July 1, 2007–A cycle of new Israeli films are achieving a new level of maturity, getting recognition in the best of the world's film festivals–and find apprecaiye audiences too. This cycle goes beyond individual films, personal accomplishment, and domestic box-office grosses. The phenom may warrant a more collective label–call it Israel's New Wave, to borrow a term from the history of international cinema.

July 20, 2007–Western may be all but extinct in Hollywood's feature cinema, but on TV, the genre is still riding high in the saddle. By beating out their competition, HBO's “Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee” and AMC's “Broken Trail” continued to demonstrate the TV Academy's fondness for the Western.

Indie filmmakers are using the Internet to sell their movies. They don't have to spend much money on prints and theatrical distribution; they sell their movies online directly to their target audience, and pocket a hefty cut of the revenues.

John Moore's Behind Enemy Lines, which was released in November 2001, kicked off a new cycle of war films that so far has included: Ridley Scott's Black Hawk Down, Gregory Hoblit's Hart's War, and Randall Wallace's We Were Soldiers. One can also add to the list the highly acclaimed TV series, HBO's Band of Brothers, produced by Tom Hanks and Spielberg. In June, MGM will release John Woo's eagerly awaited WWII saga, The Windtalkers, which was pushed back from last year.

The emergence of a new cinematic force or movement is not a coincidence: The arrival of promising directors goes in cycles and Hollywood sets the context in which those cycles occur.