Sometime around 10am Central time on Tuesday, something funny happened to the servers that house Film School Rejects. And while we don’t yet exactly know the extent of this “something funny,” we know what happened afterwards. The entire site’s content – more than 30,000 articles – disappeared. What followed was perhaps one of the darkest and most insane 24-hour periods in the history of this website. I had a complete meltdown on Twitter, numerous wonderful people offered good wishes and positive vibes and we began thinking about what we would do in the event that Film School Rejects could not be resurrected.
Could we start over? Sure. Could we turn it into a blog about pizza and Game of Thrones? Why not? Could we be reborn as a movie news parody site? That might actually have been fun.
Instead, we remained hopeful that everything would work out alright. And thanks to some hard work by some senior tech folks at our host, Media Temple, we are back up and running. There are still questions to be answered. Most importantly, why did this happen and what can we do to prevent it in the future? For now we’re just happy to be back in the game.
To celebrate being back, I’d like to share with you a few things that we watched while waiting for this hurricane of nightmare scenarios to play out. As it turns out, a few things happened over the last 24 hours.
1. The Spectre trailer
This look so good. James Bond finally comes face to face with the author of all of his pain. And it’s elite cinema bad guy Christoph Waltz. We also get our first look at the stunning Blue is the Warmest Color star Lea Seydoux as one of Bond’s new femme fatales (or at least, so we hope).
2. A ten minute preview of The Muppets
ABC released a ten minute look at the upcoming Muppets show, which debuts in the fall. For all intents and purposes, this appears to be the first ten minutes of the first episode. I dig the vibe. It’s The Office with The Muppets. The other interesting thing to note is that this notion of an “adult” look at Kermit and friends isn’t exactly new. The best of the Muppet movies – including The Muppet Movie and the recent The Muppets – have all been sort of behind the scenes looks at the Muppets in real life. That’s what has me excited about this new series.
3. The Mississippi Grind trailer
Ryan Reynolds and Australian star Ben Mendelsohn in a movie by Half Nelson writer/directors Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck. This is one of the few movies I was sad to have missed at Sundance this year. But Kate liked it, and that’s good enough for me.
4. The Good Dinosaur trailer
Some of this looks photo-real, which isn’t entirely new for Pixar (see: The Blue Umbrella, a short from 2013). However, the juxtaposition with a clearly cartoony dinosaur is very interesting. The trailer gives us a little bit of the emotion that we have come to expect from Pixar, all with the promise of more to come.
5. The Before We Go trailer
It’s going to be Captain America’s directorial debut, in which he gets to woo Alice Eve. It appears to be one of those transcendent single evening in New York movies about a boy and a girl and their resistance to letting go, or something of that nature. I’m a sucker for these kinds of movies.
6. This epic supercut of Christopher Nolan movies
Friend of the site Miguel Branco has put together this supercut that brings every film in Christopher Nolan’s filmography together. He does well to capture the sense of loss or longing that exist across all of Nolan’s stories. Also, some epic visuals.
7. At least 4 seasons of Adventure Time on Hulu
Did you know that when you watch Adventure Time on Hulu, there are no commercials? Sure you get to know the theme and end credits song very, very well. But you can also simply keep watching. And with episodes only 12-minutes long, you can get through quite a bit during a nervous 24-hour period. Here are a few clips mashed together featuring the adventures of Fionna and Cake and songs, which is the best combo possible: