1. "Hollywood pigeons to be put on the pill": It's not nice to fool with Mother Nature.

["Hollywood residents believe they've found a humane way to reduce their pigeon population and the messes the birds make: the pill. Over the next few months a birth control product called OvoControl P, which interferes with egg development, will be placed in bird food in new rooftop feeders."]

["Who knew that an essay by David Denby could induce more than groggy nods from readers fortunate enough to make it across the finish line? Yet his New Yorker "Critic at Large" cogitation-lamentation on romantic comedy in the gastrointestinal era of Judd Apatow has incited quite a salon exchange over at Emily Gordon's Emdashes, with Katha Pollitt dropping into the comments section to reiterate her recoil at Seth Grogen and the stunted, grubby man-boyhood of Knocked Up."]

["As you might know, Shirley Temple had been considered for the role of Dorothy Gale in The Wizard of Oz but was eventually passed over either because her singing voice was inadequate or because MGM and 20th Century Fox couldn't come up with a satisfactory trade. In an attempt to beat MGM at their own game, Fox bought the rights to playwright Maurice Maeterlinck's "L'Oiseau Bleu" ("The Blue Bird") with an eye on Temple for the lead. Ironically, The Blue Bird became her very first box-office dud and signalled the end of her career as a child actress."]

["What a startling way to wake up in the morning. Just weeks after I wished the great filmmaker good wishes on his 89th birthday, he has lost the figurative chess game with Death. Still, Ingmar Bergman will live on forever with his remarkable body of film work. What worries me is how his stock has fallen over the years and how many younger film buffs have little exposure to his works. Sadly, not one of his many remarkable films made the final 100 on the list put together by The Online Film Community announced yesterday. Hopefully, in my just-waking-up haziness, I can do at least a somewhat reasonable tribute to the Swedish filmmaker."]

["The downbeat flipside to Richard Lester's A Hard Day's Night, released less than a year after the Beatles-starring picture, John Boorman's 1965 Catch Us If You Can (the director's feature debut) sees the Dave Clark Five—at the time the Beatles' most formidable rivals in what we in the States called the British Invasion—trying to get away from it all in the dry chill of a British winter."]

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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.