For a filmmaker once synonymous with slackerdom, Richard Linklater has proven to be one of the most prodigious and consistently excellent American filmmakers. A small but rich vein of the two dozen features he’s made have been portraits of artists, including Me and Orson Welles and, if you like, School of Rock .

This fall brings two more, one set at the dawn of a great career ( Nouvelle Vague , about Jean-Luc Godard and the birth of the French New Wave) and another on the cusp of its tragic end: Blue Moon , about lyricist Lorenz Hart . Both are, in their way, joyous celebrations of brilliant, stubbornly uncompromising creative visionaries. And both are a grand time at the movies.

Blue Moon , the first to arrive of the two, is one of the more sheerly delightful movies of th

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