Baby (Jennifer Grey) learns to soar with the help of Johnny Castle (Patrick Swayze)

While it would be one of many of my nominees, this affectionate appreciation from Julie Klausner might persuade others to vote for Dirty Dancing as what the author calls "most Jewishest movie."

 In honor of the High Holidays, let Jewish and Gentile cinephiles offer their thoughts on the subject.

In the animation category): Prince of Egypt  (1998, with the voice of Ralph Fiennes as Moses) and The Rugrats Passover. In the classics category:  Counsellor at Law (1933, with John Barrymore as the attorney who suspects his wife of anti-Semitism). In the the comedy category: Annie Hall (1977, with Woody Allen and Diane Keaton) and In Her Shoes (2005, despite the fact that Shirley MacLaine is cast as a Jewish nana). In the drama category: Enemies: A Love Story (1989, with Ron Silver as the Holocaust survivor leading a triple life) or Munich (2005, with Eric Bana and Daniel Craig as an agent sof Israel's Mossad) or Defiance (2008, with Daniel Craif and Liev Schreiber as Jewish Nazi-fighters during World War II). In the musical category it's Dirty Dancing  (1987, with Jennifer Grey as the Jewess attracted to Gentile dancer Patrick Swayze) and Marjorie Morningstar (1958, Natalie Wood as the Jewess attracted to Gentile dancer Gene Kelly). Upcoming is the Coen Brothers' A Serious Man, a serious candidate for the honor.

Spike Lee once told me that he just "didn't get" Enemies and shrugged, "Maybe you just have to be Jewish." I don't know that that's true. But I was reminded of his perplexed reaction to the movie as I was walking out of (the very fine)  A Serious Man and buttonholed Gentile colleague Lou Gaul  and asked, "Is this understandable to a non-Jew?" Lou nodded, answering, "Oh, it's so Catholic." Yom tov to members of the tribe, a good weekend to everyone else ... and your nominee?

Should "Barbie: The Movie" base the screenplay on Presidential Barbie?

Now that movies based on kiddie toys are demomstrated box-office smashes (see Transformers), it was only a matter of time that a certain doll who has gone through more transformations than Optimus Prime would be the basis of a movie. Yes, Barbie: The Movie is in development . But on which of her many personas will the screenplay be based? Fun-loving beach girl in the striped strapless swimsuit? Presidential candidate with the Hillary Clinton bob (pictured)? Who should play her? And didn't Reese Witherspoon already play a reconstructed and adorably accessorized Barbie in the Legally Blonde movies?  Should Barbie be an entrepreneur, a homemaker, a politician? What conflicts should she encounter?

Jean Cocteau's "Blood of a Poet" (1930). That's legendary surrealist photographer Lee Miller as the statue.

There are poetic films (think Jean Cocteau's Blood of a Poet, pictured). And there are films about poets (think Il Postino, about exiled poet Pablo Neruda and his friendship with the milkman). Bright Star, Jane Campion's rhapsodic sonnet to John Keats and his muse, Fanny Brawne (which opens in Philadelphia on Friday) is both, a movie of evocative visual imagery exquisite as the poet's imagistic odes.

Campion's fresh-air naturalism is light years away from the suffocating-parlors of Sidney Franklin's The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1934), about the forbidden love of Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning. Riffling through the mental rolodex,  it's hard to think of other poetic films about poets apart from Blue Car (2002), Karen Moncrieff's story of an adolescent writer. Shakespeare in Love (1998), including sonnets by the Bard, and Poetic Justice (1993), with Janet Jackson as the beautician/poet (her lyrics courtesy Maya Angelou), and Smoke Signals  (1998, with the words of Sherman Alexie), have their moments.

 I also relish My Left Foot (1989), with Daniel Day-Lewis as Irish poet and artist Christy Brown, The Basketball Diaries (1995), with Leonardo DiCaprio as the late Jim Carroll and Shadowlands (1993), the moving story of C.S. Lewis (Anthony Hopkins) and his unlikely affair with  American poet Joy Gresham (Debra Winger).

With the exception of the poetry-slamming hero of So I Married an Axe Murderer (1993) and the doggerel-writing title figure in Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936), poets in films tend to be stormy, rather than sunny, figures. Consider the Charles Bukowski (Mickey Rourke) chronically drunk in Barfly (1987), T.S. Eliot (Willem Dafoe), saddled with an unpredictable spouse in Tom and Viv (1994) and Sylvia Plath (Gwyneth Paltrow), battling depression and her husband's infidelity in Sylvia (2003).

My vote for the most preposterous movie poet goes to Cornel Wilde as Omar Khayyam (1956) -- a poet/mathematician who inspired the Antonio Banderas character in the distinctly unpoetical The 13th Warrior. Yours?

Favorite movie poet/poetic movie? Any takers for Leo DiCaprio as Arthur Rimbaud in the 1995 Total Eclipse ?  

John Garfield (right) decks his opponent in "Body and Soul." More than 60 years after its 1947 release, it remains one of the most searing sports movies ever.

Sports mavens Ray Didinger and Glen Macnow have a  new tome, The Ultimate Book of Sports Movies, which lives up to its immodest title. Opinionated, informative and fun,  it's guaranteed to launch a million debates and twice as many movie memories in its ranking of the Top 100 sports flicks of all time. I won't tell you what their number one pick is, but it's a boxing film that is not Body and Soul (1947, pictured), the John Garfield-starring expose of corruption in the ring, which I would rank first and these sportsmen rank #18.

Among the book's many enjoyable huddles is their "All-Time Movie Football Team," which includes Burt Reynolds ( The Longest Yard )as quarterback, Cuba Gooding, Jr. (Jerry Maguire) as wide receiver and LL Cool J  (Any Given Sunday )as running back. Their All-Movie-Star Baseball Team includes Kevin Costner (Bull Durham) as catcher, Michael Moriarty (Bang the Drum Slowly) as pitcher and Wesley Snipes (Major League) as outfielder.

Quibbles? Well, Geena Davis (A League of Their Own) is a pretty awesome catcher, but TOPOSM lists only four femme-centric titles  -- including League -- in its Top 100. Guys will be guys. Smartly,  they include documentaries like Hoop Dreams (#14)  and When We Were Kings (#21).  For me, the only glaring omission from their Top 100 is Personal Best.   But it's their list, and it's pretty damned good. What's on yours?

Catherine Deneuve and Susan Sarandon in Tony Scott's "The Hunger."

Doesn't matter that the moon isn't full,  there is no escaping vampires. At this very nanosecond on the small screen True Blood and The Vampire Diaries at your throat; on the large there are last year's Twilight and Let the Right One, a Danish film being remade by Hollywood. Coming soon to your local multiplex: the Twilight sequel, New Moon.

Why are stories of neckbiters so popular? Ask Alice Affleck Bullitt, whose Beyond Dracula, a course offered at the Bryn Mawr Film Institute in October, will explore modern vampire films such as Kathryn Bigelow's Near Dark and  Neil Jordan's Interview With a Vampire.  For Bullitt, "The allure of vampires is that they are dangerous, but also seductive--isn't it hard to deny that as humans, we are often drawn to things or individuals despite (or to wit, because of) the fact that they are bad for us?"

The bloodsucker is an unusually adaptable metaphor. It can be used to represent sex (as in Tony Scott's The Hunger, featuring a stylish Sapphic  love affair between Catherine Deneuve and Susan Sarandon), social transgression (Bigelow's Near Dark, with the fanged ones coming from the wrong side of the tracks), insatiability (Jordan's Interview With a Vampire) and initiation (Twilight).

What metaphor does your favorite vampire film/show trade in?

No one puts Patrick Swayze in the corner.

Tough guys do dance. And are remarkably tender. That's what Patrick Swayze, dancer/actor in the tradition of Jimmy Cagney, Gene Kelly and John Travolta and inspiration for Taye Diggs and Hugh Jackman, proved with incomparable grace both offscreen and on.

As I wrote in his obituary:

It's hard not to think that the one-time gymnast who vaulted to stardom in 1987's Dirty Dancing had rehearsed his premature exit in the 1990 blockbuster Ghost. As the banker who solves his own murder mystery, he speaks from the dead to his living sweetheart, Demi Moore. Mr. Swayze, impossibly sexy and throbbingly sensitive, tells her: "It's amazing, the love inside. You take it with you."

It's hard to think of another actor who could carry off roles like these. The surprise of Swayze is that he presented himself as a galoot before  revealing a character of rare gallantry.  "Patrick possessed a depth of nobility," said his Point Break director Kathryn Bigelow."

What qualities did you like about him? Favorite movie? Snatch of dialogue?

For those who would like to leave expressions for his family, here's the link.

Is De Palma's "Blow Out" the best movie made in Philly?

Movie Geek Alert: The estimable Cinema Viewfinder is hosting a learned blog-a-thon on the movies of Brian De Palma, with excellent contributions from the likes of Glenn Kenny, Ratnakar Sadasyula and Chris Voss.

Few filmmakers polarize filmlovers like De Palma, whose love-'em-or-hate'em features include the marrow-chilling Sisters (1972) and the definitive high-school horror flick Carrie (1976). The director, a bearded barrel of a man, grew up near Philadelphia's Rittenhouse Square (his father was the head of surgery at Jefferson Hospital) and attended Friends Central. De Palma directed Blow Out (1981), one of the best movies made in Philly, the addictively enjoyable Scarface (1983), the provocative peeping-Tomcat Body Double (1984),  that slickly entertaining The Untouchables (1987)  one of the most compelling among Vietnam films, Casualties of War (1989) and the stylish Mission: Impossible (1996). Though he hasn't scored a maintream hit since then,  Femme Fatale (2002) is one of my guilty pleasures, an  impossibly sexy dreamscape with Rebecca Romijn-Stamos and Antonio Banderas.

De Palma does not so much explore as present the connection between sex and power (and vice-versa), which in his films is often linked by an umbilicus of blood. (As Tony Montana, hero of the Oliver Stone-scripted Scarface, put it: First you get the money, then you get the power, then you get the women.") Another persistent theme is that of a man unable to save a woman in jeopardy.

The naked violence and sexuality of De Palma's films have made him a controversy magnet. During the 1980s some social critic observed that every time he made a movie he lowered the national IQ by 10 points. Since there are so few filmmakers with such swoony style, I'm inclined to forgive him for a lack of substance. You will not, however, hear me defending the indefensible The Bonfire of the Vanities (1990) or Mission to Mars (2000), ravishing, but indecipherable.

Are you a De Palma fan or foe? Favorite film? What themes do you see in his films?

Cary Grant outrunning assassins in the sublimely entertaining "North by Northwest."

"That's funny, that plane's dustin' crops where there ain't no crops," observes the guy at the prairie bus stop to dapper Cary Grant in North  by Northwest, granddaddy of the modern action flick, at the top of a sequence in which a DDT-spewing plane attempts to fumigate the Manhattan adman mistaken for a CIA agent. N by NW (its title borrowed from Hamlet -- "I am but mad north-northwest: when the wind is southerly, I know a hawk from a handsaw") will celebrate its 50th anniversary in November with reissues on DVD and Blu-Ray.

N by NW may not be Alfred Hitchcock's best film, but it is something better. It is one of those movies -- including Casablanca, Rear Window, The Magnificent Seven,  The Man Who Would Be King and the Sean Connery James Bond films -- that are cinematic best friends. You're always happy to see them and you see something new every time you visit. Most would nominate N by NW, a Cold War film travelogue that zips from Manhattan's Plaza Hotel to the United Nations to Chicago's Union Station to an Iowa cornfield to Mt. Rushmore as the most purely entertaining film ever made.

Legend has it that James Bond creator Ian Fleming was so smitten with the film and Grant's performance as the imperturbable, well-tailored  figure at its center that it inspired his conception of James Bond. What is definitely true is that Fleming wanted Grant to star as Bond. Grant demurred.

There is much to recommend in the mistaken-identity Cold War thriller apart from Grant's high-comic performance. James Mason is suave and slithery as a Communist operative, Martin Landau shifty as his henchman and Eva Marie Saint seductive as an intellectual who may be playing  both for Communism and Democracy.  It also has a memorable score by Bernard Herrmann (subject of a Turner Classic Movies tribute this month), a snappy screenplay by Ernest Lehman and influential art direction by Robert Boyle. You might be interested in this post about James Mason's modernist house seen in the film.

Where does N by NW rank in your Hitchcock pantheon? What other movies do you include among your film best friends?

Does the announced remake of "Yellow Submarine" make you feel like a Blue Meanie?

"There's nothing new except that which has been forgotten," proclaimed Rose Bertin, Marie Antoinette's milliner. Looks like Hollywood is taking her words to heart, as Patrick Goldstein reports today in his audit of the reboots and remakes clogging the movie pipeline. They include Bob Zemeckis' Yellow Submarine, Steven Spielberg's Harvey and Bryan Singer's Excalibur.

Many classic films -- including John Huston's The Maltese Falcon  with Humphrey Bogart and Martin Scorsese's The Departed -- are remakes, the Huston the THIRD version of the Dashiell Hammett story cranked out by Warners in under a decade and the Scorsese a reboot of the Hong Kong actioner Infernal Affairs. His Girl Friday, one of the greatest comedies ever, was Howard Hawks' gender-reversed remake of The Front Page.  

 Great as some sequels are, I'm not looking forward to the upcoming remakes Fame and Footloose and The Karate Kid. And yet I totally get why audiences want to see classic stories with contemporary actors, for example J.J. Abrams' Star Trek. In this vein,  there are very good remakes of The Parent Trap (Hayley Mills and Hayley Mills in the original, Lindsay Lohan and Lindsay Lohan in the remake) and Freaky Friday (Jodie Foster and Barbara Harris in the original, Jamie Lee Curtis and Lohan in the remake).  And, goodness knows, Little Women was great with Katharine Hepburn as Jo in 1933 and with Winona Ryder as Jo in 1994.

A lot of the announced remakes are of TV shows. For every small-screen success remade as a big-screen bomb (think Bewitched or Starsky & Hutch) there are surprisingly good updates such as The Brady Bunch and Get Smart.

My vote for the Worst. Remake. Ever. would probably be Warren Beatty's Love Affair (a remake of Leo McCarey's 1939 Love Affair and his 1958 An Affair to Remember) which likewise inspired Nora Ephron's enjoyable rethink Sleepless in Seattle.

Favorite/least favorite remakes? Your thoughts on the eternal remake trend?