The Big Town (1987) was covered by Scoopy recently, and I agree with everything he said. They had a good cast, interesting characters, great music, interesting interiors, great exterior locations, everything but a story. Had they devoted less time to winning crap rolls, and more to character development, it would have helped a lot, and some original plot device to create dramatic tension could have made this a very good film. As it is, it is entirely cliched start to finish.

Diane Lane shows breasts, and is also seen in pasties and a g-string doing a fan dance. Suzy Amis shows a very brief glimpse of her right nipple, and an unidentified stripper also is wearing only pasties and a g-string. The proper score is C-, as Scoopy said, but I suspect I enjoyed it ever so slightly more than he did, do to the atmosphere of the film.

OTHER CRAP:

• Wolfowitz remarks that bullfighting shows Spaniards are a brave people and they shouldn't run in the face of terrorism. Bullshitting also shows us webmasters to be a proud, brave people.
• Marcelo Mitnik, an Argentina native and UCLA graduate student, has won the inaugural Sidney Sheldon Writing Scholarship. OK, let's try to figure out why this is news. The scholarship is worth a princely $5,000 and Sidney Sheldon is the guy who wrote The Other Side of Midnight, and was the head writer on I Dream of Jeannie. Now THAT'S prestige! In other news, journalist Jayson Blair has been awarded the Other Crap Scholarship, which consists of the leftover pennies from the 7-Eleven "take one, leave one" jar.
• Here's the trailer for Shaolin Soccer. I don't know what it is about, but I have a decent guess.
• The ever-nutty FCC determines that "Blumpkins" are indecent.
• A very cool picture of the day. There is a canal in Arizona which runs due east-west. That means that the sun rises and sets directly on its line twice a year, on the vernal and autumnal equinox. Beautiful photo.
• Paris Hilton was hospitalized after being kicked in the stomach by a horse. She was being filmed ... riding the horse ... yeah, riding it. That's the ticket.
• Scarlett Johansson to play in Napoleon flick. The producer of the film is ... um ... Melanie Johannson. Scarlett Johansson will also star in 2004's A Love Song for Bobby Long, which is produced by ... er ... Melanie Johansson.
• The official merchandise Web site for President George W. Bush's re-election campaign sells clothing made in Burma, whose goods were banned by President Bush from the U.S. last year to punish its military dictatorship.
• Please, we beg of you. Join the fight against fake racism.
• Urinal Cake Supplier Gears Up for Spirited Presidential Election
• Quotes of the Year: the wit and wisdom of celebrities.
• WARNING: (Beagle.Q Virus): "Beagle.Q is a variant of the Beagle mass-mailing worm that affects only Microsoft NT or Windows-based systems. It does not replicate through the usual method of sending itself out as an e-mail attachment it replicates by sending out 'carrier' messages with spoofed return addresses, then exploiting a vulnerability in the Microsoft Outlook mail client to download itself from remote servers when recipients open those messages"
• What kid doesn't love the Poop Pals?
• Prosecutors finally dropped the child-porn charge against Pee-wee Herman
• Various clips from Richard Linklater's Before Sunset, the sequel to 1995's Before Sunrise, a romance starring Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy.
• Baseball: Should Larry Walker make it into the Hall of Fame?
• Ready.gov - From the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Terrorism forces us to make a choice. Don't be afraid, be ready ...
• A humorous overview of the Government site linked above.
• The new official Warner site for B A T M A N B E G I N S. Nothing there except a logo - but it's a very cool logo.
• Letterman Lands Janet Jackson Interview CBS announces 24 hour tape delay and urges congress to go to Defcon 3 and raise Terrorist Alert to Orange.
  
  
• 21-Month-Old toddler wins $100,000 Prize.
• A detailed survey of birds and butterflies in Britain shows a population decline of 54 percent to 71 percent, a finding that suggests the world may be undergoing another major extinction.
• Mastercard loses its suit against Ralph Nader.
• Vlade Divac - president of Serbia?
• Star Wars: The Musical
• Here's the long-awaited trailer for Van Helsing . Pretty cool except for the outrageous accents.
• The sex and nudity report on Taking Lives
• The sex and nudity report from Dawn of the Dead
• Courtney Love bares her boob in burger bar. OK, I know I said no more Courtney stories only a few hours ago, but actual photographic nudity is an exception.
• Democrats object to New Hampshire governor's St. Patrick's Day humor: "Benson's presentation featured crude stunts, foul language and nudity; and clips from the Comedy Central Network." No, not that. Clips from Comedy Central. He MUST be impeached.
• The University of Texas escapes a loss to Princeton. Texas was losing at halftime, until the guys from Princeton realized that they were from Princeton, and Brandon Mouton scored 18 in the second half for Texas. Texas was the #3 seed.
• A Devon teenager claims she is the only person in the world who can communicate with geese. I can understand if she thinks she can talk to geese, but how does she know she's the only one who can talk to geese? I was stumped by this until I realized the solution is obvious - the geese told her.
• The Web site for the Recording Industry Association of America (riaa.com) has been down for more than a day, following several days of periodic outages. This is related to being targeted by the MyDoom virus.
• Cameron Diaz caught in fraud suit.
  • Cam's lawyer made a major legal blunder. The guy who sued Cam is a photog who tried to sell Cam back the pics he took of her years ago. He said "she was trying to buy the pictures from me in good faith, and I was doing her the courtesy of the right of first refusal", so he sued her for breach of contract when she proved to be working with the police. Cam said, "Dismiss the charges. I was just working with the police to try to get blackmail evidence against the guy". The judge said, "Sorry, Cam, but that doesn't excuse you from fraud. It only means the police may also be guilty!" Now Cam is in the position where she has already admitted the fraud, and the judge has ruled her defense inadmissable. Oops! Her lawyer should have thought that all through in advance.
  • Cam has also accused the photographer of forging her signature on a model's release, which caused him to be arrested. If it turns out that she is lying, she will not only lose a massive lawsuit, but could face serious criminal charges. Keep an eye on this one, and hope for her sake that she's telling the truth. Personally, I believe her. The photog says he had a $5 million offer from someone else, but gave Cam the right to buy the pics for $3.3 million. Assuming he really had the full rights to those pics, why would he do that?
• Here's the first trailer for the Disney baseball flick, Mr. 3000. "A retired Milwaukee Brewers baseball player comes out of retirement when three of his base hits are disallowed, dropping him below the 3,000-hit plateau."
• Gallup: The Potential Impact of Iraq on the Election. Gallup's bottom line is this: the Democrats can't really use this as a campaign issue. This issue is only important to people who have already decided who they are going to vote for, and a vast majority of swing voters still believe the war was worth it. Kerry would be ill-advised to focus on this unless the situation changes dramatically. Kerry is already likely to get the votes of those who oppose the war. In order to win, Kerry will have to focus on items (1) which are important to undecided voters, and (2) where those voters are likely to prefer Kerry's position to Bush's.
• Script-o-rama. Scripts, transcripts, early drafts, etc.
• The critics slam Taking Lives: only 29% positive reviews at Rotten Tomatoes.

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.

Skinny Dippin'

• Juliet Mills in the buff in Avanti (.avi version, .wmv version)

• Kate Winslet swimmin' au naturel in Iris. (.avi version, .wmv version)

• BONUS: Kate Winslet in a brief sex scene in Iris. ( .wmv version only  - it is at the end of the .avi above)

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.

• Ariadna Gil, topless (1, 2, 3, 4)

• Ayanta Barilli, more toplessness. (1, 2)

• Carmen Elías, yup, also showing some breast exposure. (1, 2)

This .jpg features some crappy pics scanned from the tabloids. At least we can see that not all big opera divas are...umm big.

MAN SUING CBS OVER NIPPLEGATE
Not All The Boobs Are On TV - Attorney Eric Stephenson of Davis County, Utah, is suing CBS for $5,000 in small claims court for damages he suffered by watching the Super Bowl. The suit accuses CBS of deceptive advertising for claiming the show was for general family audiences when they knew it would contain "inappropriate, lewd, offensive, violent, and degrading adult content." CBS claims the case is without merit because they didn't know Janet Jackson's boob would be exposed.