Rendez-vous (1985) Wadeck Stanczak is a clerk in a rental agency. Juliette Binoche come sin looking for a place to rent. She is an aspiring actress with a bit part in a play, and gives Stanczak a ticket. He goes back stage to see her, and finds her topless and being fondled by a guy. He finds out she lives with the jerk. The three end up in her apartment, but Stanczak and Binoche leave when her boyfriend gets obnoxious. They end up in his apartment, where his roommate, Lambert Wilson, gets obnoxious.

So, of course, Biniche falls madly for Wilson, and wants a platonic relationship with Stanczak.This is the point where Stanczak becomes a full-fledged whiney loser. Then it gets even more French, in other words, stranger. Wilson has a death wish, she survives, he doesn't, she is picked to play Juliet in a play because she can't act, and we never know if she is any good, or if she ends up with Stanczak.

The good news is lots of nudity, including full frontal and rear from Binoche and Caroline Faro, who plays Juliet in a sex show. IMDb readers have this at 6.6 of 10. It won best director at Cannes, and was nominated for most of the Cesar's. Binoche was wonderful. Stanczak ruined the film for me. This is a C-.

Young Casanova (2002):

This is a lavish production done for German television which tells a story of a few years in the life of Casanova - his last three years or so in Venice, followed by his arrival in France. It was filmed on location in Venice and Versailles, and features lots of intrigue and lots of sex and nudity.

Ya gotta love the new Germany!

The story is basically true to history, although the script took some liberties with some minor historical characters in order to make the story work more economically. Having recently refreshed my memory with Casanova's memoirs, I'd have to say that this production stayed true to the spirit of these adventures and intrigues, even if it changed a few details.

The brilliant and accomplished young Casanova gets involved in various plots and romances in Venice which eventually lead him to seduce the mistress of his stepfather, the French Ambassador. The Ambassador's jealousy is strong enough to set the couple up to be discovered by the woman's husband, who in turn devises his own scheme to have Casanova thrown in jail. Casanova escapes from the prison after 18 months of solitary confinement, and finds himself starting life over again from scratch as a refugee in France. He seeks revenge against his stepfather, who is now a very powerful man in the court.

Through artful seductions, charm, and just plain brainpower, Casanova finds a way to ingratiate himself with everyone who is anyone in the world of 18th century France - King Louis XV, Madame Pompadour, the king's ministers, the king's would-be mistress, and even his Casanova's cynical stepfather. Casanova becomes involved in a power struggle between Pompadour and his stepfather, who is by then the foreign minister, but our hero manages to convince both sides that he is working in their interest and, in a sense, he is!

While he is in France, in his spare time, Casanova invents the French National Lottery (true story), and becomes rich, only to give it all up eventually, just because he needs to move on to other conquests and other adventures. As it turns out, he chooses a good time to leave France anyway, since Louis's weakness is about to result in an ill-conceived war in which France will be crushed by England and Prussia, the aftermath of which will be social conditions conducive to revolution.

The story is salted with some of Casanova's less cynical romances, in which he made love to women because he loved them, and not as part of his various intrigues, betrayals, schemes, and counter-schemes. Indeed, sometimes he loved the women but used them in his schemes anyway!

The only thing I found a little distracting is that the lead actor did a blatant rip-off of the Mozart character in Amadeus. He did the same silly giggle, wore the same perpetual smile, exhibited the same charming blend of naivete and brilliant guile, and the guy even looks a bit like Tom Hulce.

But I don't know if that really makes much difference. The lead character, Casanova/Mozart does seem too familiar, but I suppose that kind of guy was a certain identifiable 18th century type, so the parallel makes sense, and this is a helluva yarn! The scenery and costumes are terrific, the film is sexy, the characters are interesting, it has a unpredictable but appropriate ending, and the English dubbing is quite competent. The DVD consists of a single film made from the TV series. It runs three hours, and it could be shorter because there are some scenes and characters which are not really necessary to advance the story. Be that as it may, I think you'll like this if the premise sounds intriguing to you.

• Barbara Schultz (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7)

• Claire Keim (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8)

• Christina Capotondi

• Roberta Mosca (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8)

• Most of the sex scenes are routine, but the one with Roberta Mosca is hot. She plays a woman disguised as a man, but unmasked by Casanova's eye for such things. When they get it goin', they really get it goin'! Here's a zipped .wmv of the proceedings.

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• The Weekend Warrior looks at the upcoming weekend. Thre are three new high-profile films this week, and the phenomenon Mad Black Woman will offer additional competition by expanding to several hundred more screens. Warrior thinks Be Cool will rule the school, while last week's disappointing "Cursed" will nosedive straight into the crapper.
• JoBlo.com presents an early review of The Pink Panther. As we feared, it sounds bad.
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• The Mr. Bonko Show - Starring Mr Bonko - filmed in the miracle of Bonkovision
• What's the origin of the term "slapstick"?
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• This week's movies: The Pacifier - no reviews available.. I suppose this movie is to Vin Diesel as Kindergarten Cop is to Ah-nuld. It is rated PG.
• This week's theater counts Be Cool 3000, The Pacifier 3000, The Jacket 1300. Also covered at that link: this week's new releases on home video.
• Out of left field: Diary of a Mad Black Woman is a phenomenon - it won the Weekend Box Office last week, although only on 1500 screens!
  • It tripled its predictions! It succeeded by serving an underserved audience - grown women. According to Lions Gate exit surveys, 74 percent of Diary's audience was female and 72% was over the age of 25.
     
  • Meanwhile, "Cursed" - which was expected to battle for first place - finished a distant fourth, and pulled in only about half of the predicted amount.
  • Hitch continued to roll with another great weekend, and passed the $100 million mark.
• This week's movies: Be Cool - not enough reviews for a score.
• This week's movies: The Jacket - 43% positive reviews. The score doesn't mean much (it's based on seven reviews.) Some reviewers really liked this "time-warp" mystery with Adrian Brody and Keira Knightley. I'm curious about it myself.
• Rare pictures of the Rat Pack performing at The Sands
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• Boston Red Sox Nation: Nomar Does Not Want Sox Series Ring
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  • I want to know what South Florida fight fans do when they are slummin' it.
• Its source of stories apparently having been crippled by the global shark shortage, The Discovery Channel analyzes the dick size of Michelangelo's David.
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• The Top 100 Gadgets of All Time
• Antoine Fuqua will direct Mel Gibson in his next film titled Under and Alone, reports Variety. Under and Alone is based on the true story of Vietnam veteran William Queen. He channeled his Special Forces training into undercover work with BATF. 
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• Three formal objections filed against Prince Chuck's wedding in latest snag

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

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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.

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

Which actress has been the most convincing playing a stripper.

Who has the best bum in Hollywood?

Email Scoopy Jr. with nominees, comments or suggestions.

Today from the Ghost...a bazillion 'caps and a couple of vids of Ananda St. James baring all in scenes from "Hotel Erotica: Up All Night". She's nekkid on the phone, in the shower, while getting a massage and of course while gettin' it on. The vids feature the phone, massage and shower scenes.

• Thumbnail previews
• Thumbnail previews
• Thumbnail previews
• Thumbnail previews
• Thumbnail previews

• Ananda St. James (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)
• Ananda St. James zipped .wmvs (1, 2, 3, 4)

Heike Makatsch

Joanna Page
(1, 2, 3)

As for the nudity, Linney is topless, German babe Heike Makatsch looks smokin-hot in red undies and the ultra-cute Page bares breasts and a bit of bum.

FCC FINES WILDLY OUT OF PROPORTION
Gee Whiz!...Ohmigod, I Said "Whiz!" - Rolling Stone compared the new $500,000 fines the U.S. House voted to levy for saying something "indecent" on radio or TV to the fines assessed by other federal agencies. It turns out that saying a naughty word would carry the same fine as illegally testing pesticides on humans. Or for the same $500,000, you could cause the wrongful death of an elderly nursing home patient, create a dangerous mishap at a nuclear reactor, and still have $110,000 left.