Sunday

Tuna
"Eye of the Beholder"

Eye of the Beholder (1999) features Ewan McGregor as a British detective, and Ashley Judd as the woman he is assigned to watch. He is trying to get over the disappearance of his wife and daughter who evidently left him, although we see him talking to the daughter and buying things for her through the first half of the film. Judd, it turns out, is a serial killer. So what does our 00-Idiot do about it? He decides to become her guardian angle and protect her from law enforcement, which is suppose to atone in some way for losing his wife and daughter.

If that sounds even remotely like a credible plot or even a plausible excuse for a film, you are even sicker than the director. I tried to watch this a couple of years ago, and threw it in a corner after about the first ten minutes. Scoop pointed out that there was nudity from Ashley Judd, and I really should capture it, so I watched the entire thing, and it doesn't get any better. As a matter of fact. they committed another unpardonable sin in showing an aged Genevieve Bujold not looking at all the way I would prefer to remember her.

Judd shows breasts disposing of a body in the rain, and in a bath scene. She also shows rear nudity and distant full frontal in the rain scene. We also get a few glimpses of her in lingerie. IMDb readers have this at 4.4 of 10, which is overly high in my estimation. Critics didn't like it any more than I did, and gross barely exceeded the $16M budget. The DVD contains both a Widescreen ad a full negative 4/3 version, and a directory commentary which I passed on. As is often the case, we get additional breast exposure in the 4/3 version, and we see her face for more of the bathtub scene. The film is professionally made from a technical aspect, but has to be one of the worst screen plays of all time, and lacks character development even for the characters it includes. D-.

  • Thumbnails
  • Thumbnails

  • Ashley Judd (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21)

     

    "Sister Sister"

    Sister Sister (1987) --Bill Condon was a man in search of his first directing job, having had some small success as a writer. He got no takers on the script he was passing around, but was finally given a chance on a teen slasher film set at a alligator farm in Louisiana. When they agreed to some rewrites, he took the job. He figured he had to keep the bayou, an alligator and some nudity, but totally rewrote it into a southern gothic mystery thriller. When it was test screened, the audiences were talking about tar and feathers, and a possible lynching, so they totally changed the focus of the film, releasing the current mess, which at least didn't end with a , "Oh, and this is all a dream."

    Two sisters run a B&B in the swamp. We learn that the younger one, Jennifer Jason Leigh, has or has had mental problems, and her older sister has avoided marrying the sheriff to look after her. We gradually learn that someone committed a murder, and that Leigh may not be the only unstable one. The film leads us from one false suspect to another until it is finally ready for the big surprise, which is, of course, the person we have no reason at all to suspect.

    Leigh shows breasts in three scenes. IMDb readers have this at 5.2 of 10. It grossed $743K. Condon blames the test audiences for ruining his masterpiece. I don't see how anything would have made this mess watchable. D.

     

  • Thumbnails
  • Thumbnails

  • Jennifer Jason Leigh (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20)

    • Johnny Web (Uncle Scoopy)

    Casino (1995):

    Martin Scorsese is generally considered to be the dean of American filmmakers, the man that the youngsters look up to. Scorsese's reputation is so redoubtable that most people are surprised to discover that he has never won and Oscar and has never had a hit. (Gangs of New York came the closest to a box office winner, with a $77 million gross, but that compared to a $97 million budget).

    I guess that means I feel about the same way everyone else feels about this guy - his talent is evident, but if he's so freakin' good, why can't he make a movie I actually like watching? Not one that I admire, but one I really enjoy,

    One of the problems with Casino is that it is practically a sequel to Goodfellas. If you just couldn't get enough of Goodfellas, here it is again. Joe Pesci obviously couldn't get enough, because when his friend Scorsese called him up, he must have said "Marty, I need time to study the role. What's my character?", and Scorsese must have responded, "skip the heavy study, little Joe, because you can play the EXACT same character as in Goodfellas."

    When I say "exact" here, I don't mean "kinda similar". I mean that this is the exact same guy with a different name. The first time Pesci did this, it was kind of a cool idea that a little, flabby, overweight dwarf with a sissy voice turns out to be an uncontrollable psychopathic juggernaut who destroys everyone in his path. I'm not really convinced, however, that every movie needs that character. Maybe you have a different idea. If you think Amadeus would be a better movie with a chubby little Salieri who kills Mozart by squeezing his head in a vice, Casino is your movie. Personally, I'm holding out for Joe Pesci's Hamlet.

    Casino is based on a famous gambler named Frank "Lefty" Rosenthal, whose story was told in Nicholas Pileggi's nonfiction book, Casino: Love and Honor in Las Vegas. Although Pileggi also co-wrote the Casino screenplay with Scorsese, the movie is a fictionalization which does not follow the Rosenthal story precisely.

    Here is the publicity blurb for the book:

    "The true story of how the mob finally lost its stranglehold over the multi-billion-dollar casino gambling industry of Las Vegas.

    No one knew more about casinos than Frank "Lefty" Rosenthal, the gambling mastermind who, with his best friend and partner Anthony Spilotro virtually ran Las Vegas for the mob. For years it was the perfect arrangement -- Lefty provided the smarts and obsessive attention to detail, while Tony made sure the bosses stayed happy with their weekly suitcases filled with millions of dollars in skimmed cash. It was so sweet it should have lasted forever, but Lefty's obsession with running the town -- and Tony's obsession with Lefty's beautiful showgirl wife Geri -- eventually led to the betrayals and investigations that exploded into one of the greatest debacles in the mob's history.

    A real-life story of love and betrayal set in America's favorite playground, Casino is a Mafia tragedy of Shakespearean dimensions, as well as the inside account of just how the mob lost control of the neon money-making machine it created."

    That summary does not exactly apply to the movie, but it's close enough to give you the idea. Robert DeNiro plays the mastermind with quiet, icy elegance. Joe Pesci plays his boyhood friend who becomes a noted Vegas hoodlum. Sharon Stone plays the hooker who becomes DeNiro's wife, then Pesci's lover. The efficient DeNiro character, Ace, has everything under control on the casino side, but everything goes wrong in his personal life, and that eventually undermines his casino operation, which needs to stay low-key in order to be effective. Ace refuses to cut ties with his out-of-control pal, then he is betrayed by his chronically unfaithful and coke-addicted wife, then he hosts a local TV show which draws further attention to himself.

    Ideally, the mob bosses want Ace to operate quietly and discreetly in the shadows, and give the impression that he's a faceless bureaucratic executive in the IBM or Disney mold, maintaining an aura of legitimacy which allows the mobs to quietly skim and launder money through the casinos. When Ace can no longer do that, he and his associates expose the operation unnecessarily, and things have to be resolved.

    It is often misreported that the movie is based on Pileggi's book. That is almost true, but not quite. The book was still a work in progress when Scorsese and Pileggi created the screenplay. Technically, the screenplay was actually written before the book, not after, but it was based on the book-in-progress.

    Although the film is fictionalized, you can believe what the film tells you and assume that you won't receive much misleading information . In fact, the film plays out like a documentary at times, when it presents endless sidebars about the details of money laundering, casino scamming, gaming, cheating, protection rackets, greasing the local politicians, and more. The film must include more voice-over than any other major fictional film in history. It runs just about three hours, and there must be pretty close to ninety minutes of narration.

    My thoughts: a good movie, but not great. Too long, too much narration, too familiar, and too much detail about penny-ante aspects of bookmaking, casino operation, and Nevada politics.

    Oh, well. If you're into the whole Scorsese, Goodfellas thing, this is a must-see for you. Excluding documentaries, Casino is rated fourth highest of all Scorsese's films at IMDb (see a list of the top dozen below), and the three above it are considered to be unchallenged masterpieces, so the general verdict of posterity seems to be "Casino is a near masterpiece".

     

     

     

    The Bitch (1978):

    I stumbled into these captures in a newsgroup. If I have seen this movie, I can't remember any details. I plan to see it soon, however.  Note Joan Collins's famous mismatched breasts in #1.

    • Joan Collins (1, 2)

     

     

    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

    • Better than Chocolate is one of the very best lipstick lesbian movies: unthreatening politics, a good story, attractive women, good photography, solid acting, good sex and frontal nudity.  (.avi version (both scenes), .wmv version #1 - lesbian body painting, .wmv version #2 - lesbonic sex)

    • If you want to see the distinguished actress Susannah York showing all she's got, you've come to the right place, amigos. Here she shows it all in Images. (.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.

    Brainscan
    'Caps and comments by Brainscan:

    If you wanted to spend some bucks to make some bucks you could do worse than turn it over to Gregory Hippolyte and ask him to film a bunch of topless women. He is responsible for such soft-core classics as "Night Rhythms", "Mirror Images", "Secret Games" and "Animal Instincts." And as hardcore director, Greg Dark, he has churned out classics of that genre, including "New Wave Hookers."

    And so someone did. Give him some money. Told him to film, "In Search of the Perfect 10." Make it a 60 minute video, they said, and get maybe 8, 9, 10, no 11 girls to remove their tops and put some comic filler between the tit scenes. Man on the street interviews, commentary by a sleezebag who would rather lie to get a girl nekkid than speak the truth... that sort of thing. Nothing high-brow, mind you. Forget the Kant and the Goethe. Tits and laughs, that's all we want.

    Greg gave em the tits. The laughs were another matter. Oh there are people who try, but I remember lines more clever from a 9th grade play the principal banned because it used the word "fairy" in a questionable context. That's too bad, because with some half-decent... hell, even quarter-decent material this would have been a semi-watchable enterprise. Instead, its not even semi-hemi-demi-watchable.

    And little Greggie shoots some blanks with the babes, too. He had some winners like Michelle Bauer and Gail Harris, and some better-than-average babes (Terri Lynn Peake and Venus Delight). When he ran out of them, he asked a bunch of 80's pornstars to take off their tops. They include Blondi, Lois Ayers, Krista Lane and Rachel Ryan. Problem here is if you want to see those gals good and naked and humpin' in the non-sport variety all you have to do is rent one of a few hundred hardcore movies. My own solution would have been to sign up a half-dozen former Hefmates, but then that's my own solution to most problems the world faces, including the odd uprising in Haiti.

    Let me also dispute the title. A perfect 10 is not what the movie is about, since all attention is reserved for the hooties. You get to see a few bums and the briefest bit of bush from Gail Harris. So its not the perfect 10 but the perfect tits that the filmmakers search for.

    In the end we have 11 women, 14 collages. In order they are

    Blondi, topless in a car, playing a blonde so dumb she thinks Anchorage is a quarter mile from Hollywood.


    Gail Harris, here billed as Gail Thackray. This woman should have won the contest, hands down. She has a most attractive body and she shows it off well in the old two-way-mirror-at-a-lingerie-store scene. I liked her so much, I worked on 3 collages of her scene... and that was a chore because the videotape I grabbed these from was more than a little noisy.

    • Gail Harris (1, 2, 3)


    B-movie veteran, Heidi Paine as a seller of maps to stars' homes. She has the only decent line in the movie when she admits the only people to whom she sells the maps are stars too drunk to find their own homes.


    Iris Condon, before she got the implants, looking as though she should be a different movie, entitled "In Search of the Perfect 0.1" Take a look and see if you don't agree.


    Krista Lane, who plays topless Twister with Iris.


    Lois Ayers, caught exercising topless in her backyard.


    The famous and righteous Michelle Bauer. She is judged to have perfect 10 hooties in this documentary. I think not. Michelle may well have been a perfect 10 if you consider the whole package but her after-market add-ons were nothing spectacular.

    • Michelle Bauer (1, 2


    Rachel Ryan, who used another name in this movie. Rachel did hardcore work under 8 different names and under 800 guys. I gather from some of the titles listed in IMDB she specialized in a certain form of near- but non-vaginal intercourse.


    Roxanna Vanalden. Never heard of her before and apparently neither has anyone else. Only listing in IMDB is this tape. Even Googled her and got one hit, to a site that offers this tape for sale.


    Terri Lynn Peake, who as Terri Lenee Peake was Pet of the Month for Oct '87. She claims in the tape that her boobs are "fucking perfect."


    Venus Delight, sometime stripper and sometime fire-eating sword-swallower (I did not make up that last part), looking extremely nice from the front and the back.


    So theres ya go. This was a good plan, in theory, but flawed plan, in practice. I guess the best way to look at ISO P10 is the same way most married guys look at their weddings... sounded like a good idea at the time.

    Hankster
    'Caps and comments by Hankster:

    Back to business after a little break from 'capping....

    Here's a good look at former Heffer Suzi Simpson (January '92) in the Sidaris flick "Enemy Gold". That of course translates into 'lots of boobs'.

    Take a good look at # 21, a slight peek at some pubic hair, a little unusual for Andy.

    Spaz
    'Caps and comments by Spaz:

    "Expecting" (2002)
    Canadian pregger comedy starring a very pregnant Valerie Buhagiar in the buff. Buhagiar was seven months pregnant when filming started and give birth two weeks after it ended. Despite her nudity the director went through great lengths not to show anything below the equator. A nude love scene was shown as a series of stills and the ever-so-present bedsheet that never rode below the hips. The DVD is only available in Canada and maybe Oz.

    • Valerie Buhagiar: breasts and pregnant as a guppy. (1, 2, 3, 4)
    • Barbara Radecki: cleavage, then fully clothed giving dildo demonstration.
    • Angela Gei: tight sweater pokies.


    "Foolproof" (2003)
    Canadian action-thriller released last week starring Ryan Reynolds best known for dating Alanis Morissette. No nudity but Kristin Booth was in really tight clothes to erotically manoeuver under some laser beams.


    "The Wisher" (2002) aka Spliced
    Canadian horror starring Liane Balaban from New Waterford Girl. The standard female cast in skimpy clothes while the school slut gets murdered soon after having sex and showing her boobs.


    "Distant Bridges" (1999)
    UK WW1 war romance that became out-of-print soon after it was released. Stars Laura Patch best known as the saucy Piccalina Sternflanks from the Lexx cable series. Tulane Joseph and Jacqueline Hussein play a couple of French hookers.


    "Screwballs" (1983)
    Just one last look at the UK DVD release. In the trailer the dark scenes are alot more brighter and there are some scenes not in the DVD feature.