Best Scene Featuring an Animal or Animals
Reindeer, White Reindeer
The fantastic work of the bull in Song of the South
The pigman in Deathstalker, contemplating a cooked pig head
The Billy the Bass pride in The Act of Killing...because who wouldn’t be proud to own that?
Ernest Borgnine with those goat horns
The talking rabbit from The Nasty Rabbit
Bart the Bear in The Edge
Freddie Jones’ quacking and the pigeon talk in Wild at Heart
that bunny twitching his little CGI leg in the Hobbit movie
A pigeon in Amour
Tai as Vera the elephant in Larger than Life
The beheaded rooster in Faces of Death
That snake-in-the-bathtub scene in Deadly Blessing
The giant fish demon at the beginning of Journey to the West
The random penguin in Terror of Tiny Town (I know it shouldn’t be eligible since that movie was a repeat, but I didn’t notice it before)
The winner: Gargamel’s cat (subtitled “Are you dead?”) in the charming The Smurfs
The “Thank God That Scene Was Unnecessarily Long” Award
J-Lo doing Yoga for a half an hour in Gigli (Go ahead and add this to my "wife" category)
Something That I Haven’t Mentioned But Want To
That scene where June Squibb lifts her skirt at the graveside in Nebraska
Best One-and-Done Performance
Catherine Gaffigan as crazy Arlene in Sisters and Kevin Farr, the fat Amish kid in Deadly Blessing--both good. But Gary Poulter’s disturbing and sometimes hilarious G-Daawg in Joe is perhaps the best one-and-done performance of all time.
The E.T., Exceptional Use of Product Placement in Film
I’m giving this award to E.T.
from poprewind.com
The Shlammalammadingdong, Worst Movie Twist
The end of Forbidden World. It's a real Ding Whopper! (I'm not sure I've ever made less sense on this blog.)
Best Nicolas Cage Moment
The yellow suit and the “I love co-cock!” in Sonny, the famous Nicolas Cage Point in Wild at Heart, the pair of Elvis songs in the same movie? This award goes to one of my favorite Nicolas Cage moments and the origin of my new band name--”I had a boner with a capital O.”
Best Crispin Glover Moment
Watching him attempt to act like a normal teeneager in Teachers, making sandwiches or doing a roach-in-underpants dance or trying to contain a black leather glove in Wild at Heart or Olivia Newton Bomb in The Beaver Trilogy. Or maybe just his Marlon Brando impression in that movie. We don’t need a winner here, do we?
Best Animated Movie
A pretty strong field in a year without a Pixar release! We’ve got Song of the South, only slightly racist; the Russian Winnie the Pooh (Vinni Pukh); the fun Lego Movie only slightly marred by the appearance of Will Ferrell; the brilliant stop-animation of Toys in the Attic. The winner is the most recent animated movie I watched, however--Don Hertzfeldt’s It’s Such a Beautiful Day.
Worst Animated Movie
Planes
The Wiseau
I’ve dreaded having to do this one, the award I give for a trifecta of ineptitude in writing, directing, and acting. And I’m sorry, Robert Rundle. You did something special, something else special, and then something else special in Cybernator, and if this was another year, you’d have a shot of winning. But two guys set the bar mighty low here. We’re talking movies worthy of being mentioned in the same sentence with Tommy Wiseau and The Room. Yes, that kind of brilliance. Choosing between Sam Mraovich with his gloriously inept Ben and Arthur and Michael Mfume and his shockingly terrible Ax ‘Em is one of the toughest decisions of my entire life. Now I know how the Academy Award people felt when trying to decide between Goodfellas and Dances with Wolves! I’m going to give the Wiseau to Sam Mraovich, who gets the edge because he had an agenda with Ben and Arthur which just makes the failure a little more profound.
Best Documentary
The Bridge, The Battered Bastards of Baseball, A Band Called Death, Invisible War, Pervert’s Guide to Cinema, Cutie and the Boxer, Tabloid, Twenty Feet from Stardom, and Searching for the Sugar Man, Jiro Dreams of Sushi, Reel Injun, These Amazing Shadows, Sick: The Life and Death of Bob Flanagan, and The Final Member were all good, but The Act of Killing was the best documentary I saw this year.
Most Unpleasant Movie Experience of the Year
It doesn’t seem that I was forced to watch anything against my will this year, so I only have myself to blame. Junior, Trespass, Fred and Vinnie, Planes, R.I.P.D., and Blah Blah Blah Charles Swan III were all dreadful, but the worst bad movie I sat through this year was easily the Kennedy assassination movie Parkland which, as I previously said, I now own. Thanks, Josh!
Best Actor
More tough competition--Love all the following performances:
John Turturro, Miller’s Crossing
Hoosier James Baskett, South of the South
David Kross, The Reader
Denis Lavant, brilliantly versatile in Holy Motors
Taika Waititi, Boy
Philip Seymour Hoffman, lots of things but especially Doubt
Ulrich Muhe, The Lives of Others
Rick Moranis, Ghostbusters II
Bruce Dern, Nebraska
Tom Hanks, Saving Mr. Banks or Captain Phillips
Jared Leto, Dallas Buyer’s Club (although McConaughey’s good, too)
Nicolas Cage, Joe
Gary Poulter, Joe
Tom Hardy, Locke
Lew Zealand, two Muppet movies
Joaquin Phoenix, Her
young John Huck McAbee, Crazy and Thief
Those are all great, but in a bit of a surprise, the Best Actor Award goes to Hank Azaria’s brilliance as Gargamel in The Smurfs.
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Or maybe Gary Poulter. . .
Best Actress
Brigitte Helm, Metropolis
Strother Martin, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
Kate Winslet, The Reader
Marissa Mell, Danger: Diabolik
Meryl Streep, Doubt or Ironweed
Faye Dunaway, so brilliant in Mommie Dearest
Sandra Bullock, Gravity
Emma Thompson, Saving Mr. Banks
Judi Dench, Philomena
Cate Blanchett, Blue Jasmine
the great Ruth Gordon, Rosemary’s Baby
Terrific performances but the only woman who can win this award this year is Scarlett Johansson in various things. Well done, Scarlett! Let me know if you want to come over and pick up your award.
The Torgo, Worst Acting Performance
When you intentionally watch as many bad movies as I do, this is always going to be a tough category. There are a lot of names here that you’d expect to see in a Worst Acting Performance list:
Nicolas Cage was on the Best Actor list but makes it here, too, for what he did in Trespass
Schwarzenegger was terrible in Junior but not as bad as he is in Jingle All the Way or Kindergarten Cop
William Shatner gave a wonderful performance in Devil’s Rain but was Torgo-blocked by Ernest Borgnine and especially Woody Chambliss in the same movie
Hulk Hogan brought his A-game to No Holds Barred but was overshadowed by the terrible villain in that movie played by Kurt Fuller who gave Bad Movie Club the word “jockasses”
The great Adam West showed up drunk for Omega Cop and not quite as drunk in Zombie Nightmare
Clint Howard performed that aforementioned puppet show and threw down a lot of bad puns in Ice Cream Man
Even Tommy Wiseau made an appearance in a short, “The House That Drips Blood On Alex”
And I’ll always contend that Charlton Heston gave a Torgo-worthy performance in The Planet of the Apes
As with the Billy Curtis, I’ve always wanted a woman to win this award. There were a lot of great candidates:
Liz Renay, in both Desperate Living and The Nasty Rabbit
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Edith Massey, Queen Carlotta of Desperate Living
Mink Stole, also from Desperate Living
Whoever played the mother in If Footmen Tire You, What Will Horses Do?
Ellen McElduff as Wanda June in Maximum Overdrive
Princess Livingston was as almost as good as she is good looking in Mudhoney
I’ve put a lot of thought into this (as I always do) and don’t think the men and women should compete for the Torgo any longer. Therefore, the first ever winner of the Livingston Award for Best Worst Performance by a Female goes to Princess Livingston for her work in Mudhoney.
Now back to the Torgo. Rounding it all out, we’ve got the following:
Hal Hopper, also in Mudhoney, snarling and hollering every one of his lines
Fred Stoller, a guy who should never have been called upon to carry an entire movie in Fred and Vinnie
Sam Mraovich, our Wiseau winner
Max Alvarado, the actor who played Best Auxiliary Character Lupo in D’Wild Wild Weng
John Terlesky, a gum chewer in Chopping Mall
Ted Prior, Deadly Prey, showcasing the best-worst tough guy voice I’ve ever heard
Brent Huff, The Perils of Gwendoline in the Land of the Yik Yak
Terence Jenkins with that terrible German accent in Vampire Cop
Ed Cannon, Vampire Cop himself
R.J. McKay as Raymond, also in Vampire Cop
Lonnie Schuyler and his eyebrows, Cybernator
Thomas Ian Griffith, evil Terry in Karate Kid III, with help from a ponytale and comically malicious bird noises
Kurt Thomas, the hero of Gymkata
Richard Ruxton, doing his best Jimmy Stewart impression in half a t-shirt in Galaxy Invader
Dean Hagopian, Zombie Nightmare’s medical examiner
Gregary Josiph [sic], the coolest demon ever in Miracle Man
Whoever plays the guy in the wheelchair in Miracle Man
Bill Freed, Hitler’s head
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I’m torn between three here, but the winner of the Torgo for 2014 has got to be Richard Ruxton for the job he did in Galaxy Invader. To stand out in a movie like that takes a special kind of performance.
The Manos
Curse of the Bigfoot (really should be on the bad-bad list instead of this good-bad movie one), Deathstalker, The Fantastic Four, Forbidden World, The Apple, They Saved Hitler’s Brain (same as Curse of the Bigfoot), The Devil’s Rain, Megaforce, No Holds Barred, Chopping Mall, The Nasty Rabbit, BMX Bandits, Deadly Prey, The Howling III, Mutant Hunt, Omega Cop, The Perils of Gwendoline in the Land of the Yik Yak, Creature, Beaks: The Movie, Robowar, Attack of the Beast Creatures, Creepozoid, Gigli, Ice Cream Man, Zombie Nightmare, Undefeatable, Robo Vampire, Tammy and the T-Rex
If you’re looking for some good-bad movie fun, almost all of those would work for you. But the Manos can’t go to all of those. I narrowed it down to ten finalists:
D'Wild Wild Weng
Mosquito
Cybernator
Galaxy Invader
Vampire Cop
Miracle Man
Ax ‘Em
Ben and Arthur
If Footmen Tire You, What Will Horses Do?
Hard Ticket to Hawaii
And the winner of this year’s Manos, one of the most prestigious awards here at shane-movies, is Ben and Arthur. Congratulations, Sam Mraovich. Let me know if you want to come pick up your award, but it can’t be when Scarlett Johansson is here.
Best Movie I Saw This Year
As always, I’m excluding things I’d already seen. That leaves out Casablanca, Miller’s Crossing, Metropolis, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Fist of Fury, The Usual Suspects, Black Sunday, Boogie Nights, 8 ½, Happiness, To Kill a Mockingbird, Night of the Hunter, Wild Strawberries, Koyaanisqatsi, Dog Day Afternoon, The Sting, Tootsie, Saturday Night Fever, King Kong, West Side Story, Rosemary’s Baby, The King of Comedy, Buffet Froid, The Exorcist, 12 Angry Men, and Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
So the candidates are the following, in no particular order:
I Hired a Contract Killer
Me and You and Everyone We Know
No Man’s Land
Black Sabbath
Danger: Diabolik
Holy Motors
Doubt
The Lives of Others
Amour
Inside Llewyn Davis
The Lone Ranger
Gravity
Nebraska
Grand Budapest Hotel
The Wolf of Wall Street
Saving Mr. Banks
The Beaver Trilogy
Her
Crazy and Thief
Sisters
Little Fugitive
Viy
The Machinist
Doggie Woggiez Poochie Woochiez!
The winner: Grand Budapest Hotel
