The staff of UpcomingDiscs would like to wish all of our readers Happy Holidays! Check back in the coming days for the conclusion of our 12 Days of Contests promotion.

I’ve seen thousands of movies in my time and today I’m sharing the ten most important things to learn from action flicks. Jump to check it out.

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Okay, title got your attention? Good. Now the disclaimer. I was thinking of calling this piece “Ten Horrors From the Path Less Travelled,” but that would have been a bit precious. I’m not going to pretend that the serious horror fans out there are unfamiliar with these titles. Nor is this list meant really and truly as a “Top Ten” (see, two lies already in my title). But consider this a reminder that there’s something other than the umpteenth rental of The Exorcist or latest iteration of Saw out there for your Halloween pleasure. So here, chronological order, are ten fine films for the season.

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Scott Adams, author of Dilbert, made an interesting observation about R vs. G rated movies in a recent post:

“A study done in 2005 showed that G-rated movies are 11 times more profitable than R-rated movies, yet the industry cranks out 12-times more R-rated movies.” [from Scott Adams]

More info on the study in question can be found here - rwurl.com/cnngstudy.

What’s up with that? Scott suggests its the pursuit of Oscars motivating producers and directors. Anyone know the ratio of G to R rated Academy winners or nominees?

In other news…

“For the past 18 months, my syndication company, United Media, and I had been negotiating with a major movie studio to do a Dilbert movie. They wanted to do it. We wanted to do it. A top director wanted to do it. We even agreed on price. But that wasn’t enough to get it done, for reasons that have already appeared in a Dilbert comic. (I can’t tell you which one.) So the movie rights for Dilbert are available.” [from Scott Adams]

Huh. Read the plot line idea that Adam’s puts forward and you may have an idea why this isn’t being filmed yet. IMHO, The Simpsons is one of the few series (in any medium) without a coherent, cross-series plot arc to make the jump to the big screen successfully.

Found via digg, another funny feature on Cracked: the 10 Best Animated Films for (Traumatizing) Kids.

Number One: Pom Poko, distributed by Walt Disney.

“Although us narrow-minded Westerners may have issues about our kids watching racoons bludgeon construction workers with their massive genitals, this kind of thing is pretty much par for the course in Japan. “Tankui” as the anatomically-improbable monsters are known, are traditional Japanese folklore creatures. In fact, we wouldn’t be surprised to hear that the Japanese version of Davy Crockett wears a coonskin cap made entirely of scrotum.

This type of film would never be distributed by a major film company in the United States. Oh, wait. It was distributed in the United States by the Walt Disney Pictures. [from Cracked]

Today’s Installment: A famous lawyer (Gerry Spence), and his cottage in Wyoming’s Teton’s (that’s a mountain range). Features a home theater that looks like an enormous cave, with tiered, pillowed seating (in an unfortunate 80’s navajo theme). This theater and another 10,000 sq/ft of cottage-y living space can be yours for an estimated $35 million!

Found via Digg, here’s the Man Cave page (rwurl.com/gspencecave), and the real estate listing (rwurl.com/gspencelisting).

Here’s an edit of the movie Fargo (read the review here!), cut to include only dialog with the word “yeah.” A funny take on a fantastic film, found via digg.

The picture tells the story. Read more here, more pics too. Actually, the builder tells his own story in “How-to: Build a Judge Dredd costume (Stallone Version).”

Kevin Goldsmith - the builder, pictured above also knows *a lot* about Judge Dredd, including the original desire to cast Clint Eastwood in the roll later filled by Stallone:

“Judge Dredd was created by 2000 AD Editor Pat Mills and John Wagner - the latter partly basing the concept on a futuristic. Dirty Harry ‘type’ character, portrayed in the 70′ s films by Clint Eastwood. A few years later, with Dredd’s continuing popularity, and with Superman holding his ground well against the groundbreaking technical achievements of Star Wars, proving that superhero films were still profitable, and with the possibility of either a Judge Dredd film or T.V. show being talked about, an opinion poll was conducted ~ 2000 AD to find the most popular actor that the readership felt should fill the role - Clint Eastwood came out as the most popular choice. No doubt this was mainly due to his previous experience of playing characters who mainly worked alone and who, whilst not over stepping the mark-well not too much anyway, handed out their own form of justice, and were also, in the main, incorruptible and unbribable.” [from 2000AD]

That reminds me of another picture I have kicking around… Eastwood got:

Good question, posed by author Iain Levison.

Citing a number of insane trucker movies (Joyride, Thelma & Louise, and Duel among others), Levison turn the stereotype into a quasi-screed white-working-guy manifesto:

There is a theme here, and it doesn’t look good for white, working class males. In fact, I can’t think of a single movie that features a positive white working class male character. They’re either slimy, like the painters in 2002’s The Good Girl, downright hateful to women (North Country, Dwight Yoakam in Sling Blade) or full blown psychopaths, as in most of the films listed above. [from Iain Levison]

Huh. I’m not so sure about that. For every psycho trucker, there’s 10 heroic white cops (as working a man as they come) pursuing gangsters of varying ethnicities.

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Nip/Tuck S4 is coming out shortly - which provides an excuse for promotional website fun! In the case of N/T, the site in question is NipTuckYourself.com, which lets you upload a photo and digitally give yourself different facial features in a nifty click & drag interface. Following your transformation, you can email the modded you, or post it to MySpace. Finally, there’s a contest to win $2k worth of unspecified home theatre swag - but you have to Nip/Tuck yourself to get to the entry form.

Anyway, I decided to give Johnny Mnemonic a makeover to look like that stoner-chick from the original Apple “switch” commercials (embedded below).

The Sci-Fi-London Film Festival (here) has created a website to let everyone watch submissions and assorted sci-fi content - from shorts, documentaries, and “classics,” to full length movies (there’s only two at the moment). The site is at Sci-Fi-London.tv, and features a somewhat awkward, somewhat low-res way of displaying video, which must be YouTube-style streamed in your browser (no downloads). If you’re an aspiring filmmaker, there’s a submission page too.

Anyway, its a fun and easy way to check out some neat content.

Terminator 2 tells us that Skynet nuked the planet on August 29, 1997 - making today the 10th anniversary of Judgment Day. Thanks, Wikipedia! T2 still goes down as one of the most influential movies in my collection: action, ground-breaking sfx, and an engaging plot all combined in the perfect storm of movie awesomeness. Below is the T2 trailer for your retro enjoyment…

I love the Transformers. I love Star Wars. Yet - I always thought the crossover toy line verged on bizarre - until today’s kick-ass release. Unicron vs. the Death Star - bring it on! Read all about it on Gizmodo & Uberreview.

Just stumbled across this awesome analysis of Fight Club as a reimagining of a grown-up Hobbes saving a grown-up Calvin.

In the film Fight Club, the real name of the protagonist (Ed Norton’s character) is never revealed. Many believe the reason behind this anonymity is to give “Jack” more of an everyman quality. Do not be deceived. “Jack” is really Calvin from the comic strip Calvin and Hobbes. It’s true. Norton portrays the grown-up version of Calvin, while Brad Pitt plays his imaginary pal, Hobbes, reincarnated as Tyler Durden. [from Metaphilm]

Read the whole thing here…

(Image Credit: Metaphilm)

Here’s site I StumbledUpon that might be of interest to you: FreeDocumentaries.org. It is what it sounds like: a list of complete documentary movies that you can watch, drawn primarily from Google Video. I don’t imagine all of these will be available for too long; click “Watch this film” on the “Bowling for Columbine” page, for instance, and you’re greeted with a screener warning at the beginning of what is obviously and illegitimately posted copy of the movie.

Heh - this is funny stuff - 13 of the Worst Movie Accents ever [found via BB]. I’ve never really paid too much attention to accents - either their relevance to a film’s setting, or their authenticity, but apparently they really piss some people off. See the trailer below for a good example…