by Joey Chirico

So, The Three Musketeers has brandished itself another adaptation.

Really?  Is it time for another?  How many have there been?  At least fifty works or more dating back to 1911.  Anyone remember the 1993 film staring Jack Bauer, Robin, Duh Winning Man, and the gifted Oliver Plat?  Good times.

Well, it’s 2011, one hundred years later, and Paul W.S. Anderson just could not help himself.  He pulled together a ragtag bunch of….well, pretty talented actors:

Matthew Macfadyen caught my attention in Frost/Nixon playing the blond haired John Birt, a friend and coworker of David Frost.  The next time he popped up on my radar was for the fantastic Starz television mini-series “The Pillars of the Earth.”  I was blown away by his performance, and look forward to seeing more of his work.  He portrays the Musketeer, Athos.

The Oscar winning Christopher Waltz, everybody!  He graces us with his presence, and we must thank him thoroughly for doing so.  The first time I saw this genius was in Quentin Tarantino’s Inglorious Basterds.  (I’m sure that’s where most people in the world caught their first glimpse.)  There were so many great and memorable characters in that film, but Colonel Hans Landa stole the show.  I have yet to see his former or latter films, but I plan to get around to them soon.  Nevertheless, I’m sure he’ll give it his all in this performance, but will it be enough to save the film?  He’ll be playing Cardinal Richelieu.

Ray Stevenson has been around for a while, jumping around on the various screens in our lives.  I’ve generally been impressed with his performances.  Obviously, I have not viewed all of his work, but let me list some that I have or simply know of:

- King Arthur – (While the film was not great, I do enjoy the stories of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table.  Stevenson plays Dagonet, and he manages to make me care about him throughout the film.  So, job well done.)

- HBO’s: “Rome” – (Unfortunately, I have not seen the series.  It’s supposed to be great, though, when in Rome.)

- Punisher: War Zone – (I can’t say I’m impressed by that one.  But, seriously, who can follow Thomas Jane?  He is a member of the Vegan Police.  The first Punisher movie wasn’t very great to warrant a sequel anyway.  But, hey, that just means it fits in nicely with this article.)

- Cirque du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant – (Didn’t see it, don’t plan to.  John C. Reilly is a great actor, but even Dewey Cox couldn’t save this one.)

- The Book of Eli – (An okay movie, and Stevenson was decent in what his role called for.  But, honestly, there was no depth to his character, and nothing for him to work with.  Maybe the movie just needed a runaway train with Vincent Vega on it.)

- The Other Guys – (If you haven’t seen this film, you should – especially for the scenes involving Dwayne Johnson and Samuel L. Jackson.  Aim for the bushes.  The End.)

- Kill the Irishman – (I haven’t seen it, but I saw a film’s trailer and it looked like it had potential.)

- Thor – (Stevenson was one of the funniest parts of this movie.  He played Volstagg, a slightly overweight warrior god with a big heart.  Sounds like a recipe for awesome.)

Overall, Stevenson is a welcome face in my book.  He’ll be playing the Musketeer, Porthos.

Mads Mikkelsen might be best remembered for his villainous role of Le Chiffre in Casino Royale, the man who cried blood.  He also played one of my favorite characters in King Arthur.  His most recent role was Draco, Perseus’s grizzled fighting coach, in Clash of the Titans.  With the exception of the Bond film, none of what I have seen him in was great.  Yet, Mikkelsen has a way of bringing out something in his characters that will usually make them memorable, and you have to appreciate that these days.  He will portray Rochefort.

Til Schweiger was also, believe it or not, a character in King Arthur (I’m just realizing all this as I’m writing).  Now, I have probably only watched about two and a half of his films, so I’m not sure about the rest of his career.  (The “half” was the movie Far Cry – I couldn’t make it all the way through.)  But he played Sergeant Hugo Stiglitz in Inglorious Basterds.  And as a captured German soldier stated: “Everybody in the German army’s heard of Hugo Stiglitz.”  Now we have as well.  Enough said.

That covers the “talent” in this film.  I don’t know enough about the young Juno Temple, or the even younger Logan Lerman to comment on their talent.  I saw Temple in Year One (not a good movie), and Lerman in Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief (a just okay movie).  I saw him in 3:10 to Yuma as well, but he was overshadowed by the greats and unable to display his talents.  He was very young then, and looks too young for this role.  With the aged trio of musketeers around him, I fear he’ll look entirely out of place portraying D’Artagnan.  As before, he may be lost among the more seasoned actors onscreen.

Orlando Bloom has been chosen to play the Duke of Buckingham.  I’m not sure how I feel about that.  Not his role, but his presence in the film.  He was great as Legolas (possibly because he didn’t talk much), but, unfortunately, I’ve yet to see any other great performances.  He was decent in the Pirates of the Caribbean films, but he was also the weakest link.

As you see, he’s not coming back for this next installment in the Pirates series.

Then, we have Anderson’s wife and “muse,” as some have said, Milla Jovovich.  I thought she was great in The Firth Element, but not so much in the multitude of Resident Evil films – some more of Anderson’s uninspiring work.  You know, if the video games upon which the Resident Evil films are based already have fantastic characters, why make up a new, unbelievable one?  Alice is some kind of super human, whom, at times, seems all-powerful.  That’s just cheap writing.  It’s called a cop-out – not the Kevin Smith film.  Well, maybe the Kevin Smith film.  If all else fails in a story, add an unstoppable super human.  Take a tip from the cancelled television show “Heroes,” and don’t make a flip-flopping Sylar who cannot be stopped.  You’ll write yourself into a corner.

Now, all I, and anyone else, have seen of Anderson’s The Three Musketeers is the trailer, and, quite frankly, it looks like a video game.  Characters are jumping off buildings, diving away from explosions and fire, and, of course, engaging in massive sword fights.  The one thing this trailer has is action.  The main thing it lacks is an understanding of the plot and everything but action.

We know the Musketeers will be fighting vast numbers of evildoers, but for what?  What is their cause other than just to fight?  This is called a “reboot,” so who knows what Anderson has in store.  I’m afraid this preview is merely a small example of all this film will provide.  Senseless action and ridiculous special effects.

Did I mention this movie would be in 3D?  That means it must be great, right?  Children love 3D!  And little kids will most certainly be aware of Alexander Dumas’s famous novel.  Right?

Wait!  What about the adults?

When I found out this film would be in 3D, I shook my head in disappointment.  I just don’t get it.  Who needs that?  I doubt it’ll even be worth it.  Resident Evil: Afterlife was also in 3D, and there was really no reason for it.  Maybe three scenes used the effect, and to absolutely no avail.

Maybe when D’Artagnan jumps from the exploding window he’ll come through the screen and crowd surf back across the audience.  Or when Jovovich slides under the immense amount of musket balls (I guess) being fired, she’ll project into the audience and give a Leeloo impression.  “Mul-ti-pass.”  I’m sure we can expect swords to poke out at viewers.  Oh, one can hope!

When it comes down to it, I saw there was another Musketeer movie in store, and didn’t know what to think.  I saw that it would be in 3D and became annoyed.  The cast made me disappointed.  Partly for the talented actors’ dilemma, and partly because of everything else.  I’m not optimistic about this film.  I’m not even sure I’ll go see it.

Anderson has not made a decent movie before or since Soldier.  (Long live Stuntman Mike!)  I guess Mortal Kombat could be included for those who love the cult classic (if it can be called thus).

But with such a bad track record and the incessant use of 3D where it isn’t needed, how can this have movie potential?

Watch the preview for yourselves and make up your minds.  All I can say is that if Dumas were alive now, he would slap the hell out of pretty much everyone involved with this film.  Except Stiglitz.

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By Michael L

And now, to gouge the eyes out of that noxious and semi-popular notion that the Scream franchise hates horror movie fans!

Ready?

Here goes:

It’s bullshit! (right in the eyes!)

I’m not convinced that all slasher movies hate women, nor am I convinced that all “torture porn” movies hate people (though some probably do).

The grossest of these shorthand pejoratives has got to be the one about Scream: that it’s looking rather patronizingly down its long, white-plastic Ghostfaced nose at a whole legion of rabid gore nuts.

That the Scream franchise is almost sort of afraid of its audience is something I will submit. It’s the same unease that pumps through Wes Craven’s New Nightmare: the question of whether horror movies are responsible because they act as a reservoir for man’s more primal instincts, or actively destructive in that they perpetrate and (some might say) encourage/glorify a laundry list of violent, murderous, sociopathic tendencies.

So Scream is uneasy with horror: its ability to create it, its audiences cult-like enjoyment of it, and everyones excitement about a bloody good beheading/impalement/disembowlement.

Unease is not the same thing as hatred. True, too, Scream does not hate horror movie fans. In fact, I would argue that it understands them better than any other horror franchise of the last thirty years. It gets that most of us are socially conscientious; it understands especially that those of us who grew up in the eighties and nineties are actively conflicted about our slavish devotion to all things prurient and pukey.

Furthermore, Scream couldn’t have been born in any decade but the nineties. It reads like a Christian Conservative talking points nightmare: kids inspired by violent media (read: DOOM, or MARILYN MANSON, etc) go crazy, and end up enacting their morbid electric fantasies in real life.

Of course, the world of Scream isn’t real life (more on that in a bit), and the creators of Scream have always gone out of their way to disavow that convenient, oven-ready bit of socio-psycho motivational pop nonsense (“the movies made me do it!”).

Yes, the killers in the Scream films generally love horror movies (yes, as the ad campaigns promise, they’ve “taken their love of horror movies too far…”)

But so too do all of their friends and neighbors in the friendly town of Woodsboro (and just about everyone in all of the Scream films).

So…what’s the difference?

Why are five out of one hundred horror nuts actually nuts?

The blessed thing about Scream is that it creates a model where we can debate the pros and cons of horror devotion in the theoretical town of Woodsboro.

The Woodsboro of the Scream films does not and could never exist.

It is a town where every eighteen year old with a pulse and a libido is obsessed with horror trivia. True, that means especially those who don white plastic masks and go about killing people in worse-than-trash-TV homages to their favorite Argento murder scenes.

But also everyone else. That means Jamie Kennedy in the original trilogy, and Hayden Panetterie in Scream 4 (so cute it hurts), and a pair of film club dorks, and everyone in their film club, and Sarah Michelle Gellar in part 2 (arguing that James Cameron’s Aliens was superior to Ridley Scott’s first Alien).

It means EVERYONE.

And no that doesn’t mean that all of the characters listed above are innocent of the insane bloodshed that occurs in any of the Scream films (that would be a spoiler, and I wouldn’t dare!), but do the math: not all of those people are killers.

No, some of them are just the sweet denizens of Woodsboro, every horror fan’s dream town.

It’s also their worst nightmare, and that’s kind of the point I think: all of this stops being fun when it becomes real. And in Woodsboro, it has a tendency to become real.

That’s why Scream‘s heroine, Sidney Prescott, is not a horror film nut: her life is (literally and figuratively) a horror movie, and she’s sick of it.

I’ve heard that from people before: “why would I watch horror movies? My life is close enough to one.” I’ve got to admit that mine is not, and were it so, maybe I wouldn’t love horror films so much.

That’s the extent of the Scream franchise’s condemnation: a simple observation that all of this is bloody good fun unless it becomes bloody real.

And I think that’s fair.

It’s also an insanely smart formula, because it allows us horror geeks to bask in the Moving Trivia Game that is the Scream franchise, while still getting the catharsis we crave via a heroine who is very much not in on the joke.

Or, rather, to her it’s not a joke.

Hers is a classic survival story, a female hero’s journey, and because it’s buried in a burrito of self-referential horror geekdom, it’s that much more satisfying for it.

So, no, Scream doesn’t hate horror fans.

It’s basically paying lip service.

But what about the Stab movies you ask?

Ah, yes, Stab…the fictional franchise of horror films that exist only within the Scream universe.

Sure, there’s something perverse about Stab within the context of Scream…because the plot of the Stab movies revolves around the real-life tragedy that befell Sidney Prescott and all of her friends during the original Scream movie (real life to the Scream films, you see…a movie about a movie within a movie…yee-ouch!)

So the second (and more important) reason Woodsboro could never exist is because of their populaces’ ritualistic devotion to the Stab franchise.

In our flesh and blood world, an exploitation movie capitalizing on the sad and violent deaths of several American youths would never be so widely embraced, ESPECIALLY in the town that said atrocity occurred.

In SCREAM, not only do they embrace the Stab films, but they geek out about them, like any other horror movie franchise.

So is that the issue that so many critics have with the Scream franchise? That it’s kow-towing to the idea that horror fans (i.e. the whole town of Woodsboro) can’t tell the difference between reality and fiction?

Because I’d argue they got that bit all wrong.

It’s not that the kids in Woodsboro can’t tell the difference: it’s that they can. They can enjoy the Stab movies because they are movies; they might be based in fact, but they will never be fact (one kid in Scream 4 even bemoans how “Stab 5 was the worst one, because it had time travel”).

No, they get it.

It’s the world’s censors (particular the rabble-rowsing Christian Coalition of the eighties and nineties) that don’t.

Horror fans can tell the difference.

Psychotics can’t, whether they be rabid horror fanatics, or religious wackos, inspired by equally ludicrously themed media (in particular, a Book).

No, Scream is not attacking any one fantasy.

It’s attacking anyone’s inability to tell the difference.

In fact, I would take that one step further and say that Scream opens up a can of worms on a very interesting debate about a culture’s mental health.

Statistically speaking, it is free first world countries that produce the majority of the world’s sick media: horror movies, and pornos, and all manner of general paracinematic smut. Yet these countries are far and away safer places to live than their more conservative, oppressive, not free, religiously mind-warped sibling countries (who, incidentally, don’t make that many horror movies).

The correlation between violent media and real-world violence clearly does not indict violent media, then: quite the opposite.

You could argue that countries repressed of the ability to produce violent cinema are the ones with a citizenship more likely to suffer real life bloodshed.

But there’s a fault even in that line of thinking: that would suggest that people only make (and consume) violent movies to sate some sort of bloodshed within themselves.

That all of us horror fans are secretly sadists, and that we’ve found a culturally convenient way to sate our inhuman appetites.

I think that’s bullshit. I think violent media is sort of understudied (save for  “causal” studies). Who knows why we love the screwed up shit we love: I think Aristotle was onto something with his theories on dramatic catharsis (clearly), but it’s limited in that it doesn’t take into account the mass consumption of low-grade, bottom-of-the-barrel gut bucket cinema.

His theories on catharsis required that it was the skill of a playwright’s drama that was encouraging feelings that in turn created stress, and then neutralized it (sort of like a cigarette fiend claiming it’s the cigarettes that reduce their stress…and not admitting that the addiction creates that stress to begin with).

So what about media made by entertainers who aren’t skilled dramatists, but are skilled special effects artists?

What happens when sheer volume of blood drowns sheer volume of plot? Does the grand guignol abide by rules of catharsis?

My point is not to suggest that mass consumption of horror cinema is abnormal: it’s only to suggest that it might mean more than the “catharsis” fanatics, or the religious wingnuts, would have you believe.

True, too, the only way you can tell if someone is truly abnormal is not what they watch, but how they react to it.

So, for example, when D.W. Griffith released Birth of a Nation onto an early American culture, it was not violent media per se that was diseased: it was the country that made and consumed the film.

That movie had the power to resuscitate the Ku Klux Klan, but it didn’t do it in a vacuum: it exposed a core perversion at the heart of the American experience: namely, stupidity and racism.

I submit for the consideration of the reader that a movie could not have that kind of profound effect now, because we are by and large a more intelligent culture today. We are a nation of Sidneys, and not her deranged psycho-killer-stalker boyfriends.

And were a movie ever to be released that did posses the same sort of inspirational power of Birth of a Nation, it would expose a societal disease that existed long before (and far apart from) the invention of art and media.

It’s people that are screwed up, and those screwy people by-and-large don’t make successful movies.

Because it’s hard to be successful when you’re an ass hole (or, perhaps, out of your mind).

Those people also tend to make for shit artists (see the above sentence for the reasoning), and it’s hard enough to make it in this world as a good artist, much less a shitty one.

As to people being inspired by violent media (demand-side psycho-babble, a opposed to the supply-side we just chewed through), I’d say that’s a bunch of bullshit too.

Because Charlie Manson wasn’t inspired by Herschell Gordon Lewis movies.

If he was inspired by anything media-related, it was The Beatles.

And that’s just goddamn nutty.

Not a sermon, just a thought.

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by Sean Collins-Smith

The things in this world that give me goosebumps aren’t exactly myriad.

Sure, if I chow down on a particularly impressive piece of peanut butter fudge or really, really get into Airplanes pt. 2 (featuring Eminem and Hayley Williams), my arms tend to get bumpier than the crappy streets in downtown Richmond.

But it takes something really special to make this happen when I’m in a room filled with moviegoers. Something like, say, the newly released trailer of Super 8.

It’s old school Spielbergian: awe-inspiring, chill-inducing, middle-America discovery story full of familiar familial fluffiness. (Note: fluffy isn’t derogatory but merely an adjective to compare Super 8 to the hardened ways of, say, Saw 8.)

Oh yeah, and because J.J. Abrams is directing, it’s gonna be at once dark, hip, scrumptiously sci-fi-ish.

It was the best part of seeing Battle: LA in theaters. (Sorry, Aaron Eckhart, your chiseled jaw isn’t quite as amazing as a Spielberg/J.J. Abrams collaboration).

Personally, I can’t wait. They had me hooked when they released that courageously cryptic trailer 10 months ago that only showed us an explosive train wreck and cut to black mere moments before we could see the super-sized monstrosity breaking free of its transportation. (I distinctly remember hearing people in the theater screaming “WHAT???” which prompted me to rush in screaming, perhaps in defense, “AWESOME!!!”)

But let’s use this as a springboard for something else: how come most trailers aren’t that great? Surely it has to do with the fact that, for the most part, a lot of things just aren’t. Whatever the piece of entertainment, it takes a certain skill set to set something apart from the crowd.

And trailers are no exception. 90 percent of ‘em are garbage, and the 10 percent that seem like they aren’t usually owe it to the actors or the directors attached to them. “Ah, that trailer wasn’t anything special, but Tom Hanks/Will Smith/Sasha Grey is usually in good films, so I’ll give it the benefit of the doubt”. Our love for the participants blind us to the rather pedestrian nature of it all.

Except when they’re actually good. I mean, goosebumps-giving, erection-incuding good. (Lookin’ at you, Sasha Grey! Sorry, just saw The Girlfriend Experience, and boyyyy oh boy.)

I remember around September, there were some really freakin good trailers around. And I found that there was sort of a link between them all: every one of them had killer music (not necessarily action packed, but fresh), interesting images and a certain restraint – they didn’t give everything away.

First example: The Social Network

I remember first seeing this trailer and falling in love with it immediately. The use of “Creep” as sung by a chorus of children more than lives up to its name, especially as used to tell a story of greed, betrayal and creepy social communication in the 21st century.

Combine that with a great mix of dialogue and images, and you’ve got a trailer that’s been viewed over 5 million times on YouTube (around 4 million of those were me). I’d argue a great trailer is as powerful as any 90 minute film, and this one is just that for me: it seemingly has that key 3-act structure complete with a great climax (Sasha? oh wait…) when Eduardo screams “Mark!!!!!” and subsequently smashes his lappy to smithereens. (You also gotta know that’s Aaron Sorkin mutilating his much-maligned image of the internet in a fit of emotional catharsis.)

More than anything, though, a good trailer holds all the keys to making a movie succeed or fail. Before The Social Network‘s full trailer was released, it was seen, with idiotic snickering, as The Facebook Movie and nothing more: a way for Hollywood to mooch off the 500 million users of the networking site by getting them to come to the theater and watch their computer savior get born.

I think this trailer changed all that. It’s classy, edgy and sets the tone with utter perfection: this isn’t some tale of a kid who couldn’t connect to his parents and therefore decided to connect to the rest of the world. It isn’t sophomoric, it’s subtle.

Not to mention infinitely interesting.

As another example of a great trailer, let’s check out Inception.

The jury is seemingly out on whether or not the film will remain as heralded as it was when it stormed the screen (the erosion has already begun, so I’m thinking not), but I’ll always have a soft spot for the trailer.

It not only gets across the sorta-outlandish concept (incept? LOL!), but it refuses to give away most of the film. The music is thoroughly kick-ass (Hans Zimmer, you’re the man!) and the images are spectacular.

I think what most trailers need is L-O-V-E LOVE. Not some hack whose job it is to create interest with a homogenized bastardization of a trailer that shows explosions and corny dialogue in an effort to grab the 70 percent of the public who have come to expect that as the norm.

No, trailers need the visionaries who volunteer their time to make the advertising as original as the films they craft. So where we’d normally get cookie-cutter crap for an Inception trailer, we get a Christopher Nolan-approved masterpiece of marketing which is purposefully enigmatic and proudly energetic: it has a magnificently slow build that gives way to booming music and truly spectacular visuals.

Can you imagine the same hype that surrounded Inception happening had the trailer not been as successfully ambiguous as it was? Sure, Leonard DiCaprio’s God-carved mug helps make the proceedings handsome and Nolan had The Dark Knight under his belt, but all that contributes in as much as it gets the fan-boys and -girls there. The trailer is what the masses eat up, and this one was perfection.

Let’s backtrack and look at what preceded these trailers:

The Social Network (Teaser)

Its worth noting that the top two comments on this trailer are “Oh my fucking god, this trailer actually gave me chills” and “I always get chills watching this trailer”.

Why? Because it’s fresh, it’s exciting, it’s different. I can honestly say I’ve never seen a trailer like this before.

Which is a crazy kind of amazing, considering the face value: all it is are a bunch of words with speech coming under them. But the format stems from our existence in the 21st century: everyone and their mother knows the format of instant messaging, whether it’s on a smart phone, AIM or facebook messaging. And that not only makes this trailer rather awesome, but wickedly recognizable.

How about that slow build we mentioned earlier – it’s here in spades. It slowly goes from being interesting to engaging to downright scary. And some great lines are there, too – among my favorites “The internet’s not written in pencil, Mark, it’s written in ink.” and “We have groupies.”

Hot damn, we’ve got ourselves the Most Plain and Blank original and downright sexy trailer of all time.

OK, maybe that’s taking it too far. How about the teaser for Inception?

I think it’s a great teaser (the music gets a little annoying at the end there), complete with a quarter dose of what made the official Inception trailer so exciting: a dollop of concept explanation, really freakin’ cool images (that hallway fight scene remains, for me, the best scene of the film) and DiCaprio’s menacing thousand yard stares.

Never gets old.

There’s one more trailer I want to showcase, and perhaps not coincidentally, it’s another David Fincher one: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.

To me, it embodies something that all great trailers do: a flawless mix of sound and sight. Every rhyme and verse coincides with the music, and the effect is something akin to visual poetry. (Plus, it doesn’t hurt that Cate Blanchett and Brad Pitt are some pretty people.)

So what do you think? Am I placing too much emphasis on trailers? Or can they be works of art just like the entirety of a film?

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By Michael L

It’s that time again.

The time where we turn the humanities into a sporting event, the Superbowl of movie-dom; the beer guzzling, finger-lickin, nacho-wolfin’ Oscars, baby!

If only.

So that last part’s just wishful thinking: the Oscars are way too classy in their act of competition to delineate into greasy palmed keg stands (a suit and tie and a glass of chianti are more appropriate).

I share in Marlon Brando’s opinion that the Oscars are sort of silly in premise, as the arts aren’t meant to be competitive.

In premise.

Because, in actuality, I love the Oscars, and I’m not sure any warm-blooded, self-proclaimed cinephile could really not love the Oscars.

Salon.com has a great slideshow up right now, the Top Ten Oscars Moments, and I urge everyone to go and watch it. There you’ll find Luise Fletcher tearfully signing to her deaf parents that they are witnessing her accomplishing her dream; Michael Moore thunderously decrying George W. Bush from the victor’s podium; Tom Hanks beautifully eulogizing those who have died from the AIDs epidemic, etc etc.

And it is those singular, powerful moments, of our talent rising beyond the limitations of skill alone, emerging Phoenix-like into the sphere of American demi-gods, that make the whole shebang worth it.

I love movies, and I love mythology. Beyond just a skull-cracking sporting event for movie geeks, the Oscars are where the two become one: where our movies and our movie stars are memorialized into the pop-culture cult of the personality; where all pompous art and glossy entertainments are burned forever into the retina of the American psyche.

And if times are shit right now, if the flagrant display of wealth and gorgeousity seem gratuitous and slightly off-putting, I take solace in the idea that this year is also a year for the Young: Natalie Portman seems poised to dance her way into Oscar history, and even if Jesse Eisenberg cedes a Best Actor Oscar to (an enormously talented) Colin Forth, it’s his mug plastered all over this year’s money horse, The Social Network (the story of a brilliant-punk-revolutionary computer geek who also happens to be the youngest billionaire in the world).

And little Hailee Steinfeld…this whole thing’s worth watching just for her. Speaking of dreams coming true, it’s all the more potent when the dreamer is at the ripest age to dream. Should she win, we’ll be witnessing something of a personal miracle.

So anyway…yeah, I think the Oscars are pretty cool.

So let’s talk predictions, shall we?

Below are my pre-pre-predictions for tonight (biased, maybe, because I missed out on a few big ones, ala 127 Hours, Winter’s Bone, and The King’s Speech, MY BAD), and I urge you to leave your predictions too.

Without further ado:

•    Best Picture – Social Network (though EW seems to think it’ll go to King’s Speech, making this old vs young thing explicit…still, all ten are pretty wonderful films, right? Tarantino’s favorite film of ’10 was Toy Story 3…about time we eliminate the training wheels of the “best animated category”, eh?)
•    Best Director – David Fincher (been deserving this for about ten years now, methinks)
•    Best Actor – Colin Firth (though, once more, I wouldn’t mind seeing Eisenberg take it; and I honestly wouldn’t mind watching James Franco take it either, if not just because I love the idea of the host also winning one of the most coveted awards…talk about a good night. And also, who doesn’t want to watch James Franco take it?)

What you want Natalie? To drink and fight!

•    Best Actress – Natalie Portman (although Annette Bening is as wonderful in the Kids Are All Right as Portman is in Black Swan…again, though, I think the pop-culture gods of American myth are wet for Natalie right now, making her the “holy shit moment” of a generation…and everyone wants to watch her take it (that’s not appropriate, stop it!))
•    Best Supporting Actor – Christian Bale (he’s live-wire energy made flesh in The Fighter; that’s not even a performance, that’s a Becoming)
•    Best Supporting Actress – Hailee Steinfeld (go, Hailee, go!)
•    Best Adapted Screenplay – Aaron Sorkin (go, Aaron, go!)
•    Best Original Screenplay – David Seidier (go, David, go!)
•    Best Original Score – Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross (if Mr. Nine Inch Nails himself wins an Oscar tonight, I’ll shit my pants from happy)

I’m actually not so sure about the Best Supporting Actress thing, because both of the women up for nomination from The Fighter pretty much ruled: Melissa Leo channeling Little Mermaid Ursula levels of evil, and thus years of messed-up family matriarchs courtesy the cult of John Waters, and Amy Adams virtually crafting Wahlburg’s character’s spine through her hard eyes and miles of legs…but that’s sort of how I feel about every category, I guess.

Should anyone win, they clearly deserve it, because more than a competition, this really is a celebration: about our human ability, not for divisiveness and destruction, but for collaboration and creation.

Now, if only it weren’t drowning in commercials, I could say all of that and not feel the creep of ironic distaste shuffling up my spine…

Anyway,  tonight, people!

Glue your ass to your couch and prepare to dream other’s dreams, electric…and because you aren’t actually there, screw the tie and chianti: it’s beer and nachos night, baby, Oscars 2011 style!

EDIT: Originally, this article said the Oscars were Monday night. Not only was that statement full of lies and deceit, it was also what we’ll classify as a big bleeding brain fart. The Oscars clearly are tonight, Sunday, February 27th.

I apologize for any confusion/inconvenience, and will appropriately flagellate myself…

Anyway, enjoy the show!

-ML

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By Michael L

There is a scene early on in the film Sunrise where “The Man” goes to meet the “City Woman” in the marsh. The camera slinks along smoothly through tall grass and tangled brush, coming to a clearing where the City Woman stands, the moon luminous in the great inky basin above. Such a scene is testament to the sheer visual brilliance of its creator, F.W. Murnau, a man renowned as one of the forerunners of Germany’s Expressionistic period, his oeuvre a stronghold of visual excellence. However, if cinema is to be regarded as more than just a visual conquest, than a film must be discussed on a contextual level as well. It is at this level that the film Sunrise will be considered. For all of its lush and provocative visuals, there lurks a flawed and seemingly shallow set of sexual politics beneath, guilty most of all for promoting negative gender stereotypes. Despite this claim, when read contextually with Murnau’s horror masterpiece, Nosferatu, a more complicated picture emerges; a reading both fascinating and distressing, where men are rendered monsters, and women exist to purge shadows, much the same as the rising sun.

Sunrise begins with a character known simply as “The Man,” who, despite several years of blissful marriage to a pretty young woman known only as “The Wife,” has found himself in the middle of a scandalous love affair with the “City Woman.” The logic behind such an affair isn’t addressed; we only know that the City Woman is a vamp, a spider of sexual prowess with only one purpose: to disrupt the otherwise ideal marriage between The Man and The Wife. Most disheartening of all, it is revealed that the young couple have recently had a baby, whom the Man neglects as much as the Wife for the City Woman. Our distressingly unsympathetic hero sneaks out one night to meet the City Woman by the marsh (the lush scene I described earlier), and it is here that she suggests to him that he should murder his wife so the two can escape to the city together.

Thus, the film’s plot is charted: he deliberately takes his wife on a “date” in the middle of the lake where he plans on drowning her, but when he approaches her, arms extended in a threatening gesture, he remembers his love for this woman. Desperate and ashamed, he returns her to the dock, where he proceeds to follow her into the city until she takes him back; the two renew their vows by watching a wedding ceremony, where the point is reiterated: it is the husband’s duty to protect his wife from harm, not inflict it on her. Through the husband’s shame and guilt, he sheds his murderous and adulterous shadow self, becoming once more the care free man she married, and the two proceed to indulge in all kinds of spirited and romantic things until the end of the picture (where a violent storm threatens the life of The Wife much the same way The Man did; however, she does not drown, and the two presumably live forever onward in marital bliss).

Which all sounds fine and good, to a point: however, in the film’s aloof and carefree embrace of human redemption, it skips past a dangerous and unforgivable mark: the Man is more than willing to kill his wife for a very long time. It is true that he at first reacts to the City Woman’s suggestion violently, but eventually she lulls him into believing that the murder of his young bride (and the mother of his child) is a great plan. He goes home, sleeps on it, awakens, and still thinks it is a good idea. He even sees his wife, asks her if she wants to go on a date (which will ultimately result in her death), and watches her react with an extraordinary ecstasy (after all, this is the only attention he’s given her in months, presumably); tragic, because the woman looks so happy to be going on a date with him, like a teenage girl who has been called pretty for the first time. And yet, he is still undeterred in his plan to murder her, only mildly guilty. It isn’t until he has his hands out, ready to push The Wife into the lake, that he more or less chickens out.

"The Man" attempts to murder "The Wife"

Thus, this isn’t the story of a man who foolishly and recklessly indulges in an affair, before remembering the true values in life and is thus redeemed; this is the story of a potential murderer, a man too stupid and shallow to recognize any value of human life in its most rudimentary sense, aside from the pleasure it can provide him. He sees the Wife through a possessive lens (indicative of the scene where he threatens the man in the barbershop who is flirting with her, despite nearly killing her hours before), an object that is ultimately a less attractive object than the City Woman, presumably because the Wife is boring now that they have had a child. It is possible that, during the second half of the film, the Man suddenly sees the Wife as more attractive because living happily ever after with her cures him of the guilt of being a potential murderer: living with his would be victim cleanses him of the sin, whereas life with the City Woman would result in the unattractive and miserable lifestyle of being a guilty murderer.

Thus, the male protagonist of the film is a shallow, selfish wreck of a human being, which would be entirely acceptable if the film were to treat him as such, and provide some kind of alternative by which his incompetence could be gauged. However, the two women in the film do not provide a safe barometer of his character, because they are not even individuals. Rather, they are simply parts of an equation: they are causal elements of his character; they’re parts only work in conjecture with his character and its obscenity, and it is in this light that I find most offensive about the film.

For starters, “The Wife,” isn’t even granted any individuality in name or gender identification, as “The Man” is. She’s not “The Woman,” she is simply his wife, an extension of his character, and is only seen through that lens. She is attributed with desirable characteristics, rather than a character: she is attractive, she is obedient, she makes the Man dinner, and in her spare time feeds the chickens and looks after the baby. She is a laundry list of agreeable traits with a pretty face, dressed in white to cement her status as the “good” girl; however, that works much the same way as Mammy is the “good slave” in Gone With the Wind: obedient, cheerful, and endlessly supportive of the main character; thus, a “good” person.

"The Wife" - A Madonna

However, this “good” person is necessarily beneath us, and we view them with a kind of empathy stemming from pity, yet we applaud their obedience. It is in the act of forgiving her murderous husband that the Wife is illustrated as truly virtuous; however, her virtue is little more than blind, passive compliance. There is no romance in this, only a terrifying vision of a “good” woman whose only real character is in her undying devotion to her husband, even after he cheats on her and attempts to kill her. If she had any brains, she’d go home, grab the baby, and get out of Germany as fast as possible (only then, she’d be a poor, single mother, and the kind of impoverished lifestyle that might lead to in the 1920s is close to unimaginable; therein lies the tragedy of the film, The Wife is pretty much stuck with The Man, so they better make it work, even if that means forgiving all his sins; not virtue, simple pragmatism).

However, as far as plot construction goes (and really, the plot here is simply the man’s roller coaster journey from “bad” to “good”), “The Wife” provides the positive alternative (a horrifying vision of a fascist relationship); The City Woman, on the other end, represents evil incarnate; the temptress who reduces an otherwise superb man to his knees. In the magical world of Sunrise, we are only given two visions of women: one is the loyal, obedient “good” wife. The other, far more sinister and threatening, is the “bad” woman, the whorish temptress.  She isn’t even given the benefit of a list of characteristics; she’s given one characteristic, and its that of the Black Widow; she wants to ensnare this man, and ruin him. The logic of her position in the film is never explored, because it isn’t based in reality: how could it be? The Man isn’t rich, he’s a poor farmer, and he’s already married and with child. What does the City Woman want with him? But that’s irrelevant, because this is The Man’s movie, and once more, the women only exist to serve his character. While the “good” girl’s sexuality exists to serve him, the “bad” City Woman’s sexuality serves as nothing more than a trap, to ensnare wayward souls (turning the “song of two humans” into a siren song).

What are we learning? Women exist either as slaves or as whores, and men are ultimately stupid, abominable caricatures of the kind of machismo they impose on their gender.

Jean-Luc Godard, the influential visionary of the French New Wave, is quoted as saying that the best way to criticize a film is to make another one. Interestingly enough, the film most qualified to criticize the sexual politics at play in Sunrise would be another silent film, made five years earlier in Germany, also helmed by F.W.Murnau. In a way, it’s a similar set-up: the story of an abysmal kind of man, and his temptation at the hands of a woman. Only this figure of grotesque maleness has a physical demeanor that matches the monstrosity inside; a livid, pale face, eyes bulging black holes, fingers akin to reptilian talons.

Enter Murnau’s Nosferatu. A landmark in Expressionistic cinema and perhaps the most influential vampire film ever made, it is a subtle retelling of the Bram Stoker novel, Dracula (or, perhaps, not so subtle: the film was the focus of a serious lawsuit between the Stoker estate and the film’s producers, one that resulted in all copies of the film being destroyed; fortunately, a few copies survived, and the film’s after-life has been far more favorable).

What a man, what a man, what a mighty fine man...

The story involves a real estate agent named Thomas Hutter traveling to the Carpathian Mountains to conduct a deal with the mysterious Count Orlok. Turns out Orlok is a vampire keen on taking up property in Germany; he shows up in a boat full of dead crew, and hundreds of black rats carrying the Plague. The real estate agent’s wife, Ellen, reads The Book Of Vampires, even though Thomas is rather adamant about her not reading it. Within its pages, she learns the secret of destroying the vampire and the plague: a pure woman must seduce the vampire, basically keeping him preoccupied with the promises of her blood until the sun rises (the vampire in the film being the first allergic to the sun). This sets the stage for the film’s famous finale, where Ellen opens her window at night, tantalizing the rodent-like Orlok; she climbs into bed, and he climbs the staircase to her room, razor-like fingers accentuated in the creeping shadow. He leans down to suck her blood, and cannot help himself but to keep sucking, even as the sun rises; ultimately, its rays destroy the vampire, and the plague is cured (an unavoidable comparison must be drawn here: both films Sunrise and Nosferatu end with the promises of the rising sun, effectively scrubbing the world clean of sin, and restoring in it a sense of hope).

Similarly to Sunrise, Nosferatu deals with the issue of a woman using her sexuality to destroy a man; however, she does not appear in the same light as the City Woman, because Ellen isn’t a whore. In fact, it is important to note that Ellen is defined as the “good” girl, though not by the same criteria that defines and constrains “The Wife.” If Thomas Hutter were married to the Wife from Sunrise, Germany would be doomed, because unlike the resourceful Ellen, The Wife would never disobey her husband and read the Book of Vampires, wherein lay the secrets to Orlok’s destruction. Rather, she is a synthesis of the two women in Sunrise: the good girl turned temptress, using her sexuality to effectively eliminate an evil. By playing with two stiff stereotypical ideas of women and combining them, Murnau effectively illustrates a very interesting character in Ellen, one who is aware of the power of her sexuality and ultimately uses it as a defensive weapon. Strange, then, that this initially complex vision of a woman would be reduced five years later to the stiff, card board cut-outs in Sunrise.

Nosferatu's Ellen: Your Madonna is a whore

More interesting, perhaps, is Murnau’s vision of maleness. In both films, we are presented with a male character of extreme incompetence: the Man from Sunrise is the Fool of the movie (for the reasons mentioned above), and Thomas Hutter cannot defeat the vampire, presumably because he is not a woman.

However, even the physical detail of gender seems inconsequential to the vampire in Nosferatu: sex has nothing to do with whether or not Orlok will make one his victim, as is illustrated by the fact that Hutter awakens in Orlok’s castle with vampire bites in his neck. In this light, Hutter’s incompetence is not that he is not a woman, for he has the power to seduce the vampire all the same. It is simply that he is not comfortable enough with his sexuality to seduce the male vampire: he is even seen reading from the Book of Vampires, so he must have stumbled upon that passage, and negated it; the fact that it mentions the hero must be a woman pure of heart seems arbitrary, considering the vampire attacks and is attracted to males equally (and, as Murnau was a closeted homosexual, surely the vampire’s equalitarian tastes would not have escaped him). Perhaps, then, a more accurate interpretation lies in the idea that Hutter’s physical gender has nothing to do with his inability to destroy the vampire at all: he is simply not “pure of heart,” the way a woman is.

Orlok, stiff for the boys and the girls

This idealization of women is an interesting comment, particularly in light of their less than glamorous roles in Sunrise. However, by comparison, all of his male characters are brutish, ridden with sin and guilt, and are ultimately not as “pure” as his women (even if that pureness involves a stupid kind of submission, ala Sunrise; a trait arguably superior to the reckless nature of the husband). Perhaps this complicated rendition of sex politics (and interesting idealization of women, especially when compared to men) is somehow linked to Mernau’s own sexuality. A reading of James Whales’ Frankenstein pictures (released about ten years after Nosferatu) could perhaps shed light on the matter. Whales (another closeted homosexual director of the time) depicted the monster as violently troubled, horrific to society and instilled with a great sense of shame at being alive, albeit through no fault of his own: his nature was simply ingrained to him by his God, Dr. Frankenstein. This reading could perhaps be used to understand why Murnau paints his men as such shameful, guilty creatures; a reflection, maybe, of the shame and guilt instilled by societal mores in regards to his own sexuality. In contrast to his women, who are seen as pure at heart and even idyllic, his men are consumed by guilt and troubled by secret desires that ultimately destroy them.

Which brings us to Murnau’s interpretation of the vampire. Contrary to almost all vampire literature, in which the vampire is presented as a desirable object of sexual ferocity (successfully aligning vampirism with the rape myth), Count Orlok is a despicable creature, rodent like and detestable. Whereas Bela Lugosi owns the night as Dracula, seducing women with his hypnotic gaze, Orlok hides in the dark, surrounded by filthy rats and other scum. It is worth noting that in Bram Stoker’s book, the vampire appeals to his female victims in a way that Orlok cannot: he acts as seducer, waiting outside of their windows for the women to invite him inside: they, in turn, are whorish temptresses (similar to the City Woman), who effectively invite what happens to them, and thus deserve to be vampires and die with a stake through the heart (again, an effectively gruesome twist on the already gruesome rape myth).

Contrarily, Murnau’s vampire is so atrocious as to be incapable of seduction. His victims fall prey to the sheer horror of his demeanor, rendered immobile with fear as opposed to lust: furthermore, when he is finally tempted by a woman to enter her room and feast of her blood, it results in his demise and her victory over him. In a way, this makes Orlok Murnau’s loudest interpretation of the male character: a figure so shameful and twisted that he is rendered to hiding in the dark as a monster. His bites are not the luscious sex acts of other vampires, rather quick, hidden violences; and when he finally has the opportunity to act in an intimate sexual way (i.e. being seduced into another’s room), it kills him.

A comparison is undeniable: Orlok and the Man have more in common with each other than with Hutter, both monstrous caricatures of maleness destroyed (or nearly so, in the case of the Man) by temptation. This puts the City Woman in a more traditional sense of “Vampire,” than Orlok, who, rather than acting as seducer, falls victim to lust (one can only imagine the horrible fate that would have awaited Orlok had the City Woman invited him into her room, and not Ellen).

The City Woman, a different kind of vampire

In that light, the apparent misogynistic simplifications of the female characters in Sunrise takes on deeper meaning: for, if read in concordance with Nosferatu, it would appear that the role of temptress is a very special role indeed, for it exposes the monster to the sun. In Nosferatu, the temptress literally kills the monster, restoring order and balance to the world; and in Sunrise, it takes the City Woman and her tempting to bring out the monster lurking inside of the Man, to be effectively exorcised later by the good Wife.

In conclusion, the films of F.W. Murnau present a complicated portrayal of sexual politics, often times distressing but never dull, where men are mutated slaves of desire, and women are vampire hunters, solely possessing the ability to purge the monster through their purity of heart. And, of course, whatever damage the two sexes incur upon each other will be righted eventually, when the sun rises and the world is once again washed clean of guilt and sin.

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By Sean Collins-Smith

We all remember the excitement that preceded the first X-Men. When it finally arrived, it was good – not great – but the most important thing was that it was a great set up for a sequel. It properly introduced all the necessary characters, left everything wide open for a followup, and gave us some good actors to latch on to.

And then X-Men 2: X-Men United stormed the scene, and it was just plain awesome.

Magnificent set pieces (it even OPENS with one…Nightcrawler destroying the White House Secret Service while an operatic soundtrack booms in the background? Yes, please!), a topical story (director Bryan Singer, himself gay, has been a well known advocate for gay rights – and the struggle for Mutant Rights in his films is arrestingly analogous) and the introduction of new, strong characters to interact with the older ones was just plain brilliant.

I honestly can’t pick a favorite scene, because they’re all so great: the aforementioned first attack on the White House, the attack on Professor Xavier’s Mutant School (Wolverine straight dominated a least a million men), or how about Magneto’s ingenious escape from his plastic jail cell? All of X2 was expertly executed to be a fun non-dumb way to have a great time at a Summer Film, and for a while, it was the number one rated comic book film on Rotten Tomatoes (until a little film called The Dark Knight came around).

And then Singer attached to Superman Returns, Brett “Rush Hour 3″ Ratner filled his shoes for X-Men 3: The Last Stand, and we got a diarrhetic disaster instead of a proper finale. Personally, I kind of like to pretend The Last Stand never happened, approaching it instead as kind of a Matrix-y made-up thing that people say happened but I truly know didn’t.

So now, in an effort to reverse the misdeed caused by that bastard Brett, we get X-Men: First Class. And what do ya know, it’s directed by a talented director (Matthew Vaughn, Kick-Ass) and produced by none other than X/X-2 director Bryan Singer. (He was originally set to direct, but we can’t get everything I suppose…)

The trailer looks badass, and without further ado, I present it here to you! Chime in with your thoughts below.

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By Michael L

I like the notion that movies are a living unconscious; our dreams, captured and displayed on the screen for all to see.

I think most people would agree that the “best” movies are the movies that most accurately capture the dreams of the greatest number of people. It’s similar to the greatest common denominator concept in math: if you take the dreams your movie conveys and divide it by the dreams of your audience, the ultimate “success” of the movie will depend on the height of that number.

So, by that token, we’re all taken by The Godfather and The Shawshank Redemption: we see ourselves in those pictures. We’re taken by Tim Robbins as an innocent Christ bringing salvation to the souls of the damned, before escaping triumphantly in the rain; we hope there’s some of Marlon Brando’s warmth in ourselves, along with his tough-as-nails decision making abilities.

We pursue these narratives in the dark, and we find them enlightening, maybe comforting, maybe even self-assuring.

I’m reminded of Anthony Hopkins as the titular character in Oliver Stone’s Nixon, staring at a portrait of JFK.

“When they look at you, they see what they want to be,” he sighs. “When they look at me, they see what they are.”

Great, classical dramas are our handsome Democratic president, residing over Camelot, gracefully accepting responsibility in the wake of the Bay of Pigs disaster, shot down before his prime.

He’s Superman; he’s American Jesus.

Horror films are his shorter, older, decidedly less handsome, snarky shadow self – the conservative behind Watergate, who escalated the Vietnam War, who lied on television, who generally cheated and fudged his way through the political world.

When we look at JFK, we see what we’d love to someday be.

When we look at Nixon…dear Christ, could you imagine if someone recorded every conversation you ever had for six years?

A national horror story, for sure.

This is not to cop-out Richard Nixon, or to patronize the horror film, only to say that horror is decidedly more awkward; it’s more open and vulnerable, and definitely more hated than the Great American Dramas.

I’m writing this basically in response to a plethora of reviews I read for Adam Green’s Frozen on Netflix, where I had the horrible, sinking realization that I just might be out of my mind.

I saw the film, reviewed it, and praised it to high heaven. I thought it was moving, revealing of parts of my personality that had sort of become dormant; I was goddamn in love with it. It made we want to go outside and kiss sunshine, and in a positive way (much the opposite of Roger Ebert’s declaration that he wanted to go outside after infamously panning the 2003 iteration of Texas Chainsaw Massacre, awarding it the dreaded ZERO out of 4 stars).

But, reading these reviews (and there a few hundred on Netflix), most people had the same complaints: they thought the film was stupid, that the characters were un-likeable (pray, they wanted them to die), that the situation was far too unrealistic to even warrant their suspension of disbelief, and that all of the decisions the characters made were dumb.

And thusly, this film I found so elegant and soul wrenching was just to them a bleeding fart of a film.

What’s worse, I’m defenseless against all of those criticisms.

I’m sure the premise is unrealistic (I’m a city-suburbs kid, and haven’t spent much time at ski resorts; I’m like Alice Cooper, coming from Detroit and thinking chickens could fly, before throwing one into a drugged up anti-hippie crowd, who quickly ripped the thing to pieces).

Maybe this would never happen; maybe these kids are annoying; maybe the decisions they make are clearly the wrong ones; worse (and this is a SPOILER), maybe there’s no way in hell blood-thirsty wolves would roam the ski slopes at night, waiting to eat the flesh off your ass if you fall out of the ski lift.

So, when you put it that way, maybe the film doesn’t work at all.

But let’s talk about dreams again.

The scariest dreams I’ve had recently were out of their damn minds.

In one, I was both Heath Ledger’s Joker and Vincent Price’s son at the same time.

Turned out, Price was a womanizer and violent alcoholic, and I was working children’s birthday parties. He was keeping S&M chicks with ripped stockings on dog leashes; I was blowing up animal balloons in terrified childrens’ faces (I was the Joker, for God’s sakes).

Somehow, Price (dad?) and I got into a huge fight, that involved muscle cars with razor sharp buzz-saws grinding away at the hoods, Molotov cocktails, shotguns, and hand grenades. We were both decked out in Joker make-up, and were duking it out in some kind of gladiator arena/graveyard of cars.

I think, in the end, he blew up my car, but I filled him with a fistfull of shotgun shells. The S&M chicks were free, and I was a disgusting, bleeding, clown of a hero.

And it was goddamn horrifying.

Another one involved me being at a Prince/Lady Gaga concert.

I met up with them backstage, and they were clearly bored by me; I pushed on my teeth in frustration, and they popped out, covering my shirt with blood; the pop royalties just rolled their eyes, and walked away.

And suddenly, I was drowning; some kind of horrible life guard who forgot how to swim, trying to save a child who was pissing blue paint from his swim trunks; somehow, after all of that, I ended up old and alone at a restaurant, looking over at my divorced wife and our children, and they all hated me.

And, again, it was horrifying.

But it sounds outrageously dumb.

So here’s my point: assuming film (at its purest) is reminiscent of dreams, I present for the jury that both are not meant to be read as strictly literal. Further, oftentimes even silly concepts can be dreamt with enough relish to make them mind-numbingly horrific.

Trust me, my dreams were scary; it wasn’t what they were, but how they were dreamt (imagine the kids who talk about “coming to class naked” nightmares; it sounds hilarious, but dreamt right, I’m sure it’s horrible).

The same is true of great horror films: it’s not that they are conceptually terrifying (or even literal, or realistic): it’s that they are dreamt with the hair on their spines standing straight up.

I think the truth about Adam Green’s Frozen is that it is horrific if you let it get to you; it’s horrible the way a nightmare is horrible. This nightmare’s the one where you’re stuck with your boyfriend and his best friend atop a ski lift.

Guilt is eating you alive: you think you’ve ruined your boyfriend’s “guy time”, and that you’ll probably end up breaking up because of that.

That guilt becomes fear: what happens if you’re stuck up here forever? What happens if the ski lift won’t start moving again, and you all freeze to death?

And that fear becomes all consuming terror, when a storm kicks in, when your boyfriend falls out, when his legs smash against the ice, when wolf howls clue you in to the fact that you are not alone on this mountain; and that, living in the darkness, there are blood thirsty wolves who are hungry.

They’re going to eat your helpless boyfriend.

He was the man you wanted to marry.

And there’s nothing you can goddamn do about it.

That’s the kind of dream that would be piss-your-pants, shit-your-jammies scary. It’s the kind of thing that you’d wake up from, and want desperately to call up your boyfriend, and hear is voice; to know that he was ok.

And then you’d leap out of bed, electrified just to be alive. And that would probably be the best day of your week, even if it was entirely unmemorable.

That’s the power of a good horror movie.

The problem is (like dreams), it works best when you’re alone with it: when it gets personal, when you let it’s magic work on you.

As soon as you share the dream, it loses its power. It becomes silly.

Horror films are the same way.

Wanna grab a few beers with friends and flip on a movie?

Don’t flip on the Great American Dramas: their effects will be diminished by the buddies and booze.

So put on a horror film.

Because when shared, the minutia of human fear becomes hilarious.

I’m not sure why that is, but it’s a fact: even The Exorcist can be funny if you’re loaded enough.

I think it’s beyond nervous laughter; it’s all out hilarity, and I think it’s because fear is such a tricky thing.

Collective nightmares (in large part) depend so much on the absurd, and absurdity is generally funny.

But there is a dark side to absurdity; everyone knows it. Horror filmmakers are obsessed with it.

I’ve said before that I think all great artists are fetishists: horror movie makers are perverts, not only about fear, but about the absurdity that so often accompanies it.

They understand that horrific experiences are often absurd. And it terrifies them.

So, again, let’s take Adam Green’s Frozen: the concept might be ludicrous on its head.

Hell, it is ludicrous, and if it somehow happened to you, you’d know it was ludicrous. Even as it was happening.

And that wouldn’t stop it from being horrifying.

It would be more horrifying, in fact, because it would feel (rightly) like the world had gone nuts.

Like everything is out of control; like God is belly laughing in Heaven, and the cosmos are high, and you are trapped in their maniacal whims.

And you just might die as collateral.

That’s scary. It’s also humiliating, degrading; it stands against everything we’re taught to believe in Sunday school, every ounce of the American dream.

I’m thinking now about the girl whose legs were chopped off in a freak accident as a result of an amusement park ride malfunctioning; that is absurd, and it’s also deeply horrifying.

The two are impossible to untangle; they can only rightly be untangled in the third person, in the movies, when we have the safety of perspective.

Hitchcock was right to declare that Psycho was a comedy; Tobe Hooper as well, stating that he thought The Texas Chain Saw Massacre was hilarious.

Both men are right, from a certain point of view, as are the kids all across the country getting piss drunk and laughing as Satan instructs little-girl Reagan to “let Jesus **** you” before plunging a crucifix into her crotch.

My God, that’s absurd.

And it really isn’t funny.

And yet, it could be.

That’s why horror’s goddamn impossible to review with any sense of certainty. It’s to assume that we’re all afraid of the same things; it’s to assume that we all have the same fears; that we’ve all had the same dreams.

Of course, how can you review anything with certainty?

Greater still, how can you create anything with certainty?

Is there anything more humiliating than having the absurdities of your fears being exploited as the absurdly funny things that they are?

Wolves? On a ski slope, are you kidding me?

But it was terrifying when I dreamt it…

I think I respect pornography, horror, and comedy the most as genres, because I think they’re the most revealing of themselves. They’re the most open and honest and easily despised by that strange, self-hating, masochistic race known as human beings. They’re the strange man recording every conversation he has for six years: he is exposed, and (rightly) hated.

But his inadequacies are by no means unique. They’re just blown up, for all of us to see, and collectively flagellate.

That’s necessary, I think; but it isn’t exactly inspirational.

(Again, not to deify Nixon, I really should get away from that analogy…)

If comedy is closely related to horror, it is by nature’s design; give the Three Stooges a chain saw, and you’d have any number of horror flicks. They are so totally related, horror based so thoroughly in maniacal sadism, that it is no mystery one of our great fears is psychopathic clowns (the Joker again).

I know it’s true, too, because I’ve seen the exact same review I’ve given Frozen (oh man, look at the character development! I cared for them, wanted them to live…it’s changed my goddamn life, yadda yadda!) to horror flicks I thought were stinkers.

A little flick called Neighbor, for instance. I saw it, didn’t like it too much, and reflected that in my (negative) review.

But I couldn’t help but feel like a huckster; I’ve seen the same review I’ve given Neighbor now attributed to Frozen by those bloodhounds on Netflix, and I think I get it: occasionally, you’re more susceptible to the dream.

Occasionally, you’re more vulnerable, particularly to the horrors of life’s absurdity.

And occasionally you think it’s hilarious, want to flip it the bird, and prove to yourself that all of this horror is just too funny.

Well, rest assured, it is.

And by the same token it really, really isn’t.

That’s the bitch of it all.

That’s the vice modern horror is trapped in.

And I’m not sure it will ever, ever make it out, so long as we’re still alive.

So, as the custodians of life’s most awkward and unpleasant dreams, I defend and admire horror filmmakers, the ones I like and the ones I don’t; and if I say I admire the porn stars next, and tell you I’m not being ironic, you will understand why.

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Original Article by Sean Collins-Smith, 1st Update by Matt Hoover

Updated on Feb. 1, 2011: So, an update from the Superman front.

Actor Henry Cavill has just been signed to play Superman in the Zack Snyder Superman movie. I don’t know much about the dude except that he has been linked to various rumors since Brett Ratner once said that he would like to direct another Superman.

He looks the part, but I will have to get back to all you Sucker Punchers out there about his acting chops. What I can say is now that he is officially tied to the project, he has some big red boots to fill, and I hope he can do it. Don’t fuck this up guys…i mean it. DON’T FUCK THIS UP!!!

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Originally posted: Oct 5, 2010 – So this could either be great news or really, really bad news.

Zack Snyder (seen above as Hugh Jackman’s brother) , visual crazy-man director of the “Dawn of the Dead” remake,  ”300″, “Watchmen”, and the recent kid’s film “Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’hoole”, has been confirmed to direct the next Superman film.

I’m entirely skeptical of him as director of this thing at first glance, but it’s hard to turn a blind eye on the others involved. First, “Inception” director Christopher Nolan – arguably the most respected mainstream filmmaker of the last 10 years – is producing. He’s got tons of experience with superhero flicks, having devoted 8 combined years of his life co-writing and directing “Batman Begins” and “The Dark Knight”, the latter of which went on to make $1 billion worldwide and garnered a Best Supporting Actor oscar for the late Heath Ledger.

Next, David S. Goyer is writing. While his directing efforts have been uhhh…not great (see: “Blade Trinity”), his stories are interesting and very dark, especially the fantastic “Dark City”. When you combine Goyer, Nolan, and Snyder, something that is at least unique has GOT to come out of this. Now the question is, can Nolan reel in Snyder’s hyper-visualized sense of filmmaking in favor of a more character-driven movie. If he can, there would be something golden here. Snyder has the possibility to bring an element of coolness to Superman that has been missing ever since the second film, directed by Richard Donner, came out three decades ago. (The most recent one didn’t do very well at the box office, even with X-Men/X-2 director Bryan Singer behind the camera).

Will “Superman” have a good chance now that Snyder and company are behind the lens? Or is the franchise doomed? Chime in!

Link: http://www.deadline.com/2010/10/zack-snyder-directing-superman/?_r=true

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And the nominations are in!

For Best Picture, we’re looking at another ten way race, this time between The Social Network, Black Swan, 127 Hours, The Kids Are All Right, True Grit, Toy Story 3, Winter’s Bone, The Fighter, The King’s Speech, and Inception.

For Best Lead Actress, the nominees are: Annette Bening (The Kids Are All Right), Nicole Kidman (Rabbit Hole), Jennifer Lawrence (Winter’s Bone), Natalie Portman (Black Swan), and Michelle Williams (Blue Valentine).

For Best Supporting Actress, the nominees are: Amy Adams (The Fighter), Helena Bonham Carter (The King’s Speech), Melissa Leo (The Fighter), Hailee Steinfeld (True Grit), and Jacki Weaver (Animal Kingdom).

For Best Lead Actor, the nominees are: Javier Bardem (Biutiful), Jesse Eisenberg (The Social Network), Colin Firth (The King’s Speech), James Franco (127 Hours), and Jeff Bridges (True Grit).

For Best Supporting Actor, the nominees are Christian Bale (The Fighter), John Hawkes (Winter’s Bone), Jeremy Renner (The Town), Mark Ruffalo (The Kids Are All Right), and Geoffrey Rush (The King’s Speech).

For Best Director, the nominees are: Darren Aronofsky (Black Swan), David O. Russell (The Fighter), Tom Hooper (The King’s Speech), David Fincher (The Social Network), and Joel and Ethan Coen (True Grit).

The nominations for Best Animated Feature are How to Train Your Dragon, The Illusionist, and Toy Story 3.

The nominees for Best Adapted Screenplay are Danny Boyle and Simon Beaufoy for 127 hours, Aaron Sorkin for The Social Network, Michael Arndt for Toy Story 3, Joel and Ethan Coen for True Grit, and Debra Granik and Anne Rosellini for Winter’s Bone.

The nominees for Best Original Screenplay are Mike Leigh (Another Year), Scott Silver and Paul Tamasy & Eric Johnson (The Fighter), Christopher Nolan (Inception), Lisa Cholodenko &Stuart Blumberg (The Kids Are All Right), and David Seidler (The King’s Speech).

Check out the official Oscars website to see a full list of nominations, including the above, as well as categories for Visual Effects, Sound Mixing, Short Films (both live action and animated), Original Soundtrack, Original Song, Makeup, Editing, Foreign Language Film, Documentary (short and feature), Costume Design, Cinematography and Art Direction.

Now, allow me to opine:

And the Oscar for Best Kiss goes too...

First of all, Trent Reznor better win an Oscar for Original Score (not only did the score to The Social Network rule, but how cool would it be if Trent Reznor won an Oscar?)

Second of all: does hosting the Oscars and being nominated for one represent a bizarre conflict of interests for wunderkin James Franco?

As Ricky Gervaisp pointed out about hosting The Golden Globes, it’s especially tough because half of the audience just lost an award. I wonder if that’s doubly true if you’re hosting and nominated; if you lose or win, does that sort of affect the show in its own way?

(I sort of doubt it though; I’m thinking James Franco is a consummate professional and should do well regardless. Plus, Catwoman herself, Anne Hathaway, will be right there with him).

Anyway, I’m not going to opine here over who’ll win what (feel free to discuss in the comments section), only to say that it’s been a good year, and that’s a pretty winning selection of movies in my opinion.

And could you get two more beautiful people to host this thing? Sheeeesh…

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Now that many of the limited release films have made their way to Richmond, VA (and other locales!), herein lies the top 10 films of last year given to you by us, the authors and pontificators of Sucker Punch Cinema! Included with some lists are reasonings behind each pick, some disappointments, and other little tidbits.

Any film chosen that has been reviewed on the site will be a link to that film’s page on Sucker Punch Cinema. Along with them are links to each author’s reviews.

Without further ado, I give you the First Annual (it can’t really be annual if you’ve only done it once, but you can Suck It American Journalist Handbook of 2010!) Sucker Punch Cinema Top 10 List!

Sean Collins-Smith (SpringsteenFan) -

(As forewarning, I’ve yet to see several critical darlings, including The Town, Black Swan, The Fighter or 127 Hours.)

1. The Social Network –  The Social Network is, by most accounts, screenwriter Aaron Sorkin’s crowning achievement. (This coming from a writer who’s responsible for the Oscar-winning A Few Good Men and Emmy-Award winning series “Sports Night” and “The West Wing”.) In my review on this site, I heaped infinite praise on this sucker, saying it was:

“…a sharply written, fiercely paced examination of the last 20 years: an exploration of the quick-n-dirty tech start-ups, the pure vastness of the Internet, the illusion of online friendship and the unimaginable stupidity of putting everything about yourself on the web.  It’s funny, it’s entertaining, it’s blazingly fast. But, at it’s core, The Social Network is an unapologetic anecdote on the asinine and angry – not to mention anonymous – nature of the online world.”

After having a little over 12 weeks to see the endless television spots for Network and watch it claim nearly every single award for Best Picture (including it’s latest commendation: the Golden Globe for Best Dramatic Feature), I can safely say it’s just as good as it was when I first saw it at midnight on October 1st. Sharpened and primed to go straight for the jugular, this bad boy will be long-remembered as the film that captured the zeitgeist of an entire generation.

2. The King’s Speech – An engrossing and entertaining historical drama that puts an emphasis on personal triumphs over broad storytelling. Geoffrey Rush and Colin Firth both deserve Oscars, and I’m torn as to whether or not I want Social Network or The King’s Speech to win. This is another film I wrote a review for for Sucker Punch Cinema, and in it I said:

“The title of the film refers to the 1939 radio broadcast Albert had to make following Britain’s declaration of war on Germany during World War II. It’s a remarkable piece of history to witness, and it further cements what many people might not realize: behind every occurrence at any point in our time has been a smaller story. A personal, political and practical story that’s yearning to be told.”

It does a great job of telling that story, and you should definitely check it out while you have the chance.

3. Toy Story 3 – The best animated film of last year also happens to be one of the best films of last year, period. There is no doubt in my mind that the people at Pixar – geniuses, magicians, artists, call ‘em whatever you want – are on one of the most wonderfully enjoyable cinematic streaks in film history. They give more emotional depth to characters created in a computer than most filmmakers can give to actual actors, and I can think of no higher praise than that.

4. Get Low - A small film that should’ve been released in the Winter months instead of the Summer, Get Low embodied everything that a well-made, independent feature should. Yet another film I’ve reviewed on this site:

“Currently winding down an unfortunately short cycle on the independent film circuit is a little gem of a film called “Get Low”. Helmed by first-time director Aaron Schneider and expertly anchored by subtle performances from Robert Duvall and Bill Murray, it’s an artistic feature that doesn’t fall into any of the stereotypically artsy crap that often accommodates independent, artistic works. It’s here to tell a story, not to navel gaze or engage in pretentious, self-importance.”

I predicted an Academy Award nomination for Get Low, but sadly I think it’s release date and small box office hampered it. Still, try to grab a look at the film if you can. It’s small enough so that it should be on Netflix or Comcast On Demand soon.

5. True Grit - There were a lot of reasons this movie shouldn’t have worked: it’s a western in a time when westerns aren’t very popular, it’s a PG-13 Coen Brothers film (the last one to do that ended up bombing), and the main actress is a nobody.

Make that was a nobody. After her portrayal in True Grit, Hailee Steinfeld should have no problem finding work for the next 10 years. And don’t even get me started on how addictively good Jeff Bridges is. On my review of True Grit a few weeks ago, I said:

“Someone opined to me that in the original True Grit (1969), John Wayne wasn’t playing Rooster Cogburn, he was playing John Wayne. Well in this remake, written and directed to quirky perfection by the Coen brothers, Jeff Bridges completely sheds his persona, embodying Rooster Cogburn to perfection. His incessant mumbling coupled with fantastic makeup (seriously, he looks and, one can imagine, smells like shit) make him a dead ringer for, as one villain quips, “a one-eyed fat man”.”

Usually you pick one or two reasons to see a film – with True Grit, you’ve got an unlimited supply of reasons: see it for Bridges, Steinfeld, the gorgeous cinematography, the understated musical score – it’s got everything.

6. Paranormal Activity 2 – Scary good time, on a budget.

7. The Other Guys – A sadly too-short cameo by Samuel L. Jackson and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson is enough to lift this from mediocre to hilarious.

8. Date Night – Steve Carrell and Tina Fey have great chemistry – and they also happen to be two of the best comedic talents of the last 10 years. Reminded me of the classic black and white 1940s and 50s comedies.

9. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Pt. 1 - An evenly placed on-the-lam pic complete with cool action scenes and great acting from our trio of grown-up kids.

10. Inception – I give it props for two main reasons: the concept was badass (if not completely explored) and the acting was very, very good. Not as amazing as everyone thought originally, but I still think it’s a good, if not great, film.

Disappointments:

1. Iron Man 2 – Nowhere near as fun, inventive, or intelligent as the first film, Iron Man 2 seemed to take everything that set the first film apart and burn it to the ground. Endless and mindless fight scenes felt numbing rather than exciting. Maybe getting a new director for the third film will make it better.

2. Predators

3. Scott Pilgrim vs. the World

4. Machete

5. Inception (a quick explanation: I liked it, but with all the talent involved, I think it should’ve been better).

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Michael L (St. Michael) -

1. The Social Network

More creation myth than biopic, Fincher paints brainiac Zuckerberg as something of a Gatsby; an avatar for isolation in the internet age, driven not by success, but by dreams of personal connection.  If that’s something that his own Facebook renders meaningless, so be it.

Exciting, bitter, intelligent; it’s Fincher’s best (of a career of “bests”), and my favorite film of the year.

2. Black Swan

A dark whirlwind of cinematic bravado, Black Swan is wild and untamed, sick in the heart, desperate and sexy. It makes film seem organic; it makes cinema practically breathe. Like Hannibal Lecter ,”so rare to capture one alive.” And whatever you do, don’t let it get inside your head.

3. True Grit

Glassy, calm retelling of the Charles Portis novel feels like literature grown from wet earth. It’s lean; the fat’s burned off, ’til only teeth remain. The Dude is a great successor to the Duke, and little Hailee Steinfeld steals the show as this film’s hard little heart. Coen’s hit it out of the park again.

4. Machete

Danny Trejo’s face was meant for cinema; likewise, he deserves his own film, and what better than this Leone epic in grindhouse drag, smeared with barbecue sauce. Seeing kid actress Lindsey Lohan all grown up, strung out on smack and attempting amateur porn, before donning nun attire and packing a hand cannon, makes it worth watching alone.

5. Shutter Island

Beautiful, odd exploration of mental illness, masquerading as Spillane-esque pulp. The whole film’s in mourning, and if the denouement doesn’t quite satisfactorily justify the preceding, so be it: it’s still jam packed with some of the most poetically haunting imagery of the year. Moving, if imperfect: Scorsese has once more gifted cinema, and I’d hesitate before looking this gift horse in the mouth.

6. The Kids Are Alright

Sticky portrait of family in free-fall – Julianne Moore and Annette Benning play a lesbian couple trying to maintain the solidarity of their family when their kids request to meet their biological father: sperm-donor Mark Ruffalo. Well acted, painfully real; works so well structurally that it makes you forget “story”, in favor of the notion that the cinema, at its best, is simply picking portions from people’s real lives, documenting them for a seemingly arbitrary (and wonderfully rewarding) amount of time.

7. Easy A

John Hughes’ brand of teenage blues is given a 21st century facelift, physically manifest in Emma Stone: as troubled as her red-headed eighties counterpart, but infinitely more confident, sarcastic, self aware, and self-satisfied. She’s a joy to watch, and the movie is too. A satisfying middle finger to lobotomized teenage entertainment.

8. Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World

Is this lobotomized teenage entertainment?

I don’t think so.

Like the video game adaptation of The Social Network, Edgar Wright’s Scott Pilgrim is texturally related: the story of a young adult filtering unpleasant experience through a digital medium.

However, if Facebook’s an external, the world of Scott Pilgrim’s all internal – his elixir is more pathological, suggesting that there is no longer a binary divide between media and reality: the two are now one and the same. I suspect it’s true, and I’m tickled pink by Michael Cera’s declaration that he needs to “get a life” before grabbing a “one up” from the air. The movie’s hilarious and exciting, and if it’s shrouding an uncomfortable truth, so be it.

9. Piranha 3D

What can I say? It was theatrically perfect: cinema as circus, all blood and sex and debauchery, in eye gouging 3D. I feel shallow putting it on this list, but I honestly enjoyed it more than most other movies I saw theatrically this year. It’s my id in jolly zen, pretty much tied neck and neck with…

10. Jackass 3D

Don’t judge me.

If it’s prurient, it’s also pretty much perfect, the Jackass crew being a talented comedy troupe as charismatic as they are physically…adept.

Steve-o strapped inside of an outhouse, slung shot miles into the sky is THE moment of the year, and brings humanity to all of the modern torrent of 3D gloss.

Why, everyone shits.

And I’ve never seen a movie so full of shit.

Other Movies I Really Enjoyed: Splice, Inception, Toy Story 3, Wall Street 2

Other Movies I Didn’t: Nightmare On Elm Street (sad face), Twilight: Eclipse, Predators, My Soul to Take

Ashamed I Missed: Let Me In, King’s Speech, 127 Hours, Harry Potter, The Town, How To Train Your Dragon, The Crazies

One I Think Deserves More Love: Resident Evil: Afterlife. Come on guys!!

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Cory Tapia (CoryTapia)’s Top Ten

1. Toy Story 3: Almost couldn’t tell what the ending would bring.

I won’t spoil it, but the end is one of the most emotional parts in the entire movie, and the only time that an animated movie has tugged at my heartstrings.  Easily the best movie (that I saw) from 2010.

2. Iron Man 2: General bad-assery all around, Robery Downey Jr. is once again perfect in the role (Its like Tony Stark’s character was written just for him).  I still wish his character had a little more development, but it was a fast moving storyline.  I also thought Mickey Rourke was perfect as whiplash, although again, I wish there was more of him throughout the movie…the battle scene in Monaco was really awesome, but I wish it would have went on for another 10 minutes…And somehow Rhodey transformed from Terrence Howard to Don Cheadle.  I personally like Don Cheadle a little better…Howard tends to over-act.  In any case, you automatically get points in my book anytime you include a giant Mech-battle at the end of your movie.

3. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, pt. 1: I felt like this movie gave the characters room to breathe.  It was nice to have a break from the usual HP formula of:  Fight Muggle Uncle, Get rescued and taken to Hogwarts, defend the school from minor baddies, maybe play a Quiddich match or two, and then have a big boss showdown at the end.  This was more of a chance to get to really show how the characters have grown up and evolved since we first met them, and I thought Emma Watson stole the show as Hermoine.

4. Shutter Island: I kind of knew the end within the first 15 minutes, but there was a point in the movie that made me question it.  The ending still managed to throw some surprises at me.  I love movies that make you question everything that you’ve been thinking throughout the story, and then flip things up and shake them around.  This is one of those movies, albeit some of the storyline is predictable before you even get to the island.

5. Inception: Sort of an original idea for the movie…I was originally interested in this movie because I am a big fan of the Matrix, and this is somewhat along those lines.  I love movies that I have to watch several times to fully grasp, and this is one of those movies.

6. Hot Tub Time Machine: I didn’t go into this movie expecting much at all, but it was actually really funny.  So maybe going in with low expectations skewed my perception of this movie a little, but it was a good, fun, raunchy throwback to the 80s when most of us writing on this site were either still in diapers or playing with our Ninja Turtles and watching “Thundercats” (Or “Gem for the Ladies”).

7. Date Night: This was one of the few movies that my wife and I can agree on.  You can’t go wrong with a Tina Fey/Steve Carrell combination, and although there weresome pretty campy parts in the script, overall it was pretty hilarious.

8. How To Train Your Dragon: Well-written, and the voice acting was top notch.  I was expecting a lame-o kids flick and instead I got a really interesting story and great animation.

9. Chronicals of Narnia: Voyage of the Dawn Treader: Ive never read any of the other books in the Narnia series other than The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, and the first Narnia movie was still the best, but I felt like Dawn Treader was better than the second Narnia.  Although they all have huge gaps in the storyline (I’m pretty sure I saw Mr. Tomnus on the Dawn Treader in one of the scenes…and he’s supposed to be dead…and how Prince Caspian can live so long even though everyone else in the Kingdom has died because thousands of years have gone by, and Aslan only decides to get involved only after almost every fairytale creature species has been wiped out, just to teach the sons of Adam a life lesson) it was still a good flick.

I also enjoyed getting to know Lucy and Edmund, because in past movies it was always about Peter, and to a lesser extent, Susan. It was nice to see the younger female shine in her role.  Despite the obvious religious undertones being pushed on you at the end, I still enjoyed it.

10. Despicable Me: The story was decent…Two “villains” against each other, and one becoming the “hero” and with that learning to deal with 3 orphaned daughters.  I thought that Steve Carrell’s voice was probably the most annoying part of this film…the faux Russian accent really got on my nerves…I never understood why they made the character Russian, or at least use someone who actually had a real accent.  Other than that, I felt like they made this film just for the sake of having the little green charactersdo the slapstick comedy

routines.  Overall, cute, but had potential to be a lot more.  I think the little green characters could have their own spinoff movie…they are like Scrat from Ice Age.

Honorable Mention: Tron: Legacy – Something this hyped was doomed to fail.  Mediocre storyline, it just felt like this movie was made just to be made. I have a really hard time believing that there are CEO’s son’s out there that spend their free time breaking into software companies that they already own, base jumping from the roofs of skyscrapers, and living in a giant metal crate.

I also had a hard time believing that the lead character, Sam Flynn, was SO good at the light discs duel AND the light cycles duel.  At some point a n00b would need to have his ass handed to him.

This movie only made it into Honorable Mention because instead of Kevin Flynn, they brought back the Big Lebowski.

WORST OF 2010:

1. Sex and the City 2

2. Valentines Day

3. Little Fockers

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Joseph Chirico (JMan)’s Top Ten -

2010 was a sad, sad year for cinema.  I didn’t even see all the good ones.  Toy Story 3 (mainly because I never saw Toy Story 2.  I know, I know.  Get off my back.), 127 Hours, The Kids Are All Right, The Town, and Waiting For “Superman”.  There was a time when tons of filmmakers were producing great movies, but standards are dropping lately.  How many flicks have there been in the Saw franchise?  Anyway, here, in no particular order, are the best, disappointing and worst films I saw, or would not see, this year.

1.  True Grit:Another amazing chapter in the career of the brothers Coen.  Matt Damon and Jeff Bridges supply great performances, but newcomer Hailee Steinfeld outshines them both.

2.  The Social Network: Aaron Sorkin never fails to entertain with his sharp and clever writing.  Andrew Garfield, Jessie Eisenberg and Justin Timberlake make up an immensely talented cast.

3.  The King’s Speech: With wonderful writing, acting and cinematography, this film will gain plenty of recognition come Oscar time.

4.  The Crazies: A remake of the George A. Romero film of the same name, The Crazies holds its own in comparison.  Frightening and suspenseful, this is what horror movies should be like.  Great performances from Timothy Olyphant and Joe Anderson saved this film from easily becoming another piece of crap in the lackluster realm of modern “terror.”  (As I’m writing this, The Crazies is coming on televison.  I intend to watch it.)

5.  Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: It’s not Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, but Edgar Wright still manages to impress with his adaptation from the graphic novel of the same name.  Connecting the real world with the virtual-reality of video games?  All I can say is: “Wow!”

6.  Get Low: Robert Duvall and Bill Murray star in this little-known gem.  The subtle humor, camera work, and superb acting craft this film into a major contender for the Oscars.

7.  Kick-Ass: Unapologetically violent and erupting with action, Kick-Ass is an adrenaline thrill ride about people who want to be superheroes.  Watch out for the lead, played by Aaron Johnson; he might be something special in the coming years.

8.  The A-Team: When there’s an older woman sitting next to you, laughing at everything in the movie, how can it not be a great film?  If you’re looking for a fun movie that borders on the absurd, sit down and watch this.

9.  The Other Guys:

Not a great film by any means, but there were three incredible elements.  1) Dwayne Johnson & Samuel L. Jackson’s characters (“Aim for the bushes.”); 2) The quiet fight; 3) The incredible bar scene montage.

10. Inception: Visually engrossing with an intriguing premise, this film is sure to impress.  It may have its faults, but it allowed Tom Hardy entrance into Hollywood – hopefully for good.

Disappointments:

1.  Clash of the Titans: I expected this movie to be a let down, despite the cast.  Sam Worthington’s talent is wasted on this CG faux-thrill ride.  Someone loudly passing gas during the final moments of the film, though, made it all worthwhile.  Especially when a woman who talked throughout the entire movie responded with: “Eww!”  We couldn’t hear the dialogue for all our muffled laughter.

2.  Resident Evil: Afterlife: I knew this film would be awful, especially with its unnecessary inclusion of 3D, which was only used a few times.  With terrible writing, acting, cinematography (overall filmmaking, really), I thought this would be the final installment in a franchise that should have ended before the first movie did.  I was wrong.

3.  Green Zone: Matt Damon, Greg Kinear, Amy Ryan, Jason Isaacs and Brendan Gleeson?  What a cast!  Unfortunately, Paul Greengrass made this film look like a first-person perspective movie.  Cloverfield had better cinematography than this, and it was also a superior film.  I couldn’t tell what was happening during any of the action scenes.  Not only did it look like it was shot while riding a bucking horse, but there were incessant amounts of cuts to fuel my confusion in this untidy heap of film.

4.  Repo Men: Jude Law, Forrest Whitaker, Liev Schreiber, and the beautiful Alice Braga.  Utterly violent, unexpected humor, great acting and a fantastic premise, this movie appeared to have potential.  But with an ending that shattered the entire experience, my night was thoroughly ruined.

5.  Iron Man 2: An unrelenting use of CG, explosions, and jokes that were too easy to write, this movie doesn’t even come close to matching its predecessor.

6.  Shutter Island: How can you go wrong with Scorsese, DiCaprio, Ruffalo, Kingsley and a cameo from Jackie Earle Haley?  While it may have its moments, this film is clearly not one of Scorsese’s best.

7.  The Expendables: I don’t know what I expected.  This movie was not great, not even good.  A large cast of action stars, with hardly a script between them.  Random scenes were tactlessly strapped together merely to give everyone screen time.  And don’t even get me started on Mickey Rourke’s crying scene.  For all the talent on the screen, this film truly missed its opportunity to be epic.

Worst Movies That I’ll Never Watch from 2010

1.  Yogi Bear

2.  The Karate Kid

3.  The Last Airbender

4.  Tooth Fairy

5.  Step-Up 3D

6.  Gulliver’s Travels

7.  Legion

8.  Lottery Ticket

9.  Sex In The City 2

10. Babies

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William Davenport (JozzyJ)’s Top Ten

1. True Grit. Possibly the most well made film of 2010.Fantastic down to the last detail.

2. Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. This movie is great for big nerds like me.

3. Inception. The only film that left me awestruck in the theater as the credits rolled.

4. The Social Network. By far the best dialogue and screenplay of any ’10 film.

5. Toy Story 3. Made me cry. Seriously. Oscar for best picture. Fact.

6. Get Him to the Greek. Best comedy of the year. Had me in tears from laughter.

7. Universal Soldier: Regeneration. Finally a sequel worthy of the original. Plus noGoldberg.

8. Paranormal Activity 2. Good follow up. The only horror film that made me jump in 2010.

9. Youth in Revolt. Great comedy with classic lines and scenes. Also had a great cast.

10. The Other Guys. Most ridiculous comedy ’10. Plus it has Michael Keaton!

I am sure that Black Swan would be on this list near the top, but I have sadly still not been able to see this damn film.

Movies in which I was disappointed:

1. Repo Men

2. Clash of the Titans

3. A-Team

4. Machete

5. The Wolfman

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Matt Hoover (RocknMatty)’s Top Ten

1. Scott Pilgram vs. The World:

If you want to see what i thought of my number one movie of 2010, click on the link above to read my review!

2. Kick-Ass: Lots of action, lots o kill’n, way cool plot, true comic nerd movie.

3. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1: love it love it love it

4. Iron Man 2: that one scene where he and War Machine are back to back blasting robobaddies…bad ass!

5. Despicable Me: IT’S SO FLUFFY!!!

6. Alice in Wonderland: Now i could watch Johnny Depp read the instruction manual to my microwave and like it, but the rest of the movie was so fucking weird that i can;t put it in the top 5.

7. The Expendables: Great cast of action stars, lots of kill’n, not much plot, true guy movie, thanks Sly.

8. Robin Hood: it was dirty and gritty, which i like, but i thought the plot moved too slow and Russel Crowe looked just like he did in Gladiator (dude grow your hair out some man).

9. Sex and the City 2: Again, i didn’t see and again my girl friend like it. i put it at nine because Kim Cattral is always hot.

10. Eat Pray Love: i didn’t watch this because it looks like crap, but my girl friend liked it, so i put it at number 10!

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Michael Bolosan (Bolo)’s Top Ten

1. Black Swan

2. The Social Network

3. Toy Story 3

4. Winter’s Bone

5. True Grit

6. Wall Street 2

7. The Ghost Writer

8. Machete

9. The Town

10. Jackass 3D

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Dallas Stakes (DalLaS)’s Top Ten

[In no particular order]

1. How to Train you Dragon

2. Kick Ass

3. Toy Story 3

4. Despicable Me

5. Inception

6. Scott Pilgrim vs. the World

7. Machete

8. The Town

9. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Pt. 1

10. Legend of the Guardians

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Spike Scarberry (The Spike)’s Top Ten -

1. Toy Story 3

2. The King’s Speech

3. Black Swan

4. Tangled

5. The Fighter

6. Letters to Juliet

7. The Other Guys

8. Inception

9. The Book of Eli

10. Hot Tub Time Machine

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by Matt Hoover

So the latest show to be stolen from the UK and remade in the US (by SyFy) is “Being Human”.

I have mixed emotions about this.

The UK one is the first one, and pretty damn good. However, it has become a little difficult to get these episodes here and the remake would be easier to watch.

[Related articles: What is "Being Human"?]

Also, it looks like they upped the budget for the US version so it will look really cool, but will it affect the writing? Lastly, it stars the dude who played Jimmy Olsen in Superman Returns (Sam Huntington) and say what you will about that movie, he played a spot on Jimmy. So this could turn out pretty good, or just be shit.

Here’s hoping they never do this to “Doctor Who”.

What say you Sucker Punchers? Are American remakes of British shows doomed from the start, or is it a good opportunity to rebrand it in America? Chime in!

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Bane and Catwoman.

Done.

I’ve got no sarcastic or pithy comments, and no real insight; only the overwhelming feeling that this is going to rule.

Playing the feline femme fatale Selina Kyle is none other than Anne Hathaway.

And Bane is going to be played by Tom Hardy.

You remember Bane. No, not the horrendous, zombie-esque interpretation from Schumacher’s Batman and Robin…

...lest we forget

No, the Bane from the comic books. The hulking, intelligent, psychotic terrorist, addicted to muscle enhancers and thirsting for the blood of a certain flying rodent.

You know. The only character in all of the Dark Knight’s rogue gallery to ever really break Batman…

In the immortal words of Jack Nicholson, “Gotham City. Always puts a smile on my face…”

Update: EW’s got the scoop here. Worth mentioning that in their press release this morning, Warner Brothers didn’t say Anne Hathaway would play Catwoman, only that she’d play one Selina Kyle.

Sort of like how Aaron Eckhardt mostly played a Harvey Dent…until half his face was burned away, and he became a Two-Face.

Mee-owwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww

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