Don't Hold Your Breath for the 'Friday Night Lights' Movie — EXCLUSIVE

After we said our goodbyes to Coach Taylor, Tami Taylor, Landry, Riggins and the rest of the Friday Night Lights crew during the series finale in 2011, we were all prepared to live a less inspired life with cloudy eyes and empty hearts. But then the unthinkable happened. Connie Britton came out with her even-keeled voice and perfectly wavy locks and delivered news so thrilling it reversed Jason Street's paralysis. Okay, well notquite, but BASICALLY. Tami Taylor was quoted by Us Weekly divulging that a FNL movie is "happening for realsies…I think it's really a matter of…getting everyone's busy schedules aligned and making it happen," she said. And we believed her. Why wouldn't we? At this point, we felt we couldn't lose – that this was really going to happen. Maybe Jason's baby Noah would be the star football player at his high school. Maybe Lyla Garrity would be living on the plot of land Tim Riggins swore he'd own one day. Maybe Julie would be a lost, strung out hooker. The possibilities were endlessly glorious. But that's all come to an abrupt halt.

Hollywood.com recently spoke with Zach Gilford, the lovable and essential character Matt Saracen, who said that Connie is a big, fat liar the reunion movie is essentially not happening. At all. "I've never heard a single word about it except for people asking me about it. It doesn't even really make sense. I can't even think of what the story is. He moves away, everybody's grown up. I mean I could see him being somewhere, but then it wouldn't be any of the other people," Gilford said.

While the star's knowledge – or lack thereof – of Friday Night Lights flick No. 2 isn't entirely promising, there's still a chance we're not sh*t out of luck… at least in the very distant future. Right? RIGHT? Unfortunately, it seems as far as Gilford is concerned, it'll never happened; and therefore, we should probably all just end our lives now.

The Best Trailers Of 2012

If yesterday's post picking the Best Trailers of Trailers of 2012 felt — appropriately enough — like a big ol' tease, don't worry, we've got all the full-length trailers from 2012 that made getting to the movies early worth your while. 

Some of this year's most compelling trailers tantalized us with sweeping scores and songs (has the Les Misérables show stopper "I Dreamed a Dream" ever sounded so good?), memorable one-liners (or, in the case of The Master, ones that don't even appear in the actual movie), and things that make us go "Hmmm" in the best way possible. 

A great trailer can, and should, play like a mini-movie and sometimes can be infinitely more entertaining in two minutes than an entire feature and the previews in 2012 were no exception. We laughed, we cried, we still can't figure out what Bane was saying in The Dark Knight Rises trailer. 

Sit back, relax, grab some popcorn before the line gets too long, and relive the best trailers of 2012: 

The Dark Knight Rises: "The Star-Spangled Banner" has never sounded so haunting as it did for the crowd-silencing trailer for The Dark Knight Rises. The entire two-plus minute trailer is heart-pounding anticipation, from Anne Hathaway's chilling warning that "a storm is coming" to that jaw-dropping football stadium sequence. This one had us chanting along from the moment we saw it. 

 

Les Misérables: Okay, Hathaway, you win. You totally killed it in trailers this year. First you got our hearts racing in TDKR trailer and then you gave us goosebumps in the sweeping Les Misérables trailer. Broadway fanboys and girls lost it the minute they heard the actress' take on the iconic number "I Dreamed A Dream". Sorry Susan Boyle, this one takes the cake. (Well, the bread.) 

 

Cloud Atlas: Oddly enough, the most musically satisfying trailer of 2012 wasn't Les Misérables, but the five-plus minute opus for Cloud Atlas. Using electro-rock band M83 to set the epic tone, the eye-popping preview for Tom Tykwer's and the Wachowski's ambitious adaptation of David Mitchell's beloved bestseller, it felt more like a thrilling, bizarro music video (especially when Tom Hanks looks like this) than a trailer, but it worked. Even after nearly six minutes we wanted more. 

 

Life of Pi: Much like Cloud Atlas, fans of Yann Martel's majestic Life of Pi wondered how on Earth this could possibly work as a movie. As soon as they witnessed the awe-inspiring trailer (seriously, when was the last time a preview made you say "wow" out loud as much as this one?) it was apparent the material had gotten into the right hands: Ang Lee's. 

 

Magic Mike: Steven Soderbergh's Magic Mike may have been an unconventional drama about chasing the American dream (in a G-string) but the Brits had it right when they made a redband trailer for the male stripper drama. Sure, the U.S. trailer had that catchy Rihanna tune, Matthew McConaughey's swagger, and a glimpse of Channing Tatum's sweet dance moves, but there was one key ingredient missing: butts! Butts everywhere. 

 

The Master: Perhaps the best example of a trailer that was better than the movie in 2012 (no matter what your feelings of The Master wound up being). When we first saw it we had a ton of questions. What the hell is this all about? Why is Joaquin Phoenix so upset with Philip Seymour Hoffman? Wait, is this the movie about Scientology? Okay, the preview and the movie never really answer any of those questions, but we're still talking about it, aren't we? 

 

Beasts of the Southern Wild: In a million years, when kids go to school, they're gonna know, once there was a Hushpuppy (played by the unbelievable, talented well beyond her years newcomer Quvenzhané Wallis) who narrated the beautiful, soaring trailer for indie masterpiece. 

 

The Perks of Being a Wallflower: There were plenty of movies that effectively used indie rock songs in their trailers (Celeste and Jesse Forever with Porcelain Raft's "Drifting In And Out" and Silver Linings Playbook's well-timed use of The Lumineers' "Ho Hey") but when Imagine Dragons' "It's Time" starts up in The Perks of Being a Wallflower, we wanted to roll down the windows and scream along on the way to the theater. Nothing below average about this trailer or this movie. 

 

The Impossible: The impossible is making it through the heart-stopping, lump-in-your-throat trailer for the movie about the inspiring true life story of a family who, against all odds, survived the devastating 2004 tsunami in Southeast Asia. If they gave Oscars based on trailers alone, stars Ewan McGregor and Naomi Watts would already have them. Knowing what the film is about should make you cry in and of itself, but once Damien Rice's cover of U2's "One" begins, it's all over. 

 

The Great Gatsby: Perhaps the most divisive trailer of 2012, Baz Luhrmann's flashy (3D?!) imagining of the literary classic thrilled some with its stylized vision of F. Scott Fitzgerald's world, and angered others who consider it sacred text. (What in the world is a Jay-Z and Kanye West collaboration doing in the 1920s?) Still, looks pretty great to us. Just too bad we'll have to wait until May 2013 to put on our beautiful shirts and see what else is in store. 

 

10 Best Box Office Bombs of 2012

You know the old motto: follow the crowd! Stick with what's popular! Always let other people do your thinking for you! It's a sure-fire way to get ahead, and to make sure you only spend your time invested in the highest quality activities. Or so we thought. Upon looking back over the year of 2012 in movies, we noticed a handful of pictures that didn't quite win over the masses at the box office... but that certainly deserved to.

These are movies that, while not exactly popular, are of the highest tier of quality — some of these low grossers might actually top your list of favorites for the year (they certainly do for us), proving that the crowd doesn't always know what's right. But you should still totally always give in to peer pressure, and only buy clothes that celebrities wear.

As far as movies go, however, think for yourself. Or at least let us think for you. Check out our gallery of our favorite box office bombs of 2012.

'Killing Them Softly' Director Andrew Dominik On Crime Movies and Capitalism—Q&A

With Killing Them Softly opening nationwide today, it’ll be the first time in five years that the words “Directed by Andrew Dominik” have appeared on an American movie screen. That delay is because the Australian director’s last film, his U.S. debut The Assassination of Jesse James By the Coward Robert Ford, only made back half of its $30 million production budget with its worldwide grosses. Even worse, it netted only $3.9 million in the States. When I ask him if he sees Killing Them Softly as a natural follow-up toJesse James, Dominik, 45, merely says, “I guess I don’t really think that way. I’m not in exact control of what I do. This was just the project I could get going.” The fact then that the Weinstein Company is openingKilling Them Softly in 2,424 theaters shows just how much confidence they have in the film—and Dominik’s vision.

A razor-sharp thriller starring Brad Pitt as a philosophically-minded hitman hired by a mid-level boss (Richard Jenkins) to hunt down the brainless twerps (Scoot McNairy and Ben Mendelsohn) who robbed a mob-protected card game, Killing Them Softly is also a not-so-subtle commentary on the intersection of criminality and capitalism. Though the George V. Higgins novel it’s based on, Cogan’s Trade, came out in 1974, Dominik set his plot in October 2008, right in the middle of the worst financial collapse the United States had faced since the Great Depression. As characters throughout the film discuss the power plays they hope will land them big bucks, TV monitors show George W. Bush and Barack Obama discussing the turmoil that had engulfed the economy four years ago. The implication is clear: the 2008 bailout that saved Wall Street despite its bad behavior isn’t that different from the windfalls awaiting several characters in the film who’ve proven that crime sometimes does pay. Near the end of Killing Them Softly, Pitt’s Jackie Cogan even says, “America is not a country. It’s just a business.” That speaks very much to a theme Dominik previously developed in Jesse James: that there’s a disparity between the way we see ourselves, as individuals and as a country, and the way we really are. 

But don’t think this is all just political sturm und drang. Killing Them Softly is actually a comedy. One of the hoods who robs a cardgame has a Cruella De Vil-style get-rich-quick scheme to steal dogs. And James Gandolfini plays the anti-Tony Soprano as a hitman associate of Cogan’s who, to say the least, has lost his killer instinct. “If the film took itself seriously, I don’t think it would be much fun,” Dominik says. “It’d be like preaching to the choir or something.” 

We asked the director to expound upon some of his film’s ideas, and Dominik was more than willing to oblige. 

Hollywood.com: How do you think the comedic tone of the film appealed to the actors?
Andrew Dominik: Well, Brad signed on thirty minutes after I pitched Killing Them Softly to him, because we had worked together before obviously. I think it was Jim [Gandolfini] who really got into the whole comedy aspect. Jim is always just going to make his guy real. I wanted him because he’s such an intensely sensitive guy, and there’s a real sensitivity to everything that he does. I could imagine Jim playing this really f***ed-up character and caring about him. That was my motive for getting him. 

HW: Gandolfini’s character in the film is almost like the burntout end-state of Tony Soprano. A once formidable player now rendered useless. I thought there was a great mix of comedy and pathos in that character. He could have been a cartoon but you end up feeling really sorry for him. I did, anyway. 
AD: Yeah, me too. There’s a real sensitivity inside the guy, even though he’s so f***ed up. 

HW: Even though the two films are very different stylistically, I feel there is kind of connection between Killing Them Softly and Jesse James thematically. 
AD: I think that Killing Them Softly is a little more one-sided in its view--my view--and a little more pop-y. I think Jesse James tries to look at its characters in a little more balanced way, as two sides of the same coin. 

HW: It’s interesting you decided to bring a George Higgins novel to the screen, considering that only one of his novels had been adapted as a movie [1970’s The Friends of Eddie Coyle, which became a 1973 film starring Robert Mitchum], but especially that you decided to update it and set it in 2008. What inspired that choice? 
AD: I got Cogan’s Trade because I had seen and loved The Friends of Eddie Coyle. So I looked Higgins up and saw that this guy was like a treasure trove. He’d written a whole lot of stories that had a real sense of authenticity about them, since he’d been a prosecutor. This book is a really simple crime and punishment story, even though it takes place entirely in the criminal world. But when it really caught fire for me was when I realized it’s a story about an economic crisis, and how it paralleled what was going on in the world at the time. And so updating it really seemed like the thing to do. 

CB: There’s a lot of political commentary in this film, usually conveyed when we hear speeches from George W. Bush and Barack Obama talking about the financial collapse on the background. Were you trying to present this story as a microcosm for what was happening in the country at large? 
AD: Yes, very much so. I think the attraction of crime movies is that they are little stories about capitalism. This is the genre in which the capitalist ideal is presented upfront. It’s the one genre in which it’s completely acceptable for characters to care about money, and maybe that’s the appeal of it. In some ways I find the people in crime films much more recognizable, much more like the people I meet in real life, than I do, say, characters in romantic comedies or other movies that on some level are concerned with reaffirming family values. Also, my experience of America, approaching it as an outsider, is just how much of life in this country is based around the dollar. This is a really, really capitalist country. And to me it seems there’s a similarity between the way criminals operate and the way everybody else does. I don’t know whether crime is dictating business or business is dictating crime. 

CB: Do you feel that the criminal characters in your film are more honest, or at least less hypocritical, about capitalism than legitimate businessmen? 
AD: Maybe. Maybe yes and maybe no. A guy like Obama has to persuade people to get what he wants. Obviously a power player in a criminal organization doesn’t have to persuade anyone. He can just do what he wants. So criminals don’t have the same problems that a president might. However, the president—or the government in general—have to engage in marketing in order to persuade people, engage in marketing to sell them on an idea. Obama’s great at singing a song of togetherness, but the American idea of freedom is really just the freedom to compete. 

CB: In showing clips of both Bush and Obama, I think you’re one of the few to indicate that perhaps they are two sides of the same coin. As different as people would like to think they are, they represent the same system and are subject to its faults and failings as much as anybody, regardless of all the Hope and Change rhetoric. 
AD: To me, regardless of who’s in office, the government is strangled by business. And the government’s priorities are dictated by business. I mean, why does America, even after healthcare reform, still not have free universal healthcare? I’m sure it has something to do with the insurance lobby. 

CB: In fact, that’s one of the final lines of the film when Brad Pitt’s Jackie says “America’s not a country, it’s a business.” Was that you speaking through that character? 
AD: I suppose so, but it’s only one half of the story. America used to be a fantastical place, you could get everything here. And everything was produced here. In some ways I think it’s more like cronyism than capitalism that’s brought the whole thing down. This is the country where the lightbulb was invented and the movie camera and the telephone, just about every f***ing thing you can imagine was invented in this melting pot. This was a place where so many ideas came together and innovation was encouraged. But it seems like the corporations have a stranglehold on everything now. America’s moved so much of its production and manufacturing offshore, it’s become a nation of middlemen.

Trek Fans, Fill in the Blanks: 'Star Trek Into Darkness' Synopsis Revealed

The promise of an "epic chess game" may not be the biggest sell for fans of explosive blockbuster action, but we're guessing in the case of Star Trek Into Darkness, the phrase might be more of a metaphor. Then again, they pulled it off in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.

Whether Captain Kirk, Spock, and the rest of the U.S.S. Enterprise will be facing off in the classic board game, the other tantalizing teases made in the sequel's newly released official synopsis (below) are enough to leave this Searching for Bobby Fischer fan sufficiently stoked. Director J.J. Abrams retakes the captain's chair for Star Trek Into Darkness with Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, and Zoe Saldana all returning for another round of intergalactic adventuring. Benedict Cumberbatch joins the cast as a villain who has, miraculously in the age of paparazzi photos and Internet leaks, remained a mystery even after shooting has wrapped. The below synopsis is our first bit of info on what classic character (or new creation?) Cumberbatch will play in the film:

In Summer 2013, pioneering director J.J. Abrams will deliver an explosive action thriller that takes Star Trek Into Darkness.When the crew of the Enterprise is called back home, they find an unstoppable force of terror from within their own organization has detonated the fleet and everything it stands for, leaving our world in a state of crisis.
With a personal score to settle, Captain Kirk leads a manhunt to a war-zone world to capture a one man weapon of mass destruction.
As our heroes are propelled into an epic chess game of life and death, love will be challenged, friendships will be torn apart, and sacrifices must be made for the only family Kirk has left: his crew.

So we beam it to you, Trekkers: does Cumberbatch's baddie, apparently "from within" Starfleet, remind you of any existing characters? Who will be the Black King to Kirk's White Bishop, and what is the personal grudge enveloping it all?

We'll find out when Star Trek Into Darkness arrives in theaters on May 17, 2013, or perhaps even sooner, 

Moonrise Kingdom' Takes Top Prize at Gotham Awards

Skirting over the sheer absurdity in the fact that The Dark Knight Rises wasn't even nominated for any Gotham Awards (it takes place there, for Pete's sake!), this year's incarnation of the Independent Feature Project's ceremony for recognizing cinematic excellence offered up some pretty worthy victors. The 22nd Annual Gotham Independent Film Awards took place Monday night with comedian and filmmaker Mike Birbiglia (Sleepwalk with Me) playing host. Snagging the coveted Best Feature title for the year of 2012 was the revered indie hit from community mainstay Wes Anderson, Moonrise Kingdom.

The 1960s-set romantic comedy, focused on a pair of renegade preteens who whisk one another away from their respective scout troops and unfulfilling home lives, was nominated back in October alongside venerable candidates The Master, Bernie, The Loneliest Planet, and Middle of Nowhere. Anderson's spirited, offbeat flick (which boasts a cast of Bill Murray, Frances McDormand, Edward Norton, Bruce Willis,Tilda Swinton, Jason Schwartzman, Bob Balaban, and two of Hollywood's most spectacular new assets, Jared Gilman and Kara Hayward), took the top prize, contributing to buzz surrounding its potential for nods come Academy Award season.

Check below for a complete list of Gotham's 2012 winners.

Best Feature
Moonrise Kingdom

Best Director
Benh Zeitlin: Beasts of the Southern Wild

Best Actor
Emayatzy Corinealdi: Middle of Nowhere

Best Ensemble Performance
Emily Blunt, Rosemarie Dewitt, and Mark Duplass: Your Sisters Sister

Best Documentary
How to Survive a Plague

Audience Award
Artifact

Best Film Not Playing in a Theater Near You
An Oversimplification of Her Beauty

[Photo Credit: Focus Features]

2012: The Year in Apocalyptic Movies, TV, and Books

December 21, 2012. The end of the world. You've heard chatter about this date for a couple of years now, likely in the form of vociferous warnings from the itinerant madman who is just articulate enough to make you think on the subject. Surely, you don't subscribe to the philosophy, but that doesn't quell your fascination. It's hard not to take interest. Way back when, a group of Mayans proclaimed the 21st day of December in our very own Christian calendar's year of 2012 to be the onset of the apocalypse. Or at least, some time since the Mayans made their proclamation of whatever date it'd be to kick off a good old-fashioned Armageddon, modern scientists miscalculated that prediction to land on Dec. 21.

There are a slew of divergent accounts flying around — the world will end next month; the world won't end next month, but the world as we know it will; nothing will happen next month, but on a separate date allotted by the Mayans, or Nostradamus, or Miss Cleo, or your friend Brian; and then, as the majority of the free world probably thinks, the world isn't really going to end. Not for a long while. Not until the sun does its whole implosion shtick, which shouldn't even take place until humans are long dead from whatever would have happened to us in Wall-E were not for the heroism of Wall-E. It doesn't matter to which category you belong — in one way or another, the apocalypse-to-be has cemented a presence in your life.

PHOTOS: Apoca-Let's Hang Out: 11 Necessary Friends for the End

Even if you don't actually buy the hype, you might be on board with the fantasy. As one individual adamantly awaiting Dec. 21 told Hollywood.com, "It's not so much that I believe something is going to happen as it is that I hope something happens." Ever since the theories broke, this 24-year-old man has been loading up on all the relevant pop culture he can take in, from Doomsday Preppers to Zombieland.

The phenomenon is unavoidable. This year, in keeping with the popularity of the trend, has instilled within its pop culture output countless pieces of apocalyptic fiction and non-fiction. In the realm of film, we've seenSeeking a Friend for the End of the World and The Cabin in the Woods touch on the Judgment Day theme; these are just the literal incarnations — The Hunger Games, The Divide, Underworld: Awakening, Resident Evil: Retribution, and several others incorporate the ideas of a post-apocalyptic, marginally inhabitable world with which the human race is left.

Announcements of further examples yet to take form have been plentiful in 2012: a film adaptation of the zombie novel World War Z, the Tom Cruise action/sci-fi All You Need Is Kill, Seth Rogen's long-gestating comedy The End of the World (formerly, The Apocalypse, and before that Jay and Seth vs. The Apocalypse — based on Rogen and Jay Baruchel's eponymous short film), and Drew Barrymore'sdirectorial project The End are among the forthcoming additions to the genre.

And then, of course, we have television, both scripted (The Walking Dead, Falling Skies, this year's newcomer Revolution... even an episode of Parks and Recreation) and unscripted (the aforementioned Doomsday Preppers) alike. We have literature — among the entries of this category are Veronica Roth's Insurgent, Lois Lowry's Son, and, notably, two novels published in 2012 that actually have the word "apocalypse" in their titles: Dean Koontz's Odd Apocalypse and Charles Stross' The Apocalypse Codex (interestingly, both are new additions to standing series by the authors, and neither literally tackles the idea of the apocalypse). And this is still a classic: 


In short, a whole lot of fiction about the world ending... or at least going to hell in a hand basket. The theme weighs heavy on the artists of today, pervading blockbusters and small personal projects alike. Our minds are adhered to the idea that our world probably isn't but at the very least could be coming to an end soon. We might not be drinking the Kool-Aid, but we're considering the terms — "What if the world were coming to an end?" we ask silently, after mocking those who validate theories of Mayan predictions. There are many followup questions entertained by curious inquirers, as exhibited by the variety of fiction spawned on the topic. And it's these questions that make the theme so fascinating to us.

What Sort of End or New World Could We Face?
Although a good deal of the films and literature of the genre borrows from established or traditional end-of-the-world scenarios (i.e., asteroids, zombie outbreaks, oppressive regimes), some choose to sway — Cloud Atlas, Revolution, the upcoming All You Need Is Kill — allowing for writers and viewers to engage in one of the most boundless dances with creativity possible. The forces to end the world are, ostensibly, otherworldly. They can be anything. Imagination knows no limits here. It is for this reason that the phenomenon of developing and watching new ways for the planet Earth to meet its end is so intriguing to the hungrily expansive brain of mankind.

How Might I Fare in This New World?
Survival stories — everyday men and women battling zombies, aliens, monsters of the tangible and intangible varieties. Everything from the gritty likes of The Hunger Games and The Walking Dead to the fun-filled Resident Evil and Underworld, and even The Watch, meet this description. The belief that we, too, can be superheroes and saviors. That when our humdrum lifestyles come to an end, it will be our quirks, our longstanding divergence from social norms, that keep us at the top of the food chain after the shift. This fantasy, that of proving ourselves worthwhile, of proving our ways better suited for a better world, is what intrigues and entices us about this style of apocalyptic fiction.

What Would I Do If the World Was Ending?
This is the sweeter and more introverted variety. From this question comes the romantic dramedy Seeking a Friend, Barrymore's developing The End (another recent example can be found in 2011's Melancholia). What can we finally say or do that we've never had the motivation, or the courage, to before? What secrets will we divulge, and to whom? What kind of people will we reveal ourselves to be when there's no longer a reason to mask the truth? It is this fantasy of uncovering our most protected ideas and desires, to opening up about whatever loves and dreams we cherish with such terror, that intrigues us about this slant on the genre.

Of course, one can meet these fantasies within other themes of fiction, but never with quite the same stakes. When the world is on its way out, it's not just you that is in danger, not just your town that you're fighting for, not just your goodbyes that matter. The universality of an entire human race taking its bow is what infuses the idea with so much power and emotional density; the lack of hospice anywhere on the planet is what makes a post-Armageddon world so horrifying and the actions of its denizens so desperate.

As such, questions stand for the future: What trend can follow in the shadow of the apocalyptic fixation? How are we ever going to "top" this theme — won't smaller-scale dangers pale in comparison for those who have hitched their wagons so vivaciously to this pattern?

Now, a simple answer to this question is that the apocalyptic trend could, feasibly, continue on indefinitely. Man can continuously invent new ways to wipe out his brethren and new, interesting mentalities on the world thereafter (or the one we know in the moments preceding ultimate demise)? But odds are that people will eventually begin to bore of the idea. And although we don't boast the precognitive brilliance of the Mayans, we can confidently predict a kickoff date for that that boredom: Dec. 22, 2012.

PHOTO: The 10 Best (and 5 Worst) Books of 2012

Once the "threat" (however farfetched it may be) is gone, so will be the thrill. So will be the fascination with seeing others — people like us — undertake the scenario. We fall in love with characters and stories to which we can relate — the apocalypse is a fantasy, sure, but it's one that has become a real and present element of our culture. Whether we believe in it or not, we feel it everywhere. The presence of the idea is what drives our lust for these movies, shows, and books. And once we're free of this ghost — a fun specter that haunts many of us only during boring commutes when we fantasize about battling our way through the wastelands that will befall our home cities — we will indeed be free of our fascination with its connotations. Once Dec. 21, 2012 is no longer threatening us, we will no longer feel the need to tell it, "Oh yeah? Well, here's how this would play out for me!" And yes, we all talk like the Little Rascals.

But on the other hand, without the company of this ghost, we're bound to find a void. As the aforementioned commenter (who asked to remain nameless — survivalists like him tend to prefer life under the radar) suggests, on some level, many of us want to believe that something Earth-shattering (literally or otherwise) will happen. We want to embrace the possibility of fantastical escapism in our actual lives, no matter how morbid it may be. And why? So we can conjure up our own theories on how it might all go down. So we can debate with friends who would be best at escaping certain doom. So we can finally tell that special someone how we feel, finally shoot for the dreams we've always set aside, finally be that person that this world — the world we really hope is on its way out — hasn't let us be. And right up until Dec. 21, we'll play around with these thoughts. And who knows? Maybe the Mayans will have something in store for 2013, and we can do the whole thing all over again. And if not, people will have to seek a new outlet for our frustrations. We'll find something — it might be a bummer at first, but it's not the end of... never mind.

Rust and Bone' Star Matthias Schoenaerts Discusses The Daring Indie Darling

With this year's awards season officially on the horizon, Rust and Bone has quickly become one of those can't miss films. Jacques Audiard's haunting drama opened to raves at Cannes, has already bee...

Friday Garden

Yesterday I spent some time out in the garden with my 3 year old daughter. We dug, we raked, we planted, we played with worms, simply put ... we gardened! Here are just a few photos from our time outdoors in the beautiful weather and in the garden. (Oh and just so you know "free for all" doesn't mean you can steal this post or the photos ;) if it's not onwww.GrowingTheHomeGarden.com it's not The Home Garden!Feedscrapers are at it again - this is not directed at regular readers)

A Bradford pear tree almost in bloom, please don't plant one...

The daffodils are bursting with yellow colors all over our yard. I love spring!

The front yard is looking pretty good since it was all cleaned up and mulched. There's still some pruning that needs done - butterfly bushes and yew. There's the arbor way in the back, it sure looks tiny in the picture!

Here's my girl running around the daffodils in the front garden with her umbrella. It was windy and she was having quite a time keeping that umbrella in place! 

Here she is again - this time well aware of the camera!

We spent some time preparing the beds and getting them all cleared of spring annual weeds that had crept into the soil. 

I think having the kids out in the garden is one reason I changed the URL of my blog to www.GrowingTheHomeGarden.com.  "Growing the Home Garden" is much more than just growing plants.

The self-sown cilantro is doing very well. There's some henbit that has mixed in but that is easy enough to remove.