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Dear Scoopy,

 

Related to the actress=escort question, you can browse some past versions of Nici's Girls at archive.org, e.g.
http://web.archive.org/web/20000307182622/nicisgirls.com/portfolio/index.html. There are some familiar names there, though "Hollywood"actress? I don't know...

Melaninis
 

 

Battle in Heaven (2005)

Battle in Heaven should be used to torture political prisoners. Show this thing at Gitmo and those terror-boys will not only be ratting out all their cells, they'll be begging for a Bible, a ham sandwich, a copy of the Wall Street Journal rather than watching the film again.

The plot - all two minutes worth - involves a poor, 40ish, obese Mexican couple who bungle a baby-napping badly enough that they end up with a dead baby. The husband works as a chauffeur for a rich general, and one day he confesses his crime to the general's daughter. She is appalled. He therefore has two choices: he can turn himself in (his own preference), or he can kill the rich chick (his wife's suggestion). The complex moral decision is complicated by the fact that the rich chick is a spoiled sex-obsessed brat who works in a brothel for kicks, is really young and hot, and throws the fat old husband a freebie now and then. The "moral" choice battles with the "immoral" one for control of his soul.

On the slow, slow path toward the resolution, we are treated to:

(1) Graphic XXX photography of the rich chick blowing the fat guy in real time.

(2) Graphic XXX photography of the rich chick fucking the fat guy in real time, followed by the detumescence of his penis in real time.

(3) R-Rated photography of the obese husband porking his morbidly obese wife.

(4) Mexican soldiers raising and lowering the flag in real time.

(5) Performances from untrained amateur actors. The "star" delivers every line robotically, with his hands held stiffly at his side. Even during sex! He never changes his facial expression in coitus or elsewhere. I assume he was supposed to do all of this, but it is laughable.

(6) Several minutes of the fat guy running around in a fog. I don't mean that figuratively.

(7) Actors posed silently in a stagy tableaux while the director moves the camera from place to place to show the audience some indications of their thoughts through the movement of their hands, or their genitals, or whatever.

(8) Lots and lots of arthouse-style Christian iconography, dredged up from the husband's subconscious as his guilt accumulates.

(9) Background noise which consists of either funereal Mexican music or irritating Tarkovsky-style natural sounds like artificially loud dripping water.

In fact, considering points the last four points above, you could very convincingly argue that this would be the very movie Tarkovsky would make if he were to come back as a young man from the artsy-fartsy portion of the Mexican intelligencia. Director Carlos Reygadas would undoubtedly consider that a compliment, and in a certain way it is. He has some of Tarkovsky's gift for creative camera work and the composition of painterly images. That's a good thing. Unfortunately, he also has the bad qualities that doomed Tarkovsky's later works: pretentiousness, obsession, emotional inaccessibility, and glacial pacing.  To make matters worse, he throws in a bit of the ol' Owl Creek Bridge twist at the end of this film, showing us that at least one scene was simply a daydream, so that it becomes unclear whether we have witnessed real events or other extended daydreams.

I reckon that Reygadas is being deliberately confrontational with his ugly sex scenes and his arthouse sensibilities, but I'll be damned if I can figure out why. He seems smart enough to realize that he's made a movie which will appeal to virtually no one except a few guys in turtlenecks. The one thing that seems capable of rescuing Reygadas from a life of sitting in cafes and talking to leftover beatniks is that he does have a sense of humor, albeit a very contemptuous one, and it often shines through. There is the contrast of the raising and lowering of the Mexican flag to the raising and lowering of Marcos's penis, with the same ceremonial music playing in both cases. There is the fixed vision of a poor, expressionless, fat couple selling pathetic and kitschy Mexicana in a Mexico City underpass, a tableaux which is simultaneously hilarious and heartbreaking.

To sum it all up briefly, Reygadas seems to have studied the masters, has some talent of his own, and has no sense of limits. Those qualifications look good on his resume, and we can hope that he someday uses them to make an actual movie rather than this kind of provocative "performance art" crap.

 

Anapola Mushkadiz

Bertha Ruiz (warning: you do NOT want to see this)

unknown (but beautiful)

Other Crap:

Why you should study your vocab words ... Dozens of private school girls sign a petition to end women's suffrage.

34-year-old teacher had sex with 13-year-old student 28 times in one week

How celebrities looked as kids

• Did you know that when Bruce Willis was a teen, he was Jason Lee? Who woulda thunk it?

Playboy has decided to make nice with Jessica Alba. In turn, she's calling off the legal dogs.

Three trailers for Clean

• "Emily Wang (Maggie Cheung) is a woman who wrestles with her dream of becoming a singer, her fitness as a mother, and daily life without her partner Lee (James Johnston). Her past is riddled with drugs and regrets, the result of which left Lee dead in a desolate motel room in Hamilton, Ontario, and landed Emily with a six-month jail sentence. The only thing that she desires for the future is a loving relationship with her son Jay, who is being cared for by Lee's parents, Albrecht (Nick Nolte) and Rosemary (Martha Henry). While Rosemary blames Emily for the death of Lee, Albrecht recognizes the importance of the bond between a mother and her son, and his faith sets the standard for the faith Emily must find in herself. Clean follows Emily to Hamilton, Paris, London and San Francisco and in three languages (English, French and Cantonese), as she battles for a place in a world reluctant to forget the woman she has been and unwilling to accept her as the woman she longs to be."

The trailer for Lady Vengeance

• "The third film from Chan-wook Park's revenge trilogy following 'Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance' and 'Oldboy'. Lee Geum-Ja, at the age of 19, goes to prison for the murder and abduction of a child on behalf of her accomplice Mr. Baek, only to find out that she is betrayed. While in prison, she carefully prepares for her revenge by winning the hearts of her fellow inmates with her kindness, thus earning herself the nickname 'kind Ms. Geum-Ja'. Upon her release from prison after 13 years, she finally sets out to seek revenge on Baek, with the help of her former prison mates."

Nine clips from Take the Lead. the Banderas dance movie.

Colbert Report: Stephen's Sound Tax Advice

• "He's no longer Stephen Colbert, human. He's Stephen Colbert, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Colbertco."

Stephen Colbert discusses public gestures and his own recent honors.

Colbert Report: Stay the Course

• "When it comes to racehorses and politicians, why not make the jump from breeding to cloning?"

"Jon pleads with Ricky Gervais to do a porno under the name 'Chubby Funster.'"

Colbert: Fantasy Baseball

The Daily Show looks at the Economic Summit in Cancun

The Daily Show's "This Week in God"

• "Buddhism's been voted the quietest faith on earth 2005 years running."

Yahoo Implicated In Spyware Click Fraud

Part Five of Silent Bob's story of Jay's battle with addiction

What's up with 666, the "mark of the beast"?

"A short animation about a guy getting a wand that makes all his dreams come true." (Outstanding little video!)

"The Bahamas has banned the gay cowboy movie 'Brokeback Mountain,' triggering a new controversy over the island chain's reputation for homophobia."

Katie Couric expected to announce she's leaving `Today Show' Wednesday

• Couric will then join CBS, becoming the first woman to be solo anchor of an evening newscast, and also the first really perky anchor.
• NBC is widely expected to offer Couric's Today Show gig to Meredith Vieira of The View and Who Wants to Be A Millionaire.

An incredibly jumbo-ass picture of Rachel McAdams falling out of her top

Whatever happened to ... Scotty Schwartz?

• Yeah, you know who he is ... "As a pre-teen, Scotty Schwartz appeared in more than a hundred TV commercials. In 1982, at the age of thirteen, he starred as Richard Pryor's cherub-faced foil in the box-office smash The Toy. The next year, in A Christmas Story, Schwartz anchored the film's famous scene as the schoolboy named Flick who unwisely applies his tongue to a frozen flagpole on a triple-dog dare."

Urville: The Imaginary City

• "Gilles Trehin is an autistic 28-year-old. Since the age of 12, he has been designing an imaginary city called Urville, named after the Dumont d'Urville, a French scientific base in Antarctica. He has created detailed historical, geographical, cultural, and economic descriptions of the city, as well as an absolutely extraordinary set of drawings. His Guidebook to Urville will be published later this year.

Playing Rock Songs Backwards

"Britney Spears in Shock: Kevin Federline Gets a Job"

The trailer for Shem

• Daniel, an arrogant and restless young Londoner, is bored with his meaningless life. When he seeks sympathy from his old Jewish grandmother, she sends him on a mission to Europe to find the grave of her father who disappeared during the Second World War. Following his great grandfather's trail, Daniel's journey leads him to Paris, Berlin, Prague, Budapest, and Sofia, finally having to flee to Rome. As he passes from one intense experience to the next, he is caught up in the turmoil of change taking place in the former communist countries, in the process discovering his Jewish roots which had previously never mattered to him. What started as an excuse simply to travel and have fun soon becomes an obsessive quest and a journey of personal discovery.

The Hammer Falls ... DeLay quits race, announces resignation

• He told the Galveston County Daily News that he would withdraw from his election bid, but would continue "to promote the conservative agenda outside of public office." He also announced that he would move away from Texas ...
• ... presumably to a country with no extradition treaty with the U.S.
• He may stay outside of public office, but he may still find himself in public buildings from time to time.

"BUSH CALLS PARALYSIS OF IRAQI GOVERNMENT A SIGN OF DEMOCRACY" ... "President Hails Partisan Wrangling, Inaction"

"Ant and Dec have revealed they believe in aliens."

• In their case, that is simply self-awareness.
• I believe in aliens as well. I can see one right now, weeding my garden.

"Daily Show: Headlines - Persian 2.0"

• "There IS a difference between Iran and Iraq! One ends in a Q, and one is developing a nuclear weapon!"

"Desperately looking to save face after Dubai Ports World pulled out of a deal to manage U.S. shipping ports, President Bush has announced a new tentative agreement. '80s rockers Twisted Sister are slated to take over port management by August 1st."

The failure of Basic Instinct 2 is Bush's fault!

• Based on my own decision not to see it, I'd say it did have to do with bush - the lack thereof.

Movie Reviews:

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

L'Insegnante (1975) (aka The School Teacher)

The School Teacher is essentially My Tutor (1983), but several years earlier, and starring Edwige Fenech in the title role. Alfredo Pea, the son of a senator, is one of a trio of class fuck-ups. Should he continue the way he is headed, he will fail Greek and be held back. His father, who controls the headmaster's promotion, pushes him into hiring a tutor for Alfredo. Meanwhile, his mother suspects he may be gay. In truth, like most normal High School boys, women are nearly all he thinks about. When he overhears his mother confiding her fears to Fenech, he and his buddies come up with a seduction plan. He will pretend to be gay, and she will try to turn him straight.

A naked Edwige Fenech is reason enough to see a film, and this one also had some funny moments. There is plenty of usual teen comedy material, including: peeping on the girls bathroom; lighting farts; etc. The mother reminds me of the mother from Hollywood Hot Tubs; Fenech's fiance is a phys ed teacher at the school who seems more than a little light in his loafers; Alfredo's buxom maid has a thick moustache; and most of the teachers are just plain silly.

The widescreen transfer is adequate, and the dubbed English sound track is not at all bad. 

This is a C as a teen sex comedy.

IMDb readers say 5.5. There are no reviews from major critics.

Fenech shows breasts, wearing only a thin pair of panties. Two girls show breasts in the ladies room, and, when the senator takes Alfredo to a whore house, another woman shows breasts and buns.

 

 

Edwige Fenech

unknowns