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The Tuna Watch:
Tuna slacked off last month with a mere 1,155 caps. To place
that in perspective, it's more than Hugo has done in his lifetime, although Hugo
has been around for nearly a decade and is one of the most prolific cappers in
history. Anyway, that brings Tuna's lifetime total to 97,856 in the
countdown to six figures. To look at it another way, it is approximately four
times as many as I have done, even though I'm probably in second place, and have
been at it longer!
Beer League (2006):
John Goodman once pointed out that he knew he was too fat when they
told him he had to lose weight to play Babe Ruth.
Well, the character of Artie De Vanzo in Beer League is an obese slob
who plays softball. He makes Babe Ruth look Nicole Richie.
Looks like Artie Lange lost about fifty pounds to
play the role.
There's been a trend in the past few years
among lowbrow films. The brow keeps getting lower and lower. Think of
it as a limbo contest for guys who can't even bend over to tie their
shoes. This flick has its brow down there about as low as a brow
can go, down there in the Moose Skowron brow range.
It's also pretty damned funny.
But I gotta warn ya, it's only funny if you
appreciate a certain type of humor. Up in the Northeast there's a kind
of no-holds-barred, crude, obscene, obnoxious, raunchy, politically
incorrect, insulting kind
of banter that goes on between jocks, tough guys, and would-be tough
guys. And that's when they really like each other. We used to call it ball-busting. Maybe they still do. I don't
know, because I left the Northeast in 1972, but it seems to me from
watching this film that the guys still bust balls exactly the way we used to
35 years ago. Maybe even a little rougher. If you cut away all the
stuff that doesn't matter in this film, it's all about ball-busting.
The disposable plot of the film is a New
Jersey twist on the traditional "root for the underdog" sports comedy.
It's Caddyshack reworked for slow-pitch softball. Most of the time this formula pits "slobs versus snobs" but the whole
"snobs" concept doesn't really fit into the North Jersey blue collar
softball scene, so the formula had to be tweaked a little bit into
"slobs versus jerks." Even then it's hard to tell the difference. The
only real distinction between them is that the jerks comb their hair,
and maybe the slobs have a little better sense of humor.
Is an unforgettable cinema experience? Hell
no. I have to write the review now, two minutes after the film ended,
because I won't remember it tomorrow. But even so, I enjoyed it. It
brought back a lot of memories of old friends and rowdy times from my
youth in the New York area. Come to think of it, I never remembered
those times the next day either.
Hell, I laughed out loud a few times. That's
worth the time I invested to watch it. Oh, sure, the film also strikes
out a lot, but so did Babe Ruth. Taking a good cut is part of hitting
homers, and it's part of writing jokes. When you nail one, as this
film does occasionally, people forget about the K's. Your mileage may vary, of course. If your
favorite author is Jane Austen this might not be for you. And you
might want to take a pass on this film if your favorite radio memories
have all occurred on NPR. On the other hand, if Howard Stern and his
gang crack you up, you should get more than a few laughs here.
Here's the Scoopy test. Watch this clip (zipped .wmv). If it makes you
laugh, rent the DVD. If not, skip down to the naked stuff.
Here's the film clip of the entire bachelor party (zipped .wmv), which
includes 100% of the film's nudity. The woman playing the "human pitching
machine" is porn star Keisha. The other women are unidentified.
THIRD PARTY VIDEOS
-
As much as I hate to admit it, given the presence of Hugh Grant, Love Actually
is really my kind of movie. Lots of laughs, big open-hearted sentiment, and
plenty of nudity. These
five zipped .wmv clips
feature Joanna Page (four clips) and
Laura Linney (the other one)
| Laura Ramsey |
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OTHER CRAP:
Catch the deluxe version of Other Crap in real time, with all the bells and whistles, here.
MOVIE REVIEWS:
Yellow asterisk: funny (maybe). White asterisk: expanded format. Blue asterisk: not mine. No asterisk: it probably sucks.
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Love and Human Remains (1993)
Let's see what I can manage in the way of a plot summary:
Thomas Gibson and Ruth Marshall live together. They are former lovers, but
now that he has entered a gay phase and given up acting in favor of waiting
tables, she is looking for a new relationship. She finds two possibilities.
The first is a bartender who ends up being married, the second is a teacher
she meets in her gym class who happens to be a woman, Joanne Vannicola. The
other four major characters belong to Gibson. There is Mia Kirshner as a
domainatrix/psychic/hooker, his under-age busboy who thinks he is straight but
is hot for Gibson, a sometimes gay lover he knows from a night club, and his
best friend who seems to have intimacy issues. Of course, Gibson is the poster
child for intimacy issues, frequently stating that there is no such thing as
love. While all of these characters are playing the dating game, a serial
killer is harvesting local women at an alarming rate.
Whatever.
Love and Human Remains is supposed to be a dark comedy, and a score of 6.7
at IMDb would indicate that it is highly regarded, or at least watchable. It
even won some Genie awards for the acting. From the IMDb score and the
comments, it is clear that I just didn't get it, or it is not my sort of film.
From my viewpoint, changing all of the relationships from gay to straight
would take away any interest whatsoever. However, I learned nothing special
about gay or straight relationships from this film.
Lets call it a dark comedy/drama with a gay undercurrent, and award a C.
- Ebert and Berardinelli agree with each other at 2 stars.
- Nudity: Ruth Marshal shows both breasts, Joanne Vannicola shows her
right breast and buns, and Mia KIrshner shows her left breast.
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Dann reports on Future Kill:
The two most notable things
about this 1985 Sci-Fi are the really cool promotional poster by H. R.
Geiger, and the fact that the stars also appeared as the stars of
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (the original one). Other than that, it's
a pretty mediocre flick, bordering on bad
Set in the future, a group
of violent protesters calling themselves "mutants" rule the city. They
dress like a cross between 70's punk rockers and rabid raccoons, painting
their faces with black masks and wearing outrageous outfits to show the
effects of toxic poisoning on the planet. A group of fraternity boys
decide to teach them a lesson, and you can guess how well that turns out,
especially since one of the mutants, Splatter, is actually a victim of
toxic poisoning, and takes out his hatred by killing everything in sight.
No non-violence for this guy.
Even Sci-Fi lovers will
have a hard time cozying up to this thing, because the script is lame, the
acting and production worse, so we're left with two nude scenes that,
while not exceptional, manage to be the best things about the movie.
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Denice Creach |
Karin Kay |
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Notes and collages
The Supernatural Ladies
...I completely understand the legend that Ms. Christie and Donald
Sutherland actually had sex in this film...just look at their
expressions...
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More of Jessica Alba
at the beach. If I understand correctly, the ones in the black bikini
are new and the others are a year old. Not that it matters. The Three
Jessicas - Alba with her toned all-American girl look, Biel with her
muscles and Simpson with her powerful legs - sure show off the value
of physical fitness. I prefer them to the Three Tenors. And they just
absolutely beat the hell out of the Three Paulies. |
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Abbie Cornish in Candy |
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A new batch from Hugo:
Kari Wuhrer in Sex and the Other man
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Lana Wood whips out the giant areolae
for some serious Demon Rage
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Leonor Varela in Americano
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Linda Park in a season two episode of
Enterprise
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Sim Garewal in Siddhartha
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Lisa Raines in Fanny Hill
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Kathleen Beller in The Sword and the
Sorcerer
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