| Butt-Numb-A-Thon 7 (12.10.05 - 12.11.05, 10 movies) |
| Date Viewed | Movie | Director | Notes |
| 12.10.05 | The Most Dangerous Game | Irving Pichel, Ernest B. Schoedsack | My personal experience of the 7th Voyage of Butt-Numb-A-Thon... and my first! RRR! RRR! RRR! RRR! Somewhere along the line, the people that make alarm clocks must have done a study to discern that the most annoying sound in the world was not a ring or a beep but rather a sideways electronic grunt. Especially when it starts crying at 8 AM. Is this the day that I get into Butt-Numb-A-Thon? I shower and get downtown by about 9:10, passing by the Alamo on my way to a somewhat close parking space. Parking before noon on a saturday pretty much rocks. If i had a wristwatch that enabled me to control time, I'm pretty sure the #1 abuse would be rewinding to 9 AM to park then fast forwarding back to whenever I need it to be. Blake and Micah are already there but I only need to casually skip in front of one person to meet them. It doesn't matter anyway since the standby line is going by raffle this year. In fact, I think maybe those people that got there at 5:30 AM did so just to make all of us feel bad if they didn't get in. I got there at a good time though. Harry's webpage said to show up at 10 and they handed the raffle tickets out at about 10:05 and cut everybody that got there after that off. I thought that was pretty harsh for about 20 seconds until I realized that it meant better odds for me. And so we waited. Luckily, the guy I skipped in front of had brought his laptop. I missing Harry's posting of the fake line-up for today: a list of movies that would play in bizarro-world BNAT. The list: Rollerball Gorgo Top Hat I Married A Monster From Outer Space Shurayukihime Guns of Navarone Escape from NY Revenge of the Colossal Beasts Deliverance Hooper Tin Drum Sword of Gideon We all new it would be 7 new ones and 5 old ones. Assuming each was new, let's see. No clue what Rollerball could be. Gorgo must be Kong. It's a Given. Top Hat... Most Everybody was thinking The Producers but my secret hope was that my memory didn't betray me and I actually did see Liam Lynch's name on that initial BNAT Attendees list and that he would show up with Tenacious D in the Pick of Destiny. Wishful thinking... Top Hat seems much more correlative to The Producers (and one of Harry's friends told us as much). No clue on Monster from Outer Space. IMDb told us that Shurayukihime was Lady Snowblood which meant Sympathy for Lady Vengeance. Had to. No clue on Guns of Navarone. People had mixed thoughts on Escape from NY but again, my secret hope kicked in. The John Carpenter on the attendees list probably wasn't _The_ John Carpenter because Eli Roth wasn't listed and we knew he was showing up. Still though, just the thought, coupled with Drew and Scott being in town... I bet they are gonna show their Masters of Horror episode Cigarette Burns. Revenge of the COllossal Beasts? No clue. Deliverance must be Hostel. MUST BE! With Eli here and the film screening in town Monday. MUST BE. No clue on Hooper. For whatever reason the guy in line kept putting his laptop away after browsing one web page and getting him to bring it out again and again seemed rude. So, trying to think of what movie Hooper is, the only thing that popped into my head is that early Paul Newman mystery movie where the title is one word that's his name. It was William Goldman's first script. Nobody knew what the hell I was talking about. One guy tried to convince me that I was thinking of The Verdict for a while... Now, Hindsight Alert, if we HAD looked up Hooper on IMDb, we all would have guessed it instantly. Tin Drum? no clue. Sword of Gideon? IMDb said it was set in Munich. Duh!!! With that, we started to brace ourselves for having to watch a Spielberg movie as the last movie. By now, ticket holders had started to line up around the building and the standby line stretched down to the pizza cart. Post-baby Karen came out and gave out raffle tickets. She asked how I was. Sweet! Recognition kicks so much ass. I think it's because I asked how her baby was doing one time when I bought a ticket next to an Alamo regular so now she registers me as "been here before" which really makes up for one of the wait staff asking me if it was my first time there a few weeks ago. Karen's recognition, followed by Tim League recognizing me and shaking my hand on the stairs, were highlights of the night as far as Alamo belonginess was concerned. A theater filled with Harry's closest friends and family, and I get recognized a few times. Felt good. I also recognized someone I didn't think I would. In the initial list of attendees, a Jedidiah Scher was listed. There was even a talkback about what kind of name that was and how crazy ha ha. Hey! I sort of almost knew a Jedidiah Scher back in high school. in Maryland. Only back then he went by "Jedd" and spent all his time playing bass and somehow being popular while still liking comic books and band. Well, sure enough... I see his face in the throng of people getting their assigned seats and goody bags. He passed me and I got to be that guy who says "hey! are you (insert name here)? I went to high school with you!" Turns out, he lives in LA and came out because his application got in. it's his first time at the theater. He said he would always read about these crazy events going on in Austin from Harry's webpage and just decided to try and go one year. Luck (and his name, no doubt) got him in. He works for G4 now. You know, he may have a cool business card now but you know what? He read about how cool Austin was and decided to come down for a weekend. I read about it and decided to QUIT MY HIGH-PAYING JOB AND MOVE HERE. So who's working for G4 and who's living the dream, I ask. Yeah, that's right. So more and more attendees flooded into the theater. Depression fell over the fifty or so of us in the standby line. I started mentally picturing the lobby to figure out how many wooden seats they have. I could only remember eight. 8 / 50 * raffle = I'm going home. A few aintitcool aquantances of mine came over to chat, each sorry/surprised that all three of us hadn't gotten tickets. They were obviously excited because they all said "see you inside" with the same level of meaning and care that I sometimes say "you too" when an usher at a movie theater says "enjoy the show." However, each of those guys expressed genuine handshakes when they saw me later on with a bright pink band around my wrist so I forgive them all. You know, sitting in the standby line really sucks. You know you have no chance of getting in and it's a horrible feeling where you're friendly with everyone else but secretly wish they'd just leave and give me their tickets and know that sooner or later, a lucky few of us would get in and the rest would have nothing better to do than think bad thoughts about us all weekend. Personally, I was completely convinced that I wasn't getting in. I was there basically to hang out with Blake and Micah for a bit and felt even worse for them because they came down from Dallas for this. I don't think I've ever won anything in a raffle ever Unless it's a situation where everyone wins and even then I get like the $10 gift certificate for Nails by Denise or something. But for as crappy as the standby line is, I did get one highlight out of it. I got to see Eli Roth and his hot Eurobabe Hostel co-star walk up in their comfy clothes holding their ass-pillows and register to get in. I like Cabin Fever more every time I watch it and thought Hostel was really really great. Whether I got in or not today I planned to find out where the hell his screening was Monday and go for that as well, so seeing him walk up and go in was pretty cool. Of course, seeing him hanging out with people I knew and both of them sticking it out till the end was even cooler, but still. One thing I missed about QT6 was getting a seat so early that I missed seeing QT actually arrive. There's something cool about that. Then these four guys showed up super late and they had tickets. Those fuckers. The least you could do is get there on time, huh??? So Karen came out and said they had 12 empty seats. That number was immediately corrected to 11. Jay Knowles, Harry's father (who was genuisely rendered as a horned cyclops in the BNAT7 artwork) picked tickets out of a bowl and read them off. Two people down the line got in together and gave a high-five out in the street. He called off a number right next to Blake, Micha, and I. We all cringed. 11 out of 50 meant that only 1 of the three of us, if any, would get in. Then they called out my number. Sweet! There were only 4 people left after my number was called but they stopped the drawing for a bit to take care of the batch of 5 of us standing out in the street. Karen started handling us like dazed cattle, taking us toward the door and handing out t-shirt and gift bag tickets along with our wristbands and telling us to go up the stairs to pay. As we left I heard Jay say "Don't raffles SUCK!" and I felt really bad that Blake and Micah only had a 1 in 40 chance with only 4 tickets left to draw. On the other hand, I had just gotten into BNAT7!!! On the stairs, I could hear Tim League on the mic, bringing absolutely massive cheers from the audience. I was really like a dazed cow standing there, ready to hand out my 60 bucks to whoever would take it just so I could get in the theater and not miss any more. I also felt a sense of duty to document the fuck out of this whole event so Blake and Micah could each re-live it through my lovely descriptive prose. They only had size Large left of the t-shirts, meaning my decidedly XL frame would never be able to sport the great BNAT7 shirt? Oh well, just let me in. I had to go back downstairs to get my wristband? oh well just let me in. Wait, I already had my wristband? don't go back downstairs then. JUST LET ME IN. You don't understand. Tim's introductions are classic. Hilarious, smooth, timed perfectly for audience reaction, I've never sat through a bad Tim league intro, even for films that he's never seen before. I managed to get into the theater and find a pretty choice seat (as far as wooden and fold-out chairs on the sides of the theater are concerned) just as TIm handed the mic over to Harry. I actually sat right next to Harry and the microphone mixer. I also had a table to put my jacket and food on and could lean the chair back just a tiny amount but enough to lean my head against the wall. I also prefer to sit near the front so that didn't bother me. The screen was pretty distorted from being on the far side wall but it also meant no heads taking up the frame and after the lights go down you don't notice the dimensions of the frame anymore. It also allowed me to easily scope the crowd just by turning my head, so I got to see how many people were sleeping and also got to see the projectionist switch projectors at the end of the reels: something I never actually watched before. Yeah the seat was wood and the bruise on my ass from slipping on the ice earlier in the week didn't like that much but I wasn't scrunched to either side so i got to stretch out a bit and my jacket doubled as pretty decent ass cushion. All in all I can't really complain about the seat at all, and think I might have actually preferred it to a seat farther back in the theater where I'd have to work to see between heads and keep my arms folded over my belly between the armrests. Plus I got to sit right next to Harry so anyone that came up to talk to him I got to overhear and when he wheeled himself out of the theater and dragged his mic along I was there to scoop it up and keep anyone from tripping over stepping on the mic. Also, when he'd wheel around to face the audience in between pictures, I was right behind him so I kind of got an effect of having an entire theater look at me without having to actually say anything. And to top it all off, when super-tiny hotty actress Angela Bettis got up with director Lucky McKee, I got absolute free reign to stare directly at her ass the whole time, since she was standing next to Harry (and really was barely taller than sitting Harry... so tiny! I felt like I could pick her up in my hand like Kong). Add all of that to the automatic sympathy and hardcore points all of us standby people earned at the end of it for sticking it out on the wooden seats and I have to say that it was like the best place I could have possibly sat. Plus I got to see this one girl who sat directly in front of Harry. I guess she's active in talkback or chat or something. She was this blonde girl; that type that's like a 7 and acts like she's a 9... you know, still fairly attractive but uses it way too much. She came with a guy who sat in a fold-up chair at the end of the row and would constantly get up and walk out to the lobby. She also made a habit of checking her cellphone about once a minute, giving me that awesome blue light in the corner of my eye. After the second movie, she came back saying "pajamas!" and wearing these silk bottoms that barely covered her ass, showing off these black lacy get-ups oh-so-intentionally. She wasn't as bad as the two girls who hung around in trashy lingerie for the whole thing, but still. She'd also kiss Harry like every time she passed by. I don't know if Harry's girlfriend sitting right next to him saw or minded or what but Harry wasn't very responsive, even after kiss on cheek #8. At some point, her dude left for like 6-8 hours and she somehow got Matt Dentler to sit with her for like an hour or so. She also left for a stretch, coming back with a huge pizza box that she ate one piece of then had a server take it away. She ordered 3 buckets of beer and 2 pitchers and drank like two bottles. She handed Harry a bottle in the middle of a movie and asked if I wanted one but I said no. I think she left and came back the most times through the whole affair. Certain people (like the "classy guy in the 'FUCK' t-shirt") got up at least once for pretty much every movie (I know because I was sitting on the side so I saw everyone that came my way to get out) but this girl took the cake. Somewhere along the way, She told me that I'd been sitting there for a long time. I said "so have you" and she struck a pose. Weird girl, man. Like really. I kind of get that not everyone that comes to this thing is there for the movies, but I would hope that everyone is respectful to those that are. There were intermittent half hour breaks for everyone to go out and smoke, use the restroom, socialize with friends, etc. so it's not like watching every movie was torture. It's pretty clear though that a lot of people were there just for Kong. I'm getting ahead of myself. As I took my seat and tried to get comfortable, Harry was telling the audience that many of us probably had guesses based on the list of fake titles he published this morning. He then said that we're not as smart as we think we are and he's smarter than he thinks he is, which doesn't make 100% sense but people cheered anyway. He also mentioned that the last film of the night is taking about 25 hours to get here. It left yesterday, should be in customs right now, and should hopefully get here before tomorrow morning. According to Harry, it's the only print of the film in existence right now. Harry then asked the crowd for any guesses on this first movie and all sorts of titles rang out. He then asked how many first-timers were here then said "all of you people yelling out new movies have been to this before and you KNOW the first movie is always old!" Then he gave it up that it's The Most Dangerous Game (which drew applause). This is a movie that I've never seen but always wanted to. I remember reading the story in 7th grade English class and there was a few stills from the movie to make it easier on us middle schoolers that have to (gasp) read! Harry said that there's really only on movie that's not a surprise "and y'all know what that is" (to more cheers) and in that movie, the movie that Ms. Wray is tied up doing with producer Merian C. Cooper is this one. Pretty confusing. I didn't really get what he said until later on in the night when all became clear. Anyway, this movie is like an alternate to King Kong that Cooper produced the year before the 1933 original. Harry then mentioned that they'd play a few pre-BNAT trailers and would anyone like to guess which. A Raucous entire audience yelled out "STUNT ROCK!" With that, the lights went down and the BNAT7 experience officially started with: Mel Gibson sitting down staring at the screen. "Hi all you butt-numb-a-thon-ers!" He gave a little talk about how he's down in Mexico (-Mel to offscreen: "Say Something in Spanish" -offscreen: "(something in Spanish)" -Mel: "See?") and said he wanted to show us the first glimpse ever of the teaser for his new movie Apocalypto. The teaser won't show up online for 3 weeks so it was a true BNAT exclusive. "Be Brutal," he said, "or cheer. It's all the same really." The teaser played, looking very interesting in the same way that The Passion teaser looked very interesting... you know, before it was revealed that it was basically a Christan snuff film. No dialgoue but shots of some pyramids and some screen text about how empires end or something. To tell you the truth I can't really remember specifics. I just remember the last shot being pretty impressive, starting with the sun and panning down to see some chief's painted arm and down further to see that he's standing before tons and tons of digital people. It could definitely be cool, but like someone told me later, you can never tell if it will be Cool Mel making a movie or Crazy Mel... Apparently when he was here to introduce The Passion at BNAT5, he was just as funny and self-deprecating as he was in the video'd intro tonight, so you can really never tell. After that, Tim played trailers for Argoman: The Fantastic Superman (now that Munich was definitely not the last movie being played (way more than one print in existence of that), Superman became the next favorite guess for everyone. This trailer helped), The Legend of Dinosaurs and Monster Birds, and Stunt Rock. Of course. The Most Dangerous Game Fake: Rollerball The Most Dangerous Game has the slow pacing and traditional set scenes of a typical 1932 movie but the horrific "twist" and subversive undercurrent that's still somewhat fresh today. It made a great first movie because, after all is said and done, it was still noon on a saturday and this is a great saturday noontime movie. It's a good settling-in movie. It kind of has the feel of I Walked with a Zombie or a better version of White Zombie or any of those foundations of early horror where it was really more about the idea than the special effects or gore. While I am all for those things, I think "the idea" remains the true source of horror in movies today. I guess there's a reason why it's in the Criterion Collection, huh. After the film, Harry introduced a few guys who talked for a while about a project they're working on with Ray Harryhausen to make Edgar Allen Poe stories as stop-motion animated shorts fopr Bravo! Canada. They showed a one-minute teaser for the six-minute short and then talked about another project they're doing with Harry from an old unfinished idea by Merian C. Cooper called War Eagles. Apparently his tagline was "bigger and better than King Kong." They showed a little "sizzler" spot for this which basically explains the idea's origin. At about this time, I look over at the other standby folk sitting against the opposite wall and see Micah! He waves and I wave back then he points down next to him. I lean over and there's Blake! I have no clue how they got in, but unfortunately couldn't go over right then and ask them because Harry decided to only do a break after every two or three movies instead of every one. This made it tough on the chronic pee-ers but also ensured that the show kept rolling. Harry told us that many thought the next film would be King Kong, and while It's true that he's showing a Peter Jackson film next, we all might be surprised. "See," said Harry, "Peter's been working on a film in secret for a while now, which Peter just does because he's wiley. It's very topical though and we present it here for the first time ever!" On the screen, some guy appears in a room talking to the camera. He's trying to introduce this documentary that he's been working on about Avian flu and that although it's very low budget, he did go to China to shoot. Then Jackson walks into frame behind him and interrupts the guy, saying that he was sorry but this was his BNAT slot and he's been working on a movie that he thinks people might want to see. "I'm all for low budget films, don't get me wrong," he told the guy on the screen, " but I've got a big budget picture that, when i was there two years ago I promised I'd come back to show. Actually I tripped right there (pointing to the bottom-left of the screen) and it was quite embarassing." This got laughs from the audience. Jackson then said he was sorry he couldn't be here in person but was stuck in the press machine at the moment wrapped up with the premiere and he hoped we would all enjoy King Kong (asking if Harry still has his gas bomb (which he did (I saw it (it was right in front of Harry the whole time)))). Then they played King Kong. |
| 12.10.05 | King Kong | Peter Jackson | King Kong Fake: Gorgo So my whole thing with King Kong is that I wasn't looking forward to it at all. I am not a huge superfan of the original, never saw the '70s remake, and thought that a 130 day shoot and over 200 million dollars for a remake was just insane. Some of my friends here had small parts in the movie though and most everybody around here thought it was going to be amazing. So I kept my mouth shut and just doubted silently. Then I saw the trailers, tv spots, and that 4 minutes that appeared online where the effects don't look up to snuff, the movie doesn't look that exciting, and it's freakin three hours long. I really enjoyed watching the production diaries online but felt they would ultimately be more interesting than the film they were making. All that said, I think Peter Jackson made a movie as good as King Kong can possibly be. I mean, yeah the first hour is long... but come on. It's a three hour movie. The whole point of a three hour movie is so you don't have to rush through it. People wouldn't complain about the pacing of the first hour if they didn't already know about what happens during the second and third. It's sort of a trick movie in that it sets itself up as one kind of movie then changes completely once Kong comes on the screen. I can only imagine what it would be like to watch this movie cold as a kid or something, not knowing the story or anything. By the time I saw the original, I knew pretty much everything about it. So watching this movie for the first time is probably a pretty wild ride. These guys go on this ship off into the wilds in search of some uncharted island... and when they get there, the movie takes a complete left turn. All of a sudden they're all attacked and this girl is taken and tied up and offered up like a snack to some unseen beast in the forest; something so gnarly and huge that the villagers build up a huge craggy wall to defend themselves and give up offerings in order to keep it happy. And then this huge ferocious ape comes out and the movie suddenly becomes a tragedy where you eventually empathize with the ape and find yourself sad when he dies. In that respect, the first hour of the movie needs to be that long in order to set up the movie that Kong is supposed to be before it gets hijacked by the giant ape. I don't think I could have seen this movie in a better environment than at BNAT. the audience cheered after scenes they liked... not just the beginning titles and end credits but after SCENES!!! The sound was top notch (so loud I think they either blew the center speaker or overloaded it. Tim was spotted about halfway through the movie replacing a wire or something because Kong's growls were rumbling), the print was brand new and crystal clear, and the whole place was filled with people there to see Kong. In fact, a lot of people left right after Kong... Of course none of the people sitting next to those that left let me know and I ended up spending the whole time in my wooden chair, but oh well. Like I said, I really didn't mind it. So the movie that I was really worried about not liking ended up entertaining me completely. The distinct thought that I remember having over and over toward the end is that if this were any better, it wouldn't be Kong anymore. Jack Black HAS to say "It was Beauty killed the beast," Kong has to fall off the Empire State Building; this stuff just has to happen for it to still be King Kong. I do think there's still work to be done whenever one digital character rides on top of another digital character (although Anne getting flipped up onto Kong's shoulder is way better than Legolas on the Cave Troll) and some of the effects shots are a little wonky but hey, we're talking about maybe a dozen shots out of however many hundred or thousand there were and I'm sure they'll be cleaned up for the DVD anyway. You would never think that NYC is completely fake, or that mostly every shot had some compositing in it. Even Kong is really great for the most part. He easily outshines Golem. So on the whole I was pretty impressed. Now I just hope it makes back its absolutely gargantuan budget. After the movie there was our first break which I used to snag by schwag bag and drop it off in my car. Afterward I caught up with the guy I went to highschool with, and ended up saying how in love with the Alamo I was as we walked up the stairs. Karen, the woman who just had her baby, heard me say it and said thanks. Awesome. In the lobby I ran into some AICN folks who went to the NY premiere. One of them said "fuck the premiere" and the general consensus is that this was a much better screening and they liked the movie even more here than they did there. This was also when I caught up with Micah and Blake, who explained that after the initial 11 got in, most of the crowd left and a small group stuck around just for kicks. SOmeone came back out a few minutes later saying there's three more seats available. Now in a group of only 9, Micah's ticket was drawn first and Blake's drawn last! Amazing odds that all three of us got in, but it made me feel good that we could all experience it and they wouldn't have to rely on this. |
| 12.10.05 | Footlight Parade | Lloyd Bacon | Footlight Parade Fake: Top Hat Back in the theater, Harry introduced the next film as 1933s Footlight Parade, which is his favorite musical (I think he said that) and a nice way to stay in '30s-era New York (rebuilt after Kong's escapades of course). He mentioned how James Cagney is best known for his gangster roles (probably because he was so freakin good in them) but he was also quite a hoofer. His background is in vaudeville but he wouldn't really get any notice for dancing in movies until Yankee Doodle Dandy like a decade after this. He really doesn't dance much in this but when he does it's pretty good and not nearly as stiff-legged as Dandy. There's also a scene where Cagney eats breakfast and there's a great big grapefruit there on the table which I can't help but think of as some set dresser's ode to The Public Enemy which came out a few years before this. The best parts of Footlight Parade should be attributed to Busby Berkeley, who created the music numbers for the movie including the tour de force triple threat of a finale that piles one outstanding number on another on another. I was very excited to see this movie because it's the one film I never quite tracked down when I went through my own private Berkeley mania a few years ago. He did this in a really hot year for him; the same year as 42nd Street, Gold Diggers of 1933, Roman Scandals, and also Dames according to Harry (although IMDb has it listed as a 1934 release). I think I still like Gold Diggers of 1933 more than this but that's simply because I saw it first. The last three numbers: Honeymoon Hotel, The Waterfall, and Shanghai Lil all belong in a museum and I believe I've seen either clips or the numbers in their entirity elsewhere. The film also has Dick Powell before he stopped shaving and became Philip Marlowe, Ruby Keeler who tries to look ugly by wearing hot eyeglasses, and Joan Blondell playing lovestruck with wild abandon. I also really love how this is clearly pre-code in that the dancers are always barely wearing anything and the humor is dirty and wise-cracking and adult. There's definitely something great about a whole music number built around a hotel where newlyweds come to screw. I think the main reason why Busby's stuff is so great though is that it captures the essence of the musical perfectly. I actually much prefer these musicals of the 30s and early 40s that all have some arbitrary plotline set in a theater of some sort because it reinforces the reality that the actual music number shatters. Once you get people singing whenever they want to, for some reason directors must think "well, we can buy them singing for no reason, but to have a lamp that wouldn't be there normally is too much. nobody will believe that." That's total BS. Footlight Parade, Dames, the Gold Diggers movies (although '35 takes place in a hotel, they still put on shows in a small stage on the grounds), 42nd Street... they all take place in a theater to give it some excuse for why people start singing. When they do though, the magic of film takes over. It becomes something completely emotional and surreal and reality distorts and melts as is needed. There's something really great about trying to imagine a Busby Berkeley number actually take place on a stage and I think that's part of the fun too. So yeah, I'm really happy Harry showed that instead of The Producers, which would probably get it all wrong wrong wrong for me. Oh, I forgot. Before Footlight Parade, they showed a Betty Boop short called Parade of the Wooden Soldiers which acted as a pretty nice transition from Kong to a musical. The cartoon had a stuffed ape come to life and wreck stuff. After footlight parade, Harry asked if Angela and Lucky were in the house. Up stepped supertiny hottie actress Angela Bettis and young horror director Lucky McKee. I immediately got super excited. I'd spooted an older guy in the ticket line with a great shirt that had a red axe on the back. Later on, inside the theater, I'd glimpsed that the front of his shirt said "The Woods," which is the movie that Lucky made starring Angela and Bruce Campbell after he finished a great little updated lesbian romantic comedy version of Frankenstein called May. So now that I saw that the older guy was actually Lucky's Dad, I completely thought that we'd get to see The Woods. They stood up and came down and stood next to Harry (cue ass-staring) and introduced... Lucky's episode of Masters of Horror. It's called Sick Girl Sick Girl Fake: I Married A Monster From Outer Space Sick Girl is about a weird bug scientist (yeah yeah they're all weird i get it) that keeps tons of pet bugs and talks weird played by Angela who meets a really cute long-haired girl played by softcore "actress" Misty Mundae and falls in love with her. I've never seen any of her work but here it's really fun. Look her up on IMDb and you'll see stuff like Bikini Girls on Dinosaur Planet, Lust for Dracula, Spiderbabe, Vampire Vixens, The Lord of the G-Strings, Play-Mate of the Apes, Naked Cooking, and Erotic Survivor, where she plays Misty, member of the Puu-Nani tribe. The list of great titles goes on and on. She actually did a really great job in this. I missed the beginning credits because I was peeing without having to wait in line so I missed her name and totally didn't know she was that type of "performer." I did really like it when her character said she wasn't shy and took her top off, but after she gets a bug's seed planted in her ear and starts mutating into a girlbug, there's some actual acting that needs to go on and she pulled it off really well. I will say this about Sick Girl. Having not seen John Landis' Deer Girl that aired the night before BNAT, Sick Girl was the best episode of the series that I'd seen to date. It's a fun little thing that unfortunately still has a rushed look to it but makes up for it with Angela Bettis' performance and some cool suspense dealing with a pillow that the superbug nests in. It made a really fun prelude to The Woods for sure. Meaning after they got back up and did their Q&A, They'd be showing The Woods... right? Well, they did get back up and they did take some Q&A. I did get to look at some more booty as Eric asked about working with Misty (Lucky knew her beforehand and wanted to work with her), where the story came from (it was a script before he was hired and the main part was written for a man but she wanted to have Angela as the lead so changed it to lesbo), shooting time (10 days, pretty fun and smooth shoot), and where Angela got her character choices (playing with the bugs was fun. this one little green leafy guy was like the best actor she's worked with. Off-mic Lucky said "didn't you base your character on an ex-boyfriend?" and she said "shh! it was an ex-boyfriend from Austin!") and what the progress is with The Woods (Lucky: "Well, it's done. It's sitting somewhere"). Argh! Wrong Answer! You were supposed to say "Funny you mention that... We have it right here! Enjoy The Woods, BNATTERS! LET'S SHOW IT NOW!!!1" but instead you just sat down. Harsh! No Fair! Oh well. At least the Masters of Horror series was redeemed now that I've actually seen a good one. Harry said there was one more movie to see before the next break and it was Sympathy for Lady Vengeance! (Harry: "I am DYING to see this") The lights dimmed and they ran trailers for Lucky Seven and The Soul of Bruce Lee (this didn't play at trailerthon, Lucky Seven did). Then the screen went white and the movie started. |
| 12.10.05 | Sympathy for Lady Vengeance | Chan-wook Park | Sympathy for Lady Vengeance Fake: Shurayukihime (Lady Snowblood) Very operatic, very deliberate, Sympathy for Lady Vengeance completes the loose trilogy of movies that each pretty much floor me. I think, at least on first viewing, Oldboy still tops the list for me but this movie was pretty damn cool as well. It kind of tricked me on my expectations though by starting out very disjointed and complex, filled with flashbacks on multiple characters and really taking a lot to keep tabs on all of these people that we're just meeting for the first time, but becoming simpler and simpler as it goes on. I heard from Blake that they're toying with a cut of the film where the color starts to desaturate at the midpoint of the film until it's complete black and white at the end. This makes complete sense and would be interesting to watch, but may also be a bit too on the nose. As it is though, the movie is pretty enchanting in the way that Chan-Wook Park's previous two were and a worthy addition to the set. That reminds me. I think I'll just be forever unclear about wether it's Chan-Wook Park or Park Chan-Wook. I've heard people say it both ways and his films credit both ways. My personal hunch is that in Korea they credit family name first then first name so I would be Miller Brian over there, but that's just a guess and I really don't know and even if that were true, would it be better to say it how they say it or say it how Americans say it? All I know is that he makes good movies. At the end I still felt a bit confused about the beginning and thought I needed to see it again, which is usually not a bad thing. There's an Alamo event just waiting to happen there though... all three revenge films one after the other would make a whole theater spooge I think. Another break, used mainly to absorb what we just saw. Blake was just a little underwhelmed but I think he'd been looking forward to seeing it for a long time. It suddenly dawned on me that this thing was one movie shy of being halfway over. Was it really 10 PM already? The battery in my watch died a few days ago so without my cell phone and in the confines of a darkened theater, I had absolutely no conception of time whatsoever. It felt like it was just getting going though. The first 10 hours had passed very quickly. Back inside, Harry introduced the next film as one that he's been bugging Tim League to get a print of for years. Luck worked out this year and one became available. He then asked the audience if anyone's ever seen a movie called The Professionals. Hmm... sounds familiar but all that comes to mind is the Luc Besson film The Professional. A few people mightily roared though, and even more people cheered when Harry asked who's seen The Wild BUnch. Well of course everyone here's seen The Wild Bunch, he's just dropping a more familiar name because not enough people have seen The Professionals. So then Harry starts up his intro in typical Harry fashion by saying he will introduce this movie in a very wrong way. Then he said he almost thinks that This movie is better than Wild Bunch because it has a fantastic cast but Wild Bunch has a fantastic cast too so the main reason why this may be different is that Jack Palance plays a mexican. "Wait a minute," I thought, "I've seen Jack Palance play a Mexican." Harry goes on to say how cool Burt Lancaster is in this film and I thought "wait a minute, I've seen a movie where Burt Lancaster is cool and Jack Palance plays a Mexican... What's the name of this movie?" Harry then says that Gina Lolobrigida... excuse me Claudia Cardinale has the second best sweaty titties ever in this film (the first pair going to Caroline Munro in The Golden Voyage of Sinbad), and that this is a great Men on a Mission flick. At this point I am like "hold on! I have seen this movie, what's it called!" at which point it clicks and I get that he's talking about The Professionals and he didn't just bring it up to compare it to the next movie. Ahh I can get mixed up sometimes. So now I'm thinking how and where I saw this movie... how I can possibly have seen a BNAT movie before BNAT! Maybe I'm really more versed in film than I give myself credit!? Oh wait... Harry listed The Professionals as one of his DVD picks. So even though I've already seen this, it was because of Harry that I have. Well, I remember liking the movie, and watching it on a big screen will be sweet, so bring it on! The trailers start. I hear a familiar tune. It's El Desperado AKA The Dirty Outlaws that screened at QT6. I start to sing along because it's such a great song. The movie was a bit slow and off, but damn if that song doesn't get lodged in my head for weekes every time I hear it. Tim's recent aquisition of the trailer does not bode well for my sanity. Next came Once Upon A Time in the West There Was A Man Called Invincible: a trailer that I like because it's funny but hate because the title is so damn long. And then, in perhaps the most random moment of the event, the teaser for Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men's Chest played. |
| 12.10.05 | The Professionals | Richard Brooks | The Professionals Fake: Guns of Navarone Harry neglected to mention that LEE fuckin MARVIN is the star of this movie, where he plays his requisite badass with morals that heads up the all-star group of equal badasses on a mission that demands maximum badassosity. Burt Lancaster, Robert Ryan and Woody Strode fill out the team as the explosives expert, the horse whisperer, and the tracker. Ralph Bellamy hires them to "rescue" Claudia Cardinale from Mexican bandito Jack Palance's dirty mits. Apparently Palance has kidnapped her and since Marvin and Lancaster used to work with him, they would know best how to infiltrate his dirty Mexican camp. Richard Brooks shows some awesomely sweaty desert. There's some great men on a mission encounters here like when they deal with random banditos on the path and how they get into Palance's camp but most of the great stuff comes from the characters. Lancaster wants to screw every woman in sight, Marvin is too cool to even look at anyone, and Palance, of course, is a Mexican. This is really a treat because it's up there with the classic westerns but it's pretty much unheard of. i personally love finding a movie like this because, with the more movies I see, I kind of miss seeing the really great ones. Like, I've already seen The Wild Bunch lots of times, you know? Wouldn't it be great to see a movie just as good but for the first time!? I remember a long time ago trying to find a D&D movie that was as good as Dragonslayer. I just couldn't do it. All I had was Dragonslayer and even that wasn't 100% fulfilling. I guess I'd have to wait like 10 years until Lord of the Rings came out for satisfaction. After The Professionals ended, Harry brought up Matt Dentler: Mr. SXSW. Matt: "The only reason why I'm introducing this movie is because I've seen it, and really the only reason why I've seen it is because it'll be playing south by southwest next year. Who was here at last year's Butt-Numb-A-Thon (cheers) OK so you guys probably remember a little movie that played called Ong Bak? (massive cheers) Well, this is not Ong Bak 2. It's not the same universe, it's a French crime film, but I think you'll see that the action and fighting in this movie is in the same vein as Ong Bak. This movie is called District 13 and right now nobody knows about it but I think it'll be a cult classic pretty soon. it was written and produced by Luc Besson. If you do not absolutely love the first 15 minutes of this movie, then you are not a true film aficianado or fan or whatever. That's all I have to say." With that the lights go down and ttrailers start to play: Scorpions and Miniskirts, Danger Girls, and Seven Golden Women Against Two 07 (treasure Hunt). |
| 12.11.05 | District 13 | Pierre Morel | Banlieue 13 (District B13) Fake: Escape from New York I guess Luc Besson is never going to direct anything again ever. I get the feeling that now he wakes up some days with a half-remembered idea he had in some dream and hires people to make movies out of them. Hey! what if Jet Li was a dog? Hey! What if a taxi had super powers? Hey! what about a movie about a guy who drives a car? He sure does attach his name to a lot of successful stuff though. OK, I remember there was a Levi's commercial a while back with a group of guys who didn't believe in the concept of stairs or elevators so they would scale down buildings and jump from rooftop to rooftop. There was also like, a french 60 minutes-esque segment that found its way onto the Internet with this same group of guys that could fall incredible distances and roll out of them without being hurt. I think that one of those guys is the star of this movie because the chase segment in the first 15 minutes of District 13 is exactly like that Levi's commercial. This dude's jumping through windows, scaling down balconies, falling like 20 feet at a time, doing all this crazy stuff, except since it's a movie there's guys trying to chase him and falling and breaking bones and stuff. It's incredibly awesome to watch and the audience immediately started in with the Oooh!s and Ow!s. The whole first bit is amazingly cool. This spider-man dude kicks all sorts of ass. Even when he's in a jail cell he still kicks ass. Then it cuts to this other dude who is a cop but can also fight and the movie slows down as it goes on. I think that's inevitable for any movie with that strong of an opening. It does get a bit absurd though, with this strung out girl apparently kicking her heroin habit in 20 minutes and some The Rock-esque suspense to get to some rocket/bomb before it takes off or whatever. The plot is pretty inane, almost to the point where watching the movie without reading the subtitles would be better, but man those first fifteen minutes. You just can't mess with those first fifiteen minutes. We had another break after that where I got to hear about kier-la's Luciano Rossi (the guy she got up and gushed about before Five For Hell on QT6's Itallian WWII Epic Night) Tiger Beat-esque fanzine, where she basically talks about how cute he is and in which movies he has the best haircut and costume and stuff like that. I personally thought it was awesome to A) hear that she was attracted to men, B) note a lack of ring on her left forefinger, and C) that she thought that I sent her a photo of him even though it was Blake that actually did it. So it was a good conversation all in all, even though it ran past the end of the break a bit. That's OK though, I will always miss a Harry introduction for a bit more time with the lovely Kier-la. When I got back inside, Drew AKA Moriarty and his writing partner Scott Swan AKA Obiswan were standing next to the big guy talking about their Masters of Horror Episode. I just heard the end but they basically said that they've gotten to see it a few times now and wanted to watch it with us so they hope we like it. The audience was not stingy with cheers and applause all throughout BNAT. It ws very clear that everyone was there to have a good time and really celebrate film and/or Harry's birthday in a good way. The lights went down once again and light danced on the screen. A wonderful little teaser for an AICN-produced movie called 2gether 4ever where a highschool girl wearing a too-short skirt draws a heart on somebody's locker in blood. And then, Cigarette Burns Masters of Horror: Cigarette Burns Fake: Revenge of the Colossal Beasts Cigarette Burns was like The Ninth Gate but better. While I am just as turned on by a search for a notoriously eveil film as I am by a search for a notoriously evil book, Cigarette Burns does not have things like guardian angels and climactic satanic rituals and Udo Kier makes a much better rich eccentric than Frank Langella. I'd count this as another good episode of the series (that makes three, with Sick Girl and Deer Woman) and I really only have one gripe about it. The notoriously evil film in question is titled Le Fin Absolute du Monde. They must say that damn title 50 times in 50 minutes. I asked Drew about this later and he said they got screwed by legal. It was originally Le Fin du Monde which rolls off the tongue much faster and smoother but the legal department made them change it. On one hand I kind of understand but on the other... like a pronoun here or there is too hard to throw in? That aside though, this had two or three really great gore moments which made up for hearing Norman Reedus say the name of the movie over and freakin over. Right after Cigarette Burns ended, Harry called for Eli Roth to come on down. Unfortunately, Barbara long-european-last-name didn't come down with him so I didn't get any more free ass-gazing in while Eli talked a bit. Earlier in the night, he had come down to say hello to Harry, snuck his hand down the neck of his shirt, and left some Eli Roth chest hair on his table. Even more earlier, we in the standby line marvelled at the constant stream of absolutely gorgeous women seen at Eli's side. This dude is obviously taking full advantage of being a movie director, massive amounts of body hair or no. It took a bit of stammering before he and Harry gave us what the next movie would be: not Hostel but a british spelunking thriller called The Descent. Eli then introduced a clip from Hostel that he calls the "eyegasm" scene to sate those of us who didn't make it out to Fantastic Fest a few months ago to see an early cut of the entire movie. The scene is a complete tease, cutting out just before the gasm moment that makes it all worth it. Afterward Eli yelled out "If I had seen that before we showed it, I would've brought something better. Sorry!" but I don't think the crowd minded. |
| 12.11.05 | The Descent | Neil Marshall | The Descent Fake: Deliverance I haven't seen that movie The Cave with Cole Hauser that came out earlier in the year but I imagine that it's a lot like this movie except for instead of Hauser and some roughneck macho types, this has six hot British chicks going down in the cave. The film played on DVD and Harry said he tried to get it on film but something went wrong along the way or something like that. In any case, this was the last movie to come together for him this year so we get stuck with watching it on DVD. It was shot on DV anyway so it doesn't really matter. I really didn't expect this movie to be good at all. I was strongly reminded of Harry's all-night horrorthon that they did this past july and how bad the requisite indy horror movie they played then was. Plus this was a cave movie where they find a monster... blah... pretty typical stuff. But then they had some shots where the hot girls had to scuttle along like worms to get through these tiny crevices in the rock and it's completely obvious that it's just them and a dv camera down there in a real cave, not some set with polystyrene rocks. At this point it started working on me like Open Water did. A lot of people were flat-out bored by Open Water; my personal hunch on that is that it relies on your fear of the ocean. If i was a diver or surfer or something and had no problem with swimming in water that went for miles and miles under me and could be filled with who knows what and I'm just bobbing on the surface like fish food before some goldfish swims up to suck it in, then I probably would've been bored by Open Water too. With this though, the thought of voluntarily going down and walking through what's basically an accident in the earth in a place where there's absolutely no light or easy way out and any number of unkown factors anywhere in the Earth could trigger the tiny space you are momentarily inhabiting to cave in and erase you forever is not my idea of a good time. So there's a moment in the film where we find out that they are in an uncharted cave instead of some safe tourist trap and I completely bought in. I was invested. After that, I was surprised again to see the dealing with the monsters, at least at first, to be genuinely scary. The first reveal really threw me and I jumped. I jumped several times and didn't feel dirty or manipulated afterward. It did get a bit excessive toward the end but I guess I am stuck with that. You can't have a movie that's all beginnings... it needs to go somewhere or you end up unfulfilled. It stayed surprisingly creepy though. A big surprise for me. Another thing I noticed while watching this was how absorbed Harry was. I'm sure Harry got tons of shit for crying during Armageddon and I've always thought he likes way too many movies but in getting a chance to watch some movies pretty much right next to him I really got to see how he throws himself into every film. He was jerking and gasping all throughout this film, even yelling out "oh shit!" once. It's the same feeling as when I saw a buddy's girlfriend all curled up against his arm and hiding her eyes while watching Hollow Man. Hollow Man! Something about that childlike innocence and vulnerability toward a movie that drives a lot of what I think is really magic about the medium. A large part of me wishes I could become 6 again like that every time the lights go down and really be affected by almost every movie I watch instead of just every once in a while when something really special comes along. It surely would've made sitting through Hollow Man more enjoyable. One last note about Harry. He left for like 10 minutes during pretty much every movie. I think it was to use the restroom in privacy and it took him a while with his wheelchair, but still. I wonder how he feels about missing so much of the movies... maybe that's why he watches them like 15 times each. I absolutely hated it every time I dozed during the last movie or every time I had to use the restroom or walk out to the lobby to give my ass-bruise a break, and with all of that I think I still only missed about 5 minutes of movie-time total. After The Descent we had another break. I finally got to ask Tim if we could expect to see the Thunder Cops trailer since he'd been showing the highlights of last week's trailerthon all night. "I'd say chances are good. In about 2 hours." Sweet! After seeing it twice, the Thunder Cops trailer has pretty much become my favorite trailer of the year. It's got everything: kung-fu, chicks shooting guns at each other, zombies, mystical eastern magics, a chase sequence between a decapitated head and a fleet of remote-controlled helicopters... what more can you ask for!? Each break really energized me. I think it made the night go faster and stay on schedule to not have a break after every movie but it really cut down on walking around and socializing with people. This was one of the few times a year where nearly a whole theater will know each other and it's cool to stand out in the lobby between films and talk them over. Oh well. Into the breach once more as night became day and we entered the final stretch of films, harry introduced the next film as a bizarre movie from the fifties that he's not sure if the crowd will like or not. The lights go down and a production company logo comes up (VCI or something like that). Some people started out "uh oh!" then we see a cliff with a man standing right on the edge and enormous cheers break out in the theater. Here it was at last: Stunt Rock. |
| 12.11.05 | Stunt Rock | Brian Trenchard-Smith | Stunt Rock Fake: Hooper If we'd looked up Hooper on IMDb and saw that it was a Burt Reynolds movie that was full of stunts, there's no way we could've not figured this out. The Stunt Rock trailer has played at every BNAT as far as I've heard but this was the first time the entire movie was being shown. Needless to say, the crowd was ready for it. Too bad it was really really horrible. Horrible in a great way of course, but still horrible. The movie is pretty self-explanatory. It's either a stunt, rock, or rock with stunts. It's either near-documentary footage of this stuntman doing lame stunts like scaling down a building or getting lit on fire or concert footage of this really lame hair metal band called Sorcery doing songs and including a guy dressed up as Merlin "battling" a arena rock version of the devil. They hypnotise each other and saw each other in half and stuff like that while the band jams for like 10 minutes at a time... just incredibly long sequences... then wrap it up when the devil has been vanquished. The loosest plotline in a movie ever ties the band and the stuntman together. For the stunt sequences, director Brian Trenchard-Smith makes liberal use of split- and tri-screen even when he doesn't have enough footage to fill each frame (he mirrored some shots, took blown-up still frames, and duplicated footage)... it's just really really horrible. The stunts and bad acting are still more interesting than the rock band stuff though, which is torturous. So many people fell asleep during this movie. I don't know why I didn't. So we've all finally seen Stunt Rock. According the the guys at the end of the movie, that was 1978 Australia's vision of the future of music: magic and stunts mixed with rock n roll. Makes you think Justin and Britney aren't the end of the world after all. Lars got up to introduce the next film which is the one from the Alamo Vaults. I'd heard great things about the films that Tim has picked in previous years for this slot. Toys are Not for Children is still pretty high on my list of movies to see. This year, Lars said they're playing a movie that Tim was too sick to make it down to the theater for. A movie that's perhaps the most offensive movie ever made. The unofficial sequel to Mandingo: Drum. Before that though, they showed trailers for Eunuch of the Western Palace (got all the men in the audience screaming) and Thunder Cops (which I am proud to say I howled and clapped during its beginning credits. That's right. this trailer has beginning credits). Thunder Cops got some pretty big apllause afterward but not big enough in my opinion. After the whole thing ended though, someone mentioned to me that someone in New Zealand had a print of the entire movie, so an Alamo screening can't be too far away. |
| 12.11.05 | Drum | Steve Carver | Drum Fake: Tin Drum Drum is a slave-ploitation movie about... well... OK Warren Oates plays a slave owner who doesn't have cotton fields or anything but rather breeds slaves for profit. Pam Grier plays his bedroom wench love slave. Rainbeaux Smith plays a sophisticated lady hired to take after Oates' young daughter who gets it on with all her daddy's studs. Ken Norton and Yaphet Kotto fill out the cast as a slave named Drum and his buddy. As a midnight movie, this would be classic. If I was fresh for this and this wasn't film #11 of 12 in a 24-hour marathon, I would be singing its praises for like an hour. It's just so wrong and has such great lines that it ends up being a movie you can't really believe ever got made. However, showing when it did, especially right after Stunt Rock, absolutely killed me. I really wish I would have gone to sleep for this instead of watch everyone else sleep. The pacing of the film dragged so much that it was really the first time I got tired the whole night. It's a shame really, because there were some pretty classic lines like Warren Oates saying "Woman! Don't go meddlin' around with my poontang!" and "What we been makin' AIN'T love!" Still though, it pretty much ruined me for the last film. After Drum finally ended, they cleared everyone out into the Sunday morning sunlight in an effort to wake us all up and to make us go through security once more before screening the final film: the big mystery movie flown in from Australia with only one print in existence. Everybody knew it was Superman. They also served a breakfast buffet with eggs and potatos and fruit and stuff to make up yummy breakfast tacos and stuff like that. Everybody but me, fresh off of naps during Stunt Rock and Drum, all seemed to be awake and alert. I, on the other hand, felt myself fading. I wasn't all that excited to see Superman anyway to tell you the truth. I don't watch The OC or any shows on the WB so I felt I am too young to appreciate what Bryan Singer seems to be doing with the superhero anyway, not to mention my lack of obsessive love for the Christopher Reeve franchise or comic series either. My personal favorite Superman was his appearance in Frank Miller's Dark Knight Returns, which is nothing at all like what most fans love him for. So we all went back into the theater and found duck-bill noisemakers on our chairs. We sat down and munched on breakfast while Harry honked his duck bill and told us that Nicky Katt was kind enough to lend us a print of an award-winning Donald Duck short that will play before the next movie. He led us on and on talking about the movie without telling us what it was. Apparently, this wasn't going to play at all. He actually got the "sorry, not gonna happen" letter from Warner Brothers but apparently they reconsidered. Then, because it was somehow contractually obligated to have its official premiere at the Berlin International Film Festival, they had to Call those guys and ask if it's ok if it plays at Butt-Numb-A-Thon. Harry said that was a real moment when Drew told him "do you realize what you just said? You had to call the Berlin International Film Festival and ask if it was ok to play at butt-numb-a-thon." So this film is a real catch for BNAT and a super early sneak. The film in question is V for Vendetta. |
| 12.11.05 | V for Vendetta | James McTeigue | V for Vendetta Fake: Sword of Gideon I've never read the comic. Basically all I know about this is Natalie Portman shaved her head for it and the Wachowski brothers wrote and produced it. I guess it's supposed to be pro-terrorism too or something like that. The lights went down for the last time of the event and Donald Duck in Der Fuehrer's Face flickered on the screen. It was great. There's a song that follows through most of the cartoon and the entire audience honked along with their duck bills. Afterward Harry got back on the mic and said "and now is the time to put the duck bills AWAY" to laughter from the audience. A vintage '80s commercial for the Atari game Starmaster played next, followed lastly by Eric's print of the hilarious Return of Captain Invincible trailer. Next up came the new X-Men 3 and brand spankin new Mission: Impossible 3 trailers which made a good ending to the night's trailer festivities. The guy next to me leaned over and warned me that he would probably be crying through the entire thing because this was his favorite story and he was looking forward to this movie more than anything else. He said there would just be streams of tears running down his face by the time it was over. I said I wouldn't judge him and it would be ok. Then the movie started with something about remembering the 5th of November. Now, here's what I remember thinking: The whole movie is set up in the first five minutes and the main guy wears a mask the whole time so all his dialogue is just staring at a mask. I remember thinking that I pretty much got everything I needed to then I started dozing. it really sucked because I know how much of a treat it was to see this so early I really thought Natalie Portman's English accent was hot and I wanted to be awake to fully appreciate what I was getting to see, but you know how that nodding head, heavy eyelid thing goes... I got up and downed a redbull which didn't really help. I chewed the rest of my gum which didn't really help. I threw off my jacket-cum-seat cushion and nothing seemed to help. It was a constant battle to stay awake for the entire thing so subsequently I never payed all that much attention to the actual movie. I was never surprised or anything like that, the whole thing had a certain sense of predestination like, whether real or imagined, I had a picture of the whole film laid out in the first five minutes. Everyone around me seemed to really enjoy it and I may well revise my stance on this considerably when I get to see it again but right then at that moment it didn't do anything for me and my hazy conscioussness. Afterward I asked the guy next to me what he thought and he said he loved it. I apologized if I distracted him at all for all my nodding head and jerking awake action but he said his eyes were glued on the screen and he didn't notice at all, which made me feel a little better. People started to get up to leave but Harry said there was some stuff to give away and that Drew and Eric were in charge of it. They decided to just call out seat numbers and Harry said one through twelve" and I had to remind them that us standby people on the sides sat in impromptu rows 13 and 14 as well. Drew called out several random seat numbers before finally asking how many people spent the entire time in a folding chair. We all raised our hands and he said everyone who did deserved something and everyone clapped for us which was nice. I had a choice between a Buffy toy and something else I was equally disinterested in or a Death, Jr. thing so I opted for the Death, Jr. I have no clue what Death, Jr. is but at least it has something to do with Death so that's fine with me. Downstairs, boxes had been placed with bundles of rolled posters for people to grab on the way out. The Rolling Roadshow van had also backed up to the front door and Alamo staff handed out Atari Flashbacks to everyone. The word is that they're releasing a BNAT version of Pitfall where Pitfall Harry is replaced by a pixelly Harry Knowles but I haven't checked it out yet. They also had Hostel mini-DVDs in the lobby to grab as well. While everyone swarmed out, I went down and dropped all my crap in my car. On the way down I spotted Blake and Micah putting their crap in Blake's trunk so I figured I had enough time to get to my car and back before they took off. Alas I didn't and they were gone by the time I returned. Oh well, I'm sure they had a good time and I'm glad they got in. Back at the Alamo, the crowd was thinning considerably. I caught up with a few friends and an offer for IHOP came out which I accepted. It gave me another really cool little Eli Roth moment where he was signing posters for fans and talking to people I knew. He was really funny much like his small part in Cabin Fever, and took it well when Aaron's wife said her school class was looking forward to Hostel and really loved Cabin Fever. "Oh yeah, they are perfect kids movies... kids love torture." I thought it was really cool for Eli to stick it out for the whole thing. Apparently this is his fourth one, which pretty much puts him in my cool book for good. At the IHOP we talked over what films we liked, when we fell asleep, and your basic geek-out movie chat. Someone brought up that Richard Pryor had died and Drew told a pretty hilarious story about a time he recently went to see him do comedy in a club. The fatigue started to set in and not even a bacon and jalepeno omlet could hold it back. Soon everyone parted ways and thus ended my first Butt-Numb-A-Thon experience. TOTALS ====== LINEUP The Most Dangerous Game King Kong Footlight Parade Masters of Horror: Sick Girl Sympathy for Lady Vengeance The Professionals District 13 Masters of Horror: Cigarette Burns The Descent Stunt Rock Drum V For Vendetta TRAILERS Apacalypto Argoman: The Fantastic Superman The Legend of Dinosaurs and Monster Birds Stunt Rock The Pit and the Pendulum (stop-motion short film) War Eagles Betty Boop in Parade of the Wooden Soldiers (short) Lucky Seven The Soul of Bruce Lee El Desperado Once Upon A Time in the West There Was A Man Called Invincible Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest Scorpions and Miniskirts Danger Girls Seven Golden Women Against Two 07 (Treasure Hunt) 2gether 4ever Hostel (Eyegasm clip) Eunuch of the Western palace Thunder Cops Donald Duck in Der Fuerher's Face (short) Starmaster (Atari COmmercial) The Return of Captain Invincible X-Men 3 Mission: Impossible 3 FOOD 1 grilled chicken club w/ fries 1 chips & queso 1 Raging Bull pizza .5 pack of gum DRINK 2 sugarfree redbull 6 ice water SCHWAG BNAT7 Yearbook BNAT7 Poster (awesome) Atari Flashback2 Matrix: Path of Neo PlayStation2 game Death Jr. Action Figure deck of Italian exploitation movie poster playing cards from NoShame Films King Kong t-shirt (XL) The Producers t-shirt (XL) BNAT7 t-shirt (L) Aeon FLux t-shirt (M) Shark Tale Rain Parka M:I III hat Aeon Flux hat Hostel nail clippers Hostel mini-DVD Hostel temporary tattoo Domino temporary tattoo Domino shotglass (chipped) Monsters HD microwave popcorn (2 bags) Transformers Comic Book (Issue #0) Wedding Crashers Do Not Disturb Door sign Madagascar postcards (set of 5) The Pit and the Pendulum stop-motion short film Postcard Wallace & Gromit pencil Starbucks Doubleshot Espresso & Cream (1 can) Hostel 8x10 Poster Monsters HD 8x10 Poster Domino Mini-Poster Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence Mini-Poster Nightwatch Mini-Poster King Kong Mini-Poster Walk The Line Mini-Poster Munich Mini-Poster The Producers Mini-Poster The Matador Mini-Poster The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe Poster War of the Worlds Poster Aeon Flux Poster The New World Poster Hostel Poster (German) Superman Returns Poster V For Vendetta Poster (ripped) |
