Remember this series? Hell yeah, it’s back. Highlighting great scenes from movies that were largely otherwise. Let’s get right to it.

This volume, I’m going to focus on The Hunger Games. While by no means a bad movie (despite some negative opinions you may have heard on the show), the second half of the film (which is the battle itself, really) mostly fell apart.

However, the beginning of the battle is a sequence of amazing quality. Not only does it grasp and put on full display the horror of being in such a situation, but it’s artful use of bravura sound editing and absolutely perfect music bring it to a whole other level. The music is almost Argento-like in several spots. No matter how you feel about the rest of the movie, this scene is a beautiful triumph.

For those who didn’t see the movie or simply don’t remember: this clip starts with a POV shot from Katniss’ (our heroine) eyes as she rises up “the tube” into the arena. I also apologize for the quality- it’s not very good. And ideally, I’d include the scene directly before this, too, with Lenny Kravitz comforting a wonderfully terrified-looking Jennifer Lawrence. FYI: Hunger Games is on Netflix, so go there for the perfect experience.

Here it is:

In an effort to pump the site with fresh content on a more timely basis, I’ve got several ideas for articles, videos, and other projects, some of which will be standalone entries while others will be series. Like this one.

Everybody has guilty pleasure movies: films you know aren’t actually all that great, are plagued with various issues, or maybe even just flat out embarrassing to admit that you enjoy. Whatever the reason, movies like these get unjustly ignored and pushed out of focus. This series will highlight those films, and hopefully even get you to give them a chance yourself- either for the first time, or again if you didn’t like them.

So, to start us off, I thought I’d go with Tron: Legacy, a movie that many people saw but few actually enjoyed. Read my thoughts past the jump.

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I did this last fall, but I thought I’d change things up a bit this time. Instead of offering a selfish, only-what-I-want-to-see overview, I’ll go wide- If you’re human and you like going to see movies, then there will be at least one thing on this list that will scratch you where you itch.

It’s very comprehensive, wait until you see. This is the only thing you’ll need to read if you’re interested in getting a peak at what’s to come. Every big release is listed, and a few smaller, interesting ones, too.

Let’s get to it, then.

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I got a bit carried away with the ‘Spring Breakers’ review, I know. This time I’ll be far more concise, I promise. Past the jump is my review for ‘The Place Beyond the Pines.’ It’s spoiler-free, so have no fears on that count.

PS: after all I say is read, I’d still like to see this again. I’ll go somehow no matter what, I think, but let me know if you’d like to join. It stays with you.

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Having just seen ‘Spring Breakers,’ I feel the need to punch out a review right away, before things start getting foggy (and believe me, that will happen extremely quickly). Not to mention that this site’s level of new content is somewhere down in the Mariana Trench, but that’s another matter altogether- let’s get to the review.

It went a bit longer than I figured it would, but not by far.

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Sorry it’s been so long between updates recently. I’ve got two new episodes that are going up very soon in podcast form, I promise. The holidays have been quite jolly this year, and time has been short.

In any event, I now present you with my ten best films of 2012. It’s a very strong list, as 2012 was a great year for movies. Easily the best since 2007, and probably better than that, too. This fall was a veritable chest of cinematic treasure: I hope you got out to the movies and enjoyed it like I did.

Read my list and thoughts past the jump.

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Soulja Boy and MrDeshawnRaw go head to head in an epic rap battle that you will be telling your childern about:

…….  Oh, sorry, I was busy playing ‘Bastion’ for the 2nd time on my iPad.

I shan’t bother you with a lengthy discussion on why I find the Wii U (and it’s launch lineup) disappointing. Rather, I’ll confine it to this single paragraph:

Nintendo seems to have made two mistakes, at least at launch, with the Wii U. First, they’ve lowered their standards- considerably. Remember ‘Mario 64,’ ‘Mario Sunshine,’ and ‘Mario Galaxy’? These are all “first Mario games” for the N64, Gamecube, and Wii, respectively. They’re all new experiences, too. ‘New Super Mario Bros. Wii U’ is a sidescrolling Mario game…. yeah, the same thing you were playing back in 1992 on the NES. Second, Nintendo has misunderstood the massive attraction of their “intro game” for their original Wii. ‘Nintendoland,’ the successor to ‘Wii Sports,’ is broken in it’s concept: ‘Sports’ was instantly & universally familiar to any audience. ‘Nintendoland’ is not. You’re not playing tennis or golf, you’re playing minigames based on Metroid, Zelda, Mario, and other Nintendo franchises. This is not the same experience as before, and won’t sell nearly as well, either.

However, the above serves as but an introduction for what I’m detailing below.

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Alas, The day has come! Windows 8 is finally here! All you folks chomping at the bit can finally get your hands on a copy. I however have been rocking the final release for about a month now and have complied a list of 5 features that excel. Without wasting more time on this article lets dive in shall we? A disclaimer first: all of my testing has been done on a laptop with no touchscreen functionality. This fact makes my experience with the new operating system completely different from someone yielding a touch screen device as Windows 8 was designed with touch from the ground up.

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I love horror movies. If you’ve ever listened to the show or even simply read my Fall Movie Preview, then you’ll already know this to be the truth. Now, if you’re a horror fan, there are certain assumptions you have to live with. Namely, the general absence of intelligence found in most protagonists of the genre. Great horror films will avoid this (at least to a larger degree than others), but for the most part, characters in these movies are pretty damn stupid. They move into the house that everyone tells them is haunted. They don’t vacate the premises after repeated noises and manifestations that could only be called hauntings. They even have the nerve to go into “that room” when the entire audience is yelling at them not to.

Yet, these well-trodden genre tropes fall well short of what Sinister‘s protagonist, Ethan Hawke’s Ellison Oswalt, is willing to put himself -and more disturbingly, his family- through. Oh sure, you’ll still see Ellison make all three of those previously listed mistakes, but that is only the beginning here.

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