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In theaters Friday: Saw III and Catch a Fire.

Out on DVD: Art School Confidential, Nacho Libre and Slither.

Art School Confidential comes to us from one of my favorite lost boy directors, Terry Zwigoff of Ghost World and Bad Santa fame. Zwigoff knows how to do comedy without cliché, so his satire of art school, which is riddled with intentional, over-the-top cliché, should be worth a look. Plus heavy hitters John Malkovich and Angelica Huston costar, giving this indie some establishment cred.

Unfortunately, Nacho Libre just might prove what I’ve been thinking since School of Rock, that the feel-good comedy may have been the apex of Jack Black the “movie star.” He needs to stop hosting MTV awards shows and go back to spinning wheelies around the leads in supporting roles before his bipolar wannabe rocker shtick grows tired.

I saw Corpse Bride this weekend. Like The Nightmare Before Christmas, Bride is a fairy tale of chilling whimsy directed by Tim Burton and brought to life by intricate stop-motion animation. The film also balances on a typical romantic-comedy hook of old: the accidental marriage and the quest for true love. Everything from the character design and music are evocative and memorable, but the story itself doesn’t have the same zing as Nightmare, which is overall the better, more enjoyable picture. But if you’re looking for a Halloween movie the whole family can enjoy without knee-jerking popcorn all over the rug or covering your kids eyes every twenty seconds, I’d recommend watching both films back-to-back.

And here’s a shortlist of my favorite scary movies, abridged and thrown together just in time for Halloween.

The Shining – The all-star jam of Stephen King, Stanley Kubrick and Jack Nicholson make one of the best movies—horror or not—of all time. Watching Nicholson go from a depressive with writer’s block to a homicidal masochist with one trip to a haunted hotel bar proves the devil’s in the bottle and Kubrick knew just how to let him out.

The Birds – You thought this was going to be Psycho, didn’t you? Well, I prefer this alternate Hitchcock classic to Norman Bates’ cross-dressing killer. What other movie can summon up so much dread by showing a single crow perched on a jungle gym? Plus you can watch this synched up with The Byrds 1966 classic Fifth Dimension for a real wild ride.

The Others – This film’s morbid mood is foreboding and inescapable throughout as Nicole Kidman and her afflicted brood get surprise visits from her soldier husband, a trio of mercurial servants, and a spine-tingling hag. Lighting, sound effects and music composed by director Alejandro Amenábar all add shades of pitch black to the movie.

Event Horizon – This deep space psycho thriller is filled with enough not-so-subliminal images of gore that it was the first movie I saw in the theater that really, really got under my skin. It also proves that messages left in Latin are much more cryptic than ones left in English. I saw it once in high school and haven’t dared since.

A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors – Freddy freaks may roast me for this one, but due mostly to childhood association, I prefer part three to the original Nightmare. Something about Krueger’s emerging humor in this one—his wit as razor sharp as those claws—that made the character all the more frightening. No one added insult to injury like Freddy in Dream Warriors.

Ever notice how bees are always making honey? They must make honey. What if a young bee wanted to be a dry cleaner? Here are the first images from Jerry Seinfeld’s upcoming animated Bee Movie out next November.

You know I wondered about this when I was e-mailed some on-location photos from Flags of Our Fathers a couple weeks ago. One photo depicted the crew of stuntmen who worked on the battle scenes in the movie. Not one of them was black. I was waiting to pass judgment after seeing the movie, but now others who have seen advance copies are saying the same thing: Eastwood’s army is lilywhite. So what’s going on here? Many African American soldiers fought and died in the Pacific theater during WWII, and Eastwood definitely is old enough to know that. So why aren’t there any black soldiers in the movie? Not even stuntmen or extras. I’m not saying Eastwood is prejudiced, but that just seems shady to me.

Here’s a trailer for an ultra-indie movie that caught my attention this weekend. It’s called Mutual Appreciation. Who knows if it’ll be any good, but I laughed a couple times watching this clip and just knowing that struggling young filmmakers can scrape together movies like this and actually have them get noticed makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. And warm and fuzzy is where it’s at. It’s about time! The trailer for Steven Soderbergh’s The Good German is online and in glorious black-and-white. I like the look of this film and even the idea of it, but honestly, the preview really makes The Good German look like a giant, shiny flop. I’ve never understood people’s fascination with Cate Blanchett and terrible acting from George Clooney and Tobey Maguire doesn’t help either. How hard is it to find two or three well-acted scenes for a trailer? You know, ones where the dialogue doesn’t sound stilted and cheesy? Pretty hard for The Good German, which is not to be confused with Robert DeNiro’s The Good Shepherd, or German Shepherds.