I've never met Bill Cody in person, but the filmmaker and I have been corresponding on and off for about two decades now, ever since I saw "Athens, GA: Inside/Out," the slaphappy 1987 documentary he produced about the music scene that gave us REM and The B-52s.

His most recent work is "Thank You For My Eyes," a documentary made with Simone Allmen about the Kurds of northern Iraq. I haven't seen the film yet; it didn't make it into Sundance, to Bill's frustration. Recently he headed back to Kurdistan (a real place, if not yet a genuine country) to teach a filmmaking workshop to young people there.

It's the MySpace blog he's keeping while in Iraq that I want to turn you onto, because it makes astonishing reading -- a testament to lives that go on and minds that keep growing even as disaster looms. The shadow of the war to the south is never not present, and yet the kids and grown-ups Bill meets constantly articulate their hopes, eager to express them in words or on film.

These are people and stories we don't get in the mainstream media, and the occasional political insights are similarly ground-level. (Love that July 2nd blog entry detailing drinks and a realpolitik conversation with two State Department wonks.)

Just a taste of what Cody is seeing and hearing:

"Yesterday a young filmmaker had to get up in the middle of our story conference to stand up. He apologized to us and then explained that he had to stand up sometimes because he has a bullet in his leg from when 'terrorists' attacked a film shoot he was on with an Arabic director from the Netherlands.

"After he got shot, the terrorists rounded up the crew and beat them for over an hour. Then they were lined up against a wall, the men aimed rifles at them and ordered them to turn around. The crew stood there scared out of their minds and waiting to die. After waiting for what seemed like an eternity they turned around and the men were gone. He said the director lied and said he was from Iraq otherwise they probably would have killed him.

"BUT he said he likes the bullet in his leg because it reminds him of his first job in 'cinema'. Only in Iraq."

Cody's blog is slowly getting around; Bob Saget recently emailed the filmmaker to tell him it reads like a combination of "Borat" and "Dr. Strangelove." I think it reads like nothing the movies have shown us. Yet. Again, here's the link to the "Thank You for My Eyes" blog, and the film's MySpace page.

The "Good Morning America" movie critic, Joel Siegel, died over the weekend. He'd been battling cancer and finally succumbed.

The uncommonly sensitive Taiwanese director Edward Yang also has died. His was not a household name in this country, even though he held U.S. citizenship (he was born in Shanghai, raised in Taiwan, and expired at home in Beverly Hills). His films were focused almost exclusively on the Taipei middle-class. The last and best known of them, 2000's "Yi Yi" (it was called "A One and a Two" over here) is his masterpiece, an hours-long, simply told film about the vicissitudes of familial love.

It is one of the finest movies ever made, and certainly one of the truest about the ties that bind relatives. Sometimes they're strong. Sometimes blood is no thicker than water. "What can you do? It's family," the movie seems to say with understated but democratic style: the long takes and wide angles allow your eye to consider everything and anything happening within his framing. As with all seven of Yang's movies, "Yi Yi" is full of complex, life-size feeling. This very much could be dinner at your house. Only more beautifully filmed.

He was a great director (1991's "A Brighter Summer Day" is also marvelous), and the movies are worse off without him.

Even if it didn't match the $60 million opening gross of "Cars" last year, "Ratatouille"'s $47 million led the weekend and represents a decisive victory for any movie about rats in a French restaurant. (I'd say that was the polar opposite of "Cars"' NASCAR demo appeal). Next weekend should prove what makes the movie special in the crowded marketplace: legs (and lot of 'em). I caught "Ratatouille" with the family on Friday night, and the packed house burst into applause at the end -- not bad for a CGI movie. Judging from the ecstatic reviews, this one has found the inner child in everyone's Antoine Ego.

"Live Free or Die Hard" didn't die, either -- the Bruce Willis grunt-a-thon made a perfectly respectable $33 million, on par with earlier installments in this delicate saga. Total take since the Wednesday opening is $48 million. Smart move, Fox, opening "LFODH" early and counterprogramming against the family crowd.

Dreamworks is trying a similar strategy with "Transformers," opening the pod bay doors tomorrow to jump start the July 4th "weekend". Wesley's review and Manohla Dargis at the NY Times aren't positive, but the core audience for this one doubtless thinks the more the movie offends the pinkie-lifters, the better it is.

Michael Moore's "Sicko" had its first week of fairly wide release (441 theaters), pulled in $4.5 million, with a solid $10k per theater. That puts it well shy of "Fahrenheit 9/11" territory but well within reach of "Bowling for Columbine" numbers. "Evening," an Oscar-season movie lost in the summer doldrums, turned out to be a counterprogramming move that fizzled: $3.5 million.

"Evan Almighty"? Toast in its second week out, with $15 million. As noted before, only "Knocked Up" seems to have any resiliency of the summer big-movie crowd -- and, look, ma, no special effects. (Unless you count that wizened mutant baby in the waiting room scene.)

More box office shenanigans at Box Office Mojo and Leonard Klady.

The big releases this weekend are Disney/Pixar's "Ratatouille" and Michael Moore's "Sicko," both top-drawer examples of, respectively, digitally animated family films and Michael Moore provocations. You can't really go wrong with either.

That said, if you actually care about movies as a medium of people and stories and ways of seeing the world -- as opposed to megabits and box office and blowing things up -- the newly refurbished Harvard Film Archive is where you want to be this weekend, and it's the only place you want to be.

The Archive's second annual "Independents Week" series kicks off tomorrow, offering a chance to see a handful of truly independent American movies -- none remotely resembling "Little Miss Sunshine" -- that have mostly fallen through the cracks of the festival circuit and the distribution rinse cycle. By and large they replicate a reality most movies swerve to avoid, so leave expectations and sugar-heavy snacks at the door. Tonight at 9 is "In Between Days" (in photo above), So Yong Kim's pellucid account of a Korean-American teenage girl coping with friendship and love, and one of the few films in the series to have made much of a splash. (I.e., it was well-received at Sundance.)

On July 7th, the series gets to "Hannah Takes the Stairs," from the gifted Joe Swanberg ("LOL") and including in the cast such filmmakers as Mark Duplass ("The Puffy Chair" co-writer and star) and Andrew Bujalski ("Funny Ha Ha"), fine young Cassavetes-wannabes all. Other films I'm less familiar with, but that's part of what makes "Independents Week" special -- discovering vibrant work that's truly out of the loop. Welcome back, HFA.

For fans of the studiously weird, there's a new Guy Maddin movie in town: "Brand Upon the Brain!" at the Brattle. No live roadshow like they got in New York and San Francisco -- boo -- but it's still a startling fusion of old-timey Hollywood tropes and subterranean surrealist psycho-vomit. I mean that as a good thing.

"The Wedding Director" at the MFA, because the appearance of a new Marco Bellocchio film on these shores is a rare and usually wonderful thing. The museum's holding over "Manufactured Landscapes," too, because audiences and a few critics seem to like it.

Indiewire relays the news that Wes Anderson's new film, "The Darjeeling Limited," will kick off the 45th New York Film Festival on September 28. "Darjeeling" stars Anderson rep company members Jason Schwartzman and Owen Wilson plus new conscript Adrien Brody as three estranged brothers traveling across India after the death of their father. David Poland read the script last year and says it's all a big metaphor for three '70s Hollywood honchos: Francis Ford Coppola, Peter Bogdanovich, and Jack Nicholson. Which sounds sort of silly until you learn the three brothers in the movie are named Francis, Peter, and Jack. And that Roman Coppola co-wrote the script. That makes Roger Corman dad. Anyway, Anjelica Huston and Natalie Portman co-star; the film goes to theaters Christmas day.

Even more exciting (for my money) is the news that the NYFF will also screen the Coen brothers' latest, "No Country for Old Men," adapted from a Cormac McCarthy novel and featuring by all accounts a hellacious performance by Javier Bardem as a killer stalking the modern West. The movie tore up Cannes recently; you can see some clips from the film (with French subtitles) here.