lopping your kids down in front of a giant silver screen has been a time honored tradition set forth by parents looking for a way to just shut their kids up. But it would seem that this is no longer a viable parenting option according to lines of protestors

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Ok, so it's not really all that new, but it looks different and hopefully I'll be writing more so screw you, it's new. After my last redesign, not only did I get a job with CinemaBlend as a news writer for them, but I realized very quickly that the home page was a total pain in the ass to update every single time I wrote a new story. Research and internet surfing gave me a few ideas on what I wanted the site to look like, while keeping it as simple to update as possible.

Ultimately the goal is automation. I post a story and images, the website knows where they go and what to do with them. But that is a long ways down the road unfortunately since I'm not making any money with Filmociraptor and don't have the spare bling to throw at a web designer to write me a boatload of php. It's a sad story really, that of a starving artist, or in this case starving self-proclaimed wordsmith. Alas, this new look is what I've come up with for now until I can make the next step, or until I get bored of looking at it this way and redesign again. I'm a bit of a "User Interface" whore and since I'm in control, I might make a new one sooner rather than later.

For now though, I'm going to be doing my damnedest to update regularly, watch more new movies as well as movies for my quest, and review everything. Not to mention keeping up with the big news as best I can and updating the trailers page with everything I think you readers might find interesting. 

So read, link, retweet, Facebook, Digg, and above all COMMENT. I love hearing everyone's opinion even if it differs from mine and I'll respond to everything intriguing and well-thought out enough to pique my interest. Happy ranting!

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In honor of the upcoming Dress-Like-Your-Father-Touched-You day (AKA Halloween), I decided to take a look back at the horror movies from the last decade and see what I could find. Some stuff showed up that I didn't think was that new, a notable percentage of foreign movies found their way onto the list, and I found out that out of all the subcategories of horror, I liked more ghost movies than zombie, vampire, or monster flicks. It was a shock even for me! I thought for sure zombies would take it.

I'll be doing my best to get you one of these a day for the next 15 days until you get to number 1 and I reveal what my favorite horror movie from the past decade wound up being.

This list is by no means comprehensive. It's just a list in rough order of my 15 personal favorite horror flicks that scared or creeped me out, or just generally were solid films in the horror genre. I'd also like to hear what you thought were the best horror flicks from 2000 and on and enlighten me as to what I missed and what had you cowering under your sheets for days upon weeks from sheer fear of being grabbed, eaten, or cut to bits by whatever it was that just had you shivering for 86 minutes.

So without further ado, CLICK ON THE IMAGE below and let's look back at my favorite scarefests from the past 10 years.

15  |  14  |  13  |  12  |  11  |  10  |  9  |  8  |  7  |  6  |  5  |  4  |  3  |  2  |  1

Fall is officially upon us. The leaves are going to start changing color, falling off trees, and becoming the bane of every homeowner's existence as they dig wet, leafy muck out of their gutters before the snow starts to fall. Unfortunately for me I don't get to enjoy any of the great weather that happens in this lovely time between October and December since I live in Florida where the weather comes in three flavors: hot, gross, or just OK.

Thankfully, aside from 2 months of weather that is just OK, Autumn is bringing with it a bunch of movies that I'm chomping at the bit to plop my fat ass in front of in order to judge them mercilessly. While my list isn't chock full of movies expected to clean up at the Oscars, almost all of them will be awesome in their own special way. Most of what I'll list you'll be able to easily get your hands on come release date, but there are a few that will only pop up limited so if you're lucky enough to be in a city like LA or New York then you won't have any problem taking in every movie in here.

The list will be in release date order, and if more than one movie comes out that day, I'll list them in the order in which they appear on my excitement scale.

                                                                                                                                   LET'S GO >>

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 

 

The biggest news in the movie-verse this week, maybe even this year, is that Disney rode into Marvel Entertainment on a white horse, and rescued the damsel not really in distress. The deal puts Marvel under the Disney umbrella along with Pixar and Disney's most recent purchase Spielberg's Dreamworks which, to people who aren't retarded, means that Marvel films are going to get a caliber boost especially if Pixar has anything to say about it.

But the intertubes has been astir with hate and ENDLESS claims that "OMFG NOOOOO! IRON MAN WILL BE WEARING MICKEY MOUSE EARS AND IT'LL BE PG!!!" proving that the world is full of fucktards who should be shot or sterilized so that their demon spawn don't corrupt my offspring with tarditude. For those of you who bothered to read up on the post announcement conference call, you'd know that Bob Iger, President and CEO of the Walt Disney Company, is approaching the acquisition with an "If it ain't broke..." attitude and fully plans to let Marvel do it's own thing. So quite your damn whining.

People have also been forgetting that Disney's body of work is fucking awesome. And I'm not talking just the animated movies, they've fully proven themselves in the live-action market as well. Pirates of the Caribbean, The Chronicles of Narnia, National Treasure (Fuck you it was fun), The Mighty Ducks, and mother fucking TRON to name just a few. Not to mention the Miyazaki films they've brought to the American masses, showing that Disney knows a good thing when they see it. Sure Disney's catalog is mostly full of kid's movies, but that doesn't mean that that they don't have the capacity to make amazing movies NOT specifically for children, see UP for example. If you think UP is a movie just for kid's, you are flat out wrong.

So to prove to you that Disney's influence will only be a positive one on the Marvel universe (and what a vast universe it is), I've compiled a list of Marvel movies that totally sucked WITHOUT Disney's help.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine

By far the worst in the X-Men series, if you even go so far as to call it part of the series, I prefer not to, X-Men Origins: Wolverine invented new levels of fail just so it could fail even harder than its Brett Ratner directed predecessor. Completely devoid of any sort of continuity to the first films, Wolverine and his cohorts should have just been given different names followed by a clever re-titling of the film to something like "Dude Where's My Memory" and voila, a completely "original" film that keeps it's dirty fingers away from my already floundering X-Men franchise. Origins was the nail in the coffin, and until rights transfer back over to Disney, expect nothing better from the next one.

 

Hulk

Not to be confused with Louis Letterier's 2008 The Incredible Hulk, I'm talking about Ang Lee's attempt at putting the Hulk on-screen and instead creating an abominiation (you see what I did there?). If you really want to boil this one down to the simplest terms, you can use two words to describe where this went wrong...Nick Nolte. Nick Nolte has become a real life charicature and putting him in your film in any sort of serious capacity is a recipe for unbelievable pie. He's brilliant in Tropic Thunder, but that's about all he should be allowed to do. Throw evil mutated dogs, Eric Bana (don't get me wrong, I like him a lot, just not here), and piles and piles of shit CGI and you've created one of the worst comic book films ever to hit the screen. Bonus points for some really cool editing though, and of course for Jennifer Connelly.

 

Daredevil

Trash! TRASH TRASH TRASH! The only reason I hate this movie less than I hated Origins is because I had very low expectations for it already, whereas I tried to stay positive about Origins until I actually saw the movie. Daredevil has one of my least favorite things to see on film in it, Ben Affleck doing any sort of action that doesn't involve a fist fight in a South Boston basketball court. Seeing him in Paycheck proved wholly to me that this man has no capacity for being badass and from the moment he starts doing playground karate with Jennifer Garner I knew that movie was going down hill on a greased up saucer. The movie takes itself so seriously you'd think you were watching oscar bait, but you're not. You're watching a comic book movie that fails at being what comic book movies all should be...fun. The movie's saving grace is Colin Farrell as Bullseye, the only actor in here who seems to know what film he's actually making.

 

Blade Trinity

Graduating from the Ben Affleck School for Action Heroes is Jessica Biel, seen in Blade Trinity making playlists on her Apple iPod, drinking her Coke, and wearing Nike shoes. And they make damn sure you know it. The movie is nothing more than a 2 hour commercial for whatever product was willing to write them checks. Watching Wesley Snipes in this is like watching a dying star fizzle out of existence only to be sucked into the black hole that is straight-to-DVD hell. While Trinity doesn't have the worst action and is fun to look at occasionally, listening to it is like ramming a screwdriver repeatedly through your eardrum, and should only be attempted by those with the most masochistic of desires.

Filling out Trinity is easily the most hateable sympathy sponge to ever have been filmed, Natasha Lyonne's Sommerfield, a blind mother who tries to help the vampire slaying crew by bumping into things and trying to sound smart. The only thing is, she's so terrible you want nothing more than to see her walk off a very steep cliff, roll through many very sharp thorn bushes until she gets to the bottom, alive, and feels around before figuring out that she's standing waist deep in a pit of rabid, flesh hungry zombie ferrets who will leave her broken eyes for last. This movie is total dogshit (with the great exception of Ryan Reynolds) and if anyone's rebuttal is "But Jessica Biel is so hot" I will skull fuck them.

 

Spiderman 3

Rounding out the list is the surprising upset of Spiderman 3, the only one of these movie that I was fully convinced would be excellent until I saw the catastrophe unfold before my very eyes. I tricked myself into thinking that Topher Grace as Eddie Brock AKA Venom would be ok, but I was dead wrong. I can't blame Raimi for ruining Venom as Sony forced the villain on him against his will and he had to shoehorn him into a movie that was already written. But I can say that Venom, THE Spiderman villain, is forever fucked up.

Not that Venom was the only part of Spidey 3 that was bad. Need I mention the jazz dance montage? As if Tobey Maguire's stupid emo hair cut wasn't enough, they put him and his dumb face up on a stage dancing around BADLY with someone, I can't even remember who since I haven't been able to bring myself to hit the play button on the Netflix watched instantly queue where Spiderman 3 has been sitting for over a year, possibly to make Mary Jane jealous.

The movie ends in one of the coolest looking scenes of the film, Harry and Peter joining forces to take down Sandman (I think) flying through New York on a Back to the Future Part 2 hover board and web ropes respectively. Watching the scene play out is fun, but the script is so terrible the pair might as well have just been hugging and freeze frame high fiving until the credits rolled. Dialog was just sort of thrown at a wall and Raimi decided to use whatever stuck. The movie is the definition of unbearable.

 

So you see kids, Marvel has plenty of potential to make straight garbage all on its own and having Disney around isn't going to change that. In fact, having Disney around as an extra layer of quality control will probably be a good thing considering some of the great things Disney has done, including a little super hero called The Incredibles that you may have heard of, which was exactly that...Incredible. Just ignore that it was aimed at kids so my point is more valid.

These 5 movies prove that there's no damn reason to get upset about Marvel getting scooped up by Disney, and that Marvel was perfectly good at producing some super shitty movies on their own (and with the help of Sony, New Line, and Fox). The prospect of Pixar working with Marvel has me all giddy, and it is a strong possibility that that will happen sooner rather than later.

The amount of positive possibilities far outweighs the negative, so it is with this blog that I tell the internet collectively to just SHUT THE FUCK UP!

In the long line of cinematic JUGHEADS, Channing Tatum has got to be the finest example to ever "grace" the screen. Never before has any one actor been able to suck the life out of a film like this guy. Exuding what I'm going to call "anti-charisma", the mere mention of his name is enough to let anyone not in their teens and not lacking any sort of reasoning know that whatever it is he's in, movie, TV show, fast food drive thru window, will be awful. And I don't mean awful like Deep Rising is awful, I mean awful like Catwoman is awful. I'm just itching for a basketball scene in G.I. Joe.

There's no other way to say it other than that he is just one of the worst and most worthless "actors" working right now. I'm going to call Hollywood and tell them I've found this suitable replacement:

Now I know it doesn't look like much and you're thinking to yourself, "Well, this rock certainly has more charisma and acting chops than Tatum, but can he really pull off the look we're going for?"

I'm glad you asked, Hollywood. With these few simple tools:

And a little movie magic, you'll get something that could easily out act Channing Tatum, and can pull off any look you need it too. Below is just one of many styles any number of rocks could pull off using the above tools:

Who wouldn't be able to resist those rock hard abs (pun incredibly intended), those dreamy blue eyes, and those sweet biceps? You can even get creative with your paper plates and give him perfectly spiked hair like I did.

Fret not though dear reader. We can be guaranteed to see Channing Tatum fall by the wayside soon enough for three reasons, the first being that he's almost 30 and that's the cutoff age for shitty actors being in the public eye. After that he's quickly going to lose his appeal with the ladies as much younger actors with wash boards duct taped to their stomachs are going to come in and steal his show.

Next, you're probably thinking to yourself, "But Will, there's a lot of other jugheaded actors out there that are wicked famous, what about them?" My rebuttal is that they simply do it better. A fine example is Dwayne Johnson. Sure he's not great, but he's charismatic and has a decent comedic presence and ability to make fun of himself. What about the most legendary meat head of all, Bruce Willis. Sure, he's a bit past his big action stage, but he's done 4 Die Hard films, Grindhouse, Pulp Fiction, The Last Boyscout, Armageddon, the list goes on and on. But you know what, he's a damn good actor and brings everything he's got to the table every single time. Channing Tatum on the other hand is the definition of 'phone it in.' Every time he opens his mouth you can taste the vomit crawling into the back of your throat.

The third and most valid reason we're definitely going to see his career fizzle out is that history as we all know often repeats itself, and it looks like it's going to again. While Tatum's career is shorter and so far brighter, there's no ignoring his many predecessors like Dean Cain and Caspar Van Dien. Both actors worked their way up, Cain as Superman in Lois and Clark in the 90's, and Van Dien in films, getting his big break in Starship Troopers, yet neither found their way into the lime light.

Why? Because they are fucking meat popcicles just like Channing Tatum is who couldn't act their way into a Colgate commercial. They are all they simply to put girls in the seats and nothing else. After their big breaks, they both managed to stack their schedules with shit, literally barricading themselves out of good properties, which Channing Tatum may be doing as we speak.

I'm looking forward to the day I'm at Blockbuster browsing the new releases for some straight to DVD bile me and my friends can make fun of and coming across a terribly photoshopped DVD cover with Channing Tatum's emotionless robot face grimacing at me from the bottom shelf. The movie will be called Alien Beast or something the like, and will run a merciful 86 minutes.

I give him 5 years....

Tops.

Nothing beats the sense of accomplishment you feel after months of aches, pains, and soreness all getting you 26 miles, hands raised as you crash through that ribbon and collapse from exhaustion yelling "I DID IT!" Right? I disagree. I feel much more accomplished when I pull 3 or more DVDs off my shelf, stack them on my entertainment center, then watch every minute of them without moving from my couch for anything other than a piss break, a beverage run, or to switch the movie out. Putting that last DVD back in alphabetical order after a 12 hour day of cinematic debauchery feels way better than going to the gym and running on a treadmill for 8 hours. Who needs muscles? Not this guy.

Sitting down with a group of really good friends for a movie marathon is the ultimate social experience for me. I'm not a partier unless it's just a bunch of people I know, and I'm a big movie person, so having a bunch of people over to watch countless movies, bad or good, is always a treat. Movie marathons have been around since the dawn of time, or at least since the dawn of the VHS tape, which started to take off at about the right time to supply one trilogy to the masses and start EVERYONE'S marathon experience right, mother fucking Star Wars.

Watching the original 3 Star Wars movies all in a row with all of your closest friends is like a right of passage. Pubes shouldn't grow on you until you've sat down, 5 or more sexually frustrated 13-years-olds, no less than 70 instances of acne among the group, making lightsaber sounds, talking like Jabba the hut, and sitting silently, pillows in every lap, watching Princess Leia in the gold bikini. You can't properly enjoy life until you can reflect on this exact experience with those same buddies 10 years later.

There's an art to it, however. Sure, grabbing 5 random movies off your shelf will still finish the job, but having a movie marathon with a mission is exponentially better. It's like buying a 5 dollar hand job versus spending $1000 on an escort for the night. McDonalds vs. Chilis burgers. You can't measure the difference. Putting in Fellowship of the Ring with the clear goal of watching the entire series will surely pay better dividends than watching 3 randoms.

Best experienced as a group but for the first time together, movie marathons give you the freedom to really get into the movies. You can quote along, cheer at your favorite scenes, point at your teary eyes and say "look how gay I am for this movie". There's bound to be trivia flying around too, creating a deeper understanding of the films you already love. Marathons are all around a great time.

In preparation for Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince, Kristin (who is a tremendous cook by the way, which I am definitely NOT saying so she will cook me delicious food later), Wil and myself geared ourselves up for a day filled with magic and wonder. Starting off with a late breakfast to power our quest, we took the five DVD stack, laid them out, and dove in around 1pm. And at 1am, our 12 hour marathon was fulfilled and we parted ways smoking our proverbial post-coital cigarettes and fell asleep knowing we had accomplished more that day than we had in the past month, regardless of how many other movies we watched.

Movie marathons are a great way to get through a day, weekend, week off, whatever. Watching movies is our past time, and watching dozens in a row is better to me than slamming beers with a bunch of idiots and yelling about bullshit. So next time anytime someone tells you that watching all the Harry Potter movies in a row is dumb, you tell them it made you a better person, and that they're stupid, and then punch them in the face.

So over the past few days I've been spending a bit of time at the movie theater. I really enjoy going to movies during the day in the middle of the week because generally it's when the people who go by themselves venture out of their caves and find their way to the theater, meaning that they won't have anyone to talk to therefore they won't interrupt my viewing.

Not this week though. Seeing Iwo Jima was fine. We went to a later showing, but it was Monday and almost everyone else was alone. Yesterday we saw the Good German though, and before the movie even started I knew I was in for a bad time. During the whole "Regal First Look" thing they do, this lady behind me was chatting up a storm with her husband who definitely just wanted her to shut her flapping lips for 2 seconds. Her voice was like a fucking pterodactyl. Fucking screeching and clawing. Christ it made me want to hit her harder than I've ever hit anything in my life. Then we got to the Cingular "Shut your fucking cell phone off and shut your mouth screen" which stayed on screen for an awkwardly long time, and this old man a row down and 4 seats over with his wife cups his hands over his mouth like a bullhorn and says "Is everyone gonna shut up once the movie starts?!" obviously just putting it out there that this bitch needed to shut her damn mouth. But she responded "the movie hasn't even staaahted yet! (long island accent = cunt) Have a clue, have a clue!" And then they went back and forth for a minute until awkwardness was finally cleared by the starting previews. I'm pretty sure the projectionist saw what was going on and was like "this is gonna be good" and just sat there to see what developed.

THEN, that same fucking banshee behind me cleared her throat about 47 times throughout the film and yawned loudly. Like she made noises while yawning, instead of just, ya know, BREATHING. On top of that, behind us on our left was an older couple and the husband was just calling everything 4 seconds before it happened. Granted, I was having a hard time following the story and sometimes it helped. Most of the time though, it was just him talking and relaying shit to his wife. Hey, Clarissa explains it all, SHUT THE FUCK UP!!

And finally today, we saw Notes on a Scandal and the people behind us just don't know what a fucking whisper is. Dude 6 inch voices, go back to preschool and learn what that is.

Dear assholes,
I go to films during the week to avoid crowds and avoid idiots talking in the theater. Please stay home and fuck off there while I enjoy my film.
Love,
Will

What year is it? There have been films since 19 fucking 10, and 100 years later people still can't be courteous in a movie theater. Here's a few pointers:
1. If you have a comment, keep it short and fucking whisper
2. If you yawn, dont go "AHHGHGHGGH" while you're doing it. You're fucking gross, shut up.
3. Don't predict the movie for the whole theater to hear. You're annoying.
4. If you see me get a ticket, listen to what I'm going to see, and pick something else.

On a lighter note, there was a couple behind us in line at the box office. The girl says "Does this movie have subtitles?" I assumed she was expecting to see Iwo Jima, in which case I was still ready to deck her because she said it like she might as well have said "I have to reeeadddd?! Ugh, waa waa waa cry cry cry I'm a cunt". The boyfriend says "no" and I am curious again.

"Oh what movie are we seeing again?" she inquires.
"Notes on a Scandal," FUCK ME I say to myself as I know that she is going to be a talker. I thought the conversation was over, but I was wrong.
"Oh" she said, "But don't they have British accents?"
...
...
Think it over for a second.
...
...
YOU ARE A FUCKING MORON!!!!!!!!!!! "British" otherwise known as "English" is the same as the language we speak, which is, you guessed it, FUCKING ENGLISH!! Why are these people alive? You would think that someone that stupid would forget to look both ways at age 5 and meet the business end of a city bus. What is even more baffling is how her boyfriend doesn't just punch her in the face for saying something like that.

Anyway, it's been real.