In this weeks podcast Chase and I discuss my viewing of Paranormal Activity 2. Spoiler alert: I'm confused.

Listen: The Maneater Arts Movie Podcast: Paranormal Activity 2

"If you’re a shameless VH1 junkie like myself, then I’m sure you noticed the introduction of "Saturday Night Live" reruns into the schedule. You also might have noticed the original release dates conspicuously end around the year 2002 (The Will Ferrell Era). For some reason, "SNL" just isn’t relevant anymore."

Read the full article at MOVE.

With Peter Jackson's rendition of The Hobbit shaking itself free from Development Hell, The Lord of the Rings trilogy has once again come to the forefront of the film community. Essentially in the form of "Can Jackson do it again?" Personally, I believe that Jackson can very well repeat the success of LoTR, but the prequel should have had a new flavor to it. Especially sense The Hobbit is anything but LoTR with a new cast.

What I can say is that Peter Jackson is obviously passionate about The Hobbit and that always bodes well.

In any case, on Sunday I found myself with massive amounts of homework and a pile of laundry to do. This quickly translated itself to The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring on the Playstation 3 and myself planted firmly in front of it. Any watching of LoTR movies tends to happen on lazy fall days where there is a good amount of monotonous house work to be done. The film's length could be an easy trait to blame, but there are plenty of long films I don't watch on my lazy days. Titanic, Avatar, and Inception come to mind.

If there is one word to describe LoTR, it would be rich. The story, the characters and the locations are all so lavish. Jackson has created such a palpable world, its hard not to lose yourself within Middle Earth. Its the very top tier of escapism. So when I'm standing knee deep in monotonous laundry work or cramming for tests, I would like to be anywhere but in my tiny room.

Monotonous is the name of the game here and the next LoTR keyword is epic. The epic quality of the films easily trumps the task of sorting lights and darks. We crave so much more than what we really have to do in our lives and the LoTR has that in spades. It's easy to go through the motions of everyday while your imagination is racing through the Mines of Moria.

The Lord of the Rings engulfs you and your imagination. All of a sudden that pile of laundry has become Mordor and the time has come to destroy it. You may wish you didn't have to and so do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide. All you have to decide is what to do with the time that is given you.

At the tip of the Ryan Reynolds invasion iceberg, the Sundance Film Festival darling Buried slipped its way into a limited release October 8th. Find out if its really worth the wait with my newest column for MOVE, 'Buried' thinks inside the box.

Tonight we've been gearing up for the midnight premiere of Paranormal Activity 2, the sequel to last year's run-away hit. From the beginning, I had my doubts about the sequel. Mostly because the original forced it's way to the top of my Scariest Movies Of Ever with stunning speed. The fact that I really did not care for the shock-value ending factors in there somewhere, but I'm not sure if it's more or less important than the pedestal I've cleared of for Paranormal Activity.

In the long run, it didn't really matter. I still spent a good amount my morning texting and calling people to make sure we had a veritable posse heading into Columbia's Forum 8, Auditorium 2 for the 12 'o clock show. We still scrambled to buy tickets hours before hand just to make sure it wasn't sold out. Nevermind the fact that it's not even a midnight premiere proper. The theater is also showing Paranormal Activity 2 at 10.

No, we'll be there regardless.

Something about the midnight premiere is exciting. Enticing, even. I've attended quite a few midnight premieres in my time (Watchmen, Iron Man 2, Harry Potter 6 - to name a few). It takes a special kind of person - a special kind of fan - to file into a packed movie theater at 12:01 to be one of the first to see anything. It's almost electric; a feeling of camaraderie. These people are crazy enough to wait hours in line and prepared to tough out the morning after. Just like you.

It's a rich tradition, the midnight premiere. It all began, in some respects with the midnight movie in the 1970s. This is where the remnants of the counter culture came to get the film fix. Movies that were not exactly a part of the Hollywood mainstream began to swim at after midnight.

Alejandro Jodorowsky's avante garde cowboy epic El Topo is often credited with starting the midnight movie craze. While personally I haven't seen El Topo, it is allegedly a surrealist style film a la Salvador Dali that boasts enough red paint blood and plot holes to send most audiences running. This unintentional camp endeared the film to audiences and El Topo played for packed theaters night after night, the line often reaching around the block. With El Topo, the midnight movie culture was born. Midnight staples such as George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead and John Waters' Pink Flamingos soon followed.

If El Topo got the midnight movie ball rolling, The Rocky Horror Picture Show picked that ball up and made it a fabulous feathered centerpiece. To this day, Rocky Horror has the longest running release in film history, as 20th Century Fox has never actually pulled the movie since its original release in 1975. Calling Rocky Horror "offbeat" would be an understatement. A rousing drag-show, sci-fi musical is a little more specific, but far less accessible.

Taking the midnight movie culture to it's very extreme, Rocky Horror takes audience participation to a dizzying level. Somehow the film prompted people to start dressing up as the characters, "shadow acting" the scenes in tandem with the film and talking back to the screen with script-like precision. You have

n't really experience midnight movies until you have danced the Time Warp with a theatre full of lingerie clad film fans.

I can't speak for every one, but its the crowd that makes a midnight premiere what it is. We are all there together, searching for the next Rocky Horror phenomenon. Hoping for a film that jumps off the screen and into our hearts.

It's the excited whoops when the lights dim. The cheers when the title card emerges onscreen. The feeling that you belong to a special group. An intimate bond that is shared between you and the crowd at 12:01.

{reference: Midnight Movies: From the Margin to the Mainstream, 2005}

{photo: Rocky Music}

In episode 2 of the Maneater Arts Movie Podcast, MOVE columnist Chase Koeneke and I discuss some seasonal flicks, as well as attacking some of the best movies that will never see the greenlight. Listen: Halloween Movies

So I know that the year isn't over yet, but for some reason fellow MOVE movie columnist Chase Koeneke and I decided to discuss the best and the worst of the year so far for The Maneater's very first Movie Podcast. Go listen: Best and Worst Movies of 2010

This week I put together a handy dandy little cheat sheet for that Halloween movie marathon you should have planned by now. Oh, you didn't? Well, then check out my new blog post for MOVE magazine, The horror hit list.

Another Friday, another column. Does David Fincher's The Social Network live up to the hype? You won't know until you see it, but until then you might be satisfied with my newest column for MOVE magazine, 'Social Network, accurate portrait of our generation'.