13 Cakes of Halloween #8

.

I can hardly do a list of notable cakes in horror films and not highlight the fresh horror franchise so obsessed with that exact thing that its first poster was cake and nothing but. I don't know if we'll get a third film to make a proper trilogy of Tree (Jessica Rothe) being cursed to live and die and live and die and live and die and live and die looped around her fucked-up birthday shenanigans or not, but the series' two movies, 2017's Happy Death Day and this year's Happy Death Day 2U, are absolutely way more fun than they have any right to be.

And the cake is actually central to the plot! I can't really talk about why without being too spoilery (and these movies are recent enough that I'd like to avoid that), but this isn't just a drive-by caking -- Tree's birthday cupcakes are the reason for this particular season.

Not only do we get a reenactment of the famous final scene from Sixteen Candles with Tree's own cute boy -- although Israel Broussard, who turned out to be a racist pig, is never gonna be any generation's Jake Ryan -- but we also get Multiple Murders By Cupcake. Take that, Final Destination.

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

Mermaids (1990)

Mary: He's an animal.
We had oral sex by the old railroad trestle.
I love it when they groooooan!

Mary in Mermaids, my new hero! (Seriously though how Dawn Davenport & Friends are those three?) I got to see this movie on the big screen this past weekend, I hadn't seen it in ages, and I realized watching this scene that when this movie came out in 1990 , much like Winona's character, was just learning about sex, and I had a vivid recollection of watching this scene at the time and thinking "oral sex" meant "kissing with tongue," lol.

Mermaids just hit blu-ray a couple of weeks ago, by the way - if you haven't watched it lately I recommend re-catching up with it; it's a product of its time for sure (up to and including the "women dancing around the kitchen table" scene) but a one hundred percent comforting one. Plus Michael Shoeffling!

Michael Schoeffling forever.

.

We're All Winners, But Mostly They Are

.

Donald Sutherland should have like eight Oscars by now but sure an Honorary one will suffice https://t.co/vwk8cpLWJQ pic.twitter.com/wEGat5khKA

— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) September 6, 2017

.

I wrote up a brief thing about who's getting Honorary Oscars this year over at The Film Experience, and as you can tell from that tweet there I am fairly psyched about one of 'em. Owen Roizman, who shot The Exorcist and The French Connection and Network and Tootsie and The Stepford Wives and The Addams Family -- but especially Vision Quest! -- is also pretty darn cool too...

5 Off My Head: Siri Says 1984

.

Welcome back, tis the time to talk to the little lady housed inside my phone and ask her to tell me a number between one and one hundred - Hark, today it is 84! So The Movies of 1984 it is. (Coincidentally 1984 is also the "Year of the Month" over at The Film Experience - you should go see an ode to Jeff Bridges' gorgeousness that literally just got posted a minute ago.)

(Oh and you can see more of that in an old post of ours here, by the way.) Anyway I usually have had a tough time narrowing down my list to just five when it's been a year I look back upon nostalgically - two of my toughest bouts were 1988 and 1996. But 1984 turned out to be kind of easy! I have a lot of runners-up, but the five top titles were all like, "Duh." So now that I've thrilled you with high expectations of shock and awe, let's do it!

My 5 Favorite Movies of 1984

Body Double

(dir. Brian De Palma)

-- released October 26th 1984 --

A Nightmare on Elm Street

(dir. Wes Craven)

-- released November 16th 1984 --

What Have I Done To Deserve This?

(dir. Pedro Almodovar)

-- released March 30th 1984 --

The Terminator

(dir. James Cameron)

-- released October 26th 1984 --

Crimes of Passion

(dir. Ken Russell)

-- released October 19th 1984 --

--------------------

Runners-up: Gremlins (dir. Joe Dante), Ghostbusters (dir. Ivan Reitman), Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (dir. Steven Spielberg), Romancing the Stone (dir. Robert Zemeckis), Blood Simple (dir. Coens), Broadway Danny Rose (dir. Woody Allen), The Company of Wolves (dir. Neil Jordan)...

...  The Muppets Take Manhattan (dir. Frank Oz), Night of the Comet (dir. Thom Eberhardt), Silent Night Deadly Night (dir. Charles E. Sellier Jr.), Sixteen Candles (dir. John Hughes), Starman (dir. John Carpenter), Supergirl (dir. Jeannot Szwarc)

What are your favorite movies of 1984?

.

Michael Schoeffling Eight Times

.

Today is the 55th birthday of Michael Schoeffling, the model turned actor forever known as "Jake Ryan" from Sixteen Candles and the platonic ideal of my pre-teen dreams. One of these years I'll run out of old modeling pictures of him to post -- since he's disappeared from public life for the past twenty-four years it's inevitable -- but I can thankfully say that day is not today! I found a few more! (See all out previous picture posts here.) Hit the jump for them...

More Happy Birthday Michael Schoeffling

.

So according to this website these pictures of today's beloved birthday boy and Forever Jake Ryan were taken by Bruce Weber for the February 1981 issue of GQ. 

I've posted images from Michael's modeling career before but I've never seen these shots before, and I'm gonna need some, you know, time, to process these here specific pictures.

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

Vision Quest (1985)

Louden: You never took a night off to see

me wrestle before. They'll dock you for that. 

Elmo: Hey, kid - money ain't everything. 

Louden: It's not that big a deal, Elmo. 

I mean, it's six lousy minutes on the mat, if that. 

Elmo: You ever hear of Pele? 

Louden: Yeah, he's a, a soccer player. 

Elmo: A very famous soccer player. I was in the room here one day... watchin' the Mexican channel on TV. I don't know nothin' about Pele. I'm watchin' what this guy can do with a ball and his feet. Next thing I know, he jumps in the air and flips into a somersault and kicks the ball in - upside down and backwards... 

... the goddamn goalie never knew what the fuck hit him. Pele gets excited and he rips off his jersey and starts running around the stadium waving it around his head. Everybody's screaming in Spanish. I'm here, sitting alone in my room, and I start crying. That's right, I start crying. Because another human being, a species that I happen to belong to, could kick a ball, and lift himself, and the rest of us sad-assed human beings, up to a better place to be, if only for a minute... let me tell ya, kid - it was pretty goddamned glorious. It ain't the six minutes... it's what happens in that six minutes. 

 Jeez that's a long-ass speech. You're so eloquent, Vision Quest.

But really we're here today because...

... it's Michael Schoeffling's birthday! The recluse on the right, where ever he is, is turning 54! Yes that's right Jake "Perfection" Ryan is in his mid-50s. Weep for us all. A few years back I did a really big post devoted to this movie and Schoeffling in particular, back in the day that you'll definitely want to click on. We miss you, Michael!

Which is Hotter?

.

Winona Ryder's boyfriend in Mermaids played by Michael Schoeffling or Winona Ryder's boyfriend in Girl Interrupted played by Jared Leto?

.

poll by twiigs.com

.

Happy 43, Winona!

.

Good Morning, World

.

Praise the internet and all the devil-gods that keep it running - another instance of otherwise-woulda-been-lost-unto-the-sands-of-time beefcakery's been saved, huzzah. That's our forever high school boyfriend Jake Ryan (aka the long lost actor Michael Schoeffling) in an episode of some HBO series from the 80s called The Hitchhiker (strangely IMDb lists it under its alternate title Deadly Nightmares) via this site here, which is doing the devil-gods work for them, finding all this obscure stuff, bless 'em. (thanks Mac) Never thought I'd get to see more of Michael Schoeffling than I already had.

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

Sixteen Candles (1984)

The Geek: How's it goin'? 

Samantha: How's what going? 

The Geek: You know - things, life, whatnot. 

Samantha: Life is not whatnot, 

and it's none of your business. 

"Life is not whatnot" should be on tee-shirts. Happy 45, Molly Ringwald! If he hadn't passed it also would have been John Hughes' birthday today, too. In summation, I'd be remiss if I did a post on Sixteen Candles and didn't include a picture of Jake Ryan, so here.

Good Morning, Jake Ryan

.

Where ever he is out there, the actor Michael Schoeffling is turning 52 today. I suppose by disappearing he'll always stay that most perfect man of our dreams that he was in Sixteen Candles and Vision Quest and Mermaids and all of the too brief eleven roles he graced us with over the span of seven short years. At this point if he suddenly showed up and was all, you know, old... well there would be some mixed emotions involved. See lots more of him here.

.

I Am Link

.

--- Alfred's Fever Dream - Alfred Hitchcock's gloriously romantic ode to emotional abuse Vertigo came out on this day in 1958 and The Playlist is recognizing its anniversary by sharing a list of five things you might not know about the film. I knew them all but then I am a Hitch spazz and there's not a whole lot left for me to know anymore, sigh.

--- Boys - Do you guys remember that web-series called The Outs that I told you to watch a few weeks back? Well the second episode is here, go watch it. Like, now. Or finish reading this post I guess and then go watch it. There are many cute Brooklyn boys in it, being cute, it's worth it, believe me.

--- Killer Thriller - The trailer for William Friedkin's super-black NC-17 rated Killer Joe is online, watch it at Slash. Or in even better quality at Apple. Apparently it's the main stop on Matthew McConaughey's "reconsider me as an actor, son" tour of 2012, and his role's insane in it. It co-stars Emile Hirsch and Emile Hirsch's furry nipples, and yay Gina Gershon! (Doggie Chow.)

--- Cam Slam - Angelina Jolie is not taking the lady role in Ridley Scott's The Counselor as had been theorized; it's going to Cameron Diaz, who I guess wants to try and be a serious actress again just like McConaughey. (Also she has new enormous breasts, so there's that.) The Counselor you should recall is Scott's next movie with Michael Fassbender as a lawyer who tries to do a little drug dealing on the side and it goes horribly wrong; the script was written by No Country For Old Men scribe Cormac McCarthy and the film co-stars Brad Pitt and Javier Bardem.

--- High & Tight - I wasn't really a fan of the first Kick Ass movie - it gave us the little girl who won't go away, after all, and features one of the most insufferable of her many insufferable performances - but I admire it for introducing us to Aaron Johnson for one, and for introducing us to him in a pretty well-fitted in the central area of his body jumpsuit at that. So now that there's real talk of the sequel happening, would I watch another hour and a half of him running around in that costume now? Even with Insufferable Girl there? I probably would. I'm so damned easy. But come on! Look at that thing.

--- Smashed - I only saw the Edward Norton version of The Incredible Hulk a couple of weeks ago and man alive it was terrible. Stupid, boring, clunky garbage. I need to revisit Ang Lee's film, which against all odds I was a fan of - it has been a few years since I've watched it though. This terrific picee by Tim at Antagony & Ecstasy does a great job plunking down Lee's film in the context of the still-going onslaught of superhero movies, and critiquing its failures (although I think he's too hard on Eric Bana).

--- Vision Queer - Glenn watched Vision Quest and got caught up in all of its glorious gayness, just like I did back a couple of years ago. It really is one of the gayest movies ever made. And with Michael Schoeffling shuffling around in wrestling gear, I ain't complaining. Oh ho ho no, no complaining here.

--- Hidey Hole - BD has a few pictures from the new Aussie thriller Crawlspace, which is not a remake of "The Single Greatest Movie Ever Made, Crawlspace starring Klaus Kinski" but something else entirely. For a hot minute we thought it was directed by Wolf Creek's Greg McLean, but it's only produced by him. Still, produced by him is enough to make me watch it.

--- And finally, this is to remind myself to watch this, but you can come along for the ride the more the merrier I always say - via Gawker he's the Disney-fied version of Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver:

The "Michael Schoeffling Was A Model" Post

.

I've always known that the disappeared actor Michael Schoeffling - aka Jake Ryan from Sixteen Candles and all of our wet dreams forever and ever, amen - was a model before he was an actor. I mean, obviously he was. Look at him, dammit. Look at him!!!

Ahem. But as with every Schoeffling-ish, finding examples have been hard to come by. Until I did some net-scouting today, that is, and managed to dig several up! Hooray! The internet is quite possibly my favorite thing. Well my second favorite after my beloved Jake Ryan, of course. See a bunch after the jump!

"Jake, would I dick you?"

.

"Let me put it to you this way:
what happens to me if I dick you?"

.

Slaves of New York in 150 Words or Less

.

Screw you, movie! I only watched you because of promises of Michael Shoeffling, and he didn't show up until the last fifteen minutes and when he did show he had a ponytail! Ugh. I suffered through two hours of Bernadette Peters swanning around with that ridiculously inappropriate can-you-hear-me-in-the-cheap-seats voice of hers wearing a series of ever taller bouffant hats for nothing! Nothing!

Okay so there were a million "Hey look it's that person!" moments - Steve Buscemi, Mercedes Ruehl, Anthony LaPaglia, Stanley Tucci, and Michael Musto flitted by in a club scene - and I always love seeing downtown in the 80s. And her boyfriend Stash was hot when undressed. So that junk was passable.

Still what a rip-off. There are only eleven films that Schoeffling made and he must be utilized dammit! He's Jake Ryan for fuck's sake! Not a ponytailed hobo!
.

"Oh I'm going to hell for sure."

.

"Here he is, talking about his dead mother,

and I can't help wishing his hands were unbuttoning my dress."

.

RIP John Hughes

.

Director John Hughes died of a heart attack at 59 years old this morning, and I mean absolutely no disrespect to him by posting a picture of my beloved Jake Ryan instead of posting a picture of him; what that's intended to be is a brief testament to what he gave us. And I don't mean that in an entirely frivolous, ooh-hot-guy-to-ogle way, or at least I don't mean to reduce all that he gave us with his films to only superficiality. Jake Ryan and all the other characters from Sixteen Candles to Ferris Bueller to Pretty In Pink and on, these folks... well they shaped an entire generation. Jake Ryan was The Boy. Molly Ringwald (in all her several incarnations) was The Girl. The Geek and The Outcast and so on, all those designations he tried to blur in The Breakfast Club and all of his movies... he didn't so much blur them as define them. He shaped the way we saw the world and what we wanted to do with that world. How we could change it. So thank you, John, for Jake Ryan and all of them, and rest in peace.
.

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

Sixteen Candles (1984)

Jake Ryan: These are really hers?

The Geek: Yeah.

Jake: How did you get 'em?

The Geek: She gave 'em to me.

Jake: Did you...?

The Geek: No! She cranked for you. I told her you asked about her, right? The girl freaked. She had a hissy. She thinks you're the cats meow!

Jake: Really? She came up to me in the gym tonight. She looked at me like I was a leper.

The Geek: Girls will do that, Jake. You know? They know that guys are like in perpetual heat, right? They know they shit, and they enjoy pumping us up. It's pure power politics. I'm telling you.

Jake: I thought she hated my guts.

The Geek: Games, Jake. Silly torturous games. You know how many times I've gone without lunch because some bitch borrows my lunch money? Any halfway decent girl can rob me - blind! Because I'm too torqued up to say no. It's heinous, I'm telling you.

.