The blog has been up and down over the last couple of days as my webhost perfoms some infrastructure upgrades. Sorry for the inconvenience; there will likely be additional outages as the week progresses, but once it’s all done we’ll be shinier, faster to load and more reliable than ever! (At least, that’s what it says in the brochure.)

But the delay in posting means I can now link to my NOW obit for Sidney Lumet, who died Saturday morning at the age of 86. One point I didn’t get to make in the piece is that Lumet was one of the greatest New York directors; Woody Allen may have cornered the market on neurotic romantics, but no one could beat Lumet for grimy, unflinching working-class characters — the cynics and misfits who actually ran the city Allen’s characters wandered obliviously through.

And the weekend box office is a bit of a surprise: “Hop” held the top spot for a second week with a $21.7 million gross, with the largely despised “Arthur” remake coming in second with $12.6 million. Good for Russell Brand, though; when was the last time a single actor starred in the week’s top two movies?

Seriously, I can’t remember. Did “True Grit” and “Tron: Legacy” do that in December? It’s all a blur.