People were up in arms Tuesday after the announcement of nominees for the 84th Annual Academy Awards. So many seem to forget that every year they are disappointed with the nominees and every year there is some film or performer who was left off or included on the prestigious list. I may have spent the final weeks of 2011 lamenting my utter ennui with last year’s films, but I never in a million years expected some of the Oscar outcomes. No Supporting Actor nomination for Albert Brooks, whose performance in Drive unnerved audiences to the core? Or the blatant disregard for solid documentary filmmaking in The Interrupters, Buck, or Project Nim, three entries into filmmaking that will forever impact the way we view the world around us? No, the Academy seemed to forget the impressive and daring offerings in favor of an adorable dog in a silent film. What is this, 1920? Last I checked The Jazz Singer pushed us into the land of the talkies. I could spend all day gnawing my tongue over which films shouldn’t have been included in this year’s awards recognition, but just like arguing the virtues and evils of the MPAA, our time is better used talking about some of the sexy pieces of work that the Academy felt were too provocative to include (for reasons I have completely made up in my mind. Hey, they have their prerogative, I have mine.). Going along with the Academy’s new voodoo math rules of deciding the [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 holidays are a time for families, gift-giving, and general peace on Earth. Unfortunately, it’s also a time of high crime rates, robberies, and evil-doers who take advantage of the innocent. With all the money being spent at the malls, and how often people leave their own homes during the holidays, these safe havens are often a target for prowlers. Just ask the Wet Bandits, who ran a mostly-successful crime spree in Chicago in the early 1990s, before they were thwarted by eight-year-old Kevin McCallister. However, times are tough, and the economy still isn’t what it should be. Not everyone can afford a new-fangled security system…or even an old-fangled security system that the McCallisters should have had on their home in 1990. There are still plenty of ways to protect your home from prowlers this year, using found items, and a dose of cleverness.

Welcome back to Junkfood Cinema; try our new pecan marshmallow yule log, patent and FDA approval pending. Happy December, everyone; it’s the most wonderful time of the month! Despite your busy schedule of shopping, decorating, and pretending to tolerate those relatives you can’t stand, you somehow managed to find time to topple down the chimney of another JFC. We are sort of like fruitcake; nobody ever asks for us, no one knows how we came to be a tradition, and no matter how clearly you state your distaste for us we keep turning up. Every week in the month of this month I will be Nationally Lampooning a festively terrible holiday film. But then, like a Christmas miracle, I will flip the flop and confess as to why the film is precisely my particular brand of egg nog. To put the star atop the proceedings, I will then offer a greasy, but delectable snack food item paired to the film in the hopes of making your waistlines a little less merry. This week’s sugar plum: Home Alone.

Seeing as this is the first go around, you might be wondering to yourself what “Over/Under” is, and rightly so. It’s a new weekly column in which I will take to task a film that has gotten more than its fair share of success and praise, and then champion a related film that comparatively gets little play. This isn’t necessarily to say that the first film is bad and the second one good, just that the disparity in love between the two is a wrong that needs to be righted. But if you choose to believe that what I’m writing is more mean-spirited and antagonistic than intended, that’s fine with me too. Let’s spar in the comments; I could use the attention. For our inaugural column we’ll be looking at John Hughes’s 1985 detention drama The Breakfast Club, a film that the teenagers who work for me still mention as being a classic, and David Seltzer’s 1986 nerd meets girl movie Lucas, a film that I can’t get a darn one of those kids to give a chance.

Whether you’re trying to avoid the releases this week or augment them with even more movies, Your Alternate Box Office offers some options for movies that would play perfectly alongside of (or instead of) the stuff studios are shoving into the megaplex this weekend. This week features a group of fast-driving thieves, a few high school memories, and 13 sword-wielding badasses to chop all of that in half as gallons of the red stuff spray from every opening.

You’ve stumbled upon Circle of Jerks, our sporadically published, weekly feature in which we ask the questions that really matter to our writers and readers. It’s a time to take a break from our busy lives and revel in the one thing that we all share: a deep, passionate love of movies. If you have a question you’d like answered by the FSR readers and staff, send us an email at editors@filmschoolrejects.com. What movie universe would actually want to live in? Susan C.

Emma Stone is up to her elbows in boys that want to pretend to sleep with her. In the movie Easy A she plays Olive, the smart girl that’s generally ignored by her class who gets a taste of popularity by way of infamy and continues to trash her own reputation in order to have one. She pretends to have sex with a gay classmate in order to boost his social status, and what results is a trip into a world of perception, heartache, trying to get with the school mascot, and a big red A on her chest.

Clark W. Griswold (Chevy Chase) just wants to have a good ole’ fashioned family Christmas at his place, but Karma (or some other unstoppable, twisted force) is working against him.

Sometimes I feel like I’m just getting back from Wally World. I’m tired, irritable, and there’s an unseasonably high urine count in my sandwiches.  But with the news that Chevy Chase and Beverly D’Angelo are teaming up for a Superbowl commercial, I have to wonder if we should really be saving up for a real family vacation. Don’t get me wrong. I love Superbowl commercials because 1) they are a colossal let down and 2) I’m usually watching the Puppy Bowl instead (after the NFC championship, don’t we sort of already know who’s going to win the Superbowl?), but I would much rather see that dynamic duo hit the big screen again. I know I’m usually pretty negative toward the lack of creativity that this decade will be marred by, but if we’re in for a penny, why not be in for a pound? Let’s just sequelize everything. All of it. Some possible downsides to a National Lampoon’s Vacation sequel in the here and now: National Lampoon, like the magazine that spawned it, has become one of the least funny producers of The Funny around. With John Hughes gone, who could possibly write it? Year One Some urine-soaked food for thought. What do you think?

Within 24 hours, a little-known project became a hot commodity. It’s not pretty, but it’s the magic of Hollywood.

For somebody associated with making some of the most resonant teen comedies in modern cinema history, John Hughes still doesn’t receive enough credit—mainly because, before John Hughes, there really was no such thing as the teen comedy.

This week on a very special episode of Reject Radio, we uncover long-lost FSR editor Brian Gibson, who brings us tales from down under — updating us randomly on the future works of Eric Bana. Other things happen, too.

The man who brought us everything from The Breakfast Club to Ferris Bueller to Home Alone died today at the age of 59. What’s your favorite Hughes film?

Throughout the history of cinema, actors, writers and directors have brought us very different views of what it’s like to be in high school. But how accurate is the portrayal of high school in movies? What if high school really was how Hollywood made it out to be?

Ever since I took in the film at its world premiere at Sundance in January, I have been curious to see how a studio would market such a documentary. I guess, now we know — you take the subjects, who are a diverse group of high school students from Indiana, and you put them in context with a John Hughes movie.