There are no bad owners, only bad dogs

2004-11-29

Michael Crichton is an arse.

I watched the best movie this weekend. It would have been better if I had altered my consciousness before it started, but it was hilarious even in a normal state. I'm pretty sure that Michael Crichton stole a lot of the plot for Jurassic Park from Dinosaurus, and Dinosaurus was a hell of a lot funnier, so screw you, Crichton. There was a bad guy with a vaguely foreign accent: sometimes French-ish, sometimes Eastern European-y, and sometimes Spanish. There was a cantina that had live entertainment: mariachis playing steel drums. Huh..? That's right. The director said "Give me something sort of tropical!" and this is what he got. There was a waitress at the cantina named Chica, played by someone with an Anglo name and a bad Mexican accent. When the dinosaurs were found (a T. Rex and a brontosaurus) a little Mexican moppet knew all about them because he had saved up cereal box tops and sent away for dinosaur toys, which were his very best friends in the world. The dinosaur toys were also used in the special effects sequences, where they seemed to be tied to a piece of thread and dragged across some sand. And there was a Neanderthal man, too! These were all found in the bottom of a lagoon, dragged onto the beach, and brought to life by lightning. There was a Faye Wray sequence with the T. Rex and the white girl, where the T. Rex lifted her up in his strong, muscular arms (I know! Those things couldn't crack a walnut!) and carried her away...until the Neanderthal man rescued her and tried to get her to do the hippety dippety! Did this movie ever appear in the MST3K catalog? It should have. There were continuity errors everywhere. I highly recommend it.

Which reminds me... Last night part 2 of a show called The Ultimate Film was on. I thought it would actually show a movie, but it was really just John Cleese going through the top 100 films according to the British Film Institute. Apparently they rank movies NOT by quality or expert review, but by asses in the seats. It's all about box office, baby. There was no mention about any calculations being done to put box office dollars into a constant (so inflation would be smoothed out), so I don't know if movies that cost a nickel to get in were ranked on the same scale as movies that cost 16 dollars to get in.

Anyhoo, here's a list of movies that were not in the top 50 (I only saw the second part):
Schindler's List
American Graffiti
(here's where it falls apart)
To Die For
Rolling Kansas
The Wrong Guy
Donnie Darko
Office Space
Garden State
To Kill a Mockingbird
Jack Frost (not that Michael Keaton piece of crap -- the one where the soul of a serial killer is transferred via nuclear waste into a snowman that terrorizes the small town of Snowmonton and they battle him with hairdryers)

There were no movies with Marilyn Monroe in the top 50, meaning no Bus Stop, no Misfits, no Some Like it Hot. No Bette Davis or Joan Crawford, either, e.g. no Whatever Happened to Baby Jane. No Hitchcock (Vertigo, Rear Window, The Man Who Knew Too Much, Psycho, etc.).

The critics they had on to comment about the films were a bit (ahem) eclectic... I personally always lurved Frank DeCaro's movie critiques on The Daily Show, but I didn't really ever take them seriously. Here he was, talking about what a hottie Charlton Heston was in Ben-Hur. Jeezy Chreezy.

Interesting things I learned: The Guns of Navarone had a gay subplot, but no one told Gregory Peck about it.

Shocking revelation: The #5 most successful movie in England of all time (well, so far) is Spring in Park Lane. What the hell is that, you may well ask. Some schlocky post WWII romance starring one of Elizabeth Tayolor's ex-husbands. #4: Star Wars. #3: Snow White. #2: Sound of Music. Did you know that one of the actresses who played one of the von Trapp children was in Playboy in order to change her image? #1: Gone With the Wind.

Also not on the list: Dinosaurus.

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