Oscar nominations are out, and Winter’s Bone (which I reviewed here) is, as predicted and hoped, one of the ten Best Picture nominees. Also as predicted, Jennifer Lawrence received a Best Actress nomination, and John Hawkes received a Best Supporting Actor nomination.
And if you haven’t seen it already, by all means do. It’s an astonishingly good film and a very worthy nominee.
So you find yourself thinking: I want to watch Mega Shark vs Crocosaurus, but I’m afraid it may be too intellectually challenging to jump into right away. Is there perchance a stupider movie I can watch first?
Come January 20, the answer to your question will be: Yes, yes there is. Behold the wonder that is MegaPython vs. Gateroid.
Still not convinced? Hey, it stars Debbie Gibson AND Tiffany! (Granted, 15 years too late, but still…) And if that’s not enough, I have two words for you: cake wrestling.
It’s good to see the folks at The Asylum and the SyFy Channel maintaining the reputation they’ve worked so hard to earn…
(Hat tip: Bill Crider.)
Anne Francis dead at 80. So that’s both leads for Forbidden Planet gone in the past year. I may have to have a memorial viewing. (Fortunately Richard Anderson (AKA Oscar Goldman) is still alive.)
By the way, that Amazon link is for the Ultimate Collector’s Edition boxed set at a paltry $17.99, which is about half what I paid for it two years ago, and I think it includes everything in the two-disc 50th anniversary edition, plus the metal box AND the Robby the Robot action figure. At that price I may have to stock up for birthday and Christmas gifts…
I was discussing the movie career of Karen Black, probably most famous for Airport ’75 and Trilogy of Terror, when I came across the IMDB entry for Stripping for Jesus.
If you know anything about the viewing habits of me and my bad-movie-loving friends, you would think that a film called Stripping for Jesus would have, at the very least, been known to us. After all, we have seen Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter. (We said to ourselves “With a title like that, how could they go wrong?” Sadly, we found out.) Especially since it ranks an abysmal 2.0 from users. And was theoretically written by Anne Heche (AKA “no, the attractive one”). So it seems like the sort of thing I would have stumbled over. (“Ouch!”)
As no reviews or footage of this film can be found anywhere on the internet, I must sadly assume that it does not exist. Unless someone can prove otherwise.
(By the way, despite my not having seen her in anything since Capricorn One, Karen Black has actually been in no less than 188 titles. Suck it Family Guy.)
The National Film Registry has announced this year’s selection of 25 important films worthy of preservation, and there are a lot of gems on the list:
Airplane!, The Exorcist, The Empire Strikes Back and The Pink Panther are all great films, arguably among the top 100 ever made. I believe it was K. W. Jeter who said that the student version of THX 1138 was much better than the theatrical release, so I’ve always been curious to see that. Strangely enough, I’m also curious about Saturday Night Fever, despite my loathing of disco, as many critics (the late Gene Siskel among them) consider it one of the great films of the 1970s, and National Review‘s John Derbyshire says it’s one of the best films about blue collar American life ever made. I also remember Dwight being impressed with Malcolm X, despite not having seen Malcolm I–IX.
Of course, a lot of these are notable only for being early examples of the form rather than gripping cinema, such as Newark Athlete:
Or A Trip Down Market Street:
Let There Be Light is John Huston’s pioneering documentary on the treatment of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder following World War II:
And Our Lady of the Sphere is sort of like Terry Gilliam’s work on Monty Python, but not as interesting:
Then again, it was made in San Francisco in 1969, so there’s nothing about it that can’t be explained by the phrase “Dude, I was so high…”
Burglers break into a store with a forklift on Christmas Day to steal beer.
But honestly, I’m only linking to this story for two reasons: For the MST3K reference in the blog post title, and to include the pure awesomeness that is Forklift Driver Klaus. (Note: Don’t watch if you’re easily offended by completely over-the-top gore and violence. Skip the first minute if you don’t understand German; the rest is pretty much self-explanatory.)
(Hat tip: Fark.)
Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead
Director: Sidney Lumet
Writer: Kelly Masterson
Starring: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Ethan Hawke, Albert Finney, Marisa Tomei, Michael Shannon
This is a “heist gone wrong” film that had gotten lots of great reviews, including from some of my friends. And having seen it, I can see why; it’s extremely well-done. (You would hope the guy who directed Network would remember a thing or two about making movies.) But I’m not quite as enthusiastic about this film as others, mainly because it’s sort of like Fargo, but without the laughs or Marge Gunderson. It’s like being in a car at the top of steep, icy hill that almost immediately starts sliding. And pretty much the entire movie is the characters sliding down that hill, with the only question being exactly how bad the crash will be. And the answer, after nearly two hours of watching them squirm, screw up and go blood simple, is very bad indeed.
The action unfolds in non-linear fashion, following first one character and then another. We see the heist go wrong in the first 10 minutes of the film, but its only later that we understand just how wrong it went, and how the consequences from it just keep getting worse.
The performances are uniformly excellent, while the script is interesting without being engaging; Hoffman’s character is so unlikable, and Hawke’s character such a weak-willed pushover, that we regard them less with sympathy than critical detachment. The direction is solid, but many scenes could have been edited; Lumet likes to watch his characters flail and squirm a bit too much, and this film could have easily been 10-15 minutes shorter and have more impact.
Whether you’ll enjoy watching it depends on how much you like watching that long, agonizing slide down the icy hill. And Marisa Tomei is still quite lovely (and, here, frequently undressed). But many viewers will find it an uncomfortable ride.
News that Venice is flooding (no, really), reminded me of something I sent around to all my friends before I put this blog up: The trailer for the totally cheestacular Sharks in Venice:
A movie that combines a bad Jaws rip-off with a bad Da Vinci Code/National Treasure ripoff, bad CGI, bad music, a bad Baldwin brother, and a bad Johansson sister. (Evidently Neil Connery was unavailable.) It checks it at an abysmal 3.0 on the IMDB; you almost have to try to get a ranking that low.
It actually looks worse than Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus:
Much less Sharktopus:
Got to admit that’s some groovy theme music, daddy-o. And before I started writing this blog post, I didn’t even know that Mega Shark vs Crocosaurus existed:
These are great times for bad shark movie aficionados…
