Friday Five: Pictures of Chantal Goya

Whitney and I have been trudging through our Month of Foreign. Some have been bad, most have been good, a couple have been amazing. One of my favorites so far was Jean-Luc Godard's Masculin Féminin: 15 Faits Précis.  It's a series of New Wave snapshots incapsulating French youth in the 1960s.  But that's not why I picked it.  The movie stars my new celebrity crush.  Here's your Friday Five: Pictures of Chantal Goya.

Friday Five: Movies Only I Love

Today's Friday Five was inspired by the movie Crash, which I love.

And you hate.

Born in East L.A.: Not to knock Tommy Chong, but this movie's funnier than any of he and Cheech's collaborations. When Rudy, a Hispanic U.S. citizen, gets deported by mistake he has to figure out a way to make enough money to cross the border back home. This movie has catchphrases (Waas sapp-en-ing?), babes (Kamala Lopez), and Daniel Stern. What's not to love?

Dangerous Minds: I love this movie so much I based my thesis around it. "Hollywood's Depiction of Inner-City High Schools" was born because I've been obsessed with Dangerous Minds for the greater part of my life. I bought the soundtrack, multiple times. I read the book until it literally fell apart. I bought the soundtrack again when the CD came out. When it came to Dangerous Minds, I did everything EXCEPT see the movie. My religious parents banned R-rated movies so I was forced to wait two years until it aired on TV (edited for time and content). I still have the VHS tape I recorded on that glorious day. And while some people may love Dangerous Minds, nobody loves it like I do. Physically.

Brown Sugar: Why don't more people like Brown Sugar? I can understand why the general blogging masses might turn up their noses, but what about the general public? The opening to this movie is one of my favorites OF ALL-TIME. A carefully edited montage of hip-hop legends reminiscing about the moment they fell in love with hip-hop. And that leads into a New York City park sometime in the 1980s where the two young protagonists watch Slick Rick freestyle to Doug E. Fresh's beatbox. Maybe the movie's too "hip-hop" for most rom-drama fans and too rom-drama for most hip-hop fans.

For Love or Money: I'm the only person who loves For Love or Money. Want proof? The only screenshot I could find online was this one. And I made it. For this post.

Daddy's Little Girls: From Sirk to Haggis, I'm a fan of melodrama. So when Tyler Perry released DLG, I was first in line (the norm for Utah screenings of Tyler Perry movies). Yes, the music is manipulative and some of the villains are characterchures. But I applaud Perry for throwing subtlety out the window and just packing punch after punch (like Crash) until I'm so emotionally exhausted that I have no choice but to agree with your movie's ideals.

Friday Five: 3-D Sequels I Want to See

#5. Ninja Assassin

THEW!  THEW!  THEW!  Ninja stars!  Ninja swords!  Ninja fists!  NOW IN 3-D!  Blood splatter!  Guts spatter!  3-D SPLATTER!   

 

#4. Garbage Pail Kids

GPK got screwed over during its theatrical run.  This movie could have birthed the revival of so many cinematic extras.  Rumblerama for the farts.  Smell-O-Vision, again for the farts.  3-D for the flying puss and popping pimples.  What a missed opportunity.   

#3. My Dinner With Andre

Two hours.  Two characters.  One meal.  One movie.  Whenever I watch My Dinner with Andre, I feel pretty left out.  They two guys are having the fucking time of their life--telling stories, telling jokes, telling each other any fucking thing they can think of.  And it seems great.  I'm forced to play Fly on Wall and that sucks.  Adding a third-dimension might make me feel a little more included.

#2. Gummo

You can keep your Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom and your Last House of the Left because this is the most disgusting movie ever made.  Harmony Korine tests your gag reflex by using non-actors who are, to say the least, puke-inducing.  There's nothing like watching a little bastard-child eat spaghetti and chocolate bars in filthy bathtubs to make your morning.  The only thing that helped me get through this was the phrase "It's only a movie..."  Something tells me that a little 3-D might force me to forget that fact.

#1. Unfaithful

Come on, she's the Denzel of white women.