Year Recap--the awards post

Important things first--2008's Midget of the Year was a tight race. After all, out of 365 movies, 52 of them had a midget. The candidates:

Don't Look Now had one creepy midget. So did The Brood, but that movie was absolutely terrible.

The Holy Mountain and Simon of the Desert both had crippled midgets, and both movies were a whole lot better than It's a Wonderful Life which had no midgets.

The Terror in Tiny Town had all midgets, and early on, I figured Billy Curtis was a shoe-in for Midget of the Year. He was terrific as the diminutive cowboy hero.

But the prize goes to Peter Dinklage from Death at a Funeral. I still can't think of that scene without laughing hard enough to fall down and hold my stomach. I did just that last night at a grocery store, right next to the pickles, and an elderly woman asked me if I was ok. I said, "Yeah, just laughing at the exploits of a midget." She looked up and down the aisle and, seeing no midget, scooted away, likely figuring that I was a drug addict. It's a scene that has to be seen to be believed. And set your vcr's, for Dinklage is going to be on the upcoming episode of 30 Rock which is a show everybody should be watching anyway. He also played the bad guy in Underdog which was a movie I had forgotten that I watched this year. So he's sure been busy. I'm sure winning my midget-of-the-year award is a highlight of his career though.

Other stuff:

I saw 22 Japanese movies which seems really low. I saw 27 French movies, 11 Italian movies, and 10 movies from Hong Kong.

I saw 36 documentaries on a wide variety of subjects. 32 movies I watched were animated or had animation. I saw 48 comedies, another 37 movies that were supposed to be comedies but weren't funny, and 14 movies that were funny but weren't supposed to be. I saw 22 horror movies and another 15 that were supposed to be horror movies but turned out to not be scary at all. There were 33 science fiction movies and a large bulk of "romantic" movies, 88 to be exact. According to the labels, I only saw 21 silent movies, but it sure seems like a lot more than that. 32 movies I labeled as "surreal" and I really tried to use that term correctly. I saw 7 movies with Vincent Price, 1 movie with Shirley Temple in black face, and 1 Sylvester Stallone movie that he actually wasn't in (Ran). I also saw 23 kung-fu movies and 11 samurai movies.

Looking at the other labels--I saw 17 movies with handlebar mustaches, 84 movies with ill-fitting pants/underpants, 15 movies with eyepatches, and 17 movies with cannibalism. The 79 movies I watched with nudity lends credence to my wife's claim that I seek out movies with nudity. The fact that I saw 27 movies with male frontal nudity (if I gave an award, Ewan McGregor's junk in that dull Peter Greenaway movie) and only 23 kung-fu movies likely means that I'm a homosexual. Suprisingly, I only saw 8 movies with puppets. I saw a whopping 224 movies with violence but only 154 movies with blood.

Jen only picked out 10 movies, including the huge surprise that was The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. My children picked out 12 more.

I paid for only two movies this year--the new Indiana Jones movie cost whatever two tickets costs, and I got the poker comedy The Grand from the dollar rental machine at the grocery store. Wall-E, by the way, is only the second Pixar movie I haven't seen in a theater.

I gave out three 20's, but two of those were for El Santo movies. The rating I gave out the most was a 16. I gave 57 movies a rating of 16. I only gave two 1 ratings. My average rating, assuming my math is correct, was a 12.978.

One of those was the worst movie I saw all year, the dreadfully offensive Facing the Giants. A runner-up, even though it had a rating better than Manos: The Hands of Fate, would be the terrible remake of The Wicker Man.

My best personal discovery of the year--The Lone Wolf and Cub series. Also worth mentioning would be the movies of Guy Maddin, Mario Bava, and Preston Sturges.

Here are the best movie experiences of the year. I'm including only movies that I had either previously not seen or have not seen bunches of times. That elimates favorites like Rear Window, The Gold Rush, Mr. Hulot's Holiday, Duck Soup, The Triplets of Belleville, The General, and The Big Lebowski. And The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly which I didn't want to include in the above sentence because it would have forced me to use semicolons.

The best bad, all highly entertaining and highly recommended:

Manos: The Hands of Fate
Night of the Ghouls, which I watched on my birthday because I couldn't find The Big Lebowski and continue my tradition.
The Beast of Yucca Flats
The Happening

The best good:

The Passion of Joan of Arc
Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors
The Falls
The Holy Mountain
Viridiana
McCabe and Mrs. Miller
Woman in the Dunes
No Country for Old Men
There Will Be Blood
Days of Heaven

Finally, one last statistic. Amount of shane-movies readers? Four! I hope to double that in 2009!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Who knows how many 2009 readers you may lose due to continued ignorant 'It's a Wonderful Life' shots?

What happened to "Charlie Stewart's Nipples"? I'm amazed you made the 365. Maybe the kids' surliness during 'Panda' was due to movie overdose.

Have you seen 'In Bruges'? These two hitmen are in Belgium, and the one played by Colin Farrell, who hates the town, suddenly exclaims in utter delight "they're filmin' midgets!". It was very funny and I thought of you. Dinklage was the midget and has a "large" role.

A few random thoughts; what are the rules for semi-colon use, and I thought I was the only one afraid of them; the new 'Indiana Jones' sucked; I thought of suggesting genre months for this year's theme but then thought myself presumptuous, and it would work worse than 'Indiana Jones...' movies.
...

and you are gay.

Shane said...

That wasn't an 'Its a Wonderful Life' shot! It was just the truth. Both of those movies are superior!

Jen didn't like the new name, and I don't want to lose her as half a reader.

Not seen 'In Bruges' but saw it mentioned on the fake-Ebert and fake-Siskel show today as one of their best of 2008 picks. No 'Indiana Jones' on either list though.

The kids didn't watch 365 movies with me. Abbey watched the most, but she liked almost all of them. And she gave 'Panda' a 20.

Semicolon use...I'm not afraid of them, by the way. But I had all those commas in there already and would have had to change them to semicolons which would have taken too much time. The rule: if you have a list of three or more things (where you'd normally use a comma) and items in the list already have commas, you have to use semicolons instead to avoid confusion. So. . .

My favorite movies are Tron, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Even Dwarfs Started Small, and Koyanisqatsi.

My daughter's favorite movies are For a Few Dollars More; The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly; Once Upon a Time in the West; and Yojimbo.

The only other thing a semicolon does is make compound sentences; it's easier than using conjuctions.

Genre months? Hmm...not a terrible idea, but I often pick things out based on my mood. I was thinking about watching three movies for every year from 1920 until now, but I'm not sure I want to do that either.

l@rstonovich said...

The Station Agent is all Dinklage. I really liked it the first time I saw it but the second time it seemed a little too cutesy. I don't recall you reviewing it...

Great year in Shaneville!