Brian vs. Movies: It's ALIVE!!!

After a lengthy sabbatical, I'm back.  Exclamation mark.

*Hold for applause*

What have I been up to?  Not a whole lot.  Work was lengthy and super-stressful, so I found thinking and typing to be the last things I wanted to do for the past few months.  Instead, I read comics, books, and played video games.  Good times.  I recommend Richard Stark's Parker books, as well as Darwyn Cooke's graphic novel interpretations of them.  Also, I recommend supporting the very entertaining Peter David; he suffered a stroke mid-January, he writes quality geeky stuff, and buying his books will help his family make ends meet while he hopefully recovers.  As for video games, I found Assassin's Creed III to be immensely satisfying (while definitely flawed), if only because it helped me discover that I have an insatiable blood-lust for Redcoats.  Who knew?  

Here's how this blog is going to proceed: over the next month, I am going to focus exclusively on 2012 releases, with the ultimate goal of posting my annual belated best-of list before the Oscars are broadcast.  I may not get to post reviews on all nine Best Picture nominees, but I will watch them all beforehand and take them into account on my list.  Once I'm done with 2012, I hope to return to a semi-regular schedule of reviewing recent, classic, and randomly awful movies for the rest of the year.

I have quite a backlog of reviews to get to, but please let me know if there's anything I should be checking out.  Some upcoming highlights will include the Chuck Norris opus, The Octagon, and the terribawful The General's Daughter, but I also plan on checking out some more classic noir in the upcoming weeks.  Let's see if I can keep a semi-regular schedule this year.