Police Academy 4: Citizens on Patrol (1987) is the fourth in the 7 installment Police Academy series, and, by this time, it had already become a parody of itself. This is mainly notable because we finally see Leslie Easterbrook in a wet T-shirt. The commandant of the academy has come up with a citizen involvement scheme, where interested citizens take a simplified training course at the academy, and then assist law enforcement. The governor is excited about the program, as is the chief. Highlights include a high speed chase, police cars after skate borders, and a biplane and hot air balloon pursuit.

IMDb readers have this at $3.4 of 10. Rotten Tomatoes scores is 0%. Fans of Bobcat Goldwait might enjoy his usual stick, and Sharon Stone has a minor role as a news reporter, and Steve Guttenberg's love interest. This was the longest 88 minutes I have spent in a long time. Note that the TV version was a little longer, and the extra footage was included on the DVD. This is a D, and will probably not please even fans of the series.

Gable and Lombard (1976):

I guess I should start off by saying that I don't really know anything about the lives of Clark Gable and Carole Lombard, and this is essentially a joint biopic of those two great stars, focusing in on the portion of their lives when they were Hollywood's most notorious non-couple. (Gable was unable to get a divorce from his wife, and that was a puritanical time, so Gable and Lombard saw each other only in private.)

I can't tell you if the actors nailed the real characters, but I can say that Jill Clayburgh seemed to capture Carole Lombard's screen persona perfectly, so if Carole was the same off screen, it was a great impersonation. I have a feeling that the brassy, sassy, wisecrackin' tomboy was only a small portion of Lombard's personality, and by keeping everything on that level, Clayburgh and the screenwriter essentially made this a feature-length sitcom special like those extra-length shows that Lucy and Desi used to do once in a while. As for Brolin, well, I think he missed it. He got Gable's cockiness just fine, but the essence of Gable, as I see it, is that underneath the cockiness was a man's man - an unpretentious, deferential, chivalrous, down-to-earth guy who would be happier hunting and playing poker with his pals than being a movie star. In fact, he probably preferred fishing to seducing women. The word was that he was one of the worst lays ever.

This film got sort of close to that, but the way Brolin played it, underneath the cockiness was a complete rube, a backwoods maroon who would have worn his pants five inches above his socks unless somebody told him not to. I have a feeling that Gable wasn't the cartoon fool that is occasionally portrayed here. There is no avoiding a central tenet of casting. In order to portray a charismatic star, one must be a charismatic star. If you want to make a film about Welles or Chaplin or Belushi, you need a comparable genius to portray your subject. James Brolin has none of Gable's magic. He's just a good looking TV actor doing the sort of impersonation you'd see on SNL or SCTV.  James Brolin as Clark Gable? Oh, puh-leez!

If you ignore the fact that this actually seems to be a movie about the romance between Gable and Lombard's onscreen personae, rather than between real people, further tainted a bit by Brolin's excessive dose of "aw shucksiness", it isn't a bad watch. The minimal ratings from TV Guide and the IMDb voters are somewhat too harsh, in my opinion.

If you forget about the names of the characters, it's kind of a sweet movie about two people who really loved one another, and had to hide it from the world. It is superficial and slapstick, but it has a good heart and a few small laughs, and it adds a little depth by dealing with the hypocrisy of the society of the 30s that wanted its stars chaste offscreen, or at least that's what the Hays Code and the Catholic Legion of Decency believed, and it was their view which prevailed for three decades.

I might actually have liked the film if it hadn't overstayed its welcome at 132 minutes!

A C- by our standard.

This movie is rated R, but I'll be damned if I know why. The closest it comes to nudity is shown below.

• Jill Clayburgh (1, 2, 3)

The Blue Max (1966):

CK Roach got me interested in this one. He wrote an excellent review here, and he really liked the film. I thought it was worth the watch, but I was far less enthusiastic than he.

For one thing, given that it probably had the highest budget of any film that year, you'd think that somebody would have double-checked the locations for obvious anachronisms. It is bad enough that the town near their airbase has 1960s-style electrical and telephone lines, but what was really irritating was the fact that they made no attempt to hide them.

This flaw, however, was royally trumped by the fact that almost all the houses had TV antennae just like the ones my family had in 1966 (see picture on the scoopy.com page)! I wonder which programs they could receive in 1916.

I agree with CK that the use of accents was confusing, but I wouldn't single out James Mason for his British accent. This was about the German Army, and most of the minor characters spoke English with a German accent, as per a common screen convention, but James Mason spoke with his usual smarmy Lolita voice, and George Peppard spoke his farm-boy American. I think a film should choose one convention or another. If German is to be represented by English with a German accent, I don't agree with that decision, but if that is the final choice, then let it be so consistently. I much prefer the common Royal Shakespeare Society convention of representing aristocratic foreign speech with aristocratic English, and representing working class foreign speech with working class English. When that convention is employed, we can all immediately identify what we are being shown, and it lets us identify with the characters as common human types which are probably as familiar to our own culture as to the culture being portrayed.

As CK noted, The Blue Max is a great film in the air. It is worth seeing just for the dogfights, aerial stunts, and the stirring Jerry Goldsmith score.

Unfortunately the film shows its Achilles heel when it is on the ground. Although the basic storyline is a good one, it is dragged out too long by too many predictable developments and trite dialogue and scenes with Ursula Andress not naked.

I reckon it is a C by our standard. Good war movie, but not a great one. A must-see if, like CK, you like the aviation stuff. I immediately set the DVD aside to give to my nephew, who wants to be a pilot, and who loves biplanes and triplanes. I'll bet that he will tell me it is his favorite movie.

This one seems tame by 2004 standards, but had a LOT of nudity for 1966.

• Ursula Andress (1, 2, 3, 4, 5 6, 7, 8)

UPDATES:

• Charlie's French Cinema Nudity Site is updated

MAILBOX:

In today's Funhouse I watched the sapphic scene from Lianna and the name Jane Hallaren rang a big bell.  I remembered her as Stella, the owner/waitress of the little coffee shop in Body Heat.  Every time I've watched that movie, which is a LOT, I've always thought how attractive she is.  Well, sir, I think a whole lot more now.  Sure glad I got to see her nekkid and making love with another woman.  Thanks a bunch, Scoop.

C

Scoop says- I never made that connection, great observation! But the thanks goes to Shiloh, who combs the globe looking for that kind of rare material, and came up with that one out of the blue.

OTHER CRAP:

• This Crap Is SportsCenter? - The decline and fall of ESPN's franchise.
• Baseball's spring wardrobe blowout for 2004.
• Four free short videos from Playboy's Cheerleaders & College Girls!
• Karen McDougal was the Playmate in December of 1997. Here is her free, nude Playmate gallery, courtesy of PlayboyPlus.com!
• ESPN Radio - The Women of AllNight Collection
• A popular reality TV show has broadcast live sex, in Romania. Are there gymnasts involved? Lesbian vampires? Who knows the satellite codes for that station?
• Lara Flynn Boyle does her stretching exercises before a date with Ron Jeremy.
• Because you'll believe anything: "A university student who drank too many Cokes died from carbon dioxide poisoning." (Hint: if you see this on a true/false test, avoid the "true" column.)
• One more rat seeks a rope to shore. Colin Powell expresses doubts about WMD claims.
• Kelly Osbourne drug rehab. It's kind of a family tradition.
• The international trailer for the early Razzie favorite, Garfield
• LIFE-SIZE KERRY ROBOT HITS CAMPAIGN TRAIL. Uncanny Android Subs for Convalescing Senator
• Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry doesn't have a Republican-leaning French cousin. President Bush is not pushing legislation that would have other countries pay off the deficit. Pennsylvania Republican Sen. Arlen Specter is not retiring to study Scottish Common Law. (April Fool's Day crap)
• The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles rob a casino.
• The Straight Dope studies whether Abraham Lincoln was gay? Where exactly did he put the Lincoln Log?
• Bill Murray says Kathleen Turner is "a great fuck".
• The famous 'Bored Boy' To Appear On Letterman Show.
• Under pressure from Cheney's attorney, publisher cancels reissue of Lynne Cheney's lesbotronic novel.
• URL says it all: BillionairesForBush.com
• Disney fleshes out dates for 2004 line-up
• Marlon Brando, The Godfather of Method, somehow lives to be 80!
• Jon Stewart takes a look at high fuel prices.
• This is the trailer for Two Brothers, a Jean-Jacques Annaud film about two tiger siblings separated as cubs.
• Man in 'Tigger' Costume Charged With Molesting Girl, Mom at Disney World. Hey, they should have known that from the song about Tiggers. "They're loaded with vim and with vigor - they love to leap in your laps."
• Remarks by Former President George H.W. Bush Denouncing So-Called Intellectuals Too Dense to Notice America's Wondrous Progress in Iraq
• Judge declares mistrial in Tyco corruption case
• Textbook piracy runs rampant in developing countries, costing publishers and authors millions of dollars. It is hilarious to visit some parts of the world and look at the books and CDs for sale, by artists like Carlie Sighmen (with a picture of the real Carly). At one point I asked the international parent company's reps if they knew their dealers in Egypt were selling illegal bootlegs. They told me everything was legal. I responded that it is fairly typical in legal CDs to spell the performers' names right! Many were spelled phonetically, the way they pronounce English there - Sinatra's first name was spelled "frenk" for example.
• First trailer for the Natalie Portman dramedy, Garden State.
• Companies add 300,000 Jobs in March, the fastest pace of the millennium.
• First time caller, long time Superman reader: Seinfeld talks sports on a NY radio station.
• Mouseketeer roll call. Count off now!
• A Cambodian man cut off his penis when he said he was visited by four hungry spirits in a dream and he had no chicken or duck to offer them.. He said, "Devils, I don't have any chicken or duck for you. If you want to eat anything, you can eat my penis." That line works a lot better on evil spirits than it worked on my second wife.
• Studios set release dates for Batman Begins, X-Men 3, and Fantastic Four .
• Improve your athletic performance with PowerSox. No wonder I sucked at sports. I had the wrong socks! Imagine if I could take a pair of PowerSox with me into a time machine, and guard Wilt's ass in his 100 point game. He'd be lucky to hit double figures.
• More Arena Football cheerleaders - The Columbus Wardogs. I guess the lady in the front row center must be somebody's mom
• A 'Coach' reunion on 'The District' : The former stars of "Coach" - Craig T. Nelson, Jerry Van Dyke and Bill Fagerbakke - keep cracking up on the set of the CBS drama "The District."
• Here are four free short videos from Playboy's Beach Babes!
• Gillian Bonner was a Playmate of the month in 1996. Here is her free, nude, Playmate gallery, courtesy of PlayboyPlus.com!
• The trailer for the new comedy from that master of subtlety, Johnny Knoxville, The Ringer. Desperate for cash to help a friend in need and pay off his smarmy uncle’s gambling debts, Steve Barker sinks to an all time low...he attempts to fix the Special Olympics by pretending to be a person with intellectual disabilities. But he is completely out-classed by his fellow Olympians, who are not only superior athletes, they’re also wiser in the ways of the world. Several of his fellow competitors immediately spot Steve as a fraud, but because they too would like to see the fall of Jimmy, the snooty reigning champion, they join forces to help The Ringer win. Together they train Steve to become a better athlete and, most importantly, a better man.

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.

Miscellaneous

A little of this, a little of that. Some women seen less frequently.

• Amy Madigan in Alamo Bay. (.avi version,  .wmv version).

• Barbra Hershey in Boxcar Bertha. Unbelievably, this film was directed by Martin Scorcese. (.avi version,  .wmv version (1, 2, 3, 4). The .avi version is a big download, includes all four scenes, plus one more.

• Brigitte Bardot - And God Created Woman  (.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.

Vénus Beauté (institut) 1999 is a French chick-flick. All the principal characters are women and all the plot points have women at their centers and men at their peripheries, playing pawn or acting like furniture. Not sure what the estrogen ranking ought to be, but I'm pretty sure it's in the double digits. So why the hell didn't I hate it?

Well, it's pretty darn intelligent. And quirky. And it has Nathalie Baye as its central character. Here I will admit to something. You know that early Woody Allen comedy in which he sees a buxom blonde on the dance floor and says he'd sell his mother to the Arabs for her (this would be a reference to Joseph and his brothers, not to the current state of life in the Middle East)? Well, I'd do that for Nathalie Baye. She is neither blonde, nor buxom but she comes across on screen as the other woman of my dreams. I'd watch The Passion if she was in it. Hell, I'd watch Kill Bill again if she were in that odiferous concoction of celluloid toxic waste.

Best reason I liked Venus Beaute is that while it is a French chick-flick it is also a French-chick flick. Several French actresses give up some goodies. That's real good news because the current crop of French actresses are down-right breathtaking, infinitely more attractive IMHO than all the gen Y bims that inhabit American movies (I mean honestly now, if you were given the choice of living a year on an otherwise desert isle with Ludivine Sagnier or Christina Ricci, who would you choose?)

The French women in question are Audrey Tautou, who gives us cleavage only but looks oh so spectacular doing it, Clare Nebout, who does two wonderful triple-B scenes, and Helene Fillieres (brief boobs only). Nathalie Baye takes a shower but the camera stays on her face, and ya know, I didn't mind it at all.

Venus Beaute. If all chick-flicks were like this one we'd be the ones dragging our significant others to see them.

• Audrey Tautou

• Claire Nebout (1, 2)

• Hélène Fillières (1, 2)

• Nathalie Baye

Today we have Allison Smith and Hedy Burres from the movie "Los Años Barbaros".

This is the second time I've 'capped this movie, but this time from a DVD! Even though the movie is not available for for sale on DVD, a newspaper here in Spain is giving a DVD each week with Spanish movies, and I was very glad they added this one to the giveaway!

• Allison Smith, the former child star from the series "Kate & Allie" going topless and showing far off frontal and rear views. (1, 2, 3)

• Hedy Burress, also full frontal, but sadly even more far off. (1, 2, 3, 4)

"Ashes and Sand"
Now this is one weird ass film. It begins as a romantic drama of unrequainted love between a troubled petty criminal 16 year old girl (Lara Belmont from "The War Zone") and an older detective (Nick Moran) and works really well for 75 minutes until the darkness begins. The last 30 mins is quite something else and even I winced a couple of times and some of the things. Not an easy watch, but is helped by good performances all round, particularly from Lara.

• Lara Belmont. Cleavage in #2, hand down her pants in #3 and undies in #8 and #9. (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9)

Since the movie is based on the life of a porn star, there are some more explicit images here and there.

Here's a breakdown of the more explicit views:
Links 17 and 18: There are a couple of erect dudes.
Link #19: She shaves her pubes
Links 20 and 21: We see a piercing down under.
Links 25-28: A BJ scene.

"SIMPSONS" STARS ON STRIKE
Don't Go On Strike, Just Do A Half-Assed Job - The actors who provide the voices for "The Simpsons" are on strike and have boycotted script readings for the show's 16th season since failing to reach a new contract agreement. They want $365,000 an episode, up from $125,000. The first time they went on strike, they were earning $30,000 an episode, and Fox threatened to hire replacement voices rather than pay them more. One show insider told Variety that it's not fair to compare them to other sitcom stars because they voice an entire show in six hours, so they'd be getting $365,000 for just one day's work.