With Watchmen due for DVD release in the not too distant future (and my not being here when the film hit theatres), I’ll take that as an excuse to bring up my biggest issue with Snyder’s interpretation of the source material.

Relax. This isn’t another lengthy diatribe about the squid.

I can almost hear the collective global sigh from here…

No, my issue with Snyder’s film is far more pressing. Because Watchmen was always a story relying heavily on Moore’s ability to extrapolate great depth from a character rather than straight-up action, that makes this cause for concern far more pressing. Rorschach.

Click “Read more…” below for the rest of this article.

Readers of a sensitive disposition should be warned that I’m about to launch headlong into a fragmented, expletive-laden diatribe containing a number of unnecessary references to my genitalia. If you’re the type of lass or lad to add “[citation needed]” to Wikipedia articles, you’re probably better off skipping this one and finding something more wholesome to do. I hear people used to go outside in the days before the interwebs, so that might be an option.

It may look as if women are the target of my manifold aspersions, but the truth is that they’re ultimately not the cause of the problem. For every talentless actress on screen, there’s a schmuck-ass dude in a suit who gave the go-ahead to cast her, more often than not due to an inability to differentiate between her talent and her talents. As a result, nearly every other movie is spoiled by tepid efforts by vapid bints with shiny teeth but not enough skill to floss with.

Enough is enough. After enduring this particular brand of bullshit for the entirety of my movie-going life, I’ve decided to start naming names. This, I trust, will bring an end to the trend of trotting out lame-duck actresses as if we won’t notice. If history is any precedent, there’s nothing more powerful than a meandering rant from a no-name blogger. If you care to check back in a couple of days, I’ll be writing an article that should eliminate poverty by the end of the month.

Jessica Alba
Jessica Alba has the cold, dead eyes of a shark, and the acting abilities of the same. Actually, scratch that. A shark would, at least, be capable of nailing the role of a shark. Jessica Alba, meanwhile, is a young, beautiful woman whose sole responsibility in any movie is to be eminently effable. Her lazy, lobotomised delivery, however, makes my penis very, very sad. You may think my dick irrelevant to the discussion, but since it’s firmly in Jessica Alba’s target audience it’s actually a valid arbiter of her performance here.

Gwyneth Paltrow
While I have no qualms whatsoever about calling Jessica Alba a dud, I’m only about ninety-nine percent certain that Gwyneth Paltrow is a shitty actress since I can’t entirely rule out the possibility that her being the biggest hippy-ass gasbag on earth has coloured my perception of her on-screen efforts. I can normally separate the actor from the character, but having spent a good chunk of my teenage years in Britain (where this pain-in-the-posterior now resides), I was so inundated with reports of Ms. Paltrow’s newest foolish thoughts that it was impossible to put her idiocy aside. Not a week went by that the tabloids weren’t adorned with a headline in the following format:

Gwyneth Paltrow: Uninformed Opinion about Something; Educated People: That Chick Ain’t Right

Here’s a specific example:

Gwyneth Paltrow slammed by experts over shampoo cancer claim

…and another:

Paltrow’s blog under fire from Hindus

With such egregious asshattery in mind, I may be prejudging Paltrow and branding her a crappy actor in spite of movies attesting to the contrary. Still, I seem to remember thinking she stunk even before she started flapping her lip, so I’m fairly happy leaving her on the list.

Meg Ryan
Her fucking face doesn’t move. This is a relatively major malfunction for an actress. In many ways we should consider her a heroine for overcoming such a crippling shortcoming to sustain a lucrative acting career. She’s like a modern-day Helen Keller, only instead of being born deafblind, she was tragically struck down in her thirties by multiple Botox-related accidents, which she repeatedly paid for.

Kirsten Dunst
How do you make Spider-Man uncool? Seriously, how? Answer me, Dunst, because you did it. They have now released a full three movies about a kid from Queens who was bitten by a radioactive spider and subsequently became one of the baddest son-of-a-bitches on earth, and I have yet to be struck by any impulse to see even a second of them. This is entirely the fault of Kirsten Dunst, who, like Freddie Mercury, has the unusual ability to display a number of her teeth even with her mouth closed. Unlike Freddie Mercury, however, she is not one of the greatest entertainers of her generation, and I don’t wish she wasn’t dead.

Jennifer Aniston
I know that if you were looking to actually do stuff rather than read about it, you wouldn’t be on the internet right now. Still, I hope you’ll take part in a little exercise I’ve devised. First, take the thumb and forefinger of either hand and pinch the tip of your nose so that the flow of air is restricted. Now attempt to imitate the low, humming sound your refrigerator makes. The noise you are now producing is all I hear whenever Jennifer Aniston is on the screen. Occasionally she’ll emit a high-pitched “Ooh!” and flap her hands wildly, and this is an indication that she has made an adorably klutzy goof and that we are expected to laugh. I invariably decline to do so. Aniston has all the charm and verve of the mild fungal nail infection that forced me to wear swim socks in the pool for much of third grade.

I had originally planned a top-ten feature, but I fear that any further discussion of these infuriatingly dull dolts will result in my developing a peptic ulcer. Drop a comment in the box below to let me know if you think I’ve been unkind to any of the millionaires mentioned above, or if there are any notable names missing from the list.

Today I thought I’d touch on a light hearted topic, plenty of deeper stuff for other times. The nice, light, easygoing world of comic book adaptations, unless you’re geektacular like me, in which case there’s not too much light-hearted about it at all. I was wondering when and how this became a genre, because that’s what it seems to be these days. Just out of interest I thought I’d jot down the names of every single comic book adaptation that I’ve seen (and I haven’t seen them all – a rare and uncharacteristic non-geek admission), and I came to 44. Forty-four. To put that in perspective, that’s the total number of films Woody Allen will have released come July when Whatever Works comes out. Including compilations, unfinished works and shorts, Alfred Hitchcock directed 67 in total. So 44 is a pretty staggering number considering more than a few have the reputation of not being particularly good… oh, Dick Tracy… make that 45. I Guess Woody will have to finish another to break even. So since we have a fairly big trough to pick through, I thought I might trawl through the dregs and marvels (or DCs), the hits and misses, the Elektras and the Dark Knights, and everything in between.

Superman – The big hitters (clichéd – even naming it this makes me feel boy-scoutish)
Where else to start but the Batman franchises? They’ve been just about the most solid producer of quality films to date (excluding the catastrophes which occurred once Joel Schumacher sank his talons into the franchise). Batman, Batman Returns, Batman Begins and The Dark Knight are must-sees in the genre and clearly worthy of a spot in any reputable top ten list. The original Superman of Christopher Reeves is just iconic to the genre, but if I were to pick one for my must-sees stack I’ll take a grab at Superman II. And while we’re talking sequels better than the original, slide in X-Men 2 to boot. Singer had that second movie to develop the characters and introduce Brian Cox as Stryker, and it all came together. Not to mention a reward for the fanboys that was as subtle as we’ve seen, with an allusion to the prospect of Phoenix to come.

Green Lantern – Big-time stars with a significant flaw (damn you, yellow!)
In the comic book adaptation world, that pretty much straight-up describes Iron Man. That film is mint up until the final conflict - amp up the final showdown with Iron Monger. The two Hulk movies belong here for very different reasons. Ang Lee’s Hulk seemed a tad too cerebral for popcorn audiences and as a result, despite the emotions being fully developed between father and son Banners, the ending seemed a bit out of place. (I’m personally not a huge fan of being constantly reminded that THIS CAME FROM A COMIC BOOK, SEE? SPLIT CAMERA PANELS, SEE? COMIC! GOT IT?!? as Ang Lee chose to present it, but that’s likely just personal preference.) As a result of the “Grr, Hulkfan brain hurt, me smash… no, me not return to cinema and tell friends no bother either” response to the first, we saw Incredible Hulk become the story of a man’s inner turmoil of trying to contain a hideous CGI plot-less slugfest. And that was just the off-screen stuff with Norton trying to keep some depth in Louis Leterrier’s blob-brawl.

Watchmen was shot about as honestly to the source material as you could get without the film being three and a half hours long and requiring an intermission (with a glaring Rorschach exception, coming soon), although I’m not entirely sure why this couldn’t be a real epic anyway. That could just be my own nerdish bias showing again, though.

Batman – Pretty amazing stuff from a mere mortal
When I think of a quality comic book movie with a paltry budget I immediately think of The Punisher. No, not that one (although Drago can terrify criminals without even making an appearance), the Thomas Jane/John Travolta micro-budgetPunisher. It was not only a solid comic book movie, but restored the action genre to the golden days of yore with stuntwork, explosions and an actual plot. These three things have gone missing in recent years, and call me nostalgic, but at times I long for more than just two massive CGI blobs beating the crap out of one another. For those times I can just slap in Punisher (or more than likely another good ol’ action movie like Die Hard or an Ahnold special) and relive the memories. Honestly, since Thomas Jane pulled out of Punisher: War Journal I’ve gone from concern to complete apathy. A History of Violence was another solid, well-paced graphic novel adaptation; don’t go in expecting a blockbuster, but it’s decent. Going back and looking at the period-piece, The Rocketeer is another solid movie with some solid performances.

Venom – So bad they’re good
Sin City is a dark, gritty noir film which keeps to the original works of Miller (not telling anyone anything they don’t already know here). It misses out on my big-hitter list because I think it becomes a tad pretentious with it, and probably somewhat because I’m not the kind of guy who likes constant reminders that what I’m watching came from a comic book/graphic novel. I like graphic novels and I like movies, but they’re each their own medium. 300 was a big hit, put Snyder on the map to give him a crack at Watchmen, which was a visual masterpiece but which I couldn’t help but think was a little vapid. Apparently it had a lot of humour to it which people didn’t get (as Snyder claimed), in which case I’m just not on the same wavelength as Snyder. As a director it’s his responsibility to get people seeing what he sees.

Err… Domestic Violence Perpetrator… that sounds sort of like a hero… Don’t consider unless you’re taking your family (and if you are taking your family it’s quicker and less painful to just beat your kids)
These are what I live for. Critics feast on these as they inspire us to creativity and generally stand up to criticism as well as a haemophiliac in the Titty Twister. The name Joel Schumacher by itself is enough to make me twitch in memory of the agonizing death he subjected Burton’s Batman series to, first with Batman Forever, but most notably with Batman and Robin. I don’t even know where to start with Batman and Robin, but once I start I can’t stop (so to spare you all from reliving the horror, I won’t begin). The Fantastic Four movies copped a lot of flak, but as family films I think they stand up OK. At least, I maintain that they stand up a lot better than Spider-Man 3 (although most critics at the time seemed to disagree with me), which had a long list of issues. The film was too long to fit in the two villains; Kirsten Dunst needs to go the Gwen Stacy route of the comics; Venom was out of character for any continuity and had to be made so family-friendly that he probably would have best been left out altogether; the forgiveness fest at the end (which Raimi was smart enough to not try with Venom, whom he had to use as a straight bad guy who knows and accepts himself as a bad guy – which is out of character) was necessary for the younger demographic, but I’ve a feeling the ending played out better in people’s heads than what was actually on the screen.

Basically, this film has pretty much killed the interest of many in the series who have now been left disillusioned. It’s going to take some quality marketing to bring in half the box office of the first, which was extremely well anticipated. They’d also likely have to continue to pander to the younger audience somewhat to maintain the box office returns, so don’t be surprised if the Lizard isn’t a particularly dark villain (although probably still about as dark as Venom was portrayed as being), which is a tad disappointing because I think that’s where the character’s real potential lies. Seeing how much I’ve gone on about Spider-Man 3 makes me glad I didn’t start on Nipple-Suit Batman and Robin.

Abomination – OK, not a hero, but then arguably neither are these…
The less said about them, the better, so I’ll just roll off some name: Elektra, Ghost Rider, hell I’ll mention Batman and Robin. Then there’s League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, which probably belongs here, although as a family film it just about stands up. It’s barely an adaptation and is probably the best evidence we have that Alan Moore does actually have the superhuman ability to curse films that he doesn’t want made. Production was marked by constant bickering between Sean Connery and the director. It retired Connery, and the director disappeared off of the face of the earth until just this year. Peta Wilson has only just started to return – she was hoping to use the film as the stepping-stone to the next tier of actresses – and damn near every other actor disappeared without a trace. Oh, and there’s a special place in hell for whoever was responsible for Juggernaut in X-Men: The Last Stand. Brett Ratner, I’m looking at you.

‘Til next time, this has been Houndito Brigande, Lord of the Parentheses.

Alfred Hitchcock was once quoted as saying that actors are like cattle, and hen you take time to think about it, it is hard to disagree. The actor is given his scope of work with a script, and must perform his role as per the director’s interpretation of said script. After all of his work is done, the film is thoroughly edited for public consumption. How well an actor’s performance is received greatly depends on all of these factors. Of course, there is no substitute for a terrific Will Ferrell improvisation or Daniel Day Lewis’ energy, but it is interesting just how much a cast weighs into our decision making process when we are selecting which movies we want to spend some of our time on. A great cast can give us Ocean’s Eleven, or it can give us Ocean’s Twelve.

Few actors are actually going to draw me to a movie purely because of their involvement, and similarly few actors make me skeptical. A great actor like Al Pacino can give us, well, just about everything he has given us in the last fifteen years. A lesser actor like Keanu Reeves can give us The Matrix and My Own Private Idaho. Ultimately, it comes down to decision making. This isn’t Inside the Actors Studio, and I’m hardly an acting talent scout. That said, the following list is a summation of the best and worst decision makers out there. These are those few big name guys that’ll pique my interest, or kill it instantly:

Good: Leonardo DiCaprio

DiCaprio’s career was relatively quiet during the post-Titanic phase, and the man who came back is one of our best bets for a solid time at the movies. 2002 revitalized his career, when he starred in both Steven Spielberg’s Catch Me If You Can and Martin Scorsese’s Gangs of New York. From this point, it was obvious that DiCaprio had grown up, and his subsequent movies have not disappointed. He would go on to collaborate twice more with Scorsese, including playing the lead in the film which finally saw Scorsese win an Oscar. They have two more collaborations on the horizon, Shutter Island and The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt. Count me in.

Bad: Ben Affleck

Kevin Smith always has nothing but the best things to say about Ben Affleck’s talent, and frankly I am sold. The guy is a good actor. That said, his decision making over the years has been poor. I can’t really say anything about Pearl Harbor that wasn’t said in the Team America: World Police song. 2003 saw Affleck star in Daredevil, Gigli, and Paycheck. Ouch.

Good: Daniel Day Lewis

Lewis doesn’t work as often as most of these actors, so when he does decide to take on a script, I am interested. Always manages to be clearly the best thing about any project he is a part of, even when working with excellent directors like Michael Mann, Martin Scorsese, and PT Anderson.

Bad: Will Smith

Fun game. Get a piece of paper and make three categories. Label the first “CGI Clusterfucks”. Label the second “Subpar Oscar Bait”. Label the third “Other”. I think he has given some terrific performances, but many have been wasted on movies that are otherwise weak.

Good: Christian Bale

Since landing the lead in Nolan’s Batman franchise reboot, Bale has been nothing short of amazing. I love his big budget “fun” movies and I’ve loved the smaller stuff he has done between the mainstream fare. Fans of Bale should check out the highly underrated Rescue Dawn, where he plays a fighter pilot struggling to survive during the Vietnam War.

Bad: Nicolas Cage

I don’t know if its fair to call him a bad decision maker, because it seems like he simply takes every single role offered to him instead of actually leaving anything up to the selective process. His Oscar for Leaving Las Vegas was well deserved, and his performances in other works, such as Adaptation and Bringing Out the Dead, are top-notch. Ghost Rider, Next, The Wicker Man and Bangkok Dangerous, however, paint a less pretty picture. But look what’s on the horizon! Currently in development, we have G-Force, Kick Ass, Astro Boy, Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, Season of the Witch, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, and Ghost Rider 2.

What do you when your movie franchise looks to have run its natural course?  Do you artificially extend the series with another sequel and risk ruining the rep of the preceding films?  Do you cobble together a  second-rate prequel and hope the fans will swallow it?  Or do you simply acknowledge that you’re not going to squeeze any more juice out of that lemon and retire the franchise once and for all?

Lately, however, we’ve seen that there’s another option on the table: the reboot.  When you don’t want to tarnish the legacy of a strong effort but still feel you can do something new with the idea, you hit the reset switch and start over.  See where I’m going with this?

Dave has done a top-notch job during his time at TBAU, and he’s stamped his style on the site so definitely that there’s no way a new crew could simply step in and carry on as if nothing had happened.  It would be the blog equivalent of same character, different actor, and we don’t want to be the new Aunt Viv. 

So we’re rebooting.  TBAU will retain the same focus and feel, but with a new cast and director, a new voice and, somewhere down the line, a new look.

I suppose it’s only polite to introduce myself at this point.  I’m C.Y., and I’ll be overseeing affairs at TBAU from now on.  I’m a foreigner of no fixed address with various vague connections to the movie industry, and I can enjoy anything from a frou-frou foreign flick to your standard guns-and-boobs blockbuster.  I’m a big fan of fried foods and creative cursing, and both will feature more heavily hereafter than you’d think was possible.

We (yes, there will be other bloggers on board) will be using the weekend to regroup, so check back on Monday for our premiere.  As the new kids in school, we’re expecting the usual barrage of e-wedgies, digital wet willies and countless other creative forms of cyber bullying.  If you’d like to get in an early blow (or, conversely, wish us luck), drop a comment at the bottom of this article or shout us out at twitter.com/thebadandugly.

Today is it! If you’re not reading this post on Friday May 15th, 2009, then you have stumbled across a blog that no longer is! The Bad and Ugly is over: 11/2007-05/2009.

That being said, I’ve heard from many of you via e-mail, Twitter and Facebook, and there’s only one question left that I have yet to answer: What do I read now?

Yes, Google Reader is an amazing tool, as is all the FeedBurner code and what blogs allow you to do with it, but before I leave these hallowed grounds, I thought I’d talk to you about a rounded internet reading diet, especially if you are a film geek or pop culture nut.

CONTENT and AGGREGATION

First, let me explain how the internet works in the sort of field I’ve been working in. There are two types of news outlets that have or host blogs. The first are large groups of “household names” that are actually making the content and uploading said content.

Photo agencies produce the majority of the high quality photos you see on film and gossip sites. These folks hire photographers (depending on the agency, those photographers might be illegal immigrants or criminals) to follow celebrities, hang out around film sets and attend red carpets in a scary-looking gaggle.

Interviews with film and pop culture celebrities are usually done by magazines or established online journalists who know the publicist of whatever film/show/event they are covering. You can find a lot of these publicists on Twitter being Re-Tweeted by film bloggers you probably already read.

Set visits go much like interviews, but posters and production photo releases could come from a publicist or a planned release along with those blogs who have a desirable target audience.

Everyone else, be they sites that have the above “exclusive” content or not, is an aggregator. Everyone else, like me and dozens of freelancers across the ‘nets is looking for a story to bring to the forefront or a link between stories that elevates the general understanding.

Criticism and opinion are the two creative outputs for the aggregator, as my opinion slowly moved to the forefront here at The Bad and Ugly. Take gossip blogging, since it was this kind of blogging I was trained in: I’m not attending the White House Correspondents dinner every year, but I do get used to looking at as many photos from the event as possible and tearing at celebrities for their outfits or the pop-culture presence at a political event. That’s the slant of opinion, and with the gossip surge of the Britney Spears Breakdown era of 2007, this sort of off-the-cuff insult-laden opinion is popular, making aggregation sites like DListed as popular as sites hiring folks to produce and find content, like TMZ.

The film world doesn’t work any differently, but does allow for general criticism to enter into aggregation an content sites.

CRITICISM

In the art world, there are three types of people: Artists, Audience and Critics. This is a difficult concept to grasp unless you have a definition of what criticism is to you. It’s the Artist’s job to keep and open connection between him/herself and the Audience. It’s the Audience’s job to be up for the experience. Because both groups are so large, the Critic is the person who doesn’t have a monetary interest in the work (publicists aren’t critics), but rather helps contextualize a work for the artist.

The best advice I can give anyone that moonlights on the internet reading things that interest them is to find a critic you agree with or a critic you always disagree with, because critics, for the most part, don’t know what they are doing.

Take a rating system, for instance. The whole “out of 5 stars” makes no sense because that assumes that all films are on the same rating system, and that system has 10 steps (assuming you use half-stars). If I enjoyed the ending of Step Up 2 The Streets and I know that my friend down the hall loves dance movies, I’m going to recommend that guy sees Step Up 2 The Streets even if I can’t in good conscience give the movie any more than 2 stars. Because rating systems place works of art against all other works of art. My favorite movies (Casablanca, Godfather 2, et al) are 5s, but I’m not always sitting in a theater to see a 5. There simply aren’t enough 5s out there. So, when I enjoy something like Star Trek so fully, the temptation is to give it a 4.5, which places it on the level of “almost perfect movies” like Rebel Without A Cause. But that doesn’t mean that Star Trek = Rebel Without A Cause or even that those who enjoy Rebel will enjoy Trek.

Because of this criticism paradox, the best thing you can do as a participatory audience member who is attempting to seek out art they will enjoy is to find a critic whose opinions are clearly justified and who you agree/disagree with on a regular basis.

Growing up, I lived in Boulder, Colorado. I read The Denver Post because that was the newspaper my parents signed up to receive, and the Denver Post film critic at the time was Steve Rosen, who would have the exact opposite opinions in his review from mine. If he liked a movie I liked, he liked it for reasons I didn’t understand. If he disliked a movie, like when he said Monsters Inc “just can’t figure out how to elaborate on and flesh out this parallel universe in a way that stays novel” I loved it. I just learned to read Steve’s columns and see movies that he had major problems with.

I also don’t believe that critics see works in a vacuum. I know that when I saw Finding Neverland mere hours after having a conversation with a (now ex) girlfriend about losing childhood innocence, I dug that movie 20x more than if I had just rolled off a Johnny Depp marathon and soaked up Dead Man. That’s why I like my strong criticism (I loved it vs. I hated it) to have some sort of hint of how the reviewer approached the material.

Otherwise, criticism becomes an exercise where you’re echoing the opinion that your audience expects of you. My initial reaction to something like Ghost of Girlfriends Past, for instance, is “I and my audience don’t see that type of movie, therefore, I’m not posting the trailer.” If I had the time and schedule to see Ghosts, I’m sure I’d sing a different tune as certain critics that I trust have surprising things to say about it. But, I’m not writing a review because I haven’t seen it, AND because I don’t want to add to the echo-chamber by assuming I have to be an apologist for a movie I liked despite it’s reputation.

Most all the reviews I wrote on this site are positive, but specifically positive. If a movie works as a film on it’s own without major plot holes or production flaws, it has already met the criteria to be called a “film.” The job of the critic at that point is to bring said “film” to the attention of the audience that will enjoy it. That’s why my Adventureland review started by saying “bring a date” and my Brothers Bloom review told the story of my mother’s doomed group-viewing of The Watchmen. My job isn’t to sell you bad films, it’s to tell you what kind of person is going to enjoy the film I saw. I’m hoping you all know yourself well enough to know when things get positively reviewed, but aren’t for you. I also attempt to make very clear that Movie A IS A DATE MOVIE and Movie B IS A SLAHSER COMEDY so people who only like slasher comedies aren’t going to see Movie A just because Movie A was well reviewed. It was well reviewed for a date movie.

ADDITIONAL READING

I’m assuming you read blogs and that you read blogs about film and pop culture. If that’s true and The Bad and Ugly were part of your daily/weekly blog diet, I didn’t want to leave you hanging. So here are some of my suggestions on sites you may or may not have heard of and their place in the complete blog diet.

HollywoodReporter.com and Variety.com - These two sites are for the Hollywood trade magazines and their online efforts. They sometimes steal from bloggers who are out there pounding the pavement, and that makes them semi-nasty, but not as bad as other folks in the entertainment industry. Not to mention these two PRINT publications still have journalists on staff who are out there scouring for stories. These two trades will cover most everything that’s of interest, but rarely frame what makes the annoucnement interesting. Yeah, Terry Gilliam is suiting up for a new project, that’s not interesting. Terry Gilliam is suiting up to try to make his La Mancha movie again, now that’s interesting. Often THR and Variety force you to read between the lines to make the interesting connection.

ComingSoon.Net , SuperHeroHype.com and ShockTillYouDrop.com - Yes, these are my Crave Online partners and parent blogs and I would be remiss if I didn’t suggest them to you, even though I’m guessing you guys know. However, each site disseminates news in a unique way. Coming Soon covers all things film with some TV thrown in. However, they are big enough to get some “exclusive” content and to break stories. They also have The Weekend Warrior, a guy who sees basically every movie released. If you read multiple critics, read this guy. There’s something to be said for being able to draw connections to dozens of other films on command, and I have a difficult time thinking of any other online critic that writes so extensively for one source. SuperHeroHype is Coming Soon’s superhero stories isolated on another blog. Here, however, the community is the highlight. Check out the message boards, they are a great place to geek out over news and my favoirte place to discuss big summer ARGs (Alternate Reality Games). ShockTillYouDrop.com is a little different as Ryan Rotten, the site’s managing editor is so geekily into horror that he often produces great stories all by his lonesome. So even though SHH might sometimes take a turn as a CS derivative, Shock never really is.

/Film - These guys still have the burning passion for film that started all of us blogging and they have done a good job using it to leverage better stories. Many a debate has been had between me and others as to where /Film came from and how they managed to grow into the powerhouse they are today, and I think I have a simple reason: these guys seem to still care, deeply. They’ve made columnists out of their bloggers, covering weekly DVD releases a daily internet video and a series of “Cool Stuff” products which are generally cool and don’t reek of advertising plants. Also to their credit, the weekly /Filmcast podcast, which frequently has me scribbling notes about what I’d be yelling about if I was on it. I’m not saying it’s always a critical home run, but that amount of visceral reaction to the opinions voiced on that podcast means something. Plus, it makes long trips on the subway tolerable if I’m fumed over them not mentioning Little Big Planet when talking about games as art.

CHUD - Cinematic Happenings Under Development is useful as part of your film blog reading (though I don’t suggest calling it a blog to their face), though probably shouldn’t be the only thing you read. The Devin’s Advocate columns are good fodder for discussion and Russ Fischer does some good writing, but this is a better place to read reviews and get into comment fights than it is to get a balanced diet of film news. Though when CHUD is good, it’s often the best read of the day.

AintItCoolNews.com - This was the site I started reading before I knew that the internet was going to be one of those things that took off. Because I’ve spent so much time reading, I’ve gotten to know the critics and their voices pretty well. When I go to AICN for aggregation, it’s only to check if I’m missing a story absolutely everyone already has. I got to AICN for Massawyrm, Quint, Mr. Beaks, Miss DuPont and to read the crazy talkbackers. Harry Knowles, the site’s big red flag, is only a reliable critic if you’ve been reading him long enough to balance his overly-positive opinions. Harry writes about what he likes or what he got to see first, so take everything he says knowing it’s an opinion. But interviews and reviews from AICN are top notch.

LatinoReview.com - I’m not sure why these guys seemed to miss that my last name was Gonzales for so long, but I’ll give them a pass on that. LatinoReview is best used for thier new video features that tell the story of unproduced screenplays under development. Even before they figured out how to use final cut, these guys (and gal) were the go-to for script reviews, and they still are.

IESB.com, Collider.com and the MTV Movies - Both these blogs cover so much that one might be tempted to only visit them, but I should really warn you against it. Even though both sites are run by good people and have good writers working for them,they occasionally slant towards the sensational. That is great for hits, but it also means some stories slip through despite being based on rumor. As long as you have a blog that aggregates what is actually happening (a THR or Variety), these guys provide a good balance of what could be happening. And when they are right, they are right before anyone else.

Cinematical.com - AOL brings you movie news without the overbearing shoving-it-down-your-throat way that AOL does other things (*cough*TMZ*cough*). These guys have a new live chat interface that’s fun as well as a litany of freelance writers that have impeccable reputations as up-and-comers or up-and-came…ers…? Critically, they sometimes see things different than me, but their editor(s) know the score. The site and it’s writers will occasionally take a chance on a story that looks uninteresting, only to develop it into something that’s much more than it first appeared to be. If you find a Cinematical writer you like, follow them.

Filmonic.com and ScreenRant.com - These guys are awesome and probably the closest to me in the sense that they are aggregators that slip opinion and criticism into your news. Vic from ScreenRant has always been very, very nice (and ripped, so don’t fight him) and Liam at Filmonic happened to start the very same month as The Bad And Ugly, but managed to be much more successful. Maybe because they are based out of the UK? Maybe I should move. Either way, both these sites come with the Dave stamp of approval, which doesn’t mean much…yet… but that’s what I can give.

FirstShowing.net - I don’t read First Showing as much as the other sites listed here, mostly because I learned early on that the site’s critical voice and my personal opinions didn’t jive. But that doesn’t take away from the fact that Alex B manages to get some exclusive stuff. Also, most everything of consequence he writes gets commented on by editors of other sites who also don’t agree with his critical opinion. The one thing I do visit First Showing and only First Showing for is their coverage of film-related alternate reality games.

ThePlaylist.Blogspot.com - I didn’t dig these guys until I met them, but now their site has migrated towards the top of my daily reading. Self-described as “a place ostensibly dedicated to that sweet spot where music and movies meet, but a place to discuss whatever the f we want,” The Playlist will often pick up on stories and find that connection to something else that makes the story insanely interesting. I kind of wish I was sitting next to someone from The Playlist when I was reading Variety each morning. Highly recommended.

A COMPLETE BLOG DIET

Things like Digg, Current Movies, Twitter and The Huffington Post will disseminate film news for you if you know how to find an aggregated section. Digg has “entertainment,” Current lets you submit interesting articles you find and vote them up or down, Twitter is where all the bloggers get together and bullshit and The Huffington Post will undboutably help you pin-point the top story of the day.

But what about people who want to dip their head in the information pool and get past the surface? That’s me, and if that’s you, I suggest a complete blog diet.

The Bad and Ugly and all of the sites mentioned above cannot and should not be your “one stop shop” for film news. My intention while writing this blog was to introduce you to things, point you in a general direction and hope that you’d link-surf or Google your way towards something with the information you want. That’s why I suggest a complete blog diet.

- Find three aggregation sites you like. There are many out there, and even when they go on story binges, covering near everything, they can’t take more than 5 minutes to scan for your interests. Instead of reading the whole Hollywood Reporter each day, find a specialized site that writes on your interests (castings, new projects) and let them do all the reading for you. If you have at least three aggregation sites bookmarked, you’ll start noticing the overlap. These are large and unmissable stories, like when Christopher Nolan actually talks to people about a new Batman film. They are going to be everywhere. But, if you’ve found aggregators you trust, they will occasionally sift out the hidden gold nugget from an otherwise boring news cycle.

- Find two sites with interviews you like. If you’ve watched enough late night talk shows in your lifetime, you know that there are some people who can’t give an interview. Then, the same subject goes on The Daily Show or Late Night and John Stewart and David Letterman manages to get an interesting interview out of seemingly nothing. All interviews are not the same. Find a site (or sites) who has writers that interview well and swing by them every other day.

- Find a critic and read them until you know them. Names and critics are not all the same. Just because /Film as a brand is a good blog doesn’t mean I always agree with their film reviews. It also doesn’t mean that those reviews aren’t valid, they just don’t apply to me and therefore I don’t use them as a basis for the entertainment products I consume. The next time you see a movie opening week, come home and look up as many reviews for that film as you can. Read them. If you find one that says what you think, start paying attention to that critic. With any luck, s/he will turn you on to some coolness you’ve never heard of.

- CONTRIBUTE and INTERACT. You can’t judge a book by it’s cover, yes. And you shouldn’t judge a site by it’s trolls, but that doesn’t mean commenting on posts with your opinion, signing up for a message board or Tweeting at your favorite writers isn’t a great way to find things you like. Some things that don’t require full blog posts, I’ll Tweet. I also try to answer every e-mail my spam filter lets through. It was MY JOB to make content FOR YOU, and anyone that has lost site of that does not deserve to sell your eyeballs to their advertisers.

The internet is a large place where an unimaginable amount of information is available. But the internet is populated by people. People who consume and read and people who consume so you don’t have to read. This has formed a community that I was honored to be part of.

I’ll still be out there, surfing the nets when I’m not writing or working to make rent. You can find me on Twitter HERE or at my personal website, ReadItOrDont.com.

It’s been an honor and a pleasure. Keep being the fans you are.

We need you.

You were supposed to see The Brothers Bloom saddled over the 2008/2009 border, with a limited run in late December over the holidays and a full run in theaters come January 2009. Then, the movie kept getting pushed back until now it’s a fun con man film that is forced to compete in a field full of blockbusters. If The Brothers Bloom opened alongside Oscar-baiting fare instead of explosions ad giant robots, the film would find the audience it deserves and surprise the up-their-own-a**es pretentious film goers with a smart romantic comedy. As it is now, it’s going to surprise f*ck-it-all summer film attendees with charming characters and a winding con man plot.

Either way, there is good reason to see Brothers Bloom, mainly because it’s good.

My mom is a big fan of summer movies to this day. The only problem this year was that she gathered a group of female friends to go see what looked to be the first big special effects film of the year. My mom enjoys movies where things explode or films with a light-hearted plot. I’m guessing that raising me helped develop her taste for escapism. Regardless, her friends are of similar ilk, which it why Mom messed up her film-reputation by taking a whole bunch of housewives to The Watchmen.

Just to cover my own butt here, if Mom had asked me about Watchmen, I would have told her to wait until it came out on Netflix. It just wasn’t her type of film. Now, people are hesitant to go see Wolverine with her, because they’re afraid they will get blasted in the face with more attempted rape and blue penises.

Mom: Take your lady friends to Brothers Bloom. It might be the one film this year that a group of Midwestern housewives and I might both enjoy. It’s like The Sting peppered with Oceans 11 and with the Rachel Weiz role you like.

As for the rest of you, I suppose I have some ’splaining to do…