It's the elephant in the room when you're talking to Duncan Jones: this guy is Zowie Bowie -- Ziggy Stardust's son! It's uncool to bring it up, but how can you not at least mention it?

Very easily, as it turns out, because the affable, self-proclaimed geek has accomplished enough on his own to make his pedigree a mere footnote.

Bike Porn: for some reason when you put those two words together, they sound extra dirty. "Bike Porn 4: Play" is the fourth annual reprise of the travelling film show which features shorts - bicycle shorts? - that show what a true velocipedist ("pedalophile?") is capable of. Or, to quote the event sponsor, Truth Serum Productions, it's a celebration of "bikesexuality, bikeuriosity, and bike objectification."

The surprisingly robust activism stirred up by Wisconsin's recent union-busting policies recall the glory days of the peace movement that probably peaked with the debacle of the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago. Those unfamiliar with the story might take a look at Brett Morgen's zesty, animated Chicago 10 (2008) about the subsequent show trial in which demonstration leaders Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Bobby Seale, and others were charged with conspiracy to incite a riot.

The regular-person-becoming-a-superhero genre continues in popularity with James Gunn's Super, which will receive a special preview screening tonight at the Brattle under the auspices of the Independent Film Festival of Boston. Rainn Wilson (The Office) plays a guy who becomes a crime fighter named Red Bolt when his wife leaves him for a drug dealer.

Let's face it: "cinephiles" and movie goers in general are just glorified voyeurs. Scopophilia, they call it. A fancy name for a practice not much more respectable than peeking through windows or keyholes. This compulsion has served as a theme for many filmmakers, Alfred Hitchcock, that jolly perve, being among the most prolific, with "Rear Window" and "Psycho" just to name two, and Michael Powell for his still chilling, career-ending "Peeping Tom

If the Irish Film Festival wasn't green enough for you, take a look at the Wild and Scenic Environmental Film Festival. It starts tonight with a panel discussion on energy moderated by Robin Young of WBUR that takes place at 6 pm at the Benjamin Franklin Institute of Technology, 41 Berkeley St, Boston. Saturday, there will be a screening of the film Carbon Nation and a "locavore" tasting session at the Mass College of Art & Design.

No sooner has the Boston Underground Film Festival reminded us of the capabilities of subversive cinema than the upcoming (April 27- May 4) Ninth Annual Independent Film Festival of Boston further boosts our faith in the medium by releasing its line-up of goods.

It's such a truism by now that it almost doesn't bear mentioning that the IFFB is THE premier film event in Boston, if not in New England (pace, BUFF, Provincetown, Nantucket.

"The Final Sentence"

Like many great artists, Elizabeth Taylor, who died today at the age of 79, peaked at the age of 12. Her first lead performance in National Velvet (1944) inspired the critic James Agee to pen a rhapsodic paean that nowadays might warrant him charges of pedophilia. He starts his review "choked with the peculiar sort of adoration I might have felt if we were both in the same grade of primary school."

Once again, the Chlotrudis Society's annual awards ceremony at the Brattle Theatre on Sunday made up for the numbing, disappointing spectacle of the Oscars, though there might have been a few too many (four)Trudies going to "Winter's Bone" for my taste. But any bunch with the astuteness to honor "Dogtooth," "Marwencol," "Animal Kingdom," and "Mother" in the same evening is okay in my book.

Repulsion

Catherine Deneuve didn't start getting kinky with The Hunger - not after having worked with Luis Buñuel and Roman Polanski. Buñuel guides her through the exquisitely twisted Belle de jour (1967), in which she plays a gelid bourgeois housewife who works at a bordello as a hobby. Polanski shows her the ropes in Repulsion (1965), perhaps the most horrible and seductive version of Home Alone ever made.