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Thursday's Ways Not To Die

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Inglourious Basterds (2009)

Leave it to me to celebrate Christmas with the year's most prominent movie Jew. But I figured I'd been promising it for weeks and if I were to find swarthy Eli Roth in his wife-beater under my Christmas tree tomorrow, I'd be having a happy Xmas morning. Hell, break out the Hannakuh candles, then I could get him eight times in a row. If religion were a good way to get laid I'd renounce my atheism at once! I guess you gotta become a priest for that to be true though. Boo yeah! How many blasphemies can I get out in one post anyway? Goddamn. There's one more.

Anyway I love how much of this scene is just a shot-reverse shot stare-down between the two fellows (with a little Brad side-action) in wide to medium shot. Its like a dance, a romance. QT's classic film-making skills showing off again. It's just such an attractive bit of violence. The fetid leaves, the crumbling brick. The way you can almost smell Eli's... muskiness. Mmmhmm. I could, and doubtlessly will, watch it over and over and over again.

Merry whatever, y'all.
And to all a good death scene!

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Previous Ways Not To Die: Fisted By Hugo Sitglitz -- Xeno Morphed -- Fuck-Stuck -- A Vengeful Elevator God: Part 4 -- Lava Bombed -- The Cradle Will Rock... Your Face Off!!! -- The Food of the Nilbog Goblins -- The Slugs Is Gonna Gitcha -- Phone Shark -- Hide The Carrot -- Sarlacc Snacked -- Avada Kedavra!!! -- Hooked, Lined and Sinkered -- "The Libyans!" -- Axe Me No Questions -- Pin the Chainsaw on the Prostitute -- The Wrath of the Crystal Unicorn -- The Ultimate Extreme Make-Over -- Drown In A Sink Before The Opening Credits Even Roll -- The Dog Who Knew Too Much -- Don't Die Over Spilled Milk -- Inviting the Wrath of Aguirre -- An Inconceivable Outwitting -- The Five Point Palm Exploding Heart Technique -- Nipple Injected Blue Junk -- Your Pick Of The Deadly Six -- Thing Hungry -- Don't Fuck With The Serial Killer's Daughter -- DO Forget To Add The Fabric Softener -- Any Of The Ways Depicted In This Masterpiece Of Lost Cinema -- Rode Down In The Friscalating Dusklight -- Good Morning, Sunshine! -- Mornin' Cuppa Drano -- The Cylon-Engineered Apocalypse -- Tender-Eye-zed -- Martian Atmospheric Asphyxiation -- Maimed By A Mystical Person-Cat -- The Sheets Are Not To Be Trusted -- Handicapable Face-Hacked -- I Did It For You, Faramir -- Summertime In The Park... Of A Pedophile's Mind -- A Vengeful Elevator God: Part 3 -- Strung Up With Festive Holiday Bulbs By Santa Claus Himself -- A Vengeful Elevator God: Part 2 -- A Vengeful Elevator God: Part 1 -- Decapitated Plucked Broiled & Sliced -- Head On A Stick! -- A Trip To The Ol' Wood-Chipper -- Pointed By The T-1000 -- Sucking Face With Freddy Krueger -- A Pen-Full Of Home-Brewed Speed to The Eye -- Motivational Speech, Interrupted -- A Freak Ephemera Storm -- When Ya Gotta Go... Ya Gotta Go -- Hoisted By Your Own Hand Grenade -- Having The Years Suction-Cupped Away -- Criss-Cross -- Turned Into A Person-Cocoon By The Touch Of A Little Girl's Mirror Doppleganger -- Satisfying Society's "Pop Princess" Blood-Lust -- Done In By The Doggie Door -- Tuned Out -- Taking the 107th Step -- Rescuing Gretchen -- Incinerated By Lousy Dialogue -- Starred & Striped Forever -- Vivisection Via Vaginally-Minded Barbed-Wire -- Chompers (Down There) -- Run Down By M. Night Shyamalan -- Everything Up To And Including The Kitchen Toaster -- Sacrificed To Kali -- Via The Gargantuan Venom Of The Black Mamba Snake -- Turned Into An Evil Robot -- The Out-Of-Nowhere Careening Vehicle Splat -- "Oh My God... It's Dip!!!" -- Critter Balled -- Stuff'd -- A Hot-Air Balloon Ride... Straight To Hell!!! -- Puppy Betrayal -- High-Heeled By A Girlfriend Impersonator -- Flip-Top Beheaded -- Because I'm Too Goddamned Beautiful To Live -- By Choosing... Poorly... -- Fried Alive Due To Baby Ingenuity -- A Good Old-Fashioned Tentacle Smothering -- Eepa! Eepa! -- Gremlins Ate My Stairlift -- An Icicle Thru The Eye -- Face Carved Off By Ghost Doctor After Lesbian Tryst With Zombie Women -- Electrocuted By Fallen Power-Lines -- A Mouthful Of Flare -- Taken By The TV Lady -- Bitten By A Zombie -- Eaten By Your Mattress -- Stuffed To Splitting -- Face Stuck In Liquid Nitrogen -- Crushed By Crumbling Church Debris -- Bitten By The Jaws Of Life -- A Machete To The Crotch -- Showering With A Chain-Saw -- In A Room Filled With Razor Wire -- Pod People'd With Your Dog -- Force-Fed Art -- Skinned By A Witch -- Beaten With An Oar -- Curbed -- Cape Malfunction -- In The Corner -- Cooked In A Tanning Bed -- Diced -- Punched Through The Head -- Bugs Sucking On Your Head
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The Headless Woman in 150 Words or Less

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Amazing. Just incredible. The ability to conjure up a confusion, a sheer mindless panic, through the way scenes bleed or slide into one another, the way we're given no anchor to settle us from moment to moment. We don't know who is who, where is where, when is when, none of it makes sense, yet who can look away?

I love this bit from this review:

"Take it as a mood piece. The mood is dread"

The dead are in the room with us. They might be the shadow, out of focus, in the corner. They smile, they leave, only the squeak of their sneakers a clue. The car tilts in an off-putting direction - everyone's being run down at once.

A great haunting film. Also, beautiful. Some pics:


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I've Got A Blow-Up Doll And She Looks Like You...

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... little girl.
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Meanwhile, There Are Two Other Movies...

.... coming out that I'd choose to swallow my own tongue

before sitting/suffering through a minute of them:

And I honestly can't tell you which I'd find more painful.

Oh sure, Holmes has Jude Law with that sexy mustache and wearing lots of tweed (tweed fetish alert!), but any good that brings is eradicated one million times over by a smirking Robert Downey Jr. and his funky-cougar haircut. I hate hate hate everything about RDJ right now. There aren't many popular actors right now that I am finding quite so completely insufferable. I've liked him here and there over the years but have never gotten the praise that's been heaped upon his decades of exactly-the-same, playing-himself performances. And the success he's gotten post-Iron Man, a film I found mediocre at best and completely overrated in the end... well it's driven me a bit off the deep-end with my dislike of him, I'm afraid.

I've never been a Guy Ritchie fan and as much as I love her in Mean Girls and even The Notebook I am kinda indifferent to Rachel McAdams. (Don't give me that side-eye.) I mean I find her pleasant when I'm watching her but she's not exactly pulling me towards anything. Especially something with such a black-hole of hatred at its center.

As for the Squeakuel (ugh that godforsaken word)... well at least it has Anna Faris voicing a Chipette. And looking thru the cast-list, there's Amy Poehler and Wendie Malick too. That's really the only stuff I can say in its favor - the trailer is the visual and aural equivalent of homeless foot. But there's nothing in it that makes me as angry as Robert Downey Jr. does these days, so that's something. An only-detectable-thru-a-microscope something... but something.
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Too Many Movies!

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Somehow I'm gonna try to watch all of those movies
over the next twelve days or so. Mmhmm.

This is what I will presumably have to resort to:

And if I can manage, I've gotta try to see these a second time:

Too much! Too much!

What about y'all? What are you gonna try
to see over the next couple weeks?
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Five Frames From ?

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What movie is this?
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Josh Hartnett Eight Times (Then More!)

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Josh Hartnett floated through my mind semi-randomly the other day and I wondered where the hell he'd gotten himself to. I mean, sure, he's not exactly rewriting the guide to screen-acting or anything, but the man is gorgeous, and there are plenty of oft-working actors and actresses skating by on that claim alone, getting up in my business, and I'd like him to be one of those getting up in my business. Yes, please. So I went and looked him up and stumbled upon these pics below from some movie he did in 2008 apparently called I Come with the Rain (nothing suggestive there) in which, if the stills and screen-caps are to be believed, he spends 95% of his time half-naked. Seems promising to me. Onto the queue it goes!

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Merry Christmas To Me!

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Way back at the start of November we heard what David Cronenberg might be up to next: an adaptation of a play called Talking Cure, which is about "the founding fathers of psychoanalysis, Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud, and their parallel relationships with a beautiful patient, Sabina Spielrein." Well it appears - via Slash - that's definitely gonna be DC's next picture, and he's already got the cast, and it's giving me a big ol' grin it is:

"Here’s what Australian distributor Hopscotch Films announced today, on Facebook of all places:

'More LA buys… Hopscotch will release ‘The Talking Cure’ directed by Cronenberg, starring Keira Knightly, Michael Fassbender, Christoph Waltz. A beautiful young woman, driven mad by her past. An ambitious doctor on a mission to succeed. An esteemed mentor with a revolutionary cure. Let the mind games begin…'"

So y'all know I'm not entirely on Team Knightley but I can like her - she was terrific in Sense & Sensibility Pride & Prejudice and I thought she was the only good thing in the later Pirates films. And I really hope I can like her again in Never Let Me Go, Mark Romanek's adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro's fantastic book. So I will allow myself an open mind here, especially since it's Cronenberg we're talking about.


But her outta the way, it's those men that's got me so friggin' excited. Michael Fassbender! Christoph Waltz! Ack! Ack! Ack! Yes yes yes! Basterds in the house! Hell yeah.
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Hair To The Throne

How have I never used that title for a post on Jake in Prince of Persia before? Perhaps I once had sense? Nah. Anyway if I did that's long gone. Looo-ooo-ooong gone. So I guess was so distracted by Jake's haircut yesterday that I didn't even notice there were two new photographs from Persia floating around. Here. (via)

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Today's Mood

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Billy Chapman (Robert Brian Wilson),
Silent Night Deadly Night

"You know, you shouldn't talk like that."

And for more of this festive fellow, click here.
Ho-ho-horrifying.
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Do Dump or Marry - Rudolph's Snow Men

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Alright, we're heading up to Christmas Town this time around. Which of these chaps from Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer would you climb into Santa's sack for a quickie with, which would you send off to the Land of Misfits Toys without so much as a second thought, and which would you find a nice little cave or tundra-bound cottage to make a life with? To refresh your memory, they are:

Hermey the Elf - Likes flippy hair-do's, pointy shoes,
and sticking his fists into people's mouths.

Yukon Cornelius - Prefers the company of dogs. Gold fetish.
Has an excitable tongue. (more on his tongue here)

The Abominable Snowman, aka Bumble -
Angry. Toothless. Bounces.

So take it to the comments, y'all. Ho, ho, ho yourself out.
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Quote of the Day 2010

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From Radiohead's blog Dead Air Space comes a lil' special holiday cheer from drummer Phil Selway:

"The vibe in the camp is fantastic at present, and we head off into the studio in January to continue on from the work we started last Summer .. I am so genuinely excited about what we're doing, but for obvious reasons I can't divulge anything more.. anyway we all love surprises don't we? 10 years ago we were all collectively (that's the band) in the land of Kid A .. and although hugely proud of that record, it wasn't a fun place to be .. What's reassuring now, is that we are most definitely a different band, which should therefore mean that the music is different too and that is the aim of the game....keep it moving."

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A new Radiohead album in the new year? Hell yes. But will it be an actual album? Or will they release online singles? Whatever will happen?!?!? I can't wait to find out.

Phil also lists his ten favorite movies of all time there and his most favorite of all is Harold and Maude. And people wonder why I am so obsessed with this band? They were made for me.
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Five Frames From ?

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What movie is this?
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The Way On The Way

Via here (via Nat) comes a couple more pictures from Peter Weir's next film, The Way Back, which stars Colin Farrell and Ed Harris. Below you'll see our first looks at Jim Sturgess and Saoirse Ronan in the movie, amongst others.

I posted some pictures from this movie previously here (including an rather attractive shot of Mr. Farrell). And here I wrote about the film's plot. Weir's one of the greatest directors alive, and I always look forward to his films. TWB is out sometime in '10.
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Jake Seven Times

Jake cut his hair!

That's the goober I know and love. (via IHJM)
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Help Me, My Beloved Geeks!

I feel shame deep shame posting a post like this. But I'm so frustrated right now I could, would if I could, spit nails, and I'm not sure what other way to go about this, and I thought maybe one of you wonderful people (I learned early and often to kiss ass when I want something, yo) could help me out. This is for you out there who know tech stuff, about which I am generally a big honking flop.

See, I got a new TV. This one. I got a cheap DVD player a couple of months ago, this one. For the time being I wanna stick with this DVD player if I can; I'm not really prepped to go get BluRay just yet. But I have this fancy HD TV now, so I got an HDMI cable to connect the DVD player and TV and use the supposed upscaling thingamajig.

Only, once I connect the DVD player to the TV player and insert a disc and it loads, the screen looks like this:

(Besides being gypsy-cursed, Alison Lohman looks like shit)

WTF! The colors are all wrong, flipped, erratic. And I can't figure out why, or how to make it look right. I thought it might be the HDMI cable so I returned one and brought the new one home tonight and it's the same deal. Fucked up.

So anyone got any ideas what I need to do? Is the DVD player just too cheap? Please tell me there's nothing wrong with the TV! Everything else seems fine. The broadcast HD channels look glorious. I haven't hooked up an HD cable box yet, I'll be exchanging boxes tomorrow, so I haven't got anything else besides the DVD player with an HDMI connection to hook to the TV to check it with.

If anybody has any ideas, any help to offer,
it'd be just so indescribably awesome. Awesome, I says!
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Today's Fanboy Delusion

Today I'd rather be...

... a comedian in grandpa make-up making incest jokes
with James Franco on Saturday Night Live.

And here's the video:

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If pretend-incest with James Franco is wrong...
then I am very very very very wrong indeed.

ETA I forgot about Liberace giving James Dean a blow-job...


... could scarcely leave that unrepresented.
You can watch video over here. I adore
the Vincent Price specials on SNL every single time.
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The Greatest Movie...

... about baby-napping cheerleader-defacing virgin-stabbing demon nuns that are fought off every five years by a whiskey-voiced Harley-momma Adrienne Barbeau, snarling one-liners off with her usual husky bombast?

The Convent (2000)

Lord Almighty what does one say about this flick? It's both a travesty and a delight all at once. How can something so completely awful have so much that's simultaneously wonderful? It's the cinematic equivalent of a violent whiplash that gives you schizophrenia and puts you in a coma at the same time, so you duke it out with your newly hatched personalities inside a bunch of nonsensical nightmares. It is pleasure, and pain.

Naturally, I came upon a recommendation via Final Girl. Who else would deliver me unto such wonders? Go read Stacie's review for more. Oh bliss. Horrible, horrible bliss.

I Think He Might Be Serious!

Over at his blog today producer Brad Fuller - who over the past decade has lovingly crafted a nightmare landscape of shitty horror remakes that've killed a part of my very being - took a moment to clear up some mean ol' rumors. Yes they are re-shooting a lil' bit of the Nightmare on Elm Street remake, he says. They've had to do this with all of their previous piece-of-shit movies, so we... shouldn't worry, I guess?

And then he moves along to the second Friday the 13th film, which recently saw its green-light sour. What's going on with that?

"Let's talk Friday 13th. We have busted our ass to get that movie going! The script is great - dare I say, better than the first. Shannon and Swift have outdone themselves."

No! Dare you say? Better than that offensive piece of dung cinematic masterpiece you threw in our faces earlier this year? No way! I won't believe it! I mean, they'd have had to get words (words? is that the words I mean?) in the right order for the script to make any more sense than your previous tour de force. I mean is that even possible? I mean, if he's serious, fuck The Godfather sequel, we've got a new Greatest Parts 1 and 2 on our hands here! Time and space might rend itself apart once it beholds this sucker.

Also, barf.

Okay, so listen: nobody's gonna argue that the Friday the 13th films have ever really been about something as silly as "a script." Oh the first two are super, in their way, and the rest of the series has its highs and it's lows and it's myriad silly pleasures that I have gotten a kick outta my whole live long life. But Platinum Dunes' version... it just didn't really get jackshit right. The tone was completely wrong. The setting was completely wrong. Oh sure, a quick nod to the campground, then we're suddenly in a mine-shaft and Jason takes prisoners? Fuck you, Platinum Dunes. So forgive me if I don't wanna give them any benefit of the doubt here. They've proven exactly one thing, and that's that they have no fucking idea what a Friday the 13th movie is supposed to be about.

Also, I am a nerd.
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Pics of the Day

LIFE Magazine's got a gallery of photographs of the cast of Avatar on the road with the flick earlier this month with their director, Mr. Cameron, and here are a few I enjoyed (I do love me a giddy, silly Sigourney):

Oh and here's one of Sam, just cuz he's missing from those:

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Just For The Record...

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... I don't care how horrible the things that follow it are. It could never be considered a "nightmare" if it involves Enver Gjokaj in a skin-tight catsuit. Just one more thing you got wrong, Dushku!
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Five Frames From ?

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What movie is this?
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Avatar in 150 205 Words or Less

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My, what big blue balls you have, James Cameron.

Having suffered through Nine's sloppy musical numbers last week, I couldn't help but compare those to Cameron's masterfully staged and shot and edited action scenes here, and the difference is as distant as Pandora is from Earth. It fills you with awe - not just the visuals, which are as magnificent as promised, but the ability with which you find yourself effortlessly loosed inside this new place.

And that's because JC knows how to shoot a fucking movie. He knows when to pull the camera out and give you the sweeping vista, when to reel it in, and when to slow it all down to show you what's happening. The rhythm, even for an almost 3 hour film, is undeniable, and inescapable. Sure the story's old, the characters are broad and the dialogue's... questionable. But the sincerity and the heart of this giant thing... it gets you. Even as the 900 pound blue gorilla in the room, after watching it I don't know why anybody would wanna knock it. Completely uncynical. It just wants you to have fun. To see spectacular things, and to make you feel like a kid again. And man does it succeed.
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Good Morning, World

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Hey there, Brian Bloom! No idea why he's on my mind. Well, that is to say, I have plenty of idea why, it's the usual reasons why, but it came outta nowhere. Here's some more of him that I posted previously, if you care. And here's a whole video (NSFW) of him romping around. Love him long time.

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Anyway! A happy holiday week to everyone, if that's your deal. Not sure what this week's gonna look like, posting-wise, I'm always crazy-busy with stuff at work right before the long break, plus I'm distracted and a distracted brain is notsomuch a fertile place for posting anything coherent. We'll see. And it's not like anybody's coming here to MNPP for coherence anyway! So let's get to it. Or whatever.
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RIP Brittany Murphy

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Oh how awful. Awful. I don't have anything I can possibly say. My heart goes out to those that knew and loved her in real life. And I'll cherish Tai forever.
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