2012 Year in Review! (Part Two)

Best Scene Featuring a Woodchipper: A three-way tie! Fargo’s famous woodchipper scene, of course, but also a great scene in Tucker and Dale vs. Evil and another in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. The latter, however, does not involve a woodchipper at all. It’s a snowchipper. But none of you have made it this far in my year-in-review, so it doesn’t really matter.

Best Scene Featuring a Nipple: Lots of candidates here as I’ve seen my fair share of nipples, but Jeff Goldblum tweaking his own while looking at dinosaurs in Jurassic Park takes the prize.

Best Monster: Various trolls in Trollhunter, crocodile men and a bitchin’ Cyclops in The Devil’s Sword, that bird puppet in The Giant Claw, Godzilla or his enemy Destororah or whatever the hell that thing’s name was, Gamera’s knife-headed opponent Guiron, Alice Cooper’s monster dog, the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man from Ghostbusters, the stop-motion gems in Equinox? They’re great monsters, but the titular Godmonster, a deformed sheepish thing, was the best monster I saw this year. And by that, I mean the worst.

Favorite Movie Moments That Don’t Fit Anywhere Else in This Mess:

“I’ve got you now, little guy” from Mousehunt
Rosemary and Herman sharing a carrot in Rushmore
The chase scene involving a bicycle and a frog running on its hind legs in the otherwise dreadful The Secret of the Magic Gourd
Jackie Chan imitating Keaton in Project A II
Richard E. Grant eating fish sticks in How to Succeed in Advertising
Gordon-Levitt reenacting the Star Wars trash compactor scene in Hesher. . .also a scene where he farts.
Loch Ness monster eating a cowboy in The Seven Faces of Dr. Lao
Gene Wilder going bonkers over his blue blanket in The Producers
Doctors trying to save a girl’s life in Hobo with a Shotgun
A one-armed man making air quotes in Brief Encounters with Hideous Men
A dough-juggling scene in A Woman, A Gun, and a Noodle Shop
The breastfeeding of a unicorn in Black Moon
Liam’s prayer in The Grey
The Orlac-esque shower butt-poke scene from Guy Maddin’s Cowards Bend the Knee
Nicholson orders food in Five Easy Pieces
All the wonderfully disturbing places Noe takes the viewer in Enter the Void
Frankenstein’s sexy sexy bride twitching and chirping
Bill Murray’s bowling

Most Outrageous Claim That I Made All Year: That John Carpenter is somehow responsible for 9/11

My Best Idea of the Year: Taking A Night to Remember, digitally remove the iceberg, and digitally include Rip Torn throwing wrenches at the ship.

My Worst Idea of the Year: Goonies 3: Mama Fratelli’s Bedroom Adventures in 3-D

Best Comment I Got All Year: “Whatever your an asshole you don’t even get the fucking brilliance of this movie. it is a parody douche bag. GO watch NOT ANOTHER TEEN MOVIE or something that you can get because WET HOT is obvously over your fucking head.” From Anonymous.

Best Fight Scene of the Year: Nothing beats the titular monkey from A*P*E fighting that rubber shark although Edward Norton fighting himself in Fight Club, Singh’s multi-jointed contortionist kung-fu moves in Kung Fu vs. Yoga, and the seemingly endless gun fight at the end of Samurai Cop are all pretty good. And if you’d call it a fight, the scene where Samurai Cop throws a sword and chops off a guy’s arm is great, too.

Worst Special Effect of the Year: The candidates: Most of A*P*E, the Darth Vader-esque wizard getting his head chopped in half in The Man Who Saved the World, the exploding birds in Birdemic: Shock and Terror, the play-doh heads in Riki-Oh. Wait, that can’t be all the candidates. I’ll have to come back to this one later.

Best Sound Effect: A slide whistle accompanying a nutsack grab in Kung Fu vs. Yoga. The worst sound effect is probably the chomping of that bird puppet in The Giant Claw.

Top Things That Would Get Me in Trouble If My Wife Read My Blog (aka A Year of Randiness):

Watching the x-rated Alice in Wonderland
Typing that I have a “thing” for Marion Cotillard
Claiming that Jennifer Aniston’s character saying “I love kung-fu” is the most arousing thing ever
How I’d like to pat Claudia Cardinale’s behind
Admitting that I was sexually aroused by a taxi
Fantasizing about 6 Shelley Duvalls at one dinner table
Joy Hammon’s car washing abilities
Speculating on how I’d probably consider dating Berenice Bejo if the opportunity presented itself
Whitney Moore “as cute as can be”
“I like animated nudity as much as the real thing.”
“I’ve been looking for a good tentacle rape scene.”
Admitting that I was aroused by Audrey II
Claiming that Sally Fields was my first lover
Adding Caroline Munro’s winking to my masturbation rolodex
Waxing poetic about the way Uma Thurman moves in Pulp Fiction
Writing about how I have no use for period horror movies except for the cleavage
Raving about Jannis Farley’s posterior
“I may have a crush on Bradley Cooper.”
Writing about lovely Genesis Rodriguez’s “actual buttocks”
“All the points I’m giving this are for the boobs.”

Best Sex Scene: So many good ones that I can’t pick just one. There’s FDR having his mistress squirt mustard and ketchup all over his “little polio legs,” Victoria Abril getting it on with a diver toy in Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down, Levitch’s simulated (I think) orgasm in The Cruise, a teddy bear and clam chowder can sex scene in Period Piece, Kevin McDonald’s attempts to sodomize a ghost in that Guy Maddin movie, and a man having his way with a library book return slot in The Onion Movie. Seriously, what kinds of movies am I watching? Anyway, Elizabeth Berkley’s swimming pool scene has got to win this one.

Best Documentary: It’s Agnes Varda’s The Gleaners and I although I really liked her other documentary that I saw (Beaches of Agnes), The Times of Harvey Milk, The Cruise and Atomic Café which I’d already seen, Hands on a Hard Body, Dark Days, and The Gods of Times Square, the latter which I wrote about in a way that seemed to piss off the director.

Best Animated Movie: When the Wind Blows, topping that stop-animated pirate movie.

Worst Animated Movie: It wasn’t going to win the Manos, so I wanted to mention it somewhere else. Titanic: The Legend Lives On. . . really has to be seen to be believed.

Best Dance Scene: Chris Marker almost makes Jarmusch’s early go Permanent Vacation worth the effort. Bill Murray’s dance in Zissou is a thing of beauty. “Moses Supposes” in Singin’ in the Rain is terrific. Salma Hayek does some good work in From Dusk till Dawn. A nude Claudia Jennings sort-of dances in a disco torture chamber in Deathsport. Madsen’s dancing in Reservoir Dogs is one of the reasons I watched that movie twice this year. Gamera dances, but he isn’t as good as Godzilla in Monster Zero. Oldman doesn’t dance, but he does conduct an apartment trashing in a way that’s almost like a dance. The winner? Obviously, it’s got to be Matthew McConaughey in Magic Mike.

Something I’m Still Confused About: That fucking cube in The Avengers!

Best Actor: Goldblum as Jesus, Goldblum as Freak 1 in Death Wish, Richard E. Grant in both Withnail and How to Succeed in Advertising, Tony Randall’s tour de force in The Seven Faces of Dr. Lao, Kingsley in Hugo, Albert Brooks in Drive, Bronson Dudley’s small part in Trees Lounge, Gambon in The Cook. . . (one of my favorites ever maybe), Norton as twins in Leaves of Grass, Mike O’Connell’s hilarious work in The Living Wake, Craig Roberts in Submarine, Alain Delon in Purple Noon, Ossie Davis as JFK, Peter Stormare from Fargo, Gleason as Smokey, Schwartzman in Rushmore. It’s hard to pick a favorite, but when you call two Gene Wilder performances (Frankenstein and Wonka) the “greatest ever,” you sort of commit yourself.

Best Actress: Caroline Munro (twice!), Whitney Moore from Birdemic, Catherine Keener in Johnny Suede, Imelda Staunton from Rat, Bejo in a pair of performances, Anita Ford and Pam Grier, both in The Big Bird Cage, Catherine Spaak in The Libertine, the hilarious Melissa McCarthy from Bridesmaids, Anais Reboux in the tough Fat Girl, Katie Aselton in The Puffy Chair, Cecillia Stark in her lone performance in Strangers in Paradise, Marie-Josee Croze from The Barbarian Invasions. What a list! The winner? Una O ‘Connor’s brilliance as Millie in The Bride of Frankenstein!

Best Musical Moments of the Year:

Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem rock on a bus in The Great Muppet Caper

The “Dingaling” song in that x-rated Alice in Wonderland
Crispin Glover’s little song in Twister
Rapping dogs on the Titanic in that awful cartoon
“Puttin’ on the Ritz” from Young Frankenstein
Wesley Willis’s song about Jar-Jar Binks in the George Lucas documentary
A shirtless Tony Randall playing a pan flute, a runner-up in my nipple category
“Satisfaction” from Riki-Oh
“Come Out and Play” from The Warriors
The talent show from Revenge of the Nerds
 
The best musical moment? That would be the Muppets’ cover of “Smells Like Teen Spirit”