It doesn’t come as much of a surprise when, after the finish of Hou Hsiao-hsien’s Flight of the Red Balloon, a few words of tribute to Albert Lamorisse appear on-screen before the credits roll. Lamorisse’s 1955 short film The Red Balloon is a celebrated fantasy about imaginative and metaphorical escape from childhood loneliness and alienation.

Where did people vent before the internet? Movie buffs online are going apoplectic these days over two things: whether or not it’s insulting for Robert Downey Jr. to be doing blackface in the upcoming Tropic Thunder, and whether Adam Sandler has gone too far with his new comedy You Don’t Mess With the Zohan, in which he plays an Israeli counterterrorism commando who moves to Manhattan to become a hair stylist.