• “Un Prophete,” which is currently playing in nine theaters in New York and L.A., and which the rest of the us get to see who-knows-when (seriously, does anyone know when?), swept the Cesars on Sunday, winning nine of 13 awards, including best picture, director (Jacques Audiard) and actor (Tahar Rahim). Isabelle Adjani won best actress for “La journee de la jupe,” which is her fifth Cesar. Fifth! Makes Meryl Streep seem a piker. As for Meilleur Film Etranger (Best Foreign Film), the choices, for a film released in France in 2009, were: “Avatar,” “Gran Torino,” “Milk,” “J'ai tue ma mere,” “Panique au village,” “The White Ribbon” and “Slumdog Millionaire.” And the winner? My least favorite among the nominees. 
• For yesterday's post I did a Google search on the phrase “Delicate, exotic flower, released into art houses“ (with quotes), so I could find the original A.O. Scott New York Times article that the phrase appeared in. Here's what I found. The first result was from theauteurs.com, quoting Scott. The second result was from The New Yorker, quoting Scott. Third and fourth? From lmagazine.com and smellytongues.com, quoting Scott. The fifth was my site. As for the original article by Scott? It doesn't appear among any of the results. Techies would argue that the Times needs to work on its search-engine optimization, and they do, but the bigger fault lies with the search engine, Google. The place where content originally appeared should be the no. 1 result when searching for that content. Not sure how you'd fix that (time stamp?) but it needs to be fixed. This isn't a feature. BTW: You add ”A.O. Scott (without quotes) to the search, and, bing, the Times article suddenly appears at no. 4. Odder and odder.
• I didn't compile a list of top 10 scenes of the 2009, as in years past, but if I did I would've included this scene. Or I might've gone for the expectations/reality scene from the same film.
• Want to be kept busy for the next year? Conor Friedersdorf of Metablog has compiled his list of the best journalism of 2009. I think I've read a quarter of the pieces he mentions, but that quarter is superlative so I can only imagine what the rest are like. I'm going to keep this page bookmarked and delve into it during free moments. Might finish it in time for the 2010 version.
• Apparently people are paying more for the first issue of Batman (Detective Comics no. 27) than for the first issue of Superman (Action Comics no. 1). Apparently they're confusing recent box office with historical importance. The invention of Superman more or less created the superhero genre. Batman came in his wake. So did many others, who faltered, including, oh you know, The Flame, The Blue Beetle, The Owl, Captain Future, Captain Flight, Bulletman, Doll Man and Air Man, so give the Caped Crusader credit for surviving. But there's no doubt which one I'd pay more for.
• Meant to post this a while ago: the dispossessed in Israel (and elsewhere) identifying with the Na'vi in “Avatar.” Pretty stunning what a movie can do.
• The Dude abides. By Manohla.
• “Avatar” has now grossed over $700 million domestically. It's also no. 15 on the all-time adjusted chart, and will pass no. 14, “Return of the Jedi” ($715 million) soon.
• Finally, Pete Hamill has a nice, personal review of the new Willie Mays biography in yesterday's New York Times. Hamill's sad close, along with the great Book Review cover illustration by Rodrigo Corral:

Hirsch has given us a book as valuable for the young as it is for the old. The young should know that there was once a time when Willie Mays lived among the people who came to the ballpark. That on Harlem summer days he would join the kids playing stickball on St. Nicholas Place in Sugar Hill and hold a broom-handle bat in his large hands, wait for the pink rubber spaldeen to be pitched, and routinely hit it four sewers. The book explains what that sentence means. Above all, the story of Willie Mays reminds us of a time when the only performance-enhancing drug was joy.

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