Recently, I found myself looking for a movie to watch that was Christmasy and festive, but not necessarily something so holiday-themed that it had Santa Clauses, reindeer, and Jesuses in it. You know, something about normal people but set around the time of the holidays. While perusing all of the top ten holiday movie lists that I could find around the web, I saw one title keep popping up again and again, Richard Curtis’s Love Actually. I never saw this one when it came out, it just looked like another generic romantic comedy to me, but it turns out a lot of people love to watch it every year around the Christmas season. And further research led me to the fact that a lot of people mention it as one of the few romantic comedies that’s actually good from the last decade as well. Sounded strong enough for me to give it a watch. It turns out I didn’t much care for the film, though, and my need for something Christmasy had been left unsated. Not willing to go out on another limb, I decided to revisit a film that I had already seen before, one that I remembered enjoying much more than I was expecting to back when it was released. This second choice was Thomas Bezucha’s 2005 film The Family Stone, which already seems to be rather forgotten. Luckily for me, time did not prove my idiocy, because upon a second watch I found that I still enjoyed [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]

And welcome back to Commentary Commentary, our weekly scouring of the DVD shelves and all the vast film knowledge held therein. It’s time once again to listen to a feature length film commentary from one of our most beloved films and go over all the great pieces of information we learn from it. This week, we’ve got another classic, a film that sparked a whole sub-genre of other films. And, before you pitch the idea of “Die Hard on a Film Blog,” know that Joel Silver probably has three screenplays in his office with that exact same pitch. That’s right. This week, we’re cracking open our copy of Die Hard and going through the commentary. So sit back, enjoy how not Christmas-y it is right now, and drink some eggnog anyway. Hey, it couldn’t hurt.

If you’re not excited about Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2, I would direct you to the review written by our own Cole Abaius. If you can’t be bothered to read such things in advance of the final Potter episode, you could watch this new featurette released by Warner Bros. today. “The Story of Snape” includes some spoilers from two movies ago, so tread lightly if you feel the need. If you’re up on your Hogwarts tales, this one seems like a necessary primer for what is to come where the final chapter hits theaters this week.

There’s a special kind of challenge in ending a story. Talk to the right writer, and he or she will most likely tell you that typing the last bit of punctuation can be the hardest ink to stamp into the page because even though that’s the goal, it also means saying goodbye to characters you’ve fallen in love with. Characters you’ve fought for and alongside of. Characters that have reflected the best parts of you, shown you your weaknesses and made you all the better for it. We may use stories as escapism, but we have to return to the real world eventually. There’s a special kind of challenge in ending a story because a final chapter has to encapsulate everything that’s played out in the much larger space that’s come before it. It has to confront the audience and its characters with choices they’ve been avoiding, trials that have been kept at arm’s length, and the lessons of all of the smaller tasks has to be used sufficiently against the most dire of consequences in order to be satisfying. It’s been a long journey, but in all of those undertakings, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 succeeds with incredible resolve.

As the only literate Reject, it’s my duty to find the latest, the greatest and the untouched classics that would make great source material for film adaptations. I read so you don’t have to. The end of the world is coming pretty soon, and the best way to be prepared for it is to read this book by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett. Don’t be caught with your pants down during the end times. Know your future, gird your loins, avoid gorgeous red heads that make you angry for no apparent reason, and keep a close eye on that neighborhood gang of kids that seems totally harmless. They’re probably hanging out with the Antichrist.

Johnny Depp makes his seventh appearance in a Tim Burton film officially making the two of them common-law married. Click to read if we think their relationship is still going strong after all these years.

We’ve seen the evolution of this series from children’s films to beautiful pieces of cinematic art. Half-Blood Prince is the next step in the elevation and evolution of that art. Yates, the cast and the crew have done something fantastic.

I will be the first to tell you that I haven’t read any of the Harry Potter books. So I have no idea what is going on beyond the most recently released film. But what I can tell you from all of the promotional materials that I’ve seen is that this new film looks dark.

Sometimes posters can be oh so wrong. They can be boring and flat and either blend into the background of the local movie theater or worse, turn people off seeing the movie. Of course, for every negative, there’s a positive. We’ll leave you to decide where these fall.

I’m not an expert on the world of Muggles, Wizards and Witches, but I do know this — what happens at Hogwarts certainly never stays at Hogwarts.

I hate to have to throw myself into the fires of minority hell, but I’m compelled to vote no on Tim Burton’s dour, overly dark and overly bloody Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.

Fans are upset that one of the promo posters for Tim Burton’s Sweeney Todd sports Big Ben in the background. Wrong century, marketing folks.