Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Frog Goes to Dinner (1985)



One day I was in the Fairfield Public Library, and on that day I saw a video in a thick black clamshell case for sale for a whole dollar. The video was Frog Goes to Dinner, and it’s a twelve minute short film based on the story by kids book mastermind Mercer Mayer. The thing that caught my eye about it is that the box stated that it was filmed in my hometown of Fairfield, CT, so I got a little excited. It was partially filmed at the Burr Homestead, which is a famous old colonial home that is now owned by the town, and used for special events and tourist attraction crap. (Frog Goes to Dinner was also filmed in nearby towns Norwalk and Weston.) Anyway, the short is pretty straight forward: a little kid is going to dinner at a fancy restaurant with his parents, so he puts his frog in his pocket. The frog escapes of course, and starts getting into all kinds of trouble, like sitting on soufflés and swimming in the lobster tank. Frog Goes to Dinner is wordless, so luckily the little kid has a very wide eyed and expressive face, but the frog is particularly impassive. Anyway, it’s a fun little oddity, plus you can watch the whole thing here!



Thursday, May 6, 2010

Cold Fever (1995)




Cold Fever is a haunting and beautiful film about a young Japanese man named Hirata on a journey in Iceland to the river where his parents died in an accident, seven years before. The reason for the journey are the funeral rites he must perform at the site of his parent’s death, so their souls can find rest, while the movie is about the journey itself. We are introduced to Hirata as a awkward, dispassionate businessman who apparently only cares about golf, but is persuaded by guilt to leave for Iceland. Once there, he is immediately besieged by bizarre situations and quirky characters, but never are these situations played solely for laughs. For example, when Hirata is riding on the back of a pick-up truck in the middle of a snow storm among a dozen men singing a Icelandic song in booming baritone voices, or when Hirata’s cab driver suddenly stops the cab and rushes into a bleak, deserted seeming building so he can participate in a nativity scene, everything exudes an aura of absurd and surreal beauty. Hirata, as played by Masatoshi Nagase (Mystery Train, Suicide Club), is very likable and multi-dimensional. He instantly feels like a real person, even though we never find out too much about him, because we feel like we are on the journey with him. He manages to portray dozens of human emotions throughout the course of the movie, and not once does it feel melodramatic in the slightest. Lilly Taylor and Fisher Stevens show up as whacked out and obnoxious American hitchhikers (Fisher Stevens and Masatoshi Nagase pee together) while the rest of the cast is either Icelandic or Japanese. The music itself plays a huge part, such as when Hirata’s plane arrives in Iceland to dark and ominous guitar, or when the radio in Hirata’s car breaks, and he’s forced to listen to weird Icelandic metal and folk music. In any case, this is the kind of movie that I hesitate explaining too much, and I feel that the only thing I can say is: just watch it!

Thursday, March 18, 2010

Satan's Cheerleaders (1977)




Satan’s Cheerleaders is a wacky mix of Satanist horror and cheerleader sex comedies. It’s not scary, but its kinda funny! Our movie opens with a bunch of guys on a deserted beach playing football. Four young girls are standing nearby, and they are very excited! They are the cheerleaders. They are all pretty one-note and out of it, except for Patti, played by Kerry Sherman, who is found wistfully staring at the ocean. The football team is basically represented by one guy, the only one who talks. The others just stand around, laughing or staring, and silent. Their coach is played by Jacqueline Cole, who comes off as zoned-out and sweet. The first half of the movie actually sucks pretty bad, as all the cheerleaders do is fool around with the lame football guy, have a friendly brawl with their rivals from a neighboring high school who drive around in a jeep and throw water balloons at them, and make fun of the overweight stuttering janitor, who gets revenge by checking them out through a peep-hole in the locker room. Anyway, eventually things actually get interesting when their car breaks down on the way to the game, and the cheerleaders and their coach are picked up by the stuttering janitor Billy, who drives them to a secluded spot where there is a Satanist altar. He strips Patti and puts her on it, but she is some sort of Satanic princess, so she gets all breathy and gaspy, and strikes Billy down with her Satan powers (which are portrayed by a reddish tint to the film). The rest of the movie has the girls wandering around the small farming community, being surprised that everyone is a Satanist, including the town sheriff and the guy with the curly moustache and pitch-fork. The best part of the movie for me was John Carradine playing a shrewd bum. At one point, one of the cheerleaders finds him in a clearing, sitting on a sofa drinking beer. She keeps asking him for help, and he eventually points at something and says “Look behind you!”, at which point she turns around, see’s absolutely nothing, and runs away shrieking, as Carradine chants “Scaredy cat! Scaredy cat! Scaredy cat!” All in all, Satan’s Cheerleaders isn’t half bad, once they actually leave the high school, and once you realize that it’s really just a goofy comedy. Keep an eye out for Director Greydon Clark’s other films, including the similar Angel’s Brigade and The Uninvited, a horror movie about a monster cat hanging out on a yacht.

Thursday, March 4, 2010

The Quiet Earth (1985)




The Quiet Earth opens with a naked man lying in a bed. He gets up and we learn that he is scientist Zac Hobson and that he is in New Zealand. He drives around looking for people, saying “Hello!” in a loud voice a lot, and finds nobody. Absolutely nobody! It appears that everyone is dead, and he may be the last man on earth. The Quiet Earth is primarily a character study, as Zac Hobson’s growth as a person is the main thrust of the film for me. Hobson is played by jazz drummer and cult icon Bruno Lawrence, who also played Teddy in one of my favorite movies, Jack Be Nimble. Lawrence spends the first half of the movie wandering around looking for people, and trying to discover the cause of “the effect” which apparently just wiped away almost every human on the face of the earth, like a dry eraser on chalkboard. He goes a little nuts after a while and starts wearing women’s clothes and delivers lectures to cardboard cut-outs of Hitler and Gandhi. The last half is all about discovery, as he meets first Joanne, a pretty young red head, and Api, a Maori, who are the indigenous people of New Zealand. Lawrence soon finds himself odd man out, but also remarks to them near the end that sometimes he feels that he is the only one really alive, and that Joanne and Api are figments of his imagination, spirits sent to aid him on his personal journey. I concur, maybe!

Friday, February 12, 2010

Fascinating


This is a list of movies that I own. I want to watch them, yet I haven't watched all of them. Can you help? Oh ok. Thanks.

VHS

Top Hat
The China Syndrome
The Presidio
Past Tense
Everybody's Famous!
Videodrome
Xtro
Beware! the Blob
It Lives Again
Screamers
Pet Sematary
Orca the Killer Whale
Witchboard
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)
Good Men, Good Women
Rapid Fire
The Secret of my Success
Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure
Dutch
BASEketball
Road House
9 1/2 Ninjas
Russkies
The Trigger Effect
Alien Nation
Gremlins
Mad Max
Road Warrior
Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome
Scorpion
Robocop
Hard to Kill
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1999)
Excalibur
The Serpent and the Rainbow
Bachelor Party
Labyrinth
Ransom
The Emerald Forest
Toy Soldiers
Willow
The Running Man
The Vanishing (1993)
Tie-Died
Summer School
One Crazy Summer
Blazing Saddles
Loose Cannons
E.T.
Extreme Prejudice
The Fugitive
Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring
Face/Off
Beverly Hills Cop
Beverly Hills Cop II
The X-Files: Fight the Future
The Peacemaker
Stakeout
The Perfect Storm
Goodfellas
Independence Day
Gleaming the Cube
Demon Seed
Spirit of Wonder: Miss China's Ring
Thunder Warrior II
Ginger and Fred
Flying Down to Rio
Night Warning
The Flamingo Kid
Emmanuelle IV
The Escape Artist
The Rescuers
The Rescuers Down Under
Best of the Fests 1989
Tommy Hobson
Shogun Assassin
Devil Talk
The Balcony
The Believers
D.P.
Zone Troopers
Kelly's Heroes
Shadowzone
Panic
The Crawling Eye
White Nights
9 Deaths of the Ninja
The Quiet Earth
Night of the Living Dead (1968)
Dawn of the Dead (1978)
Strong Kids, Safe Kids
Richard Scarry's Best Learning Video Ever!
Takin' it Off
The Red House
True Romance
The Winner
Nico the Unicorn
Robotech vol. 19
Blank Tape #1 (Humanoids of the Deep, Scarecrows, Tremors, Maniac Cop)
Intimate Relations
The Art of Dying
The Crossing
Cleopatra Jones
Dead Man
Cold Fever
Sister Act
The Millionaires Express
The Day of the Triffids
From Hollywood to Deadwood
DOA (1949)
Where The Day Takes You
InHumanoids: The Movie
Toys
True Lies
The Land Before Time
Batman: Tales of the Dark Knight
The Lover
Blank Tape #2 ( random episodes of Columbo)
Blank Tape #3 ( Tommy, Batman (1966), random episodes of 60s Batman tv show)
Clownhouse
Slaughter in San Francisco
Stop Making Sense
Santa Sangre
Mindwalk
Mystery Date
Runaway Train
The Keeper





DVDs

I Walked With a Zombie
The Body Snatcher
Leprechaun
Leprechaun 2
Fear No Evil
King of New York
Wholphin no. 5
To Live and Die in LA
Slipstream
Horrors of Spider Island
Vigilante Western Collection (Keoma, The Four of the Apocalypse, And God Said to Cain...., The Fighting Fist of Shangai Joe, White Comanche)
Transporter 2
The Master- the complete series!!
Kung Fu Killer
The Hunter
The Mechanic
Mazes and Monsters
Satan's Cheerleaders
Harlan County USA
The Sci-Fi Boys
Q the Winged Serpent
Batman: Gotham Knight
A Sermon About Natalie Wood (this is something i found on the street. It was intricately wrapped, contained detailed instructions, and possibly recorded by an insane person)


Thursday, January 21, 2010

On the floor

I sat there in silence staring at the sumptous banquet placed before me, and found myself unable to enjoy it. I could think of nothing but long hours spent in front of a stove, of a lone woman spending interminable lengths of time in moist darkness, chopping vegetables and baking bread, curing meat and boiling pasta. I picked up a checkin drumstick, put it in my mouth and chewed and looked in the doorway. All I saw was the silhouette of a large mangy beast, probaly an ape. It stood there, bright shiny eyes piercing directly into my heart. I looked down into my food, unable to eat.


Here is how this story was written: one day I was hanging out with some freinds in their apartment, a conversation took place that I now forget all the details of, but I do know that I advised them to "write a story about it", and they said, "Why don't you write a story about it?" So I did, and then I read it to them. I think they liked it.

Walking Home

The little boy ran down the long hot sidewalk, his face open and clear. When he saw the dead grey bird lying there on the ground, he stopped and peered at it a long time. Then he began to lick it. He licked and licked. Hours later, the boy returned home with a strange look on his face. "What's wrong son?" his father asked. The little boy stared at his father for a while, his eyes large and milky, then opened his mouth wide. Out flew a small grey bird, wet with a little boy's spit.






















This was drawn by my best freind Lee, check out her drawings and other stuff at http://www.flickr.com/photos/medicinetongue/
And maybe buy some stuff too!!
http://www.etsy.com/shop/LuvLee12

p.s. I thought of this story while walking home one night.