Well well well, we wonder what this film is about? With a title as stupid as that, you sort of hope for a so-bad-it’s-good movie to go with it. Sadly, this is a cruel and miserable world and hopes are for the feeble-minded; the film is terrible. More terrible than the title. What could we call it to trick the clever film critics into thinking it might possibly be an OK flick? This caused some debate amongst the BFF staff, with the worlds “tub” and “ghost” being bandied about a little too freely. In the end, we decided on The Chernobly Squirrel, after the plot-integral Russian drink and the bushy-tailed rodent that seems bent on causing trouble. Don’t tell us you wouldn’t be interested in watching THAT little beauty.

#9 – Saving Private Ryan

Tom Hanks gets tasked with a difficult mission in this flick; can you guess what it might be? Oh yeah, he totally has to go and save someone called Ryan. Who is also a private. So that’s that pretty much covered. What could you call it instead? Hmm; it’s tricky, very tricky. What about Sole Survivor, to relate back to the Sole Survivor Policy? Yeah. It’s not going to win any prizes, but it’s vague enough, huh?

#8 – Machine Gun Preacher

The film title of Gerard Butler’s latest flick makes me want to vomit just a little bit, but that could be a personal issue. Machine Gun Preacher. MACHINE GUN PREACHER?! Hmm, I haven’t seen this one yet, so I have no idea about the plotline. If I were to hazard a guess, I’d say it was about, I dunno, a PREACHER with a bloody big MACHINE GUN. Yiesh, They should’ve taken my advice and called it Fully Automatic Liberation. It’s so edgy, isn’t it? Three words that sound quite deep and, at the same time, so very empty… it means nothing but says so very much. And if Fully Automatic Liberation existed, you can bet the Tarantino fans would be FLOCKING to the cinemas.

#7 – Honey, I Shrunk The Kids!

Now what sort of paternal mishap could happen in THIS film? Maybe he loses them in the supermarket, or he accidentally sells them to a travelling tribesman, or he… oh. Oh, he shrinks them, does he? Of course he does. So that’s THAT surprise ruined forever. You know what might be better? Quarter Of An Inch. It’s a little bit edgy, a little bit dirty and racked with intrigue. RACKED with it. So much more enjoyable.

#6 – Snakes On A Plane

Uh-huh. Now, we actually quite (despite ourselves) enjoyed Snakes On A Plane and, to be honest, any other title would be grossly misleading to paying audiences. However, and it’s a big however, if we were going to slap an obscurity onto it, we’d call it Scaling New Heights. Whaddaya mean that’s stupid? If you can think of a better one, we’d be interested to hear it…

#5 – Zack And Miri Make A Porno

Meet Zack and Miri. You know what they’re going to spend their time doing throughout the plot of this movie? That’s right, they’re going to make a porno. Whilst this simultaneously fails as both a premise AND a title, we do feel it is our duty to sweep in and save the writers from themselves. How about Coffee Shop Camera? Or Star Whores? Or The Amateurs? SO MANY OPTIONS THAT WERE SEEN AND NOT TAKEN!!!

#4 – Throw Momma from the Train

They say trailers can give away too much, but what about a title that pretty much hands you the entire plot in five easy words? Ridiculous. How about we call this one Split By The Same Volcano instead? Ooh, yeah. You like that, huh? It’s so deep. So very deep and meaningful. We’ve just lifted that line out of the script; arthouse poetry is a doddle.

#3 – Alien vs. Predator

Looky looky! Do you think this film might possibly include the villain of Alien being pitched against the terrible creature that is Predator? Maybe? OF COURSE IT BLOODY DOES!!! I don’t care anymore. I just don’t care. It’s a stupid film anyway, with 2D characters and terrible dialogue, so why should I extend the hand of friendship to the AVP makers? Because I’m a wonderful, generous and generally life-affirming person, that’s why. They should call it The Ultimate Prey. Make the trailer ultra-mysterious. Reveal absolutely nothing until the film happens and, just maybe, you might lure in an unsuspecting audience before word gets out about the terrible sci-fi plot hash…

#2 – Three Men And A Baby

You can SEE that this film is about three men and a baby from the picture slapped on the DVD cover; why does the title have to hammer it home as well? You know what’d be an improvement? Latin. Latin would make this better in so many ways. They could have called it The Triumvirate; it would’ve sound all mysterious and religious and dark, wouldn’t it? People would’ve flocked to the cinema, waiting to be confused, and found themselves confronted with Tom Selleck, Steve Guttenberg and Ted Danson doing silly things with an infant. But that would’ve been fine, because it would have been POP-IRONY (or something similarly clever, anyway).

#1 – Toy Story

We love Disney. Disney is the KING of giving us amazing movies despite their oh so obvious titles. Look at Sleeping Beauty, or Beauty and the Beast, or The Hunchback of Notre Dame. There aren’t many surprises when we get to the plot, but it’s never an issue. Kids don’t really care about that stuff; if they did, don’t you think See Spot Run would’ve bombed when it first went on sale? Toy Story is, needless to say, one of our favourite Disney flicks but, should we rename it for the purposes of sounding extremely cultured at the next kiddy film festival, it’d be The Eternal Companions. Because, you know, the toys love Andy unconditionally. It’s beautiful, isn’t it? Go ahead, wipe away a tear if you want to. I’ll wait…

Do you have an alternative film title of your own? Dazzle us with your wordplay below…

SO, new picture! It’s princess Merida! She’s bad-ass! You can tell cos she’s SHOOTING AN ARROW, and there’s nothing ANYONE can do about it!

We can’t really be expecting a second trailer for Brave anytime soon, seeing as we got our sticky hands on the first one not that long ago. But still, we have high hopes for this tale of a highland princess entangled in an epic, bears-and-magic based quest. We’ve got till August to wait until the official release, so there’s still plenty of time for us to forget all about the ill-fated Cars sequel, our ol’ pal Mater and his questionable romances…

Aardman’s Arthur Christmas got a few nods too – Best Feature, Best Writing in a Feature, as well as one for Storyboarding In A Feature Production (YEAH! YOU GO AARDMAN STORYBOARDER KRIS PEARN!). Pixar’s Cars 2 also gained 6 nods in total – again including Best Feature – but it’s Dreamworks who have the advantage this year; with the combination of Puss In Boots and Kung Fu Panda 2 . Of course, we’ll have to wait until the prizes themselves are announced to see who comes out on top, but considering our embarrassingly passionate review of Po’s second kung-fu outings, we can only promise swift retribution to those who fail to acknowledge his talents.

How To Train Your Dragon cleaned up in the 2010 awards – is it going to be another year of Dreamworks domination? Only time will tell…

Anyway, this is the new poster – click it to embiggen, if you want:

What? What d’you want from us? There’s nothing to be said about this poster at all, other than the Martians are cheap Na’vi knock-offs and the stylised ‘JCM’ thing is quite cool. Otherwise: meh. A big spoonful of meh for you, this Tuesday afternoon.

Can you be enticed to give a shit about John Carter? Teach us your secret!

Disney had been in discussions with the confusingly monikered McG – who previously directed Terminator: Salvation and the Charlie’s Angels films and whose next film This Means War looks mental – but they ended up parting ways. But don’t worry, McG, there are plenty more fish in the sea.

Now, it’s probably best to tell you from the off that this is a much more traditional-fairytale type trailer than we’ve come to expect from Pixar. The studio’s strength has always come from finding epic stories in the unexpected and the imaginative, so it might be you’re a little surprised by how… well… we hate to say it, but how Dreamworks this offering looks at first glance:

The similarities between this trailer and the general tone of How To Train Your Dragon are striking, not only in setting, but in humour and narrative arc, too. To be honest, glorious animated hair aside, we’re not totally sure what to think. There’s no denying that there are some stunning moments – the opening sequence is particularly dazzling – but we can’t shake off the feeling that we’ve seen quite a lot of this (“this is not for a girl etc etc” “if you had the chance to change your fate…”) many times before.

It’s important to remember that the majority of the story (Merida setting off to finding a wise old witch accompanied by three miscellaneous Lords, the saving of a village she has caused the downfall of etc) isn’t touched upon at all, so Pixar are obviously keeping a lot of cards to their chest. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It’s just, well, after the lack-lustre effort that was Cars 2, Pixar needs their next original offering to show they’re back on track. We just hope Brave delivers.

This rather sweet film tells the ‘true’ story of two girls, Elsie and Frances, who discover a bunch of fairies and take their photos with them. Arthur Conan Doyle and Harry Houdini come along and are like, “Cool”.

History’s Verdict: “Aw! Look at the fairies! Look how cute and small they are! Seriously though, this film is based on lies. Fairies don’t exist. Plus, one of the girls admitted that it was a hoax on her deathbed. And have you seen those photos? Come on people.”

#9 – Apocalypto, 2006

Crazy-ass Mel Gibson’s crazy-ass film tells the story of a nice man called Jaguar Paw trying to escape from some nasty men in 16th century Central America. Jaguar Paw’s village is destroyed and all the inhabitants are taken to a giant Mayan city, complete with pyramids, blue people and a lot – really a lot – of human sacrifice.

History’s Verdict: “Well this is hardly fair on the poor old Mayans. Compared to their bloodthirsty predecessors, the Aztecs, the Mayans were a pretty civilised bunch. And by civilised, I mean that they favoured non-lethal bloodletting over full-on sacrifice. Also, there’s no evidence that the Mayans took captives from random villages. Mostly, slaves were taken during political warfare. End of, Mel Gibson. End of.”

#8 – Pocahontas, 1995

Ah, Pocahontas. Feminist icon for little girls of the nineties everywhere. A film memorable for its awesome soundtrack and bittersweet ending where love interest John Smith (Mel Gibson, again? Really?) sails off back to England, leaving Pocahontas standing on a big rock, hair drifting elegantly in the wind.

History’s Verdict: “Nope. No that’s not what happened. The real Pocahontas met John Smith when she was about 10, got married off to some guy called John Rolfe and carted back to England where she promptly popped her clogs (moccasins?).”

#7 – Braveheart, 1995

Third Mel Gibson film on the list, and second from 1995. Evidently a big year for Mel (and thus a sad, sad year for History). Braveheart depicts mullet-haired hottie William Wallace riding around and shouting “Freedom” all in the name of Scotland. Along the way he beds Isabella (French wife of King Edward II’s son, also Edward). Oh, and he wears a kilt.

History’s Verdict: “Come on, people! The title doesn’t even refer to William Wallace! It was Robert the Bruce (semi-traitor-but-actually-a-goodie in the film) who was described as such in a poem by William Edmondstoune Aytoun. Also, Isabella was only about ten when Wallace was killed so that’s GROSS. And kilts didn’t appear until the 16th century, over two hundred years after Wallace’s lifetime.”

#6 – From Hell, 2001

Beardo-weirdo Alan Moore’s graphic novel was the basis for this crime thriller, charting an investigation into the Jack the Ripper murders. Johnny Depp stars as clairvoyant detective Frederick Abberline, who is on the hunt for the culprit. SPOILERS: In the end, it turns out that the Jack the Ripper murders are actually part of some mad conspiracy. The real killer is a physician working for the royal family and his murders are part of a Masonic cover-up.

History’s Verdict: “Frederick Abberline was a real person who almost certainly wasn’t a clairvoyant and didn’t look like Johnny Depp. Admittedly, this film doesn’t exactly mess with history so much as make stuff up. BUT the film does feature both flashlights AND lobotomies, neither of which were invented at the time. And it makes all Jack’s victims a lot younger and sexier which, in many ways, is the worst crime of all”.

#5 – Anastasia, 1997

Anastasia is another Disney pic which dispenses with the horrifying truth in favour of rainbows and happiness. The film is based upon the urban legend that Anastasia, youngest daughter in the Russian Romanov family, escaped being murdered in the massacre that killed the rest of her family in 1917.

History’s Verdict: “This is bullshit. I’m sorry. Anastasia’s remains were discovered in 2007 alongside her brothers, Alexei.”

#4 – Anonymous, 2011

Shakespeare didn’t write his plays, Edward de Vere did blah blah blah. Read our review for the full scoop.

History’s Verdict: “This is offensive and, frankly a little snobbish. I mean, they’re basically saying that only some fancy aristocrat would have had the intellectual capacity to write Shakespeare’s plays. THAT’S RUDE. Also, it suggests that Elizabeth had several bastard children and that Shakespeare murdered Christopher Marlowe. Go away Roland Emmerich. Go away.”

#3 – Independence Day, 1996

In honour of Roland Emmerich, we are featuring another of his films on this list. Nabbing the bronze medal is Independence Day, the big bucks jingoistic hit of the nineties, which follows Will Smith and Jeff Goldblum (amongst others) trying to save the world from some really impolite aliens. It also posits that a UFO was actually uncovered at Roswell in 1947.

History’s Verdict: “History? This isn’t history! Leave me alone.”

#2 – The Da Vinci Code, 2006

Ron Howard’s film, based on the 2003 novel by Dan Brown, is about Tom Hanks uncovering some worldwide conspiracy involving Da Vinci and Jesus or some shit (we can’t be bothered to properly read the Wikipedia entry). Basically, it SPOILERS! SPOILERS! turns out that Audrey Tautou is the great-great-granddaughter of Jesus following a saucy affair with Mary Magdalene (we KNEW she was no good).

History’s Verdict: “Ugh. This is stupid. I don’t want to do this anymore.”

#1 – Inglourious Basterds, 2009

Well obviously this was going to take the top spot. Quentin Tarantino’s film doesn’t so much mess with History as throw it out the window altogether. Inglourious Basterds follows the exploits of a band of ragtag Jewish soldiers who go around brutally killing and scalping Nazis. The film memorably ends with Hitler and all his BFFs being lured into a cinema and machine-gunned to death.

History’s Verdict: “Actually, that’s more or less how I remember it”.

If the shockingly small amount of factual information offered up here offends you, or you feel we have missed out a crucial History-bashing film, then leave your comments/opinions/beliefs below.

The Pirates of the Caribbean dream team are back on course after they managed to drag their budget down to a piffling $215m – excellent news for fans of Armie Hammer and Johnny Depp, who will star as the titular hero and his Indian sidekick Tonto. It was widely speculated that the less-than-astounding success of Cowboys & Aliens would put Disney off a Western venture, but they’re evidently relying on Depp’s unparalleled ability to draw in the crowd (although if Indy and Bond couldn’t do it between them…)

The Lone Ranger is due to begin shooting in February, with a projected release date of May 31st 2013. Hi-yo, Silver! Away!

Take one sip…

Whenever an animal bows nobly

Make these teensy-weensy little sips; a lot of animals do a LOT of bowing and almost all of them do so nobly. Why? They’re being ruled by an awesome lion and they’re totally cool with it. We could stand to learn a few things from the giraffe in particular; so gracious, so tall, so very very noble.

Whenever Mufasa’s voice sense shivers of delight shivering down your spine

It’s James Earl Jones. He’s not Darth Vader. His voice is HOT and deep and rolling and powerful, sans the asthmatic wheezes of his stint in Star Wars. We’re pretty sure Mufasa could say anything and it would sound overwhelmingly deep. “Remember who you are. You are my son, and the one true king. Remember.” WE REMEMBER, OH MIGHTY MUFASA!

Whenever Simba shows classic signs of being a commitment-phobe

Nala is definitely backing the wrong horse (or lion, as it were). He’s voiced by Ferris Bueller, king of taking days off for a start! This guy ran away from home and grew up with two care-free bachelors. It’s like the animal version of Two And A Half Men, isn’t it?

Take two sips…

When you suddenly realise that this so-called Circle Of Life ain’t so rosy

You live, you die, something else benefits from your death. End of. Two sips are necessary to calm your nerves.

Whenever you feel the tears welling up…

This film is so very sad; in the first part of the film, we explore a beautiful relationship between a father and his son. “We’ll always be together, right?” asks Simba, innocently unaware of how this sweet little line is a mere plot device propelling Daddy to certain death.

And Mufasa dies. If you cry, take two sips to ease the pain. If you don’t cry, take two sips of something strong in an attempt to melt your icy heart of stone.

Whenever a translation of The Circle Of Life chant makes you smirk.

Don’t believe me? Check this out:

Nants ingonyama bagithi baba = There comes a lion

Sithi uhhmm ingonyama = Oh yes, it’s a lion

Ingonyama Ingonyama nengw’ enamabala = It’s a lion and a tiger

Er, “it’s a lion and a tiger”, is it? This is AFRICA! Any tiger knocking about on these plains is clearly a very lost and sad individual, no doubt soon to fall victim to that vicious circle of life we keep hearing about. These sips will gently muddle your brain and make you more accepting of these oddly misinformed moments…

Take three sips…

Whenever something drastically unoriginal but wonderful happens, such as a Lion returning from beyond the grave.

To be fair, Mufasa only comes back as a ghost. Aslan, on the other hand, actually returns from the grave (because he’s Jesus).

Whenever you stumble over the words to “I Just Can’t Wait To Be King”.

Whaddaya mean, you don’t know the words? What kind of sordid childhood did you have that deprived you from watching The Lion King at least once a day? These sips are part-mournful, part-punishment. Don’t even attempt to relish them, you dunce of all things lion-ish.

Whenever you feel an urge to respond to every criticism with a resounding ‘Hakuna Matata’.

Late for work? Hakuna matata. Forgot your anniversary? Hakuna matata. Forgot to pay child support this month? Hakuna matata. Accidentally contributed to the murder of your father? You can see where I’m going with this. Sure, it means no worries for the rest of your days and it really is a problem-free philosophy, but that doesn’t make it the right response to the real world. “Hakuna matata”, in the wrong hands, just translates to “shirking your responsibilities”. Drink up, loser.

LET OUT YOUR INNER LION AND CHUG! CHUG! CHUG!

Whenever you find yourself contemplating bestiality.

God, we’ve all been there. You may want Mufasa to whisper sweet-nothings in your ear with The Voice, or have a hankering for a roll around in the grass with Simba, or a strange desire to stroke Zazu’s plumage but, hey, these animals are attractive. If you were going to make it with any African critter, it’d be one of these; you’re not alone in that. It’s still frikkin weird though, so down that bottle of rum to help you forget about this shameful fetish. If you wake up behind bars, you either got caught making it with a cat or you managed to break into the lion enclosure at your local zoo. Both are bad news; on the bright side, at least it means that the hangover is the least of your worries…

Jobs originally acquired Graphics Group in 1986 with the intention of producing high-end graphics hardware, but after several years of unconvincing sales (despite the unquestionable quality of the Pixar Image Computer, which was used to produce its first short film Luxo Jr. and thereby gave rise to Pixar’s hopping Anglepoise lamp mascot) the company branched out into producing commerical animations. In 1991 Pixar signed a three-film production deal with Disney, and four years later the animated landscape was changed forever when Disney/Pixar’s Toy Story was released to universal acclaim.

After years of legal wrangles over the division of profits from their joint film ventures, Disney eventually bought Pixar in 2006. Steve Jobs’ controlling stake in Pixar catapulted him onto the Disney board, with his 7% stock making him Disney’s largest individual shareholder. Jobs also helped oversee the joint animation work of Pixar and Disney as part of a special steering committee.

Steve Jobs’ innovation and entrepreneurial spirit contributed immeasurably to the amazing advances in animated film which audiences have enjoyed over the past twenty-five years. He will be sorely missed.