If you’re a writer for TV, movies, or animation in Hollywood you are officially out of a job starting today! Happy Halloween! Never fear, there are people out there who understand your pain and are trying to help. YouTube.com’s ritersrock recently posted a humorous video written and directed by Gregg Rossen and Brian Sawyer depicting what members of the Writers Guild may be up to until this unpleasant strike is over. The video titled,”Hero’s of the Writers Strike” (below) features many mainstream writers having to resort to flipping burgers and literally whoring themselves out until the strike is over. Paul Guay from “Liar, Liar” tells a fat man in a hideous suit to “trust me, you look great.” Tom Donnelly from “Sahara” has trouble accepting an order from a drive-thru window and tells the patron “you may want to go more archetype instead of stereotype.” Overall it’s a hilarious video that does a great job of giving Hollywood screenwriters something to laugh about.

I wonder if the strike will effect the writing on YouTube? Hmm… I’m guessing yeah.

Watch the “Hero’s of the Writers Strike” now by pressing play below!

… from the Vaults of the Classics

These days a film that qualifies as “scary” is really just a conglomeration of CGI, ridiculous oozing make-up and simply put – excess of every possible sort. Granted there have been a few here and there that have made many an audience leap out of their skins, but there are many old-school horror/thriller films that did the same thing with mere camera techniques, angles, lighting and ambiance. Not to mention that the stories themselves are worth watching as opposed to modern plots, which consist of blood spurting scene after blood spurting scene. So for your viewing pleasure here is a compilation of The Top Ten Best Classic Horror/Thriller films from before1950…

#10 The Mummy (1932): Not necessarily a sleepless night inducing scary film but it is a tradition in the collection of thriller/horror films. Karloff is at his best here without uttering a sentence. Lighting is everything, especially when the camera looks into the mummy’s soulless eyes, filled with pools of horrible vengeance in which to drown. This version is superior to the remake because you can smell the rotting flesh in its ancient wrap as the creature shuffles along.

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Heeeeeeeeeeeeeere’s JOHNY…..

Have you been to one too many Halloween parties in your lifetime? In the past week? Yet you love celebrating Halloween you say. Well then try something new this year and visit the Hollywood Forever Cemetery where Stanley Kubrick’s “The Shinning” will be shown (yes IN the cemetery!) at 7pm on Halloween night, gates open at 5:30pm.

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As is to be expected from all TCM fans, Halloween will yield a day long movie marathon. Classic horror/thriller forefathers Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff have many a film in the line-up, such as The Devil Bat, Bride of the Monster and The Body Snatcher. In the mix of 1940’s films are a few from 63-65, including The Haunting (which was later poorly remade in 1999). So if you are feeling more like a homebody than a socialite this Halloween, TCM is there with arms wide open offering ghouls, insane asylums run amok, the traditional vampires and monsters as well as grave digging scientists and sinister wax statues. Who needs trick-or-treaters or Halloween parties when TCM is offering a great collection of movies with which you can eat all that candy you forgot (or will forget) to hand out!

Finally all you fans out there can imagine a Nightmare Before Christmas land that is almost real!

Did you enjoy the original Nightmare before Christmas? Then there is a slight chance you will have fun with the 3-D version of Tim Burton’s stop motion masterpiece, which is being currently shown at the El Capitan on Hollywood Boulevard (across from the more renowned Graumman’s Chinese Theatre also known as the Kodak Theatre), the National Amusements The Bridge: cinema de lux, and at Mann Criterion on 3rd St. Promenade in Santa Monica.

At El Capitan, the matinée is $11, two dollars cheaper than after 6p, when adult tickets prices go up to $13. You can treat yourself with a $22 dollar ticket, the VIP price, and with entry obtain popcorn, a soft drink, a reserved seat and (drum roll please) NO waiting in line, hoorah! Tickets are a little cheaper through Goldstar Events, at $9.00, but you are do get the usual $2.50 service charge for buying tickets from them. To order through the theater just show up, or for individual ticket sales call 1-800-DISNEY6.

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Yep. It’s that movie you heard about with the guy and the sex doll. I have known about it for a while and I think a lot of people have. People that usually don’t talk to me about upcoming films would even bring it up to me. “Hey, you hear about that movie coming out with the guy from The Notebook and the sex doll?” That’s pretty much all I knew about this movie. That, and I saw the posters. Going in, I had very little idea of what was about to flicker in front of me. I assumed it would be somewhat funny, maybe even quite bad in its attempt to be funny (which happens TOO often with a premise like this). I don’t often go spending $10 and two hours of my life on something I didn’t already do research on… or even check out the trailer. When the credits hit, two words instantly came to my head: Surprisingly endearing.

This is the part where I would describe the movie and give you enough info so that you can decide whether or not it is worth your time and money. I’m not going to do that. Sorry. Hold on. Let me see the trailer over at Apple and see if I should link you to that. Nope. Please don’t even watch the trailer. If you already have seen the trailer in front of another movie, I can’t do anything about that. All I can say is that it didn’t do it justice and I’m glad I didn’t see it before. It ruins some funny scenes that happen during the film.

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I saw the preview for this film and couldn’t wait to see it. I think both Denzel Washington (Frank Lucas) and Russel Crowe (Richie Roberts) are great actors, and I especially love them when they get to play bad-asses. After seeing American Gangster, I felt it was built up to be much more than it was. To me the subject of the film was drugs, not gangsters. The entire feel of the movie, felt off. I guess that’s what you get for hiring an English guy to make AMERICAN Gangster. From the way they are selling it, it should have been a gangster film that deals with drugs, but instead it was a movie about drugs with gangsters and cops around them. I thought this was going to be a contender for The Godfather or even The Sopranos, it’s not.This moving was closer to Blow than The Godfather.

The film, which is 157 minutes long, starts out with a bang but then seems to never stop setting things up for..? The film doesn’t get to the point until about an hour and a half into it as Russel Crowe finally says “I don’t think they want this to stop. It employs too many people…Stop bringing dope into the country, about 100,000 are going to be out of a job.” This, finally, is what the movie is about. Here I was thinking it would be about Denzel Washington’s character being a nobody, then rising up becoming more successful than all the Italian Mafia. Instead it focuses on the corruption of the police force and the people who are against it. The film hides behind the facade of a gangster epic, and it’s just not.

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If you don’t know already… I love me some superhero. I grew up reading whatever I could get my dirty little hands on. X-Men and Spider-Man were the main ones for some reason. Too bad both of those ended with an awful third movie. I never really ventured into DC territory until later. I suppose I was a late bloomer. Oh well.

So me and most other former (or current) comic book geeks are loving this wave of superhero flicks that we’ve been riding. Unfortunately, it’s hit or miss. But we’ll take what we can get. Here are some updates and rumors that you can munch on for a week or so…

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Elizabeth: The Golden AgeWith much anticipation did I go alone to see this sequel to one of my favorite movies, Elizabeth, starring Cate Blanchet. I could not drag my boyfriend there, he hadn’t seen the first one and the previews were not enough to entice him.

I was ready for more of the same - a woman who has to continually struggle to keep grubby catholic hands off of her throne, not just for herself; but for the good of her people. A beautiful woman, who had to say goodbye to the romantic girl inside of her and keep her mind on other matters - serious adult matters, like running a religiously divided country, half of whom thought her a bastard and an usurper. From the trailers I couldn’t wait to see this character that I so admire historically and in the context of the first film - stand up to the fanatically religious idiot King of Spain and kick his ass!!

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