So here's the deal: you can spend $11 tomorrow and have your mind and soul degraded by "Tooth Fairy" or "When in Rome." Or you can watch Werner Herzog's new movie for free, which is screening as part of Gerald Peary's Cinematheque program at Boston University.

I'd opt for the second alternative, myself. "My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done?" is reputed to be even weirder than "Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans."

What with all the extraordinary events of the past week, not the least of which being the election of Scott Brown as US Senator (the same week "Legion" is released? hmmm), I feel an update on the Antichrist situation is in order.

Is Brown the Evil One, the one labeled 666 and prophesized in the Book of Revelations to bring on Armageddon? In my opinion, the jury's still out.

The other night a billion or so people watched a bunch of overdressed, sometimes inebriated Hollywood celebrities accept trumped up awards. The Golden Globes, they call them. Well, if you were one of the unfortunates who tuned in you might be asking yourself a) "What's wrong with Harrison Ford? He looks like he's coming out of anesthesia" and b) "That was terrible: where can I see a quality movie awards program?"

Watching some of unctuous, boorish, inebriated and otherwise (James Cameron gets his own category) embarrassing behavior on last night's Golden Globe broadcast, I remembered that I forgot to post my "Five Most Awkward Interview Moments from 2009." Partly that was because there weren't that many: I could only come up three.

To all the tributes to Eric Rohmer, who died a few days ago at the age of 89, I'd like to add one from my late mother, Kathleen Keough. I think it's fair to say that Rohmer was her favorite French director. Not that she was a big expert in the field, though later in life she expanded her knowledge of foreign films. As her hearing started to fade, she appreciated the subtitles.

James Cameron's "Avatar" is now in its fourth week topping the box office, with a worldwide gross of $1.3 billion and a $429 million domestic gross challenging the previous record of $800 million held by Cameron's previous movie, "Titanic." But a shrill note of protest is growing. Not about aesthetics, of course, but politics.

Saving the some of the best Best and Worst for last...

BETSY SHERMAN

TEN BEST

1.A Serious Man

2.The Hurt Locker

3.Observe and Report

4.Bruno

5.Treeless Mountain

6.Gigantic

7.In the Loop

8.Fantastic Mr. Fox

9.Where the Wild Things Are

10.World's Greatest Dad

It just occurred to me that we are almost a full week into the new year and I haven't yet listed my five worst of 2009. My guiding principle, as usual, is not to go after the easy targets, like "Did You Hear About the Morgans?" or "Planet 51," "Old Dogs" or even "Land of the Lost." Instead I've chosen films with artistic or commercial pretensions, whose critical and/or monetary success indicates a wrong direction that cinema has taken, leading inevitably to cultural and moral degeneration and the breakdown of civilization as we know it.

The last critics organization, The National Society of Film Critics (I would been there but my flight to New York for the meeting got snowed out) has voted, and it looks like "The Hurt Locker" has pretty much cleared the table with these groups, (in a mirror image of Boston, among others), Best Picture, Director, and Actor.