2013 Year in Review Part III

Best Scenes Featuring Puppets: Well, it’s hard to argue with Meet the Feebles where the Muppet-like characters engage in sex acts, do drugs, and kill each other. And I did watch a pair of movies featuring the actual Muppets, including the Swedish Chef who apparently can’t be rated lower on a “favorite Muppets” list than Lew Zealand. In Rock and Roll Nightmare, there’s an appearance by what I can only describe as penis puppets, and those are great. As my closest friends and family members know, I love ventriloquist dummies, and Adrian Brody and his dummy are good in Dummy. There’s also a perverse ventriloquist act in the artsy Mansion of Madness. But I keep returning to Peter Jackson’s Feebles, and if I have to pick just one scene, I’m going with the walrus-on-cat sex scene close to the beginning of the film.

Best Nicolas Cage Moment: I didn’t watch many Cage movies this year, shooting my proverbial wad last year or two years ago with the Summer of Cage. But he was great (actually great, not just Cage great) in Scorsese’s Bringing Out the Dead as a guy gradually losing his mind like only Nic can. His best line--”Why’s everything a cardiac arrest? Come on!” But the best Cage moment is in the unremarkable Stolen in which he threatens somebody with a “You touch her and I’ll take you down to the levy and kick your fucking ass!” and, even better, exclaims “Happy face pancakes!” and does that awesome Nicolas Cage pointing motion. You Cage fans know the gesticulation I’m talking about.

Best Setting: Monument Valley in The Searchers? Fincher’s decaying city in Se7en? Australia in the wonderful Wake in Fright? The Nostromo in Alien? Outer freakin’ space from the imagination of Stanley Kubrick? Nope, the best setting is Cano and Jeunet’s Caligarian landscapes in City of Lost Children.

And yes, I realize that the last sentence up there might be “pretentious and sad.”

Best Action Sequence That Is Not Really an Action Sequence: Watching Joaquin Phoenix and Philip Seymour Hoffman square off during a powerful interview scene in The Master.

Best Action Sequence: Sonny Chiba castrates a guy with his bare hand in The Streetfighter. Godzilla imitates that bowler with a terrific crotch chopping motion in Destroy All Monsters. There’s a hilarious Wild West shoot-out in the Czech parody Lemonade Joe between the titular protagonist and a trumpeter in blackface. The Legend of Hell House features a scene where a stuffed cat attacks a character, and that’s pretty awesome. George Peppard and peeps has the only science fiction weiner roast you’re ever likely to see in Battle Beyond the Stars, and although that might not sound like an action scene, it almost is compared to the rest of the film. You just have to check out the “third leg of Bruce Lee” in the Bruceploitation flick The Dragon Lives Again. And shane-blog favorite Crispin Glover plays Twister in Freaky Deaky. But the most awesome action sequence of them all is from the strange Japanese film The Cat in which a cat and a dog fight. It’s something to behold, friends. Here it is on Youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tc2nfqqjb5A

Best Kung-fu Moment: Because I forgot to include it up there--a scene in Duel to the Death, a movie just stuffed with all kinds of ninja action, where a bad guy is decapitated with the head being impaled on a tree limb where it says “You will die!” and explodes.

Here are more things I learned from movies this year:

Russia will ban a movie--like The Exterminating Angel--if it involves people who are not able to leave a dinner party. Because not being able to leave a dinner party is apparently anti-communist.

But A Report on the Party and the Guests tops that because it was “banned forever.”

There’s a Manos: The Hands of Fate reference in ParaNorman.

The first spoken word in 2001: A Space Odyssey doesn’t happen until the 25 minute and 30 second mark.

What happens when a toad is struck by lightning--cause I didn’t know.

There’s a tsunami every other day in Okinawa.

Booze leads to alien invasions.

Jack Nance, Jack Klompus, Flea, and Meatloaf all appear in the same movie.

A movie can still be really good even if it’s got 6 Tom Hankses in it.

Hankses is the plural of Hanks.

David Lynch thinks the rape scene in Blue Velvet is funny.

Best Sex Scene: Nothing beats that Karina wink, and that walrus-on-cat-puppet action could easily be in this category, too. And so could the Cane Toad necrophilia in that documentary. Peter Stormore gets a sex scene in Small Town Murder Songs, and it forced me to call the “man on top” position “The Stormare” ever since. Ted, in the movie Ted, has a sexual encounter with a human female, and Rudy Ray Moore gets funky in Disco Godfather, and yes that’s as life-changing as it sounds. The weirdest sex scenes involve a guy having sex with meat in Mansion of Madness and a naked woman in a monkey mask giving a handjob to a guy with Cerebral Palsy in Crispin Glover’s What Is It? But I’m going with Hitchcock’s randy ending of North by Northwest with that train going through the tunnel. So hot!

Favorite Movie Memory Involving My Wife: It took my wife 11 minutes and 39 seconds to realize that she was watching Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter and not Lincoln. “Abraham Lincoln didn’t kill people” still makes me laugh.

Favorite Thing My Wife Said While Watching a Movie: “If that tiger starts talking, I’m done.” That was during Life of Pi which she apparently didn’t like as much as me. Since we watched it, she’s been “Richard Parker” in my phone.

Best Musical Moment: “76 Trombones” in Bernie. James Franco poignantly rocking that Britney Spears song in Spring Breakers. The “Youth Classroom” segment of the weird Japanese movie Funky Forest. Stingray Sam’s songs in that sci-fi Western musical. Maybe I should have mentioned Stingray Sam in the musical category. The five-minute harmonica solo a woman plays in sci-fi women’s prison movie Star Slammer. The lone song in that new Oz movie with acrobatic Munchkins. Those are all great, but here are six words that put them all to shame--Human xylophone made of little people. And to add three more words--in sailor costumes. That, along with Apples Yonahan who has nothing to do with this category but should be mentioned somewhere in this mess, is in The Dark Backward.

Best Masturbation Scene: Because I still have this category. Three nominees that I can remember from this year: The beginning of Poultrygeist, the creepy forced masturbation horrors in the “L” short from The ABC’s of Death, and the scene with Joaquin Phoenix masturbating on a beach in The Master. I’m going with Poultrygeist because it involves Native Americans and it seems like the politically correct thing to do. After all white people have done to these people, it’s the least I can do.

Most Interesting Politically-Incorrect Things I Learned from Movies This Year: Jewish people are mutants. Indians eat horses. Black people can’t swim. Gay men love singing from the tops of pianos. [Note: These are not my ideas. I got them straight from movies.]

Best Idea Ever: The Klaus Kinski Ride in Damon Packard’s wonderful Reflections of Evil.

Best Idea I Had All Year: A retelling of The Godfather from the perspective of the horse who ends up decapitated.

The Tootie: In honor of Margaret O’Brien, who gave one of those most wretched performances by a child in movie history, I’m naming the “Worst Child Actor” award after her. Linda Scheley is truly awful in The Monolith Monsters, but she thankfully goes into a coma in the movie. David Mendenhall manages to out-bad-act his movie father in Over the Top which is a pretty incredible feat when you think about it. The Tootie goes to Tony Rumford who does some unbelievably terrible work in Abar: The First Black Superman.

Best Shot in Any Movie I Saw All Year: Mike, Sully, a lake, the moon. Monsters University. Man, that Pixar can make pretty pictures.

Most Terrifying Thing Somebody Started Calling Me After We Watched a Movie Together: “Little water snake” after Starchaser: The Legend of Orin. Thanks, Josh.

Most Befuddling Dialogue: The “Why do men have souls?” nonsense at the end of The Beast with 1,000,000 Eyes. Brain-damaged philosophies with pseudo-depth.

Best Depiction of the Devil: Malcolm McDowell gives it his all in Suing the Devil, one of the worst movies I saw all year. But that Satan in Rock and Roll Nightmare is a thing of beauty.

Movie That Made Me Pump My Fist and/or Pee the Most: The gloriously original, almost off-puttingly creative mess from India that is Enthiran. Seriously, see it! It's got a robot and dancing!

Best Moment Featuring an Animal or Part of an Animal: I already mentioned that pooping camel at the end of Even Dwarfs Started Small. George Burrows makes a great monkey in Hillbillys in a Haunted House. The killer chickens in Food of the Gods are great and not in the movie nearly enough. Tom Waits gets to hold a rabbit during his scenes in 7 Psychopaths. There’s some violent kangaroo stuff in Wake in Fright. Howard Vernon uses a rhino horn in creative ways in one of those Jesus Franco women’s prison movies. I’ll mention the talking cat in A Talking Cat?!? a little later. My favorite animal moment is when bushmen in Animals Are Beautiful People imitate animals though. Love that!

Best Performance by an Animal: That chicken (uncredited) at the beginning of City of God.

Best Dance Scene: A picnic “sausage fest” in Funky Forest is great, but this goes to John Turturro and his moves in The Search for One-Eyed Jimmy. Of course, almost every scene in Can’t Stop the Music is nearly orgasmic. [Note: Go ahead and put that last sentence in the "things that would irritate my wife" category.]

Worst Dance Scene: Margaret Livingston stinks it up in the otherwise brilliant Sunset, but the beginning of The Comedy, a scene that involves beer-drenched men dancing in their underwear and at least one penis, is the dance scene I’d rather never see again. You know, because seven times is enough! [Note: That one, too.]

Best Movie Insults:

“You platypus-looking mo-fo”

“Slime-sucking neanderthal”

“Frog pussy”

“Pernicious mummy”

Best Subtitle: From The Cat: “I never knew a cat could fight to and so hard!”