What was the world's first porno?

A recap of Jon Stewart's Oscar material

Film Jerk's Early Report for March 5

• "This week's Early Report covers the 59 known new movies opening in theatres or expanding their runs between Thursday March 8 and Friday March 31"

Nominees and Winners | 78th Annual Academy Awards

• The night went as I expected until the very last moment when there was a Hollywood-style surprise ending - Brokeback lost to Crash for Best Picture.
• Will this be remembered as the worst year in the history of Cinema? Everyone I talk to says "I like to go to movies on weekends, but I couldn't find anything to go to last year." When I ask people the best film of last year, these Oscar nominees never come up. People most often mention Cinderella Man or Batman Begins or Sin City or The 40 Year Old Virgin, but nobody has any great passion for any film in the past year except that Penguin documentary, which people genuinely loved.
• I suppose it tells you that the right-wing pundits are actually right about one thing - Hollywood is completely out of touch with the country. In a year which many people consider the worst ever and in which the box office plunged, the people at the Oscars were patting each other's backs about what a lovely year it was. Oh, well. What could they say? Let's face it, not even Jon Stewart has big enough balls to say that the winners were the ones that didn't suck as bad as the others.

Dave Chapelle's Block Party - as reviewed by the James Joyce of film criticism, The Filthy Critic

The trailer for Fierce People, a film directed by Griffin Dunne.

• Contrasting the mores of high society with the blunt savagery of primitive tribes, Fierce People takes an inside look at the upper classes, examining the darkness that lurks beneath the surface of good manners. Sporting a biting wit, and featuring charismatic performances from Diane Lane and Donald Sutherland, this unflinching drama exposes the trappings of wealth and privilege, and their overwhelming power to both seduce and corrupt.

Borowitz: BIN LADEN TRIED TO WARN BUSH ABOUT KATRINA ... In Newly Released Teleconference, Madman Expressed Concern About Levees

• "Elsewhere, in an ominous sign that Iraq may be sliding into civil war, Ken Burns and his camera crew turned up in Baghdad today."

Clooney Wins Supporting Actor Oscar

• "George Clooney was wrong. Despite claiming earlier that he wouldn't win, Clooney took home the best supporting actor award Sunday for his performance as a veteran CIA operative in 'Syriana.'"

Weekend Box Office Results, March 3-5, 2006

• Oscar weekend is not normally a good movie-going weekend, but this weekend was a flat-out disaster. The top twelve films amassed only $84m, compared to $109m for the comparable group last year.
• The carry-vers performed as expected, but three major new releases bombed, finishing 30-60% below expectations
• The only bright news was the performance of Aquamarine, a tweener movie which received generally positive reviews, and exceeded modest predictions. That was not very bright news, since it was basically a case of a film with poor expectations and average results.
• Madea's Family Reunion held off all the newcomers to hold the #1 spot in "total gross", and it even held off Dave Chappelle to take the #1 spot in "average per theater." (Chappelle was expected to dominate this category completely.)
• Speaking of Chappelle, the prognosticators were just too enthusiastic about his concert film. If the forecasts had not been so high, we would now be saying "Wow, this little film managed to finish second in average gross per theater." Unfortunately, he had been expected to do far better. The Weekend Warrior predicted second place overall (actual finish seventh), and $11,900 per screen (actual $5,400). And he was the more conservative of our two forecasters!

Jack the Ripper (1976)

This is a Jess Franco film, but far from a typical slapdash Franco effort. In fact, it is a rather polished, if historically inaccurate account of Jack the Ripper. Of course Jack is a doctor, and rips the customary naked strumpets, but Franco added many plot points. Jack's problems were caused by his prostitute mother, for example, and this leads to the most graphic scene where our Jack uses his knife like a dildo. The Scotland Yard detective in charge of the case has issues of his own. He is very depressed that he is getting nowhere with the investigation, so his girlfriend puts on a strumpet outfit to act as a decoy - without bothering to tell anyone! Most surprisingly, Franco's version of the story has a happy ending!

The film looks good, and the photography is very restrained for a Franco effort, with only one psychedelic scene. Jack the Ripper is also well acted and the dubbing is adequate. Franco maintains a creepy atmosphere throughout and absolutely nailed down the "creepiness" factor when he cast Klaus Kinski, who gave a surprisingly restrained performance as Jack, very much in keeping with the screenplay.

IMDb readers say 5.3. 

It doesn't matter if you call this a Jack the Ripper genre, a Jess Franco film, or horror, this is a C by our standard - a competent genre film.

Josephine Chaplin (breasts)

Francine Custer (little big horns)

Esther Studer (full frontal)

Lena Romay (breasts and pubes)

Casey the Coed (2002) - day two

Tonight we have the images of Allysin Chaynes and Roxanne Hall. I assume that many of you don't spend a lot of time on hard core films, so here is a little background on the four ladies in this film (see the other images in yesterday's issue.)

Laurie Wallace is 30, and 5' 8". Her IMDb listing shows 44 credits going back to 1988, and she now has her own production company. According to her official web site,  she was a Phi Beta Kappa student majoring in German and Political Science, and graduated Summa Cum Laude from Loyola of Maryland. She has also won many awards for Scottish Highland Dancing.

Allysin Chaynes is 27 and a petite 5" even. Born in Romania, she has 164 credits dating back to 1997. At 32A-21-32, she was the slimmest woman in this film, and had a modest breast implant job. She works part time as a fitness trainer, and plans on becoming a nutritionist.

Monique Dane is 26 and 5' 9". She has 15 credits at IMDb beginning in 2002. She is Danish, and a natural 37D, sporting the largest breast in this film, and the only un-enhanced ones.

Roxanne Hall is now 29, and has an amazing 333 credits. She also stands 5' 9". She was born in the UK, and came to Hollywood as soon as she reached the minimum age necessary to appear in hard-core movies. Her first credit was in 1992. She would have been 16, so this information is questionable, but her adult career began in 1994. When a mandatory AIDS test in 1995 came back positive, she returned to the UK. Fortunately, the test was wrong, and she returned to Hollywood. She is happily married to male porn star John Decker.

IMDb lists the film, but has no opinion at all about it. It lacks plot, but makes up for that with good photography of top porn stars in good light. It is probably fortunate that they didn't ask much in the way of acting from them. This is a C.

Tuna

Allysin Chaynes

Roxanne Hall