Let the Devil Wear Black (1999) -- Something is rotten in the State of California, and what it is is this abysmal remake of Hamlet. It is set in LA county, California. Randall Batinkoff plays Hamlet. His father has died of an apparent heart attack. His uncle almost immediately takes control of the family business, and announces his engagement to Batinkoff's mother, Jacqueline Bisset. A ghost talks to him in a bar crapper, telling him his father was murdered. Mary Louise Parker shows her breasts while talking on the phone (she is the Ophelia, who is going insane). There is also an unknown stripper played by Brooke Taylor. Batinkoff must solve the murder and avenge his father.

This one is very forgettable, and, judging by the number of reviews on line, most people just didn't bother seeing it. IMDb readers have it at 5.1 of 10. The acting was wooden, the story contrived, the pace all wrong, and most of the film is in partial darkness. This is a D.

The Stud (1978):

"I can review that film in two notes, Wink":

Joan Collins.

Chronologically, this is the prequel to the cinema classic The Bitch, and while that other Collins film is rated a bitchy 2.6 at IMDb, this one is rated a studly 2.8.

There are two reasons why this film is slightly better than The Bitch:

1) The story has no merit, but unlike The Bitch, this film is comprehensibly edited. Collins is the decadent wife of a rich, boring businessman. She chooses a handsome young man to be her personal stud. She trains him to behave in society, and mainly to fuck and suck, and she supports him in lavish style. In return for her largesse, she expects him to service her 24/7. Stud-boy is kind of tired of this life, in fact he's downright miserable, so he is trying to figure out how to get out of the arrangement. {SPOILERS} Collins's husband figures out what is going on, cuts Collins off penniless, and sends some thugs to beat the snot out of Stud-boy {END SPOILERS} I guess the point is that he gets beat up for something he was being forced to do anyway. That is supposed to be all ironic and all, but if you think about it, he endured one beating, and was then free of Joan Collins for a lifetime. Well worth it, in my opinion.

2) This film uses real disco hits instead of songs that sound like songs from the era. The sound track of The Stud is pretty much Disco's Greatest Hits. I don't know your opinion of disco music, but I figure no matter what you think of it, good, famous disco is better than bad, obscure faux disco.

• Joan Collins (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8)
• Emma Jacobs (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6)
• Sue Lloyd
• the usual blonde lesbo chicks who are in the swimming pool in all Joan Collins movies
• an incredibly beautiful red head. Her character was named "Felicity". (1, 2) None of the online resources on celeb nudity mention her topless scene in this film. The Bare Facts does not mention her either. Apparently her completely irrelevant scene, which takes place in the first couple minutes of the film, has been cut from some prints. And yet she is, by far, the best looking woman in the cast.
• Minah Bird. (1, 2, 3, 4) Also a very attractive woman.

OTHER CRAP:

• Zug.com sent a letter to each of the 100 U.S. Senators asking for their favorite joke. They pretended to be a 10 year old boy. Here are their results.
• Arizona Senate approves 80 mph speed limit, forbids troopers to pull over drivers for seat belt violations. "I'm perplexed at the Legislature. They are essentially saying 'no' to stronger seat belt laws and saying 'yes' to driving faster," says Michael Frias, deputy director of the Governor's Office of Highway Safety.
• "I have a 231 year old pussy". Interestingly, the article is not written by Cher.
• In Court with Courtney: "At another point she said to her attorney, 'You're fired.' 'Miss Love, you're not doing yourself any favors,' Superior Court Judge Elden Fox said. 'Rehired,' Love said."
• Panoramic color photo taken on Mars. Mars is amazingly like Texas. Except that it probably has a better record of leadership.
• It's Bibleman! Woe be unto you if you challenge the first hardcore Christian superhero!!!
• Jason Rivera reviews the latest WWE "singing wrestlers" album. Nasty, cutting-edge, stuff, as you'd expect from the Riv man.
• There are only about 400-500 Sumatran Tigers left in the world. Whew, thank God. I thought we'd never get rid of them. Now if only the same hunters would start tracking down rats, we'd be sittin' pretty.
• Kid Rock Makes Jokes, Prince Makes Peace, Pete Rose is absent, at Rock Hall of Fame ceremony.
• Chris Rock the Funniest Person in America? Huh?
• The Church of the Apathetic Agnostic - "We don't know - and we don't care"
• Blowjob Planet - The only blowjob counter in the World
• Jo Blo discusses Kevin Smith's Playboy interview: "'Jay and Silent Bob are dead for now. But I always told Mewes that if he could get clean and sober I would think about doing another film with them.'"
• Passion star Jim Caviezel meets with the Pope. And the pope is all "oh, thank you, Lord, for allowing me to see the second coming before I die", and Cavaziel is all "whoa, dude, I'm not a God, I just play one on TV", and the Pope is all ballistic in Latin or Polish or something ... maybe ya hadda be dere.
• FreakingNews.com asks their Photoshop wizards to "Dress up politicians/celebrities for St. Patrick's day!"
• The Daily Show interviews George Carlin.
• The Daily Show reports on the South Korean impeachment process and the recent elections in Spain and Russia.
• Great film clip from Face the Nation. Rumsfeld says "nobody in the administration ever used the term 'immediate threat'" when referring to Iraq. . He claims it just sprung up as folklore. The interviewer then happens to have available an exact Rumsfeld quote from September 19, 2002, “No terrorist state poses a greater or more immediate threat to the security of our people and the stability of our world than the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq.” BUSTED! The fun is watching Rumsfeld's cornered, stammering reaction.
• Starsky and Hutch reviewed by The Filthy Critic
• The Naked Secretary and the copy machine.
• Teacher Removed Over Topless Photo From Super Bowl Party. Her principal, the superintendent, and the school board members all received anonymous e-mails with pictures attached, pictures of her with her top raised.
• Student arrested for wearing his baseball cap sideways. It must be great to live in a community where police officers have the time to arrest people based on their hat preferences. I wonder how many officers they have in that community.
• Bush administration accused of manufacturing the news.
• Duct tape bikini contest.
• Quebec films dominate nominations for the 24th annual Genie Awards
• The Kama Sutra carved in coconuts. Just something the professor thought up after accidentally spying Ginger in the shower.
• The History of the Blowjob
• An excerpt from Guts, the scandalous new story from the man who wrote Fight Club.
• First trailer for Coffee and Cigarettes. Jim Jarmusch's ensemble comedy is a series of vignettes, all revolving around discussions held over coffee and cigarettes. Starring a diverse cast, including Bill Murray, Steve Buscemi, Tom Waits, Cate Blanchett, and others, the film has been in production since the 1980s and is in black and white. Topics of conversation include Nicola Tesla, alternative medicine, Paris, the movie industry, and more.
• SoCal city considers banning all items made with dangerous dihydrogen monoxide. Dihydrogen monoxide is h2o - better known as water.
• Jessica Simpson to the Secretary of the Interior: "You've done a nice job decorating the White House." I always wondered what the "Interior" was!
• The new Spanish prime minister is Mr Bean
• Lederhosen boycott threatens Oktoberfest. Amazingly, this is NOT from Weekly World News.
• The Ukulele Hall of Fame. A bunch of Hawaiian guys and Arthur Godfrey! Pete Rose has been banned for betting on banjos.
• Famous album covers re-created with LEGOS
• The tournament of Charlotte Babes - they need your vote.
• 'Raymond' Star 'Almost Sure' Show Will Return, given his flop as a movie star.
• Ben Affleck has ruled out the possibility of ever starring in a sequel to his 2003 hit Daredevil, because he doesn't want to do any more action movies! Instead, he plans to do Swedish art movies about people dying of cancer, and documentaries about crop failure.
• Variety reports that Columbia Pictures screened 12 minutes of Spider-Man 2 footage for the first time in Tokyo on Monday, with star Tobey Maguire in attendance
• First review of Hellboy: He loved it. "This is the first must-see geek movie of 2004."
• Settlement reached, Terrell Owens to Eagles
• A four gig hard drive the size of a postage stamp
• Roddy Piper and Ginger from Gilligan's Island, together at last. Klinger, Sulu, and Dr Zhivago willl also be joining them.
• Shakespeare's will is available on the web. I checked. He didn't leave me anything. Not even one of his fiberglass fishing poles.
• Elisabeth Shue has sex 44 times a day. No wonder she hasn't made any movies lately.
• Four free short videos from SPICE UNCENSORED! (Material too hot for Spice TV)
• Terri Harrison was The Playmate of the Month in October 2002. Here is her free, nude Playmate Gallery Courtesy of PlayboyPlus.com!
• Actor Charlie Sheen, the star of the CBS sitcom "Two and a Half Men", and his wife Denis Richards are the proud parents of baby girl Sam Sheen.
• Reflections on The Streak and other baseball arcana. Given his level of hitting performance in 1941, how likely was DiMaggio to hit in 56 consecutive games? Is DiMaggio’s streak the least likely streak of 30 games or longer? How likely were the others? Which types of batting characteristics are most conducive to hitting in streaks? Is Benito Santago really a better candidate for a hitting streak than Ted Williams? Which modern players are most likely to produce hit streaks? Is there any reasonable likelihood that the DiMaggio streak will be broken?
• FallonFey.com has now loaded the Weekend Update from 3-13-04
• GALLUP: Voters Prefer Kerry on the Economy, Bush on Terrorism, consider the economy more important. The arranging of priorities is the reason Kerry leads the polls now. This is interesting. Consider that terrorism in Spain helped the opposition get elected, but it would work the opposite way in America. The more visible is terrorism, the more likely that Bush will be elected, since American voters find him overwhelmingly better to deal with that. On the other hand, if terrorism is far in the back of people's minds, voters will choose based on the economy, and they find President Bush overwhelmingly less competent to handle that. Therefore, al-Qaeda is now essentially working on the "Committeee to Re-elect Bush/Cheney" - the more trouble they cause, the more likely is Bush to get elected. It's weird how the world works sometimes.
• All the covers of MET-ART.COM
• Reverend Al calls it quits. Kucinich is the only hold-out.
• Nudity At Bikini Party Leads To Arrests In Daytona
• Months ago, al-Qaeda planned: Bombs 'to split Spain from allies' . "We think the Spanish government will not stand more than two blows, or three at the most, before it will be forced to withdraw because of the public pressure on it," the al Qaeda document says. If its forces remain after these blows, the victory of the Socialist Party will be almost guaranteed -- and the withdrawal of Spanish forces will be on its campaign manifesto."
• This is a series created a while back by Trey Parker and Matt Stone for Shockwave. It was never used, for reasons which will soon become apparent.
• Detroit Tigers exempted from steroid ban. In fact, to restore competitive balance, the Tigers are actually being forced to take steroids.

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 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.

Words from Scoop.

.avi's from Shiloh.

.wmv files made by Scoop from Shiloh's .avi's.

Follow-up:

• Since Tuna is featuring If These Walls ... 2, here's Stone and Degeneres in motion. (.avi version, .wmv version)

Beyond the Valley of the Dolls:

• This is a semi-famous grade-b Russ Meyer flick written by none other than Roger Ebert! That alone should cancel out his Pulitzer Prize when he arrives at Heaven's Gate. Here's a playmate from the 60s, Dolly Read.(.avi version, .wmv version)

• Erica Gavin and a mammoth-chested Playmate from the 60s, Cynthia Myers (.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.

First up today....

Treasure Hunt (2003) is a Jim Wynorski DTV that combines the worst elements of Blair Witch and Survivor. People on an island? Yes, yes, seen that one before. Cinema verite style, with shakey-ass camera? Sure, sure, that one's been done. Killer loose and it turns out to be the first person supposedly killed, whose body disappears in ways mysterious? Oldest plot device in the world. Nothing new under the sun.

And no one would care if ol' JW had gone out and gotten him a bunch of babes to prance around nekkid. What ol' Jim did, however, was go out and get himself a bunch of women who were babes a way long time ago. We are talking Sam Phillips, Tane McClure and Gail Harris. Most mercifully, he keeps there clothes on. Well, not Gail. She shows her bum and its looking just fine, thank you. But the other two do stayed covered, for which I am most grateful.

Jim did grab himself a few young babes. Shea Smith, Melissa Brasella (who looks terrific) and Glori-Anne Gilbert. Only Glori-Anne takes off her top, but then Jim shoots those scenes by the light of a bonfire or puts the camera so close to the action that he just about jams it up her nose. And when you tack on the facts that a) the camera is always moving, sweeping from one side to the next, jittering as if Michael J Fox were trying to hold it still; b) the digital compression is so bad that remnants of one frame remain as the next comes up, well what you get with closeups is something almost impossible to capture.

But then in one scene, the camera stops moving, the lighting is perfect and Glori-Anne starts to remove her bikini and I'm thinking, well maybe this will make up for all the other painful crap I've had to watch... but noooooo. The camera cuts away before you get to see any goodies. What the hell? You already got her topless twice before, Jim you stupid fuck, why go modest on us now? I could have pulled his pea brain out through his nose at that point.

A couple of things came to mind as I watched this atrocity unfold:

1) There is a phrase in Spanish that translates as "limp dick" but carries with it much more baggage than any English phraseology might. That's Jim Wynorski. He's written, produced and directed 50 movies and rather than getting better or showing any sign of progress in his craft over time, he has gotten measurably worse. I'd much rather watch Deathstalker II than anything he's done this century.

2) Had a roommate who despised the dorm's RA. A man of few words, the roomie once said of the RA that "he could fuck up a wet dream." After watching Treasure Hunt, I understand what that means.

3) In American Wedding, as Stifler sits listening to Nikki Schieler's character (the stripper cop) talk of her past and her dreams and finally blurts out, "I don't care. All I want you to do is dance." That's the way I felt as I sat and watched the heads of some very uninteresting people speak terribly uninteresting lines into a shakey camera. I didn't care. All I wanted was for the babes to dance.

I like Glori-Anne Gilbert. She's cute as the dickens, blessed with a most exuberant body and he gets nekkid a lot. I have to like her, since I have capped her in three movies, each of which sits below the IMDb Mendoza line (under 2.0), one of which (Dream Witch) is considered by many to be as bad as Manos, the Hands of Fate. Understand, then, Treasure Hunt is even worse. Avoid at all costs.

The read-out on the caps

• Gail Harris, Bum and pokies

  Glori-Anne Gilbert:

• Topless by fire light
• Topless in daylight
• Topless in a pond
• Not topless because...???

• Mary Ann Schmidt Bikini, 8 sizes too small

• Melissa Brasella Cleavage. Lovely Woman

Next up...another batch o' paparazzi pics.

• Nell McAndrew, the UK babe and former Lara Croft model caught topless (links 1 and 2). (1, 2, 3)

• Nicole Kidman

• Ophélie Winter, the gorgeous French singer and actress caught topless at the beach.

• Padma Lakshmi, the model, actress, cookbook author and soon to be Mrs. Salman Rushdie. Here we see her in a semi-see-thru dress.

• Pam Anderson

• Paula Devicq, pokies

• Rene Russo, pokies

"Me Without You"
The trials and tribulations of two best friends growing up near London. Has it been done a trillion times before? You betcha! Is this version better than the rest? Probably not.

Even so, performances by Michelle Williams and Anna Friel in this 2001 production make it a watchable movie, and while the typical growing-up problems of sex and drugs provide no new plot elements, it certainly isn't a bad movie.....just not a great one.

• Anna Friel, topless
• Michelle Williams also topless.

MARTHA STEWART RESIGNS
Create Better Excuses - Monday, Martha Stewart announced that she has resigned as a director and Chief Creative Officer of her own media company, for which she still owns the controlling share. The board announced that they had created a new position for her, "Founding Editorial Director," which will let her use her unique creative talents to continue to make a contribution to the business.