Men Who Hate Women Who Text During Movies – “The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo” and Other Thoughts

[Editor's note: This is more rant than review, but I was amused and hope you will be too.]

It is almost 2 A.M. I have a full-time job to wake-up to in the morning. My 9-month-old baby has been sick. Last night I did not sleep well. Tonight I will not sleep well. Theoretically, I can sleep until 7:30 AM and have time to get ready and out the door, but none of my 3 children will let me sleep that long. Knowing this, I still cannot sleep, for my blood is still boiling, my adrenaline is still up, and I must share my experience at the movies.

Down in the Dumps: Craptacular Cinema

Call me “Captain Obvious,” but for the uninitiated, the unobservant, and the just plain forgetful folks out there, the beginning of the year is a terrible time for movies (second perhaps only to August), a time Hollywood commonly refers to as a “dumping ground” for–for lack of a better word–shit.

Awful Goodness

Anyone can make a movie… anyone.

It sometimes seems that you don’t even need basic human attributes to get someone to finance your movie. You don’t even have to speak the language your film is written in to get someone to sign off on your artistic vision.

Requiem for a Fanboy – A Poster Prelude

[Editor's note: Stay tuned for Bryan's complete Top 20 posters of 2010.]

One of my favorite things about movies, theater, concerts–any event that needs to be advertised–is the poster. They have to sell something, an entire 90-minute event summed-up with one picture. While the specific qualities and purposes for the posters are often very different, the goal is still the same: to catch someone’s eye and make them remember it. With movies, the process is in overdrive.

Why I hate M. Night Shyamalan

I am a very positive person. I really hold few grudges and maintain a near perfect state of love for all creatures on earth, both large and small. However, when I do find someone or something to loathe, I do it with a fury. Welcome, then, to my unadulterated hatred of acclaimed film director M. Night Shyamalan.

Re-Animated: If Dreams Came True

[Editor's note: Re-Animated is a new column devoted to remakes, some movies we'd like to see and some we wish Hollywood would leave to rest in peace.]

In the world today it seems that very few people are coming up with new ideas for movies. Which is fine, there is an end point to all creative endeavors. So what do we do? We pick ourselves up, dust off some of our old favorites, and remake them with our newfangled CGI and color film and lady directors. Woohoo! Wait, wait, something horrible just happened. We chose all the wrong movies to remake. Like a bad techno cover of a beloved 80’s dance album, these terrible remakes keep on coming and fewer people even bother seeing the original. Now we’re even remaking startlingly recent films so that we don’t have to know how to read to see a movie (e.g. The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, Let The Right One In) But what about movies that need to be remade? There is a wonderful, beautiful, and much undernoted wealth of movies that could use a little modern charm. Let us start with an example.

Water Boys and Swing Girls: The films of Shinobu Yaguchi

Shinobu Yaguchi is a name you should know. If you’ve ever even heard of Swing Girls, Water Boys, or Adrenaline Drive count yourself lucky.If you’ve actually seen them, even better. Yaguchi is a Japanese writer/director of ten films (so far). He’s also editor and cinematographer on a few as well. His films are, on the whole, light-hearted and fun. They tend to center around geeky outsiders finding themselves and their place in the world.

Killing’s as Easy as Breathing

I want to see The Expendables, but not for the reasons you think.

The upcoming testosterone-on-steroids action flick from the mind of Sylvester Stallone is being heralded as a throwback to the bygone days of the 1980′s, a time when heroes had more muscle than brains, more guns than laptops, and more stunts than…well there was no CGI. To achieve his goal of resuscitating the clichés of my youth, Sly assembled every macho man he could find (except of course Macho Man Randy Savage). You might have seen the posters or the trailers in which the marketers have decided require no plot detail whatsoever but merely a long recitation of the beefy cast. There’s Stallone, Statham, Li, Couture, Lundgren, Crews, Austin, Willis, and taking a break from whatever he does in Sacramento, Schwarzenegger. Are you ready for some ass-kicking indeed.

Xavier Institute 10-Year Reunion

We are gathered here today to recognize the 10th anniversary of Bryan Singer’s X-Men. It was this very month that the comic book genre was kick-started, ushering in a decade overflowing with billions of dollars worth of attention paid to one of the toughest crowds ever in the history of entertainment: the nerd.

What the Fourth Means to Me

The Fourth of July is more than an American holiday. Traditionally, it also coincides with the release of Hollywood’s big-budget blockbusters, the studios’ tent-pole movies. Sadly, this year the Hollywood studios seem to be pitching their tents for the sole benefit of 15-year-olds. [Editor's note: It's just like in Jaws, with Hollywood in the place of the town of Amity. Hollywood is a summer town, they need summer dollars. But, they would never act out of foolhardy desperation in attempt to make more money. Surely, they learned the lesson about the price of greed espoused in the original summer blockbuster...]

An Open Letter to the Movie Studios

Hi, it’s me, Nathan Ayling. You don’t know me, which is probably a good thing because if I met any of you, I’d probably rip off my Empire Strikes Back t-shirt and stuff it down your delusional fucking throats. You’re having a bad summer, eh? No shit. I could have told you that. I could have told you that a year ago. “What’s wrong,” you ask. Well, here is the hard truth: I, Nathan Ayling, have seen three new movies this year, and when Nathan Ayling doesn’t go to the movies it’s a bad, bad thing.

What Do You Mean “Sold Out?”

I took my son to see How to Train Your Dragon last weekend (check out my review here).  I wanted to save a few bucks and see the matinée for $6 instead of the $11 for a later show.