27 April 2006

ermm...




No reason for this Katharine McPhee photo.
I just like to see her when I open my blog.
:)


p/s: tonight that fake dumb blonde Kellie Pickler has been eliminated. Finally.
Katharine McPhee gets the second highest vote.
So I guess you could call the picture above.... Celebration.


10 April 2006

You Want An Update?! Here's An Update Of Death!!

Fact: Violence sells. It's everywhere. It's on our TV, the primetime news, in the streets and even in our homes. It's the reason why we have 18SG rating in the LPF rating system. Sometimes I feel that parents nowadays are more willing of letting their children watch a violent movie rather than a sex-themed movie. That explains why action movies are so popular among kids. And that explains why we sometimes see parents bringing in their kids to watch an 18SG rated movie into the cinema.

Movies are the ultimate medium for violence. Sometimes a movie is remembered solely for its violent death scenes. Somehow, freaky, disgusting, shocking, disturbing death scenes are sometimes a 'pleasure' to watch in movies. It's not that we are all sick human beings, but the nature of death scenes in movies are so real, unbelievable and intense that we kinda enjoy the sudden rush of fear by watching it. It may makes us feel disgusted, shocked, upset and most of the time afraid. In movies we could witness every type of death: death form being eaten, dismemberment, ocular trauma, decapitation, impaling; u name it they got it. And because we had seen it all, the moviemakers are finding new creative ways to kill a character. The result : more violent ways to shock us.

So in honor of the creativity, in honor of the film makers, here is my Top 25 Favorite Death Scenes in Movies. Bear in mind that this list only includes scenes in which the characters are DEAD. (..that explains why I didn't include that wire-cutting leg scene in Audition) This list can be debated forever because someone will always disagree. Everyone has their own favorite. Tell me yours... Come on, I know u have one. :)

25. Man On Fire - Butt Bomb
Denzel is cool. And when he plays a character that is out for revenge, it is even cooler. I love the scene where he shoved a time bomb inside a guy's ass and while the clock is ticking, Mr. Cool interrogates the guy and then walk away as the bomb was about to explode. Cool.

24. 28 Days Later - The Eye Gouge
The best thing about this scene is that I really didnt see it coming. You've probably seen just about every way for a zombie to kill a person (..and vice versa) but when Cillian Murphy grabs that guy's head and stick his thumbs all the way through his eye sockets... Ouchh!

23. Bonnie & Clyde - The Final Ambush
It's the scene that most people remember from this movie. Many won't forget the jerky, writhing orgasmic bodies of Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway when they got completely showered with bullets in one of the most classic revolutionary, graphic ambush-death scene in movie history.

22. Haute Tension - The Piano Head Smash
The French always has a way to make our stomach squirms. Quite a lot freaky death scenes in this one but the one where the guy gets decapitated by a giant piano got me screaming, '..OH SHIT!'. The cleverest use of a piano in a slasher flick ever.

21. Dead Man Walking - Death Sentence
There's nothing gory about Matthew Poncelot's (Sean Penn) capital punishment death via lethal injection, but it's rather sad. I remember Sister Helen Prejean (Susan Sarandon) telling him: "I want the last face you see in this world to be the face of love, so you look at me when they do this thing. I'll be the face of love for you." Damn.

20. Saw 2 - Venus Flytrap
Extra marks for creativity. The opening scene of Saw 2 was very intense and builds the momentum for the whole movie. A man suddenly woke up with a Venus Flytrap mask locked between his neck. The mask has a timer, and the man must locate the key before the timer runs out and the mask closed. The catch is : the key is hidden in the back of his right eye socket! Jigsaw, you're one artistic devil, you.

19. Casino - Baseball Heads
Okay, so this one is not totally dead. The beating death and barely-alive burial of Nicky Santoro (Joe Pesci) and his brother by a gang of club-wielding thugs in the middle of an Indiana corn field. The sound of the iron bats clunking their skull makes it very uneasy to watch.

18. Sin City - Wolves Dinner
QT and RR are famous for their violent movies and Sin City is one of them. The coolest death scene in Sin City has got to be when Mickey Rourke dismembers Elijah Wood while he is still alive and let a pack wolves eat the rest of his body except for the head. Extra points for creativity.

17. The Godfather - The Tollbooth
Another classis death scene. Sonny Corleone (James Caan) was riddled with bullets in one of the most intense scene ever filmed. Caan was placed with 147 blood squibs all over his body to simulate being hit by multiple burst of machine gun. Now that's dedication.

16. Silence of The Lambs - Eating The Face
Hannibal Lecter's (Anthony Hopkins) vicious killing of two guards, including lunging at Sgt. Pembry with bloody, face-eating cannibalism, then savagely beating Sgt. Boyle to death with a police riot baton, and relaxing afterwards to Bach's Goldberg Variations. Sicko.

15. Scarface - The Mansion Standoff
"Say hello to my leeetle friend!". The bullet-ridden and coke-convulsed body of one-man army Tony Montana (Al Pacino) in a bloody standoff at his mansion and his death by a point-blank shotgun blast in the back, sending him crashing down thirty feet to a pool below. It's either that scene or the opening scene with a chainsaw.

14. Final Destination 2 - Mega Accident
It's a movie about death and of course this movie is filled with death scenes. Most of the scenes are creatively done but the opening multiple accidents scene was breathtaking and scary. It's pretty realistic and makes you think again about overtaking that 'lori balak' when driving.

13. Lost Highway - Coffee Table Splits
Another one of those scenes where u suddenly screams out '..Woi! Shit!'. It came out of nowhere, in fact if I remember correctly, it was right after the scene where Balthazar Getty was watching the video of Patricia Arquette doing the doggy style on the big screen TV. The guy who was slamming Arquette gets into an argument and suddenly falls head first onto the edge of a glass coffee table and gets it imbedded half way into his skull. I never looked at a glass coffee table the same way again.

12. Kill Bill Vol. 1 - Tophead Slice
The duel between The Bride and O-ren Ishii that ends with a swing of the infamous Hatori Hanzo's sword that slices off the top of O-Ren's head, exposing her brain. That scene is on this list because only QT can make that scene believable... and cool.

11. Fargo - The Wood Chipper
One of the best dark comedy ever made, the infamous wood chipper scene involves a mad kidnapper Grimsrud played by Peter Stormare supplying the wood chipper with his kidnapping accomplice Carl (Steve Buscemi). You're not sure whether to laugh or hurl.

10. Dead Alive - Final Zombie Showdown
The lawnmower scene... definitely the lawnmower scene. Classic Peter Jackson zombie gorefest. More like a killing scene than a death scene actually..but it still counts.

9. The Deer Hunter - The Russian Roulette
The Russian roulette scene in a gambling den in Saigon when Nick (Christopher Walken) blows his brains out. I remember seeing this movie for the first time on RTM when I was about 9 years old and the censors didn't edit this scene! At that time, I was terrified. Somehow that image just stuck inside my memory.

8. Devils Rejects - Facing The Truck
The whole movie was a violence and sadistic affair. The one scene that really gets to me is when the girl was running out of the motel room wearing a 'face' mask that Otis Firefly carved out of her boyfriend. She ran straight to the road and then got hit, face-first by an 18 wheeler truck. What makes it even worse is the scene that came right up after that scene, when they show the intestines and the guts spilled out on the road. Sick.

7. Pulp Fiction - Marvin Accidental Death
Another QT classic. I just love this movie. One of the funniest scene in the film is also the nastiest. The sick, accidental back-seat death of Marvin by Vincent's (John Travolta) mispointed gun is truly hilarious and nasty at the same time. The arguing and the bickering of Jules (Samuel L. Jackson) and Vincent afterward make the scene even funnier. Very dark humour.

6. American Psycho - The Axe
One of my personal favourite film. One of the best scene in the movie has got to be when Jared Leto character getting the hatchet to the face by Patrick Bateman, brilliantly played by Christian Bale, in his apartment, while Huey Lewis & The News's 'Hip To Be Square' was playing in the background. Stylish.

5. Henry: Portrait of A Serial Killer - The Soldering Iron

What's sick about this movie is that it is based on true events. You could never imagine that any human being could be so violent until you witness the things that Henry did in this movie. The butchering of the whole family was intense, but the one that stuck in my mind for years is the scene where Henry repeatedly stabs the TV salesman with a soldering iron for charging too much then smashes a TV over his head.

4. Irreversible - The Fire Extinguisher
The French again. This movie will always be remembered for the very long (..and very hard to watch) rape scene with Monica Bellucci, but the scene where Vincent Cassell broke a guy's face with dull, crunching blows from a fire extinguisher until it becomes a bloody pulp was very real, unflinching and very animalistic. Very hard to watch.

3. Psycho - The Shower Scene
You know which scene I'm talking about. The 45-second steamy shower slashing scene, beautifully edited from 70 different angles and 90 edits, when Marion Crane is butchered by 'Mother' remains one of the greatest cinematic moments of all-time.

2. Ichi The Killer - Give Good Head, Lose A Foot
Takeshi Mike. The name alone spells violent and gore. But he's a genius. So many scenes to choose from this movie. Definitely the most brutal and sadistic movie that I had ever seen... and very funny too. All of the death and tortures in this movie are very hard to watch (...especially the scene where Kakihara slits his own tongue!) . But the one that's worth mentioning is when Ichi, right after receiving a blowjob from Ms. Tachibana, decide to slash the poor girl left leg with razors concealed in the heels of his shoes. And as Ms. Tachibana hopping on one leg like a kangaroo, rushing for an exit, Ichi slits her throat and blood sprayed out of her open wound like a water sprinkler. Funny, sick and gross at the same time.

1. American History X - The Curb Scene
Nothing, I mean nothing will ever come close to the teeth in the curb scene in American History X. The first time when I saw this particular scene, I literally gagged. Truly the most violent thing that I've ever witnessed on film. Until this day, when I watch this movie, the scene always had the same effect on me just like the first time. We don't really get to see the neck or the jaw broke, but I think what makes this scene so intense is that it looks so fuckin' real! You could really feel the chills as we watch the guy's teeth slowly biting the curb. And while we think that Edward Norton's character is going to blow the guy's head with the gun that he's holding, suddenly he lifts up his feet (with Doc Marten boots on) and 'POWW!!!'. (silence).


...life would never be the same again.



So go to hell with all those zombies, predators, terminators, aliens, vampires and so-called scary, gory movies. The REAL thing is the scariest thing.