Last Friday's Movies

Best of 2012

Movies



1. Magic Mike

This is essentially the male Showgirls. Why wouldn't it be the best movie of the year? 

2. The Hunger Games

And this is Death Race 2000. I can only enjoy movies now that remind me of other movies.

3. The Cabin in the Woods

Evil Dead.

4. Haywire

Lady Streetfighter.

5. Roller Town

Roller Boogie.

TV



1. Breaking Bad

They only showed 8 episodes this year. Seems unfair to reward shows for great but less entertainment.

2. Community

So maybe Community is the best show of the year. They managed to show 12 episodes this year even with their network pushing back season 4 into 2013. We still got the Law and Order episode, the psychiatrist episode and one of the best last 3 episodes of a series ever. Had it ended.

3. 30 Rock

Having said that 30 Rock showed 30 episodes, the most of any this year. It was a little much.

4. Ben and Kate

The best new show of the year. At least through the first ten. See that Breaking Bad? It's not so hard.

5. Bob's Burgers

Eighteen. And they had to draw each episode. Jeez, Breaking Bad. You're terrible.

Albums



1. Let's Quit - Don't Talk To The Cops!
Marissa said this sounded like a tape someone found on the ground. She's not wrong.

2. Gossamer - Passion Pit
3. A Sleep and A Forgetting - Islands
4. Wilderness - The Features
5. Celebration Rock - Japandroids


Songs

1. How It Starts - The Features



 How It Starts was in a Mustang ad and I was really excited.

2. Swag Treated Treated Swag - Don't Talk To The Cops!



See? Tape on the ground.

3. Take a Walk - Passion Pit



Speaking of, this isn't the first song Passion Pit has had in a commercial.

4. Call Me Maybe - Carly Rae Jepsen



The Since U Been Gone, Toxic, Gold Digger, SexyBack, Umbrella, Single Ladies. Poker Face, Fuck You and Rolling in the Deep of its time!

5. Hallways - Islands



I found out just now that this is also the best video of the year.

6. Runaway - Imperial Teen



Well, this video is delightful too. They should have a channel for these.

7. Gave Up - Dangerous Ponies



My real favorite album I heard this year was the self-titled one from Dangerous Ponies. But it came out last year.  Luckily they released a song this year that proves they can write at least 14 good songs.

8. No Tear - Perfume Genius



9. If You're Ready To Learn - Brian McKnight



NSFW. This is a cover because the sound is better.

10. The Riots Gone - Santigold




Podcasts



1. Stop Podcasting Yourself
2. Harmontown
3. Comedy Bang Bang
4. Mark Kermode and Simon Mayo's Film Reviews
5. How Was Your Week with Julie Klausner

Books



1. My Friend Dahmer - Derf Backderf
2. Shock Value: How a Few Eccentric Outsiders Gave Us Nightmares, Conquered Hollywood, and Invented Modern Horror - Jason Zinoman
3. Kasher in the Rye: The True Tale of a White Boy from Oakland Who Became a Drug Addict, Criminal, Mental Patient, and Then Turned 16 - Moshe Kasher
4. Harvey Pekar's Cleveland - Harvey Pekar and Joseph Remnant
5. Ali in Wonderland: And Other Tall Tales - Ali Wentworth

Best of 2012 Movie Night

Unlike last year we didn't see a lot of movies this year that also came out this year. As far as I have the patience to look it up, we may have only seen one. Corman's World, a lowly bonus third movie.



That must mean there are plenty of options for Best of 2012 (that fit into the BMN paradigm).

Not so fast poor quality practitioner of reason. The year 2012 was a bad year for movies. But it's like what they say about bad pizza. It's still a good year when they put chicken strips in the crust.

And the chicken-strips-in-crust of movies is Modus Operandi. Somehow knowledge of this movie was important in a recent Wisconsin's Hardest Trivia game. All you needed to know is that Danny Trejo is in it but soon you'll know that Mark Borchardt stars, the only Bad Movie Night actor I have touched, and Sasha Grey "presents" the movie.

Given the movie's incongruousness, Modus Operandi was seemingly filmed over decades with several script revisions. Yet it received a relatively good review from Roger Ebert that began,

You need to have paid your dues to appreciate "Modus Operandi." Have you marinated in exploitation films? The cheap kind from the 60s and 70s, made by fly-by-night filmmakers on starvation budgets? Where you can almost sense them gasping as they try to accumulate enough footage to qualify as a feature? And where the female characters are wearing bikinis even in business offices?
It's not enough to like such films because they're "so bad they're good." You need to specialize, and like the films because they're so good about being so bad they're good. "Modus Operandi," a film by Frankie Latina that has won praise on the midnight movie festival circuit, is such a film. 

So Ebert is questioning your ability to enjoy a bad movie. See if you measure up.

The Cabin in the Woods also tests your knowledge of exploitation films. It'll be like you're back in school!

Here's what happened last week:

Merry Christmas 1986!

When flight simulators were okay with mostly being about flying into monuments:

This Toy Reminded Me of You

Reason For The Season

I wonder how this kid is doing nowadays. Seen previously.

Pepsi Xmas

I had a Pepsi earlier today and this toy makes me realize I was indoctrinated from an early age. It also explains why I drink Pepsi out of coffee cups, with a spoon and napkin. Do you think kids would lose the napkin and say, "Mom, I lost my toy napkin!"

"Well, here's a real napkin dear", says Mom.

"You don't understand me AT ALL!"

Things From A Department Store Catalog From 1986 That I Had

Remember that scene in Big where Tom Hanks "doesn't get" a robot that transforms into a building because buildings aren't fun? Well I loved the Rock Lords:

 

And they turned into rocks. They were an offshoot of the Gobots, the superior, better designed transforming robot toy. And that extends to Voltron. I was never a Voltron person. The better giant robot show was Tranzor-Z.

   

But even the many-robots-combining-into-a-large-robot was bested by Gobots:



I also had a robot that vacuumed.

 

 It was the original Roomba. I also had the dog from the same toy line, Spotbot.

 

 He got a twisted stomach and we had to throw him away.

 The Sectaurs Hive Playset was gigantic.

 

And it had a built-in puppet:



Speaking of, I did not have a DaZoo.

 

But I did have a My Pet Monster, of course. My parents loved me after all. Thirty-two dollars sounds steep but it had breakaway chains and, according to the one I had, sentience.

I had this monster game and Audrey II:

 

 Both this.

 

 and this

 

look familiar so I guess I had a thing about spying on other people's conversations. Probably just to verify that everyone knew that my new remote controlled Lamborghini was super cool.



 I still have this Frogger watch:

 

Something I played so often I found the point where the score would stop counting up. In conclusion, what the hell is this!

 

Things From A Toys "R" Us Newspaper Insert From 1986 That I Had

I had the gun and sensor but not the ridiculous helmet. None of my loser friends had any Lazer Tag accessories so I was stuck shooting myself.



I had that '57 Chevy and "Snake Oil" truck. Thirty dollars? Geez, thanks parents!



I haven't thought of the Inhumanoids in 25 years. That thing with the rib cage had squishy guts.





I had this Turbo Train, which went up the wall. Apparently that was a theme in 1986:



I learned you could shut off power while it was going up the wall and it would fly off the track and into the air. It would fall back to Earth, killing all the passengers on board. But, hey, they're the ones that bought a ticket to some sort of terror train. I don't remember ever successfully making a jump either:


An aside: I was jealous of Sweet Secrets but they were for girls.

Today's Movies

Christmas Movie Night 2

Did you know Psycho takes place during Christmas? It was by chance. They filmed during the holidays and couldn't edit around Christmas decorations in the background of some scenes. So Hitchcock just added this in the beginning:



The point is I needed an intro to this blog entry and I went with this.

The Dorm That Dripped Blood is Daphne Zuniga's first movie:



Three years later she was in a movie called The Initiation that partially takes place in a mall and has a very suggestive poster:



See? It suggests you go see the movie. If I went with the same pseudo-Christmas theme as three years ago, Malls, we could have had Zuniga Christmas Movie Night.

But then we wouldn't get to see Trancers. It's the second movie we'll watch that was written by Danny Bilson and Paul De Meo, the other being Eliminators.



It's a similar Mad-Lib-by-12-year-old movie about a [cop] who [time travels] to find a [psychic] who [farts].

Somehow it's the second Helen Hunt BMN movie after Desperate Lives



yet we have seen zero Erik Estrada movies. Life is crazy.

Here's what happened last week:

Last Week's Movies

Christmas Movie Night

How can I write anything about Christmas that hasn't been written before? Christmas is like the cytopathic effect of BVD on MDBKs, pronounced! There, did it.



Santa with Muscles is Mila Kunis's first non-religious movie. Here she is bullying a Jew:



She atoned for that by making the second worse Christmas movie ever, according to the IMDB Bottom 100. The worst is Santa Claus, which we watched three years ago.



Before That 70s Show, it's the first time Kunis worked with Don Stark , who we last saw in Switchblade Sisters.

 

But Santa with Muscles is the second time Don Stark worked with Clint Howard, the other being Evilspeak. It's the first and only time Howard has worked with Garrett "'Chocolate Chip' Charlie" Morris. Shoot, I was trying to keep that going. Ed Begley Jr. is in it. Everyone's worked with the Begs. Even Garrett Morris, in The Pound Puppies movie.



Jaws The Revenge has Michael Caine and Mario Van Peebles. We last saw MVP (huh, that's weird) in Baadasssss! when he played his dad Melvin, who's also in Jaws The Revenge. You'll also enjoy the fact that Charles Bowleg is in this movie. Not because he's famous but because his name is silly.

Here's what happened last week:

Today's Movies

Many Small Creatures Movie Night

Millions of Unusual Small Creatures Lurking Everywhere isn't just the best toy of the 80s



but a great description for this week's Bad Movie Night. This is also the return of horror movies and the beginning of the holiday movie season. It's all just too much.



Critters has a cast. I had the word great in there but had second thoughts. M. Emmet Walsh is great for sure.



A few months ago Entertainment Weekly had to run a correction stating that M. Emmet Walsh was not dead, as they asserted previously. Thing is, I would have bet anything he was dead too. Now I'm sure, and I bet this was Entertainment Weekly's problem too, that I was confusing him with J.T. Walsh.



Back to the cast. I like Lin Shaye, the old, tan lady in There's Something About Mary. Dee Wallace is cool for being the mom in E.T. and Cujo. Billy Zane allows you to watch Back to the Future and say, "Oh yeah, there's Billy Zane". Just like Elijah Wood in Part 2. Adolph Hitler is credited in Critters. I don't like Hitler. I want that on the record. I just mention it to point out the IMDB message board for Hitler with subjects like "Why did he break his non-agression pact with the Soviets?". I expected more "Gay?" and  "[Post deleted]"s.

The director of Critters went on to do Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, Mr. Holland's Opus and Rock Star, that movie that's always on VH1:



So we're in hands. I took out good.

Gremlins is our 5th Joe Dante joint. Returning BMN actors include Corey Feldman (The Lost Boys), Polly Holiday (The Pumpkin Competition), Jonathan Banks (The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension) and Dick Miller.


White Line Fever
Hollywood Boulevard
Piranha
Rock 'n' Roll High School
White Dog
Chopping Mall
Night of the Creeps
Dead Heat  
Gremlins 

Tying him with Linnea Quigley for second place. And since one of her movies is an "archive appearance" I decree that Dick Miller is officially in second place behind Cameron Mitchell's 12. This is the slowest race in history.

Here's what happened last week: