By KIRK BAIRD, Toledo Blade

We're at the midway point of the summer movie season. And the numbers for Hollywood don't look good.

My wife has a good friend who continuously breaks a cardinal rule of cinema.

She talks on her phone during movies.

I know this because on several occasions the friend has taken a call from my wife in the middle of a film.

Considering Alice Cooper's legacy for onstage theatrics, it's not surprising that the rocker has a fondness for pop sensation Lady Gaga and her anything-goes concert production.

"Conversations with Scorsese," a book-length interview with director Martin Scorsese by longtime Time magazine film critic Richard Schickel, is akin to eavesdropping on a fascinating discussion between the two smartest people in the room.

And when it comes to movies, it doesn't get brainier and more passionate than Scorsese and Schickel.

There are two kinds of people in the world, and you can apply that cliche to many things in life. People either like the Yankees or they don't ... or lima beans ... or subtitled movies ... or Apple products.

It's back-to-school time again, and popular culture tells us that means trouble. High school, according to the 1955 movie "The Blackboard Jungle" (inspired by a novel by Evan Hunter), is nothing but classes of unruly teens brandishing switchblades and bad attitudes.

A coal-black void as empty as deep space. That was life as it was in the days before the World Wide Web.

But once our computers became connected, we discovered the joy we'd been missing; our collective wintery-grim outlook, melted by a sunny disposition, morphed into a postcard-perfect rosy sky above a green field and clear-blue lake.

Let me spare you the trouble.

"White Christmas," "It's a Wonderful Life," "A Christmas Story" and "Miracle on 34th Street."

There you go. The best holiday films to watch, a list as predictable as the coming of cold winter nights. Which is a pity given the staggering amount of Christmas films there are.

And what about all the other holiday films that don't make the list?