Love the Hard Way (2001) is a German romantic comedy/crime film shot in English in New York. Charlotte Ayanna is a brilliant honor student in Chemistry. Adrien Brody is a petty hustler who lives for the moment, but has a secret sensitive side, which he expresses writing, when nobody can see him. He meets her working in a theater lobby and is impressed. When he sees her again on campus where he has been to collect from a deadbeat who uses him as a bookie, he talks her into a date. She has always been focused and reserved, and his wildness appeals to her.

His main gig involves suckering wealthy out of town businessmen into a hotel room with two of his accomplices, then, with another, they break in dressed as cops, and extort money from the men and "arrest" the girls. The other member of the group is a desk clerk at the hotel. He uses his profits to buy rare books. Police detective Pam Grier is hot on their tails. When the girls are busted, they have to change hotels. Ayanna is madly in love with him by then, and he won't admit to his feelings for her, treating her like dirt.

Will she go over to the dark side? Will Pam Grier nail him? How will it all play out? Ayanna shows breasts in several sex scenes. IMDb readers have this at 6.0 of 10. I didn't much like either character, and the editing was the worst I have seen in some time. The film is full of jarring jump cuts, and the sex scenes are intercut time slices of before. during and after that rob any possibility of heat being generated. It won some European awards for acting and directing. I didn't hit fast forward, but was very glad when it finished. This is a low C, many clearly enjoy it more than I did.

If you are thinking of buying DVDs from outside your region read this

American Crime (2004):

What a surprise! I don't think I've enjoyed a serial murder mystery in years. You know the drill. The omniscient baddie is coming for all or one of us, and we don't know who he is. That whole wacky I Still Know What You Did Last Summer thing. I usually hate those. But I liked this one, even though it was a humble straight-to-vid.

American Crime is a complicated, multi-layered, multiple murder mystery.

When a topless dancer's corpse is found by some fishermen, they hope to earn a reward by calling a local TV station instead of the police. As the plot thickens, the producer (Anabella Sciorra), the ambitious female reporter (Rachel Leigh Cook), and a techie intern (Kip Pardue) realize that maintaining an exclusive on the case presents their lifetime career opportunity, so they continue to keep the police in the dark while they uncover a chain of clues. The dead woman's belongings include a video tape of her, and the footage was apparently filmed without her knowledge by a stalker. That might not be so suspicious except that another women is also shown on the tape and that woman is also dead, murdered some time earlier. The investigators conclude that the stalker's m.o. is to tape "stalker footage" of a prospective victim before killing her, followed by sending the tape to his next prospective victim, along with similar "stalker footage" of herself.

The case gets far more complicated when the next tape seems to identify the female reporter as the next victim. She decides to get the hell out of town and moves several hundred miles away. This turn of events finally does get some national attention, so their small town is visited by a British reporter (an almost unrecognizable Cary Elwes) from a big syndicated U.K. show called "American Crime". The "American Crime" reporter joins the local producer and her intern in the complicated investigation, but he seems to be such a complete putz in every way, so hilariously incompetent that one might reasonably doubt whether he is a reporter at all!

As the film progresses, their paranoia runs high and each of the investigators realizes that any of the others might actually be the murderer. This situation was managed very effectively so that the writers and director didn't have to provide the customary clumsy "red herrings", but allowed the suspicion to shift back and forth naturally, as each of the primary characters interpreted signs and clues rationally, yet with their reason shrouded sufficiently by the veil of their own paranoia so that anyone could have been seen as a potential murderer.

You won't have to worry about my spoiling the mystery for you, because I still don't know for sure who the killer is. The film has an ending which shows one person confessing to the crime, then arguing that the confession was extracted under duress, followed by a final incident which seems to prove that the confessed murderer could not have done the crimes.

American Crime was shot entirely on digital video in a widescreen aspect ratio, and was edited with the slick professionalism of a TV show intro, as befitting the fact that it is at times a TV show within a TV show within a film. ("American Crime" is shown covering the local investigation as a news story it itself, and the local broadcasts are also shown at times.) Some of the direction is gimmicky, bordering on surreal and symbolic, sometimes even crossing those borders. Furthermore, some of the footage is deliberately obfuscated by the director's technique, since it involves, in the most radical case, a guy filming a TV which is playing a tape of a women watching another tape of herself on her own TV.

If you were to argue that the whole project sounds a bit "over directed", you might have a fair point, but I would respectfully disagree. I would normally be uncomfortable with how the macabre humor and the surrealism destroy the "fourth wall" in a serious murder investigation, and I would normally carp about all the layers of films within films until the entire project seems like a nested Russian puzzle, but in this case I think the entire presentation worked very effectively. It is slick, engaging, creepy, and mysterious. I really enjoyed the nebulous ending as an alternative to the usual spoon-fed and contrived answer. In fact, I was so involved in the puzzle that I watched most of the film a second time to see if I could be certain of the identity of the killer or killers. I think I know, but I'm not certain, and that ambiguity really provided a sense of involvement that I used to get from the best works from Hitchcock and Serling.

Although American Crime went straight to video, it was a helluva lot more interesting and proficient piece of genre filmmaking than most of the theatrical releases I saw in the past year. This is the most original reworking of the overdone serial murderer formula in a long time, and the director, Dan Mintz, showed a real knack for combining macabre imagination with highly proficient editing to package the creepy thrills. My hat is also off to the proficient editor, Todd Miller, and to the creator of the opening credits, if that was someone other than the director or editor. Those credits are a delightful blend of technology and artistry.

I almost didn't look at this film because I've been busy and it was one of this week's minor releases, but I'm glad I did. I radically underestimated it. It grabbed my attention right from the "git-go", and never let up. I ended up enjoying it!

No flesh from Anabella Sciorra or Rachel Leigh Cook, but:

• There is good exposure from Julie Cialini, who shows her breasts and thonged bum as the topless dancer. Julie was Hef's 1995 Playmate of the Year. (1, 2, 3, 4, 5)
• There is minimal exposure from Amy Arce. She shows her breasts, but only in a video-within-the-film, and only after she is lying lifeless.
• I don't know what Anabella Sciorra showed. Maybe nothing. Maybe some nipple or areola. Here it is, anyway.

Just for fun: Bobby Jo and the Outlaw (1976)

I suppose the best thing about this zipped .wmv clip is Lynda "Wonder Woman" Carter without her superhero underoos, but there are so many other pleasures:

• the peyote-induced dialogue

• the performance of preacher-turned-actor Marjoe Gortner, who was inexplicably overlooked at Oscar time.

Marjoe's big claim to fame was that he married somebody when he was four years old. No, he wasn't the groom. He was the preacher! Marjoe also had a singing career in the early 70s. You'd think that Bobby Jo and the Outlaw, which is rated below 4 at IMDb, would be the nadir of anyone's career, but for Marjoe it was one of his shining moments. He made six worse movies! I'm not sure what he's doing now, but whatever it is, you can bet he sucks at it.

• (3.97) - Bobbie Jo and the Outlaw (1976)
• (3.54) - The Food of the Gods (1976)
• (3.48) - Mausoleum (1983/I)
• (3.35) - Feuer, Eis & Dynamit (1990)
• (3.29) - Starcrash (1979)
• (3.15) - Viva Knievel! (1977)
• (2.60) - American Ninja 3: Blood Hunt (1989)

Other Crap:

• Here is the trailer for the soon-to-be immortal cinema classic, Tom Yung Goong. "A young Thai fighter named Kham must go to Australia to retrieve his stolen elephant. With the help of a Thai-born Australian detective, Kham must take on all comers, including a gang led by an evil woman and her two deadly bodyguards."
• Here's the trailer for Up and Down
  • "In the dead of the night, near the Czech-Slovak border, two smugglers discover their truckload of illegal Indian immigrants have left a baby behind. In a small Prague apartment, Franta and Mila dream of having a child, but Franta - on probation because of his soccer hooliganism past - is not allowed to adopt, and Mila is unable to conceive. After cashing in on her savings, Mila decides to buy a baby.
• Here's a new international trailer for The Interpreter, an action thriller with those two hard-chargin' action stars, Nicole Kidman and Sean Penn
• The full trailer from The Longest Yard, the remake of a classic Burt Reynolds movie, starring Adam Sandler. Also starring - who else - Burt Reynolds.
• Luckily for you guys with real lives, I have nothing better to worry about than whether Ben Affleck will pop the question on Valentine's Day? You know, since it's St. Valentine's Day, the mob should consider massacring him.
• Weekly World News: A new study reveals that the sexier a woman's name, the hotter she's likely to be. Not only that, but if a woman changes her unsexy name to a more erotic one, she quickly becomes sexier. That's the claim of the Marilyn Institute's executive director Adonis Studly, who was born Bernard Freeb.
• Borowitz: VIRGINIA BANS MARRIAGE BETWEEN COUPLES WHO WEAR DROOPY PANTS.
  • In its latest effort to protect the sanctity of traditional marriage, the Virginia House of Delegates today passed a law banning marriage between two people who wear low-riding pants.
• Mimas orbits Saturn. Large, close, and impressive!
• Michael Jackson taken off the air in Switzerland.: "YESSSS! That means more available air time for Zamfir, master of the Pan Flute!"
• Microsoft's AntiSpyware disabled by a Spyware
• Looking for that perfect Valentine's gift? How about "sex in a can" for women.
  • "The spray was used on 261 female participants, aged 35 to 45, some of whom reported a fourfold increase in the incidence of good sex. "
• How does ESPN celebrate Valentine's Day? By picking the hottest sports couple.
  • Very few couples on the list actually consists of two athletes (Hamm/Garciaparra, Graf/Agassi, e.g.). The rest of their choices are athletes who are dating or married to entertainers. Fron this latter grouping, I don't see how you can top Marilyn and DiMaggio, who were each the biggest star in their respective fields. Even if you took today's biggest star and paired her with today's greatest athlete, the pairing would still pale in the spotlight of MM and DiMag. Stars don't shine as bright as they used to. Barry Bonds and Nicole Kidman, for example? Nowhere near Joe and Marilyn. The only pairing I can see coming close would be (maybe) Kournikova with Tom Cruise or Brad Pitt, and even that seems to fall short.
• Seabed 'scarred' by tsunami quake
• The international trailer for Turtles Can Fly
  • "'Turtles Can Fly' is the third feature from internationally acclaimed Iranian filmmaker Bahman Ghobadi ('A Time For Drunken Horses'). Written, directed and produced by Ghobadi, the film features of cast of local non-actor children. It is set in Ghobadi's native Kurdistan on the eve of the American invasion of Iraq. This film won the Golden Shell at San Sebastian and the Silver Bear at Chicago and is the Iranian entry to the Academy for 2004 Foreign Film consideration.
• Three new clips from the Irish dramedy, Rory O'Shea Was Here
• The trailer for the animated Madagascar
  • "Ben Stiller ('Meet the Parents'), Chris Rock ('Chris Rock Never Scared'), David Schwimmer (TV's 'Friends') and Jada Pinkett Smith ('Collateral') star as the voices of four zoo animals who hang up when they hear the call of the wild."
• Canseco spills the beans on steroids. Juiced : Wild Times, Rampant 'Roids, Smash Hits, and How Baseball Got Big.
• Maris' son wants Canseco claims probed "Former home run king Roger Maris's son wants baseball authorities to investigate accusations by former slugger Jose Canseco that he used performance-enhancing drugs with some of the sport's top players, including Mark McGwire and Jason Giambi."
• Letterman's "Top Ten Messages Left On Jose Canseco's Answering Machine"
• The Aviator team of Martin Scorsese, Leonardo DiCaprio and screenwriter John Logan are in early talks to develop a remake of Akira Kurosawa's 1948 classic Drunken Angel.
• Prize-Winning Female Athlete Is Actually Male: "Sithole told the court he was born congenitally deformed. A tribal healer, known in the West as a witchdoctor, gave him 'female status' but the spell didn't work properly because his family didn't pay the healer's full fee."
• Cub Scout sells 10 tons of popcorn.
• POWER RANKINGS: NFL Final Power Poll. Surprise - the Patriots are on top.
• Culpepper sounds off on Randy Moss
• Bjork, the nutbag Icelandic singer, goes all Sean Penn on a reporter in Bangkok.
• This one time, at band camp ... "Police said the band teacher had tied young girls to chairs with duct tape and rope and then re-enacted bondage scenes from his porn collection."
• Mississippi Squirrel Revival by Ray Stevens
• USATODAY.com's gossip columnist says she heard a rumor that Jessica Alba will do Playboy this year. Don't hold your breath, but it would be mucho cool if true.
• Boston University students create a porn mag.
• Federal agents discovered more than 6 tons of marijuana in a shipment of yams. The feds were suspicious because the same Jamaican company's name surfaced a year earlier when Customs officers found 877 pounds of marijuana in an abandoned shipment of pumpkins. Could be another movie role for Michael Rapaport! They thought they'd fool the Feds by keeping the same company name, but switching from pumpkins to yams! Suh-weet!
• SCI FI Channel has ordered a second season of its hit series Battlestar Galactica,
• Debbie Gibson's new album is called Buns of Steel - and for good reason
• BUSH PROMISES TO BRING TROOPS HOME THROUGH IRAN. Most Direct Route, President Says.
  • "On a related subject, Mr. Bush said that the vote-counting in Iraq’s historic presidential elections was not yet complete but that it looked like the winner would be actor Jamie Foxx, for his performance in 'Ray.'"
• Marcia Cross says "I'm not gay". "And I'll even offer to follow the Mike Piazza route and marry a Playmate to prove it ... oops."
• The end of the world as we know it ... Britney Spears' marriage to dancer Kevin Federline is reportedly on the rocks, according to two US magazines.
• Russell crowes about actors appearing in ads. Russell Crowe has taken a whiny little bitch swipe at George Clooney, Harrison Ford and Robert de Niro for appearing in TV ads. The simon-pure, unsullied Gladiator star tells GQ magazine, 'I don't use my celebrity to make a living. I don't do ads for suits in Spain like George Clooney or cigarettes in Japan like Harrison Ford." Interestingly, DeNiro responded by kissing Crowe.
• Prince Charles to marry long-time partner Camilla Parker Bowles.
• BERNIE MAC BATTLES A DEADLY ILLNESS.

Other Crap archives. May also include newer material than the links above, since it's sorta in real time.

Click here to submit a URL for Other Crap

MOVIE REVIEWS:

Here are the latest movie reviews available at scoopy.com.

• The yellow asterisks indicate that I wrote the review, and am deluded into thinking it includes humor.
• If there is a white asterisk, it means that there isn't any significant humor, but I inexplicably determined there might be something else of interest.
• A blue asterisk indicates the review is written by Tuna (or Junior or Brainscan, or somebody else besides me)
• If there is no asterisk, I wrote it, but am too ashamed to admit it.

This week's poll...
Who has the best Bum in Hollywood?

For each nominee I've included a movie or two that features a great, rear nude performance.

Here are the results of our most recent other polls...
The Top 20 Nude Scenes of 2004

The Best Nude Film Debuts of the 80s

The Best Nude Film Debuts of the 90s

Please Email Scoopy Jr. with more nominees, comments or suggestions.

A very special thanks to the Ghost for these....

The Ghost first sent in these 'caps and vids of Candice Michelle back in June of last year...long before anyone knew who she was. Now she's a Rasslin' babe, and of course the star of the GoDaddy.com commercial that aired during the Super Bowl.

Here she is topless, full frontal doing some posing and getting it on in a regular pseudo-sex scene as well as a 3-way scene from an episode of the late night series "Hotel Erotica".

• Candice Michelle (1, 2, 3, 4)
• Candice Michelle zipped .wmvs (1, 2)

• Candice Michelle and Tina Leiu. Posing nude in links 1-5, sharing a dude in 5-7. (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7)
• Candice Michelle and Tina Leiu zipped .wmvs. Vids 1-6 feature both ladies posing, vids 7-9 feature them in bed with a dude. (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9)

"The Life"
This 2004 drama from Spain with many titles (The Life, You puta, Whore), is not a drama at all, but rather a documentary with a fictional drama woven around about an hour of interviews with prostitutes. The producers claim: "This film does not use any actors for the interview portions of the film." That's the majority of the movie, and almost all the women in the collage.

In the drama part, a wannabe actress (Daryl Hannah) makes a living as a prostitute while trying to land acting gigs. Her neighbor (Denise Richards) is a graduate student desperately needing money, so the actress introduces her to the world of prostitution.

The drama part is fairly lame and predictable given the rest of the movie, and actually makes up a very small portion of the movie. They could have/should have left it out, but the interviews with the prostitutes are interesting.

Many will not enjoy this movie, but I felt it did a good job of de-glamorizing the world's oldest profession. It also includes quite a bit on porn actresses, which the filmmakers seem to consider as just another type of prostitute. Given that the dictionary definition of prostitute is "One who solicits and accepts payment for sex acts", and given that is exactly what a porn actress does, it's kind of difficult to argue otherwise.

• Denise Richards plus assorted nekkid chicks (original version, about 940k!)
• Denise Richards plus assorted nekkid chicks (smaller version, about 380k)

SEXIEST WOMEN OF VARIOUS AGES
It'd Be Absolutely Fabulous If They'd Stop This - A panel of beauty experts assembled by the UK edition of Good Housekeeping magazine chose Kylie Minogue as the sexiest thirtysomething, over Kate Beckinsale and Catherine Zeta-Jones. The sexiest woman in her forties was Elle Macpherson; Joanna Lumley of "Absolutely Fabulous" was the sexiest fiftysomething; Catherine Deneuve topped the sixties category; and the sexiest seventysomething was Honor Blackman, who played Pussy Galore in "Dr. No."