In The Cut (2003)

In The Cut is less-than-so-so thriller, but is pretty effective as a dark character study. It's most noteworthy for featuring the erotic highlights of Meg Ryan's career. Notes at the Movie House.

I recently took a second look at it based on some HDTV clips that were in Usenet. Here's a short zipped .wmv version of some key nudity.

And here are three new captures of the Megstress

Other Crap:

"British Bars Selling Sex Toys in Machines" 

The Smoking Gun: "Mary J. Blige is one demanding diva " 

Cool bookmark: #1 song on any date in history since 1940

• I never heard of the song from the day I was born or my first birthday, but I remember every one from my second birthday onward.

An episode of America's Top Model that you may have missed 

"All-Electronic Aibo Team a Hit With Iditarod Fans"

• My one experience with the Iditerod was a major failure. I had my sled pulled by cats. It was a mess, because cats are small and you need like six hundred of 'em to pull a sled. I did seem impressive there for a while, at the starting line, when I barked "On, Puff. On you tabbies." Unfortunately, they all started running in different directions, most of them pursued by dogs from the other sled teams.

Jon Stewart Hosts Hilarious Fake Oscar Ceremony

• "Some of the biggest names in the film industry were punk'd on Sunday night when they showed up for what they believed to be the 78th Annual Academy Awards Ceremony. Instead, plastic 'Oscars' were handed out at random during a three-hour comedy show hosted by the Daily Show's Jon Stewart. 'You got me!' exclaimed actress Rachel Weisz at the fake after-party, where she finally learned that her award was hollow and filled with sand. Weisz appeared in a gardening-themed thriller that earned a disappointing $33.6 million at the box office--over $5 million less than The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl in 3D. The sham Best Picture ceremony honored an obscure slate of nominees, the most profitable being a gay western that was the twenty-sixth highest grossing movie of 2005. Also supposedly in the running were a film about an anti-terror assassin (#63 at the box office), a documentary about some old-time newscasters (#90 at the box office), and a slow-paced film about a writer conducting interviews for his true-crime novel (#97 at the box office)."

Cheney confesses to having assassinated both Kennedys 

Arabs Start Beheadings at US Ports, Seize Carnival Cruise Lines 

Fashion Police - Red Carpet Patrol with Melissa Rivers and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn  

Business news: Cox Merges With Ucker 

Conan O'Brien's visit to a Finnish sauna 

Four more clips of Malkovich and Depp in The Libertine 

The trailer for BLACKBALLED: THE BOBBY DUKES STORY

• Tries to do for paintball what Dodgeball does for dodgeball. Stars some of the Daily Show regulars

The British trailer for Confetti (which includes nudity)

• Official blurb:
• A sharp and affectionate comedy featuring an ensemble of UK comedic talents, "Confetti" follows three couples as they duke it out to win a bridal magazine contest for "Most Original Wedding of the Year." The talented cast -- which includes Martin Freeman ("The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy," "Love Actually," "The Office"), Jessica Stevenson ("Shaun of the Dead," "Spaced," "The Royle Family"), Stephen Mangan ("Green Wing"), Felicity Montagu ("I'm Alan Partridge"), award-winning comedian Jimmy Carr in his first screen performance and Alison Steadman ("Topsy-Turvy," "Life is Sweet") -- was afforded total creative freedom within the confines of a carefully crafted story frame. To prepare, the cast took part in weeks of intense workshops where they began the process of developing and inhabiting their unique roles.

 "Scenes" from The Zodiac, which is based on the eponymous murderer. 

Slither **uncensored** featurette

• "Slither" is an edgy blend of heart-stopping terror, wry humor and surprising humanity from genre-bending screenwriter James Gunn, whose "Dawn of the Dead" became one of 2004's most surprising hits.

The international trailer for The Benchwarmers

• They're going to release a David Spade baseball movie internationally?

The French trailer for Basic Instinct 2 

An international trailer for Click, Adam Sandler's new high-concept comedy which co-stars Walken at his weirdest. 

The trailer for A Prairie Home Companion

• "A Prairie Home Companion is a fictionalized account of Garrison Keillor's award-winning show, which currently runs on more than 558 public radio stations. The film follows the show's cast of characters preparing for the final live broadcast on the eve of being shut down after 30 years. As passions erupt, secrets emerge and a mysterious stranger lurks in the shadows, the vigilant stage manager must hold it all together since the show must go on."
• Maybe not as bad as it looks in the trailer. Directed by Robert Altman. One of the best casts ever assembled.

The trailer for Mission: Impossible III 

Here's the trailer for the new X-MEN movie, THE LAST STAND

Whatever happened to colored toilet paper? (NOTE: "Scott still makes TP in beige, blue and pink, but it can be hard to find.") 

Streisand says Bush runs a "currupt dictatoriship."

• The funniest part of it: I checked Streisand's blog, and she did finally correct it, but altered only the errors which Drudge cited specifically, leaving numberless other grammatical and spelling errors!
• See if you can count the errors in this sentence alone: "Our congress, who is supposed to serve as the checks and balances of the executive branch of government, has completely lost their voice." Here's another classic: "The arrogance of this C student who maligns his opponents’ credibility by calling them flip floppers, is the biggest flip flopper himself!"
• One of Streisand's arguments is that Bush is unfit to make good decisions because he was a C student!

Keith Olbermann's oddball plays of the month 

And the Oscar for "best see-through dress" goes to: Kate Bosworth 

Behind the scenes - The Academy Awards show you never saw 

VIDEO: The shower scene in Porky's 

The filmed intro to last night's Academy Awards show. 

Police called to fight over toilet paper

• Hey, it was the rare 3-ply!
• This is a real story, and the following a genuine quote from it. Somebody send this to Tarantino for Kill Bill 3.
• "The maids at the Siesta Motor Lodge in North Charleston armed themselves with a plunger and mop after accusing each other of taking toilet paper from each other's cleaning carts"

Japanese researchers extract vanillin from bull shit, thus explaining the unlikely contract between Ben & Jerry's and Bill O'Reilly 

"FOREIGN AFFAIRS MAGAZINE REFUSES TO PULL JESSICA ALBA COVER" Scientific American is considering hardlining as well. 

HOLLYWOOD PROVES IT'S NOT RACIST

• "Most observers had expected that Hollywood would demonstrate it's not homophobic by giving its top honor to Brokeback Mountain. But in the end, industry voters felt it was more imperative to prove they are not prejudiced against non-whites than non-heterosexuals."

Under Pressure from National Institute of Mental Health: NCAA RENAMES MARCH MADNESS -"MARCH BIPOLAR DISORDER" 

"The Academy Awards were down 10 percent from last year's ceremony, based on preliminary Nielsen Media Research ratings from the nation's 55 biggest markets."

• No surprise there. The box office was down about the same amount from the previous year, and the biggest box office films weren't even nominated for any major awards.
• The year can be summed up by the fact that no film earned more Academy Awards than Memoirs of a Geisha, which received 65% negative reviews, and grossed less than $60 million.

MovieJuice! takes a satirical look at 16 Blocks 

BBC NEWS looks at America's Oscar show, says it sucked worse than the nominated films. 

Movie Reviews:

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

Kristin Novak (and others)

Factotum (2005)

Lili Taylor

Marisa Tomei

Emily Hynnek

Last night, in one of the biggest Oscar upsets ever, the heavily-favored gay cowboy movie "Brokeback Mountain" lost the Best Picture Oscar to "Crash." 

* The voters thought "Crash" was also about gay people because they heard someone in it got rear-ended

*  Once again, the "Brokeback" guys got the shaft in the end

*Ironically, they never expected "Crash" to come in through the back door

* "Brokeback Mountain" is about two handsome men who hide their homosexuality with sham marriages to women, and people in Hollywood
just couldn't relate to that. 
 
  

George Clooney said he's glad Hollywood is "out of touch" with America because Hollywood leads America on important issues, like giving a Best Supporting Actress Oscar to Hattie McDaniel in 1939.

* And a Best Actress Oscar to Halle Berry, just 62 years later!  A
year after Selma, Alabama, elected its first black mayor. 

 

PHOTO OF THE DAY!  A water buffalo gets too close to President Bush's crotch