Written by John Shea    It's that time of year again.  After much agonizing and hand wringing, I'm ready to declare the year's best movies.  It was a good year at the movies, with 16 films in serious consideration for the list.  While the year did seem to spawn an inconsiderate number of lame sequels and big budget flops, there were a lot of great little films to be found.  I could easily expand the list to twenty and have lots of good films on it but I like keeping the list at ten.  It forces me to give every movie real thought before including or discarding it.  Longer lists just become a list of what didn't suck in a given year.  So without further ado, I give you my top ten.

Written by John Shea   

Let me give you a bit of advice if you plan to attend Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.  If you happen to know a Tolkien purist, refuse to go with them.  I say this in the interests of protecting your enjoyment of the film.

Written by John Shea    Last week I said to expect a lawsuit over a New York Post article in which the paper screened a bootleg copy of Mel Gibson's upcoming controversial film The Passion.  Gibson is seriously considering just that but more interesting is the news that the FBI is investigating the matter.

Written by John Shea    Bear with me tonight folks.  Generally this column is related to entertainment but every once in awhile I need to rant about other topics.  So I'll understand if you skip this one.  I do make a reference in the end to tie it into entertainment though...

Written by John Shea    Okay, okay, the new website is finally running and that means I can stop my existence as a little hermit hunched over the computer and cursing furiously which has been the status quo for a couple months now.  We're still moving in to the new digs, which explains why you might not find some older articles or reviews but fear not, they will all get here shortly.  So I'm back to writing this column, which means you can all stop with the hundreds of angry emails demanding more columns.  I mean that.  Okay, maybe not hundreds.  But still, that really angry minority can relax and stop clogging my inbox.  Okay, I'm kidding.  The only guy who noticed was a sad hockey fan in Minnesota.  And he didn't really complain all that much.  More of a mild grumble really.

Written by John Shea   

21 May, 2003

Howdy folks. Let me take a quick moment to mention this column and the guy stabbing at keyboard to create it. I've been running this site five years now. It started as a quick joke among friends, something I tossed up on the company intranet for personal amusement. But my single-minded need for perfection led me to tinker with it, expand it and then for reasons I'll never truly understand, move it on to the internet proper. Still, it was a personal joke and I expected nothing of it. Not until someone contacted me wanting to sell ads on the damn thing. The thought of getting money for the ravings of my largely unbalanced group of friends was intoxicating. That began a relentless expansion of the site until we get to what you see today. Sure that's the severely glossed over version but I also don't want to bore you before I really get started on this column.

Written by John Shea   

23 May, 2003

See? I told you it was going to take time to get up to doing this column daily. Every other day is probably more likely until I get the hang of this. Anyway, let's get a shameless plug out of the way. Check out our coverage of the 29th Saturn Awards from the previous weekend. Our LA writers Rafael Pujals and Tim Ritenour did a great job talking to any important person within arm's reach.

Written by John Shea   

26 May, 2003

It's a holiday weekend so news is scarce tonight. As a result, the column is a tad short today. Bear with me though, it will get better tommorrow.