Top Ten Movies To Look For In 2011: Follow Up

By Lisa Anderson

In late 2010, I made a list of the 2011 films that I was most interested in. With many year-end retrospectives going on, I thought I’d go back over the list and report on how these movies compared to my expectations.

1. Red Riding Hood

Of all the movies on my list, this one probably disappointed me the most. The story was muddled and didn’t make use of folklore and symbolism in the way it could have. The love triangle was not as interesting as it could have been, and there were disappointing performances all around from otherwise amazing people. Last but not least, the script missed the perfect opportunity to have the wolf throw back its head and howl at the moon. Red Riding Hood had its good moments and there were things I liked about it, but overall, you’re better off watching Hanna (reviewed here) for an innovative, feminist take on fairy tales.
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Best Of 2011: Less Lee Moore

As always, I wish I’d had the time and resources available to experience more, but here are some of the things that made 2011 memorable (in alphabetical order, to be fair).

À l’Intérieur (Inside) at TIFF Bell Lightbox, August 20: Though I’d already watched this film three times on DVD, I felt that I needed to see it on the big screen. I’ve probably said this a few times already, but it’s still true: it manages to completely transcend the horror genre to become a bona fide work of cinematic art. It is indescribable and powerful and if you haven’t experienced it yet, you should.

Adam Ant: For all those folks who thought he was a crazy, bloated has-been, recent live performance clips on YouTube will more than prove those half-baked theories wrong. He’s so much more than the guy who did “Goody Two Shoes” and any and all adulation for him is well deserved. His descent into madness, fall from grace, and subsequent return to form (used in the truest, most non-cliched sense ever) are remarkable achievements. He remains, after thirty years, a huge inspiration to me. (more…)

Jimmy Carter and The Rabbit Incident

Even at the best of times, it’s no picnic being the President of the United States. Being President in the 1970s was practically impossible.

Nixon inherited the bloody Vietnam conflict and struggled to govern a deeply divided nation through the oil crisis, economic stagnation, and that little Watergate thing. Athletic, competent Gerald Ford started out his brief presidency by pardoning Nixon for his crimes, heroically sparing the country an even more divisive trial; for his trouble, he got not one but two assassination attempts, and Chevy Chase turned him into a bumbling national joke. But nothing compares to the travails of our Thirty-ninth President, James Earl Carter. Double digit inflation. A bloated and unresponsive federal government. The collapse of Iran, the rise of radical Islam, and the intractable hostage crisis.

And the rabbits. The relentless, murderous rabbits.

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That Beatty Touch: Heaven Can Wait

By Less Lee Moore

Although it was released in 1978, Heaven Can Wait was one of my favorite films to watch again and again on HBO in the dawn of the 1980s.

Along with Foul Play, which was released in the same year (and is another fave), it’s a film that’s intended for adults, but which still possesses enough sweetness to appeal to a younger audience.
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So They Were Stars: The Razzle Dazzle Rockin’ Reign of the Hudson Brothers

By Cait Brennan

The Bible says music tore down the mighty walls of Jericho. In the 1960s and ’70s, rock and roll did the same for a generation of girls and young women. The rise of pop culture brought women and girls an unprecedented level of freedom, power, and influence. Perhaps it can’t quite be called “feminist,” and it may seem like a small thing, but before the mid-’60s, before the Beatles and Monkees, who could have imagined whole magazines devoted to pin-up boys?
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Greetings Traveller: Tales From Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace

By Paul Casey

Greetings traveller. Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace was a Sci Fi/Horror spoof aired on Channel 4 in Britain in 2004. Created by Matthew Holness and Richard Ayoade—who you may be familiar with as Moss from Graham Linehan’s The IT Crowd—Garth Marenghi did not receive the mainstream love of The Mighty Boosh or Peep Show, and yet of all of the sublime, interconnected comedy to come from Britain in the last decade, it may be the greatest.
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Theatre Of Blood: The Stage Is Set . . . For Murder!

By Aila Slisco

There is a space between comedy and horror which some people call black humor. If a movie can inhabit that space, it will likely be a favorite of mine. While this has certainly been used in movies up to the present day, the golden age of this kind of horror comedy film arguably happened in the UK several decades ago. Theatre of Blood is not only a great example of the horror comedy, but my favorite film of the subgenre.
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Oh Hamburgers: Thoughts On South Park‘s 15-Year Run

By Ben Sullivan

Few serialized forms of entertainment—let alone television shows—have been so defined by an overt enthusiasm to piss off all elements of their viewing audience as South Park. Presaging the Adult Swim grotesque and Seth McFarland’s ribald flippancy, South Park tossed its cavalier line into every cultural imbroglio, national hypocrisy, or simple question of taste at hand. From paparazzi to PETA to NAMBLA, from hybrid drivers to iPad users to country music listeners, from liberals to conservatives to just about any A, B, or C-list celeb caught in the compromises of fame and exposure, South Park‘s defamatory fangs have never wanted for fresh meat.

Reluctantly passing the torch . . .
even if they both agree on Family Guy.

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A Day On The Tube: 35 Clown-Hating, Sponsor-Trashing, Kid-Riot Years With Wallace And Ladmo

By Cait Brennan

From left to right:
Wallace, Gerald (the “spoiled rich kid”), and Ladmo

In the spring of 2011, PBS’s acclaimed series Pioneers Of Television presented a special on the lost world of locally-produced kids’ TV shows. The names and faces were familiar, giants like Fred Rogers, Willard Scott as Bozo, Romper Room, Bill Cosby, Jim Henson. And among them—taking up almost half of the hour-long show—were names unfamiliar to most of the nationwide audience, but known and beloved in the Southwest for generations: The stars of the subversive, satirical sketch-and-cartoon show Wallace and Ladmo. On the air five days a week for a staggering 35 years, the show broke every rule in the kids’ TV book, and earned a legion of fanatical fans.
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How You Can’t Do That On Television Changed Kids’ Television

By Emily Carney

Like many kids, I was obsessed with Monty Python’s Flying Circus growing up. Python was featured on America’s Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), usually sandwiched between Doctor Who (with Tom Baker!) and a terrible British sitcom called ‘Allo ‘Allo. It had a great classically-rooted theme song, and was completely hilarious.

It should be explicitly stated, however, that Python was not, in any way, shape, or form, a kids’ TV show. It presented a lot of adult situations (“I LIKE TITS!” is actually a quote by Terry Jones, the Welsh member of the troupe). I would NEVER let my nephew and niece watch Python, as I don’t want to be collared for child abuse. So, when my parents were actually watching me, I’d switch the channel to Nickelodeon (a relatively new cable offering at the time) and watch the Canadian TV show, You Can’t Do That On Television. YCDTOT at its best was the preteen version of Python, and possessed its own brand of surreal, controversial humor. It also had a great attention-getting classical theme song.
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