This was a major holiday week in America, so FSR content was a bit lighter than usual. And yet you may have been too busy traveling to follow the site over the past few days anyway. If so, the most important thing you missed is our post highlighting all the things we’re thankful for this year. Among them is you, whether you’re one of the longtime loyal or one of the many who’ve just started reading us this year. Now, even though the holiday is a couple days past, we want to thank you for once again catching up with us here at the Reject Recap as we give you another rundown of our best reads from the past seven days. As always, first we remind you to check out our reviews of this week’s new releases: Life of Pi; Red Dawn; Hitchcock; Rust and Bone; and The Central Park Five. We also re-posted our Silver Linings Playbook review since the film went wider this week. Among the films, it looks like we recommend Rust and Bone and Central Park Five the most. We haven’t published a review of Rise of the Guardians yet, but we invite you to read our interview with the animated film’s director, Peter Ramsay, the introduction for which offers some critical praise. This week we also watched and commented on new trailers for Now You See Me, Parental Guidance, Admission, Chasing Ice and Jack the Giant Slayer. Watch those and all our latest Short Film

Exactly one billion years ago today, a group of settlers had an early dinner with the Wampanoag Native American tribe before playing an unsettling game of touch football in their back yard. They then went to the local merchant to stand in line for many hours in hopes of purchasing an item for slightly less than what it will cost the following day, thus completely justifying the enormous emotional distress of doing so. Today we honor this tradition by having a dinner with friends and family to celebrate the unification of mankind before going to the mall and doing the exact opposite of that. But hey, it could be weirder. For example, the following:

When you really think about it, Eastbound and Down is one of the HBO’s most depressing shows — no small feat. The hero’s journey Kenny Powers has been wandering through gets sadder and sadder with each season, as the character falls hard from the top, unlikely to ever obtain the glory he once had. This show challenges its characters to the fullest, and that’s something Jody Hill, David Gordon Green, Danny McBride, and the rest of the creative team behind Eastbound and Down seem to revel in. Not many television characters can match the sheer narcissism, misogyny, delusion, sadness, and hilarity of Kenny Powers. Somehow, the worse he acts, the more human and oddly lovable Hill & Co. make him. Powers is about as anti-heroic as a television character can get. Here’s what Jody Hill had to say about what we can expect from season three, the highs and lows of Kenny Powers’ arc, Stevie Janowski’s warped coming-of-age Stevie story, and more:

The cinematic doppelganger effect seems to happen on a cyclical basis. Every few years, a pair of movies are released whose concepts, narratives, or central conceits are so similar that it’s impossible to envision how both came out of such a complex and expensive system with even the fairest amount of awareness of the other. Deep Impact and Armageddon. Antz and A Bug’s Life. Capote and Infamous. Paul Blart: Mall Cop and Observe and Report. And now two R-rated studio-released romantic comedies about fuck buddies played by young, attractive superstars have graced the silver screen within only a few short months of each other. We typically experience doppelganger cinema with high-concept material, not genre fare. To see two back-to-back movies released about the secret life of anthropomorphic talking insects, a hyperbole-sized rock jettisoning towards Earth’s inevitable destruction, a Truman Capote biopic, or a movie about a mall cop seem rare or deliberately exceptional enough as a single concept to make the existence of two subsequent iterations rather extraordinary. Much has been made of the notion that Friends with Benefits is a doppelganger of No Strings Attached (the former has in more than one case been called the better version of the latter), but when talking about the romantic comedy genre – a category so well-tread and (sometimes for better, sometimes not) reliably formulaic that each film is arguably indebted to numerous predecessors – can we really say these films are doppelgangers in the same vein as the high-concept examples, or

To do this year’s bottom of the barrel justice, we put our resident lover of all things bad Kevin Carr to work, to find the absolute worst movies of 2009

Much like the great prognosticator of trends that he always was, Billy Wilder drew from the past and anticipated the future by creating a hilarious movie that also happens to deal realistically with infidelity, occupational depression, and suicide.

On the 16th anniversary of the first public screening of Clerks, we get personal with the man, the myth, the lunchbox as he rips his heart off his sleeve and slams it down on the table.

In this incredibly light edition of This Week in Blu-ray, we get one of the year’s darkest, most absurd comedies right alongside a few great comedies from yesteryear…

Rob Hunter loves movies. He also loves writing bestselling mystery novels and helping hot detectives capture evil-doers. 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’s releases include Barker’s Book of Blood, Observe & Report, Ghosts of Girlfriends Past, Albino Farm, lots of TV shows, and more!

Sometime within the next fifteen years, it’s possible that Seth Rogen may or may not embark on a road trip with Barbara Streisand and someone will film it. Yes, this is the highest level of accuracy and detail we can give you, but admit that you’re intrigued.

Despite being a sourpuss and all around curmudgeon, Robert Fure thinks Happy Endings aren’t just for Thai massages.

This week John predicts that die-hard fans may care about Crank: High Voltage, State of Play and 17 Again. But after a few weeks of big hits, we are due for a down weekend and he thinks this might be it.

Kevin Carr calls for an apology from the feminists for their treatment of Seth Rogen.

Today brings the birth of The Early Edition, FSR’s latest daily feature — its your new first stop for movie news in the morning. Period. Seriously.

Since we haven’t done this in a while, and since I haven’t slept in four days after starting “LOST” from the beginning, I felt the need to address some new features on the site premiering this week and some cultural trends that are getting us drunk and touching us inappropriately.

This weekend was billed as a battle between the boys and girls at the box office, as Hannah Montana threatened to take down last weekend’s box office champ Fast and Furious. And the girls won — or more likely, “the” girl won.

While other Rejects may have enjoyed the film, Robert Fure pepper sprays Observe and Report in the face and then mercilessly beats it into the pavement. See if you agree inside.

forgive me for my utter lack of enthusiasm. As you know, Hannah Montana is the big new movie that is rolling out in theaters this weekend, and I am not a fan of Hannah Montana, and I don’t know any friends of mine who like Hannah Montana, and I don’t know any enemies of mine who like Hannah Montana, either.

Kevin Carr reviews this week’s new movies: Observe and Report, Hannah Montana: The Movie, Dragonball: Evolution and Anvil!: The Story of Anvil.

Neil comes out swinging, preparing to defend the good name of Observe and Report from Kevin’s bile. Meanwhile, Kevin defends Hannah Montana as best a fat guy can.