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Neglected in '10: The Mafu Cage

I've watched the 1977 Karen Arthur movie The Mafu Cage about a half dozen times since it was reissued on DVD late last year, and I still don't know what the fuck a Mafu is. I believe it is the name Carol Kane's Cissy character gives to all of the creatures she keeps in a cage in her house and eventually murders because she doesn't like being touched. These creatures are usually apes but sometimes humans. Oh, and she doesn't always dislike being touched: she actually enjoys being touched by her sister, who she has sex with, except when she does that, she does most of the touching.

This movie is so fucking weird!

 

Neglected in '10: Private Screenings with Liza Minnelli

For the next several days, I'll be touching on stuff that happened and/or was released last year that I never got around to writing about. We all need ways to make our year-to-year transition easier -- this is mine.

Liza Minnelli sat down for a typically batty walk through her life in film on the TCM show Private Screenings. At this point, with this woman, it's not about drunk or sober -- it's about weird. I really need to be more on top of covering her every public action from here all out (I'm all over tonight's Season 25: Oprah Behind The Scenes). If I don't, I know it's BALLS TO ME.

(Props to freakgirl for furnishing me with this footage.)

Neglected in '10: Best Worst Movie

For the next several days, I'll be touching on stuff that happened and/or was released last year that I never got around to writing about. We all need ways to make our year-to-year transition easier -- this is mine.

I didn't write about Best Worst Movie last fall when it finally came out on DVD, because here's probably not much more to say about it. It is as acclaimed as Troll 2 is critically reviled (0% on the Tomatometer and holding!). But just try to stop me upon reflection! Much like my favorite movie of '10, Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work, Best Worst Movie is a documentary whose appeal is not limited by its subject -- it is a good movie, period. I'm apathetic about Troll 2 as a film (I've seen better worst movies!), but I'm fascinated with it as a piece of media and a phenomenon. Best Worst Movie documents it as such in more detail than it probably deserves, and is better for it. This is a film about bad movies, in general. It is about those who understand them and those who most certainly don't (one person we meet in the latter category refers to Troll 2 as "cultic"). One of the biggest of several laughs here comes when Troll 2 star George Hardy hosts a screening in his small hometown to people who clearly don't give a shit about garbage cinema. Here's my favorite reaction after the movie is over:

That woman needs to understand that you don't piss on hospitality! Clearly, she's learned nothing.

Neglected in '10: The I Think We're Alone Now commentaries

For the next several days, I'll be touching on stuff that happened and/or was released last year that I never got around to writing about. We all need ways to make our year-to-year transition easier -- this is mine.

I Think We're Alone Now, a film that follows a middle-aged man with Asperger's and a younger, intersex woman who are united through their (current!) love of '80s flash-in-the-pan teen pop sensation Tiffany, is one of my favorite documentaries of all time (it's just behind Paris Is Burning and Living Dolls on my list). I've said so much about it already, but that was before I listened to the commentaries on the DVD of the film that was released several months after I wrote about it.

Wow.

Both Jeff (Asperger's) and Kelly (intersex) provide their own commentary tracks, which work as both updates on their lives and opportunities for meta-voyeurism, as these people (who were followed in the first place because of their unique world views) look at themselves in the mirror of documentary filmmaking and report back. If you found the movie (or the likes of it) exploitative and off-putting, you will find this encouraged stream-of-consciousness harrowing; if you loved the opportunity to visit with people who are clearly like no one else on this earth, you'll love these tracks just as much. Jeff's is the drier of the commentaries (he calls it a "voice over" for whatever reason). He does, though, reveal that Tiffany has Asperger's and that Alyssa Milano has the "rare combination" of both Asperger's and sociopathy. (By the way, both Tiffany and Alyssa have filed restraining orders against Jeff for separate instances.) He says that Kelly tried to kill herself after Tiffany got married (a tidbit that is probably best not revealed regarding your silent competitor for the title of Biggest Tiffany Fan of All Time) and that Tiffany once said to him, "There are a lot of things that we talk about that shouldn’t be heard by most people." This may very well be true, but he takes it as a compliment. Whoops.

Kelly's track is something of a goldmine of good quotes...

Neglected in '10: Winston drinking water

For the next several days, I'll be touching on stuff that happened and/or was released last year that I never got around to writing about. We all need ways to make our year-to-year transition easier -- this is mine.

 

Last November, a news story went around regarding the mechanics of cats' tendency to drink water while staying relatively dry (as opposed to sloppy dogs). If only I'd had it together, I could have opportunistically posted this relatively...dry video of Winston drinking out of his bowl. Oh well, for now, let the sounds of a cat lapping at water soothe you into the new work year. It's like an inside waterfall but, in light of the story above, scientific. Behold Winston's balance with the forces of gravity against the forces of inertia!