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Dear Scoopy,

 

I was wondering if you or your readers might be able to help. I recently came across an old news story from 2004 that interested me. It involved a site called www.nicisgirls.com (now out of business) that specialized in using Playboy playmates, pornstars, models, and in a few instances a hollwood actress, and BBC presenter as escorts. Here is a link to the story http://www.adultfyi.com/read.aspx?ID=6931. I am very interested to know who the Hollywood actress is.  The story also talks of Sophie Anderton doing some escort work. I know this is a little off topic, but I figured that you or your readers might have some information on this subject.  Any help that you can give would be appreciated.

 

Thanks

Anyone know? Write me

 

 

Mona Lisa (1986)

Very complicated movie. On the surface, it's a British gangster flick, with some detective elements thrown in. Like many great films, however, it only uses some genre conventions to gussie up a character-based drama.

Bob Hoskins plays a small-time mob functionary just back from seven years in stir. He believes that he did his time to protect his boss, so he naturally thinks Mr Big (Michael Caine) owes him big-time. Mr Big doesn't see things the same way. He tries to avoid Hoskins entirely, and the best thing he can offer him is a menial job as the chauffeur for a dark-skinned call girl named Simone. Hoskins is an ordinary man, unsophisticated, casual, uneducated, and slovenly. He immediately clashes with the prostitute, who wears designer clothing, frequents toney hotels, and purrs with a plummy accent. After several arguments, Hoskins finally wins the favor of the call girl because she can see that he is completely different from the other men in her life and in her profession - for all his faults, he is actually a very decent and compassionate human being, even a little naive. Although he had originally seemed totally unsuited for the job of escorting her through expensive hotel lobbies, given his rough manner, Hawaiian print shirts and yellow patent leather shoes, the call girl finally decides to polish up his rough image and continue working with him.

In the meat of the film, the call girl bonds with the unpretentious ex-con deeply enough to ask for his assistance in a bit of detective work. She wants Hoskins to find a young girl lost somewhere in the back streets of London, presumably turning street tricks and shooting up junk. He takes up the challenge, and makes a foray into the depths of London's seamy underbelly of sordid peep shows and sex-for-sale. Hoskins is no Columbo, so he really doesn't realize the number of feathers he will end up ruffling to bring the young girl back to Simone, but he is greatly attracted to Simone and thinks that they may be falling in love, so he is willing to take on some dangerous mob types to get the job done.

The title of the film relates to the fact that Simone, like the woman in the painting and the figurative Mona Lisa in Nat King Cole's song, is not just the superficial work of art on display for customers, but a complicated and surprising woman. Unfortunately, the surprises don't always work out as well as Hoskins might have hoped.

Although the crux of the plot involves the relationship of the chauffeur and the prostitute, the drama is given far greater depth and realism by two other relationships in Hoskins' life. The film derives additional atmosphere and offbeat energy from Hoskins' relationship with his best friend, an eccentric mechanic who is into reselling kitschy items and reading lurid detective stories, many of which seem to have parallels with Hoskins' own life. The story picks up a dash of heart and develops some additional character depth through Hoskins' attempts to rekindle a relationship with his teenage daughter, who barely remembers him from her childhood, before his trip up the river.

Underneath its layer of small-time mobster sleaze, Mona Lisa is a genuine and heartfelt story. You will understand what an unusual gangster film it is when you realize that the musical score is not hard rock or hip-hop, but elegant and sad love ballads by Nat King Cole and Phil Collins. The characters seem like real people that we get to know, if not always like. I feel that I could have run into these people in London, and they would have behaved as they did in the film. I was very pleased to see the film concentrate on plot and characterization rather than car chases, pecker contests, and gunfights, so I was a little bit disappointed that this realistic slice-of-life drama degenerated into a violent slay-fest at the end, but even that was handled with a certain degree of credibility that is lacking in the fantasy gangster films of the post-Tarantino era.

A very worthwhile watch. 100% positive reviews, many awards and nominations, four stars each from Ebert and Berardinelli.

Sadly, not much nudity. A goodly amount would have made the movie just about perfect.

 

Cathy Tyson (sexy, but not nude)

Unknowns

Other Crap:

Gators devour the competition.

• How many of you remembered that the Gators started the season 17-0? They finished 11-0. In between, they were 5-6!
• I hadn't noticed it until today, but Florida blasted through the tournament with ease. They had a close game against G'town, but blew everyone else away by 13 or more. I told my son before the tournament that I thought Florida had the best talent in the country, but I doubted they'd go anywhere with four sophomores and a junior. As usual, I was wrong.

South Park - X-Mas in Iraq

• "Here's a complete episode of South Park in which Santa Claus is shot down and tortured by the Iraqis."

Driving Mr. Osama - Bin Laden's driver linked to Miss Daisy

• "So I said, 'Mr. B, you too old to be hatin' like that.' But he didn't pay me no mind, just laughed at me while he beheaded the cashier and pistol-whipped the stockboy."

FilmJerk.com's Early Report for April 3

"Die Hard director John McTiernan became the 14th person--and the most well-known Tinseltown figure--to be charged with a crime in relation to the federal racketeering and conspiracy case against private investigator Anthony Pellicano"

Julia Roberts' Broadway Show Grosses Nearly $1M in Debut Week

Bush immigration policy! Bienvenido Amigos!

Weekly World News: Tobacco company sues secondhand smokers

• "The B.S. Raleigh Tobacco Company is fighting back. They're tired of people enjoying their products for free. That's why they've filed a $5 billion classaction lawsuit to penalize millions of secondhand smokers."

What does Kenny Rogers look like these days? (Different. Very different.)

"A 34-year-old woman reported to Ypsilanti police that she had traded her father's minivan for cocaine and wants the car back."

Four clips from An American Haunting, the film about the so-called Bell Witch

The SEE NO EVIL - OFFICIAL MOVIE SITE has a different trailer fron the one we have seen.

Six new clips from American Dreamz

The teaser for the Simpsons Movie

A new clip from The Notorious Bettie Page

Whatever happened to the erotic thriller? ... "Not much audience for sexy mysteries, as 'Instinct 2' attests"

"IRAQIS BITTERLY DIVIDED OVER NCAA TITLE GAME" Florida-UCLA Contest Inflames Sunnis, Shiites

Welcome to "Duct Tape at the Movies"

The Top Ten Female Streakers

"Oven door passed off as flat-screen TV in scam"

• Nobody has pressed charges because those who purchased the oven door were satisfied with the programming. "Beats the hell out of Will and Grace," explained one customer.

World's 25 Tallest Buildings all seen in a single skyline

iowahawk: Operation Steel Gazelle: A Smart, Multi-Slide Democratic Plan For Toughening American Security with Smartness

Part 4 of Silent Bob's article about Jay's drug dependency.

Lindsay Lohan Ass Slip

Tell me how much chocolate you eat and I'll guess your age

Another Week in Unnecessary Censorship

Bill Maher On Oppressed Christians

Man Show: The museum of annoying guys

Rice: "Errors" Now "Eeyores"

Family Guy's Hitler References

Ice Age 2, as reviewed by The Filthy Critic

• Somewhere near the end of the article, he actually does mention the film!

"NATION'S TEENS BUZZING ABOUT FOX ATOMIC

• "I can't wait to see what Peter Rice and his new teen-focused division create for us!" high schoolers proclaim

RUSSELL CROWE SUDDENLY LEAVES WIFE FOR NAOMI CAMPBELL

"Kutcher sent to Abu Ghraib after Punk'd prank involving roadside bomb goes wrong"

GREEN SCREEN PHOTO REVEALS TRUTH BEHIND SEACREST-HATCHER ROMANCE

Two trailers for See No Evil

• "Seven feet tall. Four hundred pounds. A rusty steel plate screwed into his skull and razor-sharp fingernails that pluck out his victims' eyes. Reclusive psychopath Jacob Goodnight is holed up in the long-abandoned and rotting Blackwell Hotel, alone with his nightmares until eight petty criminals show up for community service duty along with the cop who put a bullet in Jacob's head four years ago. When one of their own is kidnapped by the killer and her fate uncertain, the remaining lawbreakers must fight this indestructible force of nature with a violent score to settle. "See No Evil" stars World Wrestling Entertainment superstar Kane. The movie was directed by Gregory Dark.

"After stating last week that the U.S. had made thousands of tactical errors in the war in Iraq, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice restated that number upward today, telling reporters that the actual figure was 'probably closer to a billion.'"

• Dr. Rice apologized for initially low-balling the number of U.S. mistakes, explaining, "Quite frankly, I forgot about a lot of the mistakes that Rumsfeld made."

"Hollywood studios will start selling digital versions of films such as 'Brokeback Mountain' and 'King Kong' on the Internet this week, the first time major movies have been available online to own."

• "The films available on Movielink can be stored indefinitely on a computer hard drive or transferred to as many as two other computers. The movies can be played on a TV if the computer is part of a home network. A copy can be burned to a DVD as a backup. Discs can be played on up three PCs authorized by Movielink but cannot be viewed on a standard DVD player because of special security coding."

British royal birthday party descends into chaos

• Tequila shooters, noisemakers, lampshade hats, public anal sex ... and that was just the queen.

A comprehensive summary of this year's April 1 hoaxes

Movie Reviews:

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

Scarlet Moon (2006)

Scarlet Moon (2006) is a new Troma release with no reviews or comments available. I will call it a horror comedy, although I am not quite sure the humor was 100% intentional. The commentary track and the 103 minute featurette gave lots of insight into how this film came about. Warren F. Disbrow, who wrote and directed was responding to a request for another erotic vampire movie. He shot this on weekends, often times only Sundays, and it took a very long time to shoot. Consequently, people often had to leave the production, causing a rewrite. When he finally decided he had enough footage, he edited a first cut, and it was well over three hours long. As he said in the commentary, unless you sink the Titanic at the end, you can't have a movie that long. His next thought was to shoot a little more footage, and make two movies. He abandoned that idea, and continued cutting. The story was actually invented during editing, and whenever their was a gap in the narrative, they did some voice-over to explain it. Warren F. Disbrow is to erotic vampire movies what Ed Wood was to space exploration.

As cobbled together, the story is narrated by a drone vampire who works for the head vampire, a guy by the name of Crawly. Back in antiquity, Queen Tara of Egypt secreted herself in a pyramid, in a room with certain icons that gave her unlimited power and pleasure. On the spur of the moment she decided to disembowel herself with a sword. Crawly is now trying to reassemble the room contents to gain her former power for himself. The last item he needs to complete the room is the Scarlet Moon, a 900 carat bright red diamond. The narrator is tasked with finding this stone, which creates a work overload since he has his regular hits to perform, and also has to keep his stoner vampire buddy out of trouble.

Disbrow cast his main squeeze Annie Donato as one of his stars and even featured his own father, and it is clear that these folks love to make movies, and have a great deal of fun doing it. Troma provides a real service giving them a distribution channel and plenty of freedom.  This is the first time I have seen the "making of" reel much longer than the actual film!

No reviews or comments are available on this one.  This can only be considered in the bad movie genre, and I will give it a C-.

One cannot complain that Disbrow skimped on the nudity, with full frontal from Christine Keller, Denise Marie Kubis and several unknowns, as well as breast exposure from Jennifer JJ. Wilder.

 

Christine Keller

Denise Kubis

unknowns

Jennifer JJ. Wilder

 

 

Fairy Tales (1979)

Hedy Burress and Allison Smith

For the fourth straight year, an April Fool's Day poll named Michael Jackson as the "Most Foolish American."  Organizer Jeff Barge noted that Jackson hadn't even been in the US, and he still easily beat #2, Dick Cheney, who accidentally shot someone in the face. Barge said if that didn't oust Jackson, it's hard to imagine what could.

*  Well, Dick Cheney could shoot Michael Jackson in the face, but it would probably be an improvement.

*  I'd say the most foolish American was that guy who went hunting with Dick Cheney. 



Kurt Cobain's cash-strapped widow, Courtney Love, is selling a 25 percent share in the Nirvana song catalog to music publisher Larry Mestel.  Love told Rolling Stone that Cobain's music won't be sold to the highest bidder but will be introduced to a new generation.  She said "We're going to remain very tasteful.and take Nirvana places it's never been before."

*  Elevators.



On this day in 1860, Pony Express service began between St. Joseph, Missouri and Sacramento, California. 

*  That was back when you could trust a postal carrier with a gun.