11:40 PM >> Tier 1

OK, so here it is. I decided to make you wait a while for the Grand Finale after hearing some readers needed extra time to soak in all of the Tiers so far. So I hope you have marinated long enough. Plus I wanted to make the anticipation grow. Because I know you are all on the edge of your seats.

Before I start, let me just say that I had the pleasure of happening to catch HULK on TV last weekend, and holy crap it was so much better than I remembered. Here is one sequence that pretty much epitomizes just how awesome The Hulk is:

Hulk runs away from helicopters in the desert
Helicopter shoots a missile at Hulk
Without looking back, Hulk catches the missile and uses it to propel himself on an ultra-long Hulk Leap
Hulk lands, turns around, and waits for the copters (still holding missile)
Copters arrive
Hulk BIGHTS THE WARHEAD OFF THE MISSILE and SPITS IT AT A HELICOPTER
[Let me reiterate what just happened: Hulk bit the freaking warhead off a freaking missile and then freaking SPAT it back at the helicopter that fired it at him]
Helicopter blows up
Hulk proceeds across desert to San Francisco

How sweet is that! Now, without further ado, drumroll please...

Tier 1
Trainspotting¹, Being John Malkovich², Memento³, Fight Club⁴, Dazed & Confused⁵, Billy Madison⁶, Requiem for a Dream⁷, The Jerk⁸, Boogie Nights⁹, True Romance¹⁰, The Simpsons Movie¹¹, Go¹², MVP: Most Valuable Primate¹³, Moulin Rouge¹⁴, Clerks¹⁵, The Usual Suspects¹⁶, Office Space¹⁷, The Princess Bride<sup>18

1 & 2</sup> If I had to pick just one all-time favorite movie, for the past ten years I would've said Trainspotting. However, ever since I saw Being John Malkovich, it has been closing fast. In fact, gun to my head having to pick between the two of them, I would get shot.
³ Because of this movie, I will watch anything that Christopher Nolan ever directs. EVER.
⁴ I never cared too much about this movie until I found out the Dust Brothers did the soundtrack. Then I listened to the soundtrack and decided to check the movie out. Then I punched myself for not seeing this movie in the theater.
⁵ I know this movie takes place in high school in the 70's, but it came out when I was in college in the 90's, and somehow I could totally relate.
⁶ I still remember one night hanging out over at my friends' apartment, us putting this movie on but listening to music instead of turning up the dialogue of the movie, and realizing that we all had this movie memorized so well that we were still watching it and cracking up at every single funny part. Boy do I miss college.
⁷ See footnote 2 above, and substitute Darren Aronofsky for Christopher Nolan.
⁸ I first heard about this movie when I was a kid. And I thought to myself, "That movie must be awful. I mean why would I want to sit around for two hours watching some jerk?" So for the next 17 years I shunned this movie. Then my new college friends made me watch it, and I felt like an idiot.
⁹ This movie completely changed the way I thought of how movies could be made and was 80% of the inspiration for me to try writing screenplays myself. When Dirk Diggler dives underwater and the music goes from being clear to sounding like it would when you are underwater back to clear when he emerges from the pool... Wow. (And besides, Rollergirl is so hot she could've gotten this movie in this Tier all by herself.)
¹⁰ Once again Brad Pitt fucking rocks in his role. It's been far too long since I last watched this.
¹¹ Yes even though it is not out yet and I haven’t seen a bootleg or anything, I mean it’s The Simpsons for god’s sake!
¹² I first heard of this movie when it came to the Dollar Theater by my apartment. Then I watched it in that theater three times in an 18-hour period.
¹³ MVP stars a chimp that plays hockey. Yes he actually skates. No movie can ever top that. Ensign and I tried to put together a screening of the DVD at The 321 with the director, but he never responded to our email. Also be sure to watch MVP 2: Most Vertical Primate (skateboarding chimp) and MXP: Most Xtreme Primate (snowboarding chimp). I heard one time that MVP 4: Most Valuable Putter (golf) was coming out, but now I can find no trace of it on the interwebs.
¹⁴ To see how much I fucking loved this movie, you should check out my original review. But you can't because it has disappeared from the internets. To sum up: F YEAH.
¹⁵ This flick showed me that you could base an entire movie around conversations only, no action. (The hockey game does not count.)
¹⁶ Do I really need to say anything. If you did not achieve MIND MELT 105% at the end then you were in a coma.
¹⁷ Talk about your all-time bad marketing jobs. Due to the commercials, I never wanted to see this movie EVER. Like I would knock myself out if you played it in my living room. Then my friend bought it for me for my birthday and I had a The Jerk-like epiphany.
¹⁸ I honestly feel sorry for people that have not seen this film. I want to have kids mainly so I can watch this with them. Does anybody want a peanut?

10:11 PM >> TurkProj2ko6 > Update H.1

m20.0, meal (c) (2/23/2007) - A bowl of Hammer's Make-It-So White Bean Chili a top of some short grain rice. And for dessert a slice of banana coconut cream pie.

m21.0, meal (d) (2/26/2007) [*PICTURED BELOW] - Open-faced Double Decker White Bean Chili Verde Corn Tortilla Quesadilla. Deck one: shredded lettuce, green verde salsa, chopped scallions, and sliced plum tomatoes. Deck two: Hammer's Make-It-So White Bean Chili spinkled with scalls and more sliced toms.

12:29 AM >> Coffee times three

I currently own three different options for making coffee in my apartment. Each yeilds a unique flavor and consumption purpose. At the end of the post you'll find a group photo with everyone snuggled together. There are no jealosies among this bunch. Each machine knows his role and the importance of that role in my life. They live symbiotically to keep me caffeinated.



Option #1 >> This is the big old pot of coffee. The flavor is pretty much normal coffee. Sometimes some gourmet bean will sneak its way in, but overall just a big pot of coffee. The Big Boy shines on days when I'm going to be at home all day watching movies or transcribing video footage.

Option #2 >> This is a quick way to a fix, a flavored fix. Currently I have hazelnut and French vanilla pods at the ready. Pod System is an easy companion when I just need a cup or two before heading out the door or for a late night snack.

Option #3 >> The Little Italian makes 1 to 2 small cups of very concentrated, super strong coffee. It's always kind of the espresso taste without all the business and expense of those high techie espresso makers.

11:49 PM >> It'll be the death of me.

So I just posted comments to the two posts below. I posted the first one, and everything went fine. But when I try to post the second, I get a message stating:

Please wait 30 seconds between posts.
7 second(s) remaining

So this is how impatient I am. I seriously waited as long as I could. I mean I was physically restraining myself from trying to repost until the seven seconds were over. Finally, when I can stand it no more, when it feels as though I will suffer a MIND MELT FULL MELTDOWN 100% while my shoulders rip free from their sockets if I try to hold my clicker-finger back, I relent and click the button to re-post.

Please wait 30 seconds between posts.
4 second(s) remaining

Sweet.

Somehow I managed to hold out for four whole seconds this time (maybe because I couldn't believe the level of my sheer idiocy), because when I clicked again, the post went through.

10:38 PM >> Venus, Pickles, and Sohpie

With my cheapo garage sale binoculars in pocket I walked out to revisit Venus. I had seen her I think a couple of hours earlier, a shimmering little red speck in the sky just up and to the left of the moon. It was facinating. But now she was gone. There are clouds everywhere very low in the sky. I couldn't even find where the moon actually was, let alone a tiny little grain of a planet. It was disappointing.

At pizza dinner tonight I made a new creation. I'm always the garbage disposal for peoples' pickle slices that come with sandwiches. I was eating pizza and thought what the H. So I placed a chunk of the pickle slice on top of one of the cheese pizza's flavor bubbles and tried a fork full. It was excellent. The pickle was one of those that just had a light pickling to it. It was a nice touch with the cheese and dough. The pizza was light on sauce, so the bite was mainly just pickle, cheese, and pizza dough. I am going to pick up one of those Boboli pizza crusts where you add your own ingredients and make my very own pickle pizza. I think it'll be really good.

This young girl Sophie ate my beard tonight as a salutation to our dinner date. At first it was very cute. And then she would not give it back. Strapped in her car seat her daddy toted her off and she was prolly laughing. I was left faceless there in the parking lot. In addition to the beard she also snatched my right hand, my shifting hand. So I had a very difficult drive home. But darn she was cute so I can't wish heartburn on her from having ate up my beard. (heartburn is also caused by Italian Cuban sandwiches and jalapenos.)

10:10 PM >> A strange breakfast und strange dinner

For you to chew on here are two recent meals that I made. At first they may sound a bit crazy. But then most things that I cook kind of freak people out. Check it out. Try for yourself.

Pizza Puff Omelette [RATING: 6.01]

11:38 PM >> Tier 2

[By the way I'm going out of town tomorrow so you'll have to wait until Monday for the thrilling conclusion.]

Tier 2¹
Snatch², Run Lola Run, Happy Gilmore, 12 Monkeys, The Way of the Gun³, Pi, Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels, Brick⁴, Unbreakable, Pulp Fiction⁵, The Goonies, The Naked Gun⁶, Swingers, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind⁷, Apocalypse Now⁸, Dogma, The Big Lebowski⁹, Sin City¹⁰, Coming to America, Kill Bill: Volume 2¹¹

Notes:
¹ There are definitely a few flicks here that make a strong case to me for promotion to Tier 1.
² Probably the toughest decision I had to make was leaving this in Tier 2 rather than Tier 1. I mean Brad Pitt's completely indecipherable dialogue is a masterstroke of acting.
³ There's just something about The Way of the Gun that I love just so f-ing much, but I don't think of it on par with [SPOILER ALERT] The Usual Suspects, so here it remains.
⁴ Brick was the best movie I saw in 2006 and probably 2005, but I would have to see it more than once to see if is truly Tier 1 or just a one-trick pony. Seriously, though, see it if you haven't. Before you see anything else in this Tier.
⁵ Still trying to work its way out of the immeasurable hole of hype from which I initially saw this film. I can honestly say I like it more every time I watch it.
⁶ This franchise (along with Stephen Wright) shaped my comic abilities for my entire life. Maybe that's not a good thing. But I can't tell you how many times I watched this as a kid. Thanks to Dusty Kent, my best friend in elementary school, for getting me to watch this for the very first time.
⁷ Charlie Kauffman is the most genius screenwriter ever. Do not try to argue this with me.
⁸ The first time I saw this, it gave me the most severe mind melt of any movie I have ever seen. (I never did see the "Redux" version. Let me know if I should bother.)
⁹ No I did not like Fargo, but TBL made up for it.
¹⁰ A mini-mind melt.
¹¹ Oh, there it is!!

9:24 PM >> TurkProj2ko6 > Update G.1

I brought the last batch of turkey reserved in the freezer from carving day out finally {pictured: "frozen (t)"}. With it I created a pot of white bean chili. The recipe courtesy of Mr. Hammer. All remaining meals will be derivatives of the white bean chili. After eating "meal (a)" I made three leftover portions. They are pictured below.

So far meal (a) and meal (b) were just bowls of chili with some homemade seasoned tort chips. But I've got some big plans. I got ideas for my final meals. I'm thinking maybe a white bean chili taco salad, a white bean chili burrito, and probably some kind of white bean corn tortilla lasagna with some verde sauce.

m18.0, meal (a) (2/13/2007) {pictured: "meal (a)"} - Hammer's Make-It-So White Bean Chili, which includes the following: ("everything by feel") onions, anaheim peppers, garlic, oil, Abita Amber Beer (1), turkey bits, chicken stock, white kidney beans, and great northern beans. Seasoned with cumin, coriander, mex oregano, chili powder, ground jap, paprika, salt and pepper, and a slurry of cornstarch. Served with homemade seasoned corn tortilla chips (butter, oil, lemon juice, mex oregano, cumin, ground jap).

m19.0, meal (b) (2/14/2007) {not pictured} - A bowl of Hammer's Make-It-So White Bean Chili and chips and for dessert of bowl of Ken's Crock Cherry Cobbler.

2:09 AM >> Tier 3

Yeah so I missed a night already. Bite me.

Tier 3
Run Ronnie Run, South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut, Austin Powers 1 & 2, Reservoir Dogs, A Clockwork Orange, The Game, The Matrix, Mallrats, Chasing Amy, Waking Life¹, 28 Days Later, The Blair Witch Project, American Pie 1 & 2, The Sixth Sense, Ghostbusters², Kill Bill: Volume 1³, Napoleon Dynamite

Notes:
¹ Really, looking back I think Waking Life should've been an Honorary Mention.
² I'm not sure whether I included Ghostbusters on here because I liked it so much or because it made me so happy to see how much my Dad enjoyed watching this when I was a kid. But I do remember that in the car on the way home my ears needed to pop and you know how that kind of feels like there's something in your ears, well I decided it was a ghost from the movie in the car with us who had his fingers in my ears. Even then I knew I didn't really believe that, but I pretended that I did because it was that fun kind of scary where you freak yourself out with only your own thougts.
³ Where's Kill Bill: Volume 2??? Hmmmm...

11:59 PM >> The Rankings

So recently I was playing the "guess my favorite movie" game, and I realized I did not have a single favorite movie but a group of favorites. Then as the OCD kicked in I further realized that really what I had were three tiers of favorite movies. Then as the nerd-insanity raged and I checked out a list of every move released since 1998 (thanks, The Numbers!), I saw there was room for Honorary Mentions as well.

Today you get the Honorary Mentions of Corporal's Favorite Movies. Then every day henceforth you will get the next ascending Tier of Corporal's Favorite Movies. Boy, are you excited or what. Bonus point for each movie you can guess will be in tomorrow Tier.

Here are the definitions of the rank-tiers:

Honorary Mention: Proabably a movie I only saw once but talked about for a month after seeing. Then when I saw the title on a list while researching I got that jazeed-up feeling in my belly. Or maybe there was a totally kick-A character (like Nightcrawler or Hulk or Amelie) that mase the movie just such a blast to watch. Yes, I think that most of these films would fit into that character bucket.
N.B: I think I put Aliens in here to represent all of the movies I loved as a kid and teenager in the 80's. (Even though I was only a teenager for one year in the 80's. You know what I mean.) Those movies will probably get their own ranking-blog-series.

Tier 3: Movies I've seen multiple times and enjoy but were the first to go when I tried to whittle my entire favorite-movie-jumble down into a Top 10 list.

Tier 2: These are the flicks that I really really dig but deep down I know I could do without if I had to choose between them or a pizza. The first test was whether I ever bothered to buy the DVD or not. The second test was OK I bought the DVD, but do I ever watch it or do I always think "Man, I like that movie, I should watch it" but then pick something else (i.e. Tier 1) instead.

Tier 1: Well this should be self-explanatory.

Honorary Mention
Chicken Run, X-Men 2, Get Shorty, The Man Who Wasn’t There, Time Bandits, Amelie, There’s Something about Mary, Aliens, Se7en, Signs, Adaptation, Phone Booth, Waiting for Guffman, The Others, Elf, HULK, The Village, Time Code

10:28 PM >> Jackpie welcomes

Jackpie would like to welcome two new guests to our family. The orphan appliances were donated by Mr. and Mrs. Kloth. We are very excited to have them around. In fact as soon as possible I am going to stock that fridge with some Hot Pockets. Nothing like a pre-show Hot Pocket it gets the inspiration shifted into high gear. There's also going to be some microwave popcorn. There will be a stock of energy drinks. There will be some chilled carrots. There's going to be Toaster Strudels. There'll be Bagel Bites. Everything mirco, baby. That's my motto.