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The Constant Gardener (2005)
I've talked about this before.
The commercial DVD has now hit the streets, so I did a few upgraded
caps of Rachel Weisz
BloodRayne (2006)
Ewe Boll's latest cinematic masterpiece, already rated #36 on the
all-time worst list, joining his last two movies on the Bottom Forty.
His last three movies:
- (2.32) -
BloodRayne (2006)
#36 of all-time.
- (2.31) - Alone in
the Dark (2005)
#34 of all-time
- (2.11) - House of
the Dead (2003) #16 of
all-time.
| Kristanna Loken |
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Updates:
I added more than 500 images to the existing volumes in the
Encyclopedia. Updated volumes highlighted in yellow.
Other Crap:
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Concentration test for men
Remember the burning mouse who set the house on fire? It's
bullshit.
Lohan 'Appalled' by Vanity Fair Article
- "The words that I gave to the writer for Vanity Fair
were misused and misconstrued, and I'm appalled with the
way it was done."
- Their response: "Every word Lindsay Lohan told her
is on tape. Vanity Fair stands by the story."
Britney Spears tops Mr Blackwell's 46th annual
worst-dressed list
Paris Hilton does a commercial for a German search engine.
egoSurf.org - Ego surfing without the guilt.
Basic Instinct 2 - pics and poster
Sienna Miller "has been painting large canvases - not with
the help of paint brushes but with her knockers."
Steve Martin and Kristin Davis are noy dating at all - not
even a little bit
A woman allegedly stabbed her partner six times because he
repeatedly played an Elvis Presley song
The Daily Show:
Author James Risen talks to Jon about the CIA's
relationship with Bush in his new book "State of War."
The Daily Show:
The election of Bolivia's Evo Morales threatens one of
America's vital interests: cocaine.
The Weekend Warrior's observations and forecasts for this
upcoming weekend
- This weekend is a tough call with FOUR new wide
releases plus an expansion of Brokeback Mountain.
- He thinks three of the new releases will finish
1-3-5 (Glory Road, Last Holiday, Hoodwinked)
- Somewhat controversially, he predicts Kong falling
from third to seventh.
- He's calling Brokeback eighth with an asterisk
(depending on how many theaters it actually reaches)
- He thinks Tristan will be the week's loser, and will
finish out of the top ten despite distro to 2000
theaters. (That seems like the right call. The studio
seems to be dumping this one, and nobody has seen it to
review it.)
This week's movies (expanding to 800 screens):
Brokeback Mountain - 88% positive reviews. (I guess
you all know what this is, right? Strong Oscar contender.
Gay caballeros.)
This week's movies (2000 screens):
The latest version of Tristan & Isolde - no reviews on
file.
This week's movies (2500 screens):
Last Holiday - 75% positive reviews. (Based on only
four reviews - but the three positives are Variety,
Hollywood Reporter, and Ebert). Queen Latifah stars in the
remake of a 50s Alec Guinness comedy.
This week's movies (2000 theaters):
Hoodwinked - 50% positive reviews. (Kooky fairy tale
in 3-D animation.)
This week's movies (2000 theaters):
Glory Road - 71% positive reviews (but based on only 7
reviews).
- This is Disney's sports movie about the first major
college team to field an all-black starting line-up.
The trailer for SEE NO EVIL, the horror film starring
KANE
Pilgrims flock to image of Jesus on Vince Young's skull!
IVR Cheat Sheet
- This is cool. Are you tired of recorded voices? This
is a list of hidden tricks to by-pass the recordings and
get a human operator
Hot FSU chick goes from internet to Maxim and Playboy
-
Here are the pictures that made her semi-famous.
MOBA : The Collection (The Museum of Bad Art)
"Sutter elected to Hall of Fame; Rice, Gossage fall short
"
The Family Guy Multimedia Archive
Letterman's
"Top Ten Signs You're At A Bad Applebee's"
An exclusive script review for the upcoming film Killshot,
starring Diane Lane, Thomas Jane, Rosario Dawson, and the
Mickster.
The trailer for Failure to Launch, a rom-com starring
Matthew McConaughey and Sarah Jessica Parker (and Terry
Bradshaw!)
The Online Film Critics Society announces 2006 nominations
WTF?
The Picard Song. Now with dancing Picard.
"Student expelled for blowing up toilet" ... and
immediately hired to write American Pie 5
"Stephen Colbert and Congressman Major Owens of New York's
11th District swap rap poems."
Stephen Colbert sits down with Fightin' Congressman Jim
Moran from Virginia's 8th district.
Conan introduces his new characters for 2006
The trailer for Cowboy del Amor, a documentary about a
colorful matchmaker who pairs up American men and Mexican
women
Astro Pic: - The Phases of Venus
"Jonathan Rhys-Meyers says he couldn't help sneaking a
peek at Scarlett Johansson's breasts while filming Match
Point."
It's now illegal to annoy someone anonymously on the
internet. You can get two years in Federal prison for
trolling!
- "Whoever ... utilizes ... the Internet ... without
disclosing his identity and with intent to annoy, abuse,
threaten, or harass any person ... who receives the
communications ... shall be fined under title 18 or
imprisoned not more than two years, or both."
- Note that it places mere annoyance on the same level
as outright threats!
- Oh, yeah, the Feds have plenty of time to enforce
that!
- The good news is that you can do all the harassing
and annoying you like, as long as you use your real
name.
"Get out of MySpace, bloggers rage at Murdoch"
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Movie Reviews:
Yellow asterisk: funny (maybe). White asterisk: expanded format.
Blue asterisk: not mine. No asterisk: it probably sucks.
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The Constant Gardner (2005)
Scoop's notes in yellow, since Tuna's
review references my own
The Constant Gardener (2005) is a political thriller. The wife of a
minor diplomat to Kenya Rachel Weisz, is murdered, and her husband
sets out to discover why. The answer lies in her discovery of a
conspiracy among a Canadian Pharmaceutical Company, an African
independent testing lab, and an African distribution company which
many UK diplomats have stock in. It seems company A has developed a
new treatment for a new antibiotic resistant strain of TB. It has one
unfortunate side effect. It kills some people. It could be fixed with
another three years of development, but they would likely be too late
for the expected epidemic, and their competition might well beat them
to market. Determined not to let that stop them, they are conducting
their clinical trials in Kenya, and simply only recording the positive
results.
The sights, sounds and rhythms of Africa were wonderful. Weisz was
very believable as the rabid activist. I did have some trouble
accepting that Ralph Fiennes would suddenly grow testicles after
losing his wife, and finding out that she might have been having
affairs with one or more men. I can see a switch from "drat" to
"son-of-a-bitch" but not all the way to "I am am going to get you, you
low life motherfuckers, if it is the last thing that I do."
Weisz, who appears to have actually been preggers in this film,
shows breasts and buns.
IMDb readers say 7.6. Critics loved it. I was not impressed. My
real problem with the film was narrative style, along with a little
identity crises. As to the narrative style, they used constant
flashbacks, and flashbacks within flashbacks to tell the story, and
not skillfully. I had trouble figuring out the order of events. The
other problem was that the script couldn't decide if it was a love
story, or a political diatribe against drug companies. While I am
basically pro love and anti-drug companies, the mix of the two seemed
jarring. This is a C+. Most genre fans like it, even though I didn't
particularly.
Wyatt Earp (1994)
Wyatt Earp (1994) is an epic western starring Kevin Costner in the title
role, and directed by Lawrence Kasdan. While Costner's films are all over the
place, 3.1 for Sizzle Beach to 7.9 for The Untouchables, Kasden has been very
consistent throughout his career.
1981 Body Heat 7.3
2003 Dreamcatcher 5.2
1995 French Kiss 6.2
1991 Grand Canyon 6.7
1990 I Love You to Death 6.2
1999 Mumford 6.9
1985 Silverado 7.0
1988 The Accidental Tourist 6.6
1983 The Big Chill 7.1
1994 Wyatt Earp 6.2
Together, they scored 7.0 with Silverado, and 6.2 with Wyatt Earp.
Certainly, they are major talents, but neither has made a great film, which
would be 8 or higher.
As Scoopy has often said, you can't make a good 90 minute feature length
biography about all the events in a great person's life. The solution, in this
case, was to make it a 191 minute epic, or more than twice the length of a
normal feature. It begins with Wyatt as a teenager, eager to run off and
joining is brothers in the civil war. His father stops him, and when his
brothers return, the family heads off to California. Wyatt immediately falls
in love with the West, and works as a mule skinner, on the railroad, and as a
buffalo hunter, but returns to Missouri to study law, and marry the girl of
his dreams. When she dies of typhoid, it changes him forever.
Most of the running time is spent on his career as a lawman, the shootout
at the OK Corral, and the aftermath of the famous gunfight. The film is
reasonably accurate, has a quality cast, and looks tremendous. The only
problem is that they take over three hours to cover 100 minutes worth of
material. Also, it didn't help that it came on the heels of Tombstone, which
was a much flashier picture about the same thing, with a livelier pace.
Joanne Going shows her right breast in a sex scene, and we see both of her
breasts in a B&W photo.
IMDb readers say 6.2. Critics were not kind. At times, I was spellbound by
the cinematography, and the period detail was excellent. Costner delivered a
good performance, but it was of a man who lived in exciting times, and
accomplished many things, but was not always pleasant to be around. The theme
of the film is the importance of family and friends, and that did come through
reasonably well. As an historical biography, this is a C. As an adventure
movie, it is less than that.
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La machine à découdre (1985) is a French movie directed by Jean-Pierre Mocky
based on a novel by Gil Brewer. In his low-budget films Mocky usually takes
on the hypocrisy in our society, and it isn't any different in this one.
The story, set in and around Nice, is about Ralph Enger, a violent and mad
doctor, played by Mocky himself, who wants to raise money to build a hospital
for children victims of war. For blind children in particular, on which he
would want to perform surgery they could get their eyesight back. During his
quest he stumbles upon Steff (Peter Semmler), an unemployed man who is trying
to sell off his last remaining gun in order to have money to pay the hospital
bill for his wife who is about to give birth.
As you may have already guessed our doctor ends up with the gun, drags Steff
along against his will, wreaks havoc and deals rather radically with mostly
well-off persons who refuse to donate him money. Add a sleazy and corrupt
mayor, probably inspired by now late Jacques Médecin (then the not too clean
mayor of Nice who went to jail for bribery et. al.) and a not very effective
police force and you get the usual ingredients for this kind of movie.
So what makes this one stand out in the crowd? Patricia Barzyk, busty Miss
France 1980, stark naked or wearing very little for a good deal of her screen
time. She plays the role of would-be opera singer Liliane, who got tagged
along unwillingly with Ralph near the beginning of the movie. As a matter of
fact he took her clothes away in their hotel room so she wouldn't escape. Upon
his return he can't find her clothes anymore and she has to cavort in
minimalistic attire.
For a movie shot on a shoestring budget it was filmed rather well and the
actors all put in laudable performances, not in the least Jean-Pierre Mocky
himself. The beautiful scenery of the French Riviera doesn't hurt the eyes,
neither does the copious nudity. The movie is terribly underrated in the IMDb
at 3.1/10 based on only 11 votes. That might be a correct mark if you haven't
noticed the double entendres. You could even see a metaphor in Miss Barzyk's
naked status or the fact that the doc wants to restore people's eyesight.
I must admit that when I first saw the movie on an old second hand VHS tape
last year, I didn't see some of the points Mocky tries to make either. Now
that it is available on a beautifully re-mastered anamorphic widescreen DVD I
did pick up what the director wanted to say. And that was before I watched the
short interview in which he elaborates on the matter some more. In fact he was
inspired by the victims of the civil war in Lebanon back then, but the overall
theme is still relevant today.
In another short interview a still good looking Patricia Barzyk, who is now
(since this movie?) Mocky's lady-friend, even reveals her birth date (October
28, 1963), it must be the first time I hear an actress unveil her age and
birth date in DVD extras. My rating is 7/10 or a solid C on the Scoopy scale.
The bare facts (zipped .avis):
- Patricia Barzyk:
clips 1-3: naked as a jaybird in hotel room ( 1,
2,
3)
clips 4-9: as good as naked leaving the hotel room ( 4,
5,
6,
7,
8,
9)
clip 10: running
with bouncing bare breasts looking for another car
clip 11-12: swimming without panties in the swimming pool of a
strangely-shaped villa in Théoule-s-Mer, just west of Cannes. In real life
not easy to approach, as a mean-looking security guard is constantly on patrol
and doesn't seem very appreciative of passers-by. ( 11,
12)
clip 13: boobs pooping out leaving the villa
- Sophie Moyse: topless on a yacht as a brainless
bimbo) ( 1,
2,
3)
- Christelle Guelielhi: breasts and hint of pubes
fucking with the car-dealer behind the counter ( 1,
2)
This leaves us with a grand total of 19 clips, short and long. Happy
downloading.
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A couple of random gals today. First up is Marie
Liljedahl in Inga, her first movie, made in 1968. Over the next
year or so she would make another half-dozen exploitation films and then just
disappear. She was such a babe, too.
   
The other gal is Caroline Baehr in Finnlandia.
Nice caboose.
 
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Pat's comments in yellow...
A report by the American College of Chest Physicians found that Americans spend
billions every year on over-the-counter cough syrups, but most do little or
nothing to stop coughing
...But they sure do quench your thirst ... and some of
the 80 proof ones make darn good mixers.
Astronomers from the Rochester Institute of Technology announced that they
estimate the journey from the center of a galaxy into the oblivion of a black
hole takes about 200,000 years
...But you can drop into oblivion faster if you marry
Kevin Federline.
Simon Cowell will help produce a new Fox talent show in which
professional singers pair up with celebrities to sing duets for a panel of
judges
...They finally found a way to make Celine Dion suck
even worse: team her with William Shatner
...They'd like to sign Ashlee Simpson, but they still
need a singer to pair her with.
HANDY LINK! How much money did Jack Abramoff give, and to whom? It's all
right here. |
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