+1 Brain of Randomness

Another collection of movies which I love, but I not everyone has seen or remembers.  I'll tell you why I love them and you can go see for yourself.

Silver Streak - Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor in their first collaboration.  Wilder is an author who is taking the train to relax, but ends up getting caught up in espionage and murder, only to be helped out by a small time crook who's in the back of a police car he's forced to steal.  Ned Beatty is great as is "Jaws" (of Bond movie fame.)

Support Your Local Sheriff - James Garner in the funniest western this side of Blazing Saddles.  He plays a gunfighter who decides to take up the mantle of sheriff in a small town that has a lot of trouble.  He cleans up the town and takes on the family of bad guys who controls the region.  Henry Morgan is brilliant as the mayor as well.  I recommend this movie to all fans of Maverick or the Rockford Files.

Murder By Death - A great ensemble cast poke fun at all the tropes of murder mysteries and all the characters therein.  Like Clue, but much funnier.  Peter Sellers, David Niven, Alec Guiness, Peter Falk, and many others.  They're invited to solve a murder that hasn't happened yet and there are many humorous twists and turns throughout.

Pass the Ammo - Tim Curry and Bill Paxton in the story of some people trying to get revenge on the TV preacher (Curry) who swiped their inheritance and end up taking him hostage on live TV.  Both are at their best in this hilarious and quotable movie.  "Bubba, pass your mama the mortar."

Doctor Detroit - Dan Akroyd stars as a mild mannered professor who is tricked into being a pimp, and creates an alter-ego to strike fear into his enemies.  I think it's one of his best performances.  Great backup from Howard Hesseman and Fran Drescher.

I should really get around to doing one of these about action movies.

I started out writing up my favorite movies of all time, but that task is very daunting.  I truly love a very large number of movies and it might be easier to break it down into some sections and then combine them.

The biggest problem is going to be that I'm going to forget a ton of my favorites that I haven't watched in a while and have to come back to fix the list.  I guess that's a cross I can bear, though.

Caddyshack - A brilliant cast, great writing, fun raunchy humor.  I love it!  I'm a huge Bill Murray fan (as you will  notice from this list) and this is one of his best.  His "sub-plot" steals the show.  Ted Knight is amazing as the "villian."  It's easily my favorite performance by Chevy Chase (although Vacation comes close.)

Ghostbusters - This movie often trades places with Caddyshack as my favorite.  Again, a brilliant cast with great writing.  The most quotable movie of all time, as well.

LA Story - As I said in another blog post, this movie is so amazingly under-rated by people.  It's one of the most intelligent comedies of all time.  There are layers and layers of meaning to the entire thing, and yet you can ignore it all and just enjoy all of the funny stuff that's going on constantly.

Groundhog Day - Look.  Bill Murray again!  And again.  And again.  Etc.  Another intelligent comedy with a lot of subtext and a great heart.

Blazing Saddles - My favorite Mel Brooks movie.  It's just funny and fun.  Gene Wilder steals the show, but everyone is at the top of their game.

Young Frankenstein - Much like Caddyshack and Ghostbusters, this movie and Blazing Saddles war for top position as Mel Brooks comedies.  This one is more intelligent (wittier, if you will) but Blazing Saddles is more fun (plus we've already established that I like some raunchiness.)

This is Spinal Tap - The best of Christopher Guest's productions.  The cast is great, the situations are brilliant, the fun never stops.  For a real treat, watch it with the commentary on.  The cast does it all in character.

Best in Show - My second favorite of Guest's work, and it's a close second.  Fred Willard steals the show as the announcer, but all the characters are ridiculous and fun.

Airplane - My favorite spoof movie (although a different kind of spoof than Spinal Tap.)  The surprises and laughs just keep coming.  It recently got a boost when I discovered that it was really a spoof of a specific movie that no one had every heard of, and not just a general spoof.

The Princess Bride - So many great scenes and lines.  A classic!  The cast is amazing, even though so many of them were not (and are not) huge names.  I can't recommend reading the book enough.  Go do it.

Monty Python and the Holy Grail - I love all of their movies, but this one is just too good to not stand out.  Like Young Frankenstein, Life of Brian is wittier, but Holy Grail is more fun.

Beverly Hills Cop - My favorite Eddie Murphy movie.  It's funny, and very quotable, but also has a good mystery story to it and some action.

Galaxy Quest - I'm a sucker for Tim Allen and Tony Shalhoub in this movie, plus the Trek geek in me gets fed.

The list goes on and on.  Here are some others that I love, but don't necessarily make the top slots, although some of them are very close.  A few of them will be written up as underrated hits soon, too.

Tape Heads

American Pie

Office Space

Fish Called Wanda -

Better Off Dead

National Lampoon's Vacation

Animal House

Smokey and the Bandit

Cannonball Run

PSU

Dazed and Confused

UHF

Raising Arizona -

Big Lebowski -

The Wedding Singer

Revenge of the Nerds

Coming to America

Super Troopers

Zack and Miri make a Porno

Men in Black

The Blues Brothers

Harold and Kumar go to White Castle

Austin Powers

Anchorman

Porky's

Happy Gilmore

The Hangover

Superbad

Shaun of the Dead

Talladega Nights

Silver Streak

Technically, her birthday was last week, but we just had her party with all the family and friends.  She fell asleep clutching her new toys and with a belly full of cake.

She's my everything.

I don't appear to be able to embed the video I want, so here's a link to it

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7ZxyojrkPU

I like to think that I have very eclectic taste in music.  I have songs I truly love from all over the place, musically, from heavy metal to rap to country to pop to dance to hip hop to almost anything.  I'm not a huge fan of free form jazz or dissonant punk or very repetitive electronic music, I guess.  But I'm sure I could find some stuff there that I enjoy if I explored more.

Let's start with a partial list of bands that I love (not necessarily in order of favoritism):

Pink Floyd - Overall my favorite band.  Not so much Syd Barrett era, but pretty much all the later stuff; the Wall, Animals, Dark Side of the Moon, and my favorite; Wish You Were Here.  That might be my favorite album of all time, actually.  I didn't like them as much after Waters left, but I still listen to Pulse occassionally.

Delerium - might not be too much of a shock after Pink Floyd.  They have similar clever lyric styles, I think.  I really enjoy that the lead singer changes constantly, and it's often someone else I really like.  My favorite songs are Poem for Byzantium, Daylight, and After All.  Just a sec.  I have to listen to them now.

The Killers - There's just something about Hot Fuss.  The whole album is just great.  I love the hits; Somebody Told Me, and Mr. Brightside, but the rest of it is really good too.  I liked Sam's Town too, but have not followed them nearly as much since then.  Still, Hot Fuss was good enough and I listen to it enough still that I consider them a favorite band.

Evanescence - Really, like the Killers, it's their breakout album, Fallen, that I like, but I like the WHOLE album.  When it came out, I just put it in the CD player and left it there for a couple months.

Weird Al - I'm sure you're shocked, but I'm a HUGE Weird Al fan.  I love pretty much all of his albums, and most of his songs (I have to admit I don't like Another One Rides the Bus much, though.)  I also like UHF.  He tours often, and I try to see him if I can.  He puts on a great show with lots of costume changes.

Jonathan Coulton - as long as we're in "Comedy" territory, I have to mention Jonathan Coulton.  Just brilliant. From Code Monkey to Re: Your Brains to Still Alive and so many others.

Blue Oyster Cult - In junior high I fell in with a couple of heavy metal fans.  We played RPGs and listened to heavy metal; Whitesnake, Van Halen, Molly Hatchet (first concert I ever went to,) and many others, but Blue Oyster Cult was a special favorite of ours.  Some of their lyrics inspired much of the game worlds we created at the time.  I still like all of those bands to some degree, but BOC has a special place in my heart.  About once a year they come by the Seattle area and I almost always make it out to see them at The Emerald Queen, or some such venue.  They do a good show.

Jethro Tull - When I moved back to Seattle in high school, I fell in with some friends that I am still very close to today.  As part of our cultural exchange I brought them Blue Oyster Cult and they brought me Jethro Tull.  There are just so many good songs, over so many albums.

Quick mentions:

There are so many bands that I like, that I'm going to just put a quick note about some of the others that fall a bit below the ones above.

Pink - She just keeps consistently putting out songs that I like.  She's on the edge of being in the above group.

Poe - She is a brilliant songwriter.  Haunted is an amazing album.  How can you not like lyrics like "I'm going to gather up the splinters and build a casket for my tears?"  Unfortunately she hasn't put an album out in 10 years due to legal battles with her contract.  Sigh.

Oingo Boingo - Great stuff.  Danny Elfman may be a musical god of the cinema these days, but he was awesome back then, as well.

Sarah McLachlan - She really doesn't miss a beat.  I've loved songs on all of her albums.

Paramore - Guilty Pleasure.  I love Misery Business and That's What You Get.

There are soooo many more, though.  Perhaps a list is in order at some time.  But not now.

No, I'm not some hipster spouting off with "Oh, you wouldn't know them."  If you're reading this blog, there's a good chance you have seen a lot of these, but I think they're under-appreciated, and deserving of attention.  And if you haven't seen them, I heartily recommend you do so!

There will be a lot of these posts.  This is just the tip of the iceberg.  Ok... that sounds a bit "hipster-ish."

1. Tape Heads - John Cusack and Tim Robbins star.  They get fired from jobs as security guards and strike out into the music video industry.  When they accidentally dub the last song recorded by the hit band Blender Children over a funeral montage, they hit it big overnight.

This film is chock full of wonderful surreal humor and brilliant little moments that stick with you.  Of special note are the video they do for Rosco's Chicken and Waffles, the spontaneous summoning of ninja weapons during a catfight, and the sobriety test.  If you're a fan of either of these two actor's comedic work, go see it!

2. LA Story - Steve Martin is a weatherman in LA who's car breaks down by a highway sign that begins giving him advice about his love life.

Truly one of my favorite movies of all time.  I could watch this one over and over.  I am in awe of all the little touches that happen again and again in this movie.  It is soaked through and through with hidden and obvious Shakespeare references, but in the context of Los Angeles lifestyle.  The cast is amazing from Sarah Jessica Parker (long before Sex in the City) and Marilu Henner to the cameos of Patrick Stewart, Woody Harrelson, and Rick Moranis (as the gravedigger.)  In keeping with the surreal comedy theme from Tape Heads above, this one has a million of them as well, and you will likely not catch them all the first time through, so watch it again!

3. Dazed and Confused - Teens celebrate the end of the school year in 1976.

I'm sure more people have seen this one than others on my list, but I really love this one so I want to make sure.  The cast is amazing including Ben Affleck and Matthew McConaughey before they hit it big, as well as Parker Posey, Milla Jovavich, and Rory Cochrane (pre CSI Miami.)  It's a good mix of "coming of age" teen comedies with hazing and pot smoking, and good enough writing to make you feel what the kids are going through.

It's late, so I'm going to leave it at three for now.  There will be more!

Here I will be posting all the thoughts I have that seem to me might be interesting to my friends.  It will be a mix of stuff, probably with an emphasis on "my favorite X."

I hope you enjoy it!