In North Dakota, which has the highest rate of binge drinking in the country, one antidote is small-town movie houses, like the Roxy in Langdon, reports Patricia Leigh Brown in the New York Times (7/5/10). Langdon's population is just 2,000, but 200 of its residents volunteer to keep the movies running. Steve Hart, a farmer, was among those who helped revive the Roxy, says just about nothing keeps people from finding community at the theater.

When a blizzard hit on Christmas several years ago, Steve says his phone started ringing. Within an hour, he says, "there were 90 people on Main Street, even though there was only one path through the drifts and the movie was 'Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel'." Clearly, folks were there for something other than the movie. "It's the see-and-be-seen, bring everyone and sit together kind of place," says Cecile Wehrman, who helped revive another North Dakota theater, in Crosby.

Tim Kennedy, who is writing a book about small-town movie houses like the Roxy, says the theaters are "buildings as social capital" that flourish "outside the franchise cinemas and their ubiquitous presence at the malls." Tom Isern of North Dakota State University Fargo, says the theaters signal a "bounce back from the bottom" in the state, and credits baby boomers with the trend. "They are the last picture show generation on the plains ... who can remember that movie theater experience and want to transmit it to their kids."

Alfred Hitchcock thought Pyscho was a dud until he heard Bernard Herrmann's score for it, reports Jack Sullivan in the Wall Street Journal (6/16/10). Hitchock's direction had been to use little or no music in the film, a device that had worked well in previous films, like Blackmail. But it wasn't working for Psycho and so Herrmann decided to take matters into his own hands, and in direct defiance of Hitchock's orders, added shrieking strings to the infamous shower scene (video) where Hitch had specified silence.

Hitchock loved it, "suddenly became enthusiastic about Psycho and gradually assented to other cues as well, including the anxious violas during the camera's inspection of Marion's stolen money on the bed and the creepy Peeping Tom theme in the Bates Motel ... It wasn't just the shower cue that astonished, but everything, beginning with the sultry chords in the opening scene that erupt when the lovers rise from the hotel bed and begin talking."

The score invested "the most banal images -- a suitcase on a bed, a car on an empty highway -- with dread." Hitchcock himself "said that the music raised Psycho's impact by 33 percent." The film was the sixth Hitchcock-Hermann collaboration but Hitchcock later came to feel "that his style was too dependent on Herrmann's music, and that may have wounded his pride," suggests John Williams, another Hitchcock composer. Hitchcock eventually fired Herrmann for misbehaving again by writing music where Hitch had demanded silence for the big murder scene in Torn Curtain in 1966.

"Today's blues music isn't only steeped in the past; it's anchored to it," writes Jim Fusilli in the Wall Street Journal (6/10/10). Those might be fighting words, except that most blues fans are damn proud of the anchor. "We all don't want the blues to be the same ol', same ol'," says Jay Sieleman, executive director of the Blues Foundation, "but it'd better be close." This concerns bluesman Buddy Guy: "The blues is getting to be like an endangered species," says Buddy. "It's like somebody put a spell on it."

And he doesn't mean Joss Stone (video). Or maybe he does. Some artists have indeed dared to step outside blues traditions. The rapper Nas "riffed on Muddy Waters' 'Mannish Boy' in his song 'Bridging the Gap' (video) and Chris Thomas King married hip-hop and the blues on his album 'Dirty South Hip-Hop Blues," for instance. Buddy Guy's own daughter, Shawnna, created a rap-blues hybrid on "Block Music," which went platinum in 2006. However, a couple of years earlier Skip McDonald, recording as Little Axe, received no such reception.

When Skip tried mixing "traditional blues with spoken word, drum loops, Indian percussion and a dab of reggae" (sample), he says he "upset a lot of people." But Jim Fusilli thinks that unless blues artists open up, the form has a doubtful future. "The future can be built on new modes of expression," he writes, "if musicians and fans remember the blues isn't really a form. It's a feeling. Capture it ... and you're playing the blues, whether it's with a bottleneck, a big band or a studio full of digital effects."

If you've ever complained about the high price of movie-theater popcorn, Richard B. McKenzie thinks you should stop whining already (The Wall Street Journal 5/28/10). Richard is author of a book called "Why Popcorn Costs So Much at the Movies, And Other Pricing Puzzles." And while it's true that a tub of movie-theater popcorn costs more than ten times as much as home-made popcorn, Richard suggests that a little perspective is in order.

For starters, he notes that the real cost of popcorn is "in the time spent popping and cleaning up, and then smuggling the result into a movie theater. (The fact that BYOP is rather easy to get away with, but very few people even try, is an indication that movie popcorn is not as overpriced as the grousers say)." If you think your time is worth $20 an hour, and it takes a half hour to pop it yourself, that would bring the cost to $10.55 -- with the 55 cents for kernels and oil.

That's more than the $8 a large tub costs in Southern California movie theaters -- and you'll also be sacrificing the experience of movie-theater popcorn. Now, you could buy pre-popped popcorn at Costco for less, but Richard thinks this is nowhere near as satisfying an experience. Then there's the reality that when you buy popcorn at the theater, you're really paying for its "sound systems, restrooms and lobby glitz." The bottom, line, says Richard, is that theaters could lower the price of their popcorn, but they'd have to compensate with higher ticket prices.

"The majesty of the act was offensive to him," says A.E. Hotchner, explaining why Paul Newman never signed autographs in a USA Today piece by Bob Minzesheimer (3/23/10). A.E. -- or Hotch as his friends call him -- is out with a new book called Paul and Me, that Hotch began writing as "notes to himself after Newman's death" in September 2008. The story goes that the two men became friends before either was famous, and both were struggling. "Paul and I were in the same boat," says Hotch. "I was trying to go beyond freelance magazine writing and Paul didn't know if he could make it as an actor."

Their connection was through Ernest Hemingway, whom Hotch met in Cuba in 1948. Hotch ended up adapting a Hemingway short story, The Battler, into a TV play. Paul originally was cast in a supporting role, but got the lead after James Dean died in a car crash. Years later, Hotch and Paul coincidentally both bought homes in Westport, Connecticut, where they famously "began a line of food products that grew from a prank by two friends with no business experience into a charity that has given away $300 million since 1982" (link).

Paul came up with "Salad King" as the brand name, but thought the better of it after fellow Westporter Martha Stewart pointed out that "kings have always put their names in their titles, like King Paul the First." To which Paul replied, "This dressing is not for royalty, it's for commoners. How about Newman's Own?" The name was left over from a restaurant idea he and Hotch had conceived, but never hatched. "I'd tend bar and you'd be the ingratiating greeter," was how Paul described the concept to Hotch. (Paul eventually did open a restaurant, the Dressing Room, which remains alive and well in Westport).

At Butler University's Hinkle Fieldhouse, there's no video board or luxury suites, and the athletic offices are squeezed in "under the bleachers," reports John Branch in the New York Times (3/16/10). But that's exactly as it's been at Hinkle since 1928, and it suits Coach Brad Stevens just fine. "Where else, the last three years, can you win 28 games a year, go to three N.C.A.A. tournaments and coach four academic All-Americans?" he says, adding that he'd be "really upset" if Butler replaced Hinkle.

The prospect of playing at Hinkle isn't exactly a draw for some athletes, but as Matt Howard, a junior forward, observes, that's okay. "If you're thinking about that, you're probably thinking about yourself a lot," he says. Besides, "10 of the 15 players on Butler's roster" are from small Indiana towns, and they know that Hinkle starred in the climactic scene of the classic 1986 film, "Hoosiers." More important, "Butler (28-4), riding a 20-game winning streak, has reached the N.C.A.A. tournament for the fourth season in a row."

So, even though the Butler Bulldogs play in an old brick barn with a leaky ceiling, they have "become a sustained midmajor power, a Gonzanga of the Midwest." And now, one of its star players, Gordon Hayward, may be a first-round N.B.A. draft pick, a first in decades for a Bulldog. "It's not for everybody," admits Coach Stevens, a former Eli Lilly marketing executive who started at Butler as an volunteer assistant, and, like his three predecessors, was promoted up. "But it is for somebody who appreciates tradition, somebody who appreciates history. And oftentimes, those are people who appreciate team."

Leave it to Johnny Depp to re-ignite the controversy over what made the Mad Hatter mad. As reported by Pat Ryan in the New York Times (3/7/10), Johnny, who plays the Hatter in a new film (trailer), told a news conference that he thought the Hatter was mad because of mercury poisoning from hats, saying he's "this guy who literally is damaged goods." But while it's true that some hats contained mercury back in Lewis Carroll's day, the symptoms of mercury poisoning -- including "excessive shyness ... and a desire to remain unobserved and unobtrusive" hardly fit the Mad Hatter.

Another theory holds that the Hatter was inspired by a French phrase, "il raisonne comme une huitre," or "he reasons like an oyster." The idea is that "huitre" sounds like "hatter." Seems unlikely. Logicians, noting that Lewis Carroll "was well known as a mathematician, think the Mad Hatter is really the Mad Adder. They cite this Hatter quote: "If you knew Time as well as I do ... you wouldn't talk about wasting it. It's him." In the Hatter's defense, physicist Robert A. Millikan wrote that the Hatter wasn't mad "when he gave to Time changeable, undependable, capricious qualities which we assign to personality."

The Hatter is concerned with time "since the Queen of Hearts has accused him of being a time-murderer." This adds heft to the theory that the Mad Hatter was based on "a top-hat wearing inventor, Theophilus Carter," who, in 1851, exhibited an "Alarm-Clock Bed" that tipped "the sleeper out of bed at the correct time." But the best "Mad as a Hatter" explanation comes from Lewis Carroll himself. Why a Mad Hatter, not a Mad Tailor or Shoemaker? (viaduct, why not a goose?) Carroll wrote, "I'm very much afraid I didn't mean anything but nonsense! Still, you know, words mean more than we mean to express when we use them."

Disney Stores president Jim Fielding casts magic on retail as media. An exclusive Q&A interview by Tim Manners. (more)

Some filmmakers are "using Sundance not just as a sales tool but also as a platform for immediate digital delivery," reports Brooks Barnes in the New York Times (1/25/10). Their reasoning is largely based on hard numbers. Of the $3.7 billion worth of films submitted to Sundance Festival this year, "only about $120 million worth make the schedule, and of those less than $30 million worth will find their way to market through the traditional system." So, for a film like "One Too Many Mornings" (trailer), which cost about $50,000 to make, it's a no-brainer to try something non-traditional.

Michael Mohan, the film's writer and director, is making it available for download for $10 and is selling DVDs for $20. "For $35, customers get a DVD, a poster and a piece of the sofa featured in the film." Michael is also offering theatrical rights via his website for $100,000. "Forget a bidding war," he says. "Whoever gets to their laptop the fastest gets it." Michael doesn't see any downside to his approach. "There's no reason it can't go to theaters after it's available online; it's two different groups of people," he says.

But this probably wouldn't work for a more expensive film. "If you've made a movie for $5 million and you're only doing a video-on-demand deal, your investors are getting killed," says Jay Cohen, an agent. Indeed, the average Sundance candidate cost about $1 million to make. But some think a hybrid distribution strategy like Michael's might have a future. "It probably does send Hollywood some signals," says Joshua Sapan, ceo of Rainbow Media, a Cablevision subsidiary that, among other things, owns the Sundance Channel. However, he cautions that specialty films generally don't "have broad commerciality as a goal."

Walt probably wouldn't have approved, but 92 artifacts of Disney magic will soon be exposed to about 30,000 Disney fans. As reported by Brookes Barnes in the New York Times (9/9/09), Disney's answer to Comic-Con -- a convention of "elaborate pavilions" promoting the Disney brand by allowing access to its treasures -- opens today and runs through he weekend at the Anaheim Convention Center. Called D23 Expo (because Walt opened his studio in 1923), the event was created by the company's PR department. At the center is an exhibition, "Treasures of the Walt Disney Archives."

It will include "the coonskin cap that Fess Parker wore as Davy Crockett ... Annette Funicello's Mouseketeer shirt," as well as the wig Miley Cyrus wore as Hannah Montana. Perhaps the most treasured of the treasures is "the giant, bejeweled storybook used for the opening scene of 'Sleeping Beauty.'" More pedestrian, but possibly even more magical, is the rotary-dial telephone from Walt's own office -- just as Walt left it. "We would never clean it -- that's Walt's grime," says Becky Cline, a Disney archivist.

That might have been okay with Walt, but he almost certainly would not have liked giving fans a backstage view of Disney props, believing it was a mistake to "talk about how we make the magic." But times have changed, obviously, and the Disney empire now realizes its imperious posture doesn't jibe with a world with more than 1,000 blogs about "all things Disney." The full archive numbers about one million items, of which about 80 percent has never been seen by the public. A team of Disney archivists meanwhile continues to comb through storage rooms, looking for more stuff. The Anaheim exhibit "may ultimately be mounted as a traveling show."