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One of my very favorite topics of film-related conversation would have to be that of the infamous "horror remake." Could be a J-horror re-imaganing, a revisit with truly classic material, or a quick-buck PG-13 junkpile that shames the name of its predecessor. (Heck, I posted a similar article last March, and I even went as far as to bang out a master list of horror remakes at my very own website!) Well, apparently the movie geeks over at Premiere.com are also big time horror nerds as well, because they've just posted their list of the 15 Best Horror Remakes.

OK, having just perused their 15 choices, I gotta say: I know it's got to be hard coming up with 15 really good horror remakes, but jeeeeez. Just lower it to a Top 10 and get The Fog, The Amityville Horror and 13 Ghosts OUTTA there. And ... am I on crack or did the Premiere squad neglect to mention Cronenberg's The Fly AND Carpenter's The Thing??? I mean, good job on throwing some love towards The Blob, Dark Water and the 1978 version of Body Snatchers, but come on! You guys omitted the two best horror remakes ever made!!!

(I'll include their full list after the jump, just to incite some discussion, but definitely check out the Premiere article before you dive in, you crazy gorehounds, you.)

A few days ago, Slither-maker James Gunn mentioned on his MySpace page that his adorably splattery sci-fi horror rom-com was the receipient of four Fangoria Chainsaw Award nominations. My response was "Hey, cool. Where are the rest of the nominations?!?!?" And now, a few days later, here they are. Neat-o.

Although Fangoria has been doing their annual Chainsaw awards for over a decade now, 2006 marks the very first time the event will be televised, much to the delight of zombie freaks and slasher geeks all over North America. The event will be held in L.A. on October 15th, although the Fuse Network won't be airing it until the 22nd. (Which means if you want to watch the event "un-spoiled," I wish you luck.) Want to throw your own votes into the tally? Fine. You can vote right here, but only between September 1st and 13th (which is a Friday, mwaahaaa!)

After the jump you'll find a complete list of all the 2006 Chainsaw nominees, plus my own predictions on which flicks would win if the event were called Amazing Geek Weinberg's Horror Awards instead of The Chainsaws.

Unlike last week, when the massive success of The Break-Up shocked almost everyone, the fact that Cars dominated this weekend's box office receipts should come as a surprise to no one. I mean, it's Pixar -- even if the reviews haven't been as uniformly glowing as those lavished upon the company's previous projects, they can nevertheless be counted on for quality, and that quality was appreciated this weekend to the tune of about $62.8 million. Despite the fact that the total is well below that earned by Pixar's recent debuts (and, indeed, not even the best bow for an animated feature this year -- that honor goes to Ice Age 2), Variety points out that the studio's films tend to hold remarkably well, and are not generally subject to the 40%-60% declines that befall many big openers in their second week. Speaking of that decline, this weekend's second place film, The Break-Up, was down almost 50% from last week, earning $20.5 million. That brings the movie's two-week domestic total to just over $74 million, a number that must make Universal very happy, seeing as how they spent just $52 million to make it.

The weekend's two other major debuts, meanwhile, both opened reasonably well on a moderate number of screens. The Omen finished up in the fourth spot (just behind X3, which is now over $200 million in domestic returns) with $15.5 million from an average of about $5600/screen, while A Prairie Home Companion took in a total of $4.7 million on only 760 screens. Full numbers are after the jump.