"Children of Invention": You didn't see it in theaters, but you can see it on Hulu (for free)!

I have an appetite for independent and foreign films that is rarely satiated by actually going to a theater and seeing them. Since I'm from New York City, I can't claim that the film isn't showing in my city since almost every film shows in New York, so I suppose the reason I don't support these low-budget films by paying for a movie ticket is because I'm cheap. In my defense, I will say that I tend to borrow the DVDs from the New York Public Library when they're available (there can be a long wait, depending on the momentary popularity of the film) and I watch the Sundance Channel, which means that I can watch newly acquired foreign and independent films in the comfort of my own home (and while checking my e-mail). It is through the Sundance Channel that I have seem some great films like "The Lives of Others" and "Four Months, Three Weeks, Two Days"; I almost saw "Maria Full of Grace"once, but my mother preferred not to watch a film about drug mules so I had to change the channel.

I haven't seen an indie in some time, and since I'm also too cheap to see a more mainstream movie like "True Grit", I have been making do with fond memories of seeing "The Social Network" and watching whatever movies cable networks choose to show. I didn't think I would see a good arthouse film until I was back in New York, but I found one a few hours ago...on Hulu. Yes, that Hulu, the Hulu that doesn't show every episode of "30 Rock" anymore and whose Movies section is chock full of trailers, Lifetime Movies, and feature films you wouldn't admit to seeing in polite company. The film I saw is called "Children of Invention". It premiered at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival (the one dominated by news of "Precious" and "The September Issue"), was released in eight theaters early in 2010, and was released on DVD in August 2010, but if you hurry you won't have to pay a dime to see it.

Mark Zuckerberg as Time Magazine's Person of the Year?

Time magazine these days doesn't tend to capture my attention much. Although I occasionally visit its website, the print magazine doesn't serve as appointment reading for me anymore; the variety of news sources that exist today, and the limits on my time, make that impossible. My disaffection with the magazine in the past several years has also been related to its misguided efforts to distinguish itself from other magazines. This has come in the form of a redesign and what has seemed like an increase in the number of pictures and graphics- at the expense of valuable text- a reader will see in the magazine.

Despite my fraught relationship with the magazine today (only as a reader of course), I have maintained an interest in its selections for Person of the Year. It defines Time and promotes the magazine the way that educational rankings make U.S. News relevant. In a dramatically changing media landscape, people do look to Time for an authoritative sense of the people who have the most influence on the events and changes in our world. The Person of the Year issue presents the best opportunity for Time to take attention away from more hip or fashionable magazines like Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, or The Atlantic. Time seemed to have forgotten that when choosing last year's Person or it wouldn't have chosen Mark Zuckerberg.