If highly paid and trained trained professionals can take a year or two and spend $60 million or so to come up with a film like, say, "Arthur," what chance do relative amateurs with no money and a 48 hour production schedule have of making something good? Especially when they are constrained by arbitrary, somewhat bizarre strictures, including a requisite line of dialogue (such as "Yes, I mean I hope so!"), a character (Marty or Mary Quinzani - second in command), and a prop (a magnet).

One of my fondest memories of the 60s was heading to Harvard Square after school and hanging out at the arcade under the Brattle and then sneaking into a screening of a movie like "Blow-up" upstairs. The shops down below had a redolence of incense and weird soaps and other hippie products from bistros like "Truc," scents that now are Proustian evocations for me, and in watching Antonioni's great film I snuck into my first X-rated movie and got my first glance of pubic hair on screen, along with most of the rest of America.

The Great Muppet Caper

Muppet movies have traditionally been the preferred alternative to The Hollywood Squares for stars on the wane, and as such they makes for classic cinema, as can be seen in today's Brattle Theatre tripleheader. Dom DeLuise and Orson Welles co-star with Kermit the Frog in The Muppet Movie (1978); John Cleese and Diana Rigg share the screen with Miss Piggy in The Great Muppet Caper (1981); and Joan Rivers and Liza Minnelli compare styling tips with Fozzie Bear in The Muppets Take Manhattan (1984).

The Velvet Underground and Andy Warhol (1965)

Unlike the recent Know-Nothing right-wingers who have embraced the name, the Boston Tea Party, the great local rock venue of the '60s, was truly revolutionary. So were the Velvet Underground and Andy Warhol, and the latter took his camera to shoot the former when they performed at the Tea Party in 1967.

Offering films that engage with contentious issues of faith and politics and inspired by a spirit of tolerance and compassion, the Boston Muslim Film Festival draws to a close over the next two weeks. Here are two upcoming films:

Screening for free tonight at 6 p.m. at the Goethe Institute, the German-Afghani director Burhan Qurbani's "Shahada" vitalizes the multi-narrative schematics of "Babel" or "Crash" with the intensity and authenticity of such Fatih Akin films as "Head-on."

Labyrinth

Source Code director Duncan Jones's dad, David Bowie, has always had a bit of the movie bug himself, bringing his uncanny charisma to films like Jim Henson's Labyrinth (1986). Looking a bit like Lindsay Lohan after a bender, his Goblin King lures a feisty teen played by Jennifer Connelly into the title maze, from which she must rescue her kid brother.

Of late, animation has gone beyond kid stuff to historical tragedy. Witness Ari Folman's Waltz With Bashir (2008), a nightmarish, autobiographical memoir of the 1980s invasion of Lebanon from the point of view of a green Israeli soldier. The first film in the MFA's "Hollywood Scriptures" series, it's followed by a panel discussion with Steven Nisenbaum of the Harvard Medical School and Rina Folman, a psychologist at UMass Memorial Health Alliance.

Under their façade of gaiety, carnivals conceal a sinister side of cultural mythology and power relationships. Or so suggests Margaret Brown in her documentary The Order of Myths. It delves deep into Mobile's Mardi Gras celebration - the oldest in the country and, in 2007, still racially segregated. There she finds secret societies, twisted violence, and lots of sequins.

With the Iranian director Jafar Panahi's fate still unknown, this news from the Middle East further dims the light shed by courageous film artists in that part of the world. On April 4, masked militants in the Jenin refugee camp assassinated Juliano Mer-Khamis, an actor, filmmaker, and co-founder of The Freedom Theatre

Alfred Guzzetti at work

Alfred Guzzetti takes the poignancy we all feel for our family albums and home movies and makes it universal in his documentary Family Portrait Sittings (1975), a collection of films, photos, and audio recordings edited into an elegant account of four generations of his own relatives.

It's the elephant in the room when you're talking to Duncan Jones: this guy is Zowie Bowie -- Ziggy Stardust's son! It's uncool to bring it up, but how can you not at least mention it?

Very easily, as it turns out, because the affable, self-proclaimed geek has accomplished enough on his own to make his pedigree a mere footnote.