The Screengrab

A lot of my friends have been going through break-ups and divorces lately, which means they’ve probably also been hearing that old familiar friends/family/Facebook folk wisdom about how the end of a relationship is like a death, which must be properly mourned.

And, given that we're down to our next-to-last Thursday list before getting dumped for some younger, sexier blogs by Hooksexup, your pals here at the Screengrab, having moved beyond denial, anger and bargaining, figured we oughta tackle grief -- well, grief and “holy shit, did you see that guy’s head explode?  How frickin' cool was that?” -- with THE SCREENGRAB’S FAVORITE DEATH SCENES OF ALL TIME, including...

The Guy With The Exploding Head, SCANNERS (1981)



Holy shit!  How frickin' cool was that?  I remember first seeing the aforementioned Exploding Head Guy during one of the montage sequences of the 1984 theatrical clip show Terror in the Aisles (a horror film comprised entirely of classic moments from other horror films, kind of like the Scary Movie franchise without the dick jokes). Later, I saw David Cronenberg’s Scanners in its entirety, although the only thing I really remember about it now is the scene above, where renegade telepath Darryl Revok (B-Movie Hall of Fame villain extraordinaire Michael Ironside) totally blows that bald dude’s skull apart -- with his mind! -- in one of the most memorable death scenes in cinematic history...second only, I suppose, to John Hurt’s demise in Alien (below) for its shock value imagery. In a way, then, it’s sad to realize that, in the wake of Saving Private Ryan and the recent wave of torture porn cinema, the image of a bloody cranium bursting like a ripe watermelon is now considered tame enough to show as a sight gag on The Daily Show. (AO)

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In an editorial in The Wall Street Journal, a publication that often inspires readers to compare what's in its highly esteemed, award-winning news coverage to what's being professed on its op-ed page and come to the conclusion that somebody's nuts, has published an analysis of the state of the movie business by Ted Baehr, chairman of the Christian Film and Television Commission, and someone named Tom Snyder, who I'm guessing is neither the late, much-missed host of the Tomorrow show not the guy who did Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist, but really, who the hell knows anymore? If there's one thing I've picked up on in the course of doing this job, it's that life's full of surprises, put it that way. Anyway, Baehr is a big wheel with Movieguide, a family-values organization that promotes better living through morally correct movies or something. Part of his op-ed amounts to a press release announcing that Movieguide recently "held its 17th Annual Faith & Values Awards ceremony", where they saluted such entertainments as Fireproof, "which received a $100,000 Epiphany Prize for the Most Inspiring Movie of 2008, sponsored by the John Templeton Foundation." Even more valuable was the information we released in our Report to the Entertainment Industry, a detailed survey of what kinds of movies made money last year, and why. Regular readers of the Screengrab will immediately recall that we did our best to cover the Fireproof experience, because we, too, want to "help families who want to find movies and TV shows that stay within the perimeters of biblical principles", to use Baehr's pithy phrasing, and because opportunities to update readers on the state of Kirk Cameron's career don't come along every day. But the most exciting news to come out of this year's Movieguide report on the state of the art is that Baehr and company have figured out how to keep the entertainment industry solvent in these perilous times. (If you can keep Kirk Cameron solvent, you can do anything.) "With media conglomerates, from Time Warner to Disney to News Corp., reporting big losses," write Baehr and Snyder, "few can afford to ignore proven recipes for box-office success. And when it comes to movies, what succeeds is capitalism, patriotism, faith and values...Once again, family-friendly, uplifting and inspiring movies drew far more viewers in 2008 than films with themes of despair, or leftist political agendas. Sex, drugs and antireligious themes were not automatic sellers, either. Among the 25 top-grossing movies alone, 14 out of 25 had strong or very strong Christian, redemptive and moral content, and nearly all had at least some such content."

These results are based on a close examination of "more than 250 major films from Hollywood studios and independents for their social, political, philosophical, moral and religious content. When all the information -- categorized by dozens of criteria -- is in a database, we calculate which movies took in the most money at the theatrical box office in America and Canada in 2008." We have no doubt that the good people at Movieguide have gone about their work with great devotion and seriousness of intent. But in their efforts to connect with the money changers of Hollywood, they may have come too close to embracing that time-honored but morally dubious practice known as Hollywood accounting.

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Death Defying Acts opens in limited release this weekend, and so far, it hasn't generated much advance buzz.  It's hard to figure out why:  It comes on the heels of other successful movies involving magicians, including The Prestige and The Illusionist;  it's a romance-driven period piece (which should attract women), but it features a murder mystery, psychics, and famed escape artist Harry Houdini (for the fellas); it's got an all-star cast led by perennial heartthrobs Guy Pearce and Catherine Zeta-Jones; and it's directed by none other than girl-geek icon Gillian Anderson.  Maybe people are confused by the premise:  in Death Defying Acts features Zeta-Jones as a spiritualist out to run a con on the master magician.  We haven't seen it yet, so we're not sure if Zeta-Jones' powers are portrayed as being authentic, but in real life, Houdini was a relentless skeptic who didn't believe in any aspect of the paranormal, and who, in fact, went out of his way to disprove all claims of the supernatural as buncombe.  Regardless, Hollywood has always been a sucker for a good psychic yarn, which probably explains why goofy New Age religions tend to take root in southern California before hitting the rest of the country.  For today's Take Five, we bring you a handful of fine films about psychics -- and not a single one starring Shirley MacLaine.

THE SHINING (1980)

Nobody does psychic powers like Stephen King, and nobody realizes those psychic powers on screen better than Stanley Kubrick does in this horror classic.  One of the most effective ideas Kubrick had was to de-emphasize Danny's psychic abilities, to tone down the paranormal aspects of the story (such as the hedge topiary coming to life) in order to play up the much more compelling dramatic element of a family in isolation slowly falling apart.  Not that the terrifying paranormal elements aren't there:  few moments in contemporary horror are creepier than seeing Danny go into a drooling fit, or the bizarre images he sees in the abandoned rooms of the Outlook Hotel -- but by keeping them ambiguous, by allowing the suggestion that none of it is real, that it's all just possibly the byproduct of an epileptic vision or a mind damaged by loneliness and alcohol -- the whole thing is made more compelling and upsetting than if the paranormal elements were made explicit.  

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It's nearing the end of the moviegoing year, and you know what that means- a heaping portion of top ten lists and awards from critics around the country. We here at Screengrab plan to post our best-of-2007 lists over the next week or so, but until that happens there are plenty of other year-in-review pieces all over the Internet that should tide you over. We won't link to every one of them here, but you can find two of our favorites after the break.

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Chicago film critic Jim Emerson has published the first part of his 2007 Exploding Head Awards on his blog, Scanners (not to be confused with Hooksexup's blog, Scanner). It's far more entertaining than most year-end lists, but we did notice a great deal of repetition. Let's run down exactly what makes Jim's head explode, shall we?

No Country For Old Men made Jim's head explode no less than 13 times. If you were sitting next to him for that one, your shirt definitely needed to be dry-cleaned.

Judd Apatow and friends caused 10 cranial eruptions: 7 for Superbad, 3 for Knocked Up.

Juno appears 3 times, meaning it caused Jim severe hemorrhaging, but he recovered.

Persepolis, There Will Be Blood, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Zodiac, Atonement, Margot at the Wedding, Ratatouille and Southland Tales each show up twice. They all gave Jim nasty nosebleeds. Check out the full list, if only to see the winners in such fabulous categories as "Best performance by an inanimate object", "Most cringe-worthy lines" and " Best Supporting Crotch." 

FILM GEEK EXTRA: Can you identify the exploding head pictured? (Hint: Not Jim Emerson's.) — Gwynne Watkins