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Get Rich or Die Tryin' (2005):
Woody Allen joked back in the 60s or 70s that all
urban dramas in those days consisted of street gangs turning into
basketball teams, and vice-versa. That was back in the days when all
movie black guys were drug dealers, pimps, and petty criminals who
wanted to play in the NBA. Now there is a new kind of movie black guy.
He wants to be a rapper instead of a power forward, as characterized
by the official plot summary for this film: "A tale of an inner city
drug dealer who turns away from crime to pursue his passion, rap
music."
That's pretty much the summary for all this
millennium's movies about gritty inner-city life.
So now all urban dramas are about turning street gangs
into rap acts.
And vice versa.
Another 2005 film, Hustle & Flow, received critical
accolades for the way it developed this same theme, but the critics
and fans excoriated Get Rich or Die Tryin', perhaps because many
viewed it as an insincere vanity project for 50 Cent, as well as an
unnecessary trip over well-traveled trails. In fact, this film is so
familiar that Terrence Howard, who played the criminal-turned-rapper
in Hustle & Flow, plays the manager of the criminal-turned-rapper in
Get Rich.
Get Rich is rated a microscopic 2.5 at IMDb - 42nd
worst of all time - and that fact produces one of the strangest pages
in the entire IMDb universe: the career filmography for the respected
Irish director Jim Sheridan. It looks like one of those Sesame Street
games of "one of these things is not like the other."
- (7.89) - In
America (2002)
- (7.80) - In the
Name of the Father (1993)
- (7.59) - My Left
Foot (1989)
- (6.88) - The
Field (1990)
- (6.80) - The
Boxer (1997)
- (2.53) - Get
Rich or Die Tryin' (2005)
Of course, Get Rich is not bad enough to be among the fifty worst
movies of all time. The film is dark, and depressing, and angry, and
represents a foreign country for which the average movie fan has no
visa, so it managed to please almost nobody, but Jim Sheridan is a
true professional who knows how to make a movie. Roger Ebert
kept an open mind about the film and, although he detested some of
its moral equivocation about drug dealing, gave it a fairly positive
three-star review based on its craftsmanship.
Personally, I couldn't wait for the sumbitch to end,
craftsmanship be damned, even though I have liked similar movies in
the recent past. I really liked Hustle & Flow, and was at least
somewhat positive about 8 Mile, but Get Rich has too many drugs and
too little music for my taste, and Mr. Cent, although a real rapper,
just doesn't have the acting chops to play a rapper as convincingly
as Terrence Howard.
Joy Bryant, however, is gorgeous.
Other Crap:
Dan Castellaneta and Harry Shearer do their Simpsons
characters on Conan's late night show.
"A documentary TV series chronicling Barry Bonds' upcoming
2006 baseball season will take an honest look at the steroid scandal surrounding
the slugger, but his lawyers can review the episodes before they air, the
producer said on Thursday."
Pale
Force: superheroes played by Conan O'Brien and Jim Gaffigan
"soap opera veteran Helen Wagner has earned a place in the Guinness World
Records by playing one role for 50 years."
Colbert discusses polygamy - the more the "merrier"
Colbert discusses the upcoming Apocalypse
"Stephen Colbert asks economist Bruce Bartlett where he
gets off saying Bush isn't Reagan."
Jon Stewart interviews Queen Latifah
Colbert rants about people named after royalty
- Stephen's sick of liberals posing as friends of the
people while taking names that endorse monarchy.
"Daily Show: What Are We Doing to Pigs?"
- Sure we could just eat healthier, but isn't it easier
to change a mammal's cellular structure?"
Daily Show:
The Palestinian reaction to the Israeli election results
- "If Israel were a country, which is isn't, Hamas
would be furious at the results of the election."
The Daily Show's Senior Jerusalem Bureau Chief Samantha Bee
reports on the Israeli election.
A huge directory of celeb pictures,
including many nudes
Weekly World News:
Thomas Edison's wackiest inventions
Britney plays a talk show host on Thursday's Will & Grace
The World's Smallest Cat?
Tipsy tourist couldn't see Ayers Rock, which was right in
front of him
Silent Bob's essay about Jay's battle with heroin, Part 3
What Would Jesus Brew?
(Very odd cartoon)
Isolatr - the site for people who hate social networking
Paris Hilton to record rap album with Three 6 Mafia
The R-rated trailer for Splinter,
an independent memory-loss thriller with Tom Sizemore and Edward James Olmos.
The trailers for Silent Hill
- "The eerie and deserted ghost town of Silent Hill
draws a young mother desperate to find a cure for her only child's illness.
Unable to accept the doctor's diagnosis that her daughter should be
permanently institutionalized for psychiatric care, Rose (Radha Mitchell)
flees with her child, heading for the abandoned town in search of answers --
and ignoring the protests of her husband (Sean Bean). It's soon clear this
place is unlike anywhere she's ever been. It's smothered by fog, inhabited by
a variety of strange beings and periodically overcome by a living Darkness
that literally transforms everything it touches. As Rose searches for her
little girl, she begins to learn the history of the strange town and realizes
that her daughter is just a pawn in a larger game."
The trailer for 4, a Russian drama disguised as a genre
film (dystopia)
- "An apocalyptic journey through the dark heart of the
new Russia. Three strangers meet in a Moscow bar one late night and spin
fantastic stories, all of them lies. They depart and journey their separate
ways through a landscape filled with decaying meat, wild dogs, ravenous
crones, cloned piglets, and modern industrial horrors. A completely unique and
disturbing film, '4' was held up by Russian censors who wanted 40 minutes cut,
but relented after the film won acclaim at film festivals around the world."
Intro to Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back - "Jay and Bob grow
up right in front of the QuickStop."
"Which is a bigger problem for the future of Major League
Baseball?' The voting options were 'competitive balance' and 'steroids.'"
"Frank Miller on Sin City 2"
Will a shuttle mission be scuttled by a work lamp from the
Space Center?
Is this really Spidey in the black suit? Some say it is a fake. AICN says,
"We think it’s real."
- I'm no expert, but it seems to me that it is a fake based on converting a
picture of the red outfit. There is some red on the arm which has not been
fully changed.
(See
this enlargement.)
Top 87
Bad Predictions about the Future
First half of the sentence says it all.
"The Wedding Singer, the new Broadway musical based on the Adam Sandler film of
the same name, ..."
This week's movies (1400+ screens):
Basic Instinct 2: Risk Addiction - 18% positive reviews
This week's movies (1600 theaters):
ATL
- 63% positive reviews
- The percentage is based on only eight reviews, but this Atlanta-based
urban youth drama received good notices from such credible sources as
Entertainment Weekly, Village Voice, and James Berardinelli
This week's movies (about 4000 screens - among the ten most
widely-distributed films of all time):
Ice Age 2: The Meltdown - 50% positive reviews
This Week's Movies (about 2000 screens):
Slither - 88% positive reviews
- I suppose that percentage will go down, but the comments were typically as
follows: "It may not be sickly brilliant or twistedly clever, but it's just
plain fun. Slither is a good old fashioned gooey, slimy monster movie with a
sense of humor."
The redband trailer and three R-rated clips from Slither
Supermodel Naomi Campbell arrested for alleged assault
- Why didn't this woman ever date Russell Crowe?
- Or better yet, team up with Crowe for co-ed tag team rasslin'
"The Hand Puppet Movie Theatre Presents Serenity"
GALLUP:
How do
people in Islamic countries feel about having women in government?
Movie Reviews:
Yellow asterisk: funny (maybe). White asterisk: expanded format.
Blue asterisk: not mine. No asterisk: it probably sucks.
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The Pyjama Girl Case (1997)
The Pyjama Girl Case (1997) or La Ragazza dal Pigiama Giallo, is an
atypical giallo for many reasons. First, it is based on a real murder case,
not a pulp novel. Second, it was filmed in Australia. Third, it is not a
typical giallo narrative style, but only contains one murder, and that corpse
is found in the opening scene. It is of a young woman who was shot in the
neck, her head bashed in, and then set on fire in her yellow pajamas, then
dumped on a beach. We then start three parallel paths. The first is the
official investigation, led by a young hotshot detective. An old retired
detective is also allowed to conduct his own investigation. The third thread,
intercut with the two investigations, is the story of what really happened.
The oddest development in the film, which was faithful to the real case in
all important aspects, was that, unable to identify the body, the police
preserved it and put it on display, hoping for an ID.
The young woman had a husband and at least two lovers, but was not
especially happy with any of them. In the actual case, the victim was known as
an amorous drunk. Considering the tawdry story, the nudity was somewhat
restrained. Dalila Di Lazzaro, as the victim, does full frontal and rear
nudity. Vanessa Vitale, in a gratuitous scene, shows breasts. The excellent
cast included Mel Ferrer and Ray Miland.
IMDb readers say 6.5. Diehard giallo fans may not be partial to this one,
which is more akin to the serial killer stories that have become popular
recently, but with a fresh narrative style. On the other hand, mystery fans
that don't much enjoy the graphic violence typical of gialli might well enjoy
this one. Lets call it a C.
| Dalila DiLazzaro |
     
     
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Shocking! The Ghost turned off Skinemax and decided to watch
some movies!
Rosario Dawson in Alexander
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Dann reports on Sliver: The
Unrated Edition of this 1993 thriller had me all the way up to the last 2
minutes. Then, they really disappointed me with a weak and lame ending.
The rest is quite good.
A young publishing
executive (Sharon Stone) moves into a fashionable apartment in a
"sliver" building in New York. She meets an assortment of well-off
weirdoes, one of whom tells her about the apartment's previous tenant, who
looked exactly like her, and died in a mysterious fall from the balcony.
She meets more of her
neighbors, including a spooky mystery writer who takes a fancy to her, and
the building's owner, who soon becomes her lover. Meanwhile, other tenants
start dying, and the police suspect both of her suitors. When she
discovers that her new boyfriend has wired every apartment with video and
is spying on all the tenants, including her, she beings to think he's the
killer.
Very exciting right up to
the ending, which really wimped out. Still, it's not a bad way to spend an
evening.
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| Sharon Stone |
Allison Mackie |
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"The Ceremony" a.k.a.
Erotiki Teleti is a Greek sex film made in 1977, directed by Omiros
Efstratiadis, a prolific director of all kinds of films. He is still active
today as director of a weekly Greek trash-TV show. The film exists in many
versions under various titles, I know of at least 5. Some of these versions are
hardcore, but it is not clear whether the explicit parts are close-up shots of
stand-ins or the actual actors. It was a common practice of the time for such
films to have a a softcore version for Greece and a hardcore-inserts version for
distribution in other countries. The version I have is cut (butchered would be a
more appropriate term, since they cut out some "legitimate" erotic scenes as
well as the inserts), however someone interested enough could find an uncut vhs
rip on the P2P networks in the form of a horrible quality mpeg-1 under the title
"Itan kapote parthenes."
The film starts with a pretentious voice-over about "Elektra" and love, but
quickly gets down to business.
Egafd.com has a
detailed breakdown of the plot, which is just an excuse to move from one sex
scene to the other. The film was obviously shot on the cheap and done very
quickly, even by sex flick standards, but in beautiful locations on the Greek
islands, mostly under the sun, and usually by the sea. And that makes it look
good.
Most of the actors are obscure names, maybe pseudonyms, but Maria Konsta
(sometimes credited as Consta) had an actual acting career up to the early 90s
and has even tried singing. Nowadays she is blonde and can sometimes be seen in
a Greek trash-TV show directed by ... Omiros Efstratiadis. She's a dark sensual
beauty and I wish I could see more of her.
| Angela Stamou |
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Caroline Dhavernas in These Girls |
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Mia Kirshner does the ol' "wine on the
nipples" trick in Sunday's L-Word |
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Misty Mundae in "Masters of Horror," episode:
Sick Girl |
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Pat's comments in yellow Hooters Airlines announced that it will end regular
air service on April 17.
Hooters Air had been flying its orange and white jets full of scantily-clad
stewardesses serving hot wings between Atlanta and Myrtle Beach. But founder
Bob Brooks said they couldn't go on in the face of rising fuel costs and other
problems in the air industry that even he doesn't have enough money to fix.
Hooters Air will continue, but only as a charter service for
sports teams and other groups.
* The Minnesota Vikings alone should provide enough
business to keep them going.
The New York Post's Page Six claims that "Basic Instinct 2" is so bad,
celebrities at the New York premiere kept cracking up laughing at inappropriate
moments. One unnamed source said the only thing worse than the dialogue was
Sharon Stone's implants, which looked lopsided in her nude scenes. None of this
dented Stone's ego, however. Stone says
that after seeing her in "Basic Instinct 2" looking so hot at 48, Playboy
offered her $1 million to pose again for the first time since her 1990 layout.
She said, "This is not the moment, but that's not to say there won't be a
moment."
* If her breasts are lopsided, Playboy will just pay to
have the smaller one enlarged ... Then the larger one enlarged.
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