These two films couldn't be more different from one another. One is a surprisingly delightful Oscar contender and the other feels like an overstuffed episode of Entertainment Tonight.

The Artist

The Artist is an absurdly anachronistic film in our age of 3-D cinematic assault. It's silent. It's black and white. And it's delightful.

The film is set in 1927 Hollywood, where George Valentin (Jean Dujardin) is a silent movie star—the speechless George Clooney of his day.

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New Year's Eve

You know those clown cars in the circus? They're usually a little Volkswagen bug that brightly dressed clowns climb out of one by one while you watch amazed that so many people could fit into one little car. Once they're all out in the circus ring, the clowns typically run around mugging for the audience, occasionally bumping into each other, and then drive off in a haze of chaos and laughter.

New Year's Eve feels kinda like that.

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