It’s a Halloween tradition of mine: reading and mocking Jack Chick. I adore it because it takes no effort, just letting the insanity wash over you. The best part is, knowing this blog’s readership as I do, I know that most of you are unfamiliar with Jack Chick tracts, and so this will be a new and glorious experience. Read here – I leave the mockery in your capable hands.

(By the way, don’t think Chick is only concerned with Halloween; there are tracts on why evolution is lie, why Catholics aren’t really Christian, and any other batshit theory you like).

Right, the preview:

3.11.2006
Does anyone deny that the funniest title of the year is Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazhakstan? We’ve been suffering an unusually anemic year for comedy, and even if we get nothing else besides the trailer, we are already in Sacha Baron Cohen’s debt. For example, without Cohen, the weekend’s major release would be The Santa Clause 3, a film of such ill-considered pedigree that merely looking at Martin Short’s image on the poster makes me slightly sick.

For some godforsaken reason, Aardman has gone CGI for their latest, the sell-out bastards. And y’all on the coasts get Volver, the newest Almodóvar film for which I must wait an unendurable week. I know nothing about this film, other than that it will be awesome. ’cause, y’know, Almodóvar.

10.11.2006
I could have seen Stranger than Fiction open the Chicago International Film Fest, but between Will Ferrell and the hacktacular Marc Forster directing, I refrained. This may have been a mistake, as the trailer is kind of…amusant. On the other hand, not one of the people associated with the project leads me to any kind of optimism at all.

In the first of 2006’s “Good” films, Ridley Scott and Russell Crowe go way out of their comfort zones for A Good Year, raising the question: does anyone want to see Ridley Scott directing outside of his comfort zone? Could he possibly do any worse than he has been for the last decade? I don’t know, it’s such a sleepy-looking thing.

A horror film starring Sarah Michelle Gellar that will suck (exceptionally so, if the trailer is an indication): The Return. And a biopic about a photographer that I’m supposed to have heard of, but haven’t: Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus. This latter film was recommended to me as follows: “It’s really good, but I don’t think you’d like it.” Thanks. Certainly, the director (he of Secretary) engenders plenty of good will.

17.11.2006
It’s the new Bond film! Does anyone who reads this blog care about the new Bond film? It doesn’t matter to me – I care about the new Bond film very much, and the new Bond even moreso. And the fact that Casino Royale is a pseudo-remake of one of the most dazzlingly incoherent films in history is just the cherry on top. I see nothing but good omens for this project: a return to the more hard-assed 007, it’s an origin story (I’m a sucker for origin stories), and they’re going to temporarily stop pretending that John Cleese is Desmond Llewelyn.

I am kind of sad that it overshadows Richard Linklater’s second film of the year, Fast Food Nation, even though this latter project got really tepid response out of Cannes. It’s Greg Kinnear + satire, so what’s not to fear love?

Happy Feet another fucking goddamned CGI movie about animals, this time with Robin Williams providing the voice, and all of this is neatly outwighed by the confounding fact that is it the first film in eight years for George “Mad Max” Miller, and yes, I really am going to permit the existence of a 27-year-old post-apocalyptic action film drag me into a Robin Williams cartoon.

Let us not consider the evil-looking Let’s Go To Prison, unless it be that we shed a tear for Will Arnett, whose days as Gob Bluth are fading like a half-remembered dream or a childhood fairy tale with each passing day.

22.11.2006
Ah, the traditionally shittastic Thanksgiving weekend! What says turkey and family and God Bless This Table more than a new Tony Scott film? That’s right, nothing! And so we have Déjà Vu, in which Denzel Washington plays with a short-range time machine and solves a terrorist crime. Hurrah for high concept! What could possibly go wrong besides every single detail of the film?

Elsewhere, a different kind of stylistic explosion, Darren Aronofsky’s The Fountain, which I’ve seen already, reviewed already, and will repeat only this: it’s a complete mess, but it’s an interesting mess, and that counts for quite a bit.

Emilo Estevez makes an Oscar bid (yikes) in the truly hideous looking RFK film Bobby, which has every actor ever, and is my early pick for worst prestige film of 2006; the annual “Christmas is about spending money” film, Deck the Halls; and a film whose title is more descriptive than even Snakes on a Plane, if that is possible: Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny.

Lastly, the only film that has a prayer at being good, The History Boys, which I already love because of it’s Bizarro World ad campaign, ignoring the plot or themes or actors in favor of making sure we all know how many Tonys the stage production won.

24.11.2006
Something had to open today, I guess, and it looks like it’s going to be For Your Consideration, Christopher Guest’s first non-mockumentary in over a decade. We know that he can do Hollywood satire, because he already has, so why bother? Oh, right, the perfect cast.