If you’re Steve Carell, and you’ve done the sitcom thing and played the funnyman on the big screen, you’re savvy enough to disappear into the scary persona he takes on in Foxcatcher. Carell spent about three hours daily in the makeup chair to become John E. du Pont, the real-life multi-millionaire who becomes a financially generous – but mentally unstable – mentor to Olympic wrestler, Mark Schultz (played by Channing Tatum).

I’m old enough to recall when “streaking” was all the rage, and a foolhardy soul dared to flash across the Academy Awards stage behind David Niven, who responded by quipping about the fellow’s “shortcomings.” And when the University of Michigan played Indiana for college basketball’s national championship on the same night as The Oscars; when one of the awards was to be announced, presenter/hoops fan Elliott Gould broke the silence after “And the winner is …” by interjecting, “Indiana, 86-68.” That was a great night for One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (which won Best Picture that evening in 1976) – not so much for the Wolverines.

Still, there are many holiday movies out there to enjoy. One might argue that It’s a Wonderful Life isn’t even the best of Jimmy Stewart’s Christmas-set films, if one prefers Ernst Lubitsch’s The Shop Around the Corner. One might also argue that It’s a Wonderful Life isn’t even the best Christmas movie of the 1940s – check out Preston Sturges’ little-known Remember the Night, with Barbara Stanwyck as a shoplifter and Fred MacMurray as the assistant D.A. who takes her home with him for the holidays (Turner Classic Movies will show it December 4 at 8pm, by the way).

Twenty-five years ago this fall, as a scribe for The Flint Journal, I was immersed in the unlikely rise of Michael Moore’s documentary about Flint, Roger & Me, to national prominence. The film made for great copy, especially as our readers were so polarized over it. (Much of their hatred for Moore seemed to subside once he turned his camera to other subjects and GM’s corporate betrayal of Flint was duplicated, as he had warned, by other perpetrators in other locales.)

Hollywood be damned – France can rightly claim its title as the birthplace of cinema, and the films from its shores – or made elsewhere by sons and daughters of the Republic – continue to be relevant everywhere.

September hastens the end of summer vacations, brings on the first football tailgate weekends … and marks the start of the movie season at the Flint Institute of Arts. Which to choose, football or movies? Hmmm…