... FOR "DETAILS YOU PROBABLY NEVER NOTICED IN POPULAR FILMS BEFORE ('HOME ALONE' EDITION)"

For Home Alone (1990), director Chris Columbus wanted to give the film a warm Christmas feel. So he drenched the production design in greens and reds, the better to imbue the viewer with the spirit of the season:

... FOR "CINEMA STAPLES AND THE PECULIAR POSITIONING OF NAMES ON MOVIE POSTERS"

While we're stuck on a movie poster kick, I happened to catch a 10-minute featurette on Ridley Scott's The Counselor the other day, which, among clips and talking-head interviews and the like, also featured red-carpet footage from the movie's October 3rd UK premiere. As they questioned star Michael Fassbender for the camera, I couldn't help but notice a peculiar poster for the film in the background (note: this photo is obviously from an Entertainment Tonight report from the very same event, and not, obviously, from the featurette I watched on the TV the other night, since I couldn't find a photo from that):

It's nothing special as far as posters go, just your typical mishmash of the actors' profiles to let you know who's actually in the movie, except for one particular problem: their names don't line up with their faces! And it took my brain a moment to process it (Why, that isn't Fassbender - that's Cameron Diaz! And that isn't Cameron Diaz - it's Brad Pitt!). Here's a closer look, so you can see what I'm talking about:

... FOR "SIGNS THAT SOME PEOPLE HAVE TOO MUCH TIME ON THEIR HANDS (MOVIE POSTER MASHUP EDITION)"

Perusing the Internets the other day, I happened on a most distressing trend...

... FOR "MOVIE COINCIDENCE OF THE DAY #2"

In which we take a look at a series of odd movie coincidences - scenes, jokes, dialogue, even specific camera shots shared between two seemingly unrelated films. Anyone who's sat through a particular scene in a movie and thought, "Gee, haven't I seen someone do this somewhere before?" will know exactly what I'm talking about.

Continuing with our horror movie theme (a week after Halloween - so sue me), I offer this comparison between two "classics" of the genre, Tobe Hooper's Poltergeist (1982) and Wes Craven's A Nightmare On Elm Street (1984). One is a haunted house movie in which a middle-class American family find themselves under attack from a malevolent spirit. The other is an atypical slasher flick in which a group of all-American teenagers fall victim to a razor-fingered psychopath who kills them in their sleep. Couldn't be more different, right? Yet they share a single scene on common - in which a character is dragged across the walls and ceiling of her bedroom by an unseen demonic force:

... FOR "HALLOWEEN HORROR PROJECT - 2013"

I'm currently at work on a Horror retrospective for the blog, but it looks like I'm not going to finish on time (that's the thing about self-imposed deadlines - you know how forgiving the boss can be), so I thought I'd run a quick opinion poll for the time being instead...

Yesterday on Facebook, I asked everyone within eye shot what they'd recommend to a friend if they were asked the question: "What movie should I rent for Halloween night?" This could run the gamut from grossest gore film to funniest scare comedy to zaniest zombie flick - anything they found particularly frightening or family-friendly (or both) for the holiday, and why that particular film should be cherished and appreciated by others. The response was about as enthusiastic as I expected, but the thing I always find so interesting is how different types of Horror movies affect different types of people. From The Blair Witch Project to The Exorcist to Psycho to Shaun Of The Dead... what's scary to one person will often have a different effect on someone else, and it was fun to get at the heart of what really scares the pants off of you this time of the season.