Today's top story in the Movies channel concerns a lawsuit filed by the grandparents of a 12-year-old girl, which asserts that she was traumatized when a substitute teacher showed Brokeback Mountain in her elementary school classroom. The Oscar winner is rated R for nudity (mostly female) and sex (both heterosexual and male-on-male). The lawsuit alleges that before playing the film, the teacher shut the classroom door and said, "What happens in Ms. Buford's class stays in Ms. Buford's class"--a comment that suggests at least a little ambivalence about the appropriateness of the film for preteens. The family is accusing the school of "negligence, false imprisonment and intentional infliction of emotional distress."

Predictably, bloggers are lining up on both sides of the issue, although just about everyone seems to agree that R-rated movies--including the flick that launched a million gay cowboy jokes--shouldn't be shown in elementary school. Here's a sampling of the chatter:

"Once again, as a teacher I am mortified at the poor judgment and sheer stupidity of some of my fellow educators." -- Verum Serum

"Parents see chance to sue and get big bucks so they can have nicer things. Civilization as humans know it to collapse sometime around noon today, or at least by supper time." -- Editorials From Hell's Leading Newspaper

"Now, I loved the movie. But Heath mounting Jake just isn't peanut butter-and-jelly fare. Call me a neoconservative, I just don't agree with it." -- Ravnostic

"This story is a unfortunate byproduct of liberal activism. It is not one of tolerance and diversity because it is intolerant and disrespectful toward those of faith not to mention those who struggle with raising children in the world of the entertainment industry's pro sex, drugs and guns mentality." -- Webloggin

"You know, as I recall, William Faulkner had that effect on me. I wonder what the statute of limitations is on psychological-assault-by-bad-literature." -- Overlawyered

Of all the films for a substitute teacher to show to a class, why Brokeback Mountain? I personally don't think the film glamorizes the homosexual lifestyle--if anything, it shows the potential agony that awaits anyone who pursues it. But why show a film like that to a class if you're not trying to provoke a debate? Is there a grand liberal agenda at work here, or did this Ms. Buford just happen to have the DVD in her purse? Is the lawsuit justified, or is the moral debate just an excuse for the family to cash in? What's your take?

The South By Southwest Film Festival is widely considered to be one of the top showcases for documentary film in North America, and if we're to take the 2007 lineup as an indicator of general trends, then there is currently no hotter nonfiction genre than the election movie. The Festival (which began last Friday and runs concurrently with the famed SXSW Music Conference through March 18) is screening at least five feature films focused on elections. An inordinate amount of attention has already been bestowed on just one of SXSW 2007's election films, the Michael Moore expose Manufacturing Dissent. But while that production by Debbie Melnyk and Rick Caine offers an undeniably alluring behind-the-scenes peek at the documentary world's biggest blowhard, another SXSW election doc has managed to embroil pop culture notables as disparate as Alec Baldwin and Jello Biafra in a massive smear against the most powerful man in California.

That film is Running With Arnold, directed by former entertainment reporter Dan Cox. The doc tracks Arnold Schwarzenegger's wild ride from Austrian yokel to world-class bodybuilder--and then from action superstar to titan of Sacramento. The film is comprised of old interviews with Arnold, new interviews with Arnold's detractors, clips from Arnold's movies, and footage shot during the whirlwind recall election that first put him in office. It's an extremely entertaining piece of propaganda, one which seems content to settle for knowing laughs from the choir in lieu of offering the kind of hard analysis that might actually convert skeptics.

Cox identifies Schwarzenegger's Achilles heel early on, with a clip from an ancient archival interview in which the young bodybuilder describes his unquenchable thirst for attention. As Cox tells it, a defining moment came while Schwarzenegger was serving in the Austrian military. He went AWOL in order to enter a bodybuilding competition, and when he returned to his unit, he was promptly thrown in jail. Not for the first time, the future Governator chose physical vanity and personal stardom over national duty. No doubt this is a dubious personality trait, and an embarrassing anecdote. But like most of the revelations in Running With Arnold, it's hardly the kind of thing that will make a dent in Schwarzenegger's career.

Remember last month, when Netscape handed out our own awards for the Golden Globes telecast? The plan was to do the same for the Academy Awards. But last night's production was a strange one, too odd in many ways to be reduced to bullet points, and one largely unworthy of praise. According to Matt Drudge, the general public wasn't even watching--if overnight estimates prove accurate, it will be the third least-watched Oscars in history. Nikki Finke warned us last week that telecast producer Laura Ziskin had a four-hour monster on her hands, but no one wants to believe that kind of bad news in advance. And based on the reports that have so far hit the Web, even those who get paid to watch these things could barely sit through this year's installment. The few bright spots have so far been glossed over by critics who seem appalled in equal measure by the show's lack of spectacle and host Ellen DeGeneres' velvet pantsuit.

These early reports (particularly Brian Lowry's review in Variety and Alessandra Stanley's analysis in the New York Times) sound simultaneously naive and hackneyed. At the Oscar viewing party I attended, at the IFC Center in downtown Manhattan, nobody in the local, primarily film industry-tangential crowd seemed particularly surprised that the show itself was overlong and, for long stretches, dreadfully dull. Certainly no one suggested that what the evening really needed was more production numbers and fewer flamboyant outfits. The New York crowd simply slogged through, clapping some but mocking more, waiting for the good stuff. For our perseverance, we were rewarded with four big wins (Film Editing, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Director, Best Picture) for the hometown favorite, Martin Scorsese's The Departed. The genuine sense of joy in the room when the final award of the night was announced made sitting through the show's interminable middle three hours seem almost worthwhile.

It's rare for a film festival to spotlight major political figures. But earlier today, former Bush Administration officials appeared on a panel alongside filmmakers Charles Ferguson and Alex Gibney to discuss their Sundance Documentary Competition entry, No End in Sight. First-time director Ferguson described the picture, which premiered here in Park City on Monday to standing ovations from both festival attendees and press, as pointedly non-partisan. Instead he aimed at creating a cohesive historical record of the mistakes made in the first year after the Iraq invasion. "I don't want it to be seen as having an ideological bent," Ferguson explained. He added: "I wanted it to be a simple accounting of what occurred. Because what happened was so stunning.... I thought that we would all be best served by showing what happened."

The panel, moderated by journalist David D'Arcy, brought together five interview subjects from No End, including U.S. Marine Lieutenant Seth Moulton; former U.S. Ambassador Barbara Bodine, who was kidnapped in Kuwait during the first Iraq war and was placed in charge of a Baghdad for a short time after the 2003 invasion; and Omar Fekeiki, the former office manager of the Washington Post Baghdad bureau. Two former Administration officials participated via satellite: Lawrence Wilkerson (who was Colin Powell's chief of staff) and Jay Garner (who was head of the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance in Iraq).

D'Arcy led the panel through a discussion of some of the major points made by the film, including the Administration's refusal to stop the looting that erupted immediately after the fall of Baghdad. "I was in the push to Baghdad," recalled Lieutenant Moulton. "There's this mistaken perception that the Marines in Baghdad couldn't have done something to stop the looting. In truth, we were told not to. We certainly had enough troops to stop the looting right there in Baghdad."

"While the American officials in Baghdad were trying to figure out what to do," said Fekeiki, "we were deceived by what they were telling the press, that everything was planned perfectly. People were building their hopes high, because they all thought we would be liberated, and that we would start rebuilding the country in six to eight months."

As Eugene Hernandez so astutely puts it over at indieWIRE, the Golden Globes are the "awards show that means nothing and everything at the same time." The Globes are selected by members of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, a loosely-defined, corruption-ridden organization that seems to grant membership to any interested party boasting a non-U.S. passport and an affiliation with the entertainment media. Think of it this way: these are the greatest achievements in film and television as decided by the people who produce the Argentinean version of Entertainment Tonight.

It can be argued that Globe winners have a distinct advantage going into the Oscar race. The Oscars are selected by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences--that is, by working film professionals and former Oscar winners, most of whom are too busy to see a ton of films in which they weren't paid to participate. As such, they're enormously susceptible to buzz. And thanks to the splashy media profile of the Globes (which belies the feeble prestige of the HFPA), buzz is exactly what the winners get.

We can all agree that the Globes themselves have a limited impact on pop-cultural history. But it's hard to resist a media event that brings together the biggest stars in the world, locks them in a room for four hours, points cameras at them, and encourages them to drink. So let me celebrate this dubious award ceremony with my own list of dubious awards. Ladies and gentlemen, I bring you my picks for the most memorable moments of the evening:

Most Unfortunate Instance of Irony, Production Elements Edition: NBC's music editors

For the opening montage of celebrities on the red carpet, the NBC telecast piped in "One Night Only" from Dreamgirls. As it happens, this song includes the memorable chorus: "One night only/Let's not pretend to care." Has even NBC given up on pretending like the Globes matter? Making matters worse, there are two versions of the song in Dreamgirls: a slower, soulful version, sung by Jennifer Hudson's character, and a shallow, disco-fied bastardization which is supposed to represent the evils of commodified culture. Guess which version NBC chose for their montage?