5 Off My Head: Siri Says 2012

Three weeks right in a row has got to be some sort of record for our "Siri Says" series -- it's been awhile since I haven't let my attention slip in between. But here we are, for the third time in as many weeks, asking the little woman inside of my telephone to give me a number between 1 and 100 and then name my favorite five movies from the corresponding year. Today, on the second try, Siri said the number 12, and so today we will skip ourselves back not too far, just to The Movies of 2012.

This year is of course recent enough that I already did this once -- you can check out our so-called "Golden Trousers" awards for 2012 at this link. Those were some substantial Pantys! 2012 represents the peak of my awards-posting -- I posted a ton that year, more than any before or since. What I remember about that is it blew me the fuck out. There's no need for almost 70 posts! I've learned to condense them, thankfully -- my sanity thanks me anyway. 

I was curious to see if my original list of favorite 2012 movies had shifted at all in the past nine years and lo, it has, although not a ton. What surprised me the most is how few 2012 movies I've re-watched since 2012? Ones that placed rather high at the time I just haven't seen since. So there's some shuffling off my head today, mostly due to my memory being hazy, but truth be told if I haven't had the desire to re-watch the movie in eight years that might say something about my love for the movie, right? Right. Anyway, the list as it stands today...

My 5 Favorite Movies of 2012

1. Moonrise Kingdom

(dir. Wes Anderson)

-- released on June 29th 2012 --

2. Holy Motors

(dir. Leoz Carax)

-- released on July 4th 2012 --

3. ParaNorman

(dir. Chris Butler & Sam Fell)

-- released on August 17th 2012 --

4. The Master

(dir. Paul Thomas Anderson)

-- released on September 21st 2012 --

5. Rust and Bone

(dir. Jacques Audiard)

-- released on May 17th 2012 --

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Runners-up: Amour (dir. Michael Haneke), The Cabin in the Woods (dir. Drew Goddard), Cosmopolis (dir. David Cronenberg), Lincoln (dir. Steven Spielberg), Magic Mike (dir. Steven Soderbergh), The Paperboy (dir. Lee Daniels), Compliance (dir. Craig Zobel), Take This Waltz (dir. Sarah Polley), The Impossible (dir. JA Bayona)...

... Wuthering Heights (dir. Andrea Arnold), Killing Them Softly (dir. Andrew Dominik), The Perks of Being a Wallflower (dir. Stephen Chbosky), Dark Horse (dir. Todd Solondz), Bullhead (dir. Michael R. Roksam), The Wise Kids (dir. Stehen Cone), The Bay (dir. Barry Levinson), Zero Dark Thirty (dir. Kathryn Bigelow)

Never seen: Hysteria (dir. Tanya Wexler), Goon (dir. Michael Dowse), Jiro Dreams of Sushi (dir. David Gelb), Hyde Park on Hudson (dir. Roger Michell), Quartet (dir. Dustin Hoffman)

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What are your favorite movies of 2012?

5 Off My Head - 12's Top Men

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It's been over two weeks since the 2012 Golden Trousers ended, so I figured we'd look back at the polls we'd included inside The Great Gratuities, aka me picking my favorite male-nudies of the year, and see who came out on top in each round. So let's! First up, the winner from the 32 runner's up...

... was Armie Hammer in Mirror Mirror. A solid, and I do mean solid, pick. And all he did was doff his top - can you imagine the hubba-hubba-hullabaloo once he sheds more? The Gratuities will most certainly take note. The Lone Ranger doesn't seem too promising on this front (although foot fetishists have surely taken note of that trailer by now), so we turn our eyes to By Virtue Fall, in which he goes to prison, bulks up, shaves his head, and faces down Eric Bana. Umm, did I just dream that synopsis into reality?

The second and third place Runners Up, for the record, were Michael Fassbender in Haywire and Taylor Lautner in the final Twilight movie. Now there's a pair.

Next stop, y'all voted on our #20-16 picks.
Tops therein went to...

... Matthew Wilkas in Gayby. With 39% of the vote, too! A very fine choice! Honestly I don't think anybody stood a chance in that line-up against that gif of him. Wilkas has a couple gigs lined up, both in what appear to be homosexually-themed television productions, so my guess is we'll see him skinning some more in the future. One of them I'd just read about - it's being billed as a "gay Sex and the City" (yeah, redundant) and it stars Jonathan Groff and was written by Weekend's Andrew Haigh.

Next up, the winner of your vote
 from our #15-11 picks was...

... Jean Dujardin and Gilles Lallouche going at it doggy-style in The Players. Once again, a gif that would not be denied. Dujardin's spent his career doffing his clothes, much of which we've documented, so post-Oscar it looks like he's getting all serious and dressed instead - he's got movies with Martin Scorsese and George Clooney coming out this year. Maybe George will give us something? Lellouche, it looks like he's staying in France, so he'll probably constantly be naked while sipping wine.

Up next! The winner out of our #10-6 spots was...

... Zac Efron in The Paperboy! Not so surprising that, although he certainly faced some stiff competition (Har har.) Alex Pettyfer and Milo Ventimiglia were right on his behind (Har har har.) As for Zac he's already been spotted shirtless playing a greeter at an Abercrombie & Fitch store on the set of the Seth Rogen comedy Townies, so I think he's realized which side his bread's buttered.

And finally out of our top five you picked...

... Matthew Bomer in Magic Mike! In a (non-)upset over our #1 placer Channing Tatum in the same movie. As I'd said in my write-up, Channing only topped Matt for me (heh) out of a sense of duty for his having gotten the movie as a whole made, so my vote was really for Bomer as well, really. Up next Matty's most promisingly got The Normal Heart lined up from Ryan Murphy on HBO.

And now, because why not...

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poll by twiigs.com

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TGT12: The Moment of 2012 Awesomeness

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This has been the moment of 2012 awesomeness.

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TGT12: The Golden Trousers Are Dead

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Long live The Trousers! Aaaand we're done. I hope everybody enjoyed the Trousers this year. I had fun doing them, and now I will go sleep for three days. For the posts where there are polls those things will still be running for about two weeks so remember you can come back and vote anew on those like every other day or whatever. They let you vote again. So do that! And in a couple of weeks I'll check back in and see who you guys picked as your faves. For now, here's is some linkage for your one-stop Pantys shopping.

The Movies!

Here is #20-11!

Here is my top ten!
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The Actors!

See them all here, or individually...

Jessica Chastain talks to Logan Lerman 

Kirsten Dunst talks to Samuel L. Jackson 

Nicole Kidman talks to Garrett Hedlund 

Robert Pattinson talks to Ann Dowd 

Donny Murphy talks to Jared Gilman 

Joaquin Phoenix talks to Kara Hayward 

Emannuele Riva talks to Denis Lavant

Jean-Louis Trintignant talks to Nadezhda Markina

Marion Cotillard talks to Daniel Day-Lewis

Matthias Schoaenaerts talks to Gina Gershon

The Gratuities!

Here are the 32 runners-up!

Here is #20-16!

Here is #15-11!

Here is #10-6!

Here are the top five!

The Moments!

Click here for all of the moments of awesomeness!

The Scary Movies!

Here are my six favorite horror films!

The Bad Movies!

Here are my ten least favorite movies of 2012!

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And of course you can just click here to see everything, the pages upon pages of everything, including all the little things that don't fit into the above categories, that I've posted this week. Once again I've topped my previous year's number of posts - I take the word "gratuitous" to heart, I do. Again, hope y'all enjoyed! Until next year this is the end, my friends...
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TGT12: The Great Gratuities #5-1

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This is it! See the runners-up here, #20-16 here, #15-11 here, and #10-6 here. And here they are, our top five gratuitous mensfolk of the year that was 2012. Give them all a hand, and/or a hand-job, whichever, s'up to you and your fate.

Garrett Hedlund in On the Road - Raise your hand if you expected Garrett Hedlund to show his dick off in On the Road. I don't expect a lot of hands there, but then I'm a pessimist and a non-believer in such surprise delights until they literally - literally - slap me upside the face. (Yes that is an invitation, Garrett.)  (Also, this movie is apparently only really coming out this weekend? Who knew?) Thankfully Garrett likes to surprise though. Add on the fact that from top to bottom he's just putting out such wanton sex vibes in this thing that the screen just melts. I could watch him and Tom Sturridge spout sexy nonsense at each other all the live long day I could. (I hope their kiss, seen below, ends up on the DVD extras since I think it's edited out of the film.) Kirsten Dunst is basically living my dream - Jake and Garrett all in one lifetime? Kiki wins.

Aaron Johnson in Savages and Anna Karenina - Aaron made the runners-up last year for taking off his shirt in Albert Nobbs, and he made #11 the year before for getting down to his skivvies in Kick-Ass - it was inevitable he'd break the top five once he went further. Inevitability aside, I had no idea what we were actually in for with him once he went further - I think I blacked out during his sex scene in Savages after they showed that ass of his, and everything ever after is a blur. A warm, happy blur. Joe Wright knew well enough to frame it like a piece of art in Anna Karenina too... well not "like" a piece of art. It is a piece of art. Can we get Aaron Johnson's ass in MoMA over next to Tilda? Pretty please? (more here and here)

Matthias Schoenaerts in Rust and Bone and Bullhead - Matty's rise reminds me a lof of Tom Hardy's, in that he made a movie (Bullhead to Tom's Bronson) wherein his newly hulking physicality was central to the point, and so the movie spent the whole time kind of just standing back in awe of these totems of masculinity, which they then disassembled in their various ways. Rust and Bone uses him similarly as this icon of simultaneous extreme strength and vulnerability, but to different effect. Anyway he was naked lots and it totally ruled. (more here and here and here and here and here)

Matthew Bomer in Magic Mike - When the first unrated trailer for Magic Mike came out I titled that post "That Is Matthew Bomer's Ass" because I just couldn't believe my eyes. I was in shock. I mean I knew he was in the movie, I was hopeful of course, but my expectations... they were exceeded, y'all. Matty's second place mostly by virtue of gratitutde, in that I'm so grateful to our #1 for giving me our #2 that our #1 deserves all of the prizes ever. But Matt's got my heart, slash, you know, my absolutely everything. Damn you, Simon Halls! (See more here and here and here and here) 

Channing Tatum in Magic Mike and The Vow - The man who made about half of this list possible! My heart belongs to Matthew Bomer really, but how could I deny Channing the prize? He gave me Bomer, and he gave me Pettyfer, and he gave me Manganiello, and McConaughey, and Rodriguez - he gave me all of them and then he went and topped it all off with the cherry that is his own hot ass more times than I can count.

And he made himself an A-lister while he was at it, and it couldn't happen to a finer fella. I actually agree with People magazine for once. This is the sort of example we need to hold high! This is humanity at its best! Hooray for Channing Tatum! Bonus points for his short shorts in 21 Jump Street and his nearly non-stop nakedness when he hosted SNL. (See more Channing here and here and here and here and here and here and here - do you see what I mean??? Give him all the money.)

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poll by twiigs.com

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TGT12: Actor To Actor #10

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Wherein we imagine a conversation between two of our most valuable players from the previous year's cinema. This round...

Alain (Matthias Schoenaerts) in Rust and Bone meets

Sharla (Gina Gershon) in Killer Joe

Alain: My girl, she doesn't have legs.

Sharla: DON'T SAY THAT WORD!

Previously: Jessica Chastain talks to Logan Lerman; Kirsten Dunst talks to Samuel L. Jackson; Nicole Kidman talks to Garrett Hedlund; Robert Pattinson talks to Ann Dowd; Donny Murphy talks to Jared Gilman; Joaquin Phoenix talks to Kara Hayward; Emannuele Riva talks to Denis Lavant; Jean-Louis Trintignant talks to Nadezhda Markina; Marion Cotillard talks to Daniel Day Lewis
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TGT12: A Moment of 2012 Awesomeness

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This has been a moment of 2012 awesomeness.

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TGT12: The Great Gratuities #10-6

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Okay-dokey, you can see all of the runners-up over here. You can see #20-16 here, and you can see #15-11 here. Next!

Joe Manganiello in Magic Mike - Top ten is surely nothing to sneeze at, yet I'm a little confounded myself that he's only this high and I'm the one that put him here. Maybe I was annoyed at all the Big Dick Richie talk with the little dick action? I'd argue most of his good stuff was only in the DVD extras but that argument deflates with what's coming further down this list so whatever. He's here, and he is a perfect thing.

Taylor Kitsch in John Carter, Battleship and Savages - Another case a la McConaughey of me being unable to step aside from the sheer volume of the year's gratuity from him - Taylor doesn't totally do it for me, but I know that's blasphemy to some of y'all. And he gets points taken off since they kept the shoulda-been-nekkid John Carter all dolled up in Martian straps. And he had the misfortune of showing off his ass, fine though it may be, only moments removed from an ass which causes angels to erupt into heavenly song (we're getting to that one soon). But you know. He's number nine. There must've been something I liked. Something!

Milo Ventimiglia in That's My Boy - Remember that skinny kid that was in The Gilmore Girls? Yeah me neither. Goddamn Milo has filled out, and out, and out, in all the exact right places. Too bad he's forced to flaunt it in shitty Adam Sandler comedies, but that's supposing that "badness" can attach itself to something so supple and divine as all that there. (see more here)

Alex Pettyfer in Magic Mike - That shot above? Is that the hottest shot in any movie this year? I think it might be the hottest shot in any movie this year. I can't really explain what it is about it that makes me go so crazy. Well the ass certainly helps. I guess it's his sleazy coyness. The whole generic "bad boy" thing is usually lost on me but Pettyfer really, really makes it work. I have posted that shot alone here at the blog like ten times already. It's in the right-hand column right now! It is perfect. But I think he's actually pretty great in Magic Mike all around. And around. Did I say round?

Zac Efron in The Paperboy - This movie is basically a paean to the sight of Zac Efron in tighty-whities. No wonder Macy Gray seemed so stoned all the time - she's high off of laundry detergent for all the underpants scrubbing she's got to do in that house. (Yeah that's why Macy Gray seems stoned.) But if you're gonna make a paean to something, Zac Efron in tighty-whities is pretty much a really really fine choice. Bonus points to Zac for super low-rise boxer briefs he sported in The Lucky One, and all that time he spent half-naked on his hotel balcony too. (More here and here and here.)

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poll by twiigs.com

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Coming up -- THE TOP FIVE!!!

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