When Bryan Singer left the X-Men film franchise to film the reboot of the Superman, comic fans were torn: on the one hand, he was leaving the characters he'd knocked out of the park twice already, in X-Men and X2: X-Men United, but on the other hand he was hopefully going to make Superman cool again. It's a win-win! Well, cut to a few years later, and it's a lose-lose: the retro throwback Superman Returns is underperforming at the box office and Brett Ratner's X-Men: The Last Stand is underperforming in fans' expectations. With Superman in line to get another, more reboot-y reboot, Singer is no longer involved, and is now talking to Fox about rejoining the X-Men franchise. While a small part of us would love to see a proper sequel to the first two decent X-Men movies, we mostly want him to stay far, far away. Here's why.

Anticipation for Spike Jonze's latest film, Where the Wild Things Are, has reached an all-time high, and early reviews are skewing towards the positive, giving us all hope that the movie will not only capture the magic of the classic children's book, but live up to Jonze's previous offerings. An unconventional, unusual filmmaker (and occasional actor) who got started making skateboard videos, Jonze moved on to commercial work and music videos before creating two of the most bizarre feature films ever made. In honor of the release of WTWTA, we thought we'd list off the top 10 things Jonze has ever directed, not counting his skateboarding movies, which we would probably appreciate more if we skateboarded, and his commercials, which we wish were longer and not about selling things.

There is a part of us that is vaguely interested in the movie Taking Woodstock, since we love Demitri Martin on his show Important Things, and the supporting cast (Emile Hirsch, Eugene Levy, Liev Schreiber cross-dressing again -- remember Mixed Nuts?) is impressive. But while the concert at Woodstock was certainly an exciting event, haven't there been enough movies about it? And is Ang Lee really the director to tackle the subject matter? Because when given exciting material, Lee has a tendency to turn it into a snooze-fest.

If there's one thing you are guaranteed to get out of a Quentin Tarantino film, it's good dinner table conversation. Not to say that you'll necessarily want to discuss the events of a Tarantino film around your dinner table, especially if there are children present, but within the reality of the movies themselves you can expect to spend at least part of your time in a restaurant or a bar, watching characters converse over a meal or drinks. In Inglourious Basterds, we get three -- one in a kitchen over milk, one in a bar over drinks and one in a restaurant over strudel with cream -- and each one of these little sit-downs is just as pulse-poundingly terrifying as any action sequence you will ever see.

Robert Rodriguez is known for two different kinds of films: bloody, sexy, hyper-violent crime-horror stories... and kiddie flicks, likely made to entertain his five awesomely named kids: Rocket, Racer, Rebel, Rogue and Rhiannon. While some of his kiddie flicks can be pretty entertaining to an open-minded adult (parts of Spy Kids 3-D are pure genius), mostly they're for the 12-and-under crowd, like the Racer-penned Shark Boy and Lava Girl. So when adult film buffs are sitting around waiting for any of the dozen genre projects under Rodriguez's purview to come to fruition, and he gives us the whimsical wish-fulfillment fantasy Shorts... well, we get a little depressed. Here are some of the projects that, given our druthers, Rodriguez should have been working on instead of Shorts.

Starting with 1960's The Magnificent Seven (a remake of The Seven Samurai) and culminating in the recent spate of adaptations of Japanese and Korean horror movies, Hollywood has often looked to Asia for new ideas. But rarely do we see it go the other way -- at least, not in any sort of official capacity. But Sony Pictures Classics will distribute the new film from acclaimed Chinese director Zhang Yimou (Hero, House of Flying Daggers), and it's a remake of the Coen Brothers' first film, Blood Simple.

Mark your calendars, because August 21 is Avatar Day! What's that, you ask? Is it some sort of new holiday where a benevolent bearded wizard gives you presents? Kinda. James Cameron doesn't sport a beard any more, but he is giving the world what he probably thinks is the greatest gift of all -- a free, 15-minute clip of his new, 14-years-in-the-making CGI spectacle movie, Avatar! Unfortunately, you need to go to an IMAX 3D or other 3D theater to see it. Because it can't be fully appreciated on the Internet or TV, of course. Which is apparently why absolutely zero footage has been released from this enormous movie that comes out in less than five months, aside from a few pieces of artwork and the footage that was recently shown at San Diego Comic-Con. Description of the footage ranges from highly positive to "lower your expectations". Based on what I've heard (a lot) and seen (very little), they're already pretty darn low.

So, you heard about this Facebook movie they're making, right? About the social networking site's rocky, apparently scandalous path to becoming the greatest thing since sliced bread? Well, apparently acclaimed director David Fincher is circling the project, which makes it sound a lot more interesting to us. Still, it's about the development and sale of a Website. Doesn't that sound kinda, I dunno, boring? Not like Flash of Genius "I invented the windshield wiper" boring, but maybe The Late Shift "who will host this TV show?" boring? Considering Fincher's body of work, there are a bunch more Facebook-related movie ideas we'd love to see him apply his talents to. Here are five.

Frank Miller's The Spirit came out on DVD this week, and it was my first time seeing it. Despite being a lifelong Spirit fan and semi-regular Miller fan (I know, nobody cares about my life story), I had sworn not to go see the movie in the theaters after failing to recognize anything I loved about the original comics in any of the trailers, and felt vindicated as I heard the reports from my braver friends. The movie was a train wreck, they said, and I looked forward to giggling through it in the comfort of my home. Man, did I not know what I was getting myself into. The movie is such a bizarre, jumbled mess on so many levels that I had to sit down to figure out what was actually wrong with it, and if the wrongness could have somehow been singled out and repaired. It's obviously too late to repair anything, but if I could somehow go back in time and save something I should have loved from being god-awful, this is what I would fix...

After months of geeking out over every bit of news we could find about Quentin Tarantino's war movie -- and misspelling the title every time we wrote about it -- it's finally here: the teaser trailer for Inglourious Basterds. And while it looks pretty bad-ass, it also kinda looks like any other World War II movie, if all World War II movies had Brad Pitt leading an all-Jewish squad of Nazi-killers. While it was cool seeing actors B. J. Novak and Samm Levine on the team, we were kind of hoping for a bit more of Quentin's usually inspired casting of familiar faces. However, Hostel director Eli Roth did creep us out as the smirking, baseball-bat-wielding sadist of the group, so maybe Quentin should have cast more of today's best-known directors? We would totally go see a movie where Quentin led a team of eight filmmakers against the Nazis -- or better yet, the MPAA! Here's who we think should be on that directorial dream team.