If things seem a little crazy at Cinematical this week, it's because our esteemed EIC, Erik Davis, and his lovely wife Jocelyn are welcoming their first baby! The adorable Zoe Sophia Davis was born this past Saturday, 7 pounds 2 ounces, and perfectly flawless in every way. (Erik totally denies that Zoe was named for the Gina Torres character in Firefly, but I'm pushing that rumor just so Whedonesque.com picks the story up.) Please join the Cinematical / Moviefone / Horror & SciFi Squad family in congratulating Erik and Jocelyn and welcoming a tiny new movie geek to the world!



One request from the proud papa: What should Zoe's FIRST movie be? (He refused to ask me for fear I'd say Friday the 13th or something.)

If you love all things flick-related, well then obviously you're at the right blog. We're very proud of the fact that Cinematical covers everything from indie and foreign to big-time blockbuster, and all the films in between. But there are certain genres that demand a little extra focus, which is why we've decided to kick-start two new movie blogs! One dedicated to the Police Academy series, and the other devoted to all things related to Brett Ratner.

Nah, just kidding. One is called Horror Squad and the other is SciFi Squad. Yes, you may notice a few articles that seem a little ... familiar, but that's because we have such a stellar backlog of genre-intensive pieces, and we'd rather reprint good stuff than let it vanish forever. Also, you can expect a LOT more original content (from some familiar names and some new ones) as time goes on.

So if you're a horror hound or a sci-fi psycho, well, here are two more links to add to your "favorites" collection. Or your RSS feed. Or your Twitter page. Please keep in mind that we want YOUR feedback on these new blogs, because that's how we'll know what sort of stuff you like to read. As always, thanks for your clicks.

Site descriptions after the jump ...

We've added a nifty new gizmo to the bottom of our pages, and we're hoping it'll give you more to do at Cinematical than just read a few posts, comment on how LAME we are for not liking Wolverine, and email the latest Eric Snider article to your mom with the subject line "OMG, sooo funny!" I've only been able to play around with our new Socialthing doo-hickey for a few minutes, and so far my favorite aspect is that Cinematical now has a nifty little chat room! To talk about movies in! With your fellow readers AND Cine-staff members!

I've been told that Socialthing does a lot more than just that, though. According to my notes, it can also help you...

• Stay connected with the sites you love, wherever you are
• Bring your social graph with you to the site you are on
• Easily share your activity with buddies
• Keep up with buddies' activities via feeds
• Discover new content, buddies, etc.
• Facilitate conversations with people that have like interests in a site's content

(That last one is the chat room geekery that has me all excited.) So please do give the Socialthing toolbar a little spin, and let us know what you think of our new toy. I plan to throw a few trivia parties and such in that chat room during the summer, so be sure you know how the gizmo works! If you'd like a little more info before jumping in, check out the official Socialthing site and nose around a bit.

UPDATE: We've decided to remove Socialthing for the time being so that we can take it back to the shed and build a much better model that all of us can enjoy. As always, we thank you for your patience, understanding and feedback.

We've added a nifty new gizmo to the bottom of our pages, and we're hoping it'll give you more to do at Cinematical than just read a few posts, comment on how LAME we are for not liking Wolverine, and email the latest Eric Snider article to your mom with the subject line "OMG, sooo funny!" I've only been able to play around with our new Socialthing doo-hickey for a few minutes, and so far my favorite aspect is that Cinematical now has a nifty little chat room! To talk about movies in! With your fellow readers AND Cine-staff members!

I've been told that Socialthing does a lot more than just that, though. According to my notes, it can also help you...

• Stay connected with the sites you love, wherever you are
• Bring your social graph with you to the site you are on
• Easily share your activity with buddies
• Keep up with buddies' activities via feeds
• Discover new content, buddies, etc.
• Facilitate conversations with people that have like interests in a site's content

(That last one is the chat room geekery that has me all excited.) So please do give the Socialthing toolbar a little spin, and let us know what you think of our new toy. I plan to throw a few trivia parties and such in that chat room during the summer, so be sure you know how the gizmo works! If you'd like a little more info before jumping in, check out the official Socialthing site and nose around a bit.

The 2009 Summer Movie Season officially begins this Friday with the release of X-Men Origins: Wolverine, and with the opening of that film comes the start of Cinematical's exciting 2009 summer movie coverage. We wanted to do something a little different this summer and create a theme for our coverage; one we could use throughout to give you folks a better idea of what to expect from us. Thus, this year's theme is Summer Appreciation -- and it involves several different summer-related features that I personally think you all are totally gonna love.

But what's Summer Appreciation, and why does it sound so made-up holiday-ish? Essentially, we've created a bunch of features that highlight the best things about summer movie season; why it's important, why we love it so much and what sort of impact it's had on all of us over the years. Not only will we be working in reviews of this summer's movies, but we'll be featuring exclusive interviews with some of today's top filmmakers as they share their own thoughts on the season and what it means to them. Additionally, look for the very cool 'Our Favorite Summers' feature (Weinberg kicks things off in just one hour from now), which will be a series that looks back at our favorite summer movie seasons from the past few decades. This will all come in conjunction with smaller summer-related features, posts, quizzes, videos and so much more. Seriously, this summer will rock -- trust that we've been working our tails off behind the scenes to give you all some of the best summer movie-related content you'll find online.

And that's just on Cinematical -- I haven't even begun to talk about what Moviefone already has up in their summer movies hub. You've got polls, lists, release dates (by genre, month) and tons more. So start tooling around now, and make sure to stop by both Cinematical and Moviefone at least 158 times per day (as advised by the surgeon general) all summer long.

The glory of Moviefone in the palm of your hand ...

Movie junkies, rejoice! Thanks to Moviefone's brand-spanking-new application for the iPhone you can get everything you love about Moviefone right in the palm of your hand.

Want to look up movie showtimes, buy tickets or get GPS directions to a theater? Consider it done. Desperately need to watch the 'Star Trek' trailer for the 107th time? No problem.

The app gives users access to all that Moviefone has to offer, including the power to buy tickets, invite friends to movies, view high-quality trailers, get celebrity and movie information, store your favorite theaters and more. So what are you waiting for? Download it now.

Additionally, you can also receive Cinematical on your iPhone by pointing it to this address.

Before we begin, let me just say that our little Halloween Costume Contest received a record turnout this year, and it's taken some time for our team of crack judges to narrow down the field to ten finalists in each of the two categories. 2008 was by far the toughest year yet, and all of us here at Cinematical were amazed to see the creativity, passion, love and just plain movie geekdom that went into all of these costumes. Unfortunately, we couldn't make everyone a finalist as there were only ten spots available in the adult category and child category, but we feel our selections represent the best of the best. From all of us here at the site to all of you out there -- thank you for participating, thank you for reading and thank you for being a fan. Now, onto the voting!

Here's how this works: Below you will see a photo gallery for each category. Within each photo gallery, there are ten images which represent each finalist alongside a number and the character they're dressed up as. Below each gallery there is a poll listing the numbers and characters as per the order they show up in their gallery (note: this order is random). We need you to look through each gallery, then vote for who you feel has the best costume in the polls. Got it? Good.

The Adult Finalists are listed below, and the Kid Finalists are listed after the jump (along with the prizing and official rules). We'll keep the voting open through Friday. Good luck!

Pictured: The winners of Cinematical's Third Annual Costume Contest in the adult category

Hey, so did you know that dressing up in a movie-related costume for Halloween could win you all sorts of fabulous prizes from your most favorite online movie destination? Of course you knew this ... and now that it's October, we here at Cinematical are putting the finishing touches on our Fourth Annual Halloween Costume Contest. Like we have in previous years, we'll be giving away a pretty awesome Halloween-themed prize package to our top winner(s) in each of our two categories: best adult costume and best children's costume.

The contest will begin on October 20th and run through early November (exact dates to be named later). We'll be working with the same rules as last year more or less (read a few after the jump), but instead of letting you vote in the comments, we'll be creating a poll for you to use. Make sure to check out last year's contest for costume ideas and such, and get your ass back here later this month for our official contest kick off post where we'll announce the sweeet prize packages.

Happy Halloween movie freaks!

In case you haven't noticed, Cinematical has officially kicked off its coverage of the 2008 Toronto International Film Festival with reviews of two of the biggest films screening this year: Rachel Getting Married and The Brothers Bloom. We have so much in store for you this year, it's best if you just sit back, relax and thank your lucky stars that someone else is in charge of fighting the crowds, the snarky journalists and the lack of sleep.

Most of our coverage will land on the main page here, but you'll always be able to find everything in one place over on our official TIFF Hub. Additionally, down there to the right of your screen you'll see a special Cinematical TIFF Widget housing quick links to all our TIFF coverage. Best of all, you can snag that and put it wherever you want (your site, your friends' site, the site of a total stranger) -- this way you (and your readers) will always know what's going on in Toronto. Could we make it any easier?

So, are you ready to check out a sneak peak of this fall's hottest movies? Do I even need to ask that? Enjoy the coverage, and let us know if there's anything you'd especially like to see.

I have something to confess: My name is Erik and ... I do not have an iPhone. [Watches all his friends on Twitter immediately bolt out the door] I know, I know, how can I write for a major blog on the internet and not have an iPhone? Am I against Apple? Do I hate the human race? Did someone beat me over the head repeatedly with an iPhone, scarring me for life, making it so I'll never ever purchase one? No, no and no. I actually think the iPhone is a pretty neat little gadget -- it's just I'm too lazy (and cheap) to switch providers.

But for those who DO have an iPhone or an iPod Touch, well, you can now read Cinematical all you want ... and it's easy, it looks cool and your friends will envy you like crazy. As you can see from the image on the right, we have a specific URL: http://i.cinematical.com/.Yup, so all you have to do is navigate over there while you're out on the streets, iPhoning away. Ain't life grand? Definitely let us know what you think!