The Fake Life - Love movies? We do too!

Thursday, December 28, 2006

Doug's Favorite Bits Of 2006

I'm not much for lists, so here is the very cream of the crop for 2006. It's the shortest set of "best of" lists you'll ever come across...

Best Movie: The Descent

One of the best horror movies in years. It's hard to scare a jaded horror aficionado like myself, but The Descent had me at hello. The location alone - an uncharted underground cave- is enough to pluck at my claustrophobic nerves. But that's just the beginning. The film perfectly balances primal fears with character conflict. Unspoken hostilities between our hapless spelunkers mirror the threat of the slathering monsters closing in from all sides. Which brings me to...

Best Book: The Ruins by Scott Smith

Don't let the positive press from Entertainment Weekly and Stephen King fool all of you punk-as-fuck hipsters. The Ruins utilizes the simplest of premises to scare the shit out of you. A group of friends are trapped on a small Mayan hill by a sinister monster. That's it. What unfolds- the injuries, the fighting, the growing sense of hopelessness- makes death not just a secondary concern, but perhaps a relief.

Best DVD: Slither

You can't judge a DVD by how good the movie is. My opinion is, if you're buying a DVD it's just a given that you like the movie. Then you judge the quality of the DVD by how well all that extra garbage complements the film. I didn't like King Kong, so a DVD packed with behind the scenes extras and an additional 35 minutes of depression era vaudeville stage routines and clunky dinosaur chases is akin to hell on earth for me. But a flick like Slither, now we're talkin' fun! This disc has plenty of gold nuggets for an old school horror hound like me- a humorously tragic behind the scenes vignette shot by the director's early mentor (Troma's Lloyd Kaufman), deleted scenes that are actually funny and/or interesting, a look at the making of practical effects (always infinitely better than learning which computer program was used to make an army of Clone Troopers), candid footage and commentary revealing director James Gunn to be a just-like-one-of-us guy whose enthusiasm for the project actually spreads to the cast and crew. It's an all around fun time for the casual DVD viewer like myself.

TFL's Favorite Hotties of the Year: