There aren’t very many good prequels out there. For the most part, what George Lucas hath wrought is a wide range of direct-to-DVD prequels of films we never liked in the first place. See The Scorpion King: Rise of a Warrior starring Randy “I’m a UFC Hall of Famer and I Have Cauliflower Ear” Couture if you don’t believe me. In fact, heading over to IMBD and looking up their list of prequels sends a Paul WS Anderson chill down your spine. There aren’t very many good entries, and some of the the ones that are passable – I’m looking at you, Temple of Doom – are barely prequels at all. So in honor of X-Men: First Class, a rare good prequel, I felt it necessary to run down a list. It’s a kind of guideline for future prequel-makers to follow – born from those who came before and succeeded. How can you craft a worthwhile prequel that doesn’t feel like it came right off the Hollywood assembly line? How can you make a story that creates interesting origin stories for characters that have already been established? Basically, how can you come up with a prequel idea that isn’t going to end up in Russell Mulcahy’s filmography? We love you, Russ. There can be only one. Those are some good questions. Here are some possible answers.

There’s no point in parsing words here. A lot of the advertising for Bridesmaids was lying to its audience. What was labeled as a “Female Hangover” with tons of laugh-out-loud, raucous, wacky, hilarious, raunchy, you-won’t-believe-that-women-fart humor turned out to be a thoughtful, slightly depressing character breakdown interspersed with some truly outrageous (Jem would be proud) moments. Misleading advertising is a menace. It’s craven in its attempt to trick people into buying tickets they wouldn’t normally buy, and it’s usually deployed to hide a lack of quality. That’s something all movie fans are all too aware of. However, with Bridesmaids, the false advertising actually proves one universal benefit that either didn’t exist before or hasn’t been celebrated as widely as it needs to be.

22 films in 11 days. One walk-out. One mighty fine steak. Such is the story of this writer’s coverage of the 2011 Cannes Film Festival, and now that Robert De Niro and his panel of the great and the good of world filmmaking have sat down over coffee and cheese to decide the real winners, I’d like to offer my own thoughts on who I would have liked to see win. This is all based on my personal experiences of the films, and you might notice the categories don’t match up to the split competitions of the festival itself, but I’m in charge here, and I can do what the flaming hell I want. So here we go with the best parts of the 64th Cannes Film Festival…

It hasn’t been a great start to the year for movie theater owners. There was the bizarre dust-up between the National Association of Theater Owners and the studios which advocated a shortened window of exclusivity before launching their films in homes On-Demand, but more so than one event, there’s a general feeling of outrage at higher ticket prices (which, as John Gholson explained on Reject Radio, have almost nothing to do with theater profits now) and higher-priced hotdogs. Plus, there’s the overall miserable experience that most theaters deliver. Now Boston.com has a truly disheartening story about theater managers not even bothering to switch out lenses between 3D and 2D films. The result? That 2D movie you saved money on by refusing the 3D up-charge is 50% darker than it should be. Read the entire article for the full take (and definitely listen to that Reject Radio episode for more illumination), but this seems indicative of a larger problem going on in movie theaters – a lack of incentive to make anything enjoyable. Audiences are coming for the movie, and theaters are delivering little else in the way of enticement. It’s no wonder that ticket sales are dropping. With the transition from reels to digital projectors, gone is the knowledge that came with understanding how the projection process really works. It took serious understanding to be behind the glass, but now it requires pushing a few buttons and reading an Archie comic.

This year at Cannes was a year of firsts. It was a first for FSR to cover it (a situation that the larger press seemed to ignore entirely), but it was also the first time in nearly two decades that an American actress took home the Best Actress Award (known as the Prix d’interprétation féminine if you’re nasty). Kirsten Dunst took home the top acting prize for her performance in Melancholia despite its director Lars Von Trier being permanently (for the foreseeable future) kicked out of the festival. From 1985 to 1993, there was a solid run of American actresses earning the award. In that 9-year span, Americans chalked up 5 wins: Cher, Barbara Hershey twice, Meryl Streep and Holly Hunter. Then, nothing. Until now. On top of that, Tree of Life became the first American film since Fahrenheit 9/11 in 2004 to win the Palme d’Or. Unfortunate rhymes aside, that’s a pretty stirring achievement (although it’s not nearly as significant as Dunst’s streak-ending win considering that 3 other American films (Pulp Fiction, Elephant, and Michael Moore’s documentary) won the Golden Palm in the same time-frame between American actress wins). However, it is timely. This information shouldn’t be merely to support a sort of nationalistic pride, but also to support cinematic pride in general. The tone of the conversation in this country is often negative because there’s an industry out there that is obsessed with bottom lines and not nearly as concerned about quality or storytelling. However, these wins (at [Due to Content Scraping and Theft, we have been forced to try abbreviated feeds. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and woud very much appreciate you clicking through to view the full article on FilmSchoolRejects.com]

The fourth episode of Mortal Kombat: Legacy took a huge step down in quality from the first three, and while this fifth episode continues the storyline that the fourth started, it isn’t quite as bad. It keeps things a lot simpler for one; this is a pretty straightforward assassination plot. There wasn’t anything new about merged souls or demon twins that got introduced and poorly explained, there wasn’t as much bad acting, and we at least got a little bit of fighting in the opening moments. It isn’t all gravy though. The episode starts with an extended sequence of Kitana and Mileena training against each other. It’s a capable Kung-Fu movie inspired fighting sequence, but it’s shot a bit too dark to look good. When the lack of lighting is coupled with the digital quality of this series’ image, it often looks like you’re watching the fight through goggles that have had ink spilled all over them. The choreography is good though, and the girls playing the twins pull off the action well, even if I don’t know why we’re supposed to buy the fact that the two actresses are identical. The fight also works well to establish Kitana as being the superior fighter and Mileena as the jealous black sheep of the family. Only, you know, super black because she’s actually some sort of vampiric clone.

Last summer was a good (not great) movie season. Granted, there were some notorious duds with Robin Hood, Jonah Hex, Avatar: The Last Whatever-It’s-Called, the one where Jake Gyllenhaal talked real funny and had his shirt off a lot, and many, many others. And, of course, there were some rather disappointing missed opportunities (*COUGH* Iron Man 2 *COUGH*). But overall, it was a solid time for both big event films and the smaller ones. There were two excellent high profile films (Toy Story 3, Inception) and a handful of great little-seen ones (Animal Kingdom, Cyrus, Solitary Man, etc.). And who could forget about Scott Pilgrim vs. the World? This summer will most likely be no different. There are a few films not to get too excited about, but there are plenty of other films to get tingly about. There are two Marvel films, a new frickin’ Terrence Malick epic, a great looking new X-Men…the list goes on and on. In fact, the list goes on right now with the 15 Must See Movies of Summer 2011:

Early yesterday, the LA Times blog released quotes from Atlas Shrugged Part 1 writer/producer John Aglialoro which indicated that he was throwing in the towel on making Part 2 and Part 3. The reason, of course, was that the film just didn’t make its money back. Aglialoro spent a reported $10m of his own cash on the production, and a second week drop off hurt the independent flick considerably. The movie has currently only made $3.2m at the box office. It started with an impressive per screen average, but as with other films which zero in on an audience, everyone who wanted to see the movie saw it opening weekend. The numbers dropped, and an expansion was scrapped. Aglialoro very specifically blames critics and what he believes is a collective “fear of Ayn Rand” amongst them for the movie’s failings. So much for personal responsibility. However, it’s his ire and hatred of the critical response that has caused an about-face. Aglialoro now claims that, while he was once defeated, he now stands ready to proceed with making Atlas Shrugged Part 2 and Part 3. Like all misunderstood artists, he should.

IndiePix is the latest site to get into the game of streaming movies with IndiePix Unlimited, but their site fills a much, much needed void. While Netflix’s indie section seems filled to the brim with sex dramedies, explorations of filmmakers’ sexuality, and narrative commentary on sex and sexual relationships – IndiePix goes far beyond that by directly celebrating the best of the best in the independent film world. Its success stems from the large selection and ease of use, but there are still flaws, and the site will need to grow (even beyond its 4,000+ available films) in order to truly become a household name. Let’s take a quick test drive:

When I caught the video pitching 2D glasses – which take a 3D movie and only allow in the right visual particles (I made that part up) to give you a headache-free 2D image – all I could think about was that I had a completely free way of turning a 3D movie into a 2D movie: Buy a (cheaper) ticket for the 2D showing. In fact, that’s better than free. It’s money-saving. It’s not rocket surgery. Why pay for a 3D price only to wear image-dimming glasses that turn it into 2D when there’s a 2D screening down the hall that doesn’t have an upcharge? Now, these 2D glasses (being sold by Hank Green) might be a huge joke that I’m not getting, but they seem about as useful as a battery-powered egg cracker. However, they might be the product of the future. In that future, James Cameron has gotten his wish, and every single movie is made in glorious, eye-straining 3D. Those of the population that are physically injured by 3D will have to have these glasses in order to see movies at all without knocking back a handful of Excedrin. But for now, you’re spending $8 to have your upcharge rendered meaningless. Who knows. In a decade, when the price has quadrupled, doctors might be prescribing them.

Editor’s Note: This editorial contains spoilers for Source Code, so if you haven’t seen it 1) you should and 2) you probably won’t get the jokes either. It comes from guest writer James Kopecky who has thought far too much about what happened at the end of Duncan Jones’s latest. When I see a movie, I take it as a two-hour-long glimpse into a reality that has a rich history, as well as an ongoing, unwritten future. After the credits roll, I assume that the characters and the story keep moving, most likely in the direction they were headed when the picture ended. So when I saw Source Code, I thought about what happened to the characters after screen faded to black. This turned out to be problematic for me, because the ending of Source Code raised a slew of questions, some more perplexing than others.

It started with a conversation I was having with my friend Robert about Salo. You’d be surprised how many ideas for articles arise from discussing this film. Not so many dinner plans, though. Makes sense for a film subtitled 120 Days of Sodom. Anyway, being avid film lovers, we agreed Salo was a film we were glad we had seen despite the inability to ever be able to “unwatch” it. We love film, and we love the notion we could sit through and appreciate a movie like Salo despite the graphic imagery therein. This spiraled the conversation into other films that our desensitized minds could handle, films we could observe from a film-lover or even a critical perspective even though they had imagery that could not be unseen. An hour later, we had disgusted ourselves to the point of seppuku, we went our merry separate ways, but a lingering idea was stuck in my head. Amidst all the onerous images I had conjured back into my mind from years and years of watching whatever whenever, a nugget of a question remained. It was basically this: As a film connoisseur, can you desensitize yourself for the sake of cinematic appreciation?

I imagine the conversation went a little something like this: “But it’s just so damned long. So dense. It’s split up into a trilogy already, but each section is incredibly detailed. We’ll have to cut only the most insignificant parts out, utilize succinct dialogue, and take everything nuanced about it and distill that into visuals for the screen. It’ll be back-breaking, intricate work that will require fortitude and kid gloves in equal measure. There are so many moving parts here, and keeping them coherent and meaningful will be the cyclopean task that either ensures our success or cements our failure. What do you think?” “Oh, I’m sorry. I wasn’t listening. Can we hurry this up?” And with that, the task of adapting Ayn Rand‘s novel began. As a piece of classic literature that has already proven itself to stand time’s cruel test, “Atlas Shrugged” deserved a far better movie than it got. The reasons are simple, and I doubt anyone would grandly fault the filmmakers in any real way. It would be like hating Babe Ruth for not being able to hit a bullet with his baseball bat. You hate that he missed, but you tilt your head and accept that everyone else would have missed too. Or, at least, almost everyone else would have. However, since the biggest problem with the adaptation was buried in the structure of the movie, there’s one thing that would have made Atlas Shrugged: Part I a far, far better film. Ready for it? [Due to Content Scraping and Theft, we have been forced to try abbreviated feeds. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and woud very much appreciate you clicking through to view the full article on FilmSchoolRejects.com]

Most casual movie fans don’t know anything about the contentious relationship between the studios and the screens they use to display their wares. The quick and dirty version isn’t a pretty one. The studio system basically holds all of the power when it comes to how movies play, how much of the cut they get from them, and how long they’ll stay exclusively on screens. Now that studios are attempting to show new films on Video-On-Demand just a month after hitting theaters (at the premium price of $30 (which is less premium than going to the theater with a family of 2-4)), the theaters are finally fighting back. Sadly, they’re fighting back with empty threats. At least they’re going for the gusto. The National Association of Theater Owners (NATO) is threatening to boycott screening films involved in the VOD plan, and that includes the giant summer flicks that were on everyone’s Most Anticipated lists. The money quote from NATO chief executive John Fithian’s statement to the Financial Times: “Let’s say you’re Regal Cinemas and it’s a busy weekend with a couple of big pictures opening. If it’s 50-50 between this picture and that picture and you have a partner that respects your [business] model and another one that doesn’t, you’re going to give the screen to the partner that respects your model.” Respecting that model is a case of giving theaters enough time to make money off of doing what they do.

This editorial features spoilers for Arthur, so go watch it first or consider yourself warned. Leave it to Drew McWeeny to make me think way deeper about Arthur than I ever really wanted to while sober. His piece on the drunken, bumbling movie called into question the reason why none of the advertising featured Arthur with a drink in hand, and, more interestingly, why the character has to learn a lesson directly related to his alcoholic behavior. The question is whether excess is still funny. The answer is yes, but it can’t be all funny, and that’s a shame. There was once a time when a character could be over the top without the audience having the spoon of morality shoved down their throats. If there are any teenagers out there, I can assure you that metaphorical spoon was never used for cooking symbolic crack cocaine. Only allegorical soup. Promise. The point is that a mainstream film just can’t feature a character knee deep in vice anymore without showing the negatives. McWeeny is absolutely correct, and what it’s led to is a new brand of self-censorship that would make Will Hays proud.

It’s dark, and it’s about to get darker. You slide ten cents worth of plastic onto your face because it’s supposed to make you see an extra dimension, and you’re paying more for it. There’s no need to do a full intro on 3D. We all know it. We all have opinions about it. Some movies that utilize it are heart-stopping while others are migraine makers without the chance of a refund. Yesterday, after coming late to the game on this one, I discovered the 3D world of sound, and it created an experience more immersive than any 3D I’ve ever seen. Strap on your headphones, take a few minutes of your day off from studying Greek Literature (you won’t use it) or ordering lunch for your boss (he can skip it), and check it out:

Pirates of the Caribbean isn’t a comic book (unless they’ve put out supplemental comic books as part of a marketing blitz (which seems likely)), but the film franchise is now another official example of the new model being looked to by movie studios. First, it was Warners pointing their Batman to the bleachers with the news of rebooting the character before Nolan even rolls cameras on the next adventure. Now, the installments of Pirates that we knew we were getting are now officially going to be stand-alone stories. That may seem like a harmless announcement – or at least as harmless as more Rum-drunk Johnny Depp in mascara can be – but at the root of it is the promise of positioning the franchise to become another Batman who’s just become another Bond. Producer Jerry Bruckheimer claimed that test audiences loved the “freshness” of the new movie because it wasn’t really tethered to the previous installments. Thus, that same situation will carry over into the next films – ostensibly giving directors and writers the freedom to do whatever they want with what will become a stock character placed into zany new quests every few years.

Anyone, including me, that wrote about the downfall of the comic book trend was just proven dead wrong. Warners president  Jeff Robinov just took anyone curious about the future of comic book movies, asked them where the drugs were, and then shoved them face down into the gutter as rain water poured over their nose and mouth. Announcing a Batman reboot before cameras even start to roll on the current Batman film is a bold move. I’m still trying to wrap my cowl-less head around what it fully means, but there are at least four major shifts that just occurred, and they all affect movie goers.

This piece contains spoilers for Sucker Punch. If you haven’t seen the movie yet, go watch it before diving in. Once the first images hit, or when the first synopsis hit, or maybe even when Zack Snyder dreamed up the concept for Sucker Punch ten years ago – a time bomb was set to explode twice, and it finally did this weekend. The first explosion was the basis for the existence of the movie, and it continued exploding many, many times during the runtime. The second was the question of feminism. Now that the movie is out, it has also exploded. The reactions from before the film was released varied, and they still do. Some see it as feminism merged with geek culture (which assumes geek culture isn’t sexless to begin with). Some see it as an affront to the advancement of women parading in thigh high boots. One who gives a strong argument for the latter is Angie Han of /film, who writes the hell out of an editorial called “On Zack Snyder’s Sucker Punch: Why Ass-Kicking and Empowerment Aren’t Always the Same Thing.” You should absolutely go read it before reading this, although I’ll do my best to condense her arguments (in a fair way) in order to respectfully counter them.

It’s not often that an argument about the fundamentals of the existence of a higher power takes place in an RV toilet, but it’s somehow the perfect setting for a character moment that stands as the centerpiece of Paul. Ruth (played by Kristen Wiig) is convinced of her belief in God without reservation, but when the foul-mouthed, chain smoking alien steps out of the water closet, it shakes her to the core. That’s not the sole example of religion or faith in the film. In fact, faith is the main theme of the entire movie. It just happens to be wrapped in a science fiction narrative and sprinkled with comedy and curse words.