1) What was the last movie you saw theatrically? On DVD or Blu-ray?
Milk, My Architecht: A Son'S Journey

2) Holiday movies— Do you like them naughty or nice?
I am fond of the horror movies, silent night, deadly knight or black xmas...is that naughty?

3) Ida Lupino or Mercedes McCambridge?
Mercedes McCambridge, for her black clad villian in Ray's Johnny Guitar, plus the voice of Satan.

4) Favorite actor/character from Twin Peaks
Lara Flynn Boyle, who did a string of sexually complicated heroines in the 90s and then sadly lost it, and this was an almost perfect noir performance.

5) It’s been said that, rather than remaking beloved, respected films, Hollywood should concentrate more on righting the wrongs of the past and tinker more with films that didn’t work so well the first time. Pretending for a moment that movies are made in an economic vacuum, name a good candidate for a remake based on this criterion.

I keep wondering if films like Ishtar or Death to Smoochy, which were marketed in a way that undersold their considerable charms, and were odd enough that they needed to be explained, would do well not nessc. with remakes, but reissues, sort of like Criterion but on the big screen. I also wonder what would happen if you gave someone like Harmony Kormine or some of the mumble core fellows 20 millon dollars and told them to remake Waterworld or Superman:Returns, or even Titanic?

6) Favorite Spike Lee joint.

As a politican: Bamboozled (because loose limbed, burlesque that is so soaked with bile is a hard balance, and it was so meta it hurt). As a film maker, the remarkably tight, beautifully acted Inside Man, with Jodie Foster playing someone new, strong, and dislikeable.

7) Lawrence Tierney or Scott Brady?
The Scott Brady who was in an episode of the littlest hobo? Then yes!

8) Are most movies too long?
Most movies spend too long explaining, and too little time working out emotions, and realtionships--as a general rule, they are badly paced (Role Models is a good example of in/out with lots of good actors scene, so is Sarah Marshall)

9) Favorite performance by an actor portraying a real-life politician.
Helen McCroy, who made the easily parodied, easily mocked Cherie Blair, into a modern, open, moral counterpoint to the cold and formal Frears.

10) Create the main event card for the ultimate giant movie monster smackdown.
Godzilla vs the Cloverfield Monster but in North Dakota.

11) Jean Peters or Sheree North?
Sheree North. (for the episode while she was the hooker with Archie Bunker and for the weird, little seen, Schumacher riff on Altman Amatuer Night at the Dixie Bar and Grill)

12) Why would you ever want or need to see a movie more than once?
If I was wrong, if people I trust tell me I am wrong, If what I feel is overwhelming what I think, if my dick or my heart gets in the way, if i am hungry or distracted while watching it, if i leave the film ambigiously

13) Favorite road movie.
true romance/crossroads

14) Favorite Budd Boetticher picture.
i haven't seen enough.

15) Who is the one person, living or dead, famous or unknown, who most informed or encouraged your appreciation of movies?
my mother, who made me talk about things when i left the cinema, my friend pat, who kept arguing about the movies with me, the art critic david hickey, who taught me to trust my love of pop trash and to treat pop trash as significant, as worthy of writing about, the english critic Mark Sinker who told me that academic criticisms were worthy of being in the same places as quatidian experiences, and David Thomson, because his reference books are so opinatned.

16) Favorite opening credit sequence. (Please include YouTube link if possible.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXrEptVgUnc&eurl=http://movieblog.ugo.com/index.php/movieblog/more/best_credits_sequences_the_taking_of_pehlam_one_two_three/ (font shot!)



17) Kenneth Tobey or John Agar?
John Agar, for working from the 40s, to 2002.

18) Jean-Luc Godard once suggested that the more popular the movie, the less likely it was that it was a good movie. Is he right or just cranky? Cite the best evidence one way or the other.

I am not sure that Goddard was in the buisness of making movies, as much as he was in the business of making essays...and i always distrust people who refuse to have catholic (small c) tastes---why can we not enjoy both alphaville and logan's run? (same themes, same aesthetics)

19) Favorite Jonathan Demme movie.
silence of the lambs

20) Tatum O’Neal or Linda Blair?
Tatum O'Neal--because of her unhinged, incenstous, drunken falling apart, in the last few years of rescue me, something that Blair never seemed to be able to do (as teenagers, O'Neal struck me as more of control of her talent)

21) Favorite use of irony in a movie. (This could be an idea, moment, scene, or an entire film.)
How unresolved Zodiac was, how the whole movie was about finding a killer, about obsessional knowing for two decades and three charchaters, and how that knowing was impossible.

22) Favorite Claude Chabrol film.
i don;t have one

23) The best movie of the year to which very little attention seems to have been paid.
Role Models

24) Dennis Christopher or Robby Benson?
Robby Benson for his voice work as the Beast.

25) Favorite movie about journalism.
Zodiac

26) What’s the DVD commentary you’d most like to hear? Who would be on the audio track?
Deep Throat Catherinne McKinnon, Andrew Sarris, Susie Bright, Larry Clarke, Phyllis Schafler, Al Goldstein, and Caitlin Flannagan.

27) Favorite movie directed by Clint Eastwood.
NA

28) Paul Dooley or Kurtwood Smith?
Kurtwood Smith

29) Your clairvoyant moment: Make a prediction about the Oscar season.
It will bore me.

30) Your hope for the movies in 2009.
Actually Gays and Lesbians fucking on Screen.

31) What’s your top 10 of 2008? (If you have a blog and have your list posted, please feel free to leave a link to the post.)
1) Role Models
It was charming, and low key, and shaggy, and v. funny, and tender.
2) Wall E
the aestheics, the arguements against copyright, and finally feeling something for robots
3) Cloverfield
how do we make movies with DV? How do we create a movie about terror in new york, after real terror exists? How do 20 year olds process and disemaite information?
4) The Strangers
formally brilliant.
5) Death Race
joan allen, saying cocksucker.
6) Burn After Reading
a perfect little coen bros. confection.
7) Speed Racer
one of the ways to solve the uncanny valley, is to make things hyperreal, made me think the most about how movies are made in this post green screen era.
8) W
profoundly flawed, with wildly inapproite shifts of tone, but for james cromwell as papa and brolin's pitch perfect performance.
9) Paranoid PArk
Van Sant should only be allowed 1 million dollars to make a movie, any more then that, and he fails.
10) My Winnipeg
guy maddin pyschogeographically deconstructs what it means to be canadian.

BONUS QUESTION (to be answered after December 25):

32) What was your favorite movie-related Christmas gift that you received this year?
I received no movie releated gifts