The Soup decries the number of post-apocalyptic movies this summer, and ends with climate change denial? Still, there's a LOT of post-apocalyptic movies out this summer.

What are you up to this Sunday night? Open thread below...

The worth-the-click YouTube Channel "Pleated Jeans" presents every romantic comedy ever made.

Open Thread below...

On the day of Roger Ebert's passing, we run Pittsburgh Dad reviewing GI Joe, Retaliation?

Methinks Ebert would give this a thumbs up.

Open thread below.

An amazing movie mashup. Open Thread below...

Moonrise Kingdom is one of those rare films that, while released before the summer, still ends up on a great many "best of" lists for the year.

What was your favorite movie of 2012? Open thread below...

Moonrise Kingdom

Big day here at the Crooks And Liars Compound.

I honestly don't think I've seen John this happy since he beat Simon Le Bon at ping pong. He's just aglow, spontaneously playing flute solos as he merrily skips between the official C&L polo grounds and croquet fields...we're all real psyched.

Why? Well, it's always a treat when your blog gets an EXCLUSIVE peek at a MAJOR MOTION PICTURE. (I write in all caps because I JUST FEEL SO STRONGLY ABOUT IT)!

I'll cut to the chase: the cinematic geniuses who created the recent adaptation of Atlas Shrugged are at it again. Originally envisioned as a trilogy, there was ominous talk that the producers might be deterred by unbelievably bad reviews, crap box office, and the general pall of suck that hung over the project like the ghost of a terrible macroeconomic scheme.

So we're of course pleased as punch the producers have found a way to soldier on, while still maintaining their principled stance of wanting to make shloads of money. When your bottom line is suffering, every libertarian warrior knows what to do: cut costs and hope for the best.

Good luck guys!

(...Oh, and by the way. For anyone who would like more info on collectivism and film: a. NERD ALERT, and b. here's a primer. And, y'know, it's probably unfair to claim that f-d up libertarian belief systems are the reason these particular libertarians are so bad at movie-making, but life is so short and libertarians are so sensitive. Let's go for it)!

John Kenneth Galbraith famously said that "the modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness." That exercise may have reached its limits with the novel Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand, which has become the bible of conservative economic "wisdom" in our time.

How did the work of a pro-abortion atheist become so popular with the culture warriors of the right? How do you get people who want to strip Darwin from the classroom to enforce Darwin on the unemployed? How does a book that inspired Anton LaVey's Satanic Bible wind up on the lips of evangelical Christians waiting in line at the box office? Answers after the jump!

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I'm the editor of Progressive Congress News Transit & Urban Development feed. This is the first in a weekly series of topical posts on cities and the roads & rails that connect them.

Trains are a highly-developed, widely-used, and very popular form of transportation -- a strange choice of culture war for the right. Yet hatred of trains, especially ones that run on time, is a pronounced theme of Mrs. Rand's Bible of selfish economic wisdom. After decades of gestation in Hollywood development hell, Atlas Shrugged Part I will soon star star Vice President Joe Biden as Dagny Taggart, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood as Hank Rearden, and Florida Governor Rick Scott as Wesley Mouch.

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I'm probably not qualified to talk about the year's best movies, because -- being the father of a 9-year-old -- I made it to relatively few of them that did not feature talking animals. However, thanks to the graces of Blu-Ray, I did get my eyes popped out by Inception, one of the best movies I've seen in many moons. Now I just need to wait for the discs to come out on the other grown-up films. So, which were your favorites?

Speaking of talking animals, one of the best-looking movies I've ever seen -- both in the 3D version in the theater and the Blu-Ray at home -- was Legends of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'hoole. I know everyone else loved How to Train Your Dragon and Toy Story 3 (justifiably), but for sheer visuals I've never quite had my socks knocked off as I did with Ga'Hoole. It lags the other two in writing, though it's still a strong enough story -- but holy cow, this kind of animation is really stunning, and most grown-ups will never see it.

For the parents out there ... what were your favorite kids' movies?

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Danielle Agnello is the Director and Co-Writer of “Cowboys and Indians: The Great Diversion”. More information and contact via Facebook and Twitter.

As a film director I have always stayed away from “political” projects and decided long ago I was only interested in human stories. When the opportunity arose to put together a short film, the idea of Cowboys and Indians: The Great Diversion seemed like a chance to take those stereotypical character types and turn them upside down. The thing that gets lost in all of this - and what is probably most important - is that these are human stories, that these are real people.

Over the last month I have spent a lot of time talking to people I don't know and I have come to realize that people are willing to believe anything that flashes across a television set. Maybe some of those people will see truth in our project, because as my co-writer Thomas Hurt explains in the article below, we all have our own "Franks".

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