Leo Braudy

Now that the desert desperation and motiveless malignity of No Country for Old Men has been showered with awards from the Director’s Guild and the Screen Actor’s Guild, it’s worth mulling over what the film, apart from its skillful acting and directorial panache, is actually about. [SPOILER ALERT: If you haven't seen the movie, key plot points are about to be revealed]

Consider the story: A hapless young man (Josh Brolin) scraping by with a wife and child, happens on some big money left high and dry after a drug deal gone bad. He takes the money and is pursued by a relentless antagonist (Javier Bardem) who gradually mows down everyone who gets in his way, including the hapless young man and finally his wife.

Oh, I forgot. There’s also a sheriff, played by Tommy Lee Jones, who makes some feeble efforts to catch the inexorable killer but finally decides to sit around with his deputy and sundry other people to philosophize about how times have changed and such implacable murderers weren’t around in the good old days.

If you think about the story in genre terms, it could be considered a nice comic turn around of a classic western plot. We all remember the stranger who comes into town at the beginning of the movie, cleans up the villains and general corruption, and leaves at the end. Only this time, the stranger is a cold-blooded killer who ventilates most of the rest of the characters--except the philosophical sheriff--and then goes on his way, hindered only by an interesting accident--about which more in a minute.

Johanna Blakley

Freud’s not the only one who wants to know what women want. Political campaigns are desperate to decode the female voter and a recent New York Times Magazine story gathers gobs of poll data – including information from the Zogby/Lear Center survey on entertainment and politics – to nail down that most mysterious and elusive creature: the female moderate.

Who is she? And more importantly for campaigners out there, what does she watch? Here’s a detailed portrait of the female moderate from our survey which sussed out the connections between political beliefs and entertainment preferences:

Based on responses to questions about political beliefs, our survey found that 62% of the “moderate” category was composed of women.

Johanna Blakley

As the DIY Video Summit at USC looms on the horizon, it’s a good time to reflect for a moment on just how far online video and “user generated content” has come. The Summit is a multifaceted, interdisciplinary effort to bring together a wide variety of digital media creators, academics and industry folks, most of whom never have a chance to share ideas or to debate the future of “DIY media.” Once confined to a tiny box, with tinny audio and unforgivable lag, video was the bete noir of Web development. But just as video killed the radio star, video has conquered the Web, transforming the look and feel of even the most mundane sites, injecting a brash vitality into a medium that had grown a little too comfortable with static images and text.

The value of online video as an audience delivery system to paying advertisers has been the sticking point in the Writers Guild strike, and it will continue to haunt digital media contract negotiations in the foreseeable future. But the insane smorgasbord of video online is much more diverse than what you see on TV. Not only will you find a treasured episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, you'll also discover video commentary on the episode, and countless remixes, including one combining footage from Buffy, The Office, and Harry Potter, all set to Miley Cyrus' rendition of "Rocking Around the Christmas Tree."