Thursday, September 30, 2010

Thursday's Ways Not To Die

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Oh ho ho, this scene. I could write a thousand paragraphs and still have more to say about this scene... so of course I put this off this post until the last minute and am now having to rush through in order to get it done. So this'll have to be the Cliff's Notes version, I fear. Probably better for those of you not willing to read a thousand paragraphs (aka every single person on Earth) anyway.

I haven't read It since high school but I remember all of this seeming even more explicitly gay in the book - the teen boy hormones in King's books swing every which way, much to the excitement of this teen boy's hormones - but I'll be damned if it doesn't get across its gayness just fine with a couple not-so-subtle winks. The bullies pressing Stanley between them and pressing their knife in his face, then slicing the buttons off of his shirt one at a time. And the pipe! The pipe, man. What we've got here is essentially a teen boy being threatened with rape who is then saved by a bright evil light pouring out of a giant anus which then sucks his proposed victimizer inside. I could write a thousand paragraphs, I tell ya what.


But all that delightful symbolic bull-crap aside, this is just a scary effing scene ya know? It's one of the series' many moments that scarred me as a kid. There's so much good in It - of course everything with Tim Curry, but other stuff too (dear lord those fortune cookies!) - it's a shame we have to wander around with John Boy Walton for so much not good stuff. I still can't stomach Richard Thomas in anything because of it. Stupid ruiner!

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Previous Ways Not To Die: An Arrow Up The Ass - The Numerous Violent Unbecomings of Olive Oyl -- Ack! Ack! Zap! -- Baby's First Acid Splash -- Chop, Drop and Sashimi Roll -- Forever Rafter -- Can't You Hear Me Now? -- Daisies Ways #5 - Harpoony Side Up -- Acid Dip -- On a Wing and a Prey -- For Standing in the Way of Sappho -- Busting Rule Number Three (For The Purpose of Number Two) -- Daisies #4 - Window Dressed To Killed -- Hands Off the Haas Orb -- Bullet Ballet -- A Single Vacancy at the Roach Motel -- A School Bus Slipped Thru The Ice -- Trache-AAHHHH!!!-tomy'd - For Mel Gibson's Sins -- A Wide Stanced Slashing --- Daisies Ways #3 - Scratch n' Snuffed -- The Victim of a Viscous Hit & Run -- Curled -- Kabobbed -- Daisies Ways #2 - Aggravated Cementia -- Boo! Nun! -- 2009's Ways Not To Die -- Bug Scratch Fever -- Daisies Ways #1 - Deep Fat Fried in My Own Unique Blend of 500 Herbs & Spices -- By the Yard End of the Stick -- Screwed From A Very Great Distance -- A Righteous Bear-Jew Beatdown -- Fisted By Hugo Sitglitz -- Xeno Morphed -- Fuck-Stuck -- A Vengeful Elevator God: Part 4 -- Lava Bombed -- The Cradle Will Rock... Your Face Off!!! -- The Food of the Nilbog Goblins -- The Slugs Is Gonna Gitcha -- Phone Shark -- Hide The Carrot -- Sarlacc Snacked -- Avada Kedavra!!! -- Hooked, Lined and Sinkered -- "The Libyans!" -- Axe Me No Questions -- Pin the Chainsaw on the Prostitute -- The Wrath of the Crystal Unicorn -- The Ultimate Extreme Make-Over -- Drown In A Sink Before The Opening Credits Even Roll -- The Dog Who Knew Too Much -- Don't Die Over Spilled Milk -- Inviting the Wrath of Aguirre -- An Inconceivable Outwitting -- The Five Point Palm Exploding Heart Technique -- Nipple Injected Blue Junk -- Your Pick Of The Deadly Six -- Thing Hungry -- Don't Fuck With The Serial Killer's Daughter -- DO Forget To Add The Fabric Softener -- Any Of The Ways Depicted In This Masterpiece Of Lost Cinema -- Rode Down In The Friscalating Dusklight -- Good Morning, Sunshine! -- Mornin' Cuppa Drano -- The Cylon-Engineered Apocalypse -- Tender-Eye-zed -- Martian Atmospheric Asphyxiation -- Maimed By A Mystical Person-Cat -- The Sheets Are Not To Be Trusted -- Handicapable Face-Hacked -- I Did It For You, Faramir -- Summertime In The Park... Of A Pedophile's Mind -- A Vengeful Elevator God: Part 3 -- Strung Up With Festive Holiday Bulbs By Santa Claus Himself -- A Vengeful Elevator God: Part 2 -- A Vengeful Elevator God: Part 1 -- Decapitated Plucked Broiled & Sliced -- Head On A Stick! -- A Trip To The Ol' Wood-Chipper -- Pointed By The T-1000 -- Sucking Face With Freddy Krueger -- A Pen-Full Of Home-Brewed Speed to The Eye -- Motivational Speech, Interrupted -- A Freak Ephemera Storm -- When Ya Gotta Go... Ya Gotta Go -- Hoisted By Your Own Hand Grenade -- Having The Years Suction-Cupped Away -- Criss-Cross -- Turned Into A Person-Cocoon By The Touch Of A Little Girl's Mirror Doppleganger -- Satisfying Society's "Pop Princess" Blood-Lust -- Done In By The Doggie Door -- Tuned Out -- Taking the 107th Step -- Rescuing Gretchen -- Incinerated By Lousy Dialogue -- Starred & Striped Forever -- Vivisection Via Vaginally-Minded Barbed-Wire -- Chompers (Down There) -- Run Down By M. Night Shyamalan -- Everything Up To And Including The Kitchen Toaster -- Sacrificed To Kali -- Via The Gargantuan Venom Of The Black Mamba Snake -- Turned Into An Evil Robot -- The Out-Of-Nowhere Careening Vehicle Splat -- "Oh My God... It's Dip!!!" -- Critter Balled -- Stuff'd -- A Hot-Air Balloon Ride... Straight To Hell!!! -- Puppy Betrayal -- High-Heeled By A Girlfriend Impersonator -- Flip-Top Beheaded -- Because I'm Too Goddamned Beautiful To Live -- By Choosing... Poorly... -- Fried Alive Due To Baby Ingenuity -- A Good Old-Fashioned Tentacle Smothering -- Eepa! Eepa! -- Gremlins Ate My Stairlift -- An Icicle Thru The Eye -- Face Carved Off By Ghost Doctor After Lesbian Tryst With Zombie Women -- Electrocuted By Fallen Power-Lines -- A Mouthful Of Flare -- Taken By The TV Lady -- Bitten By A Zombie -- Eaten By Your Mattress -- Stuffed To Splitting -- Face Stuck In Liquid Nitrogen -- Crushed By Crumbling Church Debris -- Bitten By The Jaws Of Life -- A Machete To The Crotch -- Showering With A Chain-Saw -- In A Room Filled With Razor Wire -- Pod People'd With Your Dog -- Force-Fed Art -- Skinned By A Witch -- Beaten With An Oar -- Curbed -- Cape Malfunction -- In The Corner -- Cooked In A Tanning Bed -- Diced -- Punched Through The Head -- Bugs Sucking On Your Head
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Still Not Watching Sons of Anarchy...

... and therefore I'm still missing shit like this. Charlie Hunnam's hanging out half-naked in jail now, huh? Siiiiiiigh.

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The Ampersand Man Can

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Ages and ages ago I remember disturbed whispers whispering about some scary movie called S&Man (pronounced sandman). The film is from 2006 and apparently presents itself, or is, a documentary about the disturbing world of hardcore fetish films sneaking up to and including snuff. That sentence should end with a question mark. I don't remember the early whispers I heard way back when and I'm keeping my eyes off the descriptions and reviews now because the film's finally getting a release, four years after it was made. It's playing in Brooklyn for one week starting tomorrow - and the director will be there tomorrow, too - and then it'll be on DVD on October 12th. You can read more over at BD. Here's the trailer:
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In between those long gone whispers I'd heard about the film and this news of its release, I actually caught the director JT Petty's most recent film on Netflix, called The Burrowers. Never got around to properly reviewing that one but it's a solid movie, the sort that finishes and you go and look up the director to see what else they've done, and see the title S&Man and then think hey, I remember hearing good things about that, and then you see if it's on DVD and it isn't, so you see if it's online anywhere and it ain't, and so you get frustrated and put it out of your mind for a couple of weeks and then WHAM news comes on it like a magical spray of faerie dust in your face. WHAM.


Still The Burrowers has some great moments - it reminded me a lot of Dead Birds, another low-budget horror flick with creepy crawly type things in a Western setting. Both of these are underrated and well worth watching.
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Andrew Garfield Four Times

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(via) Once upon a time, seeing Andy strike the sexy poses struck me as silly - this gangly whippet of a boy with the giant bubble of brown hair is a lot of things, but sexy in the generic pretty sense never seemed high on that list. And I know a lot of people scoffed when he was cast as Spider-Man for the same sorts of reasons. He's so awkward, ya know?

But I did not scoff when he was cast as Spider-Man because I'd already stopped giggling when Andrew Garfield and "sexy" were mentioned together because by then I'd seen him in Red Riding and in there he oozed a confidence, a sexiness, I'd never seen or frankly expected from him. But I shouldn't have been surprised since he's proven time and time again that you do not underestimate Andy Garfield.
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Five Frames From ?

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What movie is this?
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Do The Munster Mash

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Ever since Pushing Daisies drifted off on a cloud of dandelion seeds, save a brief dalliance in Heroes-ville we've been full-on Bryan Fuller-less, and the world's been a little bit grayer, with a little less music in the air. We've all just assumed he'd been spending the time building playing-card skyscrapers and doing dolphin taxidermy in his attic, but no! With a sudden swiftness that's knocked me outta my socks once twice thrice times - thankfully I wear four pairs of socks every day - the announcements have come. He's doing a series for SyFy! He's writing a newfangled version of Pinnochio! And now, this (via EW):

"Consider this an early Halloween present from me to you: Pushing Daisies mastermind Bryan Fuller is toiling away on a modern-day reboot of the creepshow classic The Munsters!

So far, NBC, with whom Fuller has an overall deal, has ordered only a pilot. But since the potential series is being described to me as “Modern Family meets True Blood,” I have a good feeling about it.

Not only that, but rumor has it no less than Guillermo del Toro (Hellboy) is eyeing a behind-the-scenes role in the project."
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How Great Does This Sound?

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Greta Gerwig's lined up a new project - she's going to be one of three female leads in Damsels in Distress, the new dark comedy by Whit Stillman (who really hasn't made a movie since The Last Days of Disco, if you can believe that), and tell me if you can't stop smiling after reading this plot description, cuz I sure can't:

"The story follows a dynamic trio of liberal arts college girls who take in a new student and teach her their own misguided ways of helping people. ways which are used as a coping mechanism for their various failed college romances. Gerwig will play one of the three girls who aim to "prevent suicides through the powers of 30's song-and-dance numbers."

The joy inherent in that last sentence is instantly overwhelming. Greta doing retro song-and-dance numbers? Why yes, I will swallow that right up, thank you.
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Hey You Two!

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Yeah I'm talking to you. You should probably just make out.
I mean, the sexual tension's just so thick. So so thick.


That's right. You know you want to. I can see it in your...


... Jesus you took him home already? That was fast. I was ju...


Alright, no need for me to keep talking. My work is done!
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