Mr Skin's nudity report on Abbie Cornish in Candy:

(1) First we see partial bra while Abbie is wearing a blue working suit, then several decent looks at both of her breasts when she’s lying in the tub after overdosing on heroin.  (2) She’s making out with Heath Ledger. In the process we get to see Abbie in her bra and panties as well as topless again. This scene is followed by her swimming in a pool wearing a bathing suit. (3) Some more footage featuring Abbie in her bathing suit is followed by a brief glimpse of right tit while lying in bed with Ledger. (4) Both breasts sitting in bed talking to some dude who wants to kick Abby and Heath Ledger out of their home for not paying their rent. (5) She’s wearing panties and an almost transparent blouse in a montage that shows pregnant Abbie and Heath Ledger trying to stop taking heroin for the sake of their unborn child. This goes on for approximately seven minutes (with brief interruptions).

Mailbox:

Hey, Scoop:

About a week ago Other Crap posted a link to a site with images from old Victoria's Secret catalogs. While taking a look through them I thought one of the models in the 1977 issue looked familiar, but I couldn't put my finger on where I had seen her before. A day or two ago, the Fun House included posted pictures from the movie "The Boy in Blue" with images of Melody Anderson and then I suddenly realized where I'd seen that model before!

Scoop's response:

I'm pretty sure he's right. As far as I can tell, that's not just a woman who looks like Melody, but that actually IS Melody Anderson, the pretty Canadian actress who left show biz to get an advanced degree. Helluva good eye!
 

• A link to the Victoria's Secret catalogs
• A link to the 1977 catalog
• Two pictures of Melody Anderson: (1,2)

 

Where the Truth Lies (2005):

WARNING - TOTAL SPOILERS (THEY ARE IMPLICIT, BUT STILL SPOILERS):

Atom Egoyan, although fundamentally an arthouse dramatist with an eye for human isolation and alienation, a jazzed-up Edward Albee with a movie camera and a Canadian passport, has also been a mystery writer at heart. The techniques of the mystery genre have always made his best movies better. If his great dramas, The Sweet Hereafter and Exotica, had been told in chronological narrative fashion, they would not have commanded our attention as they did. For as long as possible, Egoyan concealed the key tragedies which underlay the drama, and by doing so, he generated audience involvement in a way that would not have been possible with straightforward hand-wringing dramas which began or ended with tragedy. Let's face it, more people will watch an involving mystery than a melodrama about loss and desperation, so Egoyan's mastery of genre-style storytelling enabled him to expand his audience beyond the turtleneck set and into some mainstream suburban theaters. The success of The Sweet Hereafter even allowed Egoyan to hob-nob with the movie biggies at the Shrine Auditorium in 1998, where he sat in the audience as a nominee for two of the most important Oscars: best adapted screenplay, and best director. Pretty heady company for a Canadian film which grossed less than five million dollars!

That day in 1998 must now seem like a long time ago for Egoyan, whose subsequent films have found neither lavish critical approbation nor significant audiences. He has made no trips back to the Oscar ceremony as a nominee, and his subsequent films have failed to crack seven in the IMDb ratings.

• (7.79) - The Sweet Hereafter (1997)

• (6.99) - Felicia's Journey (1999)
• (6.80) - Ararat (2002)
• (6.69) - Where the Truth Lies (2005)

He's also lost whatever minimal popular appeal he created with The Sweet Hereafter. If its $4 million gross was surprisingly low for a "best director" nominee, that film must now seem to him like a license to print money. The Sweet Hereafter grossed more than the three subsequent films added together! Felicia's Journey and Where the Truth Lies failed to clear the million hurdle, and Ararat wasn't much over it. I have to think that there are some unhappy investors in Where the Truth Lies, because the budget was $25 million.

Perhaps Egoyan thought that his skills as a mystery writer could help his films get more exposure and higher grosses than usual, because Where the Truth Lies makes the quantum leap from "melodrama disguised as a mystery" to "full-fledged mystery noir with only a hint of dramatic significance." If he thought that, he was wrong, or perhaps he has lost some of his skills, because Where the Truth Lies must be the most obvious mystery I've ever seen. It's a classic case of the screenwriter being many, many steps behind the audience.

How much more obvious could it be? I was able to figure it out before I entered the theater, from reading the official plot description! "A female journalist tries to uncover the truth behind the breakup, years earlier, of a celebrated comedy team after the duo found a girl dead in their hotel room. Though both had airtight alibis and neither was accused, the incident put an end to their act." Well, let's see. Without seeing the film, we know she must have seen something she wasn't supposed to see, and she wasn't going to be quiet about it, so somebody had to make her disappear somehow in a way that gave the boys an alibi. The film is rated NC-17, so it must be something kind of sexual and forbidden. Whatever it was, it was bad enough to make a really successful act like Martin-Lewis break up forever, even though they had no legal problems. Whatever it was, it had to be something which bothered one of them, since there was no risk of public exposure. Gee, what could it be?

Normally when I make my guesses about films like this, I can figure out one or two major points, but the film still presents surprises along the way. Not in this case. I had every plot point already 100% correct in my mind before I entered the theater. It's a mystery with nothing mysterious about it.

Is that enough to ruin a film? No, probably not. I think if you were to guess immediately the identity of the real bad guy in L.A. Confidential, for example, the film would still give you lots of lurid pleasures and visceral thrills along the way. In fact, I have no problem watching L.A. Confidential again and again, even though I know all the plot twists. Unfortunately "lurid pleasures and visceral thrills" are a long way from Atom Egoyan's home ballpark. He's a subtle, cerebral guy with an eye for nuance and he's a master at dealing with the sense of loss. That's not exactly the right formula for carrying a B-style noir mystery. People who watch movies like Body Heat and The Big Sleep don't expect the lead character to be reciting passages from Hamlet. These stories are about passion and guns and wisecracks. Egoyan doesn't really go there. He sort of tries. There's lots of sex and nudity and depravity and a dead body, but Egoyan just doesn't have the knack for sleazy entertainment. Sadly, the Rupert Holmes novel is said to have been a funny, raunchy, gossip-dishing delight. I guess that wasn't Atom's oeuvre ... at least I can't imagine buying a ticket for "Atom Egoyan's Wild Things."

The Chicago Tribune wrote:

"Does Egoyan want us to forget Holmes' bracingly tongue-in-cheek vision and give ourselves over to something far more bleak? If that was his intention, the director would have done well to assert himself more firmly—and find a lead actress with the maturity to shoulder the task at hand."
 

The Trib is right about that performance. On top of all the film's half-hearted and failed forays into various genres, this film is saddled down by a very poor central performance from Alison Lohman. The girl is not Kathleen Turner. She is supposed to be a highly successful writer in her mid twenties, but comes off as a 14-year-old airhead. In fact, I was briefly led to think that I may have been wrong about the film's central mystery. When one of the partners got sweet on Lohman, my mind started to wander and I thought, "Oh, she's supposed to seem like a 14-year-old airhead. The secret must be that one of the partners has a taste for really, really young girls, like pre-pubescent or something, and the other partner was disgusted by it." Of course, that was just a red herring I created for myself based on Lohman's poor performance.

Where the Truth Lies is not successful as a weighty melodrama; it doesn't work as a page-turning mystery; it isn't old-fashioned sleazy fun; and it has one very bad performance in the middle of it. It also has the dreaded 1960s-style psychedelic drug/sex scene, complete with Jefferson Airplane music, and the storyline was written by the guy who wrote "The Piña Colada Song"! That doesn't leave much, does it?

The Movie Chicks summed it up well:

"This movie is filled to the brim with sex, lies, manipulation, blackmail, murder, and more sex. But even with all this sordid material to work with, it barely rises above boring. It captures the period well, but it feels as cold as a crate of lobster on ice. The truth is that this movie is a lot like the Lanny/Vince nightclub act – not nearly as good as it thinks it is."
 

I should probably clarify that I didn't come out of the theater thinking I had just seen a very bad movie. It is a failure, but it is still a film made by Atom Egoyan, not Jim Wynorski. It has some good moments generated by acting, camerawork and music; and it has $25 million worth of production values. The 6.7 at IMDb may be somewhat misleading since only hard-core Egoyan fans have seen it in the first place, but I have no problem with it being in the 6s. Overall, I thought it was kind of an OK movie-going experience, but I just can't recommend it to anyone. It's not for fans of mysteries or arthouse dramas or sleazy noirs - or even for fans of Atom Egoyan.

Zipped .avis

• Alison Lohman (1, 2)
• Kristin Adams (and Alison Lohman)
• Rebecca Davis
• Rachel Blanchard

Other Crap:

Film Jerk's invaluable Early Report for February 26th

"ARMED CHENEY TO GUARD PORTS" "Shotgun-packing Veep Offers Solution to Port Controversy"

Lineup Analysis

• In theory, this constructs your ideal line-up from data you provide. It is certainly not traditional. It consistently places one of your worst hitters in the #3 spot. In my example - a guy with a .325 OBP and a .425 slugging avg. Using more traditional thinking, I expected that guy to be batting eighth.

Ken Lay is broke

"IHOP restaurants are offering free pancakes on Tuesday - National Pancake Day"

A classic film moment - Dr.Evil and Scott Evil on The Jerry Springer show

Weekend Box Office Results, February 24-26, 2006

• It was good and bad news for new releases. The sum of all new releases was about as predicted, but individually none of them performed as predicted. Madea's Family Reunion took in an astounding thirty million dollars, while the other two releases finished with about half of their expectations
• It was good and bad news for Paul Walker as well. His new release (Running Scared) flopped like a carp, but his doggie movie continued to outpace expectations, and dropped only about 20% from its excellent opening weekend.

 

 

Psycho Path chosen as silliest street name.

• Other contenders include Divorce Court and Unexpected Road

Totally disgusting video - fake ad for feminine hygiene products

Vince Young's Wonderlic result: reportedly 6/50

• Successful quarterbacks rarely score below 20.
• The highest active player in the NFL (Kevin Curtis of the Rams) scored 48/50
• Only one player in history has scored 50/50, Harvard's Pat McInnally, a receiver/punter for the Cincinnati Bengals who scored a perfect 50 in 1976.

"Khrushchev's Secret Speech -- Full Annotated Text"

• Fifty years ago this week, unknown to those of us in the West, Khrushchev denounced Stalin behind closed doors. The link provides the full text of his speech.
• The heroic saga has a sad ending. Here is a recent news story about the recent rehabilitation of Stalin's reputation. Fifty percent of Russians view Stalin's role in history as positive while Khrushchev, like Gorbachev, is not held in very high esteem by mainstream Russians.

 

"Here are some absolutely amazing anagrams of famous people." Well, of their names, actually.

The Strange Curse of "Hot Lead and Cold Feet"

• Don Knotts and Darren McGavin died in the past few hours. I hope Jim Dale has paid up his life insurance.

The Bono Nobel Peace Prize Quiz

The result of a Google Search for March 20th.

Kolchak continues to research the paranormal - from beyond the grave

• "Darren McGavin, the husky, tough-talking actor who starred in several TV series, played a grouchy dad in the holiday classic A Christmas Story and had other strong roles in such films as The Man with the Golden Arm and The Natural, died Saturday. He was 83."
• One of my favorite character actors, and someone who has been around since my earliest memories.

Movie Reviews:

Yellow asterisk: funny (maybe). White asterisk: expanded format. Blue asterisk: not mine. No asterisk: it probably sucks.

* Art Heist:

- Ellen Pompeo

- Rachel Laure

* Hustle & Flow:

- Paula Jai Parker

- Taryn Manning

* Her name is Carla:

- Mina Badie

- Julianne Nicholson

* Red Eye:

- Rachel McAdams

* Dear Wendy:

- Alison Pill