In Harm's Way (1965) is an Otto Preminger film staring John Wayne, with Kirk Douglas, Patricia Neal, Paula Prentiss, Jill Haworth, Dana Andrews, Burgess Meredith, Franchot Tone, Slim Pickins, James Mitchum, George Kennedy, Barbara Bouchet, Larry Hagman, Carroll O'Connor and Henry Fonda. The film opens the evening of Decenmer 6, 1941, at a dance in the officer's club at Pearl harbor. We meet a few of the characters, most notably Barbara Bouchet, whose husband is aboard ship. She is a party girl, dances seductively, then leaves with another officer. The two go to the beach, she skinnydips, cut to them waking up under a blanket on the beach, and all the Zeros in the world descending on them. Wayne is the commander of a battle wagon, and one of the few to get his ship out of the harbor to relative safety, only to be hit by a torpedo.

His arm is broken, but, more importantly, he deviated from standard procedure, and is made to ride a desk. We meet his son whom he has not seen since he was a child and Wayne divorced. The son is now a Jr. officer, but, raised by his wealthy mother, is a snob and a politician, wanting to ride out the war as a journalist, and staff to a congressman turned officer. The son is dating Jill Haworth, a young nurse, but his intentions are anything but honorable. Wayne meets her roommate, Patricia Neal, and they start a romance. For the rest of the film, Wayne struggles to get a shipboard command back, and then win WW II by himself.

The story, based on the novel Harm's Way by James Basset, is far more complicated than that, and completely fills the 2 hour and 45 minute running time. The entire film was shot on location, and battle scenes were filmed aboard Naval vessels. Bouchet shows most of her breasts in the skinneydipping scene, and Jill Haworth has good see-through action just before she is raped. Despite nudity, strong sexuality, war violence and a rape, this was rated PG.

IMDb readers have this at 7.0. It was nominated for an Oscar for Black and White cinematography, and Patricia Neal won a best foreign actress BAFTA. The complex plot was very much in line with other WW II films, and Preminger's trademark epic scope was very much in evidence. While this was a late entry into the WW II war hero genre, it was a good one. For me, the strength of the film was in developing characters and relationships making it much more than an historical reenactment. This is a C+.

Two clips

• This is a really rare one. I don't even know how to get a copy of this. A short clip of Nastassja Kinski in "Tatort - Reifezeugnis"

• Here's one for Mandy Moore fans. No nudity, but some sexy underwear in Try Seventeen

Other Crap:

• Vida Guerra will bring her magnificent behind to the April issue of FHM
• WWE diva Christy Hemme will appear nude in the April Playboy
• Marlon Brando to play Jor-El in Superman Returns. With the possible exception of Elvis, Brando is the first guy I can recall to use death as a positive career move.
• About 24,000 clips from The Upside of Anger. In a rare disturbance of the time-space continuum, these clips are cumulatively longer than the actual movie. This is the romantic coot-comedy with Coster and Joan Allen. You think it's impressive that Brando is doing scenes after his own death? Let's see him drag his fat decaying ass into a romantic comedy like Costner.
• IN FINAL BROADCAST, RATHER REVEALS THAT THE FREQUENCY IS 102.7, closes the book on this decades-long mystery.
• The South Park tribute site has now made available: Mr Garrison's Fancy New Vagina. (Garrison had a sex change)
• Teen Sends Student Semen-Frosted Brownies. Amazing that the police would care about that when they eat so often at McDonald's and every Big Mac they order gets an extra helping of ... um ... secret sauce.
• The Weekend Warrior's predictions for this coming weekend. He expects Robots to open with a monstrous $50 million, Hostage to ease into a mediocre fourth place, and Mel Gibson to make even more money off Jesus Chainsaw Lite.
• This week's movies: Robots - 67% positive reviews.
• This week's films: Hostage - 31% positive reviews. A few people think it's a decent popcorn flick, but most say Hostage sticks to the formula of dramatic swelling music, slow motion action, cliches, Bruce Willis squints, and improbable plot twists.
• Incredible comparison of Sin City graphic novel to movie stills.
• Jeff Gannon's entry in Wikipedia. Somebody went batshit with this research.
• Roger Ebert gets a record amount of mail about his pan of Mad Black Woman. "I have received more e-mails than about any review I have ever written, outnumbering Fahrenheit 9/11 and Passion of the Christ put together. And they were not all the same message, generated by some web site or its followers. Each manifestly came from an individual reader who felt moved to write."
• If you can, be sure to stop in Washington State this week for your complimentary buggering. State official declares: "It's anal sex week."
• Daily Show: As Syria is set to pull out of Lebanon, demonstrations range from extreme to kissable.
• Jon Stewart talks about his mom: "As Martha Stewart is released, take a listen to the ambient sound of reporters in their natural habitat."
• Martha on parole? Stephen Colbert talks to another ex-con about the uncertain future Martha Stewart faces.
• Naked Woman rides down a steep hill on a bike - and YOU decide what she will hit. I liked "industrial fan", but "Whoopie Goldberg" was also good.
• 'The Da Vinci Code's' amazing success. First printing 85,000. Total sales to date: 25 million copies. Brown's previously unknown "Angels and Demons", published in 2000, now has eight million copies in print!
• Here is the trailer for the French film Look at Me.
  • "This is the story of Lolita Cassard, a young woman of twenty years who has it in for the entire world because she doesn't look like the girls in glossy magazines, who doesn't look a thing like her young mother-in-law, and who would so much like to feel beautiful, at least in her father's eyes, if only her father's eyes could find her. But this is also the story of a man named Etienne Cassard, who doesn't see other people much at all because he's busy looking at himself, feeling older, a man who very likely wanted for love himself, who struggled long and hard to find his place in the world. This is the story of writer named Pierre Miller, who's lost faith, who doubts he'll ever meet with success, who meets with success and who meets Etienne Cassard. This is the story of a singing teacher, Sylvia Miller, who believes in her husband, at least in his talent, but who has doubts about her own and that of her pupil, Lolita - until she realizes she's the daughter of Etienne Cassard, the author she admires so much. This is the story of human beings who know exactly what they'd do if they were somebody else, but can't handle being themselves very well, who are very simply struggling to find out who they are."
• Here is the trailer for Face: "Set in Queens in both the '70s and the '90s, 'Face' is the coming of age story of two women caught between the conflicting cultures of their traditional Asian heritage and the surrounding influence of urban life."
• Bruce Willis has revealed he threatens to kill his teenage daughter's boyfriends. So, let me see. They can either believe he is kidding, or believe they are about to date a girl who carries the DNA of a psychopath. It would have been interesting if I had been the right age to date Rumer because when I was 16, I would often beat the living shit out of my date's father with my car antenna. You know, just to establish who was truly in control.
• Charlie Sheen: "I did not cheat on my wife. The reason for our separation is a private matter between the two of us." She files for divorce while six months pregnant; he never cheated on her ... makes you wonder what the hell happened with those two? I believe him, and I agree that their pain is not something the public has a right to know about, but I think he'd be better off just letting us think he cheated on her. Otherwise we'd imagine some really demented stuff. I mean, what is the deal? Did he make her wear thick-rimmed glasses and pretend to be Dave Garroway in bed? Or did he ... wait, I think I'll just imagine in private as I think about demented things being done to Denise Richards
• Scotty Evil creates a comic book - and it sounds like a pretty cool idea.
• Weekly World News: "WORLDWIDE TOILET PAPER SHORTAGE LOOMS "
• Conan previews the next series of "State Quarters"
• U.S. FORCES IN AFGHANISTAN FIND DETAILED DIAGRAMS OF RUSSELL CROWE. Bush now calls the outspoken actor the main front in the war on terror.
  • Mr. Bush said he was instructing his military commanders in Iraq to transfer five thousand troops currently stationed in Basra to Mr. Crowe’s beach house north of Sydney. “We will fight the terrorists at Russell Crowe’s beach house so we do not have to fight them here,” Mr. Bush said.
  • But moments after Mr. Bush’s speech, al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden issued a new statement saying that the information on the laptop was no longer valid: “It is true that Russell Crowe was on our list of targets when ‘A Beautiful Mind’ came out, but after ‘Master and Commander’ we took him off.”
• Everything that you could possibly want to know about the first episode of the upcoming "Clone Wars" series. The submitter wrote, "This cartoon version of Star Wars Episode 2.5 is far better than the live action movies. I would bet that it will be even better than Episode III."
• Muscle-bound thespians play the part. Page 3 pays tribute to the 10 most memorable -- and memorably bad -- performances by athletes.
  • Actually, they missed the best of all. Alex Karras (who eventually became a good professional actor) certainly met the criterion of "memorable" in his film debut as Mongo in Blazing Saddles. Has everyone forgotten the brilliant moment when he punched the horse?
  • Karras, by the way, was so good in college that he almost won the Heisman trophy - as an interior lineman! He finished second in the balloting to John David Crow. Second place is the closest the Heisman has ever come to awarding the statue to a lineman.
  • Only one defensive player has ever won - Charles Woodson, who was impressive enough to take the Heisman from no less a name than Payton Manning his ownself, despite the fact that it was Manning's senior year and Woodson was only a junior at the time.
  • The year that Karras finished second, an OFFENSIVE lineman finished fourth.
  • How old is Vinny Testaverde? The year he won the Heisman, one of the guys he beat out was The Boz!
  • Here is the 1957 Heisman balloting. (The Heisman people have a great website. I got distracted there for a long time!)
• MLB Preseason rankings. The submitter also wanted to point out that if you live in Florida and want to see your favorite team play, wait until your team comes to Tampa to play the Rays, and you can get incredible seats! Tampa has great weather, a pleasant park, and an empty stadium. In fact, if you're under 60, the Rays might let you suit up and pitch a few innings.
• The Million Dollar Babe in a bikini. Swank has a seriously healthy and fit body on 'er.
• NBAE turns actors into serious hoopsters.
• Ratherisms - Dan Rather Quotes From Election Night
• GALLUP: Rather leaves with credibility down.
  • In May of 2002, a survey found no difference between the credibility of Brokaw, Rather, and Jennings. All three scored approximately 20% in "do not believe what person says." All three network anchors have lost credibility since then, but Jennings and Brian Williams are still in the 20s on that measure. Rather has skied to 44!!
• Weekly World News: "DOCS PUT COMPUTER PORT IN MAN'S BRAIN". Now he's a genius ... who loads software directly into his head!
• Governor Joe Piscopo??
• The British celebrate their most important holiday, National Frog Day. Unbeknownst to me, Britain has developed critically low frog populations. OK, I have to admit I don't really care about that, and I don't even have a decent joke for this section . I just really wanted to use the word "unbeknownst" once in my life.
• Claim: Some new Wisconsin quarters contain a printing error that makes them especially valuable. [[[---]]] Status: True.
• Claim: An unsuccessful contestant on The Contender committed suicide after being bumped from the show [[[---]]] Status: True.
• First Look at Doom, starring The Rock

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.

Of the Best Actress Winners who showed nudity in their award winning roles, who gave the best nude performance? I think I've included every actress to show Oscar some skin. If I missed anyone, let me know.

There are a couple on the list that push the definition of nudity, (Hunt's scenes were see-thru and partial, MacLaine's nudity was very brief, and Christie's was rear only) but it's my poll, so ppphhhtttt :-p

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?

Best All Time Television Comedy

Email Scoopy Jr. with nominees, comments or suggestions.

Check out the 10/08/04 and 10/09/04 updates in the Back Issues for Scoop's comments about the series and even more pics.

• Laura Albert. Topless in #1. Tied to the bed with whip cream on her breasts in #2. (1, 2)

• Susan Ashley, stripping off her shirt. Some 30-somethings may remember her as one of the former hostesses of the MTV game show "Remote Control".

• Carolyn Lowery, very nice topless in scenes from the episode "And Your Little Dog, Too". (1, 2)

• Cherie Michan shows off her big'uns after losing a hand during a game of strip poker. (1, 2, 3)

• Paula Trickey topless in bed in scenes from the episode "Futile Attraction". You may remember her as one of the stars of late 90's series "Pacific Blue".

• Also from the "Futile Attraction" episode, Connie Woods gets topless and fulfills a cheerleader fantasy at the same time.

• Maya Tai Dorsey, topless and baring a little bum in a sex scene. (1, 2)

• Patrice Fisher shows toplessness and thong views while getting up from the massage table. (1, 2)

"CONVERTING" MARCIA CROSS
Not That Desperate - "Desperate Housewives" star Marcia Cross says that ever since a phony rumor she's a lesbian hit the Internet, men have been trying to "convert" her. She told the New York Post that at a recent Hollywood party, a man came up and whispered, "I heard you were gay. Let's get a room and prove that wrong." She replied, "Sorry, I'd much rather be gay than sleep with you just to prove I wasn't."