... FOR "MARKETING PLOYS AND WALT DISNEY'S 'TANGLED'" (OR "QUIZ TIME, PART 4")

So there's a new Disney cartoon out in theaters. It's called Tangled, about a rogue-ish thief named Flynn Rider who climbs a tall tower in the middle of a pastoral field and finds a barefooted girl with wicked-long hair extensions living inside. Hilarious adventures ensue, in which Flynn and his horse encounter ruffians in a forest, all the while accompanied by said girl who giggles a lot and swings from trees and other assorted things by said hair.

Did I mention the story's actually a modern spin on Rapunzel, that age-old Grimm's Fairy Tale your parents read to you as a child, "Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair" and all that? You probably gathered as much from the previews you've seen on television, only... why aren't they advertising it that way? Before the movie was released last weekend, I don't think they even mentioned Rapunzel by name in the trailers. If you haven't ventured out to see it yet, you might even be surprised to learn it's also a full-scale Disney musical, complete with show-stopping numbers by Alan Menken (of Little Mermaid / Beauty And The Beast fame) and all.

... FOR "BEGINNINGS AND ENDINGS AND 'HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS, PART 1'"

First off, we've already established that adapting children's books into movies can be a tricky business. There's a lot of padding involved in turning a 30-page tome into a 90-minute feature, and I'd hesitate to call any attempt at this (so far) an unqualified success.

The world of Harry Potter, meanwhile, is a completely different matter. J.K. Rowling's Witches and Wizardry series is so chock full of incident, so ripe with characters and fantastical creatures and iconic moments, that it's a struggle deciding what to leave out. This has been a great source of frustration for fans loyal to the books, especially after the first two entries in the series, Harry Potter And The Sorcerer's Stone and Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets, which were short enough (at 300-340 pages) that director Chris Columbus and his team could follow Rowling's narrative without deviating from it too much. As the books expanded, though, subplots had to be dropped, character beats fell to the wayside, and it’s been fun listening to Potter-philes express their growing exasperation over what didn't make the cut.

... FOR "MACGUFFIN WITH EGG (PART 2 - 'JAWS' EDITION)"

Wake up call: The MacGuffin in Jaws is the shark, no ifs, ands or buts about it. Anyone who tells you different is trying to sell you something.

This might be the reason why so many people who experience Steven Spielberg's terror-under-the- water masterpiece today feel so gypped by it: the shark looks so "fake" - obviously a mechanical monster and not the real thing - that it's hard to focus on anything else. By doing that, though, you take your focus off of what the movie's really about.

... FOR "THE BEST FILMS OF THE DECADE" - PART 8

Genre:

HORROR

Defined:

Slasher pics. Zombie flicks. Dismemberment, monsters and murder. The Horror film has evolved since the days of early cinema, when genre pics kept their horrors mostly off-screen. Now, though, filmmakers leave very little to the imagination, as if the simple act of scaring us just isn't enough. 2000-2009 saw the return of the "splatter film" in significant numbers, with prolonged sequences of torture, mutilation, and gore. While titles like Hostel and Saw dominated multiplexes, other trends included remakes of American classics (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Halloween), remakes of Asian Horror flicks (The Ring, The Grudge), and "found footage" films (Cloverfield, Paranormal Activity). There was, in short, no shortage of frights this decade.

The Top Five:

5. Shaun Of The Dead (Edgar Wright, 2004)

Just when you thought zombie movies couldn't get any funnier. Part end-of-the-world scenario, part Romantic Comedy (billed, in fact, as the world's first "zom rom com"), Edgar Wright's side-splitting Horror-Comedy is a mishmash of so many genres it's hard to guess what'll come at you next. Wright co- scripted with star Simon Pegg, based off an idea from their British slacker sitcom Spaced, about an aimless appliance salesman who's settled into such a routine – hanging out with his ne'er-do-well flatmate at the local pub, and generally disappointing his girlfriend – that it literally takes scores of the undead to shake him from his stupor. This mix of shrieks and laughter has been done before, of course (George A. Romero's Dawn Of The Dead springs immediately to mind, as does Sam Raimi's Evil Dead series) – but never quite at this pitch. One minute the dry British wit floors you with its typical indifference, the next someone's getting ripped to pieces during zombie attacks. For anyone with the stomach for it, Shaun's a real hoot.