Despite early promise, Aidan Quinn never broke through to superstardom. But I’m glad he’s still playing interesting roles, like the raging author Nicholas in the Irish supernatural drama The Eclipse .

Starlight Cinema, the Wisconsin Union Directorate’s 35-year-old avant-garde/experimental film series, is kaput. The WUD Film Committee is discontinuing it along with the rest of its series, including Real to Reel (its middling documentary series), International Cinema (maddeningly spotty) and Midnight Movies, all of which called the Memorial Union’s Fredric March Play Circle home. The committee will still show movies, but no longer break them into series.

The manic family comedy City Island aims to be a sort of opéra bouffe sung in the key of the Bronx — well, City Island, to be exact, a tiny, scenic fishing village improbably plunked down in New York’s uppermost borough.

I’m generally partial to Terry Gilliam, and The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus , beset by catastrophe, during which star Heath Ledger died in mid-shoot, shows just how ingenious, and how wildly imaginative, director Gilliam can be.

The Doors were wonderfully resourceful musicians, and singer Jim Morrison was a one-of-a-kind entertainer: menacingly sexy, mellifluous on the vocals and, whatever you think of his poetic pretensions, gifted at pop songcraft.

Avatar , James Cameron’s planet-shaking, moon-rocking, eco-worshiping, dragon-riding new science fiction fantasy epic-and-a-half, may not be a perfect movie. But it’s sure as hell an incredible experience.

The results are in, and they reveal that 2010 was another growth year for the Wisconsin Film Festival, which ended Sunday. Total attendance was 34,539, up from 32,645 in 2009 and 30,028 in 2008.

Wisconsin Film Festival director Meg Hamel fears sunshine. She believes sleet is the best weather condition for the festival, to drive people into theaters. Otherwise, she says, they’ll stay home to clean their garages.

Meg travels from film to film by bike during the four-day fest, so Ben mounted his camera on his own bike and took to the streets!

After two days of evening shows, Friday at the Film Fest offers the first opportunities to play hookey, which is exactly what a few women who preferred to remain anonymous are doing at House Quake .