Universal PicturesWhen "Earthquake" came out almost exactly 37 years ago, it was the fourth biggest hit of 1974, behind "Blazing Saddles," "The Towering Inferno" and "Young Frankenstein." (Man, Mel Brooks used to rule Hollywood.) Part of that success was no doubt due to its big cast (Charlton Heston, Ava Gardner, George Kennedy) and the fact that disaster movies were pretty popular. But another factor was Universal's decision to release the L.A.-set film in "Sensurround," a sound system that incorporated low-frequency noises to mimic rumblings in the theater. (The studio wanted you to "feel" the earthquake as it was happening.) Thank goodness Hollywood no longer tries such silly gambits to get people to go to the movies anymore, huh? Oh, sorry, our mistake: They still totally do that. Which is why it's sorta perfect that a new earthquake movie being worked on will be in 3D. In fact, "3D" is even in the title: That's just how 3D it's going to be.

Warner Bros. PicturesThe Projector spends a lot of time -- perhaps too much -- thinking about "The Dark Knight Rises." The movie doesn't come out until July, and while part of us wants to see it right now, another part of us enjoys the endless tease about what the movie could be like. We loved the first two installments of the Christopher Nolan reboot, so we have high hopes for this final chapter. And now there's a chance we can see an extended segment of the new movie two Fridays from now. Should we? Or is it better to wait until summer and see the whole thing at once? We can't decide.

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• A year ago, Hailee Steinfeld came out of nowhere to impress everyone with her first major film role in "True Grit." We haven't heard much from her since -- she's supposedly still doing that new version of "Romeo and Juliet" -- but she's just now snagged the female lead in "Ender's Game," which will star "Hugo" kid Asa Butterfield. The "it" teen of last awards season teaming up with the "it" teen of this year: They probably have a lot to talk about. [Showblitz/Variety]

Magnolia1. There's a betrayal, or a double-cross, something, at the beginning of "Outrage," and even though I'm not quite sure what it was exactly, I know that everyone was extremely upset about it. I know this because, in pretty much every scene for the rest of the movie, one Japanese man does something just awful to another Japanese man. (Briefly, an African man shows up, awful things are done to him, and then we're back to the Japanese again.) This is obviously an oversimplification of Takeshi Kitano's "Outrage," right? It's not just one scene of mob violence after another, with no context or characterization, right? I'm just dull. Has to be. Right?

Of the 24 Oscars given out each year, one category that probably gets the least attention is Best Animated Short Film. That's too bad: These bite-sized movies can pack a surprising emotional punch, and the animation styles are often quite different than the typical Pixar/Dreamworks/CG kinds that are popular now. Today, the Academy revealed the 10 shorts in the running for a nomination, and we found a trailer for one, "Dimanche/Sunday," that looked particularly intriguing. We hope that critter in the road got away OK.

Paramount PicturesYesterday, we went through a rather elaborate, thoughtful dissection of what the National Board of Review might pick for Best Film. After much deliberation, we went with "The Descendants" just barely over "The Artist." And then we ended with a throwaway comment: "We can't wait for tomorrow when we find out the group picked 'Hugo.'" The prophecy has been fulfilled: They just announced that "Hugo" is their Best Film.

This is the first time the organization has ever given their top prize to a film by director Martin Scorsese, who also won Best Director. In case you're wondering, "The Artist" and "The Descendants" both ended up in NBR's 10 best list, which really means top 10 English-language films. (There's a separate list for foreign-language films.)

George Clooney grabbed Best Actor for "The Descendants," and Clooney's "Michael Clayton" co-star, Tilda Swinton, won Best Actress for "We Need to Talk About Kevin." Christopher Plummer was Best Supporting Actor for "Beginners," while

We've known for a month that "Ebert Presents at the Movies" might have to pull the plug due to a lack of funding, and last night Ebert made it official: The show will go on hiatus at the end of the year. While we wait to hear about the program's future, here's a segment from a special episode that hosts Christy Lemire and Ignatiy Vishnevetsky did early in the year where they talk about the films that made them want to be critics. Say what you want about the show, but don't you dare accuse these two of not liking movies. "Ebert Presents" was all about its movie love: We hope we see it back sometime in 2012.

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Trying to make a movie out of one of William Shakespeare's famous plays is sort of like trying to do a cover of one of the Rolling Stones' most popular songs. Sure, it's tempting, but you're competing against all the other versions out there already -- and you're just opening yourself up to criticism about how your rendition wasn't nearly as good as so-and-so's. Filmmakers want to put their stamp on the Bard, but there are so many stamps all over "Romeo and Juliet," "Hamlet" and "Macbeth" already, so how can you do something new?

Maybe that's one of the reasons I responded to actor Ralph Fiennes' "Coriolanus" so strongly. It's a Shakespeare play that's not quite in the pantheon, but it's still very good. This gives Fiennes plenty of room to explore the work and modernize it, providing it with a vitality I haven't seen in a Shakespeare film in a while. And in the title role, Fiennes is simply a monster.

"Coriolanus" tells the tragic tale of Caius Martius (Fiennes), a bloodthirsty,