Author Archives: Jay

Frankenweenie

There once was a dog named Sparky. He was smart, athletic, and a talented film star, at least in his best pal Victor’s homemade creations. Victor is a little boy with no friends other than his beloved dog Sparky, so when Sparky meets his untimely demise, the waterworks commence. And Victor’s not too happy about it either.

We already know that I should never watch movies the feature dead dogs, but did you know that policy should even apply to movies where the dead dog is reanimated?

Yup, still pulls on the old heartstrings. Sparky, meanwhile, has all kinds of strings holding him together, but no amount of stitches prevent his ears and tail from occasionally falling off, which seems rather macabre for a children’s movie.

Frankenweenie leaps from the mind of mad genius Tim Burton – and it’s based on a short film

FRANKENWEENIE - (Pictured) Tim Burton holding Sparky. ©2012 Disney Enterprises, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Photo by: Leah Gallo

he made back in the 80s. Victor, like everyone else in his world, is a sort of monster, but in his heart he’s just a boy inspired by his science teacher to put the screws to the laws of nature. As soon as he successfully jolts the carcass of his deceased friend to mostly-positive, mostly-alive results, his classmates are blackmailing to do them same for theirs. And not all pets are created equal. If the story sounds a little familiar, it should. It’s a tongue-in cheek homage to the classic 1931 film Frankenstein, based on Mary Shelley’s book of the same name.

This is a beautiful stop-motion feature that used over 200 separate puppets, with roughly 18 different versions of Victor alone. The puppets have human hair and 40–45 joints. Sparky was constructed as rather “dog-sized” and is comprised of about 300 parts, some of them made by watch makers, to bring his mechanical skeleton to life.

It was the first black-and-white feature film and the first stop-motion film to be released in IMAX 3D, and went on to be nominated for an Academy Award for best animated film (it lost to Brave, though it should have lost to Wreck-It-Ralph). It’s got loads of great voice talent from Tim Burton favourites like Winona Ryder (Edward Scissorhands), Catherine O’Hara (Beetlejuice), Martin Short (Mars Attacks!), and Martin Landau (Ed Wood).

For those of us who like our Halloween fun with a little less blood and a little more guts, I’d say this one is a definite holiday staple. What’s your favourite Halloween thing to watch? Do you have a pet you wish you could bring back? Check out the comments for my own Frankenweenie!

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Harvest Moon

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In a page right out of Schitt’s Creek, a wealthy man goes bankrupt and his spoiled daughter is devastated to have her shopping interrupted. Jenny discovers that her trust fund has been pillaged and all her assets (shoes) seized and there’s only one thing left to her in the world: a lowly pumpkin farm.

Out she trots to bumfuck nowhere, location of “the old Jarrett farm” where several Jerretts are still living and trying to eke out a living, more or less. She meets a handsome Jarrett named Brett who despises her even after throwing her in a muddy puddle (practically her own fault for wearing a designer outfit to a farm, fyi – that’s their MV5BYWNhNjMxYWMtMzdjOS00MTAzLWJkNTMtZjRiNTMyOTZjYmE3XkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyMzM0ODg1MzA@._V1_SY1000_SX1500_AL_ definition of “asking for it”). She needs to sell the farm for a nice profit; he’s always intended to buy it back whenever they had a few dollars scraped together. He does not currently have the means, and she can’t afford to wait. Plus, a TERRIBLE real estate gives her bad advice – that she can’t sell the farm because the Jerretts have significant personal debt. So she resolves to put her vapid, superficial skills to use giving the farm a makeover. Somehow new placemats will make the farm more profitable? As you can imagine, Brett and company are not only unmotivated to help her, they’ve got a plan to thwart her plan!

Not that Jenny needs any help getting herself in trouble. If there’s anything in a given scene that can her daisy dukes wet, you bet she’ll find it, and then act like a cat pawing at its arch nemesis when she does. Cinema at its finest!

Harvest Moon has more dead mothers than you can shake your Starbucks Pumpkin Spice Latte at. But will Jenny ever find enough “revenue streams” to make someone else’s business viable enough for her to sell the land right from under them? Do NOT question the business sense, her father’s in-house lawyer looked it over, goddammit (yes it’s the same lawyer under whom the family went bankrupt, but what does that prove?).

There’s a lot of questionable content here – a condescending makeover, slapstick involving a tractor, even a Footloose dance lesson knock off without any budget for music. But most importantly, there’s a vaguely handsome widow who is just mean enough to Jenny for her to fall in love with him. Somehow.

Celebrate Good Times – Come On!

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1981, year of my heart: 700 MILLION people tuned in to watch Princes Charles marry the Queen of puffy sleeves, Lady Diana; President Ronald Reagan nominates the first woman, Sandra Day O’Connor, to the Supreme Court of the United States; MTV, the first 24 hour music video channel, is launched with Video Killed The Radio Star by The Buggles; the Boeing 767 makes its first flight; the Dodgers won the World Series over the Yankees after a shortened baseball season due to striking players; Simon & Garfunkel perform their Concert in Central Park to half a million fans; the Edmonton Eskimos win their record 4th consecutive Grey Cup by the skin of their teeth; Donkey Kong makes its de laurawed but; Eli Manning, Britney Spears, Alicia Keys, Justin Timerberlake, Pitbull, Beyonce, Roger Federer and Georges St-Pierre are born; the first DeLorean rolls off the production line; the Raiders became the first
wild card playoff team to win a Super Bowl after defeating the Eagles; Walter Cronkite signed off the air; the first heart-lung transplant is performed at Stanford’s Medical Center; the original Model 5150 IBM PC with a 4.77 MHz Intel 8088 processor was released in the U.S. at a base price of $1,565; the Islanders took home the Stanley Cup; Luke and Laura got married on General Hospital. It was a banner year.

On the radio

1981 sounded super cool, of course. Disco was reluctantly loosening its grip on the mainstream, making way for radio hits like:

Rick Springfield’s Jessie’s Girl

The Rolling Stones’ Start Me Up

Queen ft David Bowie’s Under Pressure

Rick James’ Superfreak

Air Supply’s The One That You Love

Journey’s Don’t Stop Believin’

Kool & The Gang’s Celebration

Kim Carnes’ Bette Davis Eyes

On TV

Dynasty, Hill Street Blues, The Smurfs, and Entertainment Tonight made their debuts.

The Incredible Hulk was suddenly cancelled. Charlie’s Angels, The Waltons, and Eight is Enough also ended their series.

Chuck Woolery hosted his last episode of Wheel of Fortune after a salary dispute, and Pat Sajak took over.

Tom Baker made his final appearance as the Fourth Doctor on Doctor Who, and Peter Davison stepped in as the Fifth.

MASH, The Jeffersons, Dallas, The Dukes of Hazard, Taxi, Diff’rent Strokes, Laverne & Shirley, WKRP in Cincinnati, The Facts of Life, and Magnum P.I were the finest in television.

At the movies:

Oscar winners Jennifer Hudson and Natalie Portman were born in 1981, along with Chris Evans, Amy Schumer, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Bryce Dallas Howard, Elijah Wood, Jessica Alba, Hayden Christensen, Josh Gad, and Tim Hilddleston.

Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark debuted in 1981 and was the highest-grossing movie that year. Other popular films included:

Stripes

Chariots of Fire

For Your Eyes Only

The Cannonball Run

Superman II

Blow Out

My Dinner with Andre

Natalie Wood drowned in a boating accident. We also lost Beulah Bondi (actress, It’s A Wonderful Life), William Holden (actor, Sunset Boulevard), William Wyler (director, Ben-Hur) and Paddy Chayefsky (screenwriter, Network).

The Oscars in 1981 looked like this:

Best Picture: Chariots of Fire

Best Director: Warren Beaty for Reds

Best Actor: Henry Fonda for On Golden Pond

Best Actress: Katharine Hepburn, also for On Golden Pond

Several actors made their film debuts in 1981, including:

Ben Affleck – appeared in a local independent called The Dark End of the Street at the age of 7, directed by a family friend. He meet 10 year old Matt Damon later this year.

Jason Alexander & Holly Hunter – both appear in The Burning, a slasher film written by Bob Weinstein. This low-budget horror flick is about a summer camp caretaker, horribly disfigured from a prank-gone-wrong and newly released from the hospital with severe deformities, who seeks revenge on those he holds responsible, starting with the kids at a nearby summer camp. The film is notable for being Miramax’s first.

Kim Basinger – she makes her first appearance in a forgotten drama called Hard Country where she had a starring role as a young woman longing to escape small-town Texas to pursue her dreams, but held back by a factory-working boyfriend.

Tom Cruise – Brook Shields and Martin Hewitt star as star-crossed teenaged lovers torn apart when bad advice from his buddy Tom Cruise (age: 19) lands Martin in jail. Watch Endless Love carefully and you’ll spy some other soon-to-be-famous faces. You might also know the Oscar nominated song of the same name, performed by Lionel Richie and Diana Ross. Tom Cruise would have a larger supporting role this year, in Taps.

Sean Penn – speaking of which – Sean Penn makes his acting debut in Taps alongside him. Taps stars Timothy Hutton as a cadet in military school who is aided by fellow student cadets Sean Penn and Tom Cruise in taking over the school in order to save it.

Kathleen Turner – she stars with William Hurt as a cheating wife in this “erotic thriller” directed by the writer of Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Empire Strikes Back. It launched her career, established her as one of the sexiest stars in film history, and identified her as frankly sexual and…rather robust.

James Cameron – he got to sit behind the director’s chair for the first time, and his stunning debut: Piranha II: The Spawning, a shameless low-budget horror sequel. He was originally hired as the special effects director, but took over when the the original director, Drake Miller, was fired. But Cameron isn’t comfortable with this credit. He claims “I was replaced after 2 and a half weeks by the Italian producer. He just fired me and took over, which is what he wanted to do when he hired me. It wasn’t until much later that I even figured out what had happened. But when I saw what they were cutting together, it was horrible. And then the producer wouldn’t take my name off the picture because [contractually] they couldn’t deliver it with an Italian name. So they left me on, no matter what I did. In actual fact, I did some directing on the film, but I don’t feel it was my first movie.” Good thing James, since critics called it one of the world’s worst movies, belonging on “anyone’s list of all-time horror turkeys”, the piranhas resembling “haddock with dentures.” Cameron, however, maintains it’s “the best flying piranha film ever made.” So there.

So this is why 1981 will always be quite precious to my little heart. And it just so happens that on this day, back in 1981, one of the funnest Assholes I know, and one of my best friends in the world, was born. Happy Birthday.

Do you have any particular memories to share from 1981?

Capital Pop Up Cinema Presents…

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We are very fortunate to live in the beautiful capital city of our country, and to have constant opportunity to do fun and exciting things. The good folks at Capital Pop Up Cinema have brought us a whole season of random, outdoor movie screenings, but this summer being packed full of travel and adventure, we only caught the last couple of offerings.

Last week, in the heart of the bustling Byward Market, hundreds of people brought lawn chairs, cozy blankets and hot chocolate to brave the cool temps for a viewing of The Nightmare Before Christmas. There were more than a few Jack Skellingtons in attendance, and the audience was in a festive and excitable mood as the sun set and the Capital Pop Up’s inflatable screen came to life. The market is the heart of our fair city, choc-full of restaurants, retailers, art galleries, night clubs, and stands selling beaver tails. Not to mention the extra-wide, pedestrian-friendly streets to accomodate the fabulous, year-round outdoor farmer’s markets that sell seasonal produce, everything from cranberries and parsnips to eggs and goat’s milk ice cream – not forgetting our world-maple syrup, of course! So imagine, if you will, this vivacious part of town, the constant stream of happy and satiated people, the occasional tour bus, the frenquent brides posing for photos, the sidewalk chalk artists, the parents pushing ginormous strollers, vendors with their gerbera daisies, and in the middle of it all, an impromptu outdoor cinema! I thought it might be distracting but actually it was good fun, and there were plenty of passerby (and maybe a homeless guy or two) who stopped to appreciate the movie and the intoxicating scent of popcorn in the air.

The Nightmare Before Christmas: a visually arresting work of stop-motion animation that blew everyone’s socks off in 1993, and legions of fans still know every musical number by heart (I can attest to that, having unintentionally sat beside some die-hards). Henry Selick directed but the film is popularly known to be Tim Burton’s, who wrote and produced the film but was simply too busy to direct. The film is about Jack Skellington, a denizen of Halloweentown who accidentally follows a portal to Christmastown, and decides that others back home should be able to celebrate this new and wonderful holiday as well – to darkly comic results. Danny Elfman, Catherine O’Hara, and PeeWee Herman all contribute voice work.

The week before, Capital Pop Up Cinema screened The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, a 1920 German silent horror film that was brought to life with live musicians. It played to a smaller but enthusiastic crowd in the parking lot of Das Lokal, a kitchen and bar at 190 Dalhousie where chef Robert Fuchs serves up delicious European fare with a German twist. The charcuterie and das schnitzel are particularly recommended, and the cocktailed called Zugspitze (vodka, elderflower liqueur, cranberry juice) is an inspired choice from the bar.

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari: directed by Robert Wiene and written by Hans Janotwitz and Carl Mayer, it’s considered to be not only the quintessential work of German expressionist film, but also among the first true horror films. It tells the tale of an insane hypnotist (wide-eyed Werner Krauss) who uses a sleepwalker (Conrad Viedt) to commit murder. The screen writers, both pacificts, wrote the story in the wake of WW1, showing a people’s need for brutal and irrational authority; Dr. Caligari represents the German war government, and Cesare is symbolic of the common man conditioned, like soldiers, to kill. Some say the movie reflects Germany’s particular need of a tyrant, but that seems facile in the shadow of Hitler. The film’s visual style is graphic and jarring, with deliberate distortion to give the impression of insanity and instability. Honestly, the art work is to die for and you could honestly treat this film as a trip to a museum and that alone will ensure your rapt entertainment. This film has a huge legacy that I am ill-equipped to discuss at length, but lucky for me I’ve come across a really great post by fellow blogger David at Movie Morlocks that will do the dirty work for me.

Welcome To Me

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So Kristen Wiig, eh?

It almost feels inappropriate to laugh at this movie. Wiig plays Alice, a woman with a whole deck of diagnoses, the most recent being Borderline Personality Disorder, but still a few cards short.

A side note about Borderline Personality Disorder: BPD is nothing to mess with. People with BPD suffer from wildly unstable relationships and behaviours, often with brief psychotic episodes. They are prone to reckless and impulsive behaviour, and have problems regulating their thoughts and emotions. BPD often occurs with other mental health disorders like depression, anxiety, and self-harming or suicidal behaviours. It’s serious stuff.

And yet this movie dares to ask: what happens with Alice, an unstable woman suffering from BPD, wins millions upon millions of dollars in the state lottery?

Well, she goes off her meds, for one.

Next: she buys herself a talk show so she can be just like her idol, Oprah Winfrey. Only Alice doesn’t want to interview celebrities or do guest bedroom makeovers. She has only one topic in mind: ME. Or rather, her. Wouldn’t it be weird if Kristen Wiig made a movie and all she did was talk about me? Yeah, not this time, unfortunately. This time it’s all about Alice.

Wes Bentley and James Marsden appear as the owners of the TV network that’s so hard on its luck it makes a deal with someone who is clearly mentally unbalanced – and since Charlie Sheen can still get work, I guess we have to find this perfectly plausible. Jennifer Jason Leigh, also a network exec, is less enamoured with her.

Meanwhile Linda Cardellini plays Gina, the unsung best friend of Alice, who never gets any respect. She’s a far better friend than Alice deserves or knows what to do with, and is a serviceable conduit for audience pathos.

Is it funny to watch an emotionally confused woman re-enact moments of her childhood while reigning her TV kingdom from a throne that looks suspiciously like a swan? It is. But it’s a one-note kind of funny, which nothing in the way of plot of character development. The screen writer looked up BPD but didn’t have the balls to go all the way. Wiig is, as always, willing to be awkward as hell. And she is. It’s a good performance, and if you like Wiig you will inevitably find this movie enjoyable if not particularly memorable. Is it a compliment to her to say we always knew she had dark reserves of madness? She moves in this role fearlessly and does more than the script asks of her.

I’m not entirely sure if director Shira Piven was going for offbeat drama or dark comedy, but the end result is nearly as uneven as Alice herself. It makes for an uncomfortable revelation of selfie-centered, emotional exhibitionists when self-examination, and maybe self-care, are what are called for. Even more condemning: that Alice is so out of control, and the “well” people around her take so little notice.

If you’re looking for some quirky Netflix and chill, you’ll find this one under W.

Lily Tomlin puts the GRAND in Grandma

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I would call this movie short and sweet, except it’s more like short and tart, tart, tart!

Lily Tomlin is no ordinary grandma.

Sage (Julia Garner) is a sweet teenaged girl in need of an abortion. Or, more accurately, in need of $600 to get said abortion. Baby Daddy is a loser, so off to grandmother’s house we go to beg for termination money. Except grandma (Tomlin) has just broken up with her girlfriend (Judy Greer) (a mere “footnote” she calls her, bitingly), and has zero cash to spare. So the two embark on a weird road trip of sorts to collect on grandma’s various informal I.O.U.s from an interesting mix of characters (Sam Elliott, Laverne Cox, Elizabeth Pena) that dusts up some old secrets along the way.

I didn’t expect this movie to be so good. I think Lily Tomlin is an absolute goddess, and if we’re being honest, this, my friends, is what an Oscar-winning performance should look like. She’s both hilarious and heartbreaking.

Big congratulations to writer-director Paul Weitz who never gives in to the temptation to soften grandma Elle, and for casting Tomlin, who inhabits the skin so fully, practically licking her fingers because she knows the performance is that good.

Elle and Sage ride around in clunky, classic style in a 1955 Dodge Royal , a car that coughs and chokes and is as irascible as Tomlin herself (in fact, it’s Tomlin’s own car). Grandmother and granddaughter are bonding over their shared mission, but also in their mutual avoidance: mom. Marcia Gay Harden plays Elle’s estranged daughter and the character is written so smartly, and is so well-acted that we forget we’ve only just met her near the end. Even her absence has felt like a presence, and the three generations are a thing to behold.

While serving up a moving little character study, this movie also achieves a creeping, quiet feminism that just feels right. And the way it treats abortion – rather casually, in fact – is remarkable.

Oh Lily Tomlin, how do I love thee? It’s really hard to tell you about the gruffness, the toughness, the cranky acerbicness, and still convey how absolutely vulnerable a performance she gives in this. And it all feels so effortless that you may not think you’re seeing a performance at all.

It’s a really special thing to see three such meaty roles written for women. These characters are complicated and they jump off the page and out of the screen in a moving and intimate way. It’s a tiny movie but deserves a wide audience, so I hope I’ve convinced you to check it out.

Meanwhile: is there any possible way that you’d ever go to your own grandma for abortion money?

The Stanford Prison Experiment

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In 1971 at Stanford University, psychology professor Philip Zimbardo set up a 2 week experiment wherein Stanford students were recruited and paid $15 a day to either be a prisoner, or a prison guard. This ‘experiment’ was aimed to find whether inherent personality traits of prisoners or guards are the primary cause of the abusive behaviour that happens in prisons. The students were screened to exclude those with criminal backgrounds, questionable mental health, or medical problems. They were all deemed stable. Prisoners and guards were established by the flip of a coin.

Professor Zimbardo designed the experiment in order to maximize the depersonalization of participants – prisoners wore sac dresses and caps; guards wore uniforms and sunglasses. He imposed one rule: there was to be no physical assault of the prisoners. Very quickly, however, the participants’ behaviours exceeded beyond what Zimbardo could have imagined. Within hours, those in the role of guard were enforcing authoritarian rules to such an extent that some prisoners were subjected to psychological torture. The prisoners, disoriented, mostly passively accepted the abuse, and could be induced to taunt those that didn’t.

After just 36 hours, one ‘prisoner’ had to be released due to increasingly erratic behaviour. Fully a third of the ‘guards’ exhibited sadistic behaviour to the ‘prisoners’ who, keep in mind, were student volunteers just like themselves. They stripped them, degraded them, exerted them, bullied them, disturbed their sleep. It became an exercise in cruelty that the professor, reluctant to look away from his precious and costly little experiment, was forced to call off after just 6 days.

As a student of psychology, I poured over this data and watched a lot of the footage, fascinated and horrified. We don’t just study this in behavioural psychology, we also study it in ethics. Why? This ‘study’ would not pass muster today, not by a long shot, not by 87 prison yards stacked back to back. Zimbardo was not much of a scientist or researchers. The MOMENT his ‘experiment’ (and you see by my quotations how I long not to call it that) veered away from predicted boundaries and went straight toward DANGEROUS situations, he should have hit the brakes. Instead, he put kids in psychologically damaging situations. Kids who were making $15 a day and didn’t fully understand that they could walk away. FIVE of eighteen had to be removed early because of emotional trauma – and I remind you this lasted only 6 of the 14 intended days.

Luckily a grad student convinced Zimbardo that not only was he passively allowing these unethical acts (and HELLO – as psychologists, we’re supposed to HEAL not damage!), but that he himself had become absorbed by his role as the “superintendent” of the prison. He had lost all objectivity. This whole experiment was a waste – because he could not remain neutral, any observations that we can make are subjective and anecdotal at best (let alone impossible to reproduce!).

If this sounds too crazy to be true, well, I wish that was so. This wouldn’t be allowed to happen on a University campus anymore, but it sure as hell feels familiar if you look over what happened at Abu Ghraib with fresh eyes. If it sounds kind of like a movie, well, now it is.

It stars Billy Crudup (Big Fish) as the famed professor, Nelson Ellis (True Blood’s Lafayette) as an ex-con consultant, and a bunch of young men as the students: Ezra Miller (Trainwreck) as prisoner 8612, Tye Sheridan (The Tree of Life) as 819 and Thomas Mann (Me and Earl and the Dying Girl) as 416.

The movie, thankfully well-acted, is chilling, troubling, and thought-provoking. The cruelty is relentlessly one-note, so if you watch it, you’re going to want to pencil in some debriefing\discussing\come-down time immediately after, because the saddest part about it is that 45 years later, it’s just as relevant.

The Walk

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Film nerds will remember a documentary released some years ago called Man On Wire. A mix of footage, reenactment and present-day interviews painted the story of Philippe Petit’s 1974 high-wire walk between the twin towers. (I remember this film so vividly I described its Academy Award nomination as “a year or two ago” to Sean when it fact it won in 2008).

Robert Zemeckis has bravely adapted this story in The Walk, with Joseph Gordon-Levitt an inspired choice as Petit.

The achievement, the thing to see, is of course the walk itself. In dizzying IMAX 3D, the effects glorifying the height are so realistically rendered that audience members feel real vertigo. If you’re not big into heights, may I remind you that the World Trade centre stood 1,362 feet above the ground, and Petit made his walk without a net. This has induced nausea and even vomiting in some audience members, and while I felt fine in that respect, I did experience some spine-tingling anxiety when nearly the whole of the second half of the film is spent up in the clouds, perched extremely precariously, sometimes tauntingly so, upon a wire we know to be improperly installed.

Petit narrates the story to us from atop another of New York’s tallest destinations – the Statue of Liberty’s flaming torch. This narration lends a fairy-tale quality to the film that it didn’t need or benefit from, and in fact it felt like an affectation. The first half of the film is slow-going. It takes an hour to get to the good part, but if you believe that things are worth waiting for, then you’re in for a treat. I’ve had 3D fatigue for quite some time now, but here again is a movie that actually uses it (like Everest) not just to drive up ticket prices, but to stoke the feeling of soaring (or of falling, if you’re a pessimist) in the audience like no other image ever could. Dariusz Wolski’s cinematography is stunning and breath-taking in that very literal way of having stolen the wind right out of my lungs.

The walk itself, as Petit always delights in telling us, is completely illegal and planned in secret. This part of the story almost feels like a heist movie, between the planning and the recruitment of compatriots. But once Petit puts one foot to the wire, it becomes a work of art. Early morning commuters stop traffic to look up, look waaaaaaaaay up at these buildings newly erected, not yet a beloved part of the city’s skyline, and suddenly they’re injected with life and meaning.

Is this movie Zemeckis’ love letter to the twin towers? It’s quite a tribute, handled with love and respect. The movie may be uneven, and a little brainless, but it is without a doubt visionary, if only you dare not only to keep your eyes open, but to do what the wire walker must never do: to look down.

Anyone have a problem with heights? Has it stopped you watching certain movies before?

A Farewell to Helen Mirren’s Fabulous Tits

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Helen Mirren, the 70-year-old British bombshell, has announced that her breasts have gone into retirement. No more nude scenes, no more topless shots – “My pleasure pillows are purely for my husband now.”

Helen’s boobies first appeared to us in 1969’s Age of Consent and as recently as a 2010 (nude) photo shoot for New York magazine. They were also featured in a 2011 SNL skit entitled “Helen Mirren’s Magical Bosom.”

“Well, I didn’t know my boobs were legendary, quite honestly, at that point,” she told Alan Cumming in a recent interview, seemingly halfway between flattered and embarrassed.

Now, as often as I might cringe when a woman takes her top off in the movies (because why? Is this really necessary? Is this even nice?), I have no problem imagining that every single time Helen did it, it was from a position of power. The woman, and her cleavage, are feminist icons.

In fact, you may note that she achieved Damehood from the Queen, in the Order of the British Empire for services to the performing arts in 2003, the same year she appeared topless in Calendar Girls. Coincidence?

Helen Mirren is gorgeous at any age, but her confidence and sassiness in her 70-year-old skin is what makes her sexy, and damn is she sexy.

Screaming Bloody Murder

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The Wilhelm scream is, as you may know, a stock sound effect that’s been used in hundreds of movies, beginning in 1951 in the film Distant Drums when a soldier is bitten and then dragged underwater by an alligator. It is likely voiced by Sheb Wooley (best known for his one-hit wonder “The Purple People Eater”) and named after Private Wilhelm, a character in the 1953 western The Charge at Feather River who gets shot with an arrow (but this was already the 3rd movie to use the effect).

The Wilhelm was re-discovered by sound designer Ben Burtt (it was a reel labeled unforgettably as “Man being eaten by alligator”), who incorporated it into a little film he was working on called Star Wars. And then he kept on throwing it into all kinds of George Lucas and Steven Spielberg productions over the next decade until other sound designers picked it up and made it a tradition, or almost an in-joke among the industry. In fact when it appears in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, it’s when a man is being eaten by an alligator. In-joke on an in-joke? Today it’s used religiously by Peter Jackson, Quentin Tarantino, and Tim Burton. You can hear it in Titanic, Inglorious Basterds, Spiderman, Planet of the Apes, Despicable Me, Sin City, and a hundred more.

Lesser known is the Howie scream, which made its debut in the 1980 film The Ninth Configuration but got its name from Howie Long’s death scene in the movie Broken Arrow. Its common labels Gut-wrenching scream, and Fall into distance give you some idea of how it’s popularly used.

Some of my favourite screams on film:

Janet Leigh in Psycho. Unforgettable.

Susan Backlinie in the opening sequence of Jaws. It’s gurgly and gasping and totally desperate.

Ronald Lacey in Raiders of the Lost Ark. There are lots of good Nazi screams in this movie, but Lacey’s final scream is classic. The burble at the end as he’s melting? Ooof. Brutal.

Margaret Hamilton as the wicked witch in The Wizard of Oz. I don’t know if it’s a scream so much as a shriek but it pierces the ear unlike any other before or since.

Donald Sutherland in Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Remember his last pod scream? Of course you do. Fuck.

Shelley Duvall in The Shining. That poor woman. Her scream is so visceral you might be led to believe she didn’t quite trust Jack Nicholson with that ax.

Fay Wray is the scream queen for sure throughout the entirety of King Kong. Just watch her facial contortions and body language as she gives the alarm over and over again.

Now I’m not sure that you’re the equal of Fay Wray, but if you’re anywhere close, now’s your chance to prove it.

Andrew J.D. Robinson is a powerhouse director, producer, and all-round film-industry juggernaut to the city of Ottawa, and one of his many current projects is a Scream Queen contest as part of his 15 Seconds of Horror Film Challenge.

He’s looking for entries from one and all, so if you have a camera and a vocal cord (or two), you’re good to go. All you have to do is unleash your inner murder victim. One loud, terrorized, blood-curling scream, and you’re done. Andrew’s assembling them all into what I can only imagine will be the most alarming montage in movie history.

So do your best – or your worst – and send them to Andrew at workobeyfilms @ gmail.com by October 21st and be sure to include any social media of yours you’d like to be linked to. And then please god send it to us. Post them right here in the comments.