Box Office Battle - August 5th

Today is a Friday. In fact, some may even call it a freaky Friday. Why? Probably because we have two major films releasing, one of which involves genetically mutated super animals and the other one stars the deadly duo of James Franco and Tom Felton. I seem to have mostly righted the ship - minus America's penchant for those damn Smurfs and the Katy Perry/Neil Patrick Harris combo - after a string of lackluster weeks, though my numbers and guesses could always use a bit more improvement. So today I am going to cross the streams, channel the super powered gas (that is totally legal and not a hallucinogen), and luck myself in to a couple of predictions that you can take to the bank. Or at least to your bookie. It should be noted that I take no responsibility for any actions you may or may not take as a result of this article. We're making some money this week baby! And so are movies, well at least one of them anyhow.

Box Office Battle - July 22nd

Just as I have been recovering from my trip to this year's Pitchfork Music Festival, I have also had to come to terms with the fact that my early predictions for last week's box office results were disastrously off base. Well, at least my prediction for exactly how much Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part Two was going to make, because I was actually pretty much spot on in my prediction of how much Disney's latest offering, Winnie the Pooh, would take in on the weekend. So with yet another week and yet another potential blockbuster releasing it's about time that I really start to buckle down and get things right this time. So pull on that helmet, pick up that, shield, and wave that damn flag because I'm dedicating this week's incredible round of predictions to the glorious nation of Patriotstonia! For the CGI!

Taking on 2011 - Top Films (Q2 Quarterly Review)

It seems like it was only yesterday I was writing up my Top Tracks and Top Albums of 2011 so far. In fact, it was a couple of days before yesterday. Despite the year being phenomenal for music, as I was looking over the list of movies I have seen in 2011, the abridged list (so the one that excludes all the 2010 releases that I am carrying over because of Filmspots eligibility purposes) is incredibly top heavy. So much so that I almost considered just doing a Top Five Movies list at this point in time because I did not think I have seen ten 2011 movies that were worth dedicating entire paragraphs to at this point in time. The trade off, I think, is that the movies that are at the top of the list are, in many cases some of the millennium's best films. Be sure to look back on the Q1 Top Films list to see how things have shaken up since then. Now dim the lights, grab the old fashioned popping corn, and let's make a list.

I Am Just Different

X-Men: First Class (Vaughn, 2011)

By and large, I think of the first X-Men film to be one of the paramount movies to usher in the recent comic book movie craze, and I have actually enjoyed all of the X-Men films I have seen up to this point. Sure I skipped out on what looked to be an abysmal spin off entry with the recent X-Men Origins: Wolverine, but with a cast that bolsters Michael Fassbender, Nicholas Hoult, James McAvoy, and Jennifer Lawrence, a script from Bryan Singer, and at least an experienced hand orchestrating everything in Matthew Vaughn I was excited to go back in time and really see the characters who set this universe in action. But, given my adverse reaction to Vaughn's previous film, Kick-Ass, I entered with tempered expectations, hoping for more, but expecting little outside of another run of the mill origin story.