August 2006

The Monday Movie Quiz #117

A single picture clue this week:

I almost feel like I should be posting this quiz on April 1, and it will either fool a lot of people or blow up in my face with more winners than all the other quizzes combined. We'll see. If you know the name of this film, send me the title by late Sunday. Get it right and you'll thrill to the sight of your name in next week's painfully obvious winners circle.

Posted by Steve Monaco at August 27, 2006 11:32 PM

Last week's Movie Quiz winners

The movie last week was Tod Browning's still amazing 1932 film, Freaks, with a real-life cast of pinheads, bearded ladies, and all kinds of other un-PC sideshow types. Effectively banned for decades, and usually only available in 16mm dupes (and thank goodness for them, since one was my intro to the film), it's now a fine-looking DVD and a reference point for horror movies from around the world.

So congratulations and a gooble-gooble to the following winners: Wayne Palmer, Jen McCabe, E. Yarber, Eric Castro, Bill Hearne, Dan Andreasen, Tim McDonough, and Hank Parmer. And special congratulations to Jeff Wepplo, who wins the grand prize this week: the DVD Eminem presents The Anger Management Tour.

Posted by Steve Monaco at August 27, 2006 11:13 PM

The Monday Movie Quiz #116

Mark Gisleson said it best last week: "Pictures are hard." So here's another all-pic quiz, but at least this time there are three to help you:

Know the movie? Send me an email with the title by late Sunday, and if you're right, you'll see your name in next week's winners circle, just like you're one of us!

Posted by Steve Monaco at August 20, 2006 11:03 PM

Last week's Movie Quiz winners

I got almost as many guesses for Frank Zappa's film 200 Motels as I did for the real film, Head (1968), the one and only feature starring The Monkees. (I wonder if, in 2006, FZ isn't recognized by more people than Davy Jones. Hope so!) The script was written by Bob Rafelson (who also directed) and none other than Jack Nicholson. Wayne Palmer wrote that he'd once read that Rafelson and Nicholson were rumored to want to do a sequel "just so they could use as the tag line: From the people who gave you Head!"

So congratulations and a glass of gravy with a hair in it to the following winners: E. Yarber, Wayne Palmer, Joe Rosenberg, Bill McLaughlin, Daryn Woodson, Jay Tiller, Bill Hearne, and Damian Strigens. And special congrats to Ken Schubert, who wins a grand prize that's so groovy, I don't even know what it is yet. (Sometimes with these prizes, Ken, that's best!)

Posted by Steve Monaco at August 20, 2006 10:36 PM

See you next week

While I'll still be on-line to get email, quiz guesses, etc., I'll probably be taking the entire week off from the blog. That's because I'll be helping my youngest get ready for college, and she leaves on Saturday.

Where did the time go? To paraphrase the Freak Brothers, 18 years go by like nothing. And now I don't have kids any more, only adults.

And am I ever glad!

Posted by Steve Monaco at August 14, 2006 2:11 AM

The Monday Movie Quiz #115

That's the clue-- know the movie? Send me an email by late Sunday with the title, then, and see your name in next week's barrel o' winners circle.

Posted by Steve Monaco at August 14, 2006 2:05 AM

Last week's Movie Quiz winners

Apparently, last week's reference to "Chip and Ernie's dad" fooled some people into thinking the picture clue actually came from My Three Sons. When I told this to a regular quiz winner (who wishes to be anonymous-- you'll see why), he replied, "Don't you remember?-- that was when Uncle Bub threw dog pee on Dad
right after Ernie and Chip were caught doing coke in the laundry room. It was great!"

Of course, it was really The Caine Mutiny (1954), with Humphrey Bogart in one of his greatest roles as the strawberries-obsessed Capt. Queeg. "They laughed at me and made jokes but I proved beyond the shadow of a doubt and with... geometric logic... " (Hank Parmer, who supplied that quote, also added, "Poor Queeg-- as if being nicknamed 'Ol' Yellow Stain' wasn't bad enough.")

So congratulations and a chance to throw a drink of your choice in Fred MacMurray's face to the following quiz winners: E. Yarber, Wayne Palmer, Michael Kelly, Hank Parmer, Tim McDonough, Joe Rosenberg, and Bill Hearne. And special congrats to Joe Dawkins, who wins this week's Grand Prize, a Gram Parsons grab bag, including an 11-song CD sampler of the upcoming Gram Parsons: Complete Reprise Sessions, and the Gandulf Hennig film Gram Parsons: Fallen Angel, featuring Emmylou Harris, Keith Richards, and Dwight Yoakam. Shit, Joe, it's actually good stuff this week!

Posted by Steve Monaco at August 14, 2006 1:24 AM

Coffin Joe returns from the (nearly) dead

A posting at Dread Central is announcing that Brazilian horror icon Jose Mojica Marins-- aka Ze do Caixao, aka Coffin Joe-- is directing and starring in the third and final installment of his original Coffin Joe series, a mere 38 years after the second one. Called The Embodiment of Evil, it promises "many gory, gory scenes and a journey into Purgatory!"

(I liked this sentence most of all: "Financing has been handed down from the Federal Government of San Paulo, and Marins will be working with the biggest budget he's ever had, so you can bet it's going to look as glistening and gory as they can get!" Let's hear it for government funding for the arts!)

I'm not holding out a lot of hope: Mojica is 77 years old, although he seems to be doing pretty well in the recent documentary about his career, The Strange World of Jose Mojica Marins (it's good, by the way). So who knows, maybe he'll pull it off. After all, he's still got the fingernails for it.

(P.S. Here's a blog entry I did a few years ago on Mojica's own cinematic autobio, Demons and Wonders, which features the famous headline, "EAT ROACHES AND LICK SKULLS TO GET ROLE IN MOVIE!")

Posted by Steve Monaco at August 10, 2006 3:21 PM

Hey, Joe-- where you gonna run to now?

Or, as they'd say in Mad, Blecch!

Lieberman lost-- everyone except Joe knew he would-- so he's going to run as an "independent." As a Nader voter, I'm especially glad to see it.

What do you think now of your would-be VP, Democrats? After six years of denouncing Ralph for daring to run against the sacred party, when Joe doesn't get his way, how much loyalty does he show?

(Nader was never a Dem, and most of the people who voted for him weren't, including me. But even though a quarter-million registered Florida Democrats voted for Bush in 2000, Nader "lost" Gore the election with a total in that state of 96,000. Right, assholes?)

So the next time you Democrats who are as tiresome about Nader as the Repubs who still bring up Clinton's BJ (in other words, the majority of both backward sects) start to bitch again about Ralph and those of us who voted for him, look instead at your boy Joe, and ask yourselves if you're ever going to see the light about this worthless party that keeps giving you candidates who don't give a fuck about you. And if more of you had listened to us-- and we voted for an anti-war candidate in 2004 who called for Bush's impeachment-- it might have been an actual three-way race in 2000, and who knows what could have happened. One sure thing: whatever it was, it couldn't have been any worse than what the Republicans and Democrats have given us since.

Posted by Steve Monaco at August 8, 2006 11:20 PM

The Monday Movie Quiz #114

Relax, that's only champagne all over the face of Chip and Ernie's dad. And he's not covered with it just because he had more strawberries than everyone else. If you know the movie this drama-drenched moment comes from, send me an email with the title by late Sunday night. If you're right, expect to see your name in next week's rebellious winners circle.

Posted by Steve Monaco at August 6, 2006 11:54 PM

Last week's Movie Quiz winners

Monstrous jokes abounded in this week's batch of emailed quiz answers identifying Godzilla, King of the Monsters as the movie in question. "Any time I see Raymond Burr holding a Japanese newspaper, I know he's not there for the Sushi," wrote one winner, who always (and wisely) craves anonymity when quoted. And Wayne Palmer reminded me of the name of Burr's character: "the wild and crazy Steve Martin!" Still the best of the series (especially in its original Japanese version, Gojira), it also features the best giant lizard theme music of all time, by the great Akira Ifukube. (A two-disc DVD of the original finally comes out here in September.)

So congratulations to the following winners: Wayne Palmer, Joe Rosenberg, Dan Andreasen, E. Yarber, Hank Parmer, Bill Hearne, Dean Carlson, Margali, and Gus Mastrapa. As for the grand prize, the winner who draws the short straw is none other than Mark Gisleson, who wins Patton Oswalt: No Reason to Complain. Dig that ironic title, Wege!

Posted by Steve Monaco at August 6, 2006 11:23 PM

Are you a high blood pressure person?

If so, "get well, get with it," in the words of this awful PSA from 1975 for high blood pressure month. It's so happy and peppy, it makes me want to stop taking my pills, just so I can feel how great it is to go back on 'em!

(P.S. Here's a link for those of who you got the reference to one of the greatest songs of all time, "Happy and Peppy and Bursting with Love.")

Posted by Steve Monaco at August 1, 2006 10:56 PM

« July 2006 | Main | September 2006 »