I brought this up on twitter and got a few interested responses, so we’re going to jump right on in, and pick people up as we go.    If nothing else, Donna & I will just watch movies on our own and post CRAZY THINGS about them.

So what is the Wacky Movie Club?  There are so many hilarious, awesome, and AWESOMELY HILARIOUSLY BAD movies on Netflix (many available for instant streaming) that sometimes I wish I had other people watching the crazy movies along with me, or re-watching my old favorites while I try to figure out if they’re as good as I remember. This way, someone will be!

For this round, I’m going to try voting, so my interested parties can have some say in what we watch first.   I’ll leave this poll open for a week, and next week I’ll post the winner & set up a post for chatting about the movie.  I think I’ll also schedule a time when those who are available can try watching it together on twitter, so if you like the idea of live movie club, leave a comment with the time that works best for you between August 17th and 21st.

Here are our first three choices, plucked from Netflix.  (Dead Again is NOT available for instant streaming, but we’d all have enough time to get the discs. Though it is quite cheap to rent at Amazon!)

Dead Again 1991 [R] 107 minutes
Availability: DVD, Amazon VideoOnDemand ($0.99 rental)
Genres: Crime Thrillers, Mysteries, Psychological Thrillers

Los Angeles gumshoe Mike Church (Kenneth Branagh) takes the case of a woman (Emma Thompson) beset with amnesia and soon makes the startling discovery that he and his client are connected — via reincarnation — to a lurid, 40-year-old murder. Branagh is convincing as an American private investigator, and he gets fine support from Thompson (his real-life wife at the time) in this inventive modern noir thriller.

Cast: Kenneth Branagh, Emma Thompson, Andy Garcia, Derek Jacobi, Robin Williams, Wayne Knight, Campbell Scott, Raymond Cruz, Jo Anderson, Lois Hall, Richard Easton, Obba Babatundé, Patrick Montes, Patrick Doyle

Pitch Black 2000 [Unrated] 112 minutes
Availability: Streaming, DVD and Blu-ray, Amazon VoD ($2.99 Rental)
Genres: Alien Sci-Fi, Sci-Fi Horror Movies, Sci-Fi Thrillers

After crash-landing on a seemingly lifeless planet, pilot Carolyn Fry (Radha Mitchell) and the remaining passengers — including murderer Riddick (Vin Diesel) and policeman William J. Johns (Cole Hauser) — encounter an army of creatures whose only weakness is light. As night approaches and the aliens emerge, the passengers must rely on Riddick’s powerful night vision to lead them through the darkness in director David N. Twohy’s sci-fi thriller.

Cast: Vin Diesel, Radha Mitchell, Cole Hauser, Keith David, Lewis Fitz-Gerald, Claudia Black, Rhiana Griffith, John Moore, Simon Burke

Practical Magic 1998 [PG-13] 104 minutes
Availability: Streaming and DVD, Amazon VoD ($2.99 Rental)
Genres: Sci-Fi & Fantasy, Romantic Comedies

In director Griffin Dunne’s romantic comedy, sisters Sally and Gillian Owens (Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman) are modern-day witches whose love lives are complicated by an unusual curse: Men who fall in love with them meet untimely ends. But against the advice of their eccentric aunts, Frances (Stockard Channing) and Jet (Dianne Wiest) — and even in the face of a murder investigation — the sisters continue to try their hands at romance.

Cast: Nicole Kidman, Sandra Bullock, Aidan Quinn, Stockard Channing, Goran Visnjic, Dianne Wiest, Evan Rachel Wood, Alexandra Artrip, Mark Feuerstein, Caprice Benedetti, Camilla Belle

Let’s bring the general sophistication down a notch. Or three. I know I took my sweet time to get around to watching Inception, but it’s okay, because I have LOTS of appreciation for it.

And not just because of this.

But a little bit because of that. Because like, I’ve grown up having crushes on him at just about every age range, so why stop now?

Mmmmmm. Brain bending goodness.

Okay, need to go write! Cipher is begging to be finished.

1) The movie? Is bad. Baaaaaaad.

2) Whitney can’t act her way out of a paper bag.

3) I’m not usually much of a fan, but Kevin Costner was unaccountably hot in this role. Seriously effin’ hot.

But, perhaps most damning, I found myself pondering a question I know didn’t occur to my teenaged self: Why the hell didn’t he just quit and let her die?? She was a brat, a tragically stupid diva with no regard for her own safety who flouted his bodyguarding rules and yelled at him constantly.

That got me thinking about books. Keepers. The old Temptations and Desires and Loveswepts. The ones I have on my shelf that, if I lose them, I will pay oodles of dollars to replace so I can have them on my shelf again.

I don’t have many, probably far fewer than your average romance reader, and here’s a secret: though I dearly adored these books, I haven’t reread a lot of them. Part of that reason is that I started reading romance a long, long time ago, when I was very young. In fact, I’m 8000% positive that my current, 33 year old self would react violently, perhaps with lighter fluid and matches, to many of the books that I simply ate up as a teen.

So I’ve been hesitant to reread a lot of the books I once mightily enjoyed, though this movie is making me rethink that. I mean, it’s not like I liked the movie; come on, it’s a piece of crap. But I did have an entirely new appreciation for the character of Frank Farmer–the gruff, stoic man with a job to do. He’s hot! Painfully, ridiculously hot, and I don’t remember having that reaction when I was younger.

Maybe it’s time to broaden the range of my rereading, see if I can gain a new perspective from some of these neglected old favorites. What about you? What are some of the books or series you love as much now as you did the first time you read them? Or, conversely, are there any beloved old books you picked up…and promptly threw against the wall?

Welcome to Day Two of our continuing “Middle of Nowhere” fiesta, celebrating all places impossibly remote and the ways you survive living there.

What is our item for Day Two?  Movies, of course.  Now, if you’re like me and Donna, living in the middle of nowhere makes renting movies a bit of a drag.  First you have to drive to the video rental place.  Then you have to rent movies and bring them home.  Then you forget to watch them, incur late fees, drive all the way back to return them, and wonder why you didn’t just pay Amazon to own them because it would have been cheaper than the gas.

Of course, that’s why the world invented: Netflix.  Oh Netflix, you are beautiful with your endless movies in our mailboxes, your streaming video and your utter lack of late fees.  So we both get lots of chances to watch movies.

Favorite movies can tell you a lot about a person.  Or a character.  So for our second day of fun, about about a peek at the movie queues of all the characters in Red Rock Pass?

Samantha: Scent of a Woman
Gavin: “Whatever Sam makes me watch.”
Keith: The Matrix
Abby: Casablanca
Joe: The Untouchables
Brynn: Shallow Grave
Dylan: Resident Evil
Sasha: Roman Holiday
Cindy: Speed
Adam: “…they’ve got sound and color now, huh?”

…okay, so the guys born in the late 19th century aren’t quite as down with the movies.  In Adam’s defense, he has been living in a cabin without much electricity since the 40s.  Gavin, however, is just a crotchety old bugger.

Today, in honor of all things paranormal, we’re going to give away a $25 gift certificate to Amazon so you can buy your own movie without spending gas or late fees on it.  All you have to do is answer the question: what is your favorite movie?

Donna and I tried to come up with our favorite movies, or a list of our top five favorite movies, but it turns out we like too many.  So here are a few of our favorites.  Feel free to list as many as you want, too. 

Donna: The Cutting Edge, Gone with the Wind, Dirty Dancing, Godfather, Sense & Sensibility

Bree: X-Men, Ten Things I Hate About You, Star Wars, The Matchmaker, Resident Evil 2

Other Contests: Top Six Day One: Ebooks, Big Bad Maine Extravaganza, Red Rock Madness