Screening

I love the smell of preservation in the morning. The rest of the day, too, if it comes to that. So it's a pleasure to announce that the UCLA Film and Television Archive's one-of-a-kind Festival of Preservation opens for business Friday night with a knockout new print of one of the killer classics of film noir, Joseph H. Lewis' "Gun Crazy. " It's too bad the concept of preservation has such a musty sound, because what it means in practice is that today's audiences can experience the most unusual, the most entertaining and exciting treasures from the entire range of cinema's past, all brought back to life by the archive's team of crack preservationists.

Sometimes Susan Sullivan, who plays the flamboyantly effervescent actress-mother of a mystery writer on ABC's hit "Castle," has needed a little career push. And even a little padding. While attending Hofstra University on Long Island 50 years ago on a drama scholarship, Sullivan was working in New York City doing showroom modeling to earn extra money. PHOTOS: Behind-the-scenes Classic Hollywood "There was this big ad in the New York Times for Playboy Bunnys," she recalled.

There is growing evidence that screening mammograms aren't all they've been cracked up to be. This month it was "More mammograms, more problems" - a study showing that screening every year (instead of every other) didn't produce any benefit but did produce twice as many false alarms and twice as many biopsies. A few weeks earlier, another study (which I coauthored) suggested that roughly one-third of breast cancers diagnosed under current screening guidelines would never cause problems and didn't actually need to be diagnosed.

Google is reportedly developing touch-screen laptops running its Chrome OS operating system and readying them for a release later this year. According to the Wall Street Journal, Google is adding the touch-screen capability to its laptops, which are known as Chromebooks, to compete better against Microsoft. Last year, Microsoft introduced Windows 8, which is designed for touch-screen computers. The report, which cites "people familiar with the matter," says it's unclear when exactly Google will release the touchscreen computers or which company will build the hardware.

In the 1950s, special-effects pioneer Petro Vlahos laid the groundwork that made a modern movie genre possible -- the blockbuster. He did it by vastly improving a composite-image process commonly known as the "blue-screen effect" for the 1959 epic film "Ben-Hur. " And he did it again when he created a related technique that made Dick Van Dyke appear to dance among the penguins in the 1964 movie "Mary Poppins. " By devising new ways to combine separately shot footage of actors and backgrounds into a single scene, he opened the door to such special-effect spectaculars as "Star Wars" and "Titanic.

Have you made your picks yet? "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.

Filmmaker Salvador Litvak knew he had a good story about the relationship between Abraham Lincoln and his longtime bodyguard Ward Hill Lamon. What Litvak didn't know was how to bring the story, which he wrote with his wife, Nina, to the big screen. As an independent filmmaker, he had to produce a period drama with a budget of less than $1 million, a trickle compared to the $65 million it took to make the Oscar-nominated "Lincoln," directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Daniel Day-Lewis.

The 85th Academy Awards will take place Sunday night starting at 5:30 p.m. Pacific. Will "Argo," Ben Affleck's drama about the Iranian hostage crisis, cap off its awards season run with a best picture win? On Oscar night, Times film critic Kenneth Turan and staff writer Robin Abcarian will weigh in on the awards show right before the show starts and during commercial breaks. FULL COVERAGE: Oscars 2013 | Top nominees Meanwhile, check back on The Envelope for complete coverage, including Oscar night predictions and more, such as:   - Oscars play-at-home ballot : Share your picks.

It's been 80 years since a giant ape climbed to the top of the Empire State Building and held on to a tiny actress while planes flew over trying to shoot him down. That scene in the original 1933 "King Kong" is one of the most memorable in cinema history. "I don't care how old you are, you feel for the poor gorilla and what happened to him," said "Kong" historian John Michlig, who has written for the "Kong Is King" website. Though there have been sequels and remakes - including Peter Jackson's CGI-driven 2005 hit - none have matched the magic and romance of RKO's original, produced and directed by Merian C. Cooper and Ernest Schoedsack.

Elizabeth Daley, a former producer, has served as dean of USC's School of Cinematic Arts for more than 20 years. She's also the founder and executive director of the USC Institute for Multimedia Literacy, which develops educational programs and conducts research on "the changing nature of literacy in a networked culture. " What purpose do you think violence serves in entertainment? It's so interesting as to how you define what we mean by violence in entertainment. Should we talk about Oedipus?