This content series is in partnership with smartwater. smartwater, good taste travels well. Click here to learn more.     We still haven’t figured it out yet. You know, all of this. Existence. Why we’re here, what we’re meant for and whether that top ever stopped spinning. Good thing we have movies to help us wade through to find the answers. And to give us more questions. With so many films over the years attempting to deliver a life lesson or an insight into the fundamental secret to our humanity, this is just a brief history which hopefully ends in the ultimate meaning. After all, at least one movie must have gotten right. The first question is where to begin.

To Whom It May Concern: 532,000,000. If you’re drinking the last drops of stale champagne from last night after celebrating the second highest-grossing summer on record, that number should sober you up a bit. It’s the number of actual tickets sold from the first week in May to Labor Day, and it’s down 4% from last year – making it (if the number holds) the smallest amount of moviegoers coaxed into theaters since 1993. This isn’t a doomsday scenario or anything. It’s not an air raid siren; just a wake up call. Overall revenue dropped for the first time in 7 years, but even as you’re still making large amounts of money, take note that your audience is looking for something else. You might say that the Olympics were the villain, but they were offset by higher ticket prices that managed to hide a deep, bleeding cut. Sometime soon, there will be a saturation point for how high you can drive up individual ticket costs while audience numbers creep down and the blood shows. That’s pretty basic economics, but who knows. Maybe a growing economy will mean you never have to see larger numbers of customers chased away by absurdly high entry fees; perhaps they’ll stabilize alongside a population willing and able to spend a little bit more to see magic in a big, dark room. Regardless, you’ve got to change your products, and you’ve got to change the way you’re presenting them to us. You’ve got to know that there’s a

By now, you probably already know that Lebron James loves Space Jam so much that he wishes he could star in Space Jam 2. No big surprise there. Space Jam is awesome, and the concept of a sequel is absolutely terrific. Just think about the way you naturally responded to his statement. Did you smile? Did you high five a friend? Did you marvel at what an ingenious idea it is? Did you at the very least avoid throwing up in your mouth? Then you’re with 99.9% of the population because this is obviously a fantastic idea. Since you’re already on board, these following arguments are for the .01% that can’t immediately see what a great movie this would make.

Aretha Franklin does a grisly mean cover of The Band’s “The Weight” with Duane Allman on slide guitar. Hopefully you’ve heard it. It’s a soulful three minutes that takes the instantly high-making hippie jam and transforms it into a heavyweight punch delivered with a drizzle of honey. Beyond its intrinsic value, what makes it an excellent cover is that it doesn’t merely echo a popular song. Instead, it proves how malleable great music can be while putting the Franklin stamp on it. Franklin grabs it and makes it her own. By now, we fully accept cover songs. We even expect them. It’s a phenomenon that grew from the humble roots of “traditionals” – songs that were wholly communal, sung by all sorts of artists until the original writer seemed to disappear behind a fog of different versions.  At a certain point, more variety was favored and covers became a sort of clever way to share the language of music. A big-name band covering someone else’s work at once showed reverence to the original, proved it could be twisted into the performer’s wheelhouse, and exhibited a kind of unselfish knowledge to the audience. It said, “I’m a musician, but I’m a fan, too.” At this point, we look forward to covers not only from prominent musicians but from everyday fans wanting to share their enthusiasm and talent. Karmin scored over 71m views of their cover of Chris Brown’s “Look At Me Now,” and they’ve graduated from making cute versions of hip

“Asking a writer what he thinks of critics is like asking what a fire hydrant feels about dogs.” No one has portrayed that Ann Landers quote better (or more directly) than Mel Brooks in History of the World: Part 1 in the sketch where a caveman critic pisses all over a newly envisioned cave drawing. Not only is the relationship between creator and critic as old as man, it’s also always involved urination. On the most recent edition of the Scriptnotes podcast, screenwriters John August and Craig Mazin discuss the looming spectre that is The Critic – a terrifying boogeyman for some, a knock-kneed weakling to others, and a complete non-entity to more. “Well this isn’t going to endear me with many critics,” begins Mazin (who recently explained the depressing state of screenwriting as a career to Reject Radio listeners). “I don’t care. I do not care. I don’t write movies for critics; I write movies for audiences. My entire focus is on what the audience thinks of the film.” The thing is, that outlook does endear him to me. That may sound counter-intuitive coming from a critic, but it’s an excellent mindset to have as a creator. Here’s why.

Our shift toward a truly global community is wondrous. We can instantly connect with cultures on the other side of the planet, directly engaging in conversations that lead to greater understanding and better appreciation. We’re traveling more. We’re savoring experiences (and socially shareable photos) more than physical objects. We’re also importing art, including movies, from a vast array of different countries. These are all good things, but there are at least three ways in which navigating the new global community has made studio movies dumber. These are the Hollywood movies that an international audience craves, and in catering more and more to worldwide box office, there have been some negative implications. Movies aimed at maximizing global gains can be broader, can sacrifice logic for political safety and can even, counter-intuitively, keep non-white actors away from leading roles.

Spend a few minutes over at Hit Record – the art collaborative headed by Joseph Gordon-Levitt – and you find all sorts of things. Experimental electronica mixed with country music that acts as the inspiration for a short story. A photograph of an old house that becomes a short film. A writing prompt that evolves into a series of water color portraits. The skill level ranges from the kind of high school creative fiction magazine you’d cringe at to the truly magnificent, but no matter where people land on the craftsmanship scale, creativity is never in short supply. That’s why Hollywood remakes are so frustrating. Let’s unpack that a bit. At this point, film fans have worked through the mental question of remakes in a Five Stage of Grief sort of way that happens to end in Apathy. There’s no shortage of opinions out there – ranging from pure hatred to the optimism that a fresh take could lead new fans to an old favorite. There’s even the, gasp, raw hope of seeing movies remade over and over until the filmmakers get it right. In perhaps the best piece of counterintuitive writing, Annalee Newitz over at io9 hails remakes as the American version of folklore. At the very least, those of us writing about movie trends have moved beyond the knee-jerk frustration and are now rationalizing the here-to-stay existence of a fad that belies a complete lack of originality. Yet, at their core, Hollywood remakes represent a knock out combination

Guest Author Ed Travis served as Editor In Chief of the ActionFest 2012 blog. Part of the mission of ActionFest is to pay tribute to the unsung heroes of action cinema, the stunt men and women. Jack Gill is one of the most important names in action cinema stunt work. Without the daring work of the stunt coordinators who make action scenes pop, the entire Hollywood machine would break down. This is a fact which I had no trouble believing personally, but came face to face with in my work at ActionFest this past year. ActionFest founders Bill Banowsky, Tom Quinn (Radius TWC) and Aaron Norris use the festival both as an showcase for films and as a platform to connect fans to the real makers of action, the stunt community. It was through ActionFest that I came in contact with Jack Gill, a legendary stuntman and the primary activist who is fighting for the creation of an Academy Award for Stunt Coordinators. You read that right: there is currently no recognition of stunt work from the Oscars. But Gill won’t rest until that changes. You may be asking yourself why there isn’t already an award, or what exactly Gill has to do to ensure that one is created. Let’s unpack all of that and maybe you can offer him some support in his quest as well.

Do we define ourselves by the art we love? Why do we get so defensive when it’s attacked? To answer that, I invite critic Eric D. Snider (who recently received a death threat for his fake, negative review of The Dark Knight Rises) to ask if he can empathize with the kind of passion that leads someone to get angry with a stranger on the internet who disagrees. Download Episode #142

With Batman in the bag and Superman on the way, Warner Bros. is still in the kind of long-term trouble a superhero team understands all too well. Like a group of heroes blindsided by a syndicate of villains that pulled off a world domination ploy, Warners is scrambling to come up with a plan to challenge Marvel Studio’s $1.5 billion The Avengers world take-over. We all know what that plan is: assemble the Justice League movie. We also know the big question Warners is frantically facing right now is how they’re going to do that. The studio can balk at mimicking a competitor’s model all they want, but the way to get everyday non-comic reading people to really care about a Justice League movie is to roll out the individual hero projects first. Warner Brothers can’t assume people want a Justice League movie simply because everyone knows who Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman are, or that post-The Avengers there is a guaranteed appetite for superhero mega-mixes. For a team-up flick to have maximum impact – i.e. maximum box office returns – without sacrificing integrity or quality, Warners needs to build a demand. The only way to do that is construct a road paved with exciting, entertaining, excellent movies (give or take an Iron Man 2 or two) that compound anticipation and audience faith.

For a man who has 8 films under his belt as a director, it seems like Christopher Nolan has been in the movie world forever. His dominance of the 2000s was so thorough and immediate that it only seemed natural to include his name amongst the greats even with a relatively limited resume. Even so, whenever conversations of the director emerge, they seem to focus on his take on Batman, his exploration of magic and deception, the idea of memory loss and toying with narrative. The movie that’s notoriously missing is his sophomore feature, his first studio picture, Insomnia. The remake of the 1997 Norwegian film of the same name starred Al Pacino as a LA detective brought to the no-horse town of Nightmute, Alaska during a time of year when the sun never sets. Brought in to help with a brutal homicide, Detective Dormer finds himself mentally unraveling after a foggy accident, many sunny nights without sleep and an internal investigation back home that threatens to end his career. It’s a strong crime film with outstanding performances that doesn’t deserve to be forgotten about in the wake of Batman, Bale and breaking into dreams. Insomnia is a movie worth a second look.

Editor’s Note: This post will be “stuck” to the homepage all weekend long. After you get back from seeing The Dark Knight Rises, no matter when you see it, come back and share in the discussion. We’re anxious to hear what you think. The critics have had their say, and you allowed it. Hell, you even let me give it a big black eye and you remained civil in our comments section. For that, I applaud you, dear readers. You’ve proven once again that the best of the Internet’s denizens choose Film School Rejects. Now it’s time for you to answer the big question about The Dark Knight Rises. Director Christopher Nolan has returned to finish off his ‘Dark Knight Trilogy’ with one massive, totally destructive film that sees Batman (Christian Bale) square off with a villain whose strength is as much of mind as it is of body. Bane (Tom Hardy) isn’t his only worry though, as a tightly-clad cat-burglar named Selina Kyle (Anne Hathaway) is also sticking thorns in the side of the Caped Crusader. What is a broken down billionaire vigilante to do? Go to war, that’s what. Now all we ask, as you pour out of your midnight screenings around the world, is that you bring your own warring words to our comments section. Jump on down there and tell us what you thought of Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises.

Over at Badass Digest, the astute Meredith Borders is raising an important question about unlikable lead characters and the impact they have on audiences liking the movie they’re in. After all, negating the use of unlikable characters is creatively limiting, but some movie fans simply don’t care for those movies which glorify the dastardly and dickish. In her well-intentioned pursuit, Borders brings up the crew from It’s Always Sunny, Walter White from Breaking Bad and the various man-children and woman-children that have hit theaters in the past few years. The problem is, in trying to defend unlikable characters, all the characters she mentions are perfectly likable. They’re just assholes. The difference is an important distinction – one that plays toward how an audience responds to storytelling at a raw level.

It was a kinder, simpler time back in January of 2010. Daybreakers and Youth in Revolt were both in theaters, New York City was asking people to eat less salt, and we were all about to find out the one-two punch that Sam Raimi was done with Spider-Man but Sony was not. It was the sort of news that reeked of corporate thinking – extending a franchise cash cow without the creative forces behind it; rebooting an unimaginably familiar character just five years after his last outing; and deciding to do all that on a dime. Optimism pointed to characters like James Bond getting new actors, but this was that rare time where a character introduced to us was being re-introduced to us, and the announcement was, admittedly, a bit surreal. It won’t be revolutionary, but there are two ways, two chances for that reboot to change the ways that movies are made. Marc Webb‘s The Amazing Spider-Man will have a lot of eyes on it these week, and a few of them will be watching it as an experiment instead of entertainment.

It’s December 2003, and Mel Gibson is standing in front of a rabid audience after premiering an unfinished version of The Passion of the Christ. This was the same guy who chuckled his way through Lethal Weapon. The same actor who got his start insinuating that a post-Apocalyptic baddie should saw his own limb off. Yes, he’d made prestigious award-grabs like Braveheart, but this was something different. Out of the darkness, someone asked where Gibson could go from here and, shielding his eyes symbolically from the spotlight, he said he couldn’t go back. He’d gotten the big house and the pool and the fame, but there was no way he could return to the types of movies he’d made before exploring the final hours of Joshua of Nazareth’s life. The movie was a plunge into the ocean, and the actor/director knew it. If anything, Funny People was Adam Sandler’s Passion, but it didn’t come with the same sort of obvious shift. It was a quieter change that – innocently as it seemed – served to undermine the career Sandler had. Whereas Gibson (as clinically insane as he is) seemed to grasp what he’d done, Sandler has remained in the dark to his career’s detriment. Bluntly put, Funny People and his choices afterward ruined Adam Sandler‘s career.

As an entertainment company, Disney has never been short of stature in a few key areas. Most notably, they’ve always been good at selling fantastical stories and moving movie-sized boxes of merchandise in their wake. They built an entire theme park around their properties, constantly move home video releases in and out of a metaphorical vault, and they always seem to come up with stories that serve two purposes: capture the adoration of youth and then get them to convince their parents to buy them things to fuel those fires of love. And for years, fairy tales and princess stories have been their bread and butter. Conversely, the folks at Pixar have always marched to a slightly different beat. They’ve always simply made stories they thought were fun, not that they necessarily thought we’d buy. Movies about talking toys, runaway fish, and main characters who can’t even talk. For Pixar (even though they became an official part of Disney in 2006 and had a working relationship with the Mouse House well before that), they’ve never made anything that felt like a Disney movie. That is, until their latest film, Brave. For better or worse, a product of princess story perception or real influence, Brave is a Disney movie at heart. And depending upon who you ask, it’s either a major misstep for Pixar or an evolutionary one for its parent company.

I’ve been taking my family on a tour of Michael Mann’s filmography recently, and every minute has been fantastic. Mann has a great eye for cinematography, writes and/or directs characters who are refreshingly competent and layered, and has a way of getting great mileage out of a topic he enjoys (crime and those who commit and prevent it) by changing the level of its presentation. He has done pieces both epic (Heat) and intimate (Collateral). He has ventured into the past, where his favorite subject varies in presence from “extant, but not important compared to other events” (The Last of the Mohicans) to “the point of the entire film” (Public Enemies). He brought Hannibal Lector to the screen for the first time as Hannibal Lecktor in Manhunter, which I must admit remains my primary source exposure to everyone’s favorite cannibal. All of these traits make Mann a director whose work should be followed, but what absolutely drives me wild about him is his use of music in his pictures’ key scenes. Mann’s soundtracks are usually a mix of contemporary rock, house music, a slow and/or seductive piece for particularly romantic moments and several compositions written specifically for the film by his composer. At least once in every one of his films that I have had a chance to see, Mann takes a piece from his soundtrack and sets it to a climactic or character defining scene and the resulting moment never fails to astound. Dialogue is usually sparse to nonexistent

The absolute, must-read article of the week is “Disrupted: Indie Filmmakers” from Brian Newman at Sub-Genre . The week isn’t over yet, but the article that shows how popularity on YouTube has sidestepped the traditional indie film festival track will be tough to beat. It may sound a bit counter-intuitive because videos that get millions of views on YouTube are How To Videos and shots of cats wearing monocles and stuff, but there are a handful of popular users that are translating a massive subscriber list (and an even bigger amount of views) into funding through KickStarter (the above image comes from Video Game High School) and IndieGoGo to raise funds for more projects. Meanwhile, filmmakers trying to find funding are still going through festivals like Sundance and, often, falling short. It’s a fascinating theory because it seems plausible. It might not make immediate sense that making mash-ups and quirky spoofs could lead to big screen bliss, but all the elements are there.

WARNING – THIS ARTICLE GIVES AWAY SPOILERS FOR THE AVENGERS, SERENITY, AND DR. HORRIBLE’S SING-ALONG BLOG. YOU’VE BEEN WARNED. Joss Whedon has a penchant for killing off his characters, particularly the likable ones. This is something you should know going into this article. It’s the reason why there’s so much built-in weight to his projects, the idea that characters you grow accustomed to might meet a bad end before it’s all said and done. It’s also the reason why the 360-degree shot in The Avengers – you know, the one your comic book geek mind exploded over after seeing it for the first time – shouldn’t be used as a marketing tool. One has to think that the shot was designed for trailers and TV spots long before the actual storyboards for The Avengers were even inked on. It’s the kind of shot that makes fans of the series, comic book and film, alike, furious, stomp out of the theater, head for the box office, and pre-order a whole row for The Avengers. They’ve got friends.

On Charlie Rose last night, Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes explained his desire to shorten the time between theatrical releases and home entertainment availability. His reason? It’s great for everyone ever. It makes sense that Time Warner (which owns New Line, Warner Bros., HBO, DC Comics, Castle Rock Entertainment, and other media ventures) would want to shorten the window. Bewkes evoked the dreaded P-word in his initial rationale for getting movies to television screens sooner, but he also recognized that there’s an audience beyond pirates that wants to have home-viewing options. “Everyone in the business, including theater owners, has an interest,” said Bewkes. But what exactly is in the theater owners’ best interest? And what will broadband bundled with shorter waiting periods mean for DVD and Blu-ray?