What happens when a legendary film critic brings is geriatric crankiness to an internet movie show? Film Jockeys follows the adventures of Carl Barker, his far-too-young production staff, the filmmakers and the movie characters that inhabit their world. Written and illustrated by Derek Bacon, it’s the perfect webcomic for passionate fans who want Carl’s Complaint Corner to be a real thing. For your consideration, Episode #24:

It’s pretty much impossible to avoid movie/TV spoilers these days, and that’s just a sad reality. Is it the worst thing? Not even close, but that doesn’t mean that those who partake in the spoiling are anything less than pricks. Still, is it possible they’re simply confused pricks? Pricks unknowingly trafficking in the art of premature infojaculation? The past week has seen two interesting discussions arise on the subject, and both of them stem from Tom Cruise’s new film Oblivion. The first one appeared on Twitter as people who had seen early screenings of the film shared their 140-character-long opinions as to what other movies this one reminded them of. They weren’t explicitly stating plot points, but in naming certain, specific movies in their comparisons, those plot points were made implicit and obvious. The second issue was voiced a few days ago by Calum Marsh in a post on Film.com about how film critics shouldn’t care about spoiling a film for their readers. There’s a kernel of truth to his point, but it’s drowned out by the rest of what he says (and how he says it). In both cases the originators claim these circumstances aren’t worthy of being called a real spoiler. In both cases these people are wrong. Before we go any further though, know that there will in fact be spoilers below for Oblivion and Moon as well as a handful of older movies (I’m talking decades old), so consider this your spoiler warning. See how easy that is,

What happens when a legendary film critic brings is geriatric crankiness to an internet movie show? Film Jockeys follows the adventures of Carl Barker, his far-too-young production staff, the filmmakers and the movie characters that inhabit their world. Written and illustrated by Derek Bacon, it’s the perfect webcomic for passionate movie fans who also hate spoilers. For your consideration, Episode #16:

Less than two years ago, scientists at UC San Diego made the “discovery” that spoilers don’t matter. Not only did they find that stories aren’t ruined by knowing the ending but that people prefer stories when they know the ending. That sounded like hogwash to a lot of us, and to a degree the study was faulted. For one thing, it doesn’t really apply to anything but short stories, as that’s the only medium employed. And on top of that, these short stories weren’t of much significance to the participating subjects. The people weren’t invested in the stories, which makes a huge difference according to a more in-depth look at spoilers in a new article at The Atlantic. Change the studied medium to a series finale of a TV show the subjects had been watching for years (or at least many seasons’ worth of episodes), and you’ll surely see different results. Even then, there are always a number of factors to consider. One thing the UCSD study got correct, not that it was a revelation, is that good storytelling throughout is more important than plot, especially a plot’s conclusion. That is what matters most to enjoyment, regardless of the medium, and what makes us return to certain stories over and over. But if you consider the way we relate to stories, the return to some works can also be more akin to revisiting our past, thinking back on a memory or watching an old home movie. Even if you’re re-reading

In 2010, after the release of the largely panned Cop Out, Kevin Smith tweeted a short but passionate polemic against movie critics (that most loathsome subsect of the human species who sit up in their ivory towers and pass judgments), writing, “From now on, any flick I’m ever involved with, I conduct screenings thusly: you wanna see it early to review it? Fine: pay like you would if you saw it next week. Like, why am I giving an arbitrary 500 people power over what I do at all, let alone for free [?] Why’s their opinion more valid?” In the interest of full disclosure, I have attended free press screenings, but I still think that Smith’s gripe had merit. Spoilers with Kevin Smith, a new Hulu original series that debuted on the site Monday, is the director’s attempt to fix the “backwards system” that perturbed him so. The web talk show’s mission? As Smith puts it on his blog, “we don’t review movies on Spoilers; we revere them.”

Back in the late 1990s, you only had two options for discussing movies. You could hang out with friends in the parking lot or late night waffle hut afterward, complaining about nipples on Batman, or you could go online to sites like Aint It Cool and Movie Poop Shoot to give unbridled, anonymous opinions slathered with as much cursing vitriol as you pleased. That’s what the internet has given us. A tool to help social uprisings, and a forum for hiding your identity while calling Joel Schumacher a “douchenozzle.” That wide-ranging usefulness is a thing of beauty, and Kevin Smith is seeking to tap into it with his new show, Spoilers. The set up is simple: Smith will amass a crowd of 50 movie fans to watch a film and then discuss it afterward. Smith will play ringmaster, and members of the opinion-loaded audience will get to share to their heart’s content. In short? It’s the comments section come to life. Of course, that’s not all the show has up its sleeves.

The legendary Cloris Leachman is a salty woman with brass buttons. Her latest conquest is the suspense thriller – working alongside, seriously, Tara Reid in The Fields. Kevin Carr sits down the Oscar winner to discuss what scares her, her work with Mel Brooks and why she owns a porn shop in an upcoming movie. Plus, Eric D. Snider and Rob Hunter go head to head Movie News Pop Quiz-style, and the discussion turns to spoiler sensitivity. Download Episode #130

Some big time shows are finally back on the air and with them has come an air of excitement and, of course, the urge to share your opinion of what happened with everyone in the entire world, because you have something of value to offer. Like a 140 character recap of what happened! You should be a writer. I am smiling so smugly right now. For better or worse (definitely worse), Twitter and Facebook are things that are going to stick around. Whether or not we even like them, we use them. They’re how we connect with friends both close and distant and they keep us abreast (a breast, hahahahaha) of what’s currently going on in the world, like why you hate waking up, how bad your dog’s fart smells, what you ate for lunch, and that question you have that you typed into Twitter instead of Google. Unfortunately, one of the things that goes on is television. And movies. On different timetables. We all get excited about entertainment, that’s why we’re here together on this site right now. But I think we can all agree that spoiling stuff makes you a dick. So here’s the thing about tweeting television….

By all accounts, one of the coolest things about Drew Goddard and Joss Whedon’s upcoming horror movie The Cabin in the Woods is that it’s layered with all sorts of surprises. So if you want to be able to experience it completely fresh, it would probably be best to not watch any trailers. Heck, it would probably be best if you stopped reading this text too. Probably you should just lock yourself in your bedroom and keep your head under a pillow for the next month. But for those less nervous about getting a glimpse of what this thriller has to offer, there’s a new trailer on the web being hosted by the folks at Fearnet. The important question is, does it reveal too much? That could only definitively be answered by those that have seen the film, but so far it seems like the answer is yes. Read on only if you’re not afraid of no spoilers.

What is Movie News After Dark? It’s a nightly movie news column and link collector that is tired of explaining itself to you, quite frankly. Drew McWeeney at HitFix got the scoop this evening on a big story, in which Harry Potter director David Yates and screenwriter Steve Kloves will be re-teaming to do a multi-film version of Stephen King’s epic The Stand. The hope here is that Yates can give it that Deathly Hallows scope, something the work of Stephen King has long deserved, but never really received. With The Dark Tower on the ropes, this could become a new fixation for King fans.

There’s been a lot of talk the last few days regarding how critics (mostly on the TV side) should handle spoilers in an age where most people don’t keep up with their programming on a week to week basis, but rather save all their episodes for large clumps of viewing material at a time. The basics of both sides have been made clear, and for the most part, everyone pretty much agrees on the following: If you’re reading a review for a TV episode don’t bitch if there’s spoilers. If you’re reading a preview for a TV season, all past details are fair game. Journalists should do the best they can to not give away spoilers in things like tweets and headlines (I’m iffy on the tweets part of that statement, but I understand the point). If you’re following a show so intensely that you want to avoid all plot details then don’t read ANYTHING about it, at all. I’m not here to hound folks like Brian Moylan, David Chen and others for their take on the idea of spoilers. Both sides are right within their respective arguments. But there’s another side to this story, a side that no one has brought up, and it’s one that’s arguably more volatile than that of potential spoilers from the likes of critics. It’s the side pertaining to the regular viewer.

What is Movie News After Dark? It’s a nightly movie news column that sometimes diverges off the path of cinema and into other forms of entertainment, such as Broadway musicals, art, politics, television or even Werner Herzog doing a reading of a filthy children’s book. Yes, that’s happening. Stay tuned. Who should step in and direct The Expendables 2 if Sly Stallone isn’t up for the job? How about Con Air director Simon West? Ruminate on that a bit, dear friends.

This rant contains what might be consider highly non-specific spoilers for the second episode of Game of Thrones, which means it’s doing a better job than the Episode Guide. Lately I’ve been on an information kick. Not the normal kind of information kick people go on. I didn’t want more information. I wanted less. Less information about movies. Less about television. No casting news. No long trailers. I didn’t care to see and hear more about the movie before I was in the theater. I was doing my best to avoid learning too much. I failed. I failed not thanks to TV Guide specifically, but to their non-blood offspring. I’m talking about every little guide and preview program out there. It can be TV Guide or TVGuide.com. Or it can be Time Warner Cable’s guide. Or the Cox Cable screen. Or the DirecTV channel guide. And I have found spoilers. So seriously. I’m begging you, TV guides. Chill out.

Some new footage from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 was shown at Cinema Con, and afterwards Potter producer David Heyman sat down with Cinema Blend to talk about what from the novels is going to be included in the film, and what will be changed. Their conversation included some pretty specific spoilers about the end of the film, but presumably most people have already read the books; so giving away story details isn’t as big of a deal as it might be normally. If you’re one of the people who haven’t read the books, and who would like to see Deathly Hallows: Part 2 without any idea of what it has in store, then you should probably not read this article. Or, you know, do it anyways and then bitch about how stuff was given away in the comments section. Either way is good. Spoilers ahoy…

The American Pie franchise has been ridden hard and put away wet. The brand name has been slapped on no fewer than four atrociously average teen sex comedies that took low-budget laughs and tacked on a semi-emotional ending. There’s nothing wrong with those movies, but they’re a dozen rungs down the ladder from what American Pie was. Now that there’s an American Reunion in the works for the entire main cast, there’s now a rumored (spoilery) plot and character synopsis out there. It would be easy to call it moronic. Instead, it’s more interesting to notice how the nostalgia of the first film has been swapped out for pop culture references.

The protection of a pure movie experience does not have to come at the cost of genuinely engaging film discussion. In fact, since a great conversation about a movie usually demands that all parties involved have seen it, the idea of spoilers doesn’t even enter into it. Unless you’re Armond White. The critic most recently took the release of The Social Network as a catalyst to talk about the internet culture of criticism, but instead of calling him insane, pointing out that for all his bold claims he’s completely unburdened by facts, or skewering his main points (which was already done fairly capably by Alison Willmore at IFC), I’d like to tackle a tangential question and a tangential claim that he so eloquently raises.

Bill Murray has been fairly outspoken about not liking the script for Ghostbusters 3. He’s also been fairly outspoken about wanting to be killed off in the first act only to return as a ghost. As you might guess, it’s a little difficult to understand whether he wants to be a part of it or not (unless he means that his literal ghost would be acting on the film instead of him). It’s the second most aggravating project out there right now (tailing Arrested Development only by inches) because a lot of fans want it, but it’s been all-talk-no-action for so long that it feels like the production has turned into your high school prom date. Now, there’s word that an unfamilar familiar face might be returning, at least in the script’s eyes, to become the next generation of Ghostbuster. Possible spoilers haunt this entire post, so steer clear if you don’t want to know what might possibly happen in a film that might not.

The Rejects put their considerable nerd knowledge to the test in breaking down the secrets of Iron Man 2 gleaned from repeated viewings. What did we find? Oh nothing really, just a map of the Marvel Universe.

I want you to think of your favorite movie. Play it out on the big screen in your head and fall in love with it all over again. Now I want you to imagine that someone ruins it for you before you get to see it.

This week on a very special episode of Reject Radio, we discuss spoilers (what they are and where to find them), zombie attacks, and why Ricky Gervais really loves being told he’s a fat slob.