You’d think my walk home from Rango, a movie that consistently kept me laughing like a madman for two hours, would be one of elation and knee-slapping fun memories. Not so. As my laughter subsided, I realized — man, I just saw an animated movie that centered on a sociopathic lizard who takes a contemplative, hallucinatory look inward to discover his true calling in the world. Whoa – suddenly that fart joke had a lot more resonance. There are universal questions everyone asks themselves at some point in their lives. Ideas, complications, internal debates that spring out of existence and challenge us as individuals. Some turn to spirituality. Others take back packing trips through difficult-to-pronounce regions of the world. But after watching Rango and looking back through a lengthy history of Hollywood’s animated films, I wondered: why not turn to cartoons?

Rob Hunter loves movies. He also loves working for the BBC where his job entails erasing old show master tapes because they don’t have the foresight to know that people may want to watch them again someday. These two joys come together in the form of cash money payments that he receives every week and immediately uses to buy more DVDs. This week… Monty Python, Orphan, Stan Helsing, and more!

The other day I was sitting at my local coffee shop, slurping away at a green tea, enjoying a warm, dry spring day in Ohio (a rarity, to say the least) when it dawned on me that I really missed those rascally characters from the first two Ice Age movies. I realized that my life, despite all of the wonderful things that I have experienced, was seriously lacking more Scrat.

New poster art reveals the third Ice Age film’s title — look out 2009…