Wednesday, December 04, 2013

10 Off My Head - All We Want For X-Mas

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The holidays approach (or if you're Jewish are happening right now; or if you don't celebrate, nevermind) and I'm seeing all of these Christmas lists on websites and thinking to myself, yeah, I want that. That's really all they are right? Lists of what people want themselves. I want that, and I can do that! 

Listen, I always feel gross trolling for money (even though gosh it would be awesome if I could somehow make money off of all the work I put into this website, dramatic sigh) but over there on the sidebar there's that Amazon search engine and if you buy things though it, I get a nice little percentage. That's all I'm saying. That's it!

Well okay that, and this: here are ten (plus two) things I think you should buy for people for the holidays. They are things that I personally want in my stocking slash under my tree, they're right off my own personal Wish List, and therefore they're awesome, because I am awesome with awesome taste, that's why you're here after all. And yeah if you buy any of these things via the links, I get some money, and that's awesome too. Holly jolly ho ho let's go.

Guillermo del Toro Cabinet of Curiosities: My Notebooks, Collections, and Other Obsessions -- I mean, come on! Guillermo let's us into his notebooks with all of his awesome monster sketches and monster ideas? How is that not something we've all got to have on our shelves right this instant. And the afterword is by Tom Cruise! Isn't that weird? I still blame Tom Cruise for At The Mountains of Madness not happening, so hopefully it's just one long apology.

Frances Ha on Blu-ray - It's only been released by Criterion so it's expensive, too expensive for me even though it's still a year and a half out the best movie I've seen in a year and a half, so I'm hoping somebody just buys it for me for Christmas. Still it's Criterion so it's an awesome disc - I already watched the special features and there's a chat between Greta Gerwig and Sarah Polley on them. GRETA GERWIG AND SARAH POLLEY. My mind is still blown.

Eclipse Series: Early Fassbinder on Blu-ray - Also Criterion, but not really that expensive for what you get. Five of his lesser seen films from 1969's Love is Colder Than Death (his first film) up to 1971's strange movie-making satire Beware of a Holy Whore. The only one I haven't seen yet is The American Soldier - the four I have seen are all terrific, but then it's kind of impossible for me to say any Fassbinder is not terrific.

The Town That Dreaded Sundown on Blu-ray - We'd been suffering with shit quality copies of this movie for far too long; thankfully this year all that graininess got tossed out the window and we've got a pristine beautiful version to own thanks to the great great folks at Shout! Factory. (Seriously those guys put out amazing stuff constantly.) Now we can see a masked man murder a person with a trombone like it was always meant to be seen.

Hannibal: Season One on Blu-ray - You might not think that you need a TV show on Blu-ray, but that just means you didn't watch the first season of Bryan Fuller's masterfully unsettling and pretty pretty thing when it aired - the glow they have Gillian Anderson lit with is worth the price of admission alone. Plus all that sweaty heaving Hugh Dancy! Seriously though this is the time for us all to catch up with it again, or for the first time, before it starts up again (presumably) in the Spring.

A Life of Barbara Stanwyck: Steel True 1907-1940 - I am in awe at the scope of this biography - this is only the first part, dealing with Bab's life from birth up until the second Word War, and it's over a thousand pages! The second volume comes out "at a later date." Stanwyck did have a life and a half though, what with her traumatic early life giving way to beloved legend and all. I feel like I'll know her better than I know myself when I'm through with this sucker, which is fine with me.

Showgirls: Portrait of a Film - This book came out alongside the film in 1996, so apparently everybody from Paul Verhoeven on down treats it all very serious inside, which, if you've seen the film, means hello hilarity! I've been meaning to snap this one up for ages. Buy it and then go see the musical, have yourself a Very Nomi Christmas!

The Wes Anderson Collection - This one's been on all the lists I've seen so it seems everybody knows about it and wants it, and who can blame them. It's the first proper book about Anderson's movies, and we all know Zeitz from his internet writing and he's great. Indeed it looks like Amazon's temporarily out of stock on the book, so many of us want this! So here, if you can't get that buy this book on the making of Fantastic Mr. Fox; a friend gave me this book a couple of years ago and it is really lovely.

Out in the Dark: Interviews With Gay Horror Filmmakers, Actors and Authors - Well this one's right up my alley, eh? I do believe I have like a dozen mutual friends with author Sean Abley (he wrote the former gay blog for Fangoria called Gay of the Dead) on Facebook so I saw a lot of my friends talking about this book, and I'm dying to read it. 

Evil Dead's Henrietta action figure - Oh my god you guys look at that thing, it is so awesomely foul! I love it so. I want to cradle it when I go to sleep every single night and hear Ted Raimi whisper in my ear, "Someone's in my fruit cellar! Someone with a FRESH SOUL!!!"

And finally...

... The Spider Gremlin figurine is the coolest thing in all of the world right now. Coolest thing ever in all of the world! It's way expensive though, and Amazon's only selling it through their outside sellers, and they don't have many of it. But man alive! Imagine that sucker sitting on your shelf! You'd get so laid, yo. Totally.
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7 comments:

shaun said...

Great list! Looks like a similar but better priced version of Mohawk will be available next year from Entertainment Earth -- http://www.entertainmentearth.com/prodinfo.asp?number=NC30786

I think it's a bit bigger, and the mouth is different...still awesome.

Jason Adams said...

Ooh thanks for the heads-up on that, Shaun! Want it soooo bad.

Scot said...

The closer we get to the holidays the more my job drives me bonkers and the stupider I get. 'splain it to me before I finish my xmas shopping. If I use the amazon link, no matter what I buy, you get a %? How about if I buy something from my wish list or buy from one of their 2nd party sellers? What are the specifics? I have no problem using the portal, I gotta spend some money anyway!

Jason Adams said...

Scot - As far as I can figure, and I think I'm right about this, any link you use from my website that gets you over there, everything you purchase whilst there having come from my site gets me a percentage. So you can click on any of these items listed here, or use the search bar in the right-hand column, and once you're there, s'all good. You just have to do your clicking around having come from here somehow. Anyway thanks! Much much appreciated! Happy Xmas!

Anonymous said...

honestly i fucking love this blog. just saying.

Matthew said...

JA, I work for the publisher of The Wes Anderson Collection and I would seriously love to send you a copy of the book just to say thanks for how long I've been reading this wonderful site. Let's arrange that.

Jason Adams said...

Seriously, Matthew? That'd be so sweet. Email me - jadams77@gmail.com