Tickle My Colon

Movie titles are slowly moving to having so much punctuation in them that I'm eagerly awaiting the upcoming film '(Revenge Of The Brackets): [Return - Of The Hyphenated Squares]'. This can be perturbing for the film reviewer on numerous levels. For example, should X-Men Origins: Wolverine be written like that or maybe X-Men: Origins - Wolverine or perhaps X-Men: Origins: Wolverine. The possibilities are endless but the one common factor in all the above is the colon, long since the darling of punctuation-happy film producers everywhere.

The colon does a very important job in film titles by providing crucial extra information about what we're going to see, information that we mere mortals would otherwise obviously be oblivious to. For example, without its rather negative colon appendage, would we have known that Pirates Of The Caribbean 3 was so bad, or that Borat was a ridiculous parody, or that a film with, you know Wolverine on all its posters was going to focus on, erm... Wolverine.

But kids, grammar can also be fun and Film Intel found itself rather distracted earlier in the week by considering the possibilities of inserting the colon in various places where it shouldn't be. The Alien Colon, if you will. Here's what you do:

1) Take any famous list of films. Good examples include the IMDb Top 250, the current box office chart, Film Intel's own reviews index or anything on iCheckMovies.
2) Scan through the list and pick two movies next to one another
3) Insert a colon between the titles
4) If appropriate add a number because, obviously, this is the big budget sequel
5) Daydream about the possibilities

Sceptical about what brilliant potential blockbusters this exercise can generate? Consider the following, all of which were made using the above method;



The Losers: Sex & The City 2

Alien: Amélie

Gladiator 2: The Great Escape

Star Trek: Amores Perros

Alice In Wonderland 2: Jurassic Park



And my own personal favourite...

The Passion Of The Christ: Mamma Mia!



So Hollywood, next time you're stressing about what's going to provide you with your next 'working lunch' or how you're going to break the box office record all over again, just remember: the colon's always here to help.

Look further...

This Entertainment Weekly article provided a valuable resource to enable Film Intel's amusement and gives out such brilliant punctuation-related awards as 'Best sarcastic use of an exclamation point'.