ten awesometastic things about little miss sunshine

i'm feeling lazy today, and entourage is on soon. so this afternoon's list is a set of quick hits about 'little miss sunshine', which owns you and your mother and probably your dog. here:

ten things that make 'little miss sunshine' the best fucking movie of 2006 so far, and i've seen a damn lot of movies this year so i feel entitled to say that

1. olive.
first of all, i love that name, so she wins. she has a pop-belly and eats icecream even though her jackass dad tells her she shouldn't if she wants to be in beauty pageants, and she's a kid. she's not all dakota fanning creepy adult-in-a-kid thing. plus her dance number was hot shit.

2. grandpa.
seriously- he snorts heroin (can you even do that? i thought snorting was for coke, but what do i know, and even if i did know i wouldn't say because, hi nsa!! yeah i know they probably aren't reading blogs but i can pretend i matter that much)- oh. right. grandpa. he likes porn, drugs, and coaches olive, the effects of which are seen in the penultimate scene and it's seriously the greatest dance bit ever. it kicks napolean's ass, anyway.

3. steve carell.
enough said. seriously. he could touch assparagus and turn it to gold.

4. the soundtrack.
i have no idea who sings it or composed it because i'm not a hipster fuck and if i ever utter 'i liked them before they were cool', punch me in the eye. please. anyway, the music is lovely and flows very well with a road-trippy type movie. so there.

5. the scene with the dead body
there are a couple, actually, but the initial one is some of the best damn hilarious espionage i've ever seen. okay so i like the word espionage and it's the wrong word for what the family hoover does with a sheet and a van, but shut up and tell me you don't laugh when you see it.

6. the silent kid gets the best lines.
never has a pen stroke made me laugh so. also, i'm totally allowed to think he's cute because in reality he's only 2 years (not even) younger than me. so there. what.

7. porn comes to the rescue.
in the movie, i mean. not for you. there's no porn here.

8. ice cream.
every movie has its gun in the first to save for the third. this time it's ice cream serving as self-confidence and a fuck off to society as a whole. sounds wonky, but it works. plus it's oh so delicious and cool and creamy and oh shit i want some half baked. this is why i'm fat, btw.

9. the beauty pageant
it's so fucking dead-on with the girls wearing more make-up than katherine harris, the snitty southern boufanty lady at the helm, and the spacey creep emceeing the thing. olive totally raises her eyebrows at him like he's an ass and draws some of the biggest laughs of the whole thing. plus, as i've said before, her dance number is super. the fact that miss california laughed and kind of grooved along with it makes it better. plus the big tattooed guy caps it all off as the most surreal, bizarre and creepily entertaining bit of the whole story.

10. the mother-effing van
what's a movie with 'sunshine' in the title without a bright, big-bird yellow vw bus? also, what's a road trip movie about a dysfunctional family without a thinly-veiled metaphor in the shape of a really fucking dysfunctional van? you've seen the commercials with the pushing and the pulling, but i'd say the horn wins. it practically has a conversation with a cop. bleeepleebeepityhonk.

and that's that. if i'm feeling inspired, later i'll do another quick list. i'm thinking, ten reality tv shows that need to happen, or possibly ten things that suck hardcore about the desert. but we'll see. as for now, hbo calls.