Soon, the year 2010 ends and with it (as usual) a year full of movies (but no contact to aliens as predicted by some movies). Some of them were extraordinary, some of them shit. Well, judging from my reviews and my feelings the year for me was more mediocre than good.

Well, thanks to the Film Cynics I got wind of a nice compilation video I couldn’t have made any better.  I think it contains most of the better known and more (critically) successful movies of 2010, weaved together quite spectacularly.

Have fun watching it and trying to recognize all movies you’ve watched this year. I well reached the double digits – which nevertheless should be a shame for a movie reviewer and movie lover like me.

How many movies can you count?

By the way: if you try to find the title of a certain movie because of the cool visuals, forget it. The creator of this compilation video indeed created a list. But the problem is that he didn’t add some time information. What’s worse is that he only added a movie to the list when it’s shown for the first time, not when it’s used again. It took me five minutes alone to find one single movie. Sigh.

But enough of me, here’s the video:

There’s one thing I hate as much as bad movies and that’s moviegoers so annoying they ruin the whole experience. Because of that I always try to know whose sitting where before I buy a ticket (in Germany, the tickets have a seating number, so only one seat per person). That task for some reason always ends up being rather difficult so most of the time I end up with the lunatics in the audience.

Please forgive me, but after so many years I just have to write down the nine biggest/worst moviegoers I ever had to endure during a watch. Consider this post a self-referential counseling session. During the last two weeks I had to endure so many types listed below at the same time I am a short hop from a mental breakdown.

But enough about me, here are the nine worst types of moviegoers you can run into in a movie theater.

The Damsel in Distress

Never watch a horror movie with a woman. Never. If you do, it will be one of the most horrible things you’ll ever experience. Not because of the movie itself but because of the woman slamming her nails into your knee every time something, anything, happens. A premium version is a girl screeching and ruining your knee when nothing happens at all. My knee still hurts fifty years later.

The Giant

The guy cannot help it that he’s as large as a house and most likely he’s a cool dude anyone loves to hang around with. But when he’s sitting right in front of you – the smaller dude (me) – you can be dead certain that half of the screen is “missing”. The premium version is a guy not only big as the Death Star but having a haircut where his standing hair adds another four inches. The happy meal premium version is when you’re watching a subbed movie.

The Hysteric Laugher

Most of the time it’s girls and women watching romantic comedies. It doesn’t matter where you sit or where she sits. When she goes off she goes off with a blast. Since many comedies have sequences where a lot of funny stuff happens at once you’ll hear her for that amount of time plus two additional minutes until she calms down. Oh yeah: it’s not that the rest of the audience is laughing in those moments. Of course, the premium version is a hysteric laugher sitting right next to you. Ouch.

The Exploding Time Bomb

This can happen during any kind of movie. The audience is silent until someone starts laughing hysterically for no apparent reason at all and it takes minutes before our beloved silence is back. Most likely, his or her friend told a joke about the movie. The only problem? The rest didn’t hear the joke. The time bomb is especially “funny” in a drama.

The Carnival Barker

This one’s very similar to the exploding time bomb. The difference is that the time bomb doesn’t intend to be loud. The carnival barker on the other hand does. So the urge to go Hannibal with them is even bigger. Most often it’s a guy believing in his own uber coolness. So when something stupid happens in a movie, his coolness bursts out like the chestburster in Alien and he shouts his stupid one liner into the dark.

The Smart Ass

This moviegoer loves to comment many things about a movie – especially the bad stuff. It’s not that the bad stuff is truly bad. It’s only that it’s bad in his eyes. This type of moviegoer is especially dangerous in hordes. You can be sure that in such situation you hear a remark every two minutes. “Yo, man that dialogue is sooooo shit.”

The Arrogant Smart Ass

This type is more dangerous than the smart ass, because here we have someone who watched so many movies he loves nothing anymore. And he does his best to ensure the surrounding audience members know that. While the Smart Ass above just blurts out his personal opinion, the arrogant smart ass knows movies and their mechanics very well. The premium version is a film student who seriously believes he’s the next Kubrick. If the arrogant smart ass is a film student who’s accompanied by a fellow student you hit the jackpot.

The Omnivore

Those people mistake movie theaters for fast food outlets. If you have someone sitting in your vicinity, prepare for two hours of *munch* *crack* *rustle* *burp* *munch* *smack*. It’s amazing how much and how loud some people can eat in just two hours.

The Constant Babbler

In my eyes one of the worst type of moviegoer you can encounter. I don’t know why, but those people mistake a movie theater for basically everything else. They chatter and chatter and chatter. And the best of all? They’re not even talking about the movie playing in front of them. For crying out loud: either STFU or leave the room. How hard can that be? Why are they in the movie theater in the first place?

That’s the nine worst types of movie goers I had to endure in the last few years. Did you have a pleasant memory with one of those types? Let us know.

Just for the record: two weeks ago I had the Smart Ass behind me, The Arrogant Smart Ass besides me and The Giant in front of me. Can you top that?

It might come to a surprise for the one or the other but I sometimes watch European movies. Admitted, anything else would be stranger than fiction because I am living in Europe.

Today was such a day I went local again. I watched a French movie about some high school kids. It’s called The French Kissers, and well, the titles fits the movie really well. In a way it was the depiction of the more than awkward phase of puberty in full bloom – accompanied by much slurping and smacking. In other words: More than once it was embarrassing not only for the characters but also for the audience.

But you know why I mention that movie at all? Not because it’s horribly bad or good. No, it’s because the movie showed me – again – why I sometimes so fucking hate European movies and incompetent European filmmaking. You know, you can rant about Hollywood all you can and want, but one thing they do know: they know how to write movies with a purpose. I don’t mean “purpose” in the sense of “let me show you how ugly the world is to make it better”. Nothing of that kind. I mean “purpose” in the sense of “this movie has a goal, the main character has a goal he wants to reach”.

European movies on the other hand, for reasons totally beyond me, very often (or to be more precise: almost every time) tend to be the exact opposite. Those movies have no purpose, in other words, no clear goal to reach. Most often you see character talking, living, doing shit all the time – while I sit in the chair wondering why the fuck I should care about any of this.

You know, the movie I watched today again absolutely proved me that having no fucking goal whatsoever ends up in a movie that could end anytime – in other words a script you could cut in half since nothing of importance happens. There is no purpose. The character doesn’t reach or learn anything. You have to imagine it: in the last scene of that movie you see the main character walking to school while saying hello to his friends. Fade to Black. End credits. That’s it. I never would have guessed that the end was coming. It simply arrived and, bang, the movie was over.

I never got the feeling of closure or that the plot reached its end. Not even once. And I never cared for the main character because he had no goal to reach against opposition. Nothing. Basically the movie faded to black because the time ran out, not because something of importance happened earlier on. In other words: that movie could’ve continued forever. Now that’s what I call great European filmmaking. The movie from today was just another example in a so long list of European movies without a purpose. It’s fucking embarrassing.

I really wonder when everything started to decay to such a level. Of course, Hollywood produces shit, but at least there’s a goal to reach for the characters almost every time. Even in such abysmal shit as Kangaroo Jack or New York Taxi or Soul Plane. Some might call this “entertainment shit” or “movies for the masses” or “formulaic writing”. But those formulas work very well. At least in that regard Hollywood learned its lesson many decades ago. Europe, it seems, still needs some decades to learn the same thing.

You probably have heard of the music band OK Go, which are well known for their amazing one-cut music videos.

Some weeks ago they published their newest take, a marching band video to their latest track This Too Shall Pass. I watched the video, thought it’s amazing, wanted to blog about, but then learned that EMI prohibited viral marketing by not allowing embedding the video.

It stirred quite a small tornado in the net. And I decided to not blog about the video because I don’t promote the stuff of guys who piss me off by thinking they’re acting smart.

After that I didn’t bother anymore about it and so I totally missed the biggest news of them all regarding this matter: OK Go has decided to leave EMI and start their own label.

I was all “WOW” for a second and read the news to get some details (which are cool to read, by the way, I really start to love the front man Damian Kulash).

Here’s a money Quote from Kulash:

If someone’s gonna get to go make a three-minute movie, I wanna be the one having that fun! So in general, whenever we can do something ourselves, we do, because it also means that your career doesn’t ride on the ups and downs of somebody else’s marketing plan.

And while I was reading that one thought slowly crawled up in my mind: could something similar happen to big Hollywood production studios in the near future?

The best is to think of the good old windowing chain they started to implement in the 1930s: today it begins with cinema, then goes to DVD/BluRay and video rentals, then goes to payTV and finishes with FreeTV.

And the start of this chain, cinema, is where Hollywood in my eyes started to dig their own graves some years ago. Because during the last years, Hollywood worked hard on digitizing your cinema of choice: Instead of the good old analogue projector we more and more get digital projectors, including Blue Pixels of Death.

But when everything is digital, you don’t have massive copy costs anymore, a reason why Hollywood forces the new technology. But when there are no copy costs anyone could – theoretically – distribute his or her movie to cinema. Even small time studios and perhaps even normal people like you and me. You either need some cheap hard drives, or – even cheaper – provide your movie via internet, something Hollywood also works hard on to implement.

I am sure that Hollywood put some neat tricks into those systems so this change won’t happen that easily. But I am also sure that it won’t take too long before – theoretically – anyone can distribute their movies to your cinema of choice.

Thinking about it, this could also be a cool idea for small theaters to get new audiences and find new niches. They could present old classics or Grindhouse features, short movies from students, have competitions for digital experiments and so on. The possibilities are endless.

The ironic part of everything will be the fact that Hollywood production studios themselves forced digital projection technology to cheapen everything – and so dug their own graves.

Note: Cheaper = more can do it. Digital = even more can do it. Do the math and tell me if I am wrong.

Let me get one thing straight from the beginning:

I love Aliens.

I think it is one of the best Sci-Fi Action movies ever made and one of the best movies of James Cameron before he started getting bad with scripts but even better with effects.

Aliens has great pacing, great suspense and hell a lot of great action. The sound effects for those awesome machine guns alone is fantastic. And on top it all Aliens is on par with Alien although they couldn’t be more different in terms of their respective feeling.

The Director’s Cut of Aliens is whole different story here.

Basically it sucks on a massive scale. It’s not those added scenes that fill in some background information. No…it’s only two damn scenes Cameron added that drag Aliens down to the suck level.

Only two scenes!!

And they completely ruin the movie because they completely remove the tension and suspense.

I am at best okay with most of the other additions. Take the scene where the settlers find the cave with the crashed alien ship. In the original it’s missing hence we know nothing about the beginning. We just see the results. Some might say that this scene is great clearing up everything. Well, I never really cared about that. It doesn’t matter. The only thing that counts is that they are screwed. Period. Another thing is the absence of Ripley. This movie is about her. It starts with her it, it ends with her and in between we never leave her. The settler scene for that alone is an epic waste of time.

Now on to those two damn scenes that truly ruin everything for me.

If you remember, after the first big action scene of Marines Vs. Aliens in which the marines get totally mopped, they head back to the main complex, think about their past errors and start barricading themselves as good as they can since they cannot get off the damn rock.

Well, in the Director’s Cut they do one other thing: they place some automatic guns in the tunnels to fight off the Aliens. What happens of course is that those guns are not placed there for nothing. The creatures start to find their way to the complex and attack twice. Of course they get busted.

It’s those scenes that totally destroy the tension of Aliens and as a result the movie as a whole.

You know I always knew those nasty things wouldn’t wait very long to attack. Why should they wait? They won by a huge margin in the first round. The question for me was more “Where are they now?” It’s the classic horror cliché: the best horror is the one you can’t see because then it can be everywhere. The same is with the original cut of Aliens. What are they up to? Where are they? Did they trick them and their motion trackers? Those nasty little buggers could lurk behind every damn corner. The result is pure tension and suspense.

The machine gun scenes remove this very suspense because they show us our beloved acidic busters. We now know where they are, we can see them and we know they are still outside…Way to go man. That’s suspension for the win!

Come on, James! What the heck were you thinking? Sigh.

As far as I’m concerned I’ll gladly stick to my super mega DVD edition of Aliens which includes the original cut. Thanks to that I can let the suspense raise to the heavens each time I watch this fantastic movie.

What’s your take on this? Am I too harsh or do you agree that those scenes are so wrong on so many levels?

I knew it: They knew it and worked on it for decades. My spider paranoia sense was always tingling and it turns out my crazy paranoia was spot on all the time…

What do I mean? I’m talking about body scanners on airports or the wish to install them everywhere so bad people can find other ways of doing bad things. In Germany they’re called “Nacktscanner” (nude scanner), which seems to be a far better description to me of what’s actually happening in them. But that’s a different plot including some public discussions worth any bad comedy trophy.

Since I first heard about the plans of installing those “gadgets” and learned about their functionality I couldn’t quite pinpoint where I’ve heard or seen that one before. The only thing I knew was that I’ve seen it in a movie.

Finally, after many moons I have the answer thanks to YouTube. Turns out I’ve seen it years and years ago in the comedy spoof sequel Airplane – The Sequel, which takes the usual airplane catastrophe formula and puts it into space.

Well, and in this movie there’s a short scene in which…well, I think it’s better if you simply watch the very short clip:

You see? Airplane – The Sequel was the movie that had the idea of placing body scanners in airports decades ago. I am sure that someone out there knew something – or they simply used the idea proposed in that scene. What’s even better: the scene even shows the problem that arises using them (which then really happened as far as I remember). Come on: they had to know something. They went to the future. I know it.

Or it went this way: scientists or politicians watched a spoof comedy of an airplane disaster in space – and turned it into reality.

That’s what I call surreal.

(I so hope they don’t follow Naked Gun and put Frank Drebin in charge of everything…)

It seems that Hollywood is getting more desperate by the minute to find new stupid reboot ideas to ruin our daily nerves. In case you didn’t know Hollywood plans to reboot the reboot of Superman, wants to reboot Spiderman and reboots Fantastic Four, RoboCop and so many other franchises and wannabe’s.

I think we can all agree that this situation is slowly but surely getting out of hand. The best example truly is Superman which didn’t even scratch the surface of a true trilogy before a new reboot.

But this situation doesn’t have to go on forever. After some thinking I found a simple and straightforward yet ultimate solution to all this reboot madness coming from Hollwood:

Any director or writer can direct or write only one movie to realize his vision or take of a certain franchise. No more, no less.

In other words: every franchise would henceforth consist of a bunch of movies, which have no continuing stories as you might expect from a trilogy or sequels. Each movie creates its own universe and its plot gets wrapped up by the end of its run.

It’s a constant reboot!

No movie would be like the other before it or after it. You wouldn’t need the same actor, or even the same team working on it. Considering this everyone involved could have way more creative freedom in their doing since…hey, what could they possibly loose when it’s only one movie each time?

Of course each studio could lose some good amounts of money, but this problem could be solved immediately by incorporating one single rule: the budget depends on the quality and scope of the script. The better the script more money they get, the bigger the possible audience, the more money they get.

So, if someone wants to make an intimate movie about Superman there should be no problem. Since the scope is small but the script is wonderful, the studio ‘only’ invests $50m. Then the big blockbuster take afterward has a budget of $200 million. And so on.

The studios even could do some surveys or “battles” by which they let the audience decide which script should be filmed next. They could even to multiple versions at the same time, from one independent take to one with the usual big budget…Damn, I am dreaming again…

What do you say? Would you like to see such constant reboots? Or do you have a cooler idea to stop this silly reboot madness?

Aaaah. Help me, help me! The horror is too much! My brain!!!!

…

The good old movie cliche. It’s as old as the movie. Heck, they even produced cliches during the silent movie era before they knew what a cliche was. Of course, it hasn’t become any better since then. Movies rip off cliches from the classics and use them until the viewer’s brain takes a nap in the nearest bar. Or worse.

Do you want to want to feel the agony again? Here are the Top 10 Worst Movie Cliches any director can come up with.

10. Languages? More than one?

It doesn’t matter if it’s Star Trek, Star Wars or Stargate. Any franchise with “Star” in its title (and every other sci-fi movie or series for that matter) knows only one language: English. So if you ever have to go to space don’t worry. Every alien race is like a normal guy from Hollywood. The difference? The costumes!

9. There is no “Man of Steel”. There are Thousands!

For most of the time you can rely on the fact that in an Action Flick For Men™ there will be a Manly Fight To The Death™. Hero and villain beat the crap out of each other for days, if not even hours . But even though they Fight To The Death™ there is one little problem: they never bleed or only get minor scratches. I know the human body can sustain some awesome amount of injuries. But I never knew that skin is made of steel.

8. Be a Hero! It’s important to Survival!

That’s the major of rule for anyone in the middle of a disaster: be the leader! You have to be it even if it kills you. Otherwise you end up as canon fodder. Whenever you are trapped in a disaster with some bunch of walking cliches (i.e. a old couple, an artist, a dog etc.), be their President. Otherwise you are doomed. It’s the iron rule of The Disaster Movie.

7. Look at that. Look! How cuuuuuuuuuuuute!!!!!

Animals never die or get harmed. An asteroid can vaporize the whole earth, a big explosion can reduce a city to ashes, but the dog survives. But it gets better: after the catastrophe is over the dog emerges from the debris, wags its tail and barks as if nothing happened. And we all go: Aaaaaawwwwwww…. how cuuuuuuuuuuuute. And don’t even forget dogs are basically everywhere. Because…shall I repeat it again? They’re so cuuuuuuuuuuuute. With twelve ‘u’!

6. Safer Sex played Safe!

A movie without sex? That’s almost impossible! It’s the spice of life. Every big male-oriented movie has it. And you can be sure of one thing: After this obligatory sex scene both characters lie in bed dressed (hey, who wouldn’t). Alternatively the woman hides her beauty with a blanket when standing up. Otherwise her lover could see her naked *gasp*!!!!! Dear girls and writers: Much worse happened in the night before. There’s nothing to hide anymore. He knows her inside out. Therefore either go fully realistic or cut the sex shit completely. Oh by the way: there’s always the Mysterious Blanket. You know, the one which covers the woman fully but the man only up to his hips. I love it!

5. Because he never stands up again…

OK. The hero dealt with a really bad villain for almost hours – if not minutes. Or he was chased by a crazy zombie maniac. Or something completely different. One thing always remains the same: after the intense confrontation (see Fight To The Death™) the hero wins the fight. Cool. But then it happens. The hero doesn’t finish off the villain by either shooting all rounds into his head or by beating him to pulp. You know, just to be sure HE DOESN’T STAND UP AGAIN IN THE BACKGROUND. Sigh.

4. Computers for anyone?

Movies love computers and computer geeks. The problem? Either we get Apple only or we get a teenage hacker breaking into a government mainframe as if it’s nothing. Even Apple cannot pull that one off. Then there’s those interfaces. They look so cool it’s not surprising they don’t exist in reality: there always something moving, although the characters use the keyboard most of the time. You cannot differentiate between cool but useless background shit and the important stuff. “Where the hell is the button!!!!!” is only one sentence I’d shout out while working with those interfaces. The first movie in which I witnessed a normal use of computers was The Ring. Oh, and there was this Sandra Bullock flick…

3. That’s a $200 Fine! Please Come Again in the Next Movie…

Time is up and our movie hero is on its way in a car. Sometimes his destination is a building. Time’s up since ten hours so he has to hurry. But that’s no problem at all because he always finds a parking lot on the spot. Right.In.Front.Of.The.Building. It can be anything. From a small shop to the biggest government building on the world. There’s always a parking lot waiting for the hero. Damn! I think we all should become the heroes of our own movies so we don’t have to search for a parking lot anymore.

2. Bullet Reload Time is for Losers.

It doesn’t matter how much our beloved action hero must shoot. He never reloads. What am I writing? He simply doesn’t have to reload. Reloading is for sissies. He has endless ammunition. Just imagine he had to reload. The universe would tear apart immediately because by doing this action he’d need to wear a ton of rounds. But that would hinder his movements so he doesn’t have to. As a result he can shoot and shoot and shoot. The parallel universe called Hollywood is wonderful. And this cliche directly leads to the most nerve-wrecking movie cliche of them all…

1.Henchmen training suspended for monetary reasons

It doesn’t matter how many henchmen a bad guy has hired (Normally it’s that many that they could form their own nation). When they’re shooting they miss the target with utmost precision. Every damn time. Think of Star Wars or any buddy cop flick. The hero can stand at point blank range and they still miss with utmost precision. Perhaps that’s the reason those guys only get hired as henchmen. The best thing they can do is to become some kind of distraction.

So this is the list of the Top 10 Worst Movie Cliches. Of course, there are some other ones out there but they would have been too easy. Here are the honorable mentions:

• the woman always falls down while being chased by The Evil. A car explodes – always, doesn’t matter why. The you-fly-through-glass-without-a-scratch-move. Noise in space. The bad guy not shooting the movie hero. And the countdown bomb with big red numbers showing the remaining time.

Did I miss something?

Some days ago James added a comment to my review of Pixar’s Up. Well, normally I wouldn’t reply to a comment via a post but by a comment myself but I think that James raised an interesting point about which I never really wrote about: movies and realism. Basically James called my criticism of Up uncalled-for because Up is not meant for realism (or written realistic) but more about the feelings of the main characters.

Okay. I get his point but he also totally misses my point because…

Since when did I ever care about realism in a movie?

I don’t know if I ever truly wrote it on this blog, but to me a movie is per se not realistic. It cannot be.  It’s impossible. Period. Therefore I say: realism in every movie is a fake. Realism cannot be in a movie. Realism is impossible to achieve.

If you head over to Wikipedia it states that realism in the arts is the depiction of subjects as they appear in everyday life without interpretation. Basically you could call a movie realistic if its characters appear normal and don’t sprout wings or believe they can walk in a straight line.

This definition is quite good and almost reaches the point I am for some years now when it comes to movies and realism. Basically my take is this: even if the characters or the story appear realistic it isn’t because a writer wrote it, a director directed it and so on. To me, on a practical level, a movie ceases being realistic with the first cut since a cut changes either position or time or both.

Of course, there are too many faults in my theory about realism and movies to count. If you like you can gladly point them out in the comments.

But you know what?

Thanks to this take of mine, I really don’t give a shit if a movie is realistic or not because to me it cannot be. As a result I care about only one thing: can a movie make me smile about what I am watching? Can a movie surprise me? Or in other words: can a movie entertain me? Realism is not important, it’s the impression or impact.

In all those years of watching hundreds if not thousands of movies I came to this obvious but basic conclusion with my own formulated theory you read above.

And you know what? With this take I am someone you can basically throw anything at.

I gladly take it.

I am someone who is a genius at the thing called “suspension of disbelief”. But don’t dare to throw at me the same shit I watched thousands of times already. And don’t dare to throw at me a shitty story that makes no sense.

What’s important here is the strict distinction of the words “realism” and “sense”. With a story making “sense” I basically mean sense in the context of the universe the writer/movie established and fleshed out. For example: a movie can play on a planet without gravity. If the story is great I love this crazy idea. But if at one moment the people start walking it’s a moment where the story officially starts to make no sense anymore. Okay, the example is way beyond bad…

Let me go back to Pixar’s Up to give you a better example. The first twenty or thirty minutes Up established a rather normal universe, you could say Up strived for serious realism. I even wrote about this fact in my review. Up is one of Pixar’s most serious movies to date in which you can see an old man struggle against the harsh realities of life including lawyers.

I also mentioned in my review that they could have made the take off of Carl’s house one of the most poetic moments in the history of cinema since this is some kind of outbreak/outburst in an otherwise lifeless and harsh universe. As you can see, I didn’t care about realism here at all. (Ok, you could say realism was still at work here, since it’s not totally impossible to fly a house with balloons (Mythbusters, your take), but I in this context I go for the “everyday life” of said definition) I totally accepted this idea and wanted the movie even go farther than it did.

But the dogs? Way different story here. The dogs were and still are one of the major faults of Up to me. They simply don’t fit in (neither did this crazy bird). To me, this would have been something completely different if they did one simple thing: establish it early on. At one moment in Up they showed a documentary about the hero of Carl. In this segment they could have added the talking dogs or at least have established the point that the guy was a genius in any way possible who claimed to have succeeded in letting dogs talk. You know, something like that. But they didn’t. And hence, the talking dogs jumped out of nowhere. It’s like watching a comedy in which suddenly Michael Myers jumps out of the bushes. It doesn’t fit. The tones don’t fit. To me this was the point the movie officially began to fall apart.

My criticism has nothing to do with realism. It completely has to do with consistency.

I could continue to write on, also in regard to James’ comment in my review, but the post is long enough already.  Well, I hope I at least could shed some light on my take on moves and the way I see them and my take on the word “realism”.

Do you think there is some truth in my take or is this complete nonsense? Let us know!

The end of the year is near and soon we have fewer years left until a meteor, alien invasion, malfunctioning earth core, solar eruption or George W. Bush completely destroys humanity in the year 2012.

But don’t think I’d let me (and you) off the hook so easily – until our fated doom I serve you blog posts with a smyle and a heart, even if it’s only list posts to review the past…

Therefore here are the best blog posts of madmind of this year in no particular order. Thank you for your support albeit how small it may be.

Let’s get started!

• Ten “Plot Holes” and Errors in Wall-E
  This post caused quite a stir in a certain Wall-E fan forum but despite that I firmly keep my stand regarding my observations. I still love Wall-E but plot holes, plot errors, mistakes and blunders still remain in it. But let’s be frank, anything perfect is boring.
• The most successful Genres of 2008
  If you ever wanted to know which genre fared best – in 2008. Perhaps I will post something similar again despite the work accompanied by it.
• Why Sequels are a Wise Investment decision
  I hate to admit it, but sequels still are a wise investment decision. Read this post about the why’s.
• To Disney
  Disney could have remade the industry and started something completely new. Well, could have. This is a rant I wrote after reading some details about the movie which was released some weeks ago.
• Genius Party Beyond – Moondrive
  a short movie which is part of an anime anthology. Nothing much on the outside but so funny and interesting once seen that I give a wholehearted “Yes” to anyone who asks if he or she should watch it.
• How to spot a Bad Movie in 1 Minute
  You really don’t need much time to spot a bad movie and you really only need one minute – or less. Read it and you know why.
• The Top 101 Sequels of All Time
  one of my biggest analyses I’ve done to date. If you want to know which sequel stands where from Evil Dead 2 to The Dark Knight, here you find the answer.
• Fooly Cooly
  Two words that describe another word: genius. Anyone even slightly interested in highly-imaginative, creative but crazy laugh-fests with a deeper meaning behind everything and a soundtrack to behold, you have really missed something. Fooly Cooly is one of the best. Read this post to learn more about it, get it, watch it! You won’t regret it.
• A Moment beyond the Alphabet
  Bad acting is bad. Horrible acting is great. Horrible acting in a C-movie is marvelous. This video proves just that.
• Stupid German Additional Movie Titles
  Germany can be a funny place, at least if you don’t care too much about movie titles. Or about additional movie titles which get plastered under almost every movie title. Head to this post to see some examples which range from funny to wtf.

That’s it! The Best of madmind 2009. I hope I will reach new heights in the next year to further increase your reading pleasure…

Happy New Year!