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At The Av Club, Steven Hyden wrote a really interesting piece today calling for a new measurement of excellence in the world of popular music. In addition to judging a band's "popularity" and "critical respectibility" he suggests you apply "the five-album test" to determine musical greatness. If an artist puts out five great albums in a row, they pass.

"Lots of artists have five or more classic albums (not including EPs or live records), but the ability to string them together back-to-back means being in the kind of zone that's normally associated with dominant college women's basketball dynasties."

It's a really fun test to apply to music -- The Replacements make the cut but The Rolling Stones don't -- which made me think that it would be equally fun to apply it to film. The five-movies test, though, is arguably even harder to pass than the five-albums test.

Many of...

Actor Tim Blake Nelson will host the awards ceremony at the Sundance Film Festival, which also announced Tuesday the members of the five juries that will determine the winners. The festival runs from Jan. 20-30; the awards will be handed out the evening of Jan. 29. (The Short Film Awards will be named earlier at a ceremony on Tuesday, Jan. 25, at Park City’s Jupiter Bowl.)

The complete list of jurors follows, with bios provided by the festival.

U.S. Documentary Jury

Jeffrey Blitz

Jeffrey’s film career started in 2002 with the Oscar-nominated, Emmy-winning documentary “Spellbound.” His fiction feature debut, “Rocket Science,” became his first to play the festival (Sundance, 2007; Dramatic Directing Award). He has also directed the documentary “Lucky,” (Sundance, 2010) and multiple episodes of NBC’s “The Office.” In 2009, he won the Emmy for comedy directing.

Matt Groening

Matt Groening created the longest-running comedy in television history, “The Simpsons.” As a cartoonist,...

Two topics, all-too-often inseparable — politics and horror — course through the veins of the new issue of Bright Lights Film Journal, featuring "a whopping 40 articles, profiles, and reviews," as editor Gary Morris notes in his lively-as-always overview. Gregory Stephen's piece on King Corn and Fast Food Nation is "a tour de force that riffs mightily on eco- and economic exploitation, racism, and a host of other timely themes.... Maximilian Werner manages an entirely new approach to films like The Ring, The Shining, The Exorcist et al. in his discussion of the evolutionary basis of fear. Mark Chapman disinters the postmodern vampire through a persuasive discussion of Claire Denis's Trouble Every Day. He also sketches that depressingly prescient Michael Powell classic Peeping Tom. Jon Lanthier clarifies much about Scorsese's overrated Shutter Island through an inspired conceit: phrenology."

There are also fresh takes on classics, obscure (Cullen Gallagher on Preston Sturges's The French,...