Awhile back Heather Anne asked me to guest post for The Collective. For my guest post I wrote a list (lists! oh how I love thee!) of my 5 Worst X, where X = Ways To Die, Cinematically.
It only seemed fitting, then, to compile a 5 Best! list to compliment my 5 Worst list for The Collective, and that is what I have to offer you today, dear readers:
Kerri Anne’s 5 Best Ways To Die, Cinematically Speaking Of Course.
5. In a freak gasoline fight with your two best friends.
This tragic movie moment made the number one spot on my 5 Worst Ways To Die list, but when it did I simultaneously asserted that this could also arguably be the best way to die cinematically, which only serves to further illustrate the beauty and the duality, the cinematic complexity that is Zoolander.
4. Dying while avenging the Natalie Portman you never had.
In the last few minutes of The Professional, super stoic hitman Leon is dying after being shot by bad cop Gary Oldman. As he’s dying, he hands a note to Oldman reading: “This is from Matilda,” with a grenade pin inside of it that then sets off an entire entourage of grenades he has strapped to his chest. It’s actually mildly romantic. Or, well, as mildly romantic as grenades strapped to your chest can be.
3. Dying without really dying at all. Multiple times.
Attempt 1: A fiery crash after driving off the edge of a cliff with a small town’s rodent mascot behind the wheel.
Attempt 2: A 4-piece toaster electrocution while taking a bath.
Attempt 3: Stepping in front of a large delivery truck in blue silk pajamas.
Attempt 4: A swan-dive from a tall building.
By now most of you probably noticed I’m referencing Groundhog Day, and the hilarious and quite difficult to kill Bill Murray.
2. Dying while dropping a bombshell on your family from the grave.
My all-time favorite movie (Eulogy) doesn’t ever fully explain how Rip Torn’s character dies, but dead he is at the start of the movie, and lest I spoil it for you if you haven’t seen it, and may I be so bold as to assume you probably haven’t, I’ll just say that I whole-heartedly believe everyone should rent and watch this movie at least once before they die. If for no other reason than to see an ensemble cast of characters at their best. Also, it’s hilarious. And honest. (Hilariously honest is my favorite genre of movie.)
1. Sacrificing yourself during a series finale to save (the world and!) the vampire slayer you love.
OK, you got me: Buffy The Vampire Slayer wasn’t a movie. At least, not this particular version. Both the series and the cinematic rendition starring Kristy Swanson were written by Joss Whedon, though, so I’m using that, and my undying devotion to the WB series, to justify me using it as my number one scene in this post. Countless episodes of Buffy were more cinematic than the best of all movies, anyway.
This final fight of the series stands alone in Sheer Awesomeness (and next to many of the series most remembered and beloved episodes), and if you liked Spike even a fraction as much as I did then you probably already know how amazingly heroic his death to save the world and Buffy one last time truly was. I might have cried. You know, hypothetically speaking, of course.
It’s hard for me to express how much I love Buffy, The Series, and how much I came to adore each and every character for their own quirks and well delivered and supremely timed lines. Rest assured if you ever ask me a question about the series I will ramble for at least a day or two, and you will have to request my silence for me to stop gushing and pontificating, and most likely gesturing while I do both.
It really is THAT good, and really you shouldn’t take my word for it, though I’d be thrilled if you did. What you should do is rent it, or buy it, or both, and thank me later.
Fair warning: it’s highly addictive, like chocolate or meth, but, as it were, much better for your thighs and your teeth.
*Title of this post is from Buffy, of course.
I posted a picture of him for a silly Instagram-related game and found him waiting for me in my dreams, something which occurs so rarely it still explodes solidly-constructed dams inside me each time I see his face, mustached and smiling at mine just the way he always did, just the way I always remember him. As usual he didn’t say much, not anything I could hear or remember, but he was there and I knew it, and when I → Read more...
I have words washed out to sea. Words ushered quietly from my lips to my fingertips, waiting patiently for the right tide, for the moon to bring my stories alive.
I have words being reviewed, words accepted and words rejected, and I’m clinging to my favorite lines, fighting for them, and it feels strange and new and exhilaratingly infuriating, this tug-of-war of wills and how the slightest bit of caving can make me feel like I’m flirting with abandoning the sanctity → Read more...
[Alternately titled: Story, The Second: The Girl Who Moved To Washington State]
It began simply. A direct message on Twitter first, followed by texts; those texts, in turn, begat plans. With those plans came anxiety and apprehension – I didn’t know you, not your face or your voice or anything else, and I wasn’t sure I was ready to – but also something exciting, a strange and unexpected hope hovering quietly on the horizon. And then we met, conversed and laughed → Read more...
Stories I said I had. Tangential stories and life-changing ones.
Until today I haven’t known where, exactly, to begin. And so quiet this space has mostly been because some beginnings are tricky. Sometimes it’s quite impossible to denote where something ended and something else entirely began.
I’m not going to be able to tell you everything, but then the best stories never really do, do they?
(That’s not a trick question. I promise they don’t.)
(Unless the story was penned by Henry James, in → Read more...