1. "Film Forgery." One can plagiarize written work easily enough. But David Bordwell wonders: is it possible to plagiarize a movie?

"It's interesting to speculate about what a plagiarized film would be. You can plagiarize somebody's script by passing it off as your own; periodically there are lawsuits from aspiring screenwriters claiming that producers ripped off spec scripts. But can you plagiarize a movie itself?"

"To put it bluntly, if given the choice between Jafar Panahi's eloquent, invigorating, tightly paced, and endlessly enjoyable Offside and the current box office mega-attraction 300 (titled, evidently, for the amount of brain cells you will lose by watching it), and you choose the latter, no amount of community service can save your soul."

"Perhaps sexual revolutions are going on all the time around us, and only a few of us notice."

"Feel left out because you didn't have a personal connection with anyone on one of those ill-fated flights, or with a firefighter who lost his life, or with any of the thousands who couldn't escape the World Trade Center? Not to worry. In Reign Over Me, 9/11 victimhood is for everyone: You can feel the exhilaration of recovery without going to the trouble of suffering the pain that necessitates it in the first place."

"What if I was forced to whittle my gadgetry? Here is what I would hold onto longest, with a cold, dead-fingers grip."
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"Links for the Day": Each morning, the House editors post a series of weblinks that we think will spark discussion. Comments encouraged.