Ever since Will Ferrell left Saturday Night Live back in 2002, there has been a huge fault with the SNL cast to find someone to fill such a gaping hole in their political satire line-up.

After Ferrell left the show, he was replaced by Chris Parnell, whose Bush impression left something to be desired. Parnell was replaced by go-to political impersonator and resident senior citizen Darrell Hammond. However his portrayal of Bush was liked even less. Hammond stepped down to let Will Forte have a crack at it, making Bush seem more of a timid, lost president than a cocky, country imbecile. In my opinion this was one of the worst choices in casting I've ever seen. Recently Jason Sudeikis has taken over the role of still-President Bush as Fred Armisen primes up his inconsistent depiction of President Elect Barack Obama.

Although fans got a taste of a return of Ferrell's iconic Bush impersonation that really helped his career take off from SNL, there's plenty more to come as Will Ferrell takes to Broadway his beloved caricature of George W. Bush. You're Welcome America. A Final Night With George W. Bush is a one-man show by Will Ferrell structured as a farewell address from the outgoing Commander-in-Chief. The show begins previews on Inauguration Day, January 20, and opens officially on February 5 with a stage run extending until March 15.

The awesome news for people who can't get tickets or don't have the money to drop on a plane ticket to NYC ? HBO has bought the rights to a telecast of the Broadway show that will air sometime either late in the stage run of the show or sometime after it has ended.

Personally, I'm psyched to see Will Ferrell do something like this. First, it's quite a ballsy choice to do a Broadway show when Ferrell's career isn't exactly at a low point (usually the staple of a choice to do Broadway by an actor/actress) and second, it's going to be great to see how Ferrell does on a stage with no alternate takes, and no other actors to play off.

No exact date is set for the telecast of You're Welcome America. A Final Night With George W. Bush but as soon we know, you'll know.

In the meantime, here's a message from President George W. Bush encouraging you to take action.

You're in the theater and the lights are completely dimmed. You've got your popcorn on your lap, drink in its holder. The last trailer just finished up...another Saw movie? Really? Some jackass in the corner triumphantly whisper-celebrates "Yessssss." *RING* What-the-fu-...you better turn that cell pho-yeah that's right. The distributor and production house logos flash and then finally...it's time.

The theater experience is generally the same, of course depending on your excitement to see your film of choice you might be a bit more anxious or a bit more angry with the cell phone douchebag.

But one thing that's always different is the feeling you have with that first shot, that first glimpse into the world you'll be following for an average of 90 minutes. Some movies just throw you into the mix, others like to ease you in with a not-so-distracting credit sequence running through the opening scene. But then, there are some movies who craft entire sequences to introduce you to their film. To make sure you know the people who worked on it, and that you are ready to pay full attention. And herein lies the Art of the Title Sequence.

With developing animation and special effects technologies, opening credit sequences have become more exciting than ever, and if they do their job right, they really get you pumped and primed for the movie.

Most of my favorite opening title sequences are from the past decade or so, but there are some truly great sequences of decades past as well. And they are being covered daily by a couple guys over at a blog known as The Art of the Title Sequence. For some interesting commentary, and videos of all the featured title sequences (including DVD commentary from many) they've really nailed some of the greats.

One of my absolute favorite opening credit sequences (accompanied by a beautiful score by John Williams) comes from Steven Spielberg's 2002 film Catch Me If You Can. The sequence itself is simple in its design. The credits themselves interact with the minimally styled characters and provide the environments and obstacles that the characters we are about to meet will inhabit for the rest of the film. The credit sequence in itself is a short and sweet animated silent film version of the entire movie, and you enjoy it much more upon a second viewing.

One of the more recent title sequences I enjoyed came from last year's The Kingdom. The entire sequence itself is a carefully crafted brief lecture to set the stage and history for the conflicts and plot that are about to unfold. The credits run over archival news footage and constantly moving and transforming timelines, graphs and maps and environments. The most powerful and striking use of this effect comes when a 3-D bar graph in the shapes of the countries identified as top oil consumers swivels around to show the United States towering #1 bar split into the Twin Towers as a plane flies into one of them. The imagery is powerful and sudden, and really sets the tone for the rest of the film

Some of my other recent favorite opening credit sequences that they've covered include (with links to videos): Kung Fu Panda, High Fidelity, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, and Thank You for Smoking

For some reason there seems to be a bit of backlash at the recent release of the trailer for Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian the sequel to the 2006 family blockbuster Night at the Museum starring Ben Stiller. I really don't know what the problem is. Night at the Museum was a great family film with enough laughs for kids and adults. Ricky Gervais had a great bit part as the museum curator and Owen Wilson and Steve Coogan bickering back and forth as the miniatures exhibits was hilarious too. And of course seeing Robin Williams return to a fun comedy was more than welcome (BANGARANG!). Sure this wasn't an absolutely stunning stroke of comedic brilliance, but by no means was it painful to watch.

With Christmas less than a week away, anyone who hasn't been enjoying or at least witnessed or acknowledged the presence of Holiday specials and movies, it's becoming pretty much unavoidable. We might have been paying a little too close attention to some holiday movies, but there are certainly some movies that have Christmas written all over them, but might not necessarily be fresh on your mind.

And so, today The ScreenRider presents to you, some Not-So-Christmas, Christmas Movies.

What follows are movies that have Christmas interwoven into the plot, or the plot at least takes place at Christmastime. But these movies aren't always remembered for their holiday significance. Here they are in no particular order:

Batman Returns

"Mistletoe can be deadly if you eat it, but a kiss can be even deadlier if you mean it." Oh, the Christmas love between Batman and Catwoman!

That has Christmas written all over it. Add that to the creepy dark-circus henchmen flying out of giant Christmas presents, a swarm of bats flying out of a pseudo Rockefeller Center Christmas tree, the villainous Penguin (inspired casting of Danny DeVito) with rocket-equipped penguins, and of course the centerpiece of any real Christmas celebration: Father Christmas himself...Christopher Walken.

On a more serious note though, despite the Hot Topic feel of some of Tim Burton's elements in his chapters of the Batman franchise, they still hold up as strong comic book movies and much better than one or two other Batman movies. The holiday setting and scenes set in softly falling snow are cinematically beautiful and provide some visuals not usually seen in a superhero movie.

Go

If I asked you what the hardest thing is to get done on Christmas Eve, you'd probably say something like shopping or driving on the highway. How about dealing drugs and getting laid?

Go tells the story of one Christmas Eve gone horribly wrong from 3 different perspectives as an ensemble cast including Timothy Olyphant, Scott Wolf, Jay Mohr and Breckin Meyer are all somehow effected by one drug deal gone bad. Doug Liman directed this cheerful holiday film before he got swept off his feet by Jason Bourne. This movie packs a punch, and is truly a snapshot of the late 90's or at least the dirtier and grittier part of it. After all, it's not too often that Scott Wolf is even seen in human form anymore.


Best holiday moment:

Todd: What do you want for Christmas, Claire?
Claire: ...I don't know.
Todd: You wanna get laid?
Claire: No.
Todd: No, you don't wanna get laid, or no, you do, but you don't wanna get laid - with me?

Catch Me If You Can

Why would you sit down to try to see Robert Zemeckis and Tom Hanks try to extend a 32 page children's book into a 90 minute holiday-musical, motion-capture animated adventure with glass-eyed, un-emotive characters when you could watch a real Christmas caper?

You might not realize it upon first flashback, but Catch Me if You Can is definitely a Christmas movie. While most of the chase itself doesn't involve Christmas, DiCaprio's Frank Abagnale, Jr spells it out for us: [when Carl catches up to him in the print shop in Montrichard] "Carl? Carl! Merry Christmas! How is it we're always talking on Christmas, Carl? Every Christmas, I'm talking to you!" And let's not forget that CHRISTOPHER WALKEN is in it!

Holiday bonus: Try this joke from Tom Hanks' character, Agent Carl Hanratty at your Christmas dinner

Gremlins

The fact that this movie combines elements of the horror, family and comedy genres of film is crazy enough, but then add to the pot that it takes place at Christmas and you've got one hell of a great holiday classic. Besides the fact that no one has seen Zach Galligan and Phoebe Cates since the early 90's, this film is still close to the hearts of all those who enjoy everything associated with Steven Spielberg. Corey Feldman also appears over 20 years before he would ruin television.

And also if you need a reminder as to how good you have it on Christmas, even if you spend it with your in-laws, you've probably never had it THIS BAD. Or for that matter as bad as the ridiculously cartoon intensified Gremlins 2: The New Batch.


Die Hard

This movie is pretty much everything that Reindeer Games tried to be. But let's face it, Ben Affleck is no John McClane. Hell he's barely even Ben Affleck anymore.

Action and Christmas have never been so cohesively entwined. Alan Rickman (who is better known to a younger, less enlightened generation of movie-goers as Severus Snape) was quite possibly the best villain of the 80's as the very diabolical and very German Hans Gruber (The Santa Claus of terrorists) with his long haired German elves.

Of course Gruber is no match for the quick wit and mass of might that is John McClane (written on a dead henchman's shirt: "Now I have a machine gun. Ho Ho Ho.") and of course, of later Family Matters fame, Carl Winslow himself.

After showing exclusively in theaters this weekend attached to copies of The Day the Earth Stood Still the first trailer for the prequel to the X-Men franchise has finally hits the net.

The trailer is absolutely stunning and really gets me pumped up for a film where Wolverine isn't a walking punchline and doesn't have to contend with terrible X-Men like Storm. There are some great cinematic shots of Wolverine and especially Gambit, with some quick shots of Ryan Reynolds as Deadpool, and even quicker shots of the rest of the team.

My one complaint however, is that this seems a lot more explosive then X-Men, in the literal sense. There are ridiculous explosions in this trailer alone, all shot epically but also a little too crisp and pre-meditated to feel completely awesome. But the biggest worry for me came from the final shot where Wolverine jumps from his motorcycle and is hurtling towards a flying helicopter, explosion abound. For me that just screams Live Free or Die Hard.

Anyway, the trailer is great fuel for the fire, and I sincerely hope that we don't have another X-Men: The Last Stand on our hands. Check out the trailer below.

Vampires and teen angst. It's a combination I've grown to love over the last few years. And yet, despite being filled with an abundance of both, this season's smash hit Twilight wasn't a movie that managed to draw me to the box office.

However, the news that About a Boy and Golden Compass director Chris Weitz has been tapped to direct the film's sequel New Moon at least has me a bit more interested. Weitz has managed adapt a couple books with varying degrees of success in the past, while recently-fired director Catherine Hardwicke has less-than-stellar history.

Weitz' adaption of Nick Hornby's novel About A Boy managed to maintain the source material's basic charm while staying true to the characters, and though the God-destroying odyssey Golden Compass wasn't the success it could have been - or, more to the point, that The Chronicles of Narnia was - I am hopeful that Weitz will be able to translate whatever people love about Stephenie Meyer's series to the silver screen.