Inception is a movie that makes you think, but perhaps not as much as it could. I don't make any claims so be some sort of film intellectual, I'm perfectly happy to watch Die Hard for the tenth time, but when a movie like Inception comes along it lends itself to thinking about it in a way you would not judge a film like Die Hard. Not that I think either movie is bad; Die Hard is one of my favorite movies and I enjoyed Inception a good deal.

In case it needs saying there will be plenty of spoilers to follow.

Moon is something of a dying breed in the sci-fi genre. Where most science fiction films these days could be best described as enabling 'epicness', Moon gets back to the roots of science fiction with its small-scale scope.

What I mean by that is, compared to films such as Star Wars, Moon is very modest. It takes place on a rock humanity was able to reach in the 1970s, and it's set in what is only the near future. However, the setting is merely a backdrop for the real story. This film could have just as easily taken place in a desert on Earth or a remote planet or really anywhere that's suitably isolated. The Moon is the perfect backdrop, however, because of its proximity to Earth and ability to seem extremely far away but still be within reach. You can see the Earth in great detail from the Moon, so it seems that much closer. As a man who has been in almost complete isolation for three years, Sam Bell can see his goal. He can see his home, and perhaps that makes his stay on Earth's only natural satellite that much more unbearable.

As has been noted many, many times, Moon works better the less you know about it. If you haven't seen the trailer yet, don't watch it. If you have seen it, try and forget it (something I somehow managed to do). The less you know about this going in, the better. It is worth noting that even though the trailer seems extremely revealing, it's actually not. The things shown in it are actually misleading as to the size of their role in the film. However, even though it's not a huge spoiler, the elements revealed in it are better left unseen until you actually go and watch the movie.

That's all I'm going to say about it (what I've already given away may have been enough), so if you still want to see it I suggest not reading the rest of this article as it is going to become extremely spoiler laden.

In spite of being a fairly large nerd, I've never really been into Star Trek. The original series was of course before my time and the first film I actually recall releasing was The Undiscovered Country, which is the final one set in the original series universe. That was in 1991 when I was ten years old, and I believe I only recall watching it on HBO. The only scene I can recall is Captain Kirk kicking an alien in the knees, only to discover that he's kicked the poor fellow in his genitalia.

Aside from that my exposure to the original series is pretty minimal. I've seen scenes from multiple episodes, but I don't believe I've ever sat down and watched one in its entirety. I've avoided all the films with the exception of a few scenes from The Wrath of Kahn and The Voyage Home. In fact the only Star Trek film I've actually seen all the way through was First Contact and that's only because my college broadcasted it on the university-only movie channel (which appeared to just be someone showing DVDs and was apparently not legal since they stopped showing them in my senior year and just gave us HBO). I've seen a number of episodes of The Next Generation since I was fairly into it when I was younger, though even then I think I was watching reruns.

Point being that I have no real attachment to Star Trek as a franchise. When I heard J.J. Abrams was directing a series reboot I admit I was intrigued since I will apparently watch anything he is involved in (except Alias somehow, though saw an episode of Felicity once) but I didn't really put much thought into it beyond the initial intrigue.

So anyway, after an impressive trailer and a massive amount of internet-based hype, I decided it was time to break my Star Trek motion picture cherry, so to speak. Actually the trailer was enough to make me want to see it because it ended up looking awesome instead of boring, which I think is an important quality for any movie to have. The internet-based hype was an added bonus to get me to see it sooner and avoid being spoiled (spoiler: I was minorly spoiled a couple of times anyway).

Strangely enough after much soul searching I think I might actually be looking forward to The Golden Army more than The Dark Knight even though I would consider Batman Begins superior to Hellboy and they both have retained their cast and director. Crazy. I will see both. Also on a related note Wanted is not a very good movie (but tolerable once it makes you lose your mind) and WALL-E is amazing. That is all.

This is something I've been sitting on since I saw the movie on opening weekend, I guess both due to lack of time and also my desire to make sure I was not jumping on some crazy Internet hate bandwagon fueled by Doritos and nostalgia for the older Indiana Jones films. However a decent amount of time has passed and I'm now pretty firmly in the camp of Indy 4 not being as good as any of the previous three.

It does of course get held up to a higher standard than any other movie because it is an Indiana Jones film. This is perhaps somewhat unfair to it as a movie in the general sense, but I think entirely fair given that it's part of a franchise. We hold second and third seasons of television shows up to standard based on how much we liked the previous season. The Phantom Menace led to disappointment in part due to it's unattainable expectations but also simply because it was not as enjoyable as the previous films. Star Wars wasn't perfect, and neither was Indiana Jones. What the Indiana Jones films did have going for them, however, was excitement, good action, and characters who usually evoked some sort of emotion in the viewer, many times the emotion intended by the writer.

The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, while for the most part technically impressive and competant, fell slightly short as an adventure movie but pretty much failed as an Indiana Jones movie. Actually, let me rephrase that slightly. It failed as a good Indiana Jones movie. It did have all the components to make it an Indiana Jones movie, it just failed to use them in an engaging way.

Since I'm in the mood to write entirely too much text, the rest is a click away. Many spoilers lie ahead!

If you haven't seen it, this video 'Overdrift' is pretty much the greatest thing in the history of the internet:


There's also a teaser for part two but who knows when the actual thing is coming.

In anticipation of the long delayed Simpsons Movie I decided to sift through the bowels of SNPP.com and pick out my personal favorite episodes. Okay there are 300-something episodes, so that's kind of a tough task, though I will admit I stopped being thorough after season 11.

Some quick facts about my initial compilation (if you don't care, then go here), which contained sixty-four episodes, mostly based on quotes and funny moments that have stuck with me. Episodes from every season from 2 - 12 are there. Season 12 has the least with 1 episode, season 8 had the most with 10 episodes. The peak of the series, for me anyway, appeared to be season 5 - 8, which accounted for 37 of the 64 episodes. However upon selecting the top 15 (which is a weird number of episodes, but I felt 20 was too many and 10 not enough) I found myself tending to stay away from most episodes airing after season 7. In fact this list is more or less a bell curve starting low at season three, peaking at season 5 -7 and then dropping back down for seasons 8 and 9.

Ordering them wasn't easy, but I mainly went on instinct. This is all personal taste of course, because we all know the Simpsons is serious business. I did the best I could.

But enough of that crap, on to the list!

In the movie industrie's growing impatience, midnight showings seem to have been bumped down to 9pm, or even 8pm showings. I recall the big stink over Transformers being released on 7.4.7 (it's on all the posters) which was then shifted to 7.3.7... thusly seeing it on 7.2.7 was accomplished. I suppose it was midnight somewhere.

I sort of grew up with Transformers. The original series ran from 1984 - 1987, which means I was six when it was canceled. Of course it was rerun many, many times while the series and toys were milked for about ten years until Beast Wars (the second iteration of the series) came out.

I've always been a opponent of nostalgia. Not in the sense that I don't think people should have it, but in the sense that thinking all the shit you enjoyed as a child was awesome and is untouchable is just silly. You will always have the memories, no matter how crappy the TV show was. I would argue that the vast majority, if not the entirety, of animated children's programs produced before 1992 (that's when the Batman animated series came out, which by the way still has its own set of issues) were rather poor in quality. Transformers was most definitely in that category. Silly plots, bad animation, mediocre voice acting, poor writing all plagued the original series with a few exceptions (Frank Welker, voice of Megatron and Soundwave and probably a fuckload of others, remains one of the greatest voice actors of our time, and Peter Cullen, voice of Optimus Prime (as well as Eeyore if you are familiar with Winnie the Pooh), has pretty much the perfect voice and delivery for the role). I've watched a few episodes recently, and the original movie, and they do not hold up to viewings today. Still, there's always been something special about Transforming robots that like to shoot each other with lasers and cause property damage that probably makes insurance companies want to add 'giant robot damage' clauses to their policies.

Anyway the point of all that was I don't care if Michael Bay 'rapes my childhood' because the very concept of such a thing is stupid. Transformers could have been two hours of Optimus Prime and Megatron having gay robot sex and peeing on Chris Latta's grave (who, by the way, aside from being Starscream and Cobra Commander (I never watched GI Joe) was also the original voice of Mr. Burns back in '89-'90) and it wouldn't have mattered because a) you can't take away my childhood memories and b) the original series sucked anyway, so get the fuck over it.

Oh right, so there was a movie. Essentially it's exactly what you'd expect from Transformers and Michael Bay. There are large robots who transform from various vehicles into robot form. Half of these large robots are Decepticons, and the other half are Autobots. Decepticons and Autobots are like Democrats and Republicans (I'll let you decide which is which) in that they fucking despise each other, but in the end they're all giant assholes who like to wreck up the place.

Also as with Transformers, there are a variety of humans who you honestly don't care about. In fact they are kind of annoying. There's the main character, Sam Witwicky, who does a decent job of comedic delivery, and his way over the fucking top parents. He's also got a girlfriend who is hot, only she's not his girlfriend until the very end of the movie, but rather just some random chick he lures into his car. Then there's some NSA/hacker kids but their plot never goes anywhere, but one of them is a hot blonde with an accent I can't quite place, and the other is a hilarious fat black man, which is just asking for wacky hijinks. Their plot never goes anywhere. In fact I don't even remember what happened to them, and I don't really care.

The movie spends some time meandering since Sam has purchased a car that turns out to be an Autobot but he's also trying to pick up girls... I don't know. There are a couple Decepticon fights, and by fights I mean they fuck the humans up. Then just when you're getting tired of human banter and obvious jokes fucking Bumblebee finally calls in the calvary and a few more Autobots show up. From where? Space. That's all that needs to be said.

Following that we get an awesome sequence where Sam looks for some glasses in his room (the Autobots need them for... something) while the gigantic Autobots attempt to hide from his parents. I know it sounds weird but it was quite amusing.

After that they finally get to fucking shit up and there are some really well done fight sequences and lots of explosions and tons and tons of property damage. Megatron is only in the movie for about a half hour, and he's not overly menacing. Also the final fight ends sort of abruptly and not at all how I was expecting it to (it's almost anti-climactic). However, the lack of a decent story or any sort of meaningful character development can be overlooked because in the end it is giant transforming robots with lasers shooting the shit out of each other. And in the end, isn't that what really matters? Yes. Yes it is.

That's pretty much all there is to say about that. I am considering creating an update category called 'Awesome Shit' for the sole purpose of categorizing this update.