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Movie theaters should just shut down in March and April and screen basketball games instead. Because, if you’ve got any sense, you’re renting Oscar-winners on DVD for $4 instead of paying double that and a mortgage on popcorn to sit through Silent Hill. Brokeback Mountain, Crash: Director’s Edition and The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe are the plums out this week.

Man, people are really up in arms about Ocean’s 13. It’s always funny to me just how incensed fans can get about the making of a sequel. Sure, they are rarely as good as the original, but does that diminish the quality of the first film? Is Ocean’s 13 a good idea? Maybe. Maybe not. But perhaps the talkback that has exploded across the Internet in one week’s time has more to do with protecting their love for the original film than forgetting the more ponderous Ocean’s 12. Liz Kelly pens an open letter to George Clooney here. She makes a decent argument, but let’s face it, if you’re going to convince Clooney to pass on a surefire blockbuster like Ocean’s 13, you’re going to have to convince him that money—like SARS—repels the opposite sex, and things like his sprawling Italian villas are for real losers.

In local movie news, Just What I Needed, a documentary about Star 80 dance nights at Spanish Moon took home top honors at the annual Outhouse Film Festival at LSU last weekend. If you like to bop to 80’s dance pop, the place to be on Thursday nights is Star 80, which is a lot like your bedroom, only, you know, in public. Look for my review of the Just What I Needed DVD in the May issue of 225.

Another film that debuted at Outhouse was Batman Formulas, a true labor of love for local filmmaker David Spitzer. This guy wrote and starred in the film on top of producing all the CG effects and designing his own batsuit. I designed my own batsuit once. I was 9 and my cape was a Spuds McKenzie beach towel. Kudos to Spitzer for completing such an ambitious project.

Finally, don’t put much faith in this, but Movie Tab claims to have the super official plot details for Spiderman 3. I sort of lost interest in the Spiderman series — at some point during the first movie. But this synopsis does hint at one thing I’m interested in seeing. And here’s a hint for what it hints at: Kirsten is Dunst. If you’re gullible and spoiler-happy, check it out here.