Three more articles are up and awaiting your eager eyes at FS.net. Below, you'll find excerpts and a short description of each of the three pieces -- and enough links to keep you procrastinating for hours.

The first article equates Michael Bay to a drug -- and delves into why it's time for all of us to quit. I'm especially proud of this one because it was featured on /Film's Page 2 by the good man himself, Peter Sciretta. The article also hit the front page of Digg and has amassed over 200 diggs so far.

Then it ended, two and a half bloated, bombastic hours later. And I felt… dirty. Used up. Spent. And most of all, conflicted. Now, I've seen every Michael Bay film. I'm a self-proclaimed Michael Bay apologist. I own both The Rock and Armageddon as Criterion Collection DVDs. I know exactly what the man is. I know exactly what I'm going to get when I come across Bad Boys II or The Island on HBO. And there's something about that that I really love. The man can direct action. Every one of his films are just beautiful. Visually dynamic (sometimes - ahem, Pearl Harbor - to a fault) and always packed with adrenaline. Sure, his sense of story may as well not exist. His sense of pacing (as of late) may as well be a belt sander, cranked up to 11, grinding away at my eye balls. But Michael Bay is a drug with predictable side effects. Well, at least he was.

It's with ROTF that I think I may have OD'ed. No, I know I OD'ed. Todd Gilchrist of Cinematical says "this must be the most movie I have ever experienced." I'll take that a step further - ROTF is the most movie I ever want to experience. It's completely, utterly, unapologetically Michael Bay. It's everything that I expected (and my expectations were subterranean). The film hit every beat, showed every explosion, panned around every inch of Megan Fox, but it just did it too much. And that's why I just can't wrap my head around this damned movie.

I should just be able to accept it and move on. Just think to myself quietly as I walk out of the theatre, "Great action. It's not Summer without Michael Bay," and then continue whatever conversation I was having before the lights dimmed and the previews started to roll. But for days now, it's like Optimus Prime is tearing at my brain. Skids and Mudflap make me hate the movie - a lot. The "forest fight" makes me love it - perhaps the most redeeming factor for the film was this scene viewed in IMAX. John Turturro, Orci and Kurtzman, and that Cylon-wannabe make me hate it again. The Fallen on top of the Great Pyramid make me love it and hate it, but by that time I'd had too much, I didn't care, I was overwhelmed and tired. And Megan Fox — well, she makes me love it and hate it to such a degree that my eyes go blue and I have to Ctrl-Alt-Del myself back to consciousness. Are you seeing the dilemma here?

The second, providing all of you wonderful readers a full rundown on M. Night Shyamalan's adaptation of the best TV series you've never seen, Avatar: The Last Airbender. Yes, it's a cartoon -- the TV series, not Shyamalan's adaptaion -- and YES you do need to see it. Immediately -- like, now.

All-in-all, I've watched and re-watched that The Last Airbender teaser countless times. Shyamalan's visual style, his direction, and young Noah Ringer's martial arts certainly bolster my anticipation. But there has yet to be any indication of character. And, at its heart, Avatar: The Last Airbender was always about its characters. The series was never dumbed-down, even while targeting a demographic aged 6 to 11 of Nickelodeon. It gracefully juggled serious morals, fun action, goofy humor, and characters that stood as real role models for its viewership — both male and female. Its representation of its female characters as strong, intelligent, self-sufficient equals, Katara especially, set it admirably apart from most other kid's properties.

Avatar: The Last Airbender is the first television show that I want to show my daughter, or son, for that matter. Even before Star Wars. I know. I just hope that The Last Airbender will retain that brilliance amidst whatever plot changes Shyamalan has made. This decade's first great martial arts film from an American filmmaker, as Dan Trachtenberg of the Totally Rad Show puts it, will hopefully be as impacting on the world of kid-targeted cinema as its catalyst was on the world of kid's television. I hope. I really do.

And the third is an exploration of what I call Modern Animation Overload -- The Magic vs. The Magical, where I attempt to figure out just what has happened to the live-action kids' films that I remember so fondly from my childhood -- and why this current generation of kids just doesn't have 'em. And, for the record, I absolutely love what Pixar has done for animated films, for film as a whole. But, because of that, they do stand as the figurehead for the entire movement away from live-action kids' movies -- so, they do play the villain in the article. But villianous they are not. Not at all.

When I was growing up in the late 80s and early 90s, the majority of my film entertainment came by way of VHS tapes. On those tapes were amongst some of my favorite films then and now: The Goonies, Willow, E.T., Hook, The NeverEnding Story, The Wizard of Oz, The Sandlot, Benji, Homeward Bound, Harry and the Hendersons, The Dark Crystal. Notice anything? Not a single animated film.

Sure, I watched the Disney classics — The Jungle Book being the one to which my fondest memories are attached — but the quantity of live-action kids' films with which I connected is far greater than animated ones. And I think you'd be hard-pressed to talk to any eight-year-old whose favorite movies aren't on the complete opposite end of that spectrum. It's just not what they're exposed to now and, frankly, it's not what they want. They're used to animals who, right before their eyes, actually speak, emote, and feel like they do — and haven't just had some voice thrown on top of their actions. They're used to seeing everything in the closest of detail, not just in suspense-inducing glimpses. They're used to connecting with toys and robots and monsters more than they're used to connecting with actual human beings. It's just what they know.

And that's a shame.

As a kid, when a magician pulled a rabbit out of his top hat, it was baffling — even when it happened right before your eyes. Where did the rabbit come from? Does it live in the hat? There are infinite possibilities. It's magic. For all the beautiful, heart-warming, spectacular storytelling in Pixar's films — they've shown me the inside of the hat. They've shown me the very tip-top that opens, hinges down, providing access to the rabbit's cage below the table upon which the hat rests. Amazing mechanics, sure, but the magic is muddled. There are no longer infinite possibilities for the impressionable audience. There's only the one right in front of you. And while it still may be magical, it is certainly not magic.

As always, thanks for reading.