2009 Recap!

I saw exactly 40 movies with little people this year, so the Little Person of the Year award had lots of contenders. Billy Curtis was again in the running for his role in High Plains Drifter. The versatile Danny Woodburn had a nice part in Watchmen. Jordan Prentice was great as Jimmy in In Bruges. Peter Dinklage, last year's winner, was in Elf. And how can you beat Raymond Griffiths as "Desperate Dwarf" in the abysmal 9 Dead Gay Guys, a little person who isn't afraid to get a little naked?

But this year's Little Person of the Year award goes to Jordan Prentice, not only for In Bruges but for his work as a groupie in the The Life and Hard Times of Guy Terrifico. If you read my review, I actually credit Peter Dinklage with the performance, just as a reader of mine mistook Prentice for Dinklage in In Bruges. The least I can do is give him the Little Person of the Year award. Sorry, little guy!

Best Performance by an Animal: Josephine the monkey in The Cameraman, The Circus, and The Kid Brother.

Best Lines: "You stink. You're a stinker and you stink." (The Lion in Winter) "Mugwump jism can't be beat." (Naked Lunch) Rex Reed's "Where are my tits?" (Myra Breckinridge) "You fat barrel of monkey spunk." (Shawshank)

Movie Moment Most Likely to Make Me Laugh Outloud at a Funeral If I Accidentally Think about It: Bruno's fears that he's about to pay-per-view Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium because the remote control is wedged in his butt crack.

Most Magical Movie Moment #1: Natalie Portman laughing while Dustin Hoffman dances on bubble wrap in Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium. It's a scene that lasts 15 minutes.

Best Buster Keaton Moments: A tie between the shot in "The Twilight Zone" of a 60-year-old Buster in his underpants and the chase scene in Go West where he's dressed as Beelzebub and running from cattle.

Best Alien: Bug-eyed aliens from Killers from Space.

Best Zombie: Bob in Dawn of the Dead.

Best Documentary: Man with a Movie Camera. Although Symbiopsychotaxiplasm Take One, Chang, and Herzog's Lessons in Darkness aren't far behind.

Best Reader Comment: "Giving the greatest Disney animated film a 14 is bull$#!^"

Most Magical Movie Moment #2: Watching Buckwheat giving the pope a bath in Harmony Korine's Mister Lonely.

Best Special Ed. Effect: Car hits mannequin in I Married a Monster from Outer Space.

Best Opening Credits: Watchmen.

Best Spoken Words: The way Orson Welles says "a ham sandwich" in F Is for Fake.

Most Magical Movie Moment #3: Chaplin's musical barbershop shaving routine in The Great Dictator.

Best Action Sequence: The climactic chainsaw fight at the end of Motel Hell.

Most Magical Movie Moment #4: Godzilla's victory dance on Planet X in Monster Zero.

Best Movie Dance Scene Not Involving Godzilla: The wonderfully choreographed mice dance in Coraline.

Most Ludicrous Moment: Lois Lane surviving a flight into space in Superman IV: The Quest to Kill a Franchise.

Best Tearjerking Moments: (tie) The first twenty minutes of Up and the last scene in The Straight Story. And almost all of Buster Keaton's Free and Easy.

Most Magical Movie Moment #5: Nicholas Cage laughing at a monkey performing karate in Ghostrider.

Best Chest: Douglas Fairbanks in The Thief of Baghdad.

Funniest Moment Not Involving Nicholas Cage Laughing at a Monkey Performing Karate: The terrorism bit in Jackass II.

Best Line of Dialogue That I Forgot to Include Up There: Jessy from Greaser's Palace: "I bring you a message. Exactly six miles north of Skagg Mountain in the Valley of Pain, there lives an evil devil-monster. His name is Bingo Gas Station Motel Cheeseburger with a Side of Aircraft Noise and You'll Be Gary Indiana. And he loves to hurt people. The last time I saw Bingo Gas Station Motel Cheeseburger with a Side of Aircraft Noise and You'll Be Gary Indiana, he told me what he wants to do. He wants to come down here and kill each and every one of you. But I said to him, "Bingo, wait a minute!" And the reason I said that is because I believe in you people. I believe you can do the job. I believe you can help each other. I believe you can make this world a better place to live in. That's it."

Worst Acting: Tim Roth in The Incredible Hulk? Tim Roth in Four Rooms? Nic Cage in Ghostrider or anything else I watched with Nic Cage? The gardener in The Mad Monster? Nope. It's Joe Don Baker in Final Justice. When you suck worse than Nic Cage, you know you suck.

Best Samurai Moment: The battle with skiing ninjas in White Heaven in Hell, the final installment of the Lone Wolf and Cub series.

Most Horrifying Moment: The sight of Sean Connery in a red diaper in Zardoz.

Most Magical Movie Moment #6: Watching the T-Rex eat a little person in The Valley of Gwangi.

Most Magical Movie Moment #7: Brad Pitt's final scene in Burn After Reading. The smile does it.

Another Tearjerking Moment That I Almost Forgot: Jek Porkin's death in Star Wars: A New Hope.

Random Thing That's Kind of Sad: That I know the name "Jek Porkins" at all.

Best Sex Scene of the Year: Tough one this year. There was Jan Svankmajer's animated meat sex in the short called "Meat". Svankmajer's man-on-seven-foot-puppet sex scene in Faust was pretty hot. And how can anybody forget the extremely erotic scene in Watchmen or the artfully steamy scene in The Brown Bunny? The absurd corncob scene in Troll 2 was about as sexy as it gets. The award, however, goes to Matthew Modine and a bird in Birdy.

Best Forehead: Another close one! Tom Hanks in Apollo 13? Tim Robbins in Shawshank? Nic Cage in Ghostrider? Nope! The award goes to Orson Welles for the work his forehead did in The Third Man.

Movie That Most Missed Richard Harris: Whatever Harry Potter movie I saw this year.

Best Musical Act: It's hard to beat Tom Waits holding a burning umbrella while performing "9th and Hennepin" in Big Time, and Robyn Hitchcock was great to see as a wedding singer in Rachel Getting Married. It's always great seeing Chico and Harpo do their thing, especially in A Day at the Races when Harpo completely destroys a piano. The hyperkinetic musicians from Underground deserve mention. The Flaming Lips' Wayne Coyne's marching band with female genitalia for heads sure was something. And the chimney sweeps' spontaneous musical number from Who Are You, Polly Maggoo? was a beautiful moment. And the Woman in the Radiator singing "In Heaven Everything Is Fine" in Eraserhead is just classic. However, nothing tops the piano/drums duo that Werner Herzog found in a brothel for Fata Morgana.

Most Magical Movie Moment # 8: The hobgoblins-stealing-golf-cart scene from Hobgoblins.

Best Superhero Movie: Watchmen

Best Monster: Lots to choose from here. Harryhausen's octopus, the "It" from It Came from Beneath the Sea. Harryhausen's creatures in the aforementioned Gwangi. Harryhausen's horned cyclops with fuzzy legs in The 7th Voyage of Sinbad. Harryhausen's skeletons in Jason and the Argonauts. The dinosaur puppets in Future War. Those fantastic and terrifying trash bags in Attack of the Giant Leeches. "Frankenstein" in Frankenstein vs. the Space Monster. The aliens in that one are really cool, too. The ridiculous troll puppets in Troll and Troll 2. The monstrosities from Big Man Japan. King Ghidorah? The stop-motion turtles in Laserblast. The twin gargantua from War of the Gargantuas. Werewolf's werewolf. The rubbery phantom in The Phantom from 10,000 Leagues. The rubbery monster in Zaat? The rubbery monster in It's Alive!. They're all so good that I can't pick a winner.

Best Chase Scene: Harold Lloyd's in Speedy.

Best Animation: I saw about 30 animated movies this year. The very best were likely Norshteyn's "Tale of Tales" and Khrjanovsky's "Glass Harmonica" from the Russian animation compilations. Spirited Away got the highest rating, but I'd seen that already. So the award goes to The Adventures of Prince Achmed from 1926. Coraline isn't far behind. Beauty and the Beast, however, is.

Most Magical Movie Moment #9: Watching Charley Bowers' doll come to life in one of his 1920's short.

Movie Moment That Filled Me with Nostalgia Like No Other: Harrey Caray's explanation of where Mark Grudzielanek's nickname (G-man) came from. Or, his home run call of a ball rolling between two outfielders.

Best Opening Scene Not in a Pixar Movie: The opening scene of The Killers.

Most Magical Movie Moment #10: The funhouse scene at the end of The Lady from Shanghai.

Best Actress: Tura Santana as Varla in Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! There is no second place.

Best Actor: Matti Pellonpaa in various things. He's my new favorite actor. But there were a lot of great performances this year: Kumar Pallara in Bottle Rocket, Coogan in Hamlet 2, Crispin Glover in everything he's in, Shintaro Katsu as Zatoichi, Don Knotts in The Private Eyes, Joe Estevez's brilliance in Soultaker, Angus Scrimm's menacing performance as the Tall Man in Phantasm, Bob Dylan in Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, Slim Pickens in Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, Michael Bryer as the hippie in Laserblast (his only acting performance), Jean-Paul Belmondo in Le Doulos, Sonny Bono as both man and foliage in Troll, Vincent Price in everything he was in, Bela Lugosi in Bride of the Monster, and Tor Johnson in both Bride and Plan 9. Whew.

Most Magical Movie Moment #11: The wacky training scene from Mr. Freedom. Actually, lots of Mr. Freedom was magical.

Most Magical Movie Moment #12-20: Various amazing and/or impossible shots in I Am Cuba.

A Year of Great Villains: The Great Dictator, Charles Muntz (Christoper Plummer's voice in Up), Shelly Winters in Cleopatra Jones, the Tall Man, Gene Hackman as Lex Luther in Superman IV: The Quest to Make You Hate Superman Movies, the deep voice in Alphaville, the producers of The Cannonball Run, Bill from the Kill Bill movies, Audrey Jr. in The Little Shop of Horrors, the creepy dude in Spoorloos, General Paul Mireau in Paths of Glory, David Cronenburg, the Other Mommy in Coraline, the truck in Spielberg's Duel, the weird children in Village of the Damned, the evil aliens in Plan 9 or Frankenstein Vs. the Space Monster, the sausage makin' farmer in Motel Hell, the religious right in One Nation Under God, A Clockwork Orange's Alex, Cruella Deville in 101 Dalmations, and W. from W.

Worst Movie of the Year: Take your pick from these genuinely bad movies with absolutely no entertainment value: the Rollerball remake, My Name Is Bruce, the exploitative How's Your News, Ghostrider, Zombie Strippers, Monster Squad, Cats and Dogs, Final Justice, The Cannonball Run, Cronenburg's eXistenZ or Crash, Call of the Cthulhu. It was an ugly, ugly year. I'll have to give the title of Worst Movie of the Year to Begotten, mostly because it's a terrible movie but also because a reader insulted me after I wrote about not liking the movie. Congratulations, Begotten. You're the worst piece of crap I subjected myself to this year.

Most Unpleasant Movie Experience of the Year: That honor goes to another "Worst Movie" contender--Zu Warriors. I still can't wash the taste of that one out of my mouth.

Best Worst Movie of the Year (aka The Manos Award): Zaat, Monster-a-Go-Go, Future War, Laserblast, Hobgoblins, Plan 9 from Outer Space, The Phantom from 10,000 Leagues, Werewolf, Attack of the Giant Leeches. Those are all bad movies. Really bad movies. But they were at least entertaining movies. I figured Troll 2 would win the Manos Award without a fight this year, but then I saw It's Alive! and Frankenstein vs. the Space Monster in the same week and they blew me away with their ineptitude. I'm giving the Manos Award to It's Alive! though simply because of the "The End?" at the end of it and the use of an exclamation point in the title.

Best Movies That I Had Never Seen Before of the Year: Lots of contenders

Last Year at Marienbad
Paths of Glory
Le Trou
Bresson's Pickpocket
My Life As a Dog
Cleo from 5 to 7
I Am Cuba
Stray Dog
Ordet
Man with a Movie Camera
Europa
Slacker
Synecdoche, New York
Underground
The Spirit of the Beehive
Speedy
The Last Laugh
La Jetee
The Adventures of Prince Achmed
Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai
Blue Angel

But the best new-to-Shane movie of the year is The Color of Pomegranates. That's right, anonymous. Eat it.

Some stats:

My readership increased from 4 1/2 to 5 1/2. Very pleasing.

My most common rating was, once again, 16. I only gave three 19's and three 1's.

Movie I watched the most: Up. And I cried both times.

There were two movies that I started but could not finish.

Average rating (again, assuming my math is correct): 12.6, down a few tenths from last year. I did intentionally watch a lot of terrible movies this year though.

And this isn't a statistic, but I am going to start another blog in 2010 while continuing this one. It's going to be devoted to ice creams. The goal => 365 ice creams in 2010.

Thanks for reading, everybody!