Daily Archives: October 7, 2009

Summer Movie Poll Madness

Posted on by

England just got substantially less green and pleasant. Temperatures have plummeted, and I’m having to wander around the house in a pair of warm slackerpants (and yes, in case you were wondering, I am a nerd). There’s no use denying it. Even though the local cinemas are clogged with top-of-the-line blockbusting audience-pleasers — such as The Soloist, Surrogates, and the Fame remake which made critics pine for the Alan Parker original in defiance of all that is holy — it’s fair to say the Summer Movie Season (aka My Christmas) is now over. And what an exciting time it was! Four million romantic comedies came out and actually did well, everything seemed to be 3D all of a sudden, and Michael Bay became the most hated film director on Earth, an event which apparently annoyed previous title holder Roman Polanski so much he gave himself up to the rozzers just to remind everyone what an asshole he is.

summer

Compared to last summer, it was a pretty underwhelming few months, with the odd high spot and pleasant surprise tucked away. Nevertheless, there was at least one stone-cold masterpiece, and even flat and kinda pointless movies often had something to recommend them (I’m looking at you, Meryl). There was also the occasional spectacular failure, the sort of disastrous and ill-thought-out fuck-up that gives the Summer Movie Season its bad reputation. So, in the interest of collating an overview of what people loved and hated this summer, I have begun two polls, asking for your favourite and least favourite movies of the 2009 summer season. The list is the same in both:

  • Klansformers: Revenge of the Fratboy
  • Zooey Hall
  • Pixar’s The Bucket List
  • Quentin Tarantino Presents: Quentin Tarantino’s Masterpiece
  • Final Destination: We’re Trying To Get Inside Your Eyeballs
  • Eric Bana Is: An Endearing Aussie Cuckold
  • Christopher Johnson and Wikus Van Der Merwe’s Excellent Adventure
  • Harry Potter And The Toenail of Effervescence
  • Terminator 4: When Third Acts Collapse
  • Cover Me With Drool, Drop An Anvil On Me, Then Drag Me To Hell
  • The Ugly Truth Is That Katherine Heigl Is Not Charming
  • Hangover: (n. painful & unamusing experience)
  • Eric Bana Is: An Absentee Time-Travelling Husband
  • X-Men Franchise Sabotage: WTFverine
  • G.I. Joe: STOP THE NANOMITES, JOES!
  • Publicity Hungry Enemies (Now In Grainy-o-Vision)
  • That’s No Moon; It’s Hott Sam Rockwell’s Talent!
  • When Anti-Matter Met The Vatican
  • Eric Bana Is: An Especially Tetchy Romulan
  • STREEP, TUCCI & LYNCH vs. a Blogger and her Annoying Husband
  • Night at the Museum: Sound, Fury, & Nothing
  • Futile and Fatuous
  • Dad! My Guinea Pig Sounds Like Tracy Morgan!
  • The Shaking [Cameras] of Pelham 123
  • Oh Will Ferrell. A TV Show Remake? We Want Anchorman 2 KTHXBAI

As I’ve never used PollDaddy before, I don’t really know what I’m doing. There’s a good chance I’ve got this wrong and it will all implode, taking all the votes with it, but then Blogger once started to randomly excise votes from polls I had going over there, so I’m sort of prepared for crappy functionality. Anyway, please vote in this poll. I’ll close it and collate the data later this year. Apologies if I’ve missed out a movie you feel passionately about. Feel free to leave a comment if I have.

ETA: I just checked out PollDaddy. Once you’ve voted on the poll you can leave comments. Click on the comment link and it takes you to a dedicated page for each poll. Oh, the future. Next you’ll be telling me you can embed videos in blogposts.