Form time to time I contribute movie talk over at InContention.com, a vibrant film site dedicate to the awards coverage. And although I’ve been slacking lately, I’m the (inconsistent) Moviegoer at The Arkansas Times. Max is sure to fire me any minute.

I hope you enjoy The Movie Club as much as I do. And I hope you enjoyed the year in movies. I didn’t see everything I wanted to, but it’ll make for a more interesting ‘09 (so far, my new year’s positive outlook is holding up).

It was a work day, today. I’ll leave it the other inhabitants of the growing Arkansas blogosphere to keep you entertained with today’s political, business and media happenings. Oh yeah, Go Hogs!

Gary Parrish of CBS Sports puts the Hogs 23rd in his national rankings. The Associated Press and USA Today/Coaches’ polls will be released later today.

UPDATE: The Coaches’ Poll gave Arkansas no love. While the Hogs received 27 votes, they are well behind Tennessee who is ranked 25th despite losing to unranked Kansas this weekend. Other teams receiving more votes than the Razorbacks (last win in parenthesis): Davidson (beat Samford); Cal (beat No. 14 Arizona St.); BYU (lost to No. 14 Arizona St.); Illinois (lost to No. 24 Michigan); Memphis (beat Lamar); Ohio State (lost to Minnesota); St. Mary’s (beat Cal State - Bakersfield); Michigan (beat Illinois); Illinois State (beat Creighton); and Dayton (beat Toledo).

While this is fairly amusing, it’s also amusing that the Hogs received the same amount of votes as Gonzaga, a team that lost to Portland State and Utah last week.

And you have to throw an undefeated Clemson team into the top 15, too. After all, marquee wins over Illinois, South Carolina, and Miami demand it.

UPDATE II: The Hogs fared better with the AP writers, but still failed to crack the Top 25.  They received 109 votes, enough to finish just outside the poll, or 28th.  Michigan (153 votes) and Cal (122 votes) are 26 and 27 respectively.  Baylor remains in the poll at 23 despite losing to South Carolina.  Even though Michigan lost to Wisconsin last week, they have wins over UCLA and Duke to their credit. Cal? I guess beating Arizona State is impressive.

1.  Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood by Mark Harris
2.  The Road by Cormac McCarthy
3.  Blindness by Jose Saramago
4.  George, Being George ed. by Nelson W. Aldrich Jr.
5.  Yesterday’s Weather by Anne Enright
6.  Falling Through Space: The Journals of Ellen Gilchrist
7.  Indignation by Philip Roth
8.  Lush Life by Richard Price
9.  The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby
10. The Maytrees by Annie Dillard

1. The Dark Knight
2. Synedoche, New York
3. Slumdog Millionaire
4. Milk
5. The Visitor
6. 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days
7. Rachel Getting Married
8. Flight of the Red Balloon
9. The Edge of Heaven
10. WALL-E

I didn’t elaborate on the film’s I didn’t get to see that might have impacted this list.  Here they are: “The Wrestler,” “I’ve Loved You So Long,” “Gomorrah,” “Revolutionary Road,” “Frost/Nixon,” “Wendy and Lucy,” “Frozen River,” “Hunger,” “Happy-Go-Lucky,” “The Class,” “Waltz with Bashir,” “A Christmas Tale,” “Let the Right One In” and “Che.”

You can look to change.gov, the transition website the Obama campaign created to capture resumes (290,000 thus far) and allow people to interact with the transition team. The site offers a blog and allows for users to submit comments, both good and bad (see Rick Warren’s announcement). It has also hosted several “Open for Questions” discussion sessions. According to Eric Schmidt of Google, “This is a part of our Internet culture, and it’s an emerging part of our political culture — you, as a citizen, get to talk back to your government.”

A month ago Mr. Obama’s campaign manager, David Plouffe, sent a message to Obama supporters requesting their input as to what to do as they plan for the future. This week, the Pew Center released a report that says that 51% of Obama’s online supporters expect to receive e-mails, text messages and other forms of communications from the administration.  There have been several stories written about this in recent weeks.

And then there’s this news from Israel where its New York consulate held a 2-hour press conference on Twitter to discuss the current war.

Mr. Obama has stated that he will name a chief technology officer - a new position - to his administration.  How and where that person will operate is yet to be known. Hopefully the CTO will have real authority and can avoid a bloated bureaucracy. With so many social media tools available to the new administration, it would be shame for Mr. Obama not to use them.

The topic of the newspaper is often discussed in this space. My friend and fellow blogger Lance Turner also dedicates a substantial amount of his space to it. In light of very bad news at the Tribune Co. and The New York Times, I’ve wondered whether the U.S. government - which seems to be throwing money at anyone who can make a large claim for it - should consider infusing dollars into the newspaper business.

At first glance this seems rather nonsensical. After all, what it the world does the federal government know about the newspaper business? If anything, the scholarship on the current crisis suggests many problems and zero solutions. What will an infusion of capital do except prolong the problem?

But Michael Kaiser of the Kennedy Center has asked for a bailout of the arts community. If you must know I’m on board with his idea because, as he notes, “It takes as much time to play Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony today as it did when the piece was composed, and the same number of actors are required for “Hamlet” as when Shakespeare wrote the play more than 400 years ago. Unlike other industries, the arts cannot cover the cost of inflation by improving worker productivity.” The short of it is this: America is better off when we fund more productions of plays, symphonies, films, and concerts.

On Sunday, the Arkansas Democrat Gazette reprinted a piece in the Perspectives section by Paul Greenberg (no relation to the Dem-Gaz writer of the same name) arguing for a bailout of writers. Mr. Greenberg’s commentary probably deserves more attention here, because of this point: He polled several hundred writers and asked this question: “if given a subsidy with no strings attached that would support you at a comfortable income level for the rest of your life would you write as much or more than you do now?” 96 percent responded yes.

But the newspaper argument, often a haven for writers and their good products, would, unlike both proposals above, require a change in the business model. But change to what? That’s the question I’ve been pondering along with many others, including Joseph Duggan, a former speechwriter for President George H.W. Bush, who argues a “let market forces decide” position in this piece in Real Clear Markets (Thumbs Up: E Star). Change, or wither and die. But whatever you do, the free market will be the final arbiter.

A free market approach is fair-minded, conservative idea that makes for a good sound bite. After all, why throw money at bad companies (I’m lookin’ at you, Hank Paulson!). However, for a free market approach to work, the market must support the creation of new publications. Put another way: newspapers can be substantiated if publications aimed at generating community-based content are created through new ventures and under new terms. But investors are going to have to jump into this business. Do you think they will?

Maybe, although I am skeptical. The most intriguing idea I’ve heard is from Joe Mathewson, a former reporter for The Wall Street Journal and a lecturer at Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism. He argues for a non-profit model. It’s exactly what you might think: take the profit margins off the table. Make the news about the news and not about the bottom line.

Still, with no discernible solution in sight and the market bearing down on newspapers, I propose this hypothesis: Allowing the market to dictate the future of the newspaper business will result in a recognizable void - perhaps for an extended period of time - in the ways news is reported at the community level.

What’s the end result? Lots of people are out of work and communities become more disconnected. Infusing capital into publications with sound business models, an effective approach to community-based news reporting, and a demonstrated ability to adapt to life on the Internet isn’t a terrible idea. Neither is running them as non-profits. Particularly when you weigh the alternative.

UPDATE: I’m late in getting this up, but thanks to the folks at the Arkansas Times blog for posting a link to this entry. It generated some good discussion on their site, which I hope you will read.

UPDATE II: Lance Turner takes a look at this issue, too, over at his blog. Have a read.

Today, Mr. Kaiser has this commentary in the Washington Post. In it he argues for a bailout for arts organizations in America.  Here Here! He notes that arts in this country provide 5.7 million jobs and account for $166 billion in economic activity annually. He notes, “Because the arts are so fragmented, no single organization’s demise threatens the greater economy and claims headlines. But thousands of organizations, and the state of America’s arts ecology, are in danger.”

It’s also worth noting that Morgan Freeman, George Jones, Barbra Streisand, Twyla Tharp and Pete Townshend & Roger Daltry will receive the 2008 Kennedy Center Honors.

Movies? I saw quite a few over the holidays: “Slumdog Millionaire,” “Doubt,” “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” “The Flight of the Red Balloon,” “Traitor” and “Transsiberian.” I can’t say I’m much interested in seeing “Valkyrie.” You? I’m also eagerly anticipating “Revolutionary Road,” “The Wrestler,” “Gran Torino” and “Frost/Nixon.”

I submitted my Top 10 to the Arkansas Democrat Gazette and I think it will run next week. In the meantime, check out Philip Martin’s. You’ll get no argument from me about “The Visitor,” which tops Mr. Martin’s list. It’s exceptional. More movie talk? Think Tank fan John Brummett says “Slumdog Millionaire” is the best film of the year (”Australia” is the worst). You can find more Top 10s over at The Moviegoer.

Enjoy your Sunday. I’ll check back in later.

A quick browse of Arkansas stuff leads me to this untimely announcement: John Brummett’s blogging. He gives The Think Tank a link on his blogroll; we shall do the same.

The United States State Department has stepped into Twitter-land.  Writes Colleen P. Graffy in today’s Washington Post: “Simply put, Twitter is just one more tool through which we can connect, and by linking my messages to video and photos, I can inform whole new audiences about U.S. views and ideas in a format with which they feel comfortable.”

There’s continuing bad news in the newspaper business.  The New York Times Media Group reports that ad revenue for The New York Times fell 20 percent last month. The primary cause is the drop in real estate and jobs classified advertising. John A. Byrne of Business Week writes of the changing truths of journalism (Thumbs up: LT).

I’ll be off and on for the next few days.  Happy Holidays.

David Sanders of Arkansas News Bureau provides his Christmas wish list for national and local pols. President George W. Bush doesn’t fare too well. Not too hard to imagine, of course. And this scathing report from The New York Times on the mortgage crisis won’t quiet critics of Mr. Bush.

Think Tank fan John Brummett examines the Arkansas Republican Party. State Republicans seem to believe that running candidates at the local level (a similiar approach to Newt Gingrich’s prior to the 1994 takeover) is the best strategy. This comes after a gathering of high powered Repubs with a Tennessee political strategist. David Kinkade, Noelle Nikpour, Mr. Sanders and I discussed the  strategy on “Unconventional Wisdom” in October.

Arkie Jerry Jones, owner of the Dallas Cowboys, is taking some heat today for the Cowboys’ loss to the Baltimore Ravens. The loss drops the Cowboys to 9-6 and in need of a lot of help to get into the playoffs. This doesn’t bode well for a team that steps into a $1 billion new stadium next season. Randy Galloway of the Ft. Worth Star Telegram says Mr. Jones needs to “fire himself.” Mike Lupica of the New York Daily News suggested something similar on the Sports Reporters today.

Philip Seymour Hoffman graces the cover of the Sunday New York Times Magazine. Mr. Hoffman is the star of the magnificant “Synedoche, New York” as well as “Doubt.”

Speaking of movies: Slumdog Millionaire, Happy-Go-Lucky? It’s also the last week for Jonathan Demme’s exceptional film “Rachel Getting Married” . . . in LR at least.

Remember Rossi Morreale? He used to return punts for the Arkansas Razorbacks. I just saw him on Weekend Update on TBS.

Enjoy the day . . . wherever you are.