I don’t like movie musicals. It’s probably more accurate to say that I strongly dislike the vast majority of musicals. Too often I find that the songs and dance numbers take priority over the film’s story and characters, and that disparity leaves me disinterested in the whole shebang. And if I’m being honest, I really hate it when complete strangers suddenly bust out with the same songs and dance moves as if they’ve been secretly practicing them for weeks. (Unless the story is about the history of flash mobs of course, but who the hell would want to watch that?) There are exceptions, but they’re usually films that place as high a value on the story being told and the characters within as they do on the music and dancing and other gibberish. Ones I do like include Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, 8 Women, South Park: Bigger Longer and Uncut and Takashi Miike’s The Happiness of the Katakuris. You could say I lean toward less traditional examples of the form. Warner Bros. just released a series of 20 Film Collection box sets broken down by genre, and when the opportunity arrived to take a look at the one focused on Musicals I literally stood still at the chance. And yet… here we are.

What is Movie News After Dark? It’s a nightly movie news column that is currently incensed with its own author, as it has determined that he is a giant wuss. Seriously? You almost let a little stomach bug get in the way of doing the news?! Pansy. Now, on with the good stuff. The shortlist for the Best Foreign Language Oscar has been released. Among the contenders listed in notes from Jeff Wells is Bullhead, a recent pickup of Drafthouse Films and standout film of this year’s Fantastic Fest line-up. Our own Luke Mullen called it “damn near a masterpiece.” That’s high praise, if I’ve ever seen it.

What is Movie News After Dark? It’s a nightly column dedicated to things happening in the world of entertainment. It’s also deathly afraid of Kevin Bacon. It would like to reassess it’s number of degrees and somehow increase from its usual 2 to at least 8. That way Mr. Bacon and his X-Men character can’t clamp its nether regions in the contraption above. At least we think that’s what that thing is. We begin our night with X-Men: First Class and a massive dump of images over at Gamma Squad. From high-res shots of the meticulously crafted costumes to high-res shots of cool CGI mutants to a high-res shot of whatever the hell Kevin Bacon is doing in the photo above. I almost don’t want to know. But I do, because this movie continues to look better and better with every little marketing bit.

Every day, come rain or shine or internet tubes breaking, Film School Rejects showcases a trailer from the past. That moment when all the children finally see the inside of the factory…is there a more magical moment on film? It’s incredible. This trailer introduces you to all of those terrible children and gives a hint at Gene Wilder’s brilliance. It’s a golden ticket from the 1970s, but would you go watch this movie based on this trailer? Check out the trailer for yourself:

Two years ago, I challenged myself to come up with twelve films that corresponded with all the verses of the popular Christmas song that Eddie Izzard loves to sing the fifth verse of. Despite ending that sentence with a preposition, I sat down to a quiet Christmas break intending to stay as far away from work as possible, but that became impossible after my third quart of egg nog. For it was after that quart that the Planet of the Apes poster in my office began speaking, nay, taunting me to the challenge of coming up with twelve more films. I only have two words for hallucinatory, two-dimensional Cornelius. Challenge. Accepted.