It seems to me its every other day that a popular novel gets the big budget Hollywood treatment. No less than six of the nine Best Picture nominees are based on a previous work, be it a play or a novel. And thats not even including The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. This is further proof (if any was even needed) that Hollywood is completely and utterly devoid of new ideas. Hell, Dragon Tattoo had already been adapted faithfully (and with much more skill) by Sweden. And lets not forget that Tinker Tailor was previously a British miniseries with Alec Guiness in the lead role. So not only is Hollywood out of fresh ideas, but they are also so desperate for good stories that they find themselves green lighting movie versions of works that have already been fucking adapted. Hey, I love a good adaptation as much as the next guys but there are still plenty of great novels out there that Hollywood hasnt touched yet. Here are seven of the finest:

Its that time of year where every major critic and blogger is busy working on their best of the year lists. Personally, I love reading those lists but I get a little tired of reading about the same movies over and over again. You know what I mean. Every list is basically a variation of the same twenty movies or so. If I read one more sentence about how The Tree of Life is a visionary experience unlike any other I think I might lose my mind. I like to read these lists to find movies that I havent heard of rather than reading about the same Oscar Bait that hits cinemas every fall. So, it is in that spirit that I present my annual list of my ten favorite obscure films of the year. These are the films that slipped through the cracks, the ones that were missed by critics and general audiences alike. This was a good year for obscure movies and I was hard pressed to keep my list to ten. Now, lets take a look at the best movies of the year that Oscar will inevitably forget:

Ah, here we are again.  It’s that time of week where I head out to a dark graveyard in the dead of night and search for long forgotten horror movies.  I’ve been doing pretty well so far, managed to discover four movies worthy of resurrection.  This week, however, is something different.  I decided to take a look at a bizarre horror flick from the eighties, The Lair of the White Worm.  It’s very, very loosely based on a novel by Bram Stoker, directed by a psychotic Brit named Ken Russell (more on him in a bit) and stars none other than everybody’s favorite awkward romantic-comedy leading man, Hugh Grant.  Yes, before Hugh Grant began tripping and falling over beautiful women all over Britain and long before he was caught in a car with a really ugly hooker, he starred in a movie where he got to use a big sword to cut snake-vampires in half.  I’m at a complete loss as to why his film career didn’t continue down this path.  Sure, he’s made out with Julia Roberts, Drew Barrymore and Sarah Jessica Parker to name a few, but wouldn’t it be more fun to chop up demons of the undead on a weekly basis? To each his own, I guess.  Anyway this article is not entirely about Hugh Grant and his early days as a fearless vampire hunter; it’s about that big white worm’s lair and whether it’s a fun place or a miserable place to hang out in for an hour and a half.  Let’s journey into the crypt and take a look for ourselves.  Just make sure to bring a torch and a really big fucking sword cuz we may need to chop up a few worms ourselves. 

Im starting to feel like its becoming taboo in this country to admit that you enjoyed a Michael Bay film. If youre a mainstream movie critic and you gave Transformers: Dark of the Moon an even semi-favorable review, Id say that you have either balls of steel or a death wish. Your cohorts who take perverse pleasure in calling Michael Bay films the death of cinema will probably hunt you down in the dead of night and place your head on a spike. Its just as bad for us nerds. Our fellow nerdy cohorts will sit and debate the merits of the Green Lantern Corps until the end of time but if I start to discuss the history of Cybertron, Ill be called a fucking moron and get told to shut my obnoxious mouth because the Transformers' back-story is retarded. When did it become so goddamn cool to hate on Michael Bay and everything that he touches? I hear more people trashing Bays films than the Twilight films! What gives? Yes, Michael Bays movies are not high art. They are not subtle, they are often far too long and their characters are frequently so one-dimensional you can see right through them. But you know what else they are? Fucking fun. If we could just quit being such elitist snobs, we might be able to kick back, check our brains at the door, and have a blast as we watch the Autobots beat the ever-loving shit out of the Decepticons. Wheres the harm in that?

Welcome back you depraved gore junkies and vampire lovers to another edition of Back From the Grave, the column where forgotten horror films are resurrected and given a second chance at life. This week, Ill be taking a look at a bizarre Italian giallo from Italy with the rather long (but very cool) title, The Perfume of the Lady in Black. Ive been waiting to see this one for years; its been recommended to be by many other hardcore giallo fans and I was rather anxious to see what all the fuss was about. I must say though, this film can hardly be called a giallo. An Italian giallo film almost always involves a masked man running around brutally butchering women. They have lots of blood, sex and sadistic kills. Dario Argentos Opera is a fine example of one of the very best, while Lucio Fulcis New York Ripper is a fine example of one of the worst. The Perfume of the Lady in Black has none of the characteristics of the above films, so if you were hoping to discover a long forgotten giallo to satisfy your bloodlust, Im sorry to disappoint you. This film owes much more to the work of Roman Polanski. In fact, it can be viewed as bit of a hybrid of Polanskis two classic horror movies, Rosemarys Baby and Repulsion. Im rather puzzled as to why this film is lumped into that specific sub-genre, but I guess it was just released at the height of their popularity. Anyway, lets take a look at the lady in black, shall we? Is she worth our time or do we need to put her back in her coffin? One sniff of her perfume will probably tell us all we need to know.

Welcome back horror fans to another edition of Back From the Grave, the column where I get out my trusty spade and shovel and dig up a long forgotten horror film to see if it is worthy of being resurrected. There are just so many damn horror movies in the world and many of the best ones have been decaying in the ground for far too long. I see it as my noble and sacred duty to at least try to bring them back to life, even if they dont deserve it. This week, Ill be taking a look at a film based on a short story from the master of horror himself: Stephen King. King has had about a million movies made based on his work and for every great one (the original Salems Lot), there are at least three that are terrible (the remake of Salems Lot, Children of the Corn, Dreamcatcher). So, where does this one fit in? Is it up there with the better ones or do I need to bury it even deeper in the cold, dark earth? Well find out as I unearth another one of his vampire tales, The Night Flier. Now come on folks, lets fly the unfriendly skies.

Man, we loved to hate on X-Men: First Class on this site, didnt we? Staub pointed out on several occasions that the film was going to be such a loose interpretation of the original comic that you could barely call it an X-Men film. And what the hell were they doing putting Havoc in the movie without Cyclops? Seemed ridiculous. Carlito pointed out that all the trailer featured was a bunch of actors posing for the camera and that the whole Cuban Missile Crisis angle seemed a bit desperate and obvious. Not to mention that the last two X-Men movies were so awful that another film would probably only add insult to injury. So yeah, despite a good director in Matthew Vaughn (Kick-Ass, Stardust), and a pretty decent cast, I cant say my hopes were too high for X-Men: First Class.

However, I finally saw the film over the weekend and, much to my great surprise, I thought it was the best X-Men film yet! Yep, even better than X2 (close call though). It gets the tone perfectly right and while it may not be a very faithful adaptation of the comic book, it still makes for a damn good time at the movies. The acting is terrific, the characters are well developed, and the film feels appropriately epic without feeling too long. Its the best superhero movie Ive seen since The Dark Knight. In addition to that, I think I learned a few lessons from X-Men: First Class that Id like to share with you:

Welcome back horror-hounds to the 2^nd edition of Back from the Grave, my new weekly column where I dig up a long forgotten horror movie and decide if it deserves a second chance at life or if it should have stayed dead and buried.  This week, I’ll be taking a look at a film from the Italian ‘Godfather of Gore’, Lucio Fulci.  Fulci made over forty films in his career, but is most well-known for his disgusting horror efforts that he began to release in the eighties and continued to punch out until his death in the nineties.  Fulci’s films are widely considered to be staples of the genre (even though many horror fans have never heard of the man) and while that is certainly debatable, no one can deny that he has directed some of the goriest films of all time.  But are they actually any good? We’ll find out as I unearth what many horror critics consider to be his best film, The Beyond.  So, get out your shovels folks cuz it’s time to resurrect the dead!

Did you see the first Human Centipede? Chances are, if youre a horror fan, youve already seen and debated the merits of that movie with your horror cohorts. If youre not a horror fan, youve probably heard of it anyway, be it from just getting wind of the movies insane premise or from watching the hilarious South Park spoof episode, The Human CentIPAD. But just in case you dont know, The Human Centipede is about a mad German doctor who stitches three people together ass to mouth as part of a psychotic scientific experiment. Most mainstream critics called it deplorable garbage while horror fans all over the world foamed at the mouth for it. The films writer/director, Tom Six, has promised that the sequel, titled The Human Centipede: Full Sequence, will be even more graphic, deranged, and disturbing than the first film. Apparently the United Kingdom agrees with him and has responded by refusing to give the film a rating. This basically means that the movie will not be able to find distribution and has been effectively banned.

Ive made it no secret on this site that before I am anything else, I am a fan of all things horror. Recently, Ive been spending most of my free time hunting down and watching older, lesser-known horror films that snuck in under the radar when they first came out. Hey, being a horror junkie, you can only watch Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13^th so many times before you start to long for something else; something darker, weirder, creepier, something that gets under your skin and festers there. Many of these obscure films are notoriously hard to track down andare often only available on VHS, but that just makes finding them all the more rewarding. Of course, for every gem Ive found, there are at least two or three that should have stayed in obscurity. But still, theyre always worth a watch (ok, there are some exceptions) and they always manage to fill the horror junkie fix, which can be as demanding as a heroin addiction. So, rather than keeping all these bizarre finds to myself, Ive decided to share them with my fellow nerds. Each week Ill be taking a look at one random obscure horror film and discussing whether or not it deserves to be up there with the likes of The Omen, Halloween, and Dont Look Now, or whether it belongs at the bottom of the barrel with The Amityville Horror, Phantasm, and The Exorcist (I know you all love that dumb-ass movie, but I think its the most overrated piece of shit of all time). Now, without further ado, let us journey into the underground! Be warned though, its dark down here, and far too easy to stray from the path, so lets tread softly. You never know what manner of creature may be hiding in the darkness waiting for you to make that wrong turn.