LEAK LETTERS #72

This isn’t
a scoop but I did not see another way to send a note to you guys. 

Your web
site rocks.  It is my definitive place for reviews and breaking
news.  We like the same films, and if not for you guys, I might never have
seen some of my favorites (Hellboy, Shaun of the Dead/Hot Fuzz, and Children of
Men).

Still, I
have a couple beefs with the new web site:

1.  I
miss the sub-headlines on the news stories.  This allowed you to get an
idea what the story pertained to before clicking through.  Sometimes your
headlines can be … misleading … .

2.  I
was just trying to find your reviews of a few movies I just watched on DVD and
gone is the alphabetized listing (at least I couldn’t find it).  The
search engine is for shit.  Ideally, both a reverse chronological listing
(as you have now) and an alphabetized one would be good. 

Thanks for
the otherwise amazing web site, guys.

Jay Writes:

Just wondering why the sudden
plethora of pop-up ads on your site?  Honestly, it is enough to keep me
from visiting the site altogether, but I look forward to the hijinx you and
your staff relay to the commoners like myself. 

My browser does have pop up blockers enabled, but starting sometime last week,
with every page of your site I visit, I see the pop up blocker do its
thing and then there’s a box, my computer is trying to update Microsoft Office
2000 and wants the CD. Then I get a popup to download 1000 emoticons; find
my secret crush; or some other garbage site.  When I close those windows a
box then asks me if I’m sure I want to navigate away from their site, like I
wanted to be there in the first place.

And its not just on the initial
visit to CHUD, its on every single page that go to within the CHUD.com domain.

I get this at less reputable sites and its a reason I don’t visit those sites
anymore unless I absolutely have to.

Is there any chance you’ll be
getting rid of these pain in the ass pop ups?

Keep up the good work and for the
love of Ash, keep the site clean of shit like this.  Ads I can handle, I
can ignore them if I want to.  I know you need to make money from
advertising, but come on, this is the lamest of the lame.

Nick Replies:



It’s not us, buddy. Use the Yahoo Toolbar, Regedit, or whatever to clean up your PC and realize it ain’t us. Every time i get one of these emails I forward it to Gorilla Nation, and only once in the past two years has it been a programming glitch and not something on the user’s end.

Why on holiday in LA recently I
managed to get into a test screening of Ed Zwicks new movie Defiance.

Here is what I thought of it, Im not
sure of the format for this type of thing so here goes – 

James Bond and Oscar winning
director Ed Zwick take on the Nazis.

Saw a preview screening of DEFIANCE
last week in Woodland Hills. Daniel Craig stars as Tuvia Bielski in the true
WWII story of three Jewish brothers who hid in the Belorussian forests and
built a community of partisan fighters, saving over 1200 Jews by war?s end.

Liev Schreiber (Zus Bielski) and
Jamie Bell (Asael Bielski) star alongside Craig as his two younger brothers.
Both Craig and Schreiber give great performances as the older brothers
competing for leadership, and Jamie Bell, who most recently starred in the
abysmal Jumper, gives a surprisingly good performance as well. 

Zwick has created one of the most
beautiful and thought provoking films of his career and definitely one of the
most Oscar worthy movies to hit cinemas in years. War and destruction has never
been so captivating and moving. There have been dozens of war movies in recent
years but none have left me caring so much or feeling so attached to the
characters. My eyeballs wouldn?t break from the screen for the full 120 mins,
and by the film?s end, I wasn?t ready to stop watching.  I can?t wait for
the release (which appears to be some time this winter) in order to see it
again.

It?s a superb film with a nice
balance of heavy hitting action and intense drama, but if that?s not enough to
make you want to see it, just the fact that these on-screen heroes existed in
real life definitely make it worth the watch.

This is a WWII movie that doesn?t
hide or glamorize war but shows the intense reality of what happens when people
band together against overwhelming evil and survive.  

Its a great old fashioned war movie
and definitely one to see on the big screen.

Nick Replies:

Zwick = Milquetoast.

Do more of them [Podcasts].

They are great.

Nick Replies:



There’s a new one that went up this weekend. Please listen and review it and spread the word all over the Earth so that more people hear it and then wonder why in the fuck you recommended it.

Kenny Writes:

First, I’m slowly getting used to the new-look Chud, and
though it’s still slower on the draw than One-Finger Muldoon in a gunfight, I
appreciate the work and creativity behind it – so, thanks to you and the design
team.

It’s great you’ve adopted the “real-time/out in the
open comments on the article” feature as well. This is one of the last
appealing quirks at AICN, and it’s cool to see the strings directly below the
article proper. One request, though – can you have your dev guys, somehow,
tweak it so we only have to log in and put the magic gobbledegook/secret agent
code in ONCE per session? It’s a pain in the ass to sign in and type
RANDOMLETTERSTRING every single time I want to comment on an article. Am I
lazy? Yes, but it’s an HONEST laziness.

Other than that CHUD’s still the best read out there.
Your writers are insightful and funny and the site really is a treat to read.
Thanks for all your hard work!

Nick Replies:



I don’t know how much flexibility we have with the talkbacks, but I’d love for people to have to have a login to use it because some of the idiots masquerading as “celebrities” like Andrew Dice Clay don’t deserve that freedom. I’ll add it to the list of hate.

Hi lads, love the site but the list of recent articles on
the left is more truncated these days, so I’m missing alot of articles because
they are being edged out quickly. It’s also harder to find the news archive but
if the recent article list was longer again it’d be easier to see what’s
happened since last time I looked.

Emilio Writes:

Browsing the internet, I came across
your website (most impressive I might add).  As a hobby-of-sorts, I
collect memorabilia from “B”-grade monster/sci-fi flicks, mainly from
the 50’s-60’s timeframe.  I would like to inquire whether you are able to
obtain/sell any 8 x 10 images (stills) from a movie entitled “Beach Girls and the
Monster” (aka “Monster from the Surf”), in
particular of a certain actress (Sue
Casey)?  I do own the DVD (which has an excellent film
gallery) but would like to obtain 8 x 10 movie stills (including
“behind-the-scenes”, etc.); unfortunately, I do not have a home
computer at this time.  I have already exhausted the most obvious sources
(Google & Ebay) to
no avail.  It’s my understanding that Corinth
Films distributes this movie…perhaps
with your insight in the industry, you could obtain this? 

Love the site etc.

Re: your Nightmare Reboot article:

Sixpence Non The Richer was late to
the chestrape…(a friend passed this on to me late last year)

“Heard
this in an atrocious Italian restaurant last night and was curious.
Check out baby Angelina in clip.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Mi_sfCtJVw

PS: Is there some info source that
would explain the strange “Skull & Cyber-Claws” creature
that replaces Freddy in the early Nightmare posters? There seems to be a
kind of quoting of it in the Craven re-imagining with F’s new gnarly
demon claw-hand.