The Most Discussed Pajiba Posts of 2006: A Beginner’s Guide to Pajiba
Pajiba’s Guide to What’s Good for You / Pajiba Staff
Guides | January 18, 2007 | Comments ()
In anticipation of our next Pajiba’s Guide to What’s Good for You (one of my favorites, to be posted later this week) and in celebration of MLK, we’ve done a little recycling: Here are the most discussed entries of 2006, which offer a good place for Pajiba virgins to get their bearings before we metaphorically assault your collective maidenheads. Enjoy!
10 Worst Blockbusters of All Time (Staff) — “In ranking the worst blockbusters of all time, each Pajiba staffer nominated 15 films from the pool of 343 with a (non-adjusted) gross of $100 million or more domestically; then we combined our votes with box-office grosses and the overall critical success of those films (as measured by the Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer) to create our list.”
Pajiba’s Guide to Third-Date Flicks (Dustin Rowles) — “In our first ‘Pajiba’s Guide to What’s Good for You,’ column, I offer you a handy-dandy guide to third-date movies, and what they mean to the future of your relationships.”
Pajiba Presents: The Best Movies You’ve Never Seen (Staff) — “The challenge posed to our critics was to write about our favorite flicks that for various reasons had never garnered the audiences they deserved. The criteria were as follows: The movie must have made less than $2.5 million domestically and, to keep the list somewhat current, we limited our timeline to anything released within the lifetime of Emma Roberts (1991-present). To make it more difficult, we also disqualified foreign-language films*, documentaries, and movies that made little money in their theatrical releases but found cult followings on DVD.”
The Kids are Alright — Standout Child Performances (John Williams) — “On lucky occasions, though, through the rare intelligence of a filmmaker or the sheer talent of a kid, we see a child as something more, as something closer to what children are, which is (scary thought) simply adults minus experience. The movies listed below all feature standout performances by child actors, but first, a couple of brief notes on the selection process.”
A Lone Star State of Mind: Films About Texas (Daniel Carlson) — “There are some films set in Texas that fully embrace the state’s mythos and become fused with a unique balance of slow movement and quick thinking, films that take place in a variety of times or cities or situations but that never stray far from car wheels on a gravel road. And it’s those films that I’d like to pay tribute to here.”
Pajiba’s Favorite Craptastic Horror Films (Staff) — “For those few unfamiliar with craptastic films (also known as craptacular, crapilicous, crapulous, or, occasionally, shittastic!), there are a few pointers we can offer newbies for optimum viewing experiences. First, craptastic films should be watched late at night and while intoxicated (the more the better). Ideally, two or more craptastic films should be watched back-to-back to heighten the level of absurdity. And, finally, craptastic films should be seen in the same denominations allowed in southern skating rinks during the 1980s: A guy and a girl, two girls, or two girls and a guy (or multiples thereof). Never, I repeat never watch a truly craptastic film alone; then it’s just crappy.”
Quiet Down Now, It Is Time to Watch the Show … (Seth Freilich) — “Let’s talk about the all-time best opening TV themes/credits.”
Adolescent Cartoons for a Post-Adolescent World (Phillip Stephens) — “In the interest of exclusion, I decided to pare this list down not only to animated shows that survived the test of time critically, but also to cartoons whose ostensible audience was young but that, through ambitious and bold presentation of ideas or themes, were still palatable to more mature viewers. I also chose not to include the opposite — shows geared exclusively toward post-adolescent mindsets.”
Un Maricon Brillante: The Films of Pedro Almodovar (Jeremy C. Fox) — “Pedro Almodóvar is many things: a satirist, a humanist, a provocateur. Trying to suss out his significance in Spanish culture, one can almost feel that if he hadn’t been born, Spain would have had to create him. He’s the hedonistic Id of a hothouse nation, kept so long beneath the heel of Franco’s totalitarianism and the centuries-long repression of reactionary Catholicism. Almodóvar’s surrealist comedy-melodramas hit you in the groin, then the heart, then the head, revealing far more about the actual experience of being human than most conventional realist filmmakers could ever show.”
The Best Short-Lived Show of All Time: “Freaks and Geeks” (Seth Freilich) — “Hey, I believe in God, man. I’ve seen him. I’ve felt his power! He plays drums for Led Zeppelin and his name is John Bonham baby!”
Damn, It Feels Good to be a Gangsta: A Pop-Culture Mix Tape (Dustin Rowles) — “We all know there are scenes in movies and television that are inextricably linked to a piece of music — you can’t hear Harry Nilsson’s “Everybody’s Talkin’,” for instance, without picturing Ratso Rizzo slumped over in his seat on a bus; the Foundations’ “Build Me Up Buttercup,” without re-conjuring the There’s Something About Mary end credits; or … umm … Kelis’ “Milkshake,” without picturing a 300-pound Alyson Hannigan doing her best Shakira impression in Date Movie. Since Pajiba is a site that hews pretty closely to television and film, I thought it’d be amusing to compile a mix-tape of scenes from TV and movies that — at least in my mind — are tied to the memory of a specific song.”
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