Saturday

Tuna
"If these Walls Could Talk"

If these Walls Could Talk (1996) was a made for HBO group of three films dealing with women in three generations, 1952, 1972 and 1992, each dealing with problem pregnancies. The common thread is that each story takes place in the same house, hence the title. In 1952, pre Roe v. Wade, Demi Moore is a widdowed nurse, her husband a marine killed in Korea. His large Irish family has been helping her, but she gets pregnant in a moment of weakness with her dead husband's younger brother, the spitting image of her bereaved husband. She resorts to a back alley abortion, her only alternative, and she hemorrhages to death.

1972 has Sissy Spacek, mother of several and wife of a policeman, who is finally able to start college, as her family is older. She finds she is pregnant with a mid-life baby. Her husband wants the baby, but admits that it will stop most of their plans, such as his early retirement, sending their daughter to a private college, and her education. The daughter, very much a young feminist, wants her to have the abortion, and her best friend, faced with the same choice, had the abortion and has no regrets. After a lot of soul-searching, she decides to have the baby.

1992 is the most powerful of the three, at least for me. Anne Heche is a young and starving architect who finds herself pregnant by her married boss. He gives her some money, and expects her to have the abortion. Her best friend and room mate, Jada Pinkett, doesn't believe in abortion, and is convinced she really doesn't either. On her first tript o the clinic, she encounters a right to life group, and ends up not going through with it. The next day, she gathers her nerve, and goes back to the clinic, which is being attacked by a huge mob of right to lifers performing for the news cameras. She has the abortion, then a protester breaks in ad shoots the doctor, Cher, to death.

Heche shows breasts and a shadow of bush in a bath scene for the only nudity in this film. It was nominated for a ton of Emmy's and Golden Globes. I think it is about as good as made for cable gets, hence a C+. It is a balanced look at an important issue told in an interesting fashion, and performed by some top talent. It was followed by a sequel that dealt with other women's issues that may have been even better.

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  • Anne Heche (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7)

    "Girl Seduction"

    Girl Seduction (2004) is a compilation of never before seen Misty Mundae shorts, interviews, and some excerpts from released films which trace her career from 1997 to 2002, beginning with her first film appearance. This will be a must own for Misty fans. The material itself is not especially exciting, and includes mostly girl girl scenes, masturbation, and girl/guy scenes at the start and end, both rather tame and not at all explicit. What interested me about the collection was seeing how she morphed in a five year period from a scrawny girl with a nose stud, a sun tattoo on her arm, and short hair into the soft, childlike long haired beauty that has become so popular. Some of the interview material also gave some insights into her character.

    I only concentrated on the Mundae images, as I doubt that there is any interest in the other women. I kept them roughly in chronological order, so you too could see the progression. I am not sure what genre this retrospective belongs to, but, despite some rather weak source material, they managed to hold my interest. I will give this a C, as an effort that accomplishes its purpose.

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  • Misty Mundae (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64)

    "On_Line"

    On_Line (2002) -- Not long ago, in reviewing a film I have mercifully forgotten the name of, I opined that it was not possible to make a film about cybersex interesting. The problem with every example I have seen is that you end up with little actual action, and a whole lot of keyboarding and narrative. On_Line proved me wrong. The story revolves around people who spend their lives in cyberspace. Some for a living, such as room mates Harold Perrineau Jr. and Josh Hamilton, who operate a version of interactive adult chat, much like the real life I-Friends, and their regular paid performers, others because they are alienated or isolated from normal society.

    The story switches among several characters, Hamilton is still getting over being jilted, but has the hots for Vanessa Ferlito, one of their performers, and also watches Liz Owens on the "angel cam," obviously patterned after Jenny of Jenny-cam fame. Perrineau is a real player, and is dating Isabel Gillies, who hangs around a suicide chat room, as a councilor, but with serious depression problems herself. We also have a young gay man in Bumfuck Middle America who is desperate for a real man in his life. His weekly cyber-experiences serve only to make him feel more isolated and alienated from society.

    I will stop there, as I am giving this film a thumbs up. Vaznesa Ferlito shows her breasts during a cyber-sex scene. So how did they beat the problem of making a cyber-sex film interesting? First of all, they made very artistic use of split screens, simulating the medium they were portraying. Second, they made the interactions live video and audio feed, but most important, they took the characters away from their computers and into the real world. I will even forgive the film for what is an overly happy ending. IMDb readers have this at 5.5 of 10. Ebert did one of his strange things. He wrote what I thought was a very positive review, the awarded two stars. This is low budget, and not a formula film, but has an element of real creativity -- the very ting that attracts me to indie films. It is not perfect, but it is entertaining, interesting, factually grounded in technology and cyber personalities, and presents good character development. This is a C, Those who enjoy indies and something different will enjoy this one.

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  • Vanessa Ferlito (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8)

  • Johnny Web (Uncle Scoopy)

    Wild Side (1995, 1996, 1999):

    This is the film with the famous lesbian scene between Anne Heche and Joan Chen. I have been wondering about the "director's cut" of this movie for a long time, so I decided to get it from Europe, and watch both versions back to back.

    • The Region 1 DVD is a 90 minute version of the story.  Back in 1995, the investors took the film away from the director, and cut it back to this length to create a suitable cable/video product after it became clear that a theatrical release was simply not in the cards. The director hated this cut, and asked to have his name removed from it. He and the investors fought bitterly. He lost. He was a troubled man anyway, and he committed suicide not long after the film's 1995 release on cable.
    • In 1999 the editor, a friend of the late director, created a "director's cut" posthumously, by working from the director's notes, using whatever footage he had available to him. This so-called director's cut, found on the Region 2 DVD, runs 111 minutes, and is in PAL format, which means that it is a 115 minute film which plays in 111 because of the 4% PAL distortion.

    Therefore, the longer version should be so-o much better, right?

    Not at all. Several reasons:

    1)  The editor apparently did not have access to all of the original footage, perhaps relating to some legal problems. Therefore, he had to cobble the director's cut from raw footage not used in the short version, and a lot of that footage consisted of earlier takes that just weren't as good as the material in the shorter version. It has all kids of problems. Some of it isn't lit properly. Some of it employs completely different lighting from what we saw in the shorter version. (The sex scene between Anne Heche and Christopher Walken, for example.) Some of it has flubbed dialogue, or just different dialogue. Some of the camera angles are close-ups where a medium shot would make much more sense. The longer version seems to consist entirely of ideas that were discarded and/or takes that had to be re-done.

    2) There is really nothing of interest in the additional 25 minutes. I watched the longer version first, and when I subsequently watched the shorter one, I had no sense that anything was missing.

    3) The scenes are presented in a radically different order in the longer version, making it a completely different movie. Certain details which are plot revelations in the shorter versions are spoon-fed to the audience immediately in the longer one. In fact, it is the shorter, more economical version which makes more sense.

    4) There is actually more of the Chen-Heche scene in the shorter cut, and the lighting of that scene is better in the short version as well.

    The long version has its defenders -  check out the official director's cut website here - but I can't agree with them. I like the shorter version better in every respect except that it is in a 4:3 aspect ratio (the director's cut is widescreen). It really doesn't matter much which is better because they both suck mightily. Neither Tuna nor I thought it was much of a movie, no matter how you cut it. Anne Heche really had to carry the entire movie, providing the only link to normal human behavior in a cartoon script. Steven Bauer and Christopher Walken had over-the-top roles and they responded with correspondingly surreal portrayals. To be honest, the characterization and dialogue for Heche's part were every bit as operatic and silly as the material Walken and Bauer had to work with. She was supposed to be a bank executive who decided to work as a $1500 a night call girl, was then invited to be the protege of a super-criminal that she serviced, and then fell in love with the criminal's wife. Sure, that's plausible. Amazingly, Heche found a way to center the role in reality and somehow made it seem credible. Heche is more famous for her quirky mating habits than for her performing, but she is much more talented than people give her credit for.

    Unfortunately Ms Heche's performance and her lesbian scenes with Joan Chen were the only good things in the movie. That scene is hot. Those women really seem turned on. I did only a small number of caps. See Tuna's caps in his section, in the back issues, or in the Encyclopedia.

    • Anne Heche (1, 2, 3, 4, 5)
    • Joan Chen (1, 2)

     

     

    UPDATES:

    • Charlie's French Cinema Nudity site is updated
    • There are approximately 19 updated encyclopedia volumes, all major names. All of these are indicated by yellow text on the main encyclopedia page.

     

     

    OTHER CRAP:

     

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

    Click here to submit a URL for inclusion in 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.

    Shiloh

    Words from Scoop.

    .avi's from Shiloh.

    .wmv files made by Scoop from Shiloh's .avi's.

     

    Miscellaneous

    • Beverly D'Angelo in Hair. She actually got to sing the worst song ever. Everyone sing along - "Gliddy glub gloopy nibby nabby noopy la la la lo lo. Sabba sibby sabba nooby abba nabba le le lo lo. Tooby ooby walla nooby abba naba. Early morning singing song."  (.avi version, .wmv version )

    • Why didn't Nancy Travis take off her clothes more? She was sure sexy in Married to the Mob. (.avi version, .wmv version )

    • Marry Steenburgen - nearly 50 years old but still showing off a very nice butt in My Life as a House  (.avi version, .wmv version )

     

    Perhaps these tips will help if you have trouble with the codecs for these movies:

    Shiloh says:

    FYI when I hypercam vids to make the file size smaller I use DivX MPEG-4 Fast-Motion for the video compressor, then I use virtualdub to compress the audio. The properties for the vids says the video codec:  DivX Decoder Filter & audio codec:  Morgan Stream Switcher which I'm not familiar with. When I compress the audio with virtualdub I use MPEG Layer-3.  A friend of mine told me about compressing the audio about (6) mos. ago. Like I said previously, only been capping for a year & a half & I'm no expert. Hopefully this info will help members with the proper codecs for my vids.
     
    When I cap big brother's I use hypercam mostly & sdp & asfrecorder if the set up allows me. I stopped using camtasia cause the file sizes were always too big, could never figure out the process, over my head lol, plus it cost too much to buy in my opinion.

    A reader says:

    You mentioned that some users were having trouble with the videos on your site. There is a tool designed to determine what codec is needed for a video. http://www.headbands.com/gspot/ Hope this is useful to you or your users.

    Scoop says:

    I made the .wmv versions of each video. The codecs for these: Windows Video V8, Windows Audio 9. The upside of these is that you know the codecs, and they'll play in the Windows Media Player. The downside is that they are slightly larger, and slightly lower quality.

    Dann
    'Caps and comments by Dann:

    "Absolute Aggression"
    In the year 2011, minor crimes like smoking are capital offenses, and prisoners are warehoused in virtual reality prisons, basically on slabs in a room hooked up to a virtual reality computer. Then, they're forced to compete in life and death virtual reality "games" that are viewed by the general public. The slogan: "die in the games, die in life", so if a prisoner is "killed" during combat, he never awakes from VR. A pretty cool Sci-Fi story that was destroyed in the process of making the movie.

    Really lame acting, unrealistic action scenes, bad production, and poor photography kept this 1996 effort from being much of a movie, but the story is there if you can ignore the other faults. A topless Amy Lynn Baxter is there too, and that ain't half bad. :-)

    UC99
    Part 3 of UC99's coverage of the Tinto Brass movie "Fallo!". Once again there is plenty of nudity including: all three B's, gyno-cam views and and a few more explicit scenes as well.

    • Maruska Albertazzi (1, 2, 3, 4, 5)
    • Federica Palmer (1, 2, 3, 4, 5)

    Variety
    Katie Holmes DeadLamb 'caps of Katie in scenes from the indie flick "Pieces of April" (just released on DVD). No nudity, she still looks as good as ever. Look for Katie in the new Batman movie due out in 2005.

    Eileen Dover
    (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7)

    Another batch of hardcore 'caps by Marvin from the good ol' days of porn. Scenes from 1978's "Sex World".

    Wet T-shirt babes
    (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9)

    Here are some 'caps of NBC pushing the limits of prime time skin on the new series "Las Vegas". Plenty of soaking wet busty babes showing pokies and then some. What surprised me when I watched the episode was that there were several quick glimpses where you could clearly see that entire breasts were visible through the wet shirts.

    Lara Belmont
    (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15)

    Señor Skin 'caps of the young UK actress topless and also showing bush in scenes from her screen debut, "The War Zone" (1999). As you may remember, "The War Zone" was actor Tim Roth's directorial debut, and as Scoop pointed out in his review, it may be the best rookie directorial effort ever. The movie is dark, depressing, powerful and not for everyone. However, if you can handle a film about abuse and incest, it is a very well made movie about difficult subjects with out the usual bullshit Hollywood ending.

    Pat Reeder www.comedy-wire.com
    Pat's comments in yellow...

    GIBSON'S "PASSION" MAKES BOX OFFICE HISTORY
    Passion For Money - Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ" weathered scathing reviews to make $26.5 million, marking the fifth largest opening in movie history and breaking "Hannibal's" record for the biggest non-holiday opening day.

  • But then, it's far more violent than "Hannibal."
  • Hollywood screenwriters are now scouring the Bible, looking for any stories about cannibals that they can adapt.
  • The movie made as much per screen on a Wednesday as "Spiderman" did at its Friday opening...So Hollywood's planning a sequel where Jesus is rescued by Spiderman.


    Remember "Porky's?" - The New York Times reports that some powerful Jewish studio executives privately say they'll never hire Gibson again, and the movie could harm his career, but top Hollywood agent John Lesher doubts that. He said, "People here will work with the anti-Christ if he'll put butts in the seats."

  • Although they are still a little ticked at the Anti-Christ for talking them into making "Gigli."
  • People in Hollywood are more comfortable with the Anti-Christ than with Christ...After all, they're in the same line of work.
  • But mostly, the Anti-Christ gets work because of nepotism.


    S.A.T. SAYS SHAKESPEARE IS NO UNABOMBER
    SAT: Shakespeare Ain't Ted - The Princeton Review used the College Board's standards for grading S.A.T. essay questions to grade some of the greatest writings of all time. Emerson, Gertrude Stein and others all flunked, with Shakespeare's "All the world's a stage" soliloquy scoring only 2 out of 6. It was called poorly-organized, with vague descriptions, sentence fragments and not enough paragraph breaks. Only one writing scored a perfect 6, an essay on oversocialization in modern society. It was judged to be well-developed, with good supporting examples, impressive vocabulary and a variety of sentence structures. It was from the "Manifesto" by Ted "The Unabomber" Kaczynski.

  • The writing just seemed to explode off the page!
  • No wonder Kaczynski got into Harvard and Shakespeare didn't!
  • I understand he's available for tutoring by mail.


    PAM RETIRES FROM SHOWBIZ
    Operative Word: "36" - Aside from voicing her cartoon "Striperella," Pamela Anderson says she has retired from showbiz. The 36-year-old bombshell told "E! News Live," "I don't want to be an actress. I never did want to be an actress."

  • Mission accomplished!
  • She never even TRIED being an actress!

    She Has Clothes? - Anderson said she's rejected offers of TV shows and movies, but she does have a new career: Tuesday, at a convention in Las Vegas, she showed off her own clothing line.

  • Because when you think of clothing, you think of Pamela Anderson.
  • It was a hookers' convention.
  • High time someone made clothes for women with 50-inch chests and 30-inch hips.


    P. DIDDY NOT QUITE READY FOR BROADWAY
    Only Will Smith Reads Scripts! - Critics were skeptical when Sean "P. Diddy" Combs was signed to make his stage acting debut in the lead in a Broadway revival of "Raisin In The Sun." Now, the New York Post reports that previews are a month away, and insiders say he hasn't even read the script yet. A spokesman for the show denied that they are casting his understudy very carefully for that reason.

  • They're considering Justin Timberlake, which makes the actresses very nervous.
  • P. Diddy still thinks it's a play about the California Raisins.
  • He's a rapper; he'll just make it up as he goes along...As long as it rhymes, who'll notice the difference, right?
  • P. Diddy is avoiding rehearsals because he doesn't want to get too much sun.


    AFFLECK-LOPEZ WEDDING SCENE CUT FROM FILM
    I'd Rather Be In Jersey - Director Kevin Smith edited a wedding scene between Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez out of his upcoming movie "Jersey Girl" because he thought it would confuse the audience and take them out of the movie.

  • Not a problem: they'll have taken themselves out of the movie after the first 10 minutes.
  • Every time it played, paparazzi would run into the theaters and take flash pictures of the screen.