Folded in among today’s DVD releases, presumably overlooked amid your Twilight sequels and Harold and Kumar 3D yuletides and “Shakespeare didn’t write his plays!” screeds, is one of 2011′s best films: The Sunset Limited, written by Cormac McCarthy, directed by Tommy Lee Jones, starring Jones and Samuel L. Jackson. Wait, you might be thinking. (You might be!) What a fine pedigree! What an excellent cast! I would have gone to see that! Did it not play at my local art house or multiplex? No, hypothetical reader, it did not. It was made for HBO, and since Sunset Limited, based on McCarthy’s play, is primarily a two-handed conversation piece about race, class, mortality, and despair, it’s probably not surprising that it found a home on a pay cable network rather than at a Hollywood studio. But this is nothing new; dialogue and intellect-driven efforts like this migrated to television long ago, as studios lost interest in telling small stories.

Since they started airing in the mid-1960s, TV movies have taken risks — either on subject matter or on rising young talent. The results weren’t always commendable; there’s a reason that the phrase “made-for-TV movie” calls up images of Tori Spelling cowering on Lifetime, or broadcast networks airing simultaneous dramatizations of the lurid Amy Fisher story. But between the networks and cable, we’ve seen an assortment of genuinely beguiling television movies; we’ve gathered ten of our favorites after the jump, with plenty of room for yours in the comments. (And, just to keep it simple, we’ve steered clear of miniseries, documentaries, and films like The Believer that were intended for theatrical release but premiered on television instead).

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1. Even though former Joy Division bassist Peter Hook took it to be “quite the compliment,” Disney has decided to stop selling its Unknown Pleasures-inspired Mickey Mouse t-shirt. According to a company rep, “As soon as we became aware there could be an issue, we pulled it from our shelves and our online store to review the situation further.” [via P4K]

2. Steven Spielberg is in serious talks to direct a new movie about Moses for Warner Bros that will hopefully remind you more of Braveheart than The Ten Commandments. Says an insider: “There have been glossy versions of the Moses story but this would be a real warrior story.” [via Deadline]

3. Uggie, the Jack Russell terrier who stole our hearts in The Artist, is apparently retiring. “He may do a couple of little things here and there because he enjoys them,” explains his owner, “but I don’t want to put him through long hours anymore. He’s getting tired.” [via Vulture]

4. “We have been working on this show for over a year and we wanted to partner with the right people. DJs are the new rock stars, it feels like the right time to make this show.” — Simon Cowell discusses his next reality project, which will see him partner with Jada Pinkett-Smith and Will Smith’s production company.

5. Are we the only ones who think that NBC giving Rainn Wilson from The Office his own spin-off about life at Schrute Farms is a really horrible idea? Did this network learn nothing from its misguided decision to air Joey? [via EW]

Bonus Buzz: The True Meaning Of Friendship

Last week, the world was treated to the very first presidential letter to have ever been Instagram’d, courtesy of Zooey Deschanel. The New Girl darling tweeted, “I am SO EXCITED!” upon opening a special envelope from President Obama, who took to some White House stationery to send his warmest wishes on her 32nd birthday. Jealous? Yeah, we are too. Zooey’s not the first celebrity to receive a letter from an admiring president — check out some fan letters, get-well-soon cards, thank-you notes, and party invitations after the jump.

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[Editor's note: While your Flavorwire editors take a much-needed holiday break, we're revisiting some of our most popular features of the year. This post was originally published August 10, 2011.] Earlier this summer, a shocking number of our readers flocked to read (and amend) our list of the harshest author-on-author insults in history. But you know who is even more childish, trifling, vindictive, and nasty than your favorite scribes? Your favorite filmmakers. These directors may not have quite the same precision with the written word as those rancorous authors, but when it comes to pettiness, they can’t be beat. After the jump, we’ll run down 30 of our favorite slights, slanders, and cheap shots from filmmakers both classic and contemporary; we’d love to hear yours in the comments.

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[Editor's note: While your Flavorwire editors take a much-needed holiday break, we're revisiting some of our most popular features of the year. This post was originally published May 23, 2011.] A few weeks back, we mentioned that list of Steven Soderbergh’s “cultural diet” (films viewed and books read and TV watched over the course of one year), noting that, in one week, he took in Raiders of the Lost Ark no less than three times — and that he carefully pointed out that each viewing was in black and white. In writing about that list, I said that this was something “we’re totally going to do now,” and last week, I did. Guess what? Soderbergh’s right. Raiders is way better in black and white.

That little experiment got me thinking about other modern movies that might play better in this decidedly less-than-modern format. There is, we can all agree, just something about black and white. In his wonderful 1989 essay “Why I Love Black and White,” Roger Ebert wrote: “There are basic aesthetic issues here. Colors have emotional resonance for us… Black and white movies present the deliberate absence of color. This makes them less realistic than color films (for the real world is in color). They are more dreamlike, more pure, composed of shapes and forms and movements and light and shadow. Color films can simply be illuminated. Black and white films have to be lighted. With color, you can throw light in everywhere, and the colors will help the viewer determine one shape from another, and the foreground from the background. With black and white, everything would tend toward a shapeless blur if it were not for meticulous attention to light and shadow, which can actually create a world in which the lighting indicates a hierarchy of moral values.”

Once I picked the movies that we thought would work for this experiment, I realized that trying to just describe them in a standard post wouldn’t work at all. So I’m doing something different with this post: I made a little video for each title, with clips transformed to black and white and commentary explaining why each one was selected. Check out Raiders and my other choices after the jump.

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Contrary to what some of the more curmudgeonly folks you might be reading have said, 2011 was actually a very good year for film, in which countless filmmakers either ignored the industry’s distrust of originality entirely, or found new and interesting ways to smuggle bits of revelation and surprise even into formulaic franchise pictures. You’ll see a lot of “best of the year” lists floating around that run down many of the same easy picks for the year’s best films, but since each film is an accumulation of small parts — scenes, lines, pauses, etc. — we thought it would be fun to pick out some of the little, specific moments that stayed in our movie-going memories over the course of 2011. Ours are after the jump; we hope to see yours in the comments. Read More »

1. The editor-in-chief of Jackie, the Dutch fashion magazine that referred to Rihanna as “the ultimate ni**abitch,” has resigned in the wake of complaints over the piece. The pop star tweeted her response to the controversy: “You put two words together, with the intent of abasement, that made no sense … ‘N***a Bitch’?!….Well with all respect, on behalf of my race, here are my two words for you … F*** YOU!!!” [via NME]

2. The Oscar that Orson Welles won back in 1941 for his Citizen Kane screenplay has been sold at auction for a whopping $861,542. Apparently famed magician David Copperfield was trying to get his hands on it, but was outbid. [via Deadline]

3. The Weinstein Company is moving ahead with its first stage musical, an adaptation of the 2004 film Finding Neverland; the current plan is to launch the show in Britain by next fall, and then transfer it to London by the end of the year. [via ArtsBeat]

4. “Like the screen Tintin, the movie proves less than inviting because it’s been so wildly overworked: there is hardly a moment of downtime, a chance to catch your breath or contemplate the tension between the animated Expressionism and the photo-realist flourishes. Relax, you think, as Tintin and the story rush off again, as if Mr. Spielberg were afraid of losing us with European-style longueurs. Bore us? He’s Steven Spielberg!” — New York Times film critic Manhola Dargis reviews The Adventures of Tintin

5. A rare performance by David Bowie on the UK show Top of the Pops will air on the BBC tonight for the first time since its original 1973 broadcast. The four-minute clip features him doing an extended version of “Jean Genie” with his band at the time, The Spiders From Mars. [via BBC]

Bonus Buzz: Arpakasso, The Adorable Alpaca That’s Sweeping Asia

You know The Spielberg Face: It’s that moment when a character in a Steven Spielberg movie stares into the distance, wearing a wide-eyed expression that combines wonder, fear, concern, and disbelief. Yes, this is a thing — and, in advance of The Adventures of Tintin‘s release Fandor’s Kevin B. Lee has put together a ten-minute video essay on the phenomenon. Beginning with a supercut of Spielberg Faces, Lee moves on to discussing the history of “the expressive close-up,” from silent cinema to the present and enumerating all of the feelings these shots can convey. The video is a must-watch for Spielberg enthusiasts, and an illuminating and amusing curiosity for the rest of us. Watch it after the jump. Read More »

1. The nominees for the 54th Annual Grammy Awards have been announced, and Kanye West leads the pack with seven nods; hot on his heels are Adele, Bruno Mars, and the Foo Fighters, who each scored six nominations. View the full list of nominees here.

2. Nicholas Cage’s rare copy of “Action Comics” No. 1 — which was stolen from his house in 2000, and later recovered — has been sold at auction for a record-setting $2.1 million. Knowing Cage, he’s sure to spend the money wisely, perhaps on a second pyramid tomb or another castle. [via MTV]

3. Here is your first look at Daniel Day-Lewis as Abraham Lincoln, snapped while the actor was having some lunch while on location in Richmond, Virginia. Looks like Steven Spielberg made a good choice. There’s a rather striking resemblance, wouldn’t you say?

4. A Colombian court has ruled against Miguel Reyes Palencia, a man who claimed that Gabriel García Márquez used his life story as the inspiration for the main character in Chronicle of a Death Foretold, and as a result, wanted 50% of the royalties and a co-author credit. [via Guardian]

5. Film critic Roger Ebert says that the recently-revived version of his show At the Movies will be going on an indefinite hiatus in the new year due to financial issues. Funding the project through Kickstarter is one option being considered, but in the meantime Ebert asks, “Please have faith in us as we sort through the possibilities.” [via ArtsBeat]

Bonus Buzz: Modern-Day Garbage Pail Kids

1. John Altschuler and Dave Krinsky (Blades of Glory) are in talks to develop an animated film for Universal that’s based on the classic cartoon character Woody Woodpecker. Do the kids of today even know who he is? [via Slashfilm]

2. Steven Spielberg has decided to widen the focus of his Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation, which was previously devoted exclusively to the memory of Holocaust survivors, to also include testimonies on other mass killings, including those of Armenians and Cambodians. [via NYT]

3. Jeopardy! contestant Roger Craig recently had the most lucrative game in the show’s history. How’d he do it? With some help from a web app that he developed, and then trained himself on. [via Gawker]

4. NBC has ordered a pilot of Bryan Fuller’s remake of The Munsters; unlike the original show, his version will be “an hour-long series exploring how the monster house came about” and “will have a darker and less campy feel.” [via EW]

5. A few of the tracks that Will Oldham and David Byrne composed for the This Must Be the Place soundtrack — the crazy looking movie where Sean Penn plays a Nazi hunter who looks just like Robert Smith — are now streaming here.

Bonus Buzz: Why Pandas Are Black And White