Have you met the team that keeps We Got This Covered running? If not, then feel free to meet us below.
*Please note that, while some of our staff members write for multiple outlets, all content published on We Got This Covered is exclusive and will not appear elsewhere.*
Matt Joseph | Founder, Owner and Editor-In-Chief
Matt created We Got This Covered in the Summer of 2010. Though it started off as a WordPress blog called We Got It Covered, the site quickly became a full fledged entertainment hub covering a wide variety of topics and areas. With five years of experience under his belt, Matt works hard on the site to ensure that We Got This Covered is a respectable, legitimate and well established website that meets the needs of its audience.
In addition to writing and editing, Matt also handles business development, public relations (for movies), advertising, social media and all technical aspects of the website. It’s a lot of work but he enjoys doing it and is always striving to provide the best experience for the site’s readers.
Though currently attending the Richard Ivey School of Business at the University of Western, Matt’s true passion lies in film, and he hopes to one day land a job in that field.
His favorite film is still, hands down, The Shawshank Redemption. Although, Inception came awfully close to stealing that honor.
Check out all of Matt’s posts here.
Chad Goodmurphy | Managing Editor
Chad grew up with a controller in hand, starting his gaming career with a borrowed Atari 2600 near the age of three. Since then, he’s spent many hours invested in games of all genres, and has developed a love for the industry. That passion made him decide to explore professional video game journalism in the winter of 2010, with the hope of joining a publication where his articles could be read by a large amount of devoted hobbyists like himself. That dream was enthusiastically realized in early 2011 when he joined both Video Game Talk and We Got This Covered, progressing to the role of We Got This Covered’s managing editor within a short period of time.
As someone who has loved writing for as long as he can remember, Chad has dabbled in creative writing as well as more formal ventures, including a role as a horror movie and DVD reviewer for a defunct website known as AllHorrorMovies.com. It was during the latter venture when he began to hone his impressions-based writing style, eventually realizing that he was more interested in covering interactive games than celluloid stories. With that change came reviews written as entries for contests, brief articles written on the Xbox Forums and the creation of a small review blog, entitled Game Under Review.
Being someone who’s played video games for approximately 20 years, Chad has a long list of favourite games. Some of its highlights include: Harvest Moon 64, Goldeneye 007, Perfect Dark, Banjo-Kazooie, Fallout 3, Duke Nukem 3D, Diddy Kong Racing, 3 on 3 NHL Arcade, NHL ’96, River Raid, Darksiders, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, Uncharted, Final Fantasy VII, Sunset Riders, Donkey Kong Country 1-3 and the Legend of Zelda franchise.
Although Chad primarily joined this website as a video game content writer, his first two articles were about his two favourite sports teams, the Toronto Maple Leafs (NHL) and Toronto Blue Jays (MLB.) As a devoted sports fan, he follows both teams and their respective leagues on a day-to-day basis, and tries not to miss a game.
In addition to writing for We Got This Covered, Chad is also employed as a staff writer for High-Def Digest Gaming.
Check out all of Chad’s posts here.
Jonathan R. Lack | Associate Editor
With ten years of experience writing and publishing for professional media outlets, eight of those spent focusing on movies and television, Jonathan R. Lack has emerged as a strong new voice in the field of film criticism. He writes movie, TV, and music reviews, along with special feature, retrospective, and industry news articles, for the websites We Got This Covered and Jonathan Lack at the Movies, the latter named after the blog and weekly print column he hosted for The Denver Post’s ‘YourHub’ section from 2007 to 2011 (his weekly ‘YourHub’ column, now called Fade to Lack, continues to appear in The Denver Post every Thursday).
Lack began writing for The Denver Post’s ‘Colorado Kids’ section, a Tuesday print inset and website written by youth reporters aimed at a young audience, in 2002, taking over the section’s movie review responsibilities in 2004. He left the ‘Colorado Kids’ in 2007 to write for the Post’s new community journalism initiative, ‘YourHub,’ where his focus expanded to include weekly television reviews and other entertainment articles.
In that first year, his writing was selected for “Brendan’s List,” the ‘YourHub’ chief editor’s compilation of the best blogs in the state of Colorado. By 2010, his work appeared every week in the Post’s Thursday print edition, and continues to do so. Jonathan Lack at the Movies, his entertainment blog devoted to reviewing film, TV, music, and more, was launched in July 2011, and in May of 2012, he joined the staff of We Got This Covered. Before you ask, his favorite film is Peter Jackson‘s The Lord of the Rings, and yes, you can count all three as one. So there.
Check out all of Jonathan’s posts here.
Jeremy Lebens | Staff Writer
Jeremy’s passion for film began at an early age when his father introduced him to The Terminator. From that point on he’s had an obsession/love for watching and writing about films as well as discussing them with others on any given day. He likes his comedies dark, his horror gory and his action R-rated. His preferred genre is science fiction, but he’s willing to watch anything at least once.
Jeremy is We Got This Covered’s primary Blu-Ray writer and he firmly believes that the future is Blu! His collection is well over 900 and he’s adding to that on a day-to-day basis. His favorite Blu-Ray’s include The Shawshank Redemption, Pulp Fiction, The Thin Red Line and Alien.
In addition to writing for We Got This Covered, Jeremy also spends his time managing and writing for another site called The Daily Rotation as well as frequently publishing bi-weekly tech articles for Guy.com.
Check out all of Jeremy’s posts here.
Jeff Beck | Staff Writer
Jeff has been a film buff as long as he can remember and started writing film criticism in 2008. In 2009, he graduated “cum laude” with a degree in English from Virginia Commonwealth University. He currently writes for a number of sites including The Richmond Examiner, The Huntington News Network, and of course, We Got This Covered, where he reviews movies and Blu-Rays in addition to keeping everyone up to date with the latest awards season news.
His favorite films include Dr. Strangelove, Pulp Fiction, Amadeus, and The Lord of the Rings, but his favorite film of all time remains 2001: A Space Odyssey. His favorite directors include Stanley Kubrick, Akira Kurosawa, Quentin Tarantino, and Christopher Nolan.
In his free time, he enjoys furthering his film education by watching a wide variety of movies from any time and any place as well as discussing cinema with friends.
Check out all of Jeff’s posts here.
Will Chadwick | Staff Writer
After writing for a humble WordPress blog, Will started working for We Got This Covered in late 2010 writing news, reviews and features for the Film and TV sections of the site, which he enjoys thoroughly. Will is based in the UK and currently studies English Literature with American and Canadian Studies at the University of Birmingham, where he also contributes to the student paper and writing societies.
When asked what his favourite films are he cites Martin Scorsese‘s Goodfellas as containing all the elements of great filmmaking, he also enjoys other films by Scorsese as well as those from the Coen Brothers, David Fincher and Steven Spielberg. His favourite TV shows include Breaking Bad, The Simpsons, Blackadder, Six Feet Under and Mad Men, which he writes weekly recaps for.
His opinion is divisive on many subjects and do not conform with most of the online community. He invites healthy debate but defies anyone to say he’s wrong with sufficient explanation.
Check out all of Will’s posts here.
Simon Brookfield | Associate Editor
Genius, jocular, enigmatic, nimble, philanthropistic – these are but a few choice words that have never been used to describe Simon. Though a graduate of the University of Waterloo with an environmental and business degree, film has always existed as a parallel passion and occupies perhaps a little too much of his spare time – a commitment worth giving.
Simon began delving into film criticism around the age of 19 as his knowledge of film began to swell and screamed for a more tactile outlet. What began as simple expression for his own purposes eventually lead to the creation of a now-defunct movie blog before he was recruited for upstart website Player Affinity and subsequently We Got This Covered as a contributing writer.
Now 23, Simon has ventured to some 2,000 movies (his favourite still remains The Shawshank Redemption) and continues to see hundreds more each year. Though possessing no formal writing training, Simon has never grown tired of this somewhat all-encompassing hobby. If you’ve ever in southern Ontario, the beer (and movie talk) is on him.
Check out all of Simon’s posts here.
Justin Alderman | Staff Writer
A gamer since he first embraced the Intellivision’s numbered-controller, Justin started writing about the video game industry in 2008 on his news blog, Gamer Investments. In early 2011, Justin joined Brutal Gamer, where he currently serves as the site’s News Editor, before becoming part of the We Got This Covered team as a video game news writer in February 2012.
Aside from his passion for writing about the video game industry, Justin is primarily a family man, a bit of a gun-nut, Star Wars nerd, and has a BA in Business Administration (Finance) with a Minor in Mathematics from Wichita State University.
Justin plays and enjoys a wide range of video games across multiple systems, with some of his favorite franchises/games being; Super Mario Bros., The Legend of Zelda, Tomb Raider, Resident Evil, and more recently Journey.
Check out all of Justin’s posts here.
John Fleury | Staff Writer
John has been playing games regularly for over twenty years, and stays on top of current news in the industry on a daily basis. His favorite gaming genres include platformers, action-adventure, and music rhythm games. Some of his all-time favorite games include Rock Band, LittleBigPlanet, Ratchet & Clank, Super Mario Galaxy, Donkey Kong Country, Grim Fandango, and Elite Beat Agents.
John studied art and animation at the Art Institute of Washington, and enjoys both drawing and animating in Flash, with one of his character designs handpicked to be made into a downloadable add-on for the Xbox 360 game, Kameo: Elements of Power. In addition, he is a major movie lover, and does film reviews for Examiner.com on a regular basis.
Check out all of John’s posts here.
Chaz Neeler | Staff Writer
Our resident neckbeard, Chaz Neeler is the angry nerd that the Internet deserves. A lifelong gamer, Chaz started cutting his teeth back in the mid 80’s with his trusty NES and has shown no sign of stopping anytime soon. Using a writing style that is equal parts intellectual discussion and fart jokes, Chaz hopes to develop a cult following that will elevate him to the status of a Greek god, but we’ll be happy if he simply stops demanding Toga Tuesday to be an official We Got This Covered mandate.
We have no real recollection of hiring Chaz. In fact, we’re not even sure he’s on the payroll. Chad Goodmurphy made the mistake of feeding him once, and he hasn’t left the bunker since. If anyone is able to provide any information on where he may have come from, please contact us ASAP.
With an astonishing amount of hours put into gaming over twenty years, trying to compile a list of his favorite games seemed to only confuse Chaz. He was able to spurt out Super Mario Bros. 3, Super Punch Out, Diablo II, Dark Souls and Enslaved before sulking away to work on his seemingly bottomless backlog.
Check out all of Chaz’s posts here.
Christian Law | Staff Writer
Living off of Cheetos, Ghost Adventures and Odd Future, Christian occasionally chooses to write news, reviews and features for entertainment websites. A junior studying journalism at the E.W. Scripps School of Journalism at Ohio University, he makes sure to use his love of film, gaming and music as a reason to skip class and eat sandwiches.
Christian began writing for the Speakeasy Web Magazine in 2011, right before he joined We Got This Covered during the summer. Finally putting to use something he learned, We Got This Covered became his outlet for spastic ranting, reviewing, and reporting. His love of everything horror is slowly eating his mind, but it’s definitely worth it.
Although it’s hard to choose, he would have to say that Goodfellas is the best movie ever made, Forrest Gump is overrated, and not enough people enjoyed Sunshine. His favorite games include the Mass Effect series, Dead Space, the Uncharted series, Custer’s Revenge, and anything created by Suda 51. He also tells his friends to watch Breaking Bad obsessively, or else.
Check out all of Christian’s posts here.
Alexander Lowe | Staff Writer
Alex has loved all aspects of the media his entire life, but since graduating from high school his passion for cinema has skyrocketed. After working as an editor and spending a bit of time in front of the camera, he realized that he enjoys studying film and writing about it most of all (though he’s willing to listen to offers if someone wants to buy one of his screenplays.)
Originally from just outside Chicago, he’s spent the last 3 and a half years studying the craft of writing and reporting at the Meek School of Journalism and New Media at Ole Miss in Oxford, Mississippi. His writing about film was mostly just for gathering his own thoughts on a few small blogs until joining We Got This Covered in July of 2012.
His ranking of favorite films frequently fluctuates, but the one movie always at the top is Good Will Hunting. Extremely close behind would be all 3 of Nolan’s Dark Knight films and The Lord of the Rings trilogy.
Check out all of Alex’s posts here.
Lauren Humphries-Brooks | Staff Writer
Lauren has loved film ever since she was a wee bairn and watched Lady and The Tramp over and over again. She further increased this passion by studying film and writing at a graduate level. All of which has successfully qualified her to tell you how wrong you are about everything. She also has a Ghostbusters tattoo on her back, which makes her totally badass.
Lauren started writing movie news for We Got This Covered in the long ago of 2012 and enjoys it, not least because she actually gets a leg up on all casting news running around the interwebs. She also writes film editorials for Man I Love Films, her own blog, and works on that pesky novel that she’s supposed to finish sometime in the next millenium.
Asking Lauren to choose her favorite movies is like asking an alcoholic to choose a favorite liquor. If really pressed, she’ll say that Alfred Hitchcock is the greatest filmmaker ever, and therefore Psycho is the best movie ever made. Other films that are awesome are The Lady Vanishes, Ghostbusters, The Fearless Vampire Killers, The Passenger, Last Year At Marienbad, and How To Steal A Million. She will arm wrestle you if you say otherwise.
Check out all of Lauren’s posts here.
C.P. Howells | Staff Writer
Ceri Peter, blessed with a girl’s name and a classic geeky look, spent much of his adolescence watching Star Wars and playing video games. After striking gold with a job as a video store clerk in college, he quickly fell in love with the film industry and all things media.
Born in the U.K. and raised in Montreal, Quebec, he switched his major from English Literature to Journalism during his first year of university when he decided that studying poetry at 8 a.m. wasn’t in his nature. Since earning his degree, he’s spent the past several years honing his writing and editing skills, and has become passionate about creating useful, fun, and entertaining media for an online audience.
After briefly writing for We Got This Covered last year, he put himself in self-imposed literary exile, while he focused on other projects and tried to decide which direction his career should take. Realizing that his passion for writing, editing, and films was like a disease, he gratefully returned to We Got This Covered and hasn’t looked back since.
While his top ten list of favorite films is constantly changing, he’ll always be fond of the original Star Wars trilogy, any superhero film he can get his hands on, and classics such as Casablanca, 12 Angry Men, and The Dirty Dozen.
Check out all of Ceri’s posts here.
Matt Donato | Staff Writer
A horror lover through and through, Matt can typically be found preparing for the imminent zombie apocalypse by absorbing every possible genre film from George A. Romero’s original Night of the Living Dead to newer zombie masterpieces like [REC]. Not only confined to undead shamblers though, Matt lists The Thing, Aliens, Evil Dead II, and most recently Cabin In The Woods amongst his always changing favorite horror films of all time. Friends and family are starting to worry that incessantly watching nothing but blood-filled slaughter-fests will slowly corrode his already warped mind, but Matt swears his sanity is still in tact. What’s left of it that is.
It was during his stint at Hofstra University where Matt discovered the fiery passion that burned for all facets of cinema, exhausting his Netflix queue at an alarming rate. Slowly transforming into the go-to film nerd amongst his group of friends, you could imagine the looks he got when answering the generic college-aged conversation opener “What’s your major” with “Business Management.”
Matt’s humble beginnings were much like any writer, starting out on a small blog created with a few buddies. As he wrote more and more, his desire to chase new opportunities grew, and that’s when We Got This Covered found their bastard child for underground horror. Joining the staff to bring up to date movie news and reviews, Matt of course will be spotlighting unique horror titles you probably didn’t know existed, sharing his enthusiasm for unfiltered originality with every single reader.
Films like Snatch, The Godfather, and Fargo got him obsessed with cinema. Films like Feast, A Nightmare On Elm Street, and Cabin Fever got him specifically digging horror. The only question is, what director will create that next special film, elevating Matt to a new level of enjoyment?
Be sure to check back every Tuesday for an ongoing column Matt writes with guest writer Remy Carreiro called Nato And Remy’s Last Stand, as the dynamic duo tackle new horror conversations each week.
Check out all of Matt’s posts here.
