The Pinky Violence Collection (1971-73)

I won't repeat what Tuna has already done. His summaries are now collected at The Movie House, and his captures can be seen in the back issues, December 13-17, 2005. He has done an outstanding job, and I don't disagree with anything he has written. Tuna's admiration for these Japanese exploitation films is shared by Mr. Skin and Quentin Tarantino.

I do want to add that I like them as well. These are immensely entertaining exploitation films, and the Panik House collection consists of four great remastered DVDs, with full-length commentaries for each of the films, plus a bonus CD of the music of Reiko Ike, who was the genre's biggest star as well as a pop singer.

The films include is plenty of nudity, outrageous violence, comedy, offbeat music, and some surprisingly good filmmaking. These are some of the best grade-B films ever made, just below the very top echelon. They are not as good as Touch of Evil or Leone's Westerns, but you might fairly compare these to some of the best Roger Corman productions like Boxcar Bertha, in that they manage to get a lot of mileage out of visual composition, editing, and storyboarding, thus compensating for a limited amount of money. And the comparison to Boxcar Bertha is not faint praise. Bertha was directed by no less a luminary than ... Martin Scorsese!

 

Various Videos:

• Camilla Overbye Roos in Intoxicating. (Zipped .wmv) This is a conversion of LC's original mpeg. (You can find a complete collection of captures in Tuna's section.)

• If you want the LC original, here is a RapidShare link to LC's mpeg of Camilla Overbye Roos in Intoxicating 

• Laurie Baranyay in Intoxicating. (Zipped .wmv) Same deal - a conversion of LC's original mpeg.

• Here is LC's original at RapidShare - Laurie Baranyay in Intoxicating 

• Two greats from an exploitation classic. Barbie Benton, Hef's former main squeeze, in Deathstalker. Zipped .avi

• The late Lana Clarkson in Deathstalker. Zipped .avi

Other Crap:

The SI cover jinx

'Desperate Housewives' - the video game (I'm not kidding)

Nicole Kidman gets naked in that Diane Arbus film, as per an IMDb contributor who saw a test screening.

The host of "Heartland with John Kasich" exchanges folktales with Stephen.

Colbert talks to Miss Manners about manners.

Stephen Colbert's Sound Advice: How to Raise a Hero

Colbert says the rainbow weather map is just another example of the homo-meteorological agenda.

See which parts of Europe world will disappear when the polar ice caps melt!

• Here's a tip for you youngsters. You might want to re-consider your planned move to the Netherlands.

Cousin Eddie says he was hoodwinked by Brokeback producers.

Underdog LSU wins in OT, ends the Longhorn dream of the grand slam

• The Horns are the current national champions in football and baseball, but they will not make it a clean sweep.

"SMOKING IS A RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE" "Cigarettes are a sacrament and should enjoy tax-exempt status!" 

Mission Impossible 3 now has an official site 

Whoa, polish up the acting Oscars for this cast! Jessica Alba co-stars with Hayden Christensen in Awake. Somehow they also got the genuinely talented Terrence Howard to appear in this. 

Daily Box Office - Friday, March 24, 2006

• Riding on the crest of a wave of good reviews, Spike Lee's Inside Man opened with a very impressive $9 million on Friday, about 50% higher than estimates.
• In another surprise, Stay Alive (2000 theaters) managed to knock V for Vendetta (3300 theaters) down to the #3 spot
• Something that surprised me: Larry the Cable Guy pulled in more per screen than V for Vendetta. I guess ol' Larry has a fairly large following.

Silent Bob, Jay, and ... Nicole Richie?

• Here is Silent Bob's response on his own myspace blog

RapidShare Video - Franka Potente in I Love Your Work 

RapidShare Video - Joy Bryant in Get Rich or Die Tryin' 

RapidShare Video- Lubna Azabal in Exiles 

RapidShare Video - Wendy Kremer in 2001 Maniacs 

RapidShare Video - various women in 2001 Maniacs 

RapidShare Video - Cristen Beavers and Kodi Kitchen in 2001 Maniacs 

RapidShare Video - Christa Campbell in 2001 Maniacs

 Osama's hotel demands

• Vice President Dick Cheney's list of hotel travel requirements -- featuring such bland fare as bottled water, diet Sprite, decaf coffee and a mandatory dose of Fox News -- has mushroomed into a major news story today after being leaked by the Smoking Gun. However, a secret addendum to the list reveals that Cheney also demands a loaded shotgun, a Bugs Bunny-Elmer Fudd DVD and an inflatable Ann Coulter sex doll. The VP also reserves the right -- if a television is tuned to any channel other than Fox News -- to smash the hell out of it then hurl it out the window. The Humor Gazette has obtained a similar list detailing the hotel requirements of fugitive terror kingpin Osama bin Laden, who often registers under the alias Osama Smith. "

The counter which keeps track of the time since Dick Cheney has shot anyone 

"Chinese micro-painter Jin Yin Hua has painted an image of a giant panda on a single human hair." 

Six more clips from Lucky Number Slevin 

Five clips from The Benchwarmers 

Three clips from American Gun -

• "American Gun is a powerful series of interwoven storylines that bring to light how the proliferation of guns in America dramatically affect and shape the every day lives of its citizens.

The Trailer from An American Haunting

• Based on "The Bell Witch: An American Haunting" by Brent Monahan. Known throughout Tennessee as "Old Kate," the Bell Witch took up residence with John Bell's family in 1818. It was a cruel and noisy spirit, given to rapping and gnawing sounds before it found its voices. With these voices and its supernatural acts, the Bell Witch tormented the Bell family. This extraordinary book recounts the only documented case in U.S. history when a spirit actually caused a man's death. The local schoolteacher, Richard Powell, witnessed the strange events and recorded them for his daughter. Members of the Bell family have previously provided information on this fascinating case, but this book recounts the tale with novelistic vigor and verve. It is truly chilling.

The trailer and three clips from The Beauty Academy of Kabul

• "What happens when a group of hairdressers from America travel to Kabul with the intention of telling Afghan women how to do hair and makeup? This engaging, optimistic documentary tracks a unique development project: a shiny new beauty school, funded in part by beauty-industry mainstays, which sets out to teach the latest cutting, coloring, and perming techniques to practicing and aspiring Afghan hairdressers and beauticians. The American teachers, all volunteers, include three Afghan-Americans returning home for the first time in over twenty years. "The Beauty Academy of Kabul" offers a rare glimpse into Afghan women's lives, and documents the poignant and often humorous process through which women with very different experiences of life come to learn about one another."

Four clips and a trailer from Romance & Cigarettes, John Turturro's working class musical. 

The first eight minutes and three clips from Stoned, the Brian Jones biopic 

The trailer and two clips from Wassup rockers

• "Wassup Rockers is set in South Central Los Angeles and follows a group of largely Hispanic teenagers who, instead of conforming to the hip-hop culture of their neighborhood, ride skateboards, listen to punk rock and wear their clothes tight. Constantly harassed, they take buses to Beverly Hills, Santa Monica and Hollywood, where they skate and catch the attention of the local rich girls, inevitably leading to trouble with parents, police and boyfriends."

Various naughty captures from Basic Instinct 2 

Another Basic Instinct 2 Rough Sex Scene 

Basic Instinct 2 Deleted NC-17 Video - rough sex scene 

Basic Instinct 2 "I Want you to Fuck Me" 

Basic Instinct 2, NC-17 Orgy Scene (very naughty) 

Basic Instinct 2 Deleted NC-17 Video 

Six Clips from Basic Instinct 2 (in French)

George Mason kicks ass again - holding Wichita to 19 in the first half.

• The fightin' Jars are now in the Elite Eight. If they can win one more, they will equal the record for the worst-seeded team to make the Final Four.
• Every other team in the Elite Eight is seeded 4th or better, including two ones and two twos.
• In other underdog news, the Bradley Renfros were no match for Memphis.

 

Movie Reviews:

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

Intoxicating (2003)

Intoxicating (2003) is a weepy-ass, dyin' man, drugs suck, soap opera movie. Pretty much everything I hate. If they had included an evil dwarf and a surprise identical twin, I would swear they made this film as a personal vendetta against me. I guess I just wasn't in the target audience because, based on the IMDb voting, this is probably the most estrogen-centric film ever made, with a 9.1 for women vs. 4.9 for men.

It stars Kirk Harris as a brilliant heart surgeon whose father, a former prize fighter, is dying of "pugilistic dementia." Harris, who also wrote the screenplay, did one thing I approve of here. By starring in it, he saved a real actor somewhere the embarrassment of speaking his lines. He was also physically wrong for the part, looking far more like a boxer father than a hotshot heart surgeon. I have no idea what either woman was supposed to find appealing in this character, since he was always working, during which time he acted like a cocky, egotistical surgeon, and in his free time he was whoring and getting wasted.

The surgeon works 14 hours a day, breaks into the pharmacy on his way out and loads up on pure medical heroin, which he then trades to a drug dealer for the far less healthy cocaine. And believe it or not, he has a girlfriend, whose idea of a good time is getting drunk and high with him, having sex, then praying to the porcelain Honda. When his girlfriend's best friend comes to visit, our doctor seems to love the fact that she has sworn off drinking because a drunk driver killed her daughter, so he plies her with booze and drugs, leading to an eventual overdose once she has become his new girlfriend.

Meanwhile, his job performance is becoming a problem. When the new girl friend ODs and he breaks her out of the hospital, he loses his job. Then his father dies. Then he does a little jail time ...

... then he sees the light. O, happy day.

The visual style of the film was great, no, awful, no, ok, in other words, there was no consistent visual style. Someone who knew how to hold, adjust and aim a camera was responsible for some of the scenes, but many were done in shakeycam, while others were done with lots of grain, or odd-colored lighting. While I have seen different visual styles used in films to contrast the present with flashbacks, or dreams with reality, I couldn't glean any logic behind this particular mishmash of styles.

Laurie Baranyay, as his original girlfriend, shows breasts and buns, mostly while purging. Note that, given her slight figure, I suspect she has plenty of practice at this. Camilla Overbye Roos, as the other girlfriend, shows breasts briefly in a sex scene.

This is a D.

Laurie Baranyay

Camilla Overbye Roos