. Not the most original story, but a pretty surefire recipe for some hanky-panky after the credits roll.

Ah, but not so fast. If you haven't seen the film, be warned that spoilers follow.

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Reynolds

​"He's sooo hot," the woman sitting next to me at the screening of Safe House sighed to her friend as the film's opening images of Ryan Reynolds working out flashed on the screen. She then went on to fiddle with her BlackBerry for half the movie. Based on those two actions, she is, I think, this scattered but not totally disagreeable CIA conspiracy thriller's ideal audience: appreciative enough of Ryan Reynolds' body to accept a world-spanning espionage drama staked on his value as a boyfriend -- and beyond that, not paying too much attention.

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After eight days in Park City, I'm back in Los Angeles; the festival continues through the weekend, with the awards announced Saturday night. Here are some notes on films I didn't get a chance to write about at length. Keep an eye out for my wrap-up of the festival in next week's print edition.

2 Days in New York
Actress/director Julie Delpy's (of Before Sunset/Sunrise fame) self-proclaimed "sequel" to her 2007 film 2 Days in Paris has Delpy's character split up from the earlier movie's boyfriend, played by Adam Goldberg, and now living with Mingus, a journalist (whom Delpy's character meets while working at the Village Voice) played by Chris Rock.

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A mash-up of cinema and journalism, document and performance; a concert film sandwiched between a mission statement and a staged punctuation to a career: the LCD Soundsystem documentary Shut up and Play the Hits offers more basic narrative satisfaction than many of the fiction films shown here using documentary aesthetics in the name of realism.

Structured around the hyper-self-conscious New York post-punk dance act's supposed final live show ever -- an epic affair that packed Madison Square Garden last April -- the film weaves together highlights of the show itself (including maybe half a dozen full performances chosen from the 29-song set); excerpts from an in-depth interview conducted by Chuck Klosterman a week before the show; and verite footage of the day after the show, documenting LCD singer/figurehead Murphy's first day as a "retiree," from the moment he wakes up in the previous night's white dress shirt, to a celebration dinner with the band and friends.

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Courtesy 1301PE Gallery

A still from Modern Times, Forever, which might be the longest film ever made

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Pacific Standard Time's performance-art festival continues through this weekend, but there are a few great exhibitions to see as well. One in Chinatown is almost therapeutic, while another, on Wilshire, seems low-key at first but becomes more and more ominous.

5. SoCal's greatest, most boring composer
John Cage, the composer who believed silence could be music and boredom could be beautiful, graduated from Los Angeles High School and went to Pomona College, so it's no surprise PST would single him out as a symbol of SoCal's specialness. Friday at SCI-Arc, four performances by contemporary California artists and composers will explore Cage's influence. Re:Composition; SCI-Arc, 960 E. Third St., dwntwn.; Fri., Jan. 27, 8 p.m. (213) 613-2200, k-pst.org.

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​The theme of the 2012 New Frontier -- the Sundance section devoted to installation work, experimental film and video and art utilizing/ exploring emergent technology -- is "Future Normal." At a preview of the lineup held for press, programmer Shari Frilot defined that branded theme as reflective of an attempt to analyze the role of film in an age when "screen culture is evolving," to the point where "media technology integration really sustains humanity."

It's fitting the first piece visitors to the New Frontier gallery encounter, and by far the highlight of the whole exhibit, uses the trendiest technology of the moment to synopsize the past.

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