CHICAGO – Some films never get a fair shot with audiences. They open in a handful of art house theaters scattered throughout the country before inconspicuously landing on DVD. Passionate movie lovers are left with the task of championing these unjustly obscure titles and helping them to acquire the audience they deserve. Before I reveal my picks for the top five films of 2010 that you probably didn’t see, here are the 10 runners-up. Read More

Avatar’s habit of breaking records is not coming to an end any time soon, last monday it broke the UK record for the biggest opening-day sales of a Blu-ray disc, selling 222,824 copies, which was more copies in one day than what the previous record-holder The Dark Knight sold in its first week. I’m sure the first week totals are going to be ridiculous. Check out my interview with the legendary and lovely Sigourney Weaver for Avatar’s DVD/Blu-Ray release below. Read More

Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove, which has won wide and continued acceptance from the time of its release, has come to be considered one of the screen’s great masterpieces of black comedy. Yet Kubrick had originally planned the film as a serious adaptation of Peter George’s Red Alert, a novel concerned with the demented General Jack D. Ripper (Sterling Hayden) and his decision to order a group of B-52 bombers to launch an attack inside Russia. Gradually Kubrick’s attitude toward his material changed: “My idea of doing it as a nightmare comedy came in the early weeks of working on the screenplay. I found that in trying to put meat on the bones and to imagine the scenes fully, one had to keep leaving out of it things which were either absurd or paradoxical, in order to keep it from being funny; and these things seemed to be close to the heart of the scenes in question.” Read More

Much of this past year was spent talking about the visual aspect of movies, what with the whole 3-D revolution (or plague, depending on your perspective) and the increased sophistication of CGI effects. But let’s not forget the other half of the audio/visual equation. Read More

If your memories of your high school years consist mostly of teen angst, awkward romances, and acne breakouts the night of the big dance, take heart—you’re not alone. Unless you were a football jock or prom queen, high school was basically four years of dealing with boring math teachers and controlling parents. Would things had been different if you went to the same high school as Harry Potter or Jeff Spicoli? Let’s take a look at the lazy and crazy TV and movie high schools that we would apply for in a heartbeat if they were actually real. Read More

When you talk about animated movies, the first studio that comes to mind has to be Pixar. They have, for the most part, consistently created better animation with better characters and better stories than the other animation studios, with only a few exceptions (How To Train Your Dragon and Despicable Me are phenomenal animated films). 21 year old Brazilian film buff (as in a film buff from Brazil, not a buff of Brazilian film) Leandro Copperfield agrees; after 11 days of re-watching Pixar’s feature films, he has selected over 500 scenes he felt were most beautiful and edited them together to create “The Beauty of Pixar.” Read More

Elena comes up with her own plan to deal with her situation and offers Rose a tempting incentive for her help. When plans change unexpectedly, Rose asks Damon to help with Elena’s plan. Tyler shows Caroline the Lockwood’s cellar where she makes a terrifying discovery. Jeremy and Bonnie attempt to retrieve the moonstone, but Stefan ends up in danger when things don’t go as planned. Bonnie and Luka also become closer. Read More