September 29, 2005

Half-assed Contest

Here's the deal:

At the end of my weekly beat reports from here until I decide not to do it anymore or am shot in mid-flight, find a screen capture from a mystery movie. The comment section will be the place where you log your guesses - I'll cut it off after the first correct answer - and I'll keep a tally of correct answers over the course of, let's say, seven weeks at a pop? If you're the cinephile who has the most correct answers after seven weeks, I'm going to send you some piece of swag from the ever-moldering pile of swag sitting here, creating friction in my marriage and providing a home for what I believe are sightless moles. There are T-shirts, novels, screen adaptations, a pumpkin carving kit from the new Wallace & Gromit flick (I'd send the pumpkin, too, but what am I, made of money? - besides, my daughter's using it as a chair), little tin cars, something truly weird from the War of the Worlds campaign - but no baseball caps because on the rare occasion they send me a baseball cap, I wear it. I'm just that poor and heterosexual.

Let's see, there's something in a sealed silver baggie that I don't remember what it is, something that I think I broke but might send someone anyway as an ironic prize with which they might impress someone with as stunted a sense of humor as me, and a few posters. Some of it probably eBay-valuable - my best advice is that if you win some random gewgaw, I'd bronze it for that day you compete at your regionals for that ridiculous IFC movie trivia show. As further proof of the symbolic nature of the prizes, I will include a signed certificate stating that you've won "FFC Blog Contest #1", dated and ready for framing. Just like a diploma from the University of Freak.

By the way - please don't request something in particular because my life, while not complicated, is far too complicated for me already. It's going to be all I can do to drag it to the post office and, in the event one of our loyal foreign readers wins, fill out that little green customs slip and try to explain why I'm mailing a xXx coaster to Australia. Consider that I'm not of my right mind and am cooking this up because I'm blocked on a review this evening and, should you run a wet finger along my arm, might hum like fine crystal.

Okay - so as an addendum to this week's Trenches, a tough one (they won't all be) so have at it:


(I will, of course, periodically, give out hints.)

21 comments:

Anonymous said...

Have NO idea what film that's from. It looks cool though.

JG Friend said...

The Jerk?

Looks like a gas station.

I'm so wrong.

Walter_Chaw said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Walter_Chaw said...

OBSCURE HINT #1: Man in the picture? Guess you could call him a latter day saint.

Anonymous said...

Bah. Your obscure hint only confuses and frustrates me further. Anonymous SMASH!!!!

Alex Jackson said...

Something with Mormons obviously.

I think that I'm out of the contest as there would be a conflict of interests; but I observe that he called Elijah Wood's character in Everything is Illuminated a Mormon.

Bill C said...

Remember the Alamo...

Anonymous said...

I'll Sleep When I'm Dead?

-- Ian

Walter_Chaw said...

OBSCURE HINT #1: Man in the picture? Guess you could call him a latter day saint.

OBSCURE HINT #2: Man in the cocoon between the two cars is a legendary bad man related to a legendary escape artist and a legendary man in black.

Anonymous said...

"Man in the cocoon between the two cars..."

So that's what that is.

Anonymous said...

Makes me think of Ocean's Eleven for some reason..

Walter_Chaw said...

OBSCURE HINT #1: Man in the picture? Guess you could call him a latter day saint.

OBSCURE HINT #2: Man in the cocoon between the two cars is a legendary bad man related to a legendary escape artist and a legendary man in black.

OBSCURE HINT #3: The film is a "sequel" in a series that's five films long.

Anonymous said...

One of them cremaster flicks.

Anonymous said...

Cremaster 2

Walter_Chaw said...

I'll take that - the still is from Cremaster 2 - the second of five although I think it might have been the third or fourth chronologically.

Gary Gilmore is in the cocooon - he's related by blood somehow to Harry Houdini and got a call (according to legend) from Johnny Cash the night before his execution. The Mormon gas station attendant, of course, is about to be one of Gilmore's murder victims.

Are the Cremaster films available on DVD? Everyone should see them - they're really sort of astonishing. Especially for fans of The Brown Bunny.

If you give me a different "tag", anonymous (like "Joe Bob" or something), I'll put a little crayon hashmark by your name on the tally. Congratulations of a sort!

Walter_Chaw said...

Whoops - y'know what, I'll give a hasher to Cap'n for being so damned specific, too. We got ourselves a horse race, boys.

Anonymous said...

Ah cool, put me down as Earnest.

Anonymous said...

Thanks!

Cremaster 2 is fourth, chronologically. Sadly only The Order, from Cremaster 3, is out on DVD.

Walter_Chaw said...

RUNNING TALLY:
Earnest - I
The Captain - I

Anonymous said...

Fudge! I was gonna guess one of the Cremaster films, just because I knew they trafficked in weird imagery. Oh well.

Anonymous said...

Well...when I say "I was gonna," I mean I had half a notion to. I probably wouldn't have actually guessed it before somebody gave out the answer. Sort of like what just happened now. Spooky... But anyway, congrats Earnest and Cap'n. Congrats... [grits teeth, narrows eyes]