August 2007

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Eye-catchers

Posted by Steve Monaco at August 29, 2007 11:41 PM

 

World news stories you may have missed

Tax dildos (Denmark). For the agricultural youth organisation Landbo Ungdom, life is a dildo party when you’re getting millions of kroner in funding from the government. Unfortunately for the group’s members, those days are over.

The Food and Agriculture Ministry recently discovered that [an] annual allotment to the organisation for ‘social interaction’ activities has been used to fund a dildo party, a ‘Miss Wet T-Shirt’ contest and drunken festivities in Spain.

Legal experts said the term ‘social interaction’ can be widely interpreted, though they generally agreed that [the group] had overstepped what was ‘morally’ acceptable.

Hellish Traffic on Sofia Ringroad (Bulgaria). Car drivers, heading for Boyana, Simeonovo and Dragalevtsi suburbs at the foot of Mount Vitosha, will have to pass through the heart of the city. Truck driver will have to come up with roundabout routes.

Faced with yet another inconvenience during the summer road repairs in the capital, drivers should console themselves with the vision of the new, southern lane of the ringroad.

Posted by Steve Monaco at August 28, 2007 4:26 PM

 

Remake my day

(Will they change the classic line to, "Dude-- Keanu barada nikto?")

If you thought Hollywood's self-cannabalizing remake jag couldn't get worse, you won't believe some of the sacred cows they're planning to slaughter, not to mention remaking crap that, arguably, shouldn't have been made the first time. Yesterday's news was all about Keanu Reeves starring in The Day the Earth Stood Still (and as a friend said, what a terrible choice for a modern-day blockbuster-- a movie where the big event is everything not moving!), but the list of upcoming sacrileges and abominations only begins there-- how about:

A remake of the 1975 Disney movie Escape from Witch Mountain, starring The Rock!

Escape from New York, re-done for a 2009 release. Of course, Rob Zombie's remake of Halloween opens in just a few days, if you're already desperate for warmed-over John Carpenter.

Will Smith continues his career of walking in other actors footsteps by following both Vincent Price and Charlton Heston in a remake of Richard Matheson's I Am Legend (The Last Man on Earth, The Omega Man), while Russell Crowe imitates Glenn Ford in 3:10 to Yuma.

Finally-- and if I hadn't seen it in the Guardian, I wouldn't have believed it-- a movie so revered you would think it would be at the very top of the "Do Not Touch" list is being remade by Warner Brothers. "To the inevitable horror of the movie's thousands of ardent fans, the producers have vowed to take the story and inject it with a '2007 wow factor.'" It's the brainchild of a guy whose own best-known creation is this.

And the movie he'll be remaking is this.

As I've said before: the studios would remake their own grandmothers to make a buck.

Posted by Steve Monaco at August 28, 2007 3:22 PM

 

The Monday Movie Quiz #138

Moments from two key scenes, plus a familiar face for possible imdb help.

Know the movie? Then you or your imaginary friend should send me an email by late Sunday night with the title of the film in question. If you're correct, expect to see your name in next week's teeth-grinding (pun!) winner's circle.

Posted by Steve Monaco at August 27, 2007 3:34 AM

 

Last week's Movie Quiz winners

Although last week's quiz movie in question was really the 1994 semi-quasi-pseudo-biopic Ed Wood, several quiz players are forgiven for thinking it was really Ed's masterpiece, Plan 9 From Outer Space. Declared the worst movie ever made in the excrementitious Golden Turkeys book, cartoonist/illustrator Drew Friedman set the record straight: "Plan 9 is far from the worst movie ever made. The worst movie ever made is whatever movie Meryl Streep was just in."

Director Tim Burton and star Johnny Depp took their admittedly pathetic titular subject and did his life story as a transvestite screwball comedy. The cast is wonderful, especially the actors playing the members of Wood's weird repertoire company. Lots of winners cited Max Casella and Vincent D'Onofrio in last week's picture clues as being favorites (with a few also commenting on the latter's voice dubber, Orson Welles soundalike Maurice LaMarche from Pinky and the Brain), and almost everyone praised Martin Landau as Bela Lugosi and-- my own favorite-- Bill Murray as Myra's real-life brother, Bunny Breckinridge. ("Let's hear you call Boris Karloff a cocksucker!") Even Danny Elfman's great score is a favorite of a few. And several winners made a similar concluding pronouncement: "Great film."

(Landau, who looks less ghoulish as Bela than he did as a young man in North by Northwest, had a great cameo at the Mission: Impossible premiere, or at least on whatever crap TV show that covered it at the time. The squeaky little dummy interviewing the stars on the red carpet asked him, "What are you doing here?" Landau proceeded to gnaw her a few new orifices, informing her of his role in the original show. Then he stalked off, only to spin around and return to blast her some more!)

But wait! Not everyone agreed with the hosannahs, like the winner who admitted, "I wanted to like it, but it literally put me to sleep. Another one for the Sarah Jessica Parker highlight roll." A few disliked the liberties taken with the biographical facts, especially the movie's almost Capra-esque conclusion: "Just as the same screenwriters foisted a fake happy ending on their Andy Kaufman movie by shifting his Carnegie Hall concert from the beginning of his career to the very end, Plan 9 From Outer Space gets a royal premiere instead of being dumped to theaters years after completion." I don't disagree with the latter view, or the observation that the writers' pay for this script would have not only funded Ed's ouevre but also financed another one or twenty new films.

My personal hope: someday the real Ed Wood story will be filmed. Preferably with an all-octopus cast.

(Besides being one of the worst film-makers of all time, is this man also America's most prolific transvestite novelist?)

So congratulations and a motor-free octopus to the following quiz winners: Vince Tuss, Mike Knox, Corey Anderson, Sarah Sicheneder, Jim Moomey, Joe Rosenberg, Michael Mattson, Nancy Louise Rutherford, Nick Rupar, Bob Redwing, Gus Mastrapa, Stacy Sarette, Bill Hearne, Bill Kelly, Mike Kelly, Donald Greene, E. Yarber, Thomas Miller, and Kevin Musolino. And morphine-laced kudos to none other than quiz champeen Wayne Palmer, who wins this week's Grand Prize: a DVD of the impossible-to-find '50s Red Menace film, Leo McCarey's great mistake, My Son John!

Posted by Steve Monaco at August 27, 2007 12:21 AM

 

From Phil Spector's movie poster collection

The latest dish: "Phil Spector’s adopted son Gary [said] that his father is convinced he’ll be found guilty, and is only spending millions of dollars on his defense team and witnesses because Phil feels it’s better to spend the money on his trial than giving all that money to the Clarkson family in the inevitable wrongful death lawsuit."

Posted by Steve Monaco at August 24, 2007 3:30 PM

 

World news stories you may have missed

Dildo robber in daylight rubbery (UK) As far as 'stick-ups' go, it was unique-- using a Rampant Rabbit vibrator to hold up a bookies.

Drug addict Nicki Jex, 27, had concealed his ex-girlfriend's vibrator in a carrier bag and pretended it was a gun in the raid on December 27 last year.

The robber-- who very appropriately acted alone-- was jailed for five years for his sex toy heist.

Teens suffer in hellish summer job (US) [O]fficials last week were apologetic, calling the conditions in which the teens labored "appalling" and "deplorable."

"It was gross," said Mary, who asked that her real name not be used. "It was spooky in there. It was dark because you couldn't see anything. There were no lights and none of the windows opened, so it was hot."

The building where the teens worked is slated to become housing for senior citizens.

Posted by Steve Monaco at August 24, 2007 2:43 AM

 

Fine rides

Posted by Steve Monaco at August 22, 2007 2:22 AM

 

The Monday Movie Quiz #137

Way too many Google-able quotes and names on this one, so I'll stick to just picture clues. And since our quiz movie in question also has lots of easily recognizable faces, we'll turn up the difficulty setting with these lesser-known moments:

Know the movie? Then send me an email by late Sunday night-- if you're correct, expect to feel the caress of next week's winner's circle on your name like an angora sweater.

Posted by Steve Monaco at August 20, 2007 1:31 AM

 

Last week's Movie Quiz winners

Many warm thoughts accompanied the correct answers for last week's quiz movie, Woody Allen's Annie Hall (1977), including this pronouncement by one anonymous winner: "Probably the little molester's best movie." I'll sidestep that argument and instead mention that my own soft spot for Annie has more to do with its Oscar wins the following year, which put to rest forever Bob Hope's tired gripe that comedy films don't win Academy Awards. (Meaning, of course, that his didn't win, ignoring what a friend of mine observed: "That's because Bob makes comedy films that suck.")

Thirty years later, Annie Hall certainly doesn't suck, but I'm not sure it's aged particularly well, either. I'm also not sure that's all the fault of the film-- its many inventive stylistic and narrative tricks have now been so overdone by all the bad comedy it inspired that it's hard to give the original a fresh look. And many moments are justifiably in the comedy hall of fame, such as the Marshall McLuhan bit in last week's picture clue, where Allen pulls him out to put a loudmouth academic in his place. (Allen said he had to literally pull the camera-shy professor into the frame, and it shows.) And like other Allen films from the '70s, it features some later-famous faces, like party guest Jeff Goldblum, on the phone because he forgot his mantra:

And then there's Sigourney Weaver in her feature debut-- that's her on the far right as "Alvy's Date Outside Theater," in her only moment in the film.

Whatever you do, don't make my mistake and revisit Annie Hall right before you catch up with Woody's last self-starring comedy, Scoop, because his doddering performance in the latter looks even worse when you've just seen him at his best in his prime. Watching him stare into the middle distance during his scenes and waiting forever for him to finish stammering through an unfunny joke is not the way I want to see him go out-- someone needs to talk to him, mentioning the name Johnny Carson many times during the conversation.

So congratulations and a spider as big as a Buick to the following quiz winners: Wayne Palmer, Joe Rosenberg, Jennifer Haugh, Patrick Allen, Michael Mattson, Mike Kelly, E. Yarber, Maria Johnson, Sean Hoffman, Nancy Louise Rutherford, Brook Berry, Yuliy V. Krasnenkov, Jason Koffman, Song-Un Lee, Bill Hearne, Isaac Kaufman, Dean E. Carlson, Kevin Musolino, and Sarah Bergstrom. And super heavy-osity kudos to Mark Gisleson, who wins this week's Grand Prize: Valis, an opera by Tod Machover.

Posted by Steve Monaco at August 19, 2007 9:59 PM

 

Idiot pictures

A few things that came up while trawling Google Images with the word "idiot."

(Note the person sleeping/passed out inside. Read the whole idiotic story here. "Both back tires are trashed. The back shocks were driven up through the floorboard. In the back seat were 10 bags, 80 lbs. each of concrete.")

Posted by Steve Monaco at August 17, 2007 12:11 PM

 

Great moments in comic book history

Posted by Steve Monaco at August 14, 2007 6:20 PM

 

The Monday Movie Quiz #136

A single picture clue, ridiculously easy if you know the film, impossibly difficult if you don't:

If you recognize this classic-- and of course you do-- send me an email by late Sunday night with the title. Next week, if you're correct, you'll be thrilling yourself with the sight of your name in our winner's circle just like it was a large vibrating egg. (Yes, that's a hint.)

Posted by Steve Monaco at August 13, 2007 2:45 AM

 

Last week's Movie Quiz winners

Last week's movie in question was Terry Zwigoff's documentary Crumb, a film about the director's longtime friend, underground comix legend R. Crumb. It's also about his family, a brood that makes Robert look almost normal by comparison and who are responsible for the majority of the movie's best WTF moments. Best of all, the film manages to get across the essence of the work, something most films about creative artists always fail to do. As unlikable as the title character can be in his on-screen interviews, the artwork collages show the real reason the film was made: to pay tribute to one of the most original American artists of the 20th century.

But brothers Charles and Max (they were last week's picture clues 2 & 3) are perhaps the "characters" who make the most vivid impressions on the viewer, at least judging from this week's email. Oldest brother Charles, who introduced Robert to drawing comics, was still living with Mom when he was interviewed for the film (he committed suicide afterward, and the film is dedicated to him), while little brother Max was begging on the streets of San Francisco as he performed his self-cleansing ritual (shown in the pic) of swallowing a yards-long piece of cloth. Fifteen years later, Max is doing better, according to this article. But it begs the question: How much better is anyone doing when they look like this?

So congratulations and a piggyback ride with Robert (on you) to the following quiz winners: Wayne Palmer, Peter Schilling, Gus Mastrapa, Nick Rupar, Michael Mattson, Jason Koffman, Amy Wilkerson-Krause, E. Yarber, Matthew Kriske, Tim McDonough, Bill Hearne, Shaun Faulkner, Dave Uri, Corey Anderson, Gene, Donald Greene, and Kevin Musolino. And extra-Crumby kudos to Theresa Stelzner, who wins this week's Grand Prize: Return of the Champions a 2-disc set by Queen and Paul Rodgers.

Posted by Steve Monaco at August 13, 2007 12:24 AM

 

World news stories you may have missed

Dildo offers visitors taste of Atlantic (Canada) Dildo, an outport of 3,000 residents about an hour's drive west of St. John's, used to be one of the province's largest fishing towns.

Wooden statues of Captain Dildo, a fictitious character devised about 20 years ago, can be spotted in the town. The bearded figure wearing a rain jacket stands as a kind of local mascot.

One such statue welcomes visitors at the wharf as they prepare to step aboard the Irish Mist, where Dennis McEntegart and Gerald Smith operate a two-hour boat tour and serve as resident experts on all things Dildo.

"It's just a coincidence that Dildo points to Spread Eagle,'' McEntegart says with a grin.

Manava has a hellish time (India) It is scary time for small screen actoresses as they try to overcome the increasing crime rate in Mumbai

Manava Naik recently had quite a harrowing experience while returning home post midnight after her shoot. Manava was driving alone when some unknown boys tried to act funny with her.

Luckily, a truck came to Manava’s rescue. She quickly escaped behind it, when the other car which was in front, shot in another direction.

It was quite a scary experience.

Posted by Steve Monaco at August 8, 2007 3:33 AM

 

Monaco in Minneapolis at mealtime

Posted by Steve Monaco at August 8, 2007 2:40 AM

 

Before they were stars

I've been watching a lot of '70s crap, and recently came across this double-feature of unexpected early appearances by a couple of my all-time favorites.

John Candy in Last Bride of Salem (1974). This was an episode of The ABC Afternoon Playbreak, a kids' show I never saw, probably because I was 20 when it debuted. Young Mr. Candy wasn't much older, playing "2nd son" in a typical G-rated TV movie about witchcraft. (The stars were Lois Nettleton and Bradford Dillman, two names that should bring yawns to anyone who remembers '70s TV.) He looks so innocent in the above pic, but note the amazing change when he's in Satanic mode:

As Count Floyd would say, Scary stuff, eh, kids?

Yaphet Kotto in Sharks' Treasure (1975). Written, produced, and directed by its star, Cornel Wilde, the old auteur was obviously intending to show Spielberg how a real shark movie was made-- with lots and lots of corn. Kotto actually made this after he was Mr. Big in Live and Let Die (but before Alien), playing a blue-collar Richard Dreyfuss. But neither Dreyfuss or Mr. Big ever got photographed like this:

And here's a tender moment between Yaphet and Cornel-- I'll let you make your own caption.

Posted by Steve Monaco at August 8, 2007 12:44 AM

 

The Monday Movie Quiz #135

Last week's choice of quiz movies seemed to be a little unpleasant for some readers, so this time I thought I'd make it more wholesome. What heartwarming cinematic saga featured the following stars?

Know the movie? Then send me an email by late Sunday night. If you're correct, expect to see your name in next week's big-assed winner's circle.

Posted by Steve Monaco at August 6, 2007 2:50 AM

 

Last week's Movie Quiz winners

Lots of wrong answers for last week's movie in question, Cruising (1980). Many thought the picture clue was Al Pacino in his first movie, Panic in Needle Park, and some didn't even think it was Al, but rather Dustin Hoffman in Midnight Cowboy (playing a cute 'n' curly guy named Ratzo). Apparently, this once-controversial film is now forgotten or unknown even by most movie buffs. Good thing, then, that a new restored DVD is coming out next month, so everyone can see it and decide for themselves whether time has been kind to it as a thriller, or if it's (still) crazed bullshit.

Having seen it recently, for the first time since it opened in 1980, I vote for crazed bullshit, but of the highest order. Pacino plays a young cop named. . . Steve Burns? Steve, straight as an arrow, is chosen by boss Paul Sorvino to live undercover and underground, cruising the leather-bar scene to find a serial killer. (Sorvino's interview questions-- "Ever been porked?"-- are a laugh, as are some of Al's cute come-ons, like "Hips or lips?") The way the story is played out, Al/Steve doesn't enter the S&M world, he descends into it, and the clubs themselves are presented as hell-dungeons worthy of any horror movie.

(Want proof? Careful, NSFW and loud as hell!!)

(Bruno Kirby, playing the dexterous man in the clip, wasn't the only bit player in the film who became better known later on-- others were Ed O'Neill, James Remar, and as the "Hankie salesman" in last week's audio clue, Powers Boothe. And it has a fantastic soundtrack by Jack Nitzsche featuring Nitzsche-produced tracks by The Germs and Willy DeVille.)

An added bonus is that Cruising ultimately makes no sense. Friedkin said in an interview that he thought there might have been more than one killer-- he didn't know! He used the same airy approach to the performance of Karen Allen, and never showed her the script or even told her the story, believing she should know as little as her character about what was happening. She disagreed, and refuses to talk about the movie. And Pacino claimed that the script he was shown was much different than the movie he wound up in, the one with moments like this:

A tougher quiz than I imagined, so major congratulations and corporal punishment by Al himself to the following quiz winners: Wayne Palmer, Joe Rosenberg, Kent Hofmeister, Michael Mattson, Isaac Kaufman, E. Yarber, Eric Castro, Bill Hearne, Gus Mastrapa, Sarah Bergstrom, Song-Un Lee, Michael Swanlund, Corey Anderson, Vince Tuss, Jim Moomey, Donald Greene, Stacy Sarette, and Kevin Musolino. And multi-hankied kudos to Nancy Louise Rutherford, who wins this week's Grand Prize, the Greatest Hits of Béla Fleck and the Flecktones.

Posted by Steve Monaco at August 5, 2007 11:02 PM

 

Our friends the animals

Posted by Steve Monaco at August 1, 2007 5:18 PM

 

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