Guns work here. Magic works there. Sketches work everywhere.

Courtesy of Johnny Bacardi, who recently took requests for a sketch meme on his blog, here is the finished product of my request: GrimJack (of course!).


Very, very cool. Thanks, JB!

20 Favorite Actresses

I was tagged by SamuraiFrog at Electronic Cerebrectomy with the following meme: pick your 20 favorite actresses. While I hate memes with such difficult rules, I decided to play along with this one anyway.

I would've posted this sooner, but SamuraiFrog made this cool collage of the 20 actresses he picked, so I wanted to do it too. I think it turned out very nice. You don't have to leave me a compliment in the comments but it wouldn't hurt, what with Santa watching and all.

After the super-keen collage, I've listed all 20 actresses, and my two favorites of their films. In most cases, these aren't going to be their most iconic film appearances, nor even arguably their best performances; these are just the films closest to my heart for whatever reason. Also, I've probably accidentally left out one or more of my favorites due to faulty wiring in my puzzler. I reserve the right not to get too worked up about it.

Feel free to add your two cents, either in the comments or on your own blog, since I'm old and tired and can't be bothered to officially tag anyone else with this meme.



Cate Blanchett -- The Lord of the Rings, The Aviator
Hope Davis -- Mumford, American Splendor
Zooey Deschanel -- Almost Famous, Elf
Minnie Driver -- Grosse Pointe Blank, Good Will Hunting
Faye Dunaway -- Bonnie and Clyde, Chinatown
Jodie Foster -- Taxi Driver, The Accused
Audrey Hepburn -- Sabrina, Breakfast at Tiffany's
Katharine Hepburn -- The Philadelphia Story, The African Queen
Holly Hunter -- Raising Arizona, Broadcast News
Grace Kelly -- Rear Window, To Catch a Thief
Laura Linney -- The Truman Show, You Can Count on Me
Myrna Loy -- The Thin Man, Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House
Marilyn Monroe -- Some Like It Hot, The Misfits
Julianne Moore -- Boogie Nights, The Big Lebowski
Parker Posey -- Kicking and Screaming, Henry Fool
Susan Sarandon -- Bull Durham, Dead Man Walking
Meryl Streep -- The Deer Hunter, Silkwood
Lili Taylor -- Say Anything..., I Shot Andy Warhol
Uma Thurman -- Dangerous Liaisons, Pulp Fiction
Sigourney Weaver -- Aliens, Death and the Maiden

50 Best Horror Films

Inspired by Johnny Bacardi (and also because lists are easy and fun and tend to generate a lot of comments), I'm going to take a stab (HA!) at the 50 Best Horror Films list that's been going around.

Let me say right off the bat: I think the list, which comes from a Metro.co.uk poll, is questionable. Saw, the fifth best horror film ever? Kindly remove your heads from your asses, good sirs and madames of Metro.co.uk.

But as many omissions and odd rankings as there are on this list, there are also a lot of good choices. I love horror, and I love lists, and I love bolding the items I have seen/heard/read/consumed on any given list, so here we go!

1.The Exorcist. William Friedkin (1973)
2.The Shining. Stanley Kubrick (1980)
3.Alien. Ridley Scott (1979)
4.The Silence of the Lambs. Jonathan Demme (1991)
5.Saw. James Wan (2004)
6.Halloween. John Carpenter (1978)
7.A Nightmare on Elm Street. Wes Craven (1984)
8.Ring (Ringu). Hideo Nakata (1998)
As Johnny B. did, I have to insert the caveat that I've only seen the American version. He didn't count it, but I am! Close enough, says I! Ha! Take that, purists!
9.The Wicker Man. Robin Hardy (1973)
10.The Omen. Richard Donner (1976)
11.The Birds. Alfred Hitchcock (1963)
12.The Thing. John Carpenter (1982)
13.Lost Boys. Joel Schumacher (1987)
14.Dawn of the Dead. George A Romero (1978)
15.The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Tobe Hooper (1974)
16.Jaws. Steven Spielberg (1975)
17.The Blair Witch Project. Daniel Myrick & Eduardo Sanchez (1999)
18.An American Werewolf in London. John Landis (1981)
19.Se7en. David Fincher (1995)
20.Poltergeist. Tobe Hooper (1982)
21.The Amityville Horror. Stuart Rosenberg (1979)
Wow, all the way to 21 before we get to a film I haven't seen! And it's a surprising one -- to me, at least. I was going to bold it before I actually stopped and thought about it. Somehow, I never have seen this one. Weird. I will, though, I will: late '70s - early '80s is my favorite era of horror films.
22.Candyman. Bernard Rose (1992)
23.Scream. Wes Craven (1996)
24.Carrie. Brian De Palma (1976)
25.Friday the 13th. Sean S Cunningham (1980)
26.Final Destination. James Wong (2000)
27.The Evil Dead. Sam Raimi (1981)
28.Hellraiser. Clive Barker (1987)
29.Hostel. Eli Roth (2005)
30.Salem's Lot. Mikael Salomon (2004)
Oops. I was counting this one at first, thinking it was the 1979 Tobe Hooper version. But no, it's the recent Rob Lowe version. Dang!
31.The Descent. Neil Marshall (2005)
32.The Hills Have Eyes. Wes Craven (1977)
33.Wolf Creek. Greg McLean (2005)
I started watching this one on cable a while ago, and got bored and changed channels. I guess all the good stuff takes a while to get to.
34.Misery. Rob Reiner (1991)
35.Rosemary's Baby. Roman Polanski (1968)
36.Child's Play. Tom Holland (1989)
37.The Orphanage. Juan Antonio Bayona (2008)
I've heard of this film recently, and that it's supposed to be scary as hell. It's going on Netflix!
38.The Entity. Sidney J Furie (1981)
I almost forgot I had seen this movie. This is the one where Barbara Hershey gets felt up by a ghost, right?
39.Nosferatu. FW Murnau (1922)
40.Night of the Living Dead. George A. Romero (1968)
41.House on Haunted Hill. William Malone (2000)
42.The Haunting. Robert Wise (1963)
I watched part of it on Turner Classic Movies the week of Halloween. Still haven't seen all of it, but I liked what I did see.
43.It. Tommy Lee Wallace (1990)
Great book, but that mini-series looked cheesy as hell. Was it actually any good?
44.Audition. Takashi Miike (1999)
Amazingly, still haven't seen it! Must correct that.
45.The Changeling. Peter Medak (1980)
46.The Mist. Frank Darabont (2008)
And wow, that's five in a row I haven't seen. I'm a little surprised and disappointed in myself.
47.Suspiria. Dario Argento (1977)
48.The Vanishing. George Sluizer (1993)
I know that I have to see this one. Just haven't gotten to it yet.
49.Shutter. Masayuki Ochiai (2008)
Never even heard of this one. And it stars Joshua Jackson? Wait, are they fucking with me? They're fucking with me. This can't actually be any good, can it?
50.Planet Terror. Robert Rodriguez (2007)

So that's 39 I've seen on this list. (Okay, 38 if you want to disqualify the Ring remake.) Not bad!

So what's missing that should be on here? Johnny B. suggested Bride of Frankenstein, which is a big yes. How about any of the classic Universal horror pictures? And why The Birds but not Psycho? I might throw in a couple more zombie flicks, like 28 Days Later or Shaun of the Dead. Oh, and I'd swap Evil Dead with Evil Dead 2. What else? Maybe Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer? Last House on the Left? Re-Animator? And where the hell is Cronenberg's The Fly? Or Peter Jackson's Dead Alive?

Anything else I'm missing? Or do you just want to brag that you've seen more than I have? Comment away!

Awesome Movies A to Z: The Answers

Thanks to those of you who took a shot at yesterday's quiz. I'm declaring Gordon the winner, as he was the first to respond and came up with 14 correct answers. Congratulations! You win a sense of accomplishment. Richard Marcej got 15, but he responded after Gordon and duplicated (not intentionally, I'm sure) many of his answers, so very nice runner-up effort there.

Below are the letters with the movies they correspond to. Click on the letters to see the full movie posters from which I copied them (and sometimes primitively edited them to disguise their origin). Since no one guessed L or S, you'll just have to click on those letters to see the answers for yourselves (and probably also see why nobody guessed them, due to my sub-par primitive disguising).

Thanks for playing along! I've got a similar comic book logo quiz planned for next week, so don't miss it.


Apocalypse Now


Blazing Saddles


Chinatown


Deliverance


The Exorcist


Fast Times at Ridgemont High


Ghostbusters


Halloween


The Incredibles


Jaws


Kill Bill




McCabe & Mrs. Miller


No Country for Old Men


O Brother, Where Art Thou?


The Philadelphia Story


The Quiet Man


RoboCop




Taxi Driver


Unforgiven


Vertigo


The Wild Bunch


The X Files: Fight the Future


Young Frankenstein


Zelig

[Insert Jeopardy! Countdown Theme here]

There's still time to play yesterday's A-Z movie poster quiz. Five Four letters have yet to be guessed, and they're toughies (and frankly, I may have altered L and S too much in my attempt to disguise them):

D
I
L
S
W

Answers will be posted later today. Play while you can!

Awesome Movies A to Z: The Quiz

Tagged by Electronic Cerebrectomy, I now give you the Alphabet Meme.

1. Pick one film to represent each letter of the alphabet.

2. The letter "A" and the word "The" do not count as the beginning of a film's title.

3. EDIT: Rule 3 is a bunch of rambling about Star Wars and Lord of the Rings with which I won't waste your time.

4. Films that start with a number are filed under the first letter of said number.

5. EDIT: Rule 5 is essentially a long-winded request for a link back to meme-originator Blog Cabins.

6. If you're selected, you have to then select 5 more people.

Really, I could've skipped everything after Rule 1, and we all would've been the better for it. Oh well.

Since I already have a history of Abecedarian Fun (as linked on my trusty sidebar!), I'm renaming the meme to match those other posts: Awesome Movies A to Z. It's my blog, so there.

And: I'm going to make a game out of it! For the movies A-Z, I'm going to give you the initial letter as it appeared on the original movie poster. You guess which movies go with which letters. Whoever guesses the most gets, I don't know, a million dollars. Or nothing. Or something in between. Like a ham sandwich. Probably nothing.

Here we go!




























As for the five people I tag to do the meme next: hell, just do it if you want.