Cap'n Howdy Presents: The Five Worst Movies I Saw in 2012

 For a change, I saw more good movies than terrible movies in 2012. I know, this must come as a shock to you, but it's true. Looking back, there are several movies I saw that were "okay" to "meh," but very few that outright stank. Well, that were made in 2012 anyway: Horror Fest and Summer Fest entries don't count this year, with one exception.

 The very bottom and the very top lists for 2012 aren't going to be too long, but while I try to put together some kind of notion of how I want to organize the "Best Of"'s, there's not much question in my mind how the bottom of the barrel stacks up. (The middle is going to take me a little while...)

 In the interest of fairness, I didn't see many of what people tell me are the very worst of this year, including: That's My Boy, Battleship, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, Total Recall, The Watch, Guilt Trip, For A Good Time Call, Twilight Breaking Dawn Part 2, Parental Guidance, or The Apparition. Unfortunately, I can't be of any help to you in that respect, but I can promise you that this list serves as one last So You Won't Have To for last year.

 So without further ado, let's count down from 5 to 1 of the Worst Movies of 2012.
 

 5.Abraham Lincoln vs. Zombies - So of the three films about Abraham Lincoln released this year, I saw two of them, and instead of picking the one with the vampires from the director of Wanted, the Cap'n wisely(?) chose the knock-off instead. From what I hear, The Asylum's cash-in / rip-off is arguably the better of the two, and if that's the case then I'm glad I didn't watch Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. This movie was terrible, and only became watchable as the anachronisms began to pile up, along with the shoehorning in of a young Theodore Roosevelt, who helps Lincoln, his secret prostitute mistress, Stonewall Jackson, and John Wilkes Booth (a member of the Secret Service... yeah, I know) to protect Fort Pulaski from zombies.

 And trust me, while that last sentence may have you intrigued, Abraham Lincoln vs. Zombies in no way deserves your attention.


 4. (tie) Underworld: Awakening and Resident Evil: Retribution - Here we have the case of two sequels, well into their franchise lives (four and five, respectively) that serve no purpose other than to set up the next sequel. While it's true that I've given up on the Resident Evil series, I held out just a sliver of hope that the return of Kate Beckinsale to the Underworld universe might up the trashy factor, but it was not to be. Underworld 4 was a lot of moping, Scott Speedman body-doubling, more pointless philosophical debate about what it means to be a vampire when Lycans control the world, and just a smidgen of Stephen Rea chewing scenery. If there's a fifth film (and Awakening is going to look awfully silly if there isn't), I can't say I'm all that enthused that we'll ever get back to the campy tone of the first flick.


 As for Retribution, well, there isn't much I would add to the review linked above. It's not really a movie, but a series of extended (read: boring) fight sequences peppered with pointless dialogue designed to reset the story (again) so that we can get to a "more interesting" movie next time. Since it looks like the next film is going to have even less of a plot, it's hard to imagine how hard Paul W.S. Anderson is going to have to work to screw it up. Then again, he lives to disappoint, so he'll find a way...

 3. (tie) Piranha 3DD and Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance -  Speaking of disappointing, what the hell happened with these two totally unnecessary sequels? They were primed to be very necessary, very schlocky, audiovisual overload based solely on the combination of source material and director. On the one hand, you have John Gulager, director of the hyper-ridiculous gorefest Feast, directing the sequel to Alexadre Aja's T&A meets Blood & Guts remake of Piranha. And on the other hand, you have Nicolas Cage returning as Ghost Rider and behind the camera are the directors of Crank and Crank 2: High Voltage, two of the most ridiculous movies in Jason Statham's already ridiculous action movie career. Oh, and both movies were shot in 3-D! They couldn't lose! It was impossible!

 Somehow, both films end up being complete and total wastes of time. Not only are Piranha 3DD and Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance not the anarchic clusterfucks you would hope for, but they're something even worse: Boring.

  Yes, boring: neither film is remotely fun to watch, in a trashy way or in a "what the hell was that?" way, which is a cardinal sin when making sequels to two absurd movies. Gulager not only doesn't deliver on the DD's his title promises (unless you count the first and last five minutes of the film), but all of the energy of Feast is replaced by the worst tendencies on display in Feast II and III. Instead of kinetic camerawork and editing, he instead falls back on a love of flatulence and cameos for the sake of having cameos, so that while he can't make a baby piranha swimming up a girl's va-jay-jay and biting her boyfriend's pecker interesting, he sure can give us three different montages devoted to David Hasselhoff running in slow motion.

 Far be it from me to point this out, but when the Spongebob Squarepants Movie finds a better way to use a superfluous cameo by David Hasselhoff, then you're doing something wrong.

 Meanwhile, Neveldine and Taylor not only don't add to the gonzo stupidity that was the first Ghost Rider, but they dial back the insanity and Mega-Acting / Neo-Shamanism by Cage and give us the tamest possible version of Spirits of Vengeance. We get less Ghost Rider, more mumble-cage, a supernatural knock-off of Terminator 2, and to top it off they find a way to waste Anthony Stewart Head, Ciarán Hinds, and Idris Elba. Thanks, assholes. Now we'll never get a properly stupid Ghost Rider movie.

 2. Taken 2 - Can we just agree not to let Olivier Megaton make movies anymore? While I didn't see Columbiana and maybe it's actually good, Megaton has now ruined not one, but two franchises with shitty sequels. First he stripped the absurdity from the Transporter films, giving the world the first boring Jason Statham action film, and then in 2012 he took Taken and drained everything good out of that with his awful sequel.

 Taken was a pretty simple concept: sex slave traders take Liam Neeson's daughter. Liam Neeson kills everyone standing between him and his daughter, in increasingly brutal ways, because that's what he does. He has a very particular set of skills, skills that make him a nightmare for people like you. Presuming that you are Eastern European sex slave traders, of course. It's a stripped down action film that delivered simple, no frills beat downs and torture.

 So logically you'd follow that up by having the families of everyone Liam Neeson murdered (yes, he has a name, and it's Brian Whogivesashit) want revenge on him and his family. In his infinite wisdom - well, really to nail Famke Janssen now that Xander Berkley wasn't asked to come back - he invites his wife and daughter to join him in Istanbul, where Neeson and Janssen are promptly kidnapped. So okay, that means Maggie Grace is going to have to do the inverted version of Taken, right? She'll save her father and mother than maybe kill Rade Serbedzija, because who else would be playing the father of the guy Neeson electrocuted to death?

 Nope. Liam Neeson gets out, crashes into the American Embassy and somehow doesn't end up being shot or prosecuted for property damage (because he calls Leland Orser, returning along with John Gries and D.B. Sweeney who is reprising someone else's role for a quick cameo paycheck). We then don't see Maggie Grace (sorry, Kim Whogivesashit) until after Neeson goes back to rescue Lenore Whogivesashit and kill all of the bad guys. Because that's what he does. Also she passes her driving test, which is somehow integral to the plot. (Not kidding)

 Only this time you can't tell that's what he does because Olivier Megaton doesn't know how to shoot a comprehensible action sequence to save his life. I literally ended up with headaches during the three (the ONLY three) fight scenes in Taken 2. It's virtually impossible to tell what's going on, who is hitting who, or where anyone is in relation to the person they're in combat with because Megaton and his editor throw rapid cuts of extreme close-ups on the screen to guarantee that nobody has the slightest idea what they're seeing. So not only is Taken 2 a LOT of setup for very little payoff, but when the time comes for Liam Neeson to use his particular set of skills, you don't even know what the hell is going on, and it hurts your brain.

 I HATED Taken 2, and there's no possible way that an "Unrated" version could be an improvement, because unless they hired a competent director and editor to reshoot the entire movie, it's a total waste of time.

 But Taken 2 isn't the worst movie I saw this year. It's not even the worst Luc Besson produced movie I saw this year, because that distinction goes to:


1. Lockout - Here's the deal: I'm willing to be veeeerrrrrry forgiving when it comes to cheesy science fiction. There are a lot of things I'll put up with if a movie can easily be summed up as "Escape from New York in Space," so even if Lockout was rocking a 17% Fresh Rating on Rotten Tomatoes the night we went to see it, I was prepared for that. I knew we wouldn't be watching high art, but instead a goofy, illogical, dumbed-down crowd-pleaser that catered to the cheap seats. As long as I got Guy Pearce as a bad-ass for ninety minutes, I figured we'd be okay. Besides, after that we'd be seeing The Cabin in the Woods. Surely it couldn't be that bad.

 And sure enough, it starts out promising. In fact, the opening of the film is the European Trailer, which is Guy Pearce making wisecracks and being punched while Peter Stormare interrogates him. And then we flashback to why he's being interrogated, and there's a clever joke involving jumping out of one window and into another gone wrong.

 And then there's the high speed unicycle chase that looks like a Playstation (One) cut-scene.

 Okay, that's really bad, but let's keep going, right? It'll get schlocky soon.

 And then Lockout fell apart. As I said, I'm pretty forgiving when it comes to movies like this, so I'll let things like repeatedly putting up a title card to let us know what we're looking at even if we've seen it five times. It's like watching a TV movie without the commercial breaks, I guess. It supports the theory that Lockout is "a series of movie-like images taped together." But then it gives up on the laws of physics while still trying to use said laws of physics as critical plot points. Then your brain begins to melt a little bit, then you start laughing. Not at what's going on in Lockout, because that ceased to make sense a long time ago, but because it's the only way to express what the movie is doing to your brain.

 Do yourself a favor and click on the link embedded in the title. It's called "Four Reasons You Might Be Drunk Enough to Watch Lockout," and while I don't recommend watching Lockout, especially not while drunk - as you are likely to do harm to your television for subjecting you to Lockout - it may give you some idea why, try as I may, I couldn't find a worse movie to watch in 2012.



 (Dis)Honorable Mention: Men in Black III, American Reunion, The Campaign - All of which were okay, I guess, but not movies I'm probably going to watch again.

 Extra (Dis)Honorable Mention to The Amazing Spider-Man, a reboot so pointless and so tedious that I couldn't even talk myself into finishing it.

Five Movies: Year End Recap Appendix

 At the end of 2011, I set out on an insurmountable task: to catch up with everything from the year I hadn't seen but wanted to. As many of you know, I posted a list of the movies I wanted to see before the end of the year. I managed to see a third of those by the time I threw my hands up in the air and said "it's halfway through January so I have to get this thing going."

 Since then, I've seen most of the films nominated for Best Picture and quite a few I wasn't expecting to see but am glad I did. They'll get proper reviews (if they haven't already), but I'm The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and The Skin I Live In away from hitting all of the major films from last year that I really wanted to see.

 Because I'm not sure quite when I'm going to watch those, I thought I'd take a look at some of the films I have caught up with from last year and see whether my Year End Recap Lists would have changed if I had seen them before writing it. As a rule, I don't amend the lists - where they are is where they stay, but I think it's a worthwhile exercise to consider the films I've seen since in the context of other movies from 2011.

 Very quickly, here is how I broke down the films from 2011:

 My Absolute Favorites (Drive, Midnight in Paris, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Tree of Life, Martha Marcy May Marlene, The Guard, Melancholia)

 Really, Really Great Movies That Didn't Make the Above List (Attack the Block, Bridesmaids, Super, Conan O'Brien Can't Stop)

 Movies That Were Pretty Good, Very Good, but Not Life Changing or Anything Like That (A Dangerous Method, Paul, Drive Angry, Hobo with a Shotgun)

 Garbage (The Thing, Blubberella, Sucker Punch, Scream 4)

 To put this in perspective, I'd put Moneyball in the Movies That Were Pretty Good category (it's a well-made movie that's inherently pointless because of how it ends), and Cowboys & Aliens in the Garbage category (not in the "Bottom Five" slot, but definitely with the likes of In Time, Killer Elite, and Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides section).

 There's probably only one movie that would cause me to reconsider the Absolute Favorites, and I'll get to that shortly, so most films not listed below fall right in the Pretty Good to Very Good (that would include Absentia, Some Guy Who Kills People, and My Week with Marilyn). Captain America is probably going into Cowboys and Aliens territory, and Your Highness? Well.... that I'd have to think about.

 The five films up for serious contention are:

 1. Hugo - I really do struggle with whether Hugo should leapfrog Attack the Block and go into the rarefied air of "Absolute Favorites." It's every bit as good, if not in many ways better, than Midnight in Paris (which it shares some tangential connections to) and certainly has more to say about film than Woody Allen's movie does about literature. Hugo is a film that caught me off guard; first I was concerned that by not seeing it in 3-D that I was missing one of the major reasons Scorsese made the film, and then second the initial burst of "kid crap" pratfalls had me worried.

 But this is a Martin Scorsese film, and I should have known better than to have doubted a master filmmaker to lure in the younger audience without pandering to them for the entire film. He hooks them with a tease of dumb kiddie humor and then draws everyone into a world indebted to cinema. I really think what's holding me back is that I didn't see it in 3-D, and even though you forget that it was filmed that way shortly after, I suspect that it would have made a difference. As it is, I look forward to watching Hugo again. And again. And again.
"
 2. The Descendants -So The Descendants is probably the least "typical" Alexander Payne film: to be sure, there are maladjusted adults behaving badly to each other in funny but also painful ways, but with a sense of warmth I wasn't prepared for. I've noticed a distinct critical dismissal of the film based on the fact the protagonists of The Descendants are all essentially products of privilege, and that their struggles are accordingly irrelevant because people who are well-to-do don't have problems. And okay, I get that some online critics don't want to watch movies where characters in better life positions than they deal with infidelity amidst the decision whether to make millions of dollars selling land that doesn't belong to them. Fair enough. I'm not sure why you liked Sideways if that's the case, but fair enough.

 The issue of class and rightful ownership was in the back of my mind during the film, but at no point did I think about Matt King (George Clooney) as a wealthy lawyer whose wife was cheating on him because he didn't spoil her. That was the argument that her father made (minus the infidelity - he blamed the accident on Matt's "miserly" behavior). I saw a guy who thought he was doing right by his family but knowing deep down that he was giving them a raw deal, one that he hoped he could compensate for some point "later." Then things fall apart and he finds himself unprepared to be a father, a son-in-law, a husband, or a mentor. Instead, he latches on the role of "victim" when he finds out about Brian Speer (Matthew Lillard), but he's not even sure how to do that the right way. It takes Speer's wife to give King some idea of how to move forward. The "I'm not going to sell the land" was a perfunctory plot line you could see coming a mile away, so when Payne cuts away from the "big speech" to return to the hospital, I was relieved.

 I don't know that I agree with the characterization of The Descendants as a "mom movie," but I can kind of understand the impetus for that. It would fall under the classification were it not for a film about dealing with the death of a cheating wife that exists in the movie for other characters to project on. It ends as well as it can, but I don't know that it's going to supplant The Help as "mom movie" material for last year. For me, it sits comfortably in the Really Really Good list.

 3. Young Adult - I was not expecting to like this movie. Hell, I wasn't expecting to WATCH this movie until several people I talked to mentioned that they liked it, even if it "went nowhere." When I get to my actual review, I'll address that point and try to reconcile my reaction to Young Adult with my feelings about My Week with Marilyn. In the mean time I wanted to let you know that Young Adult, despite my strong distaste for Juno and all things Diablo Cody related, stuck with me. Not in a "why did I watch this" way, but in a "well damn, that hit home in a lot of ways" way.

 I've noticed that this is a common reaction among online reviews, in part because Mavis Gary (Charlize Theron) is the misanthropic writer many of us relate to even though we probably shouldn't. The film is concerned with bad decisions, feeling like you "peaked" too soon, and most of all about how perceptions of others affect you at critical junctures in life. The dialogue is so removed from the "hip speak" of Juno that aside from one reference to a combo restaurant, I wouldn't have pegged the film as being from the writer of Jennifer's Body. Like Melancholia, Young Adult is a movie that I've come back to in the weeks since I watched it, and as a result deserves mention among 2011's best surprises.

 4. The Artist -The backlash against The Artist began almost immediately after the film won Best Picture (and Best Director and Best Actor) and has only increased since many of the competing films landed on home video. I'm not going to pile on the film, which was by no means the best film I saw of 2011 but was a perfectly enjoyable hybrid of Singin' in the Rain and Sunset Boulevard. It's a movie that makes you feel good, and it's fun to watch and is clever at times. It makes you smile, even if it doesn't make the longest lasting impression. That's fine, because the Academy Awards doesn't always reward the "best" film or whatever criteria you want to judge disparate films by. Like The Departed, The Artist is starting to get the "well it wasn't that good" chatter, so whether it deserves the top spot of 2011 or if it was just marketed to win awards is kind of irrelevant.

 I did want to say that while I did really enjoy The Artist, I'm not sure I'd put it in the Really Really Liked list. I thought long and hard about this, and will probably watch it again before I make up my mind, but in the wake of films I've seen since, The Artist continues to be bumped down by movies I was more surprised by, more engaged with, or ones that linger in my memory. I don't want to pile on The Artist, but I'm not sure where it would fit if I had the list(s) to do over again.

 5. Tucker and Dale vs. Evil - This is going to be a strange comparison, possibly the first time it's ever been made, but I kind of feel the same way about Tucker and Dale vs. Evil as I do The Muppets. I wasn't necessarily sure what I was going to see when I watched both films, but had high hopes. The buzz was generally good, but every now and then I'd run into a negative review that made one or two very salient points, and I'd be a little worried.

 Both films are a lot of fun, if not perfect, but set out to do what they intended: The Muppets exists to bring, well, the Muppets back, even if they don't really show up as we know them until more than halfway through the film. Tucker and Dale vs. Evil is a killbilly slasher movie that flips the protagonists and antagonists and pushes coincidences and "accidents" to extreme degrees to maintain that inversion. Both films are clever takes on expectations, with likable leads and slightly unexpected plot twists near the end. In keeping with that, I'd put the two films side by side on the list. That should give you some idea of whether Tucker and Dale vs. Evil is worth your time.

 Keep an eye out for an actual review of Young Adult sometime soon. I'll be back tomorrow with a look back at The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

Five Movies: The Five Worst Movies I Saw in 2011

 Today I'm going to kick off Cap'n Howdy's Year End Recap for 2011 with the bottom of the barrel. As I'm generally convinced that I won't see anything that sucks more than the films below, I feel comfortable locking this in place and moving onward and upward.

 I actually very rarely watch a movie expecting it to be terrible. There are plenty of movies I know are going to be, how shall we say, "not good" but those films tend to have entertainment value that compensates for their lack of finesse (or if you prefer, quality). I gravitate towards movies with rewatchability, something that's going to play well with a crowd of people willing to set their need for well told stories aside and have a good time. Sometimes that burns me; the films on this list are movies that bored me, annoyed me, or couldn't justify their meager existence by the standards of "popcorn fare."

 Contrary to popular assumptions, I didn't really see that many "bad" movies in 2011, which is admittedly a bit surprising, even for me. It is telling, however, that of the five films below, all but one of them were "So You Won't Have To" reviews, and the one that wasn't happened during "What the Hell Week," that momentary lapse in judgement when I watched Saw VII. Speaking of which, the (presently) "final" Saw film wouldn't even make this year's list. That's how bad things got.

5. The Thing - A prequel with no reason for being that only reminds you how much better you've seen this exact story. Twenty years ago. I still have no idea who this movie was made for, because if you're going to see this iteration of The Thing, you HAVE to have seen the Carpenter version for the ending to mean anything. If you've seen John Carpenter's The Thing, there's nothing for you in this movie.

4. Sucker Punch - I can totally understand who this movie is for, and even by the standards of 13-15 year old friendly, geek fetish fanboy drivel, Sucker Punch fails. It's like that scene in A Dirty Shame where Johnny Knoxville introduces Tracey Ullman to the various fetishes - a little bit of schoolgirl uniforms with steampunk Nazis and samurai with Gatling guns mixed with dragons and killer robots on trains and oh yeah it all happens during sexy stripteases to Bjork... but it's all so... boring.

3. The Change-Up - We're moving into really vile territory here. I didn't like The Thing and Sucker Punch - they wasted my time. The Change-Up was repulsive, irredeemable, chauvinistic crap. I felt insulted that the people who made this thought I might laugh at anything that happens in this piece of shit. Oh yeah, did I mention that the movie opens with a baby shitting in Jason Bateman's mouth? That's comedy, folks.

2. Blubberella - Speaking of unfunny, offensive, stupid, juvenile crap, how could I leave Uwe Boll off of the list? Somewhere in the midst of making Bloodrayne III: The Third Reich, the good doctor thought it would be fun to make a parody of his own films using most of the same cast and sets, but replacing his vampire heroine with a really fat chick. And constantly making jokes about how fat she is. Get it? It's a comedy because she makes fat jokes about herself! And so does everyone else! And don't forget jokes about Jews because it's a movie with Nazis! Oh look, Uwe Boll is Hitler! And that white guy who plays the gay stereotype is in blackface playing the mother from Precious! It's so hilarious. So hilarious you won't ever have to waste your time. But if this is number two, then number one has to be something really heinous...

1. Scream 4 - Fuck Scream 4. If Wes Craven can't do better than My Soul to Take and Scream 4, he can hang up that "master of suspense" moniker and go back to teaching literature. The film is nothing but 90 minutes of sour grapes about the state of horror films disguised as another "deconstruction" of the genre. It's a film that uses the structural hook of "remakes" as the template for the kills but can't even muster the energy to be a bad remake of Scream. It's just another tired sequel that nobody asked for and nobody is talking about. I watched it with Cranpire, who is as close to a die hard "fan" of the series as I know, and he hated it. What chance did the rest of us have?


 Additional Awards:

 It May Have Been Broke, but You Sure Didn't Fix It: Red State - Kevin Smith decided to go in a different direction with Red State, and it still sucked. While it's true that I couldn't finish Cop Out, I did sit through Smith's ham handed take on the Westboro Baptist Church by way of the Waco / Branch Davidian disaster, and I wish I hadn't. Not only is the camerawork reminiscent of the worst "hand-held" style TV cinematography, but the story is so damned smug by the end that I wished all of the protagonists had been killed instead of just the three kids hoping to get laid. Oh. Spoiler.


 Not Going to End Up on Any Other List so here's as Good a Place as Any: The People vs. George Lucas -The reason I didn't review this documentary is because there's nothing in the film that its target audience doesn't already know. That defeats the purpose of the film, since only internet geeks outraged over the changes to Star Wars would even care in the first place. I didn't realize it was still necessary to beat up on Jar Jar Binks twelve years later, but sure enough he's there to be flogged. Listen, if you really want a strong deconstruction of George Lucas and Star Wars, watch the "Mr. Plinkett" reviews. They're more entertaining.

 Probably My Favorite Gimmick Review of a Movie That Deserved It: The Hangover Part II

 The Worst Movie I Saw in 2011 That Wasn't from 2011: A Night to Dismember - I still have no idea what we watched, and two people continue to remind me that I traumatized them at Horror Fest with this "film."

 (dis)honorable mention goes to: In Time, Exporting Raymond, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, Killer Elite, The Mechanic, Season of the Witch, Ride Rise Roar, Cyrus, Quarantine 2: Terminal, Bong of the Dead, Blood Runs Cold, and in a surprising turn-about, John Carpenter's The Ward. Don't think that just because they didn't make the final five that they're worth you time AT ALL.


 "Sorry, I somehow missed these" list: Green Lantern, Apollo 18, Straw Dogs, Cars 2, Hoodwinked Too: Hood vs. Evil, A Serbian Film, The Human Centipede 2: Full Sequence, Jack & Jill, What's Your Number?, Abducted, Battle: Los Angeles, Bucky Larson: Born to Be a Star, Atlas Shrugged, Zookeeper, Red Riding Hood, The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part One, and I only saw five minutes of Dylan Dog: Dead of Night. I turned it off.

 I'll be back later this week with the middle and the best and then the very best of 2011. Believe me, kiddos, it only goes up from here!

Five Movies: Holiday Films I'm Pretty Sure I Haven't Seen

 Every year I like to highlight atypical holiday fare - movies that happen during the holidays but aren't exactly what you'd call "Christmas" films. I specify Christmas not to leave out any of the other holidays that happen in December, but because movies like Die Hard, The Ice Harvest, and Lethal Weapon all feature Christmas as the backdrop. The same goes for Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, Bad Santa, Batman Returns, Edward Scissorhands, Brazil, Gremlins, The French Connection, In Bruges, and Tales from the Crypt.

 Today I thought I'd look instead at five movies that are essential holiday films that I don't think I've ever seen from beginning to end. If, for some reason, you were worried this list would include A Christmas Story, The Nightmare Before Christmas, National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, Home Alone, or Reindeer Games, fear not. I've only missed one of those films, and I use the term "missed" loosely.

 No, gang, the actual list is much more inexcusable than that. I'd say "let's get the big offenders out of the way first," but there's no smaller slight against Holiday films on the list. Let's jump straight into it, shall we?

 1. Miracle on 34th Street - Every year it plays on Thanksgiving. Why? Well, because it starts during the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade, I think. I've never seen more than the first ten minutes, and I had to look up the ending to "spoil" it when I was spoiling a movie a day because I don't actually know how it ends. I've never seen it, and never really felt the urge to. Not out of some judgmental reaction, but just because it never struck me as a movie I wanted to watch.

 2. White Christmas - To be fair, if there's a movie on this list that I think I'm not alone in having missed, it's this one. Everybody knows the song, to be sure, but I've never encountered the target audience for this movie. Not to speak ill of Bing Crosby and company, but other than my parents I don't think I know anyone else who owns the movie, let alone watched it.

 3. The Muppet Christmas Carol - Count me in the bracket that was just a little too old for the "second coming" of the Muppets in the 1990s. I never saw Muppet Treasure Island or The Muppet Christmas Carol or Muppets from Space. I'm sure they're enjoyable in their own right, and I know people just a bit younger than the Cap'n who LOVE this movie, but I haven't seen so much as a second of it. I was more along the lines of the Mickey Mouse Christmas Carol, which I haven't seen in ages.

 4. A Charlie Brown Christmas - I know. I HAVE to have seen A Charlie Brown Christmas. It's only thirty minutes long, everybody knows the damn thing, and I can't remember anything about it. Ever. The music? Sure. The pathetic tree? Only because people keep mentioning it. The only conclusion I can come to is that I've never seen the special from beginning to end. It's the only explanation.

 5. It's a Wonderful Life -Yep. This occurred to me while watching The Ref, where another character says "I've never seen this movie all the way through" to a group watching It's a Wonderful Life. I am in that same position - I've seen enough of the film in sections to have probably "seen" the whole movie, but I've never watched It's a Wonderful Life in one sitting. I'm probably missing big chunks of the movie because I know the prologue really well, the bridge scene, the flashback where Donna Reed and Jimmy Stewart are dancing and fall in the water, and the ending. I even sort of know the parts where George Bailey tries to talk to people in a world where he was never born, but that might just be from innumerable parodies. Someday I'll actually watch It's a Wonderful Life and complete the process of being a human, but for the moment I'm some sort of heartless monster.

 Runners up include Love Actually, Holiday Inn, Elf, The Polar Express, The Bishop's Wife, A Christmas Carol, and Christmas Evil. But I have seen Ernest Saves Christmas! And Trapped in Paradise! That has to count for something, doesn't it?

Five Movies: Holiday Films I'm Pretty Sure I Haven't Seen

 Every year I like to highlight atypical holiday fare - movies that happen during the holidays but aren't exactly what you'd call "Christmas" films. I specify Christmas not to leave out any of the other holidays that happen in December, but because movies like Die Hard, The Ice Harvest, and Lethal Weapon all feature Christmas as the backdrop. The same goes for Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, Bad Santa, Batman Returns, Edward Scissorhands, Brazil, Gremlins, The French Connection, In Bruges, and Tales from the Crypt.

 Today I thought I'd look instead at five movies that are essential holiday films that I don't think I've ever seen from beginning to end. If, for some reason, you were worried this list would include A Christmas Story, The Nightmare Before Christmas, National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, Home Alone, or Reindeer Games, fear not. I've only missed one of those films, and I use the term "missed" loosely.

 No, gang, the actual list is much more inexcusable than that. I'd say "let's get the big offenders out of the way first," but there's no smaller slight against Holiday films on the list. Let's jump straight into it, shall we?

 1. Miracle on 34th Street - Every year it plays on Thanksgiving. Why? Well, because it starts during the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade, I think. I've never seen more than the first ten minutes, and I had to look up the ending to "spoil" it when I was spoiling a movie a day because I don't actually know how it ends. I've never seen it, and never really felt the urge to. Not out of some judgmental reaction, but just because it never struck me as a movie I wanted to watch.

 2. White Christmas - To be fair, if there's a movie on this list that I think I'm not alone in having missed, it's this one. Everybody knows the song, to be sure, but I've never encountered the target audience for this movie. Not to speak ill of Bing Crosby and company, but other than my parents I don't think I know anyone else who owns the movie, let alone watched it.

 3. The Muppet Christmas Carol - Count me in the bracket that was just a little too old for the "second coming" of the Muppets in the 1990s. I never saw Muppet Treasure Island or The Muppet Christmas Carol or Muppets from Space. I'm sure they're enjoyable in their own right, and I know people just a bit younger than the Cap'n who LOVE this movie, but I haven't seen so much as a second of it. I was more along the lines of the Mickey Mouse Christmas Carol, which I haven't seen in ages.

 4. A Charlie Brown Christmas - I know. I HAVE to have seen A Charlie Brown Christmas. It's only thirty minutes long, everybody knows the damn thing, and I can't remember anything about it. Ever. The music? Sure. The pathetic tree? Only because people keep mentioning it. The only conclusion I can come to is that I've never seen the special from beginning to end. It's the only explanation.

 5. It's a Wonderful Life -Yep. This occurred to me while watching The Ref, where another character says "I've never seen this movie all the way through" to a group watching It's a Wonderful Life. I am in that same position - I've seen enough of the film in sections to have probably "seen" the whole movie, but I've never watched It's a Wonderful Life in one sitting. I'm probably missing big chunks of the movie because I know the prologue really well, the bridge scene, the flashback where Donna Reed and Jimmy Stewart are dancing and fall in the water, and the ending. I even sort of know the parts where George Bailey tries to talk to people in a world where he was never born, but that might just be from innumerable parodies. Someday I'll actually watch It's a Wonderful Life and complete the process of being a human, but for the moment I'm some sort of heartless monster.

 Runners up include Love Actually, Holiday Inn, Elf, The Polar Express, The Bishop's Wife, A Christmas Carol, and Christmas Evil. But I have seen Ernest Saves Christmas! And Trapped in Paradise! That has to count for something, doesn't it?

Five Movies: Alternate Cuts That Helped

 Yeah, I thought I might be talking about Star Wars this evening, too. But I'm not nearly far enough into the Blu-Ray set to do that, so you're just going to have to wait a little bit.In case that wasn't clear, yes I did get the Blu-Ray of the complete series for the extra three discs, which I've been poking through when I have time. I never said I wasn't going to; I just said I'd think about it. Go back and look for yourself. But I digress, let's take a look at Five Movies that benefited from revisionist directors, writers, producers, or actors.

I have, in the past, bagged on THX 1138, Aliens, Terminator 2, Donnie Darko, and The Exorcist for alternate versions (usually called "Director's Cuts") that remove ambiguity or clutter up the film with unnecessary subplots or sequences. This past week the cyclical outrage over changes to Star Wars again brought up the debate about whether the creative force behind a film has the right to alter their movie, or if the movie belongs to the audience.

 In some cases, these alternate versions are effective or even improve upon the film, with or without the participation of the original cast and crew. This was actually a harder list to put together than the "Theatrical Cuts I Prefer" counterpart. I ended up leaving out a lot of alternate versions; The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly has an interesting "extended" cut, as do Apocalypse Now and Touch of Evil. I've decided to leave them off not because I don't like them or, in some cases, prefer the alternate cuts. The "workprint" version of Alien 3 is the only alternate cut we're likely to see since David Fincher has no desire to revisit the film, so I'm leaving that out of the five, although it materially changes the experience of watching the film. Not having seen the theatrical cut of The New World, I don't want to compare the two necessarily, although the differences are by all accounts atmospheric in nature (as I understand it, Blood Simple is a similar situation). I opted to leave out The Lord of the Rings and Leon: The Professional, but freely admit I prefer the Extended Editions.

 To keep to the rules, these are five films that have been changed dramatically by revisiting footage, inserting or deleting material. One or two have subtle changes in visual effects, but all of them are as or more interesting because of the alterations.

 1. Brazil - What is frequently forgotten when looking at the battle over Brazil is that between the two extremes of Gilliam's cut and Universal's "Love Conquers All" cut is that they reached a compromise before the film was released in December of 1985. The theatrical cut of Brazil was twelve minutes shorter than Gilliam's original cut (details covered here, which also mention a fourth version of the film), and it wasn't until the Gilliam approved Criterion release of the film that fans were able to see his complete cut of Brazil. Taken in its full scope, I tend to appreciate the abrupt opening and better sense of absurdity in the world than in the American theatrical release.

 2. Payback - This is a point of contention between friends, because I am partial toward Brian Helgeland's "Director's Cut - Straight Up" Payback, many of them hate it. Payback was a film we were tremendously fond of in 1999, and it's no-nonsense, smart ass attitude was a huge component in seeing it three times in the theatres and many more times on video. I wasn't aware that Helgeland walked away from the film when he couldn't cut the film in a way palatable to Paramount, Warner Brothers, and Icon Productions (Mel Gibson's company). I had no idea that the explosions, the narration, and Kris Kristofferson weren't a part of his original conception of the film. That the ending was much bleaker.

 After Helgeland left, Gibson shot much of the new material himself and that's the Payback audiences saw in theatres. And I really like that Payback. In 2004, Gibson and Warner Brothers reached out to Helgeland to see if he wanted to put together his version of the film - a leaner, darker experience - and he took them up on it. The resulting film is a dialectical Rashomon to the theatrical cut: they tell roughly the same story in a similar way, but the execution is different. Helgeland's cut is more mean-spirited, more direct, and isn't as interested in moments beyond Porter getting his money back. Gibson is more ferocious, and a violent exchange with Deborah Kara Unger shifts their relationship into a more volatile state. Porter is less likable, less identifiable, and his situation ends the way it probably would have, the way he thought it would. I realize that I'm in the minority even liking the director's cut, but I think it's a fascinating contrast to the "audience friendly" version I was first enamored of.

 3. Kingdom of Heaven - Longer is not always better. Ridley Scott's extended cuts of Gladiator and Robin Hood, for example, don't improve anything (in the latter case, they just muddle things more). Kingdom of Heaven, on the other hand, benefits significantly from expanding from two-and-a-half hours to a little over three hours as a Director's Cut. The theatrical cut briskly moved along, undercutting the scope and depth of the Crusades. However, by reincorporating nearly 45 minutes of footage, Scott eases the choppy nature of the film and lets it breathe as a full-fledged epic. (See differences here, and they're significant changes) When I mention Kingdom of Heaven, I make a point to recommend the Director's Cut, because while the running time may shy people off of the film, the shorter cut isn't worth bothering with.

 4. Conquest of the Planet of the Apes - As far as I know, the only way to see the alternate (referred to as Unrated) cut of Conquest is on Blu-Ray, but two changes shift the tone of the film significantly. Only the opening and closing were changed in 1972 (to secure a PG rating), and of the two the ending is more important. The brutal beating of a gorilla in the original opening sets the tone, but Caesar's post-riot speech at the end has been removed entirely. Instead of appealing for mercy, Caesar allows the humans to be beaten to death, and the bloodied apes are shown stacking the bodies of riot police officers. Gone is the implication that apes and humans could or should live side by side, which makes Battle for the Planet of the Apes (which also has an alternate Blu-Ray cut) a little more tenuous. The shift, however, is in keeping with the militant tone of the film.

 5. Blade Runner - I couldn't not put Blade Runner on this list. I really thought about leaving it off, because nearly everyone agrees that there's a stratospheric leap in quality from the Theatrical Cut to the "Final Cut" (named so because Scott was not actively involved in the already exisitng "Director's Cut"). Many of us grew up with the narration laden, expository heavy Theatrical Cut on VHS, and while it is what drew most to the world of Blade Runner, the 1992 "Director's Cut" really sparked a renewed interest in Ridley Scott's follow-up to Alien.

 Personally, I prefer the Final Cut, because it reflects changes Scott wanted to make but couldn't (he was working on Thelma and Louise). The differences between the DC and FC are not always evident, but are minor adjustments (the dove flying away, Zhora's death scene, the shift in one of Batty's demands to Tyrell) designed to make Blade Runner more cohesive. The most significant change is Deckard is no longer dreaming about the unicorn; he is shown to be awake the entire time. The Final Cut retains much of the ambiguity of the Director's Cut but has the polish and attention to detail Scott was unable to provide at the time. If I'm going to watch the film, nine times out of ten it's the Final Cut.

Five Movies: Looking Forward

Welcome to Five Movies, a periodic feature on the Blogorium where the Cap'n spotlights five films worth your attention. This edition is focused on a quintet of features I'm looking forward to over the summer. Of the five, four of them have already been released in one form or fashion, but not in a way where I've been able to sit down and check them out.

After being able to check out a number of other "of interest" films beneath the surface, whether for good (American: The Bill Hicks Story), or for less-than-good (Hobo with a Shotgun), the Cap'n is ever looking forward, and the five films below aren't necessarily on the cultural radar the same way a Thor, Pirates of the Caribbean, or The Hangover Part 2 are. They may not be the top of the advertising heap, but they might move up your mental queue a bit after today.

1. Rubber - Can I interest you in a movie about a killer, psychic tire? Rubber has consistently been garnering positive (is slightly bewildered) reviews as Quentin Dupieux's film made its way through the festival circuit, and is now on VOD. Provided the Playstation Network ever comes back, I look forward to diving into one of the stranger films I've heard about in recent years, a film favorably compared to Blood Car by a colleague. That's more than enough incentive for the Cap'n to check it out.



2. The Hole - Okay, here's a film nobody seems to be talking about. Like John Landis' (not very good) Burke and Hare, The Hole is Joe Dante's return to feature-length movie making - his first since Looney Tunes: Back in Action. The Hole (also like Burke and Hare) hasn't been released in the United States, and while I can understand the Landis one (it's really just not funny AT ALL) The Hole seems to be generally well reviewed by those who see it. The hesitation seems to be linked to its role as a "kids' horror movie," and the film has been mentioned as being similar to The Gate, which is played well at Horror Fest in a room full of adults.

I suppose there might be some hesitation about releasing a "kid friendly" horror film (even in 3-D); I can't really remember one since Monster House, and it's a long ways away from when it was regular fare to drop the children down for matinees of Gremlins or Monster Squad. Still, I find it odd that Dante and Landis, two "geek friendly" directors, are having so much trouble making it back to their native soil. Okay, Dante anyway - if you'd seen Burke and Hare, the Landis situation wouldn't be so perplexing. Count me in for seeing The Hole when and if it ever makes it stateside.

3. Tucker & Dale vs. Evil - I don't really know much about Tucker & Dale vs. Evil, other than the premise: two well-meaning hillbillies (Alan Tudyk and Tyler Labine) are vacationing in a cabin when a group of teenagers stumble across them, assume they are planning to kill them, and try to fight back. The film is an inversion of films like Wrong Turn or The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, where the protagonists are assumed to be "evil" and the ineptitude of the antagonists (the kids) keeps killing them off.

The film fares very well on IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes, so it's strange that there's virtually no buzz about this film. I'd seen a photo on Bloody Disgusting last year or two ago, then had totally forgotten Tucker & Dale vs. Evil existed, so its forthcoming release has my attention.

4. The Cabin in the Woods - Of the five, I have to say I'm the most concerned about this film. The Drew Goddard (Lost, Cloverfield) directed, Joss Whedon (Serenity, The Avengers) scripted horror film is shrouded in secrecy, and has been sitting on the shelf for nearly two years. The MGM financial collapse prevented The Cabin in the Woods (which stars Bradley Whitford, Richard Jenkins, Amy Acker, and Chris Hemsworth), and the only exposure anyone seems to have with the film is the snarky posters, which poke fun at horror movie conventions.

So the pieces make sense, the lack of release isn't directly attributable to a "bad" movie (which is often why a film is shelved, although not always *coughAlltheBoysLoveMandyLanecough*), so why then is the Cap'n nervous? Well, like Tucker & Dale vs. Evil, The Cabin in the Woods has been suggested to be a horror-comedy, but unlike the former film, this one apparently leans heavily on the "horror" over the "comedy," and has been described as "high concept." Don't get me wrong, but this is a fine line to walk: Buffy the Vampire Slayer was consistently more humorous than frightening, and while you can argue the relative merits of The Frighteners, Scream, or The Evil Dead, but it is a rare kind of movie that can be scary AND funny*. I am therefore cautiously optimistic, understanding that the odds may not be in The Cabin in the Woods' favor.

For my final pick, I'm going to look a year out for a movie nobody else seems remotely interested in.

5. Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance - So here's the deal as I see it: Nicolas Cage (Drive Angry) is coming back, with Neveldine / Taylor (Crank, Gamer) directing based on a story from David Goyer (Blade Trinity). There is no chance Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance is going to be a good movie. It's going to be a TERRIBLE movie, filled with spastic editing and camerawork, a likely incoherent script, and unrestrained Mega-Acting from Mr. Cage. It's a perfect storm of bad ideas rolled into one movie.

The question isn't "how bad will it be?" but "can this unasked for sequel to Ghost Rider reach the level of camp that the first film did?" The Cap'n understands that I am all alone on the "this can't be so bad by accident" appreciation of Ghost Rider, a movie so willfully stupid, so unbelievably asinine that one can't help but stare at the screen, jaw agape. That said, all of the pieces are in place for Spirit of Vengeance to be every bit as ridiculous as its predecessor, in large part because Neveldine and Taylor injected seriously absurd moments into Crank and Crank: High Voltage, including but not limited to a Giant Monster fight in the middle of the film. Their influence is joined by Goyer's original story, which if it's anything like Blade Trinity, is a good sign.

I don't know if you've seen Blade Trinity, in part perhaps because you sat out Blade and Blade II, but I urge all fans of "bad" cinema to seek out this cacophony of imbecilic ideas, egregious over-acting, and brainless plot holes. If there's a film that gives Ghost Rider a run for its money, it would be one where WWE Superstar Triple-H shoots the sun a bird because he's a vampire. Only a film with vampire Pomeranians could compete with Nicolas Cage jumping over a football field of running helicopters riding a motorcycle. Now, it should go without saying that these films are not "good"; if you somehow skipped to this paragraph, these are BAD movies, but nevertheless very entertaining trainwrecks. If Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance comes anywhere close to them, count me on board.



* For the sake of argument, allow me to make my case about Evil Dead II, Shaun of the Dead, Slither, Fright Night, and An American Werewolf in London (to name a few), which are all more comedy than horror. Even Dead Alive and Drag Me to Hell, which balance shocks with yuks, lean heavily on comedy as a form of relief, without many lingering chills.

Five Movies: The Most Repetitive Music in Film

Sometimes I'm not even sure where these come from, but after hearing that True Grit and Tron Legacy and Inception all had "repetitive" scores, I started thinking about films that truly test my patience with an over-reliance on one or two pieces of music, and this edition of Five Movies finds offenders far more egregious than any of 2010's punching bags. Take a look for yourself, and when possible, a listen:


5. The Creature from the Black Lagoon - It's not that all of the music for Creature is so tedious, but the fact that there's one theme for the Creature, and that it plays every time it appears onscreen, really robs the film of actual thrills or chills.



4. Dead Man / Human Highway - I'm lumping the two of these together because it feels like there isn't a piece of music that Neil Young doesn't love to play to death when he's in charge of the soundtrack. Dead Man's first half is punctuated by the same guitar riff played ad nauseum, which does add to the hypnotic effect of the film, but is nevertheless taxing on one's patience after a certain point. In Human Highway, we're subjected to the same Devo song ("Worried Man") every single time Devo appears on-screen during the narrative proper, so much so that it's a minor relief to hear the unbearably long "Hey Hey My My" during the film's dream sequence. That said, no sooner are we out of the dream sequence than the rest of the cast is performing "Worried Man."



3. The Graduate - I rarely have complaints about Mike Nichols' The Graduate, but its famous soundtrack, featuring music from Simon & Garfunkel, has the unfortunate tendency of playing "Mrs. Robinson" in different incarnations for most of the film (among other S&G songs). If there's such a thing as beating a song into one's head, The Graduate finds a way of doing it, and in the process sullies an otherwise entertaining piece of music.

2. Man on the Moon - Like The Graduate, R.E.M.'s score for Milos Forman's 1999 Andy Kaufman biopic suffers from the overuse of an instrumental version of one song - R.E.M.'s "Man on the Moon," which plays over and over and over again with little variation over the course of the film. Were it not such an obvious choice or not performed by the band whose song title inspired the film's title, or if it had simply been held back just a little bit, I might not be so perturbed by it, but nearly every time the film changes location, or the progression of Kaufman's life or career switches, it's back to the same old theme.

1. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring - The number one, without fail, all time worst example of "playing a theme to death" I can think of. Howard Shore has two major pieces of score for The Fellowship of the Ring, and depending which part of the movie you're watching, you'll hear them both repeatedly. Early in the film, he plays the "Concerning Hobbits" theme for all its worth:



In the second half of the film, after the fellowship is forged, Shore relies on its theme for nearly every transition, action sequence, or musical bridge:



If you've ever tried watching The Fellowship of the Ring on television, or found yourself in the second half of the film, it's embarrassing how much of a crutch this "theme" is; it's one thing to return to a theme, touch on variations of it during other pieces of music (take Danny Elfman's Batman score, for example), but to play the same theme without variation for half of a three hour movie is taking it too far. Considering how toned down the repetition is during The Two Towers and The Return of the King, it certainly seems like Shore was aware of this too.

Five Movies: Five Books About Movies Worth Your Time

Yesterday, I briefly mentioned that literature about film was a useful way of feeding the Cinephilic meme, so it only seemed fair that the Cap'n give you some suggestions. More often than not, the casual-to-curious film fan will wander into their local bookseller (or retail chain), head for the "Media" section, and find themselves inundated with oversized "making of" books, unauthorized celebrity bios, and more "1001 ____ Movies You Must See Before You Die" than you can shake a stick at. The end result tends to be that they leave with nothing, feeling perplexed about where all these "great books" their friends talk about are.

One of the problems - perhaps the largest problem - is that the critical analysis or scholarly approach to film texts are limited to small, university presses, and most major chains don't feel the need to carry them. It is, after all, not their target demographic - typically the casual shopper looking for a paperback to enjoy on a sunny afternoon - so you won't find analytical texts just anywhere (periodically they pop up in used book stores, especially ones in the vicinity of a college campus).

Then again, the neophyte or leaning cinephile will want to wait for most of those texts, so while I'll mention a few after the list proper, this edition of Five Movies will focus on good "entry points" with a dash of heavier reading to keep you busy. Whenever possible, I'll link the titles to Amazon, so you have a reasonably priced starting point.

1. VideoHound's Cult Flicks & Trash Pics (edited by Carol Schwartz with Jim Olenski) - Let's start with a video guide; when I was younger, I used The Video Movie Guide by Mick Martin and Marsha Porter, but as the list of films grows, the reviews become shorter and shorter, and omissions ramped up. VideoHound publishes guides by topic, genre, and year, so you get more concentrated subsections of films, with better information about the film and its relative merits. I chose Cult Flicks & Trash Pics because if you want a handy guide to the "underground" films that exist in the realm of meme-dom, this is a great point of entry. It also makes a good companion to J. Hoberman and Johnathan Rosenbaum's Midnight Movies.

2. Hooked by Pauline Kael - From movie guides, let's move on to collections of reviews by critics; while I do own a few books by Roger Ebert, Pauline Kael was far and away my favorite "newspaper critic" - her reviews are insightful, witty, and so effortlessly well written that it drives me crazy I can't come anywhere close. Kael died ten years ago, and her collections are woefully out of print (I found Hooked at a used book store), but our number 2 pick is a little bit easier to find than 5001 Nights at the Movies, which is also excellent. Hooked deals with reviews from 1984-1989, covering a number of titles you may be familiar with (and many you won't be), and even when I don't agree with Kael (like her pans of After Hours and Raising Arizona), I appreciate the level of writing she brings even to pithy dismissals. This book would make a fine counterpoint to Harlan Ellison's Watching, which covers much of the same time period in cinema.

3. The Kid Stays in the Picture by Robert Evans - You may have seen the documentary based on our third choice, also narrated by Evans, but it doesn't even scratch the surface of this entertaining, frank, and frequently revelatory autobiography from the former head of Paramount Pictures. Evans makes it clear from the get-go that this is his version of the story, but his path from salesman to B-movie actor to mogul is never dull, even if the facts tend to lean only in one direction. As "tell all"'s or Hollywood biographies go, skip what you normally see on the shelf and gravitate towards The Kid Stays in the Picture; you'll learn a lot more and have more fun doing it.


4. The Director's Series by various authors, editors, et al - This series, which sometimes goes by the name Directors on Directors, is a collection of interviews with various filmmakers about their process, history, craft, and themes in their body of work. There's one for just about any director you could be interested in: David Lynch, Martin Scorsese, Alfred Hitchcock, Federico Fellini, Werner Herzog, David Cronenberg, Douglas Sirk, Lars von Trier, John Cassavetes, Louis Malle, Ken Loach, Woody Allen, Kryzysztof Kielslowski, Pedro Almodoovar, Tim Burton, Paul Schrader, Barry Levinson, John Sayles, Robert Altman, and Terry Gilliam. Personal favorites? I'd start with Lynch on Lynch or Gilliam on Gilliam, which have a more conversational tone with the directors in question. Burton on Burton is a treasure trove of information, but its structure is more of introductory text preceding a quote from Tim Burton moving chronologically through his films. It's interesting, but less intimate, so I'd start with Gilliam or Lynch and more forward from there.


5. The Making of Star Wars: The Definitive Story Behind the Original Film by J.W. Rinzler - As chronicles of making a film go, you'd be hard pressed to find a more in-depth exploration than The Making of Star Wars. I assure you that even the most die-hard Star Wars fan is going to find plenty of revelations in the book, about the writing process, the conceptualizing of Lucas' vision, the perils of making the film, its disastrous first edit, and the effort that went into making the first film a cultural landmark. Rinzler does similar work with the Indiana Jones series and The Empire Strikes back (and, one must assume, eventually Return of the Jedi), with plenty of access to everyone involved in the making of A New Hope, and the book feels like it steps beyond the typical "Lucas whitewash" that other "histories" of the films have.

This is just to get you started, of course; if you want some really good "theory" I suggest More Than Night: Film Noir in its Contexts by James Naremore, Horror, The Film Reader, edited by Mark Jancovich, Theories of Authorship, edited by John Caughie, or Terminal Identity: The Virtual Subject in Post-Modern Science Fiction by Scott Bukatman. If you like more niche or subgenre guides, hunt down Stuart Galbraith IV's Japanese Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror Films.

If you want to have some fun with reviews or career pieces, check out Vern's Five on the Outside, Seagalogy: A Study of the Ass-Kicking Films of Steven Seagal, or "Yipee Ki-Yay, Moviegoer!": Writings on Bruce Willis, Badass Cinema, and Other Important Topics. You can also look at the series of director interviews with the likes of Steven Soderbergh, David Lynch and The Coen Brothers. Want to know how to make a movie? Try Robert Rodriguez's Rebel Without a Crew or Lloyd Kaufman's Make Your Own Damn Movie!. Want a cultural history of a genre? Check out David J. Skal's The Monster Show, Kendal Phillips' Projected Fears: Horror Films and American Culture, or Joe Bob Briggs' one-two punch of Profoundly Disturbing and Profoundly Erotic.

I'm always looking for more good reads, so if you have one, pass it on.

Five Movies: The Cap'n Presents His Favorite Pieces of 2010

Originally, I had planned to close out the year end recap on Saturday, but ended up bouncing around from town to town in order to take care of financial business. While I could *technically* "sneak" that piece in the weekend spot before yesterdays Roger Corman trailer Sunday, I think instead we'll treat it as a "day off" from the Blogorium. The Cap'n and the Cranpire did close out Saturday night by watching the Corman produced Forbidden World (also known as Mutant), hence the Trailer Sunday. We'll get to Forbidden World later this week...

Today, I'm going to provide links to my favorite articles / reviews / columns / posts of 2010. Technically it's not a "Five Movies" but all five deal specifically with film, and in many cases deal specifically one film or type of film.


1. Horror Fest: A People's History (Part One, Part Two) - I had possibly the most fun I've ever had compiling these stories and then editing them together into an overlapping oral history of Horror and Summer Fests. This version of Part Two finally fixes the glitch and allows readers to see Barrett's advice, correcting a text color issue I missed in the first go-round.

2. Re-Adapting and the Tainted Discourse of "Remakes" - a piece dealing with the curious case of True Grit, a film which appears to be a remake on the surface but is being classified otherwise, and the ramifications of shifting that argument.

3. Winnebago Man vs. Best Worst Movie - What appears, at first, to be a comparison piece of two films is also a study of the "YouTube" generation, "secondary fame" for films, and the way audiences relate to films in a post-MST3k world.

4. My "Mixed Tape" Manifesto - A (sort of) open letter to the creators of Greensboro's Mixed Tape Film Series, a sound concept which continually underwhelms me in its execution, but could easily be improved if the creative minds behind it would follow their own advice.

5. Coen Brothers Final Day One: Auteur Theory - This post is visited more than any other that doesn't have the words "Thankskilling" or "Leprechaun 3" in it, largely by students who are (hopefully) citing it for their papers. If you aren't, I will find out somehow - eventually your professors are going to check online, and I hope they find blog, where it came from. I appreciate all of the traffic, and I'm glad to know people find the research I did useful, but don't steal it. It's going to be painfully obvious when your teacher sees a quote from Harlan Ellison's Watching, a book they know you haven't read.


Bonus favorites:

Hamlet Week - Where I nearly drove myself crazy watching five major adaptations of Shakespeare's play and comparing and contrasting them with each other and the original text. Days One (Laurence Olivier), Two (Mel Gibson), Three (Kenneth Branagh), Four (Ethan Hawke), Five (David Tennant), and Six (Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead).

The "Twitter" Experiment - and why you'll never see the Cap'n open a Twitter account.