TV SHOWS TOO GOOD FOR THIS WORLD, YOU MONSTER! THERE ARE CHILDREN WATCHING, YOU HEARTLESS BASTARDS!

Get out your angry yelling voices we’re doing a special cartoon version of TV SHOWS TOO GOOD FOR THIS WORLD, YOU MONSTERS! This time I’m going to talk about five great cartoons cut in their prime!

Top Ten Least Favorite Films of 2013

Ugh, these movies. THESE MOVIES, YOU GUYS. I am going to complain about them. You know, last year I made a resolution to be less negative which is why last year I didn't have a top ten worst/most-disappointing/most-annoying/movies-I-complained-about-the-most list. But it's a brand new year so poop on these! It's nice to start off the year by PURGING ALL THE HATE FROM THE LAST ONE. To start off, a few notes: I'm only doing movies I saw, which is why Smurfs 2 or anything worse isn't on here. Also, all movies get the honorary Congratulations-On-Actually-Making-A-Movie Award, because, I mean, at least that's something, right?

Top Ten Favorite Movies of 2013

It's a new year: 2013 is over, and 2014 is now! Time to look back and judge all the movies we've seen and make them fight to the death for our entertainment! Line them up in a row and tell them who's beautiful and who's not! What am I even talking about?! Anyways, here's my list of my favorite movies from 2013!

Sketched List: 13 Horror Comedies for Halloween

Halloween is tomorrow! No doubt, a lot of people will be going trick-or-treating, or to a spoooooky party! Or maybe they'll relax at home with some scary movies. But what if you're just looking to chill and have some laughs, but still stay in the spirit? Here are 13 fantastic classic and/or little-known horror-comedies for your Halloween night!

10 reasons why you should start follow The Following

There have been a handful of episodes of The Following already, so instead of doing a full review, I'm going to give you ten very good reasons why you should catch up and start following The Following!

Kevin Bacon plays a pretty good Kevin Bacon.

The Single Awareness Day Ultimate List of Loner Movies to Watch Alone by Yourself 2013

Valentine's Day is tomorrow, or if you're single, it's more likely you'll be celebrating Single Awareness Day. Wooo solitude! Eat all the of the chocolate by yourself! Play all of the single player vidya games! Watch all the movies alone! But you don't want to watch no sappy movies about love and romance and everything that reminds you of your perpetual singlearity, you want loner moviesabout badass singles! So here's my comprensive list(aka a bunch of movies I thought of off the top of my head) of 7 movies that are all about badass loners, being alone, and only trusting yourself! Enjoy!

Best movie soundtracks of 2012

For a final look back at the year 2012, I wanted to list my 11 favorite movie soundtracks and scores from 2012! Why 11? BECAUSE WHO ASKED YOU THAT'S WHY GEEZ STEVE GET OFF MY PORCH. Anyways, On to the 11 soundtracks you should totally buy and listen to until your ears bleed or something!

Can you tell I had no idea what to sketch for this? No? Good.

My 10 favorite movies of 2012

2012 IS OVER! 2013 IS NOW!  But hey, let's bring in the new year by celebrating the great movies of 2012! Because hey, 2012 had some fantastic-ass movies.

First off I just want to honorably mention the honorable mentions: Chronicle was a fantastic new superhero film, Haywire was a tight little action film, Argo is a super tense yet funny thriller, Brave is still a great Pixar movie, The Secret World of Arrietty is a wonderful Ghibli film with an amazing sense of scale, and Casa De Mi Padre is just a damn funny oddball film. Check all those puppies out.  On to the winners!

13 things I'd like to see in the Amazing Spider-Man game

The Amazing Spider-Man game is set to release in June alongside the movie of the same name, and like the movie, I feel like it's going to be ok. Not great, just ok.  Movie tie-in games tend to be on the lack-luster side, and there hasn't been a great Spider-Man movie tie-in game since Spider-Man: The Movie: The Game for the xbox(no Spider-Man 2 was not great. Debate me in the comments!).  But what could turn The Amazing Spider-Man from a mediocre movie-tie in to the best Spider-Man game to date? Well here are 13 things to start with.

Spidey just looked at the new costume. What sense does any of that make?!

10 New Year's Resolutions I wish movies would make

It's the New Year! The big twenty-dozen! Or Double-Doze for the cool kids.  Now that we're all symbolically reborn like phoenix wrights, we make our New Year's Resolutions to become better people  and work a little harder and all that crap.  Well here are ten resolutions I wish movies would make this year!

Best Movie Soundtracks of 2011

This is a different kind of list. Instead of talking about the best or worst movies, I'm listing the best soundtracks and scores of movies! Of course you may recognize a few of these from my best movies of 2011 list since a great soundtrack helps toward making a great movie. I judge a soundtrack on it's uniqueness, how well it fits with the tone of the movie, and how likely I am to get it and listen to it multiple times.  So here's a list of my favorite scores and soundtracks of 2011!

12 Best Movies of 2011

It's the end of the year! Time to take a look back at all the great movies this year had to offer. So many in fact, that I had to up my count from ten to twelve! Why 12? Because eff you, this is my movie blog, that's why! Well...ahem...anyways, here are my picks for the 12 best movies of 2011!

The 6 worst movies of 2011

We're winding down for the year and approaching a full year here on Sketched Screenings come this January! So, to round out this year in movies, I thought I'd give my best and worst movies of the year. It was a good year for movies. It was a good year for great movies. It was a good year for...truly horrible movies. And so, without further ado, I give you my pick for the top 6 worst movies of 2011!

My Top 5 Favorite Noirs

This is my first montagy sort of sketch. I think it came out rather well, especially Robert Ryan.

I love noir. It's my favorite genre ever. For those of you who don't know what it is, Noir is a genre of movies from the early 1940's to the late 1950's that were prevalently dark, gritty, and cynical.  The shadows were big, the good guys weren't always good, the bad guys weren't always bad and you never got a happy ending. Everything just had this moral grey era.

It was a genre that popped up right after WWII in a time when people didn't trust the world they lived in anymore. Noir created the hard-boiled detective, the femme fatale, the crook with a heart of gold, and many more staples you see in movies, games and TV today.  And even though the genre is sometimes associated with that played-out detective formula, it was also a time when film makers were experimenting with story and technique.

So here are my top 5 all-time favorite Noir movies, and a great place to start if you're looking to get into the genre after the jump!

Sketched List: 7 favorite gory horror scenes

After just watching Dead Snow(surprise it's on this list!) I wanted to make a list of my 7 favorite gory kill scenes in Horror movies.  Fair warning for those squemish: Loooota blood. Also disclaimer, these aren't necessarily the best gory scenes(add your own in the comics if you think I missed something!), these are just my favorite, and just ones I can remember, and just ones specifically from horror movies. On to the gore!

Tried something new this time, quick photoshop zombie kill. What do you guys think?

6 Things that didn't suck about Phantom Menace

I did a post awhile back about movies that had great trailers, that really ramped up the anticipation, but just couldn't deliver when the movie came out.  One of those movies(number 1 actually) was Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace, and for good many, many reasons(lookin' at you Jar Jar). But I wanted to make a post about the six utterly awesome things that came out of that disaster.  Read on for more!

Sketched List: 15 Awesome Trailers, Bad Movies

Ugh. This image is a mess. Much like these movies! Zing!

Hey there fellow movie lovers! In this downturn of recent movies to review, I've been thinking over movies that had awesome trailers that really got you pumped, but couldn't follow through with a solid movie. This isn't a comprehensive list as I'm sure it would be much longer. These are just the ones that A) I remember the trailers and B) I really felt let down by them.

Sketched List: 7 things filmmakers should be copying from District 9

My apologies to the Prawn nation for any inaccuracies, I freehanded the crap out of this.

Last year, this year, and I'm sure years after, filmmakers are and will be trying to "make the next District 9". That is, make the next big breakout sci-fi alien flick. Monsters, Skyline, and recently Battle: Los Angeles all tried to do this with mixed results at best. What were they doing wrong and what are the aspects of the stupendous District 9 should they be copying? Here are 7 things the movie did right that filmmakers don't get.

7) It wasn't an invasion story

Most every alien story dating back to the 1950's has the same story: They come, they invade, we kick their asses back. This is not the story of District 9. The aliens landed sure, but not to invade and conquer; in fact they don't even say why they came to Earth in the first place. But the real story is about Wikus uncovering the mistreatment of the Prawn species and desperately trying not to turn into one of them and getting one of the smarter Prawns back home. This is a much more interesting and less egotistical story(They're a ridiculously advanced species and they always need to invade for our resources? Really?) In fact, a few of the better alien stories had this 'alien trying to get back home' story arc (See E.T and Paul).

6) It wasn't set in America

Not that I'm anti-America, and of course it makes sense for filmmakers to set it in America to pander to American film audience, but really, why do Aliens always feel the need to invade New York or L.A.? Is the Pizza really that good?(answer: yes) In fact Cracked did an article explaining why, even if there was a good reason to invade the U.S., it would be a poor war strategy to directly invade. In District 9, the aliens touched dirt in some hobunk town in Africa, a completely random spot. If you are going to pick the U.S. of A., at least pick some random town for no particular reason.

5) The main character wasn't a stereotype

Yes, he was a white male who worked in an office. But he wasn't a meathead, or a mysterious loner, or a nerdy kid trying to impress a girl for an entire movie. He was just a regular guy with normal needs and wants. He wasn't ridiculously altruistically good. He didn't come out at the very beginning of the movie citing how he's completely against the mistreatment of Prawns, he was just as racist(Specisist? Alienist?) as everyone else. He was damn near unlikable at times. This made him realistic, interesting, and gave room for a believable story arc in which he eventually turned into a hero.

4) Interesting Aliens

These aren't just humans with cat faces, or your generic run of the mill little gray invaders. These are dirty looking weird shrimp insect creatures that don't even have proper mouths! Oh and they're one of the only alien races to wear clothing for once. And you have to give them props for building robots in their spitting image instead of big lumbering boring mechs.

3) It was a movie that delivered

It had great cgi alien creatures, insane drug lords, spaceships, giant robots shooting missiles and tossing cars, and for those who've played half-life 2, the godamn Gravity Gun. Unlike some other movies where there's just a flash here and there of action and then it's back to the talking and brooding, or a dramatic build up of the alien throughout the movie; they show you the aliens outright, show some toys you'd want to see played with and then they played with them.

2) It had Meat

And no, I'm not talking about catfood. District 9 had a story, it had depth, it had a meaning. It had multiple levels of understanding; how the prawns were treated and what that was a metaphor for, how accepted racism can be, and the degradation of a society. It had a deep story with varied and interesting characters. It wasn't just a rehash of Dances with Pocahontas in Furngully.

1) It was hard to watch

This is tough for film makers to do, but District 9 did it. A distressing movie is hard to watch but it compels us to watch it more. It puts characters we feel for through the meat grinder and blames us for putting them there. The main character is dying and there is no way to save him. Innocent aliens are being oppressed. A child is separated from his father. This wasn't a "fuck yeah blow shit up" feel good movie, this is a movie that made you think and made you hurt, and I defy alien filmmakers to do it again.

10 lessons about relationships from Movies

So maybe it's Valentine's Day for you, maybe it's Single Awareness Day, I say screw the holidays and watch movies!

In honor of this semi-glorious greeting card day, I'm doing a list of some of my favorite movies about relationships and the lessons they teach us. NOTE: These are not nessesarily romantic comedies, or even movies mainly ABOUT relationships; if that was the case, all that would teach us is that people can fall in love within hours, always date the person who's the exactly opposite of you as long as their hot, and two people will always get back together in a monogamous relationship with no repercussions.

Yeah. Sure. As if. Spoilers probably. In no specific order:

Rushmore

The story: Boy falls in love with teacher and does ridiculous illegal things to get her affection.

The Lesson: You can't always get what you want, but if you try real hard, you get what you need.

This is a Wes Anderson movie, with Jason Schwartzman as the lead, and Bill Murry as his older friend, so already you should see this movie. Max Fischer fancies himself a renaissance man of Rushmore academy by joining ever club concievable, but in reality, he has horrible grades. After reading a quote from a library book, he falls in madly love with a teacher, Miss Cross and goes about saving classes and building an aquarium for her. He tries to get her throughout the entire movie and acts like a real jerk when he doesn't.

He eventually gets kicked out of school and meets a bright student, miss Margaret Yang, in his new public school who really has the hots for him. He dislikes her because she's actually a good student with decent grades, but in the end he finds out she's just as messed up as he is, finally letting go of his crush on Miss Cross. Sure he didn't get the prize he was looking for, but he found someone even better, the person he needed.

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World

The story: Boy falls in love with a girl but then has to beat the girl's seven evil ex's to win her affection.

The Lesson: Breaking up is haaaard.

At the beginning of the movie, Scott is "dating" a high schooler, Knives Chang. But as soon as he sees Ramona roller-skate through his dreams, he...well just starts dating Ramona. It's not after goading from his roommate does he do the right thing and break it off with Knives...in the quickest, worst way possible.

Guys, gals, I know its tough. I feel you. You do really like this person and you don't want to hurt them, and you really wish you were still dating them if it wasn't for reasons X, Y and Z, and they deserve better and you want to leave them better than you found them sure sure, but be an adult about it. Don't be a Scott Pilgrim.

Forgetting Sarah Marshal

The story: Boy gets dumped by girl, boy tries to get over girl by going on vacation, boy meets same girl at vacation spot with other boy she's dating.

The lesson: Getting dumped sucks.

This is the movie I most recognized with when I had my bad break up. And it really does a great job of showing it: He goes through fits, he cries, he sees her everywhere, oh and now he gets to see some guy make out with her, isn't that fun? NO IT'S NOT I'LL STAB THEM BOTH IN THE EYE WITH MY-all I'm saying is that being dumped and breaking up sucks, and there's nothing you can do about it. It's just going to hurt for awhile and you just have to let it run it's course.

Also, Aldous Snow is a total dick.

Art School Confidential

The story: Boy goes to art school to become an aspiring artist but everyone there is crazy.

The lesson: WOMEN ARE BAT-SHIT CRAZY

Ok, maybe that's not the best lesson, but it's true. They're crazy. They have knives. I've seen them. It's a universal truth that, as the great Voltaire says, "All men are dumb, all women are crazy." ESPECIALLY artists. Trust me. I am an artist, we are all batshit crazy, that's our job.

Anyways, in the movie, Jerome is a virgin and wants to pop his cherry, so his friend tries to find the perfect artsy girl for him. Three crazy art broads later, Jerome is still a virgin. Honestly, I think I've met all three of these girls. So yeah, just be careful out there.

500 Days of Summer

The story: boy mets girl, girl dumps boy, boy tries to get girl back.

The lesson(s): Don't look for the girl of your dreams and things may not always be working out like you think they are.

Tom was expecting to fall in love. He had an idea in his head of what the relationship would be and what she would be like. She would be quirky, and love all the same things he does. Then Summer comes along and fills that quota and he absolutely knows she's the girl for him. But sometimes, its just not that person. Don't visualize your expectations onto someone else. And just because you think the relationship is going well, doesn't make it so. Learn how to read your significant other better so you're not taken by surprise when she suddenly wants to break up.

Sweeney Todd

The story: Boy loses girl, boy goes insane, boy meets new girl, boy and girl kill people and turn them into pies, everyone dies at the end.

The lesson: A relationship cannot be built upon lies.

Mrs. Lovett really wants her relationship to work out with the butcher barber extraordinaire, Todd, so she keeps a couple of things form him about his former wife. Well, that hurts her and her relationship in the end. Very much. Literally. So yes, if you're just starting a relationship, be upfront about things in the beginning, even if it risks the relationship. It'll be better to get it out of the way now than to have it explode in your face later.

The Prestige

The story: boy and another boy are magicians, one boy is married but then that doesn't work out and other boy gets a new girl and then the first boy gets an assistant girl and aaaaaaaah crap. Whatever.It's about magicians and it's directed by Chris Nolan and contains David Bowie and has wolverine battling batman so just go see it.

The lesson: Try juggling two and you'll lose both.

One of the magicians meets a girl and they get married and have a daughter, but then he gets a new assistant and they fall in love. Granted, it's Scarlet Johannson as an assistant, but still, it doesn't end well for either of his lady friends. So if you're in a commited relationship, stay committed. Or else: David Bowie.

The Mask

The story: Boy gets magical mask so he can become a crazy cartoon hero guy and woo a girl.

The lesson: The nice girl isn't always the nice girl.

Oh, you didn't expect to see this in here, did you? I love this movie for this message, and I really wish they'd have it more often. Stanley Ipkiss really really REALLY wants to go after the incredibly hot blonde that sings at the lounge, but his brain is telling him he should probably just go with down-to-earth Peggy because she's a real normal woman and not some snooty floozy. But what happens when shit hits the fan? The nice common girl sells him out and he ends up with the hot blonde! WHAT?

Has anyone else noticed that trend in movies lately? Well not just lately, I guess it's an ongoing theme to subliminally keep common folk in line. Have you seen this before? The main guy is obsessed with the really really hot girl but friends with the still-hot-but-she's-wearing-glasses-so-it-doesn't-count girl, and in the end he finds out the hot girl isn't real and the real girl has been in front of him this whole time.

Ugh man, stop stereotyping people. See, don't put expectations on people. Just because a girl or guy looks nice, doesn't make it so, and visa versa for the exceedingly hot people. And why can't we get some more movies where there are two very reasonable choices?

The Mummy Returns

The story: Boy and girl have to stop an evil mummy from controlling the world.

The lesson: You have to be selfless for the relationship to work.

Wah? The mummy returns? Really? Have I gone mad? Well it's quite possible. But this has the quintessential selfless relationship scene so cheesy it works. Rick and Evy are the good couple and the mummy and his resurrected bride are the evil couple. And wouldn't you know it? Both Rick and the mummy are dangling over the pit of hell while the temple is crumbling to pieces. What does the good couple do? Well, they both think only of each other's safety, so Evy rushes to help Rick up, while Rick tells her to just go. What does the evil couple do? The Mummy screams for his bride to come help him up, while she runs away screaming that she can't.

Well obviously with their team work the good couple survives. The mummy, resigned to his fate, lets go and tumbles down while his bride accidentally trips and falls into a pit of scorpions. Should have gone to couples counseling. But it just proves that both parties have to be think only of each other for the partnership to fully work.

Streets of Fire

The story: Girl gets kidnapped, Boy has to rush in and save her.

The lesson: sometimes, even if you love each other, it just doesn't work out.

Streets of Fire is a great classic 80's movie, and if you haven't seen it you should definately go check it out. It's a rock and roll fable. There's rock ballads, and fighting and even has William Defoe as a leather wearing bad guy. But here's the thing, I'm going to spoil the ending for you: The guy doesn't get the girl in the end. Sure they love each other and they'd do anything for each other and they're both hot so the laws of the movie gods say they should stay together, but she's a rock star and he's a tough guy. They just don't fit. And truth be told, that's just the way ti goes sometimes. Two people could be really perfect for each other, but they just don't Gel.

I hope you enjoyed this random list of movies. Do you agree with the lessons? What are your guys' favorite movies with relationships and what lessons can you learn from them?