A fine last-minute option for the movie buff on your Christmas list, the fifth edition of David Thomson’s The New Biographical Dictionary of Film was published in late October. I finally got around to cracking it open this week … and I’ve yet to close it. Thomson’s 1,076-page tome is as addictive as ever, bound to keep one engrossed as they move from entries that have appeared in every edition since the first, in 1975, to new and/or updated capsules on those who’ve emerged since his most recent edition in 2004.

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Miranda July's refreshingly slanted worldview is finally back on display via The Future, which will get its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in January. The long-awaited follow-up to her 2005 feature-length  debut, Me and You and Everyone We Know, tells the story of a thirtysomething couple who adopt a terminally ill cat, a decision that has an unexpected impact on their lives — and likely the film's viewers.

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The nominees for the 68th Golden Globe awards were announced today. As usual, the nominations run from astute to completely ludicrous.

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We've got another thin week for new movie releases — unless you're excited about the latest Narnia film, which I'm not. Even the new Johnny Depp/Angelina Jolie thriller — which I was initially eager to check out despite the warning sign its studio raised by not screening it in advance for critics — is getting thoroughly trashed by those unlucky enough to have seen it. That leaves Wild Target, another film its distributor (the indie outfit Freestyle) didn't screen in advance, as the lone possible saving grace. No pressure.

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The New York Times Magazine's annual Hollywood Issue comes out Sunday. In advance of the print edition, the Times Web site yesterday unveiled an inspired take on the issue's typical photo spread that features the "actors who defined cinema in 2010." Dubbed “Fourteen Actors Acting,” the interactive multimedia supplement is a “video gallery of classic screen types” that features 14 separate shorts directed by fashion photographer Solve Sundsbo, each a minute in length with its own musical score by adventurous, classically inclined Indie artist Owen Pallet (formerly known as Final Fantasy).

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Did anyone else see baby-faced Facebook founder/CEO Mark Zuckerberg on 60 Minutes the other night? The 26-year-old multi-billionaire told interviewer Leslie Stahl that, after initially vowing that he would never see David Fincher's Facebook origin story, The Social Network, he took the entire company to check out the film the day it opened in theaters.

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After weeks of multifarious movie-house options (23 over the last month, to be exact), we have only three releases this week. Curiously, two of the three are documentaries (A Film Unfinished and The Tillman Story, a pair that reveal war to be the hellish, dehumanizing debacle it always will be), a welcome trend that has given us a number of unique options in recent weeks, including Catfish, The Elephant in the Room, 4192: The Crowning of a Hit King, Inside Job, Jackass 3D, Last Train Home, Restrepo and Waiting for Superman.

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The first-ever Film Talk 2010, a daylong conference featuring a “series of lectures, collaborative discussions and promotional and networking opportunities for the Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana film communities,” takes place this weekend.

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The Sundance Film Festival announced its 2011 lineup today. The festival, which invades the small ski-resort town of Park City, Utah, Jan. 20-30, will include 115 films from 28 different countries. Befitting a fest known for its nurturing of fresh talent (40 of the 115 are from first-time filmmakers), the 32 films in the U.S. Dramatic and Documentary (16 in each category) include a bunch of new names as well as a few familiar faces.

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James Franco and Anne Hathaway will be at the Oscars ceremony on Feb. 27 … as co-hosts. Announced earlier today, the Academy's latest tweak (following last year's expansion of the Best Picture category from five to 10) seems a clear effort to lure younger viewers (Franco is 32, Hathaway is 28) to a show that has been had trouble generating interest in recent years. The duo probably can't be any worse than Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin, a pair who had a surprising lack of chemistry as last year's co-hosts.

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