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Two weeks ago, I asked if 2012 could be a red letter year in the history of nerd movies. Now that a few weeks have past (and posting it in the Spoony Experiment Screening Room) I've been asked a very good question: how do you define a "nerd movie"?

Now in the broadest sense, a nerd movie (to me) is a film that while it can be enjoyed by "the straights" (aka normal people who don't spend good portions of they're time obsessing over pop culture minutiae) are films that can be analyzed, lauded and vilified by, well, nerds.  Now while that may encompass every film ever made, I'd say that plenty of films (Pratical Magic, Soul Food, Hotel For Dogs, The Squeeze, ect) wouldn't probably be given half a thought.

Now, finding a nerd movie is probably easier than you think. Honestly, most times you can just look at the cover of a film to know whether or not nerds would care about it.
Now this...

THIS is a nerd movie. It's in the fantasy genre, is based on a beloved fantasy book, and has a giant spider( Okay, the last one is only important to me).

This...

Is a piece of s#%^, but it's also a nerd movie. (Hey, I never said nerd movies had to specifically be movies nerds love) It's (a horrible) sci-fi movie that's a bastardization adaptation of a beloved cartoon franchise. (That involves John Tuturro getting pissed on. F*#% you, movie.)

This...

This...

Rating: 41 YEARS OF NOT GIVING A SHIT.

Have you heard complaints about how Tim Burton messed up "yet another franchise" yet? Did people mewl into your ear about how the movie lost the integrity of the show? Have they tried to convey the plot of the 26 seasons of the show in order to nit pick each failure in the movie?

Tell them to shut the fuck up.

I saw the original show and bored the shit out of me. Guess what I thought about the movie? It bored the shit out of me.

One thing I noticed in retrospect was that one of my favorite films from last Summer (Final Destination 5), and my least favorite movie of the year (Transformers 3) both shared one thing in common: The main character's name was Sam. Sam Lawton (Nicolas D'Agosto) in FD5 and Sam Witwicky (Shia LeBeouf) in Transformers. With both series being considered popcorn flicks (with one being far more financially succesful while the other receives far less hatred) I began to think about the differences between the two Sams, for me, explains why I believe one of these films really works while the other......doesn't. I will explain my thoughts now.

Assembled we are strong!/Forever fight as one!

In a word: amazing.
A watermark movie for which not only comic book movies, but blockbusters in general will be judged by. As good as it honestly gets, in my opinion. Better than The Dark Knight? No, but that not even close to being important. The Dark Knight and The Avengers are two separate entities with two separate goals and will not be judged by one another. So,yeah, The Avengers is awesome.

[And now, a brief rant]
To everyone one who didn't go see this movie because of creator's rights issues or ( in the case of Armagideon Time helmer Andrew Weiss) pure apathy toward blockbusters in general and find the film blatantly panderific, I'd like to say that you forget all that an go see it anyway as many times as possible. Why?  Because this...

... and all other Michael Bay-like pieces of garbage must be destroyed. No, not just destroyed, curb-stomped! I know its coming out two weeks after The Avengers, and some of you may want to see it "ironically" (whatever that means) but this mound of elephant diarrhea must  go down like the Titanic, and be twice as more disastrous in order to make Hollywood go away from this crap!SO GO! GO NOW! HURRY! BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE!

[Brief rant over]

You know the most spectacular thing about this all, though? IT ALL WORKS!!! The fight scenes are well choreographed. The acting is top notch. The script is witty and fast paced. The humor works and is not either intellectually insulting or racially offensive (like some other movies I could name.)Characterization and dialogue go hand in had with the action, as if their both just two little children frolicking through a sunflower draped meadow. And not a single frame of shakey-cam in sight! This, this is almost too good to be real!

OHMYGOD, THIS IS ONE OF THE GREATEST MOVIES I'VE EVER SEEN IN MY LIFE!

Yeah, I'm fanboying it up, so what?! Films like this don't come around too often for me to do that! So go, my friends. Go forth and be in awe. You will be glad... no, you will be elated that you did.

Excellent work, people! See you all for the sequel!

Not to be confused with Blood +, or Blood the last vampire, a vastly superior work.

My version is 94 minutes, but IMDB has one at 122, which may have all the gore and titties which would maybe have made this feature worth while.

As it stands, it runs a lot like a very garden variety TV show, in the vein of One Tree Hill.  I did make it through the whole thing, but felt rather disappointed by the lack of gore.  The DVD cover promises gore.  This has about as much gore as One Tree Hill.

But anyway:

A woman gets turned into a vampyre, and a series of unremarkable, unmemorable events happen, for the most part.  Angst is involved.

(Cross-posted at doggans.com)

Rating: YEAH! WOO HOO! BRING IT! WORDS!

As we speak, nearly everyone has seen The Avengers. Before the United States could see it (the country it was made incidentally enough) the rest of the world got to see it and for a week were able to agonize us by telling us how awesome it was. We were told to suck it by countries I didn't know existed. Now that it's here, America can show it's love for the four hard bodied studs on a level rarely seen outside of P-Town.