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Horror movies. Some people like them; some people loathe them. Horror can be a hard sell for movies. Not everyone will want to see a horror movie. Usually, it’s word of mouth that turns a horror movie into a hit; otherwise it takes a hit in box office sales. Lots of Hollywood horror movies these days have been inspired by Asian movies. We all know of The Grudge series and The Ring. These have proven to be popular even when you may not be able to make sense out of what’s really happening in the story. Horror is like that sometimes.

The Possession, a horror movie inspired by the likes of The Exorcist and other possession films that came before it (the trailer says it’s inspired by a true story), is a movie about a young girl who buys a box at a yard sale and gets possessed by the evil spirit inside of it—a simple premise which leads to lots of horror in the house and madness for the parents. It’s The Exorcist all over again, only Jewish.

So the kid buys the box, opens it at home and her behavior changes until she starts hurting her parents. The father links the metamorphosis to the mysterious box and does a little digging. He seeks the help of a Rabbi who seems to know the problem with the box. He lets the dad do the dirty work first, but of course, dad fails and in comes the reluctant rabbi to help out, sacrificing his otherwise normal life.

Thrilling? Such movies always thrill. If you don’t care for clichés and plots that have been used over and over again in horror movies, then The Possession may just be another movie for you to see. It is from producer Sam Raimi who gave us Evil Dead, Army of Darkness, Drag Me To Hell, Xena, Legend of the Seeker, and of course, Spider-Man. But he’s just the producer of The Possession.

John Carter is a story of a man out of place. Transported to the planet Mars by an alien artefact, John Carter’s situation in the story inspired by author Edgar Rice Burroughs, is something of a controversial idea back in the 1930s. The planned film of the pulp fiction series was scrapped due to concerns that the movie-going audience would not be appreciative of the idea of people living on Mars, much less the idea of a Confederate soldier from Virginia teleported to the planet across thousands and thousands of miles of empty space. In that time, an orphaned baby raised by apes made more sense, which was likely why John Carter faded from pop culture. Unlike Tarzan who stayed “grounded,” John Carter got stranded somewhere where no one had solid reference to.

Now, more than 70 years later, John Carter is making a comeback—finally, on the silver screen. But unlike in the 1930s when audiences were more down to earth, people today are less inclined to be awed by such out-of-this-world stories if the ideas involve concepts proven by science with hardly any reasonable doubt, to be not true or far from plausible. In the John Carter series, the planet Mars is portrayed as inhabited by various cultures and nations—warring people who call their home planet Barsoom. Of course, we all know that Mars isn’t inhabited and there aren’t even traces of ancient civilization from the data sent back by orbiting satellites, landers, and rovers on the ground. What we know now about the Red Planet thus makes the idea of John Carter on Mars much less science fiction that it was in the 1930s. It’s more of a fantasy of the past.

Nevertheless, what’s old can still be new if it still entertains. It’s akin to the arena of gladiators where good people have seen warriors kill and get killed, again and again. But like what actor Russell Crowe so memorably declared, “Are you not entertained?” Embarrassing as it is, we have to admit that even if we’re already jaded by all the fantastic things fed to us by science-fiction films, we’re still entertained. We’re guaranteed to be entertained if the story is formulaic and the scenes packaged. If it’s action, you expect action; if it’s horror, you expect horror; if it’s romance, you expect love. John Carter is about John Carter on Mars. What you see is what you get, and in this kind of movie, you simply dive into the experience even if you can’t suspend the belief that it’s all not real.

John Carter is directed by Andrew Stanton (remember Walll-E?) and starring Taylor Kitsch and Lynn Collins. Sure, it’s reminiscent of movies like the classic Conan the Barbarian, He-Man, and Yor, but a good story is still a good story, and if John Carter has the sci-fi cowboy action to boot and the 3-D goodies to delight, then it will get an audience, like those sci-fi fans who like Burroughs.

How long has it been since the first Alien movie with director Ridley Scott at the helm? It depends on when you are in time, but it’s really been a while as of this writing.

The first Alien movie was and still is an experience unlike any other, even at a time when there were no computer graphic effects. Ridley’s treatment of Alien was like Edgar Allan Poe’s writing—you actually feel the environment in the scenes which enhanced the believability of the film. It was serious entertainment without any pretensions.

The appeal of Aliens is all about the adrenaline-releasing horrific experience of being at the mercy of an environment where monsters are out to get you. It’s about surviving against all the odds. The movie Prometheus, originally envisioned to be a prequel to the Alien series, had evolved into something else entirely but still within the universe of the Alien franchise. It retains the look and feel of the original Alien movie with designs from Alien artist, H.R. Giger, who is famous for his dark and visceral art we now associate with all Alien movies.

Prometheus recalls the events in the first Alien movie. But it’s more about the race of the dead alien encountered in the first movie which is linked to secrets that concern the origins of the human race. As the movie trailer says, “They went looking for our beginning; what they found could be our end.” It’s a terrifying thought, but Prometheus is not exactly the kind of horror film like Alien. This is more science fiction than anything else which is designed to appeal to the old fans of the original movie. It even has a female character similar to Ripley in the first one, who starts out as a bit naïve but ends up as a fighting woman.

Those in their teens when Alien came out will surely enjoy Prometheus, especially with Ridley Scott directing again. After many ideas on the production of the prequel movie to Alien came out and didn’t make it—there was even one where James Cameron was supposed to participate in—it’s inevitable that Ridley Scott come back for a new science fiction film from that universe. It’s likely that in time, this one will also end up as one of the great classics to be enjoyed for generations and perhaps even when real aliens have been discovered.

Given the predominance of Hollywood movies, it would be easy to think that European characters aren’t as popular as those made in the USA; well, okay, maybe except for Harry Potter and Sherlock Holmes, both of which are British.

ClixSense is a big player in the get paid to click ads business. It's also a trusted and proven one being in the game for so many years as a pioneer. You register for free and you click ads. You get paid for every click. But because members only get cents and fractions of a cent in payment per click, people largely ignore this system. But technically, ClixSense can really be a big income earner for people if they simple take it seriously and do what’s necessary to earn money regularly and to grow how much they take in.

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Horror fans should already be familiar with the Final Destination series. They’ve come to expect the unexpected when it’s about death by the unknown. But now, the makers of Final Destination have come up with a movie where the cause of death is certain—by the jaws of a shark!

Shark Night 3D is all about a group of young people trapped in an island with a hungry shark that seems bent on tormenting the group and getting a bite or two out of the naughty kids. Yep, it’s always the naughty ones who get to die first in this kind of horror movie, and they have a whole lake house for themselves for the weekend. The shark on the other hand, has them all for itself. The group starts out as seven, but this number is fast whittled away and the group ends up with much less.

Marketing using social networking techniques is a must in this age of ecommerce. While it’s practically still a frontier out there, with a lot of marketers and researchers now leading the way, we now have a clearer picture of what’s effective when it comes to social network marketing.

The Producers of the cult hit movie, 300, has come up with a new ancient period film that uses the same slick and dreamy movie experience that fans have come to expect from them.