We are absolutely thrilled and honored to be included on CINEMANIAC Dennis Dermody's list (reprinted in it's entirety below) in the June-July Issue of PAPER Magazine.
I know, the weather is getting warmer. People are shedding their winter garb and starting to look more buff and attractive. As you stroll the streets, your mind is wandering toward thoughts of love. Well, for God's sake, don't do it. Don't pick up that phone to make that dinner date. Don't introduce yourself to that good-looking stranger at that party. Don't get up the nerve to ask for your co-worker's phone number. Not this year -- especially not this year. In Chinese, this year is the year of the rat, and that should be a tip-off. In the U.S., it's the year of fatal attraction, misery, STDs, and hefty courtroom fees. So when you're at the rental store, don't go pick up An Affair To Remember and Titanic with that dreamy far-off look in your eyes. Remember, Deborah Kerr ends up a hopeless cripple in one and Leonardo DiCaprio drowns in the other. Rent the following 10 movies instead to steel yourself from making that fatal love connection.Fatal Attraction (Paramount)
Michael Douglas plays a married man who has a one-night-stand with Glenn Close that causes untold misery. The scorned Close stalks him and his family -- even boils their bunny -- and they have to drown the bitch just to get any peace.
Moral: If you think with your dick, it will cost you dearly... Eliot Spitzer.
Primo Amore (Strand)
This bizarre Italian film, the flipside of Feed, is about a lover who whisks his girl to a remote country house and starves her, weighing her daily, until she resembles a strand of spaghetti.
Moral: Jenny Craig is one thing, but a boyfriend who frowns when you eat a potato chip deserves to be fed into a wood chipper.
Crash (New Line)
A couple (James Spader and Deborah Kara Unger) who get off on car crashes hang out with a posse of like-minded people who get boners at the sound of screeching tires and busted glass.
Moral: In love you're just road kill.
Feed (TLA Video)
Women are kept locked up in an abandoned house by a deranged killer who fattens them up (with a funnel) until they get so morbidly obese that they die.
Moral: Fall in love and your boyfriend might turn out to be Jack Sprat.
Irreversible (Lionsgate)
In Gaspar Noe's nightmarish film, told chronologically backwards, a couple go for a lovely evening out, after which the woman gets raped and the boyfriend ends up bashing the wrong guy's head in at a gay bar called the Rectum.
Moral: Every night out with your future date will turn out exactly like this, if not worse.
Kissed (MGM)
A strange girl (Molly Parker) who works at a funeral parlor likes her dates pretty damn stiff and cold, if you get my drift. Her poor boyfriend tries icing his body and keeping very, very still, but it just isn't enough and eventually he has to hang himself in order to be her special date.
Moral: All relationships end with you on a mortuary slab.
Socket (TLA Video)
In this wonderfully deranged, gay sci-fi horror film, a doctor named Bill is struck by lightning and joins a secret society of electricity fiends who meet to hold hands and attach themselves to a live wire for that extra jolt. He and a handsome intern become lovers, but when Bill becomes bored with having to stick a fork in an electrical outlet for a quick thrill, he decides to surgically implant plugs and actual sockets into his and his lover's wrists for easier access. Socket to me!
Moral: Even gay relationships turn out badly, and up your Con Edison bill.
Basic Instinct 2 (Sony)
In this hilarious flop of a follow-up to the notorious Paul Verhoeven film about a female serial killer, a London psychiatrist (David Morrissey) falls in love with the infamous, possible man-killer Catherine Tramell (Sharon Stone), and before you can sing "London Bridge Is Falling Down," guess what happens?
Moral: You fall for an older woman who looks like Sharon Stone, and she stabs you with scissors. Or, you fall in love and end up in a crappy sequel.
Pretty Woman (Touchstone)
In this much beloved fairytale movie, Richard Gere stars as a wealthy businessman who picks up a hooker (Julia Roberts) and eventually falls for her.
Moral: She's a prostitute, for God's sake. You don't think after one night in bed with her he's going to be brooding about all the horrible old men she's blown? Give me a break.
War of the Roses (20th Century Fox)
Kathleen Turner and Michael Douglas play a couple at war against each other for the upper hand in an acrimonious divorce.
Moral: Marry this summer and you'll end up crushed under a chandelier, or my name isn't Alicia Gottlaid.
This story was published on June 11, 2008.
©2008 PAPER PUBLISHING COMPANY. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
