Catfreeek's 2009 Wrap Up

I thought watching & reviewing all those movies was a task. Trying to sift through them all and pick out a few favorites is a labor all in itself. Here's my 2009 bests.

Best All Around Film:

Let The Right One In

Visually Stunning & Artistic:

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari

Hidden Gem:

Fear(s) of the Dark

Most Disturbing:
This had to go to 2 films for me.
Martyrs
Hands down this is the most disturbing horror I've ever watched.

Dead Girl
However, this film left me with such an icky feeling it deserves an honorable mention.

Best Zombies:

Dead Snow

Just Plain Weird:

Unholy Women

Best Pipe in the Ass:

Frontiers

Scream Stud:

Pablo Parés - Plaga Zombie: Mutant Zone
Any guy who is covered head to toe in shit & blood and still looks good gets my vote.

Funniest Film:
Homebodies

Most Bizarre Film I've Ever Seen:

Executive Koala

So Bad It's Good:

Seytan

Catfreeek's 2008 Wrap Up

Wrapping the Cat

So it's taken me over a year to get motivated to do a wrap up for 2008. There are just so many on that list, it's intimidating. I even ignored JSP's constant prodding and kept putting it off. As I sat here today doing virtually nothing because it's too cold out I thought that maybe it was time. So here goes nothing.

Best Overall film:

The Orphanage
Unanimously chosen by numerous thonners. The acting is superb.

Biggest Blood Bath & Most Disturbing:

Inside
Mad woman with scissors.

Most Obscure:

Fausto 5.0
An unexpected discovery.

Funniest:

Mr. Vampire
Hopping Vampires.

Worst Original Idea Ever:

Buttcrack
Speaks for itself.

Best Drive-in Movie:

Mansion of the Doomed
Basement full of people with empty eye sockets. Need I say more?

Most Twisted:

May
I loved this film in all it's twisted glory.

Most Beautifully Shot & Artsy:

Onibaba
A work of art.

Sickest FX:

Meatball Machine
Crazy, crazy stuff.

Scream Queen & Scream Stud:

Sarah Lassez - Mad Cowgirl
Sexy, but crazy as all hell.

Michael Teh - Lost Colony: The Legend of Roanoke
Bad movie, hot guy.

2009 Wrap up coming soon.

HHD Champion:

I know, I know - Again. After I joked about doing it last time. First Ever Back-To-Back Victories. I agonized over doing it, because there seemed to be an unspoken rule against it. But dammit, I had to do it. Her stuff this week was inspired, dramatic, hilarious and also somewhat disturbing. She really painted a breathtaking picture of her high school experience. Suspensions, molestations, a jaw-dropping collection of teachers ("stiff" gym teacher, bestial art teacher, and that's just scratching the surface...). Overall, I was incredibly impressed. A+++.

Here's the crown jewel, the one with everything: humor, imagery, poetry, implication, and that ineffable ability to have 17 syllables tell an entire story:

She picked out her pet
Handsome dear, get me coffee
All the boys ran…ran

(It's the repetition of "ran" at the end that really says so much more about what's going on. I assume it referred to the music teacher from the prior haiku, and I love how it implies so much about what the boys would do. It reminds me of the Far Side cartoon with the deer hunter hiding behind the tree near the deer outhouse: "Hank knew the spot well; he only had to wait. The deer would come, the deer would come."

Class was sparsely attended, (I second-guessed the topic to death) but those in class had some genius stuff that made it a very enjoyable day, and a difficult choice. Witness:

JPX -
Because of Jimmy
I had braces for 3 years
I hope he's dead now

(My early favorite to take it all. Hysterical.)

AC -
in 11th grade
listened to "the wall" nightly
retained THOSE lessons

(Mmmm hmmmm. Hear where you're comin' from.)

JSP
Seventh grade crisis
Tim Jones stole my ham sandwich
I will get revenge

(The amount of material this one petty act has generated is staggering. Tim Jones And The Sandwich could be a weekly topic.)

Cat:
Mr. MacGregor
Once stood on a chair for height
Just to yell at me

(GREAT image. Especially the thought of him going to get the chair, moving it into position, while you wait and watch. Priceless.)

Octo:

It's hard to look tough
After ten minutes on ground
Clutching and mewling

(When you really think about it, it's very true.)

Landshark: (always good to see you)

Hairy sweaty arm
Holding my cherished delights
Come to me gagger

Harley Davidson
Intimidating machine
Get out of my way

(I know these weren't strictly "for" this week's topic, but nevertheless I almost made them the winners. I could NOT stop from hearing Mr. Baker actually doing a reading of both of them. The first one in particular, the last line - MR BAKER: "...come to me...(pause, look up at class, take glasses off)...gagger." I did a video in high school centered around Mr. Baker (played with hypnotic accuracy by one Seth Milman.) Both of these are GREAT haikus, but the Baker element makes them truly, truly special.)

JSP, see me after class.

Well done, everyone! Sorry for the late, sparse post but work has been monstrous this week.

Congratulations again, Whirly! Horrorthon's first Back-To-Back Champion!

Scott Meets Family Circus

An easy target but hilarious nonetheless. More here.

Wall Street 2

From iwatchstuff, This is just the kind of photograph I want hanging in my office, if I ever have an office, and if I ever have a mentor or protégé willing to stand/sit beside me for a professional photo that conveys what an air of dignity we have in this office since I've been working there.

[JPX] And just for the heck of it, here's the trailer,

Holy Carp! It was 50PageMcGee's birthday YESTERDAY (Wednesday)

Yes it's true. Fitty turned 32 yesterday (he's still a baby!) and I had the privilege of dining on fine Manhattan clam chowder with him and a select group of cronies. Totally forgot to do a blog post about it, though, as I did most of today. So give it up for the lad!

Thanks to Herr Pants for the intimate Gretchen moment. Johnny, that is.

Legion

(2010)



The fate of mankind is in the hands of a fallen archangel, a baby and a bunch of yahoos holed up in a New Mexican diner together. - Should have been the tagline

I knew precious little about this movie going into it. One glance at the poster and naturally I assumed the story involved a homosexual angel searching for a good time but ultimately finding true love. So I was quite pleased to discover that my friend had in fact selected an apocalyptic last-stand Night of the Living Dead style shoot-em-up for movie night. First let me get this out of the way; Legion is a spectacular failure of a film. It systematically squanders every good idea in the script. The number of inconsistencies, plot holes and unanswered questions rival only those in the Bible itself. The characters are mostly insufferable. Rather than focusing on the part of the story that actually interests the audience – the events that inspired God’s decision to slaughter the entire human race – first time director Scott Stewart tortures his audience with character buildup that goes nowhere and the exploration of the relationships of the rag tag fools. I yearned for a boardroom scene in which God weighed the pros and cons of genocide. Instead I spent most of my time with World’s Bitchiest Mom, Generic Waitress, Annoying Black Guy, Nice Black Guy, Boring Guy, Snotty Girl and a couple of other clowns. Throw in a guy named Jeep (I shit you not), some subtle pro-life proselytizing and you’ve got yourself an abomination for the ages, right?

Nuh-uh! For reasons I can’t really defend, I found Legion highly enjoyable. First of all, I’m a well documented sucker for religious horror films. Satan movies are generally a reliable bundle of joy but I found the notion of the angry, vengeful God possibly even more appealing. After all, the whimsical, egomaniacal, petty, sadistic, unreasonable, vengeful prick of the Old Testament is rarely depicted on film. Instead we’re usually served that nice bearded fella or George Fucking Burns. (If you made the mistake of clicking on that link then congratulations - you’ve just witnessed the graphic rape and murder of a Beatles classic!)

Anyway, what did the humans do to deserve extinction? The best answer provided (during the opening AND closing credits mind you) is that the Creator was “sick of all the bullshit, I guess”. Alright then. Why are the demons or zombies or whatever the hell they are virtually invulnerable in one scene but easily killable in the next? (Shrugs.) Why is the baby of a white trash chain-smoker so significant? Fucked if I know. What I do know is that Legion took the same winning formula of Dawn of the Dead, From Dusk Till Dawn, The Mist and countless others, put a sloppy but intriguing spin on it and well, it held my attention.

Culkins - still creepy

R.I.P. Miramax

From iwatchstuff, After 31 years of operation, Miramax, the Weinstein-founded company known for its independent spirit, is closing the doors on its New York and LA offices today, officially killing the company. The closure will put 80 people out of their jobs, and your Pulp Fiction and Clerks DVDs will stop working by the end of the week. Truly, the end of an era, and of course it happens the day after I finish writing a film with lot of really clever dialogue that may be too edgy for mainstream audiences.

R.I.P. J.D. Salinger

J.D. Salinger, the American author of The Catcher in the Rye who was once described as “the Greta Garbo of literature,” died yesterday of natural causes at his home in Cornish, New Hampshire. He was 91.

The celebrated author chose to spend the last half-century of his life in virtual seclusion, guarding his privacy with such fervor that he only succeeded in fanning the flames of public curiosity. As Paul Alexander put it in his book Salinger: A Biography, “He became famous for wanting not to be famous.” But of course, Salinger’s main claim to fame has always been as the man who wrote The Catcher in the Rye.

Read all about him here

'Poltergeist' actress Zelda Rubinstein dies at 76

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Zelda Rubinstein, the 4-foot-3-inch character actor best known as Tangina, the psychic who tries to calm a family inhabiting a haunted house in the 1982 horror film Poltergeist, has died. She was 76.
Her agent, Eric Stevens, tells the Los Angeles Times that Rubenstein died Wednesday at a Los Angeles hospital. Stevens says she recently suffered a heart attack.

Rubenstein made her film debut in the 1981 comedy Under the Rainbow and went on to roles in Sixteen Candles, Southland Tales and the TV show Picket Fences. She returned for both Poltergeist sequels.

The Pittsburgh native also appeared as the mother figure in a high-profile mid-1980s AIDS public awareness campaign and was an outspoken activist for the rights of little people.

Haiku Hump Day: HIGH SCHOOL KNOWLEDGE, or, How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Thought Of Bombing My Teacher’s House

For some reason, I’ve been on a very philosophical, existential kick at work lately. Maybe it’s the conditions, maybe it’s the heightened clarity brought on by my recent ranting about Crap Jobs, but I find myself growing increasingly amazed that, as Cinderella (the band, not the Disney floozie) once said, the more things change, the more they stay the same.


Winners of Best Transvestite Philosophy Award of 1987


*hoarse growl* - “MY GYPSY ROAD…CAN’T TAKE ME HOME!!!”


What it is seems to be is, as Nietschze once said, “aah-CHOOOOOO!!”

Sorry, that was just Nietschze sneezing. Disregard.

What it seems to be is an amazing parallel that runs deeper than just casual observations about surface similarities between our childhood, adolescent and adult lives. It is the fact that we will ALWAYS make the same choices based on who we are, and what our environment and upbringing has made us do, regardless of so-called “education.” We will always retain the same type of random information that we WANT to retain, regardless of quality or quantity of said information being provided. You can tell me all about how this particular cardboard box was manufactured and shipped from Poughkeepsie, NY to Odor Creek, OK in order to hold nothing but nails, but the fact is, 10 years later, the only thing I’ll remember is that the driver of the truck listened to Cinderella the whole way there. This is getting too deterministic and philosophical. And now for something completely different:


The name of this incredibly awesome tag team was almost the topic this week, but then I thought, “It’s just too soon.”

Anyway, after that rambling, incoherent intro, which I hope I have succeeded in making everyone in the room dumber for having read it (THERE’S that elusive narrative thread, buried within an Adam Sandler reference…whew), (which reminds me of a few high school teachers I had), (holy crap! TRIPLE parentheticals, spaced by commas, punctuated within!), *MrsX slap-on-the-head*



Sorry. After that rambling, incoherent intro, I wanted to stress that this week’s topic actually is Things I Really And Truly Learned In High School. Or college. Or grade school. For instance, after all the nonsense and the papers and the doodles I went through (I kept my high school notebooks for the doodles alone – okay, no more parenthetical references), I marvel at the randomness of the actual knowledge I remember retaining solely from high school classes. WITNESS:

- Macbeth is pretty damn good, as is all Shakespeare, if you REALLY take the time. The deeper you go, the better it gets.
- Force equals Mass times Distance. Pretty godamned effective when you think about it.
- The Civil War was not actually about slavery, but was moreso a perfect storm of societal, economic and territorial frustrations coming to a head at the perfect adolescent point after the birth of a nation (but on the test, just select (b) Slavery).
- In that same class, I learned how to build a nationwide railroad.
- Michael Crichton’s name is actually pronounced CRY-ton, not “CRITCH-ton,” like it’s fucking spelled. But it doesn’t matter because he’s dead.
- "Diner" is actually a pretty damn good movie, despite the Guttenberg.
- The popular, beautiful, rich people will always make slaves of the homely, hardworking masses. In ANY hierarchy, not just high school.
- Give me some clay and a kiln, and I’ll give you a wrestling figure.
- Sewing is hard as crap.
- Homework, as a concept, totally sucks, has always sucked, and will always suck.

That last one is what kind of brings us full circle. Or at least, it brings ME full circle, which is to say brings everybody else full Mobius-strip, or full Rocky-Point-Corkscrew. After a 14-hour day, sometimes after enduring gale-force winds and rain, just like this past Monday, I STILL have to come home and do an hour and a half to two hours of work to prepare not for tomorrow, but the next day, as the requirements of the Key 2nd AD entail. I have to show up for work tomorrow having already prepped the FOLLOWING day, and spend the entire day cross-checking information with 10 different departments. And it totally, totally sucks. 20 years later, I STILL have fucking homework. And I don’t retain a BIT of it. For the record, as I craft this intro, I am sacrificing my “homework time” in favor of getting up early and scrambling to prep at 6am Wednesday. To have a HHD post. Because that’s just the kind of blogger I am.

I can feel I’m on the verge of another disjointed diatribe, so I’ll only ask you all this –

What did you REALLY learn in high school? And as an adjunct, Has it helped you at all?

No cutting class today, people. Although as a subcategory, I’ll take “Amusing Hall-Pass Haikus That Get Me Out Of This Whack-Ass Topic.” But you need at least 5 to be excused.

I’m sure you’ve all seen the following, as they made the email circuit a few years ago, but here’s some real-life test answers penned by actual students, and I only wish I’d had the presence of mind to do some shit like this. Bantha fodder for inspiration (and I hope the quality is clear enough. If you can’t read ‘em, go here for these plus more hilarious essays and stuff):

Star Trek II update

From denofgeek, Here's what we know thus far about the sequel to JJ Abrams' massively successful Star Trek reboot.

Firstly, we know that it's arriving on June 29th 2012. We also know that screenwriters Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci are back on board to pen the film. And we know that, even though he's not confirmed he's directing yet, JJ Abrams is still heavily involved and likely to take the helm.

And we now know just a little bit more, too. Kurtzman and Orci have been talking a little more about the project at a Los Angeles Q&A (as reported by Trek Movie).

Inevitably, speculation still surrounds the possible return of Khan as the villain of the sequel, and Kurtzman did acknowledge that the follow-up was set to be more about the adversary this time round. "I think sequels are very much about the villain," he said. "Because while the villain serves to bring the crew together [in the first film], the second one I think has to be a true challenging of what that family is about. That is why Wrath of Khan was so amazing. Khan tested each one of them and ultimately asked for the ultimately sacrifice, and that is why that movie held up so well."

But don't expect a retread of Star Trek 2. Roberto Orci said that "We would never do a remake....it will be some time in the five year mission. But that is a question. Should we pick them up immediately the next day or should it be later, we are still discussing that."

Orci also admitted that the pair have a tricky job on their hands. "Frankly I fee more pressure," he said, "because we were so confident when we came up with the idea of how to bridge canon, and yet free ourselves from canon. Now we have no excuses for anything, now we are free. Now we don't have the benefit of low expectations."

"Avatar" Sequel Going into Pre-Production

From worstpreviews, "Avatar" has become the highest grossing movie of all time, which is why it comes as no surprise that a sequel will definitely happen. Director James Cameron has already said that most of the money that went into developing the first film will not have to be spent again since lots of the environments and effects have already been built.

Cameron added that it would be stupid not to make "Avatar 2." Now /Film is reporting that technical crew members have already signed on for a second installment. Their contracts are for three to five years, in case development runs long.

Judging by this news, it seems that "Avatar 2" will not be in theaters before 2013. That's a long time to make movie that already has a story and has most of the hard work already done.

It's a finger trap!

From slashfilm

Gary Coleman arrested...again

Gary Coleman was arrested Sunday for domestic violence, authorities said.

The former child star was arrested in Santaquin, Utah on a domestic assault warrant and booked into the Utah County jail about 1:30 p.m., according to the Utah County Sheriff's Office.

He was wanted for one count of domestic assault - a misdemeanor - though it's unclear when the incident occurred. Utah County Deputy Denton, who declined to give her first name, said the warrant stemmed from a missed court date.

Coleman is working on posting bail of $1,725, Denton said, and the jail doesn't have any record of who his alleged victim was.

The "Diff'rent Strokes" star had another run in with cops only recently, when his wife locked her husband out of their house and unleashed a profane tirade at police in their drive way in July.

"F--- you and f--- him!" Shannon Price, 23, screamed before her arrest.

"You deserve this after how you treated me!" she shouted at Coleman was the star stood amidst toppled furniture, scattered DVDs and strewn clothes.

Coleman, 41, was not injured, although a police report said "his bedroom was destroyed."

Price was charged with misdemeanor domestic violence and disorderly conduct.

The pair met on the set of the comedy film "Church Ball" just five months before exchanging vows.

In 2008, the couple almost split during an appearance on the syndicated "Divorce Court," where Price described Coleman as distant and depressed.

Coleman also pleaded no contest in 2008 to charges he rammed a fan with his truck outside a bowling alley.