The last awards ceremony of the year may well be the best, and not just because Phoenix film editor Peter Keough is one of the presenters. For the 19th year, the Chlotrudis Society will present awards to the best of the year's offbeat, obscure, and independent films in a program notable for its puckish humor and musical ingenuity - just try writing a song with the name of Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul in the lyrics.

I've been trying to write something about the end of the Boston Phoenix, but for fuck's sake I'm not going to stack myself up against Charlie Pierce, Susan Orlean, Yvonne Abraham, et al who can write circles around me. And besides I loathe writing. Hate every painful thing about it -- and meanwhile I'm already trying to write this goddamned feature, which now is going to get all huge scrutiny as the Last Phoenix Political Story, in the shadow of all the ridiculously good journalists who set the bar here.

Her Zero Dark Thirty got robbed at the Oscars, but you can console yourself by watching some of Kathryn Bigelow's earlier films in this triple feature at ArtsEmerson. It includes Blue Steel (1989; 1 pm), in which Jamie Lee Curtis crushed Hollywood female stereotypes playing a cop out to get a serial killer; Point Break (1991; 6 pm), a genre-scrambling thriller in which Keanu Reeves is cast against type as an FBI agent who infiltrates a gang of surfing bank robbers; and The Weight of Water (2000; 9 pm), an adaptation of the Anita Shreve novel, in which the lives of those investigating a century-old murder intermingle with those of the people being researched.

This statement from Phoenix publisher Stephen M. Mindich was circulated to staffers earlier today:

I can state with certainty that this is the single most difficult communication I've ever had to deliver and there's no other way to state it than straightforwardly -

As of now the Boston Phoenix has ceased publishing and wfnx.

We were notified at 2 pm today that the issue of the Boston Phoenix on stands today is the last one we will ever publish.

The timing comes as a shock, but the news isn't a surprise. We're less than a year into an experiment launched last fall to turn a 46 year old alternative weekly newspaper into a weekly magazine. By every measure not related to advertising sales, it has been a success.

Compare any of today's so-called romantic comedies with the elegant confections of Ernst Lubitsch from eight decades ago and you'll probably get depressed. So just forget about them and enjoy the offerings in the Brattle Theatre retrospective series The Lubitsch Touch. It starts tomorrow tonight with Ninotchka (1939), in which Greta Garbo plays a Soviet commissar whose party-line propriety is shattered when she visits Paris on assignment and falls for the couture and the charms of a class enemy, a Count played by Melvyn Douglas.

Our crack reviewer Peg Aloi is also a practiving Wiccan, and thus the ideal person to report on this up-and-coming event that just wrapped up today. Fittingly in this city infamous for witch hunts, a featured film included "West of Memphis," (reviewed by Jake Mulligan in this week's issue of "The Phoenix") a documentary about a contemporary witch hunt -- the wrongful prosecution and conviction of the three then teenagers of the title for a 1993 triple homicide.

Welcome to "Meet the Mayor," a segment in which we interview local Foursquare Mayors in their natural habitats.

Andrew Square House of Pizza
Kurt Villon

If the Irish had invented pizza, what would be on it?
I think you'd have to go with potatoes. . . . Maybe corned beef and potatoes. I don't know if cabbage would go well on pizza, but corned beef and mashed potatoes would actually be kind of delicious.

Irish-born Bostonian Kieran McWilliam still remembers his very first Guinness at Reddy's in Carlow - his preferred stomping ground on the old sod. Clearly, it made an impact: for more than 20 years, McWilliam has been behind the bar at Brighton's Irish Village, pulling perfect pints of the lauded stout. With St.

On the eve of the Oscars, a crowd of actors, models, casting directors, talent scouts, and other local film and stage peeps gathered in the swanky bar at Newton's Hotel Indigo for a networking party presented by NE Actor and Model Club Inc. At a soiree packed to the gills with people who make their living standing out, we feared it might be hard to pick just one star of the show.

^{Dick Lehr}

Former Pulitzer Prize winning Boston Globe staffer Gerard O'Neill could pass as a prosecutor, right off the set of, say, Law and Order. O'Neill is polite, almost soft spoken, but there is a hint of a killer instinct lurking beneath the poised exterior coiled to jump -- perhaps just for the fun of it.

Shelley Murphy and Kevin Cullen cut their teeth at the Boston Herald before they were hired by the Boston Globe. As a result, they have a touch more edge than some of their colleagues at Morrissey Boulevard. And -- interesting enough -- a touch more charm. Their book, Whitey Bulger: America's Most Wanted Gangster and the Manhunt that Brought him to Justice, has hit the New York Times Best Seller List.

Last week I told you about a two-week adventure I’d just embarked on, traveling from Monterrey, Mexico’s Festival NRMAL to McAllen, TX’s Galax Z Fair and then SXSW in Austin. Festival NRMAL wrapped up on Sunday evening, and the whole experience was very surreal.

NRMAL’s main event was an all-day outdoor festival with four stages on Saturday, with over 50 bands from around the world, though they were mostly from Mexico and the United States.

You might recall Mexican filmmaker Carlos Reygadas from when his terrific Battle in Heaven (2005) was cited recently by the Phoenix for featuring one of the 55 Worst Sex Scenes of the 21st Century ("Saddest blowjob in the world"). His latest film, Post Tenebras Lux (2012), may not be as transgressive, but it nonetheless bears the stamp of a unique and visionary artist in its depiction of a privileged family whose façade of respectability melts into hallucinatory chaos.

Karaoke at Courtside

We've all had that conversation. "What do you want to do?" "I don't know, what do you want to do?" and so forth. Eventually, the group agrees that all of the usual haunts have grown tiresome and someone boldly suggests karaoke. Whether you're that guy who thinks they can sing because they got a lead in a middle school production of The Music Man, or you're just looking to get drunk enough to belt out some old school jams at a karaoke spot that doesn't completely suck ass, we promise you'll actually have fun at any of these nominees for Best Karaoke Spot

Domenica Ruta's With or Without You is the autobiographical tale of a junkie's daughter, who navigates her mother's needles and pills on the way to adulthood only to end up with an addiction of her own. It's like Roald Dahl's Matilda, but without the magic or happy ending.

Ruta writes about her childhood with detached sadness.

As showcased all throughout the Town Hall Tea Party Era a few years ago, Massachusetts is hardly immune to right-wing buffoonery. Our crackers are every bit as clueless as flag-waving imbeciles elsewhere; as for elected officials, until recently we had a Republican in Washington who tossed Wall Street's salad in the Senate steam room every chance he got.

The past couple of years have been kinda rough for New Hampshire music. Bands are leaving town, venues are closing, and college kids won’t listen to anything that doesn’t have a bass drop in it. But 2013 just might be the year things start looking up. Believe it or not, New Hampshire has a vibrant music scene, however decentralized and rural it may be, and bands are finally starting to poke their heads out and show themselves.

Still from "Landfill 16" by Jennifer Reeves

One of the most innovative and intriguing film series around, Balagan doesn't disappoint with tonight's program, DIY Dystopia. It includes experimental shorts, made the old fashioned way - on celluloid, that draw parallels between the doom of traditional filmmaking and the downfall of the environment.