There aren’t very many good prequels out there. For the most part, what George Lucas hath wrought is a wide range of direct-to-DVD prequels of films we never liked in the first place. See The Scorpion King: Rise of a Warrior starring Randy “I’m a UFC Hall of Famer and I Have Cauliflower Ear” Couture if you don’t believe me. In fact, heading over to IMBD and looking up their list of prequels sends a Paul WS Anderson chill down your spine. There aren’t very many good entries, and some of the the ones that are passable – I’m looking at you, Temple of Doom – are barely prequels at all. So in honor of X-Men: First Class, a rare good prequel, I felt it necessary to run down a list. It’s a kind of guideline for future prequel-makers to follow – born from those who came before and succeeded. How can you craft a worthwhile prequel that doesn’t feel like it came right off the Hollywood assembly line? How can you make a story that creates interesting origin stories for characters that have already been established? Basically, how can you come up with a prequel idea that isn’t going to end up in Russell Mulcahy’s filmography? We love you, Russ. There can be only one. Those are some good questions. Here are some possible answers.

Welcome back to Junkfood Cinema. Every week Brian Salisbury normally force-feed you hot spoon-fulls of hot garbage from his personal celluloid landfill, but today Kevin Kelly is stepping in to blast your eyeballs and clog your arteries.

Robert Fure just checked in with me once again with yet another video blog from his hotel room in San Diego. This time he’s got a preview/review of some raw footage that was shown Saturday night for Give ‘Em Hell, Malone, starring Thomas Jane and Ving Rhames.

Thomas Jane deserves more respect. Allow us to present the first trailer from his upcoming movie Give ‘Em Hell Malone as further evidence of this fact.