As a kid I fell in love with movies mainly for the stories and characters, and every once in a while, maybe some special effects. As I got older, my love affair was renewed when I discovered the Cult of the Director. The Cult of the Director allows one to look at movies in a far more personal way. It's an ongoing game; one can discover long-forgotten works, or piece together old puzzles, but one can also look ahead and guess how a director's career arc will come together. Basically, there are roughly four kinds of directors. The most common is the kind with no personality, and perhaps very little skill, someone like Brian Robbins, the director of Meet Dave (58 screens). Many of these folks eventually disappear without ever making much of a mark. After that, we get the craftsman, someone with lots of skill and talent but still no personality. These guys are the most interesting to talk to; they're unpretentious and tell the best stories. Brad Anderson, the director of Transsiberian (81 screens), is a good example.

Then there's a weird category of directors who have somehow come to popular attention, despite a lack of skill and/or a lack of personality. These can range from moneymakers like Brett Ratner to Oscar winners like Ron Howard. But of course, since we're talking about live human beings here, there's a lot of wiggle room in these categories, and I could probably establish several sub-categories. Not to mention that any director's career can suddenly change course at any point. Yes, even Brett Ratner could suddenly make a good film. (I'm not saying he will, just that he could.) These people manage to stay on top through a lucky combination of subject matter and promotion. Even though films like Brick Lane (31 screens) and Mongol (16 screens) have no skill or personality, they seem like great films because of their stories and packaging.

Where else would you expect to see the world premiere of a comedy in which Matthew McConaughey is shirtless for the entire film? It had to be Austin. Instead of the traditional red carpet, the stars of Surfer, Dude strolled down a green carpet in 90-plus-degree weather last night, as part of a benefit screening for Austin Film Society. McConaughey (who kept his shirt on the entire time, sadly) was joined by a half-dozen of his co-stars, including Woody Harrelson, as well as director/co-writer S.R. Bindler. Bindler's previous film, the documentary Hands on a Hardbody, played at the Dobie in Austin for more than a year back in the late 1990s. Even McConaughey's parents were on the green carpet, although I don't think they appear in the R-rated comedy. The only disappointment was that Willie Nelson, who also has a role in Surfer, Dude, wasn't around.

After the jump, I've included a photo of Surfer, Dude actresses Alexie Gilmore and K.D. Aubert from last night's premiere. Out and About, the Austin American-Statesman's social/entertainment blog, has posted more photos from the green-carpet event as well as a short and light-hearted review. Surfer, Dude is opening on Friday in limited release -- including Austin -- and then will hit more cities on September 12. The film's distributor is Anchor Bay, primarily a DVD distribution company, but in the past year or so the company's started giving its movies a small theatrical release before the DVD rollout.

Isabel Coixet's Elegy (92 screens) is a "disease-of-the-week" movie. I hate "disease-of-the-week" movies, but I really liked Elegy. I also liked Coixet's previous film, My Life Without Me, which was also a "disease-of-the-week" movie. Sarah Polley's beautiful Away from Her from last year was another excellent example. This begs three questions: What is a "disease-of-the-week" movie? Why do I hate them? And what makes Elegy so good? The phrase "disease-of-the-week" was coined to describe a certain type of TV movie some decades ago, which had addicted housewives sniveling and crumbling up tissues at their TV tubes for two hours every seven days. But filmmakers quickly snatched upon the formula as a quick and easy way to weasel their way into film critics' hearts, and probably win an Oscar or two.

Disease is an unfortunate part of life, but it's a part of life that no one likes to think about. What usually happens when we get sick? We avoid going to the doctor! We hope it'll go away. So why do people like these kinds of movies, movies that acknowledge our own mortality and frailty? I think the secret is that the most successful of these movies play up the disease angle, but the real subject is the heroism of the others, the people who are not sick. That way, the disease gets center stage, and some "courageous" actor gets to show off, while the audience gets to identify with the other characters, the ones who stand by their friends and family. The ones who don't give up.

By chance, two Takashi Miike movies, Dead or Alive and Audition, opened in my town with in a week of one another in 2001. It was pretty eye opening seeing the huge difference between them, the speedy carnage of the former and the slow suspense of the latter, and I became an instant fan. Since then I've managed to track down just six more Miike movies, and in that same time he has made over forty (including videos and TV shows). The speed of his production fits perfectly with the personality of his movies. They're often nonsensical; I couldn't make heads or tails of two of his more recent pictures, Gozu and The Great Yokai War. And they're very definitely energetic, verging on crazy. He reminds me of the great German director Rainer Werner Fassbinder, who cranked out over 40 movies and TV shows in less than 15 years and died at the age of 37. Miike is now 48 and one wonders how much longer he can keep going before he combusts.

Miike's new movie, Sukiyaki Western Django, finds him making a slight change of pace. No, the movie is still crazy and fast and nearly unintelligible, but he has stopped for a moment to consider the work of other filmmakers. The movie is a tribute to Spaghetti Westerns, and especially Sergio Leone's A Fistful of Dollars (1964), which in turn was based on Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo (1961). Remember Bono's taunt at the beginning of U2's cover version of "Helter Skelter"? ("This song Charles Manson stole from the Beatles. We're stealing it back.") This movie feels as if Miike is doing some stealing back of his own.

Can everyone guess where I am right now, and what I'm doing? I'm very thankful that the New Orleans airport has free wireless available while I wait for an airplane crew to show up for my flight, so I can return to sunny Austin. In the meantime, I have a laptop and Internet access and a stack of DVDs to watch. I am prepared. I can watch movies indefinitely if necessary, especially if I can get Hulu or Netflix's Watch Instantly cranked up.

I have a few suggestions for packing / purchasing / (legally) downloading movies to watch on your laptop or other device in an airport or on a plane. Pick at least one or two movies that are old familiar favorites. Sometimes when you're stuck in a terminal with poor food choices, a "comfort movie" can be your very best friend. In addition, I find it difficult to listen clearly to movies on an airplane or even in a noisy terminal (you don't want the sound too loud, so you can hear updates on your flight's delay), so it's best to pick something where you already know what's going on and don't need to catch every last nuance of dialogue. Big goofy action films and physical comedies have an advantage over talkier films where you have to pay attention.

In compiling this list of specific recommendations, I tried to avoid the overwhelmingly obvious choices for watching movies in airports -- personally, I don't want to watch disaster films at times like this, or even spoofs of disaster films like that timeless comedy Airplane. The Terminal and Snakes on a Plane also a little too close for comfort. I thought instead of lighter fare, with scenes that emphasized the fantasy world of airline travel, good or bad, and the magic of escapism. Next time, I'm tucking a few of these in my laptop bag myself.

Steve Coogan, 42, is perhaps best known for his TV persona, the part-arrogant, part-clueless sports announcer Alan Partridge. And though Coogan could go on playing him forever, he has instead used his budding American film career to branch out, try different things. His collaborations with "serious" director Michael Winterbottom were a good start; 24 Hour Party People (2002) and Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story (2006) earned rave reviews here in the States. He appeared opposite big stars such as Jackie Chan (Around the World in 80 Days) and Ben Stiller (Night at the Museum, Tropic Thunder) and answered the call of a handful of cult directors, making small appearances in films by Jim Jarmusch (Coffee and Cigarettes), Sofia Coppola (Marie Antoinette) and Edgar Wright (Hot Fuzz).

His name appears alone above the title of his new film, Hamlet 2, in which he plays Dana Marschz, a washed-up American actor now teaching drama at a Tucson high school. To save his class and his career, he writes a sequel to "Hamlet" that causes a huge ruckus. (Hint: it has something to do with "Sexy Jesus.") The one connecting factor with all these movies is that Coogan's characters are more or less awful, but compulsively watchable, people. Coogan -- who is conversely very nice in person -- recently chatted with Cinematical about his new movie.

Cinematical: How did your gallery of humorously annoying characters come about?

Steve Coogan: I don't know. It just sort of happened. I'm just attracted to playing people who are ostensible unlikable. That's not to say that there's something in there that makes you care. It might be that you just find them so awful that you just can't stop watching, like a car crash. And they're not self-aware. I think somehow, whenever I see a character on screen who I feel is trying to get me to like them too much, it has the reverse effect. It kind of puts you off. It's: "Quit looking at me with those doe eyes. I want to kill you." It's not like I've thought this through. It's just, you do stuff often enough and you see patterns. You see them, and I see them too. Sometimes they're not self-conscious. I guess that's why I'm probably doing it.

A couple of weeks ago I was in Safeway and I spotted a cheap DVD, a double-bill of The Fugitive (1993) and U.S. Marshals (1998), and I impulsively bought it. I already owned The Fugitive on laserdisc (that old thing) and had seen it many times, but I hadn't ever seen U.S. Marshals. I know it's supposed to be awful, but the cast of Tommy Lee Jones, Robert Downey Jr. and Wesley Snipes suddenly appealed to me. I decided to re-watch The Fugitive before I settled down to the sequel. I liked it as much as ever; it's a rare example of everything in the Hollywood machine coming together in the right way at the right time and working perfectly. But this time, something new struck me.

Last week I wrote a defense of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (184 screens), which I determined has been judged more by its hype than by the actual content of the film. But I didn't get much of a chance to talk about the film's star, Harrison Ford, who is an integral part of the film's success. I'll be the first to admit that Ford is an exceedingly limited actor. One of his failings is his seeming lack of humor and spontaneity in certain roles, exacerbated by the fact that, in person, he comes across just as humorless (though it could be that he merely mistrusts journalists). But ironically, one of his best attributes he shares with the comic actor Jackie Chan: a reluctance to enter into the action.

It's too bad that more movies don't have the courage to explore faith and spirituality in a direct way; studios are usually too worried about appealing to all religions -- and all pocketbooks -- to be very specific about the subject. The other reason is that it's difficult for Hollywood movies to wrap up their neat, bow-tie happy endings with everything resolved, since the idea of faith is based on lack of proof, lack of finality. One of my favorite movies is Dreyer's The Passion of Joan of Arc, which uses an unconventional, off-kilter visual scheme to document some exciting, endlessly fascinating arguments: which side is God on and what does He really want with us? The new Henry Poole Is Here bucks the trend with the appearance of a "miracle" in the life of its ordinary, everyday character. Does it raise any interesting, life-changing questions? Sadly, no. The film is too bored and lackadaisical with its subject to change much of anything. It's too uninspired to be inspirational.

Henry Poole (Luke Wilson) is a man with "movie disease." This means that he's going to die, and he'll have absolutely no symptoms until he does. Sometimes "movie disease" comes with a cough, but not this time. Sometimes "movie disease" has a name, like "brain cloud," but not this time. In preparation for the dark day, Henry buys a house in his old neighborhood, loads up on booze, doughnuts and pizza and waits. Meanwhile, his nosy neighbor Esperanza (Oscar nominee Adriana Barraza, from Babel) brings him tamales and pokes around his backyard. (Her late boyfriend used to live in the same house.) She notices that a badly done stucco job has produced a water stain, and that the water stain looks a bit like a familiar guy with a beard. The picture even produces a drop of blood.

With Toy Story (1995), a studio called Pixar blew the lid off of animated movies as we knew them. Thirteen years later, the other studios have yet to even approach that early level of excellence, let alone match the advancements Pixar has made since. Oddly similar to the most recent clunker Space Chimps, the new Fly Me to the Moon looked infinitely more promising in that it was based on an actual idea: the 1969 Apollo 11 mission as seen through the eyes of three stowaway flies -- in 3D! But sadly it proves itself as technically dull and as creatively stifled as Space Chimps as well as nearly every other non-Pixar movie.

After a totally useless, noisy black-and-white prologue, we get a very cool establishing shot. The camera flows smoothly through the back lots behind Cape Canaveral in Florida. It swoops into a patch of dirt and a tangle of weeds, through some bits of discarded junk, to the world where our little flies live (like humans, in little dollhouses). During this and other traveling sequences, the 3D works beautifully, engulfing us comfortably in this tiny world. But as soon as we meet the characters, the movie starts to sputter. In real life, houseflies can zip across the kitchen pretty darn fast relative to their size, but these flies drift lethargically from place to place, and the movie bogs down in their lackadaisical pace.

We're well into August, and here in Austin it's hot and dry and the last thing most of us are thinking about is anything going on next March. But over at SXSW, they're ignoring the dog days of summer and preparing like crazy for next year's interactive, music, and (of course) film festival / conference. The 2009 South By Southwest Film Festival is scheduled for March 13-21, as you can see from the new site for next year's festivities, and you can start submitting your films now for consideration. You've got until December to get your short or feature film to the festival if you're dreaming of seeing your name in lights (or at least your film's title) at the Paramount next year.

A few films are already scheduled to be screened at the 2009 fest: the SXSWclick winners, which were recently announced. The Grand Jury award for the short-film contest went to Peter and Ben, by Pinny Grylls, which also won in the documentary shorts category. Little Pumpkin, directed by Tiffany Bartok, took home the Popularity Contest award. You can watch these films and the winning shorts from all categories on the SXSWclick site. In fact, you can watch all the finalists online if you like. So if you want to pretend it's March in Austin, crank up the air conditioning a bit, sit back in a comfy chair with a beer or milkshake (in tribute to Alamo Drafthouse, a favorite SXSW venue), and enjoy the SXSWclick shorts. Then hike a mile back to your car with Scott Weinberg or Will Goss next to you, scarfing down hot wings from a Sixth Street bar and speculating on how many screeners they can watch that night before they pass out from exhaustion. (Okay, maybe you do have to wait for March for that last experience.)