The Festivus Airing of Movie-Related Grievances

Yesterday was Festivus, a holiday for the rest of us, popularized by “The Strike” episode of Seinfeld. The holiday was concocted by Seinfeld writer Dan O’Keefe’s father. On the show, it was executed by Frank Costanza. It featured an aluminum Festivus pole (instead of a tree), the Feats of Strengths, and most importantly, the Airing of Grievances. Here are my grievances with several facets of the film industry. To quote Frank Costanza, “I got a lot of problems with you people! And now you’re gonna hear about it!”

The Third Annual TDYLFie Awards

It’s a major award!

The end of the year is just around the corner, which means it’s time for a bunch of lazy journalists to do their year-end best and worst lists. But why should they have all the fun? I’m lazy too. And I’ve established an award for this stuff two years in a row now–the TDYLFie. I’m going to capitalize on that laziness for an easy article. First, let’s establish some scope. I don’t see nearly enough new releases to make any sort of reasonable “Best/Worst of This Year” list. Thus, this list will be comprised of movies that I’ve seen this year only, which will run the gamut from era to era, genre to genre, and on and on. In reality, this is more of a list about my own experience watching movies this year than it is about anything that was released in this year. Without further delay, here is the awards program for the 3rd Annual TDYLFies.

Ruining Movie Posters with Comic Sans

Comic Sans is a font with an interesting place in the graphic design kingdom. Most designers hate it. Hell, most people hate it in general. And that’s because it’s a bad font. If you really want to know why, then read this article. If you use it, graphic designers and font nerds and lots of other people will laugh at you. To illustrate the point about how bad the font is, I’ve recreated a bunch of movie posters using Comic Sans instead of the original font. No matter the era or genre, I think you’ll see how inappropriate it is, even in comic book films. Consider it a public service announcement.

Superhero Movie Bingo

It’s officially the summer movie season, even if summer doesn’t actually start for another month. And that means that we’re all going to be inundated with big budget blockbuster films. No genre gobbles up a budget quite like superhero movies, and they’re going to be all over the place. The Avengers is already shredding the box office. Later this summer, we’ll finally see The Dark Knight Rises. Spider-Man will get a re-boot in a few weeks. And it won’t stop there. Sequels are already in production for Thor, Captain America, and a third Iron Man film in the next few years. Superman is slated to come back next summer. I’ve decided to give you all an extra layer of enjoyment with these superhero films with a superhero movie bingo card.