I know what you're thinking. Last year for April Fools I doctored up the infamous joke ending of Alfred Hitchcock's North by Northwest in order to make it just a taaaad more obvious. Y'know, for the people that only felt the rush of wind as the original joke sailed right over their heads. So you might be expecting that this post will be a joke too, right? Well, here's the thing: last year was somewhat of an anomaly. I'm not really a big April Fools kinda guy. But just because this isn't an April Fool (hey, it's only March 31st!) that doesn't mean that this post won't have funny bits. And, yeah, I might even doctor up another video so stick around 'til the end.

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Frank Ockenfels 3 has once again produced a series of gorgeous character portraits ahead of AMC's new season of Mad Men. Like the portraits he did for season four, these images are dramatic works of art that capture some of the characters and themes from the show and its upcoming season. After a year and a half hiatus, it's nice to finally see these characters again. Below are some of my favorites.

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There's been a lot of buzz lately about The Artist, especially with tonight's Academy Awards looming. But the conversation hasn't just been about the merits of the film on the whole, but also about its appropriation of one of the most famous musical cues to ever be attached to a film. That piece would be Bernard Herrmann's "Scene d'Amour" from Alfred Hitchcock's 1958 masterpiece, Vertigo. Is its use in The Artist intended as a loving homage as The Artist's director, Michel Hazanavicius, claims? And if The Artist takes home an Oscar for Best Original Score, can we really say that at least some of the credit doesn't belong to the now-deceased Bernard Herrmann for the music he created for a different film entirely? [Update: The Artist just won for Best Original Score.]

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The films of Pixar are heavily populated with references to movies of the past, to the films most beloved by the studio's many writer/directors. Consider WALL-E's villainous robot AUTO whose devilish red-eye brings to mind HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey; or The Incredibles' hilarious Edna as a doppelganger for real life costume designer Edith Head; or even A Bug's Life whose entire plot—a defenseless village hires warriors to protect itself from bandits—is lifted right out of Seven Samurai. Most of these homages are created as comedy. They're cinematic in-jokes for the initiated, connections that simply make one smile. But Pixar's films are far greater than the sum of their homages. Most often they are great films, the kind that reveal hidden nuances with each additional viewing. Toy Story 2 is one such film.

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What, exactly, does "Tintin" mean to you? There's a very good chance that for you, "Tintin" is simply the title to Steven Spielberg's new, mo-cap animated film that opened in theatres this past week... and nothing more. But for me "Tintin" isn't just a funny sounding name for a character or movie. Tintin is a passion that has been with me for most of my life. Tintin was my gateway drug to the world of comics, a medium that I grew to adore as much as any other, and that I still love today.

Tintin in America is the first comic book that I can recall reading. Well, there had always been the comic strips in the daily newspaper, but that's not quite the same. I discovered a few Adventures of Tintin books in a dark, neglected section of a local book store back in 1983 or '4. Back then, graphic novels and other comic collections just weren't stocked at traditional book stores so finding comics—especially comics that I'd never even heard of—felt like a wondrously odd and magical discovery. I was in second grade—eight years old, or about to be. In the years that followed, I picked up copies of all the Adventures of Tintin books; I've probably read each of them a dozen times. And now, 28 years since my first encounter with the character, we have a Tintin movie created by one of our greatest filmmakers. My expectations for the film are high. Unreasonably so. No current film project is dearer to my heart than this one.

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This week, the Large Association of Movie Blogs (The LAMB) is running a contest around the concept of "If A Movie Character Ran For President." The idea is for members to create and submit a poster (or modify an existing one) to match the theme. I don't typically participate in such contests because my busy schedule prohibits it. But this time, I just couldn't resist creating a submission. You see, I'm a big fan of Akira, both the 1988 film and Katsuhiro Otomo's comic series (or manga, as comics are referred to in Otomo's native Japan). I quickly realized that Akira's film's power-mad protagonist, Tetsuo Shima, would be a great subject for this theme. Below, I'll walk through the concepts that influenced my design, and then reveal the final poster that I submitted.

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Jane Campion's In the Cut is a film designed explicitly as an example of feminist filmmaking. The film might be classified as a thriller or even a slasher film, but viewing the film with such genre expectations would only lead to dissatisfaction. In terms of plot, In the Cut is a film about a serial killer. But the film dodges narrative convention at every turn in order to present something entirely different. There are no clues to drive the audience towards a suspect; to guess at his identity would be arbitrary and beside the point of the film. In fact, the serial killer plot is relegated to the background. To view the film in terms of its plot and the conventions of the thriller genre can only lead to frustration as the film does not work through such a reading. Instead, if we are to connect with the film, In the Cut must be read as a study of the psychoanalytic theory of cinema presented by Laura Mulvey in her landmark essay, "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema." I have no intention here of providing a value judgment on Mulvey's theories. Instead, my aim is to illustrate how director Jane Campion integrated Mulvey's theories into her film, and then subverted them in order to strike another blow against "the monolithic accumulation of traditional film conventions" that Mulvey was so interested in breaking down. Director Jane Campion uses the language of cinema and the machinations of plot to render the film around the subjectivity of a woman, to challenge the myth of romantic love and the "cult of the female star," and to establish a world where the male gaze is presented not as a pleasurable vantage point for the audience but a viewpoint to be feared.

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Earlier this week, I received my first-ever IKEA catalog. At nearly 400 pages and about a half-inch thick, it's easily the largest piece of direct mail marketing I've ever seen show up at my house. There's been steady talk about the new store all year. Some simply marveled at the shear size of the building that was being erected. For those who have never seen an IKEA, try to imagine an immense, bright blue warehouse of a building with the enormous words "IKEA Home Furnishings" christened in bold yellow letters on all four sides of its exterior. It's kind of like the country of Sweden just planted a 415,000 square foot flag right next to the interstate. Some people buzzed about the new store constantly as though the appearance of a new brand in town promised to positively effect the quality of their lives. In fact, hundreds of people lined up several days ahead of its grand opening, not unlike the throng of Star Wars geeks who camped out for the premier of The Phantom Menace. Fight Club's Narrator, an unnamed, wispy shell of a man played by Edward Norton, would probably be there as well if he actually existed here in the real world. He'd be among his people. People who had become "a slave to the IKEA nesting instinct."

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