Best of BMN 2013

I see I forgot to make a "best of" for Bad Movie Night.

1. Music Videos

I like the non-traditional BMNs and going five years without doing music videos left a wealth of videos up for grabs. This one didn't make it in time:

2. Street Wars

I just re-watched this one so it's fresh in my mind but it's amazing. It's encouraging that there are plenty more Jamaa Fanaka movies where that one come from.

3. Miami Connection

4. Mad Foxes

Biggest surprise of the year. Where did this movie come from?

5. Xtro

Most of the weird things in history happened in Xtro.

Rock Lords

Googling this lady's shirt in 1988's Iced:



brought up these toys, Rocks and Bugs and Things:



Which I totally had. Which made me realize I never did a toy post like last year. And that I really liked to play with toy rocks.  Toy post for the year, check. Oh crap, I also meant to volunteer more.

Best of 2013

Movies



1. The Kings of Summer

Nobody is talking about his movie. Maybe it's because the director looks like this.



Normally I wouldn't think anything of the silence. In the past the best movie of the year was a spoof of blaxploitation movies, a hyper-violent superhero comedy and male stripper dramedy (Incidentally, soon after Magic Mike I saw Looper. Looper is the best movie of 2012). But TKOS is a totally normal, summer coming-of-age movie that's only exceptional in its superior quality. Sorry The Way Way Back and Oblivion. 

2. John Dies At The End

The fact that Phantasm's Don Coscarelli is still making great movies should delight you. Why are you so hard to delight? Your joy this year came from family and Two Broke Girls. How do you not hate yourself?

3. This Is The End

This was essentially a bottle episode in movie form. All my favorite actor-comedians played themselves except Brian Huskey who played a character and Danny McBride who played Danny McBride.

4. World War Z

It wasn't like the book. It's super you like not liking not books.

5. Iron Man 3

It was the highest grossing movie of the year for a reason. And the fifth reason is it's good.


Television



1. Orange Is The New Black

Articles on this show made you hate the term "binge watch". Plus, if OITNB was made for binge watching why did it have an interminable opening credits sequence? It wasn't the worst opening, however. Oh, plus I liked the show a lot.

2. Nathan For You

I watched this entire series at ~3 am with the new baby so I'm only pretty sure it was great. It's like a prank show that doesn't hate humanity.

3. Orphan Black

"O-word + [optional words] + Black" is the best equation for a great TV show since "Arthurian wizard + repair shop + doesn't matter what else, the first two are gold".


4. Masters of Sex

There's a beaver munching on a stick in the opening credits. For the love of god. A beaver. Munching. On a. Sti. ck.



Great show though.

5. (tie) Bob's Burgers/Enlightened

About Enlightened. I watched the first season of Veep and Enlightened this year because people said they got a lot better in their second seasons, which I then also watched. Veep was very good. The whole time. Brian Huskey was in it. As well as Bob's Burgers. That guy is the Danny McBride of interesting work. 

But Enlightened was good in the first season and extra, super good in the second. I'm risking being Tyra who always rewarded improved top models over consistently great ones. WHEN I YELL LIKE THIS IT'S BECAUSE I LOVE YOU.




Albums



1. I Hate Music - Superchunk

This album has a really fast, really loud song where the lyrics are mostly, "I'm staying home!". I feel like that sometimes.

2. RKives - Rilo Kiley

This is a rarities album with songs from a time when I still liked music. 

3. We The Common - Thao Nguyen and The Get Down Stay Down
4. No Blues - Los Campesinos
5. Ski Mask - The Islands


Songs

1. We the Common (For Valerie Bolden) - Thao & The Get Down Stay Down



2. Runnin Around - Rilo Kiley



3. Step - Vampire Weekend



4. Nietzsche's Harvest Song by The Weaks

This just came out a week ago. I might still be in the honeymoon phase. Which is to say I'm finally ready to tell it all the weird stuff I like in bed.

5. We Can't Stop - Miley Cyrus

Also best video of the year.

6. Me and You and Jackie Mittoo - Superchunk

\

7. What Death Leaves Behind - Los Campesinos



8. Nil - The Islands



9. Talk Dirty feat. 2 Chainz - Jason Derulo

Hey guys, sold out arenas you can suck my penis.

10. Hard Out Here - Lily Allen



I don't hear anything in Lorde that is as groundbreaking as people say but she reminds me of Lily Allen, who is still exciting.


Books



1. Bleeding Skull! A 1980s Trash-Horror Odyssey by Joseph A. Ziemba and Dan Budnik

My favorite website wrote a book. About things like Winterbeast. I wonder if other websites I use a lot, like thesaurus.com, will follow suit. I tempestuously prognosticate that magniloquent, um, thing.

2. Hip-Hop Family Tree by Ed Piskor
3. Tenth of December by George Saunders
4. Sisterland by Curtis Sittenfeld
5. How To Fake A Moon Landing by Darryl Cunningham


Podcasts



1. Stop Podcasting Yourself

The third year in a row on top. There's no stopping SPY, even one of the hosts being shot in the head in July.

2. Harmontown
3. Comedy Bang Bang
4. Mark Kermode and Simon Mayo's Film Reviews
5. How Did This Get Made?

What If Movie Studios Quoted The ‘How Did This Get Made?’ Podcast On Their Movie Posters?

Today's Movie

Today's Movies

Christmas the 13th Movie Night

Horror and Christmas is my favorite combo since Jab-Cross-Left Hook or #9 at Burger King or 20-11-23. So it's synchromonious that Friday the 13th lands in December this year. This along with Hanukkah landing on Thanksgiving makes this the best Holidays ever!

I don't know why Bloodbeat is not only filmed in Wisconsin but takes place there. The director is French and only did one other, French, thing. It's about a samurai warrior. There's no deer hunting.



Whoops, there's deer hunting. My theory is the director had just seen The Shining and wanted a lot of snow for his movie so he headed to Wisconsin. Unfortunately by the look of the movie it did not snow much that year.

Did you see Iron Man 3 and wonder why it was so jokey? And set during Christmas? That's because Shane Black wrote (and directed) it. He's the guy behind Lethal Weapon and five of his movies have been set during Christmas. Presumably BMN movie The Monster Squad didn't take place at Christmas because the Squad was a program run out of the local JCC.



The Long Kiss Goodnight was written by Shane Black and directed by Deep Blue Sea's Renny Harlin. Kiss is a lot like Sea except hold the sharks, keep the Samuel L. Jackson and add Geena Davis. Ah, shoot. I should've gotten a side of LL Cool J.

Here's what happened last week:

Today's Movies

Paul Walker Movie Night

Whenever someone in the film world dies I look to see if we can honor that person with a Bad Movie Night theme. But I don't think it's happened since Haim Movie Night three and a half years ago.



Paul Walker, however, is in two movies I've always thought of showing. That's not including the Fast movies, which get increasingly ridiculous. And I'd never heard of Programmed to Kill, nor do I have it, but it looks promising.



I like lady terminators.



In the invite for this BMN I compared the monster in Monster In The Closet to Harry



before I knew Kevin Peter Hall (Prophecy, One Dark Night, Mazes and Monsters) plays both. The movie was Paul Walker's debut. He was only 10 when the movie was made but he's credited as Professor Bennett. It's also Fergie's film debut. She plays Senior Vice Provost for Faculty Development Lucy.

The fact that Monster in the Closet is one of John Carradine's last movies means that John Carradine and Fergie were once in a movie together.


Approximate picture of John and Fergie.

Tammy and the T Rex stars Denise Richards and Paul Walker as the respectively titular characters. It's directed by the guy who made Mac and Me and written by the guy who throws the naked pool party in The Last Picture Show.



Most importantly it's George "Buck" Flower's eighth appearance at BMN.


Massacre Mafia Style
Escape from New York 
Maniac Cop 
Mac and Me
They Live
Blood Games
Criminally Insane
Tammy and the T Rex

Here's what happened last week:

Nature Attacks Movie Night

It was hard not having Bad Movie Night two weeks ago. And I had the perfect movies too. We're up to 555 movies so we could have watched 555:

 

And the last 80s Thanksgiving horror we haven't seen yet, Blood Rage:



Look at all the severings we missed out on. It would have been such a perfect BMN the people would have raised me on their shoulders, marching through the street, hailing the newest\master of movie picking. I turned in early that day instead. It was nice.

The theme doesn't end at Nature Attacks. These movies are bad on purpose. Which are usually the worst bad movies. In a bad way. Jeez it's hard to talk about this sometimes...

Here's what happened last time:

Today's Movie

Today's Movies

Punishment Movie Night

Punishment Movie Night, which follows a Bad Movie Night where no one showed, was last shown almost three years ago. But that doesn't mean we went that whole time with perfect (at least one in) attendance. No one came to Rat Movie Night but the following BMN was Easter-related and time-dependent so punishment was avoided. No one came to Gay Movie Night but the following BMN was our three-year anniversary so punishment was avoided. Your disinterest has been well-timed but you couldn't avoid it forever. Still, that's two-and-a-half years. Yay us.

I'm sure nobody remembers Cry Wilderness but when that movie played a BMN-goer said it was terrible. My response was to say if that's true I'm never going to show The Force on Thunder Mountain. It has everything that's "terrible" about Cry Wilderness but lingers on it for five additional minutes. Per occurrence! But I'm going back on my word since that person is no longer with us. It's not what you're thinking, they're dead.

TFOTM is like a nature documentary with no narration and human guest stars. One of the human's wrote a four-out-of-five star review on Amazon a few years ago. He says it's "a good kids' story" and the "music was as bad as the story line". I'd add the dog in it looks like Mushroom from Gremlins. Five stars!



Referring back to that last Punishment Movie Night with Ogroff and Las Vegas Bloodbath, Dance or Die takes place in Las Vegas as well. Must be something about that city that makes your movie intriguingly bad. See also: Double Down, Showgirls and The Hangover.

Dance or Die also has dancing in it, which reminds me, see Breakin' 2: Eletric Boogaloo next Thursday at 6:30 at Madison's Central Library.

Here's what happened last week:

Today's Movies

Sex Comedy Movie Night

In the last sex comedy Bad Movie Night, Supernatural High School Sex Comedy Movie Night, I proposed four categories of sex comedy: Period, Privacy, Food and Supernatural. Here's the deal: I was being facetious. There are really SIX categories of sex comedy and these movies represent the additional two.

Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! belongs in the Punctuation category. See also Goin' All the Way!, Let's Do It! and The First Turn-On!!. It also, confusingly, belongs in the anti-category Not Really A Sex Comedy. It's funny. There are large-breasted women. But implying that big busts are inherently sexual is pretty offensive. And maybe the profound cleavage is a result of not being able to find well-fitting shirts. Wait, the German title is Die Satansweiber von Tittfield. Okay, it's back to being sexy. Such a beautiful language.

FPK2 is the return of director Russ Meyer, who also made Beyond the Valley of the Dolls.



Surf II's director, Randall M. Badat, isn't returning from anything. You might say he was "badat" making movies. I'll wait until you're done laughing. Oops, I forgot how reading works. Someone who is returning, for his sixth time (incredibly), is Eddie Deezen.


Laserblast
Midnight Madness
Zapped!
WarGames
Critters 2
Surf II

This time in a starring role!

Surf II does fit into the Supernatural category (it has zombies) but more accurately belongs in the Sports category. See also Hot Dog... The Movie, Jocks, Coach, The Great American Girl Robbery, Gimme an 'F' and Cheerleader Camp. Those last three only if cheerleading is a sport. Alright, seven categories: Period, Privacy, Food, Supernatural, Punctuation, Sports and Cheerleading.

Here's what happened last week:

Survivalist Movie Night

Friday's movies aren't just two scents of Right Guard Sports Stick. They're movies that include survivalists. Me, I can't go get the mail without stocking up at REI first. That doesn't make a whole lot of sense but neither do these movies.

Mountain Fury director William Dever, despite a dubious start, is still going strong in movies. Last year he executive produced Jim Wynorski's Gila!



The movie is not based on Roundy's Mountain Dew-reminiscent Mountain Fury:



See Wikipedia's list of Generic Citrus Sodas. Worst name: Mountain Moondrops. Best name: Heee Haw.

Quiet Cool stars Chris Mulkey (Runaway, The Hidden, Dragon Wars) who if he'd only been in the Twin Peaks Pilot he'd be in the Five-Timers Club right now. But Hank was in jail.



The movie furthers my fascination with Nick Cassavetes. He's in Quiet Cool and Mask and Assault of the Killer Bimbos and The Astronaut's Wife. I just can't wrap my head around it. This is just like Bob Balaban. He directed Parents and My Boyfriend's Back? He wrote Gosford's Park and the Tales From The Darkside pilot? Russell Dalrymple AND Warren Littlefield? I go lay down now.

Here's what happened last week: