Warning: Above clip may scar young children for a very, very, very, very long time.

That's it. My day is officially over. The South Park Studios are now open, and not only can you watch every single South Park episode for free (for free!!!), but you can also search among tons and tons of clips (roughly 3000), which you can then embed on your site. Since this is, like, the greatest thing to happen to the online world since the very awesome movie website Cinematical was born, I figured it was worth a post. Ah, but South Park is TV -- not film. Okay. Fair enough. That's why I found an SP clip that was film related.

The above South Park clip comes from one of my favorite episodes of all time -- Imaginationland. This is right after the boys first arrive, are greeted by the folks who live in Imaginationland, but then have to survive a lethal suicide bombing attack. That's when they switch to riff on a scene from Saving Private Ryan ... and, well, go watch it for yourself. And please don't be mad at me when your boss scolds you for hanging out on the South Park Studios site all date today. For you fans: Most random character to show up in Imaginationland? Who was it?

Must ... Not .. Watch ... 20 ... Episodes ... Right ... Now ...

[via EW]

Today we salute the military veterans who have either served in wartime or in peace. I think technically Veteran's Day specifically honors war veterans, but I don't see why the non-combat military personnel needs to be excluded. Still, in the movies, it's the war vets that are most memorable, and on this holiday, I'd like to present my list of seven favorites.

Obviously this list isn't comprehensive -- in fact, I don't feature any examples of the now-stereotypical Vietnam vet character, which would include Tom Cruise in Born on the Fourth of July or Gary Senise in Forrest Gump. This is just a list of characters, positive and negative, that I prefer and which I think somewhat represents the wide and diverse scope of war vets.


"Homer Parrish" from The Best Years of Our Lives (1946, William Wyler)

About fifty years before Robert Zemeckis was digitally removing Gary Senise's legs to make him the disabled vet Lt. Dan of Forrest Gump, William Wyler directed a real amputee veteran named Harold Russell as the handicapped character Homer Parrish in this movie about the difficulty of coming home following World War II. Russell actually won an Oscar for his performance as Parrish, a former high school quarterback who returns to his childhood sweetheart, with whom he's engaged and for whom he no longer feels good enough. The actor/character has hooks for hands and appears in some sappy, obligatory scenes where he has trouble with them, but he ends up a guy that is beloved more than pitied, and it's almost easy to forget he has the handicap, especially after hearing him play piano with the false limbs.

It's rare that anything I see at the movies these days strikes me as profound, groundbreaking or revolutionary. I've been watching a lot of movies for a very long time. Visually, things have changed over the years. But it always comes back to the story, doesn't it? 300 is a movie that pushes the boundaries of conventional movie-making. And the story was OK, too. So we watch it and think, "Wow, that's pretty f**king cool." But if the story completely sucked, the movie wouldn't be nearly the smash hit it is.

So I went to see Meet The Robinson's at the famous El Capitan theater in Hollywood. My first thought when the movie started playing was, "Wow, this is pretty f**king cool looking." At about 600 hundred theaters across the country, the movie is shown in Disney Digital 3-D (yes, glasses and all). As I started getting roped into the movie about the orphan kid and his friend, I thought, "I really like these characters, and this is pretty f**king cool looking."

As I continued to watch the movie, I was totally engrossed. And I was aware that I was totally engrossed. (As a movie "reviewer" you actually start to monitor your own reactions. I know, it's a bit creepy and droid-like). I thought to myself, "This movie is totally fun and I love the characters, but why the hell am I so into it?"