Wednesday

Contact junior by writing junior@scoopy.com. Contact Scoopy by writing unclescoopy@msn.com. Contact Tuna by writing tuna@scoopy.com Send submissions to scoopy@scoopy.net

To see and use all the Funhouse features, you need Netscape 6.+ or MSIE 5.+.

• Netscape 6.2.2 is available free for download or on CD.
• MSIE 6.0 is available free.

1969 (1988) After the two films I watched yesterday, I figured 1969 would be a step up, even after Scoops negative review. I was wrong, and think Scoopy was too easy on the film. Nothing about it rang true, the sound track sucked big-time, the "hippies" looked like mainstream college kids, and the college kids looked like seminarians. There was no effort at all to get the dialogue right, and they didn't even begin to tap the surface of the objections to the war. It was like Ed Sullivan produced a "Really Big Show" based on the Readers Digest version of the anti-war movement.

Probably the biggest insult to my intelligence was showing the cop menacing our hero with his baton. When the police lost it and rioted, they just cracked every skull in sight. Also, building take-overs had a fairly rigid protocol. A group would have a meeting to discuss demands with some official, they would be turned down, and they would sit down and stay there. Others would hear about the non-violent protest, and join in. The "establishment" would try to outlast them, and finally have the police start cuffing them and carrying them off to jail. Demonstrations would get out of control at times, and end up in tear gas and violence, but not building takeovers. This film tried to merge the two, and didn't get either one right.

The aspect they were putting under a microscope is an interesting one. We are seeing the radicalization of a small town who was just joining the 60s, even though it was already 1969. Some of the plot elements were correct, such as kids in school only to avoid the draft, one brother in the military and another in the anti-war movement, High School valedictorians devoting their speech to an anti-war message, and kids making a road trip over the summer were all part of the era. It was unnecessary to show the alcoholic single mother, or her affair with a married neighbor, other than an attempt to show that the parents were not behaving any better than the kids. The radicals in this one were radical light. This story could be made into an interesting film, and, in case anyone wants to remake it, I have a few suggestions:

1) Either do a riot or a sit-in or both, but do them right.
2) Don't make the hippie beach commune nearly as neat or organized.
3) Lots more facial hair.
4) Have a mix of campus costumes, including mini-skirts, shorts, jeans and granny dresses/peasant outfits.
5) Take advantage of the sit-in for anti-war exposition
6) Show some hardship during the road trip, like having the van stuck in the mud.
7) Dump the song list, and try to get the following:

1) Opening scene - I Feel Like I'm Fixin' to Die Rag - Country Joe and the Fish
2) Brothers Funeral - Silent Night/6 O'clock news - Simon and Garfunkle
3) Riot Scene - Light My Fire - Feliciano
4) Acid dropping scene - White Rabbit - JEFFERSON AIRPLANE
5) Hitchiking scene - Spinning Wheel - Blood, Sweat and Tears
6) Final demonstration - Aquarius - The Fifth Dimension
7) Brother leaving for Nam - And When I Die - Blood, Sweat & Tears
8) Sex scene with Winona - This Girl's In Love With You - Dionne Warwick (oh, and get Winona's clothes off)
9) Valedictorian speech - Blowin in the Wind - Bob Dylan
10) Comforting Winona after the riot - Bridge Over Troubled Waters - Simon and Garfunkle

Get the dialogue right, from the common slogans and anti-war rhetoric, to the hippie slang.

This would make a watchable film, but probably one without much of an audience. I, however, would see it. This film is not technically flawed, but has no strong plusses other than the clear full-frontal exposure at the hippie commune, and does not at all capture what it is aiming for. D+.

Movies:

Perfume is a complete waste of celluloid, except for the pictures below. I can't imagine why they made this movie. Despair in the world of big-time fashion.

• Naked chicks (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7)

However, it was better than the grade z actioner, The Circuit. A University professor, Dirk Longstreet, was once Dirk Lincoln, the Eastern Seaboard Champion of an illegal underground fighting society, known to its members as ‘The Circuit’. Dirk is happy with his new name and profession, but when his brother enrolls in the fighting society to make money. Well, you know the rest.

• Gail Harris. She's a former porno star who turned publisher (for Larry Flynt), and is now trying to return to film as a "legit" actress.

The January Man comes from the Hogan's Heroes school of comedy. It is a wacky slapstick comedy about serial murder. I'm not kidding. Tuna and Jr liked it, but I really had mixed emotions. It features charming characterizations from the three principals (Kline, Rickman, Mastrontonio), but everything else is awful. It has wildly overacted bit players - Rod Steiger was embarrassing - this is the same guy who did The Pawnbroker? Danny Aiello matched him for sheer over-the-top silliness. Harvey Keitel looked embarrassed to be in the film. He was not over the top. Quite to the contrary, he played his part completely straight,  and he seemed to be acting in a completely different film. Inconsistent stuff, and often in quite bad taste. (They do plenty of schtick while looking at badly mutilated bodies. Take this victim - please!)

• Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio (1, 2, 3, 4)
• another chick (Katherine E Miller)

Domestic Disturbance is a semi-horror "stepdad from hell" film with Vince Vaughn as the evil stepdad, and John Travolta as the kindly dad. Lame movie. No nudity.

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 I inexplicably determined there might be something of interest.
• A blue asterisk indicates the review is written by Tuna (or Lawdog or Junior or C2000 or Realist or ICMS or somebody else besides me)
• If there is no asterisk, I wrote it, but am too ashamed to admit it.

• Gwen Welles (1, 2, 3, 4)

Next up are VHS caps from the 1972 hippie flick, Thumb Tripping. Meg Foster and a really el lame-o dude travel the highways by thumb. They are picked up by Mariana Hill and her boyfriend, get drunk and romp around a bit all topless and everything. The Mariana collages include an initial-disrobing peek at her hooties, a serious gander at the boobs whilst cavorting in the water and then a nip-slip during an impromptu dance at a biker bar. Meg Foster's scenes include a real nice semi-see thru/pokie prelude to an implied sex romp shot from a U2 at 80,000 ft (or so it appears), ending in a dark sit-there and barely-show-them hooter exposure. Damn! I love Meg Foster. Those eyes, that voice, and such a kick-ass little body. But all her nekkid scenes are like this one: distant or dark or both.

• Meg Foster (1, 2)

• Mariana Hill (1, 2, 3)

A few weeks back Tuna presented caps from one of the best nekkid scenes of all time: the Barbara Crampton/Kathleen Kinmont disrobing in Fraternity Vacation. Both babes are, well, babes, and they each posses very interesting bods and they are at least kinda famous and you get both of them... simultaneously... together... at the same time. So Tuna sent me a number of frames he did not post to the Funhouse. That number approached Avogradro's. I mucked with them a bit and decided to split up those I could into separate Crampton and Kinmont collages and keep together those that did not divide easily. First batch are of the uber-cutie Barbara Crampton.

• Barbara Crampton (1, 2, 3, 4)

Segue to the Crampton/Kinmont inseparable collages. Should mention the first four collages show boobs, the fifth is of the mooning scene, with the ugly male butts cut out.

• Barbara Crampton and Kathleen Kinmont (1, 2, 3, 4, 5)

Last up are a few collages of Ms. Kinmont in isolation. Tis a wonderous set of home-grown hooters this woman owns.

• Kathleen Kinmont (1, 2, 3)

Last up is a comment sure to ruffle a few feathers. I guess the easiest way to figure out what people like is to watch what they do rather than listen to what they say. On that theory, a reasonable being would have to conclude that the Funhouse queen is not Jennifer Connely. It is... drum roll... Britney Spears. Seriously. Type Jennifer's name into the Scoopy search engine and you get the odd hit here or there, a few dozen in the past couple of years. But type in Britney's and you a few dozen in the past couple of weeks. And whereas Jennifer has to show off the eighth wonders of the world to get posted to the Funhouse, Britney just has to raise the hemline or lower the neckline by a couple of inches and there she is, "motherfucker" and all. Shee-it, I am as guilty as anyone else. Sent in maybe two Jennifer things in the past two years but at least twice that number of Britney near misses. So let's bite the bullet, boys, and admit to the obvious: Hail, Britney, Queen of all she surveys... like it or not.

Today Kimberly Rowe shows us a little skin in "Justine: Exotic Liaisons" and Daneen Boone (the heroine of the movie) has a bit of a nip slip.

• Kimberly Rowe (1, 2, 3)
• Daneen Boone

A couple of weeks ago one of your readers wanted caps of Joely Fisher in the premier episode of "Baby Bob" which I sent along. Last night she gave us another pretty good glimpse of impressive cleavage.

• Joely Fisher (1, 2, 3)

>From IMDB News, turns out Liz Hurley's new baby resembles alleged daddy, Steve Bing. Guess that means he sucks on her breasts, then he craps all over her...

Hurley's Sister: Damian Looks Like "Beast" Bing
Elizabeth Hurley's sister Kate has branded the actress' ex- boyfriend Steve Bing "a beast" - but says her sibling's new baby looks like him. Kate launched a stinging attack on Bing - who denies he is the father of Hurley's newly born child Damian, despite the star's claims to the contrary - because she says her famous sister has been reduced to tears since the birth because of his behaviour. The literary agent was reported to have said at an after-party for the London premier of About A Boy, which stars the actress' ex- partner Hugh Grant, on Sunday, "It's tough for her, she has been in tears. I was with her when she left the hospital and she was in floods of tears about the whole thing." However, Kate says her sister's parentage claims are supported by the 12-day-old baby boy's appearance. She said, "Let's just say that Damian looks like both sets of parents." Liz, currently staying out of the public eye in her singer friend Sir Elton John's Windsor, England residence, is thought to have brokered a $2.1 million magazine deal for the first pictures of her and her first child.

And the rest are from Ananova. First, another Vanessa Williams-style scandal. I wonder if she was doin' it in high heels...

Beauty queen may lose crown over sex photos
The new Miss Czech Republic could be stripped of her title because she was photographed and filmed having sex with her boyfriend two years ago.

Competition rules forbid all Miss Czech Republic candidates from having participated in erotic modeling.

Photographs have surfaced showing 18-year-old Katerina Prusova involved in sex games with her boyfriend when she was just 16.

The photographs were not commissioned by any erotic magazine but they could force her to lose her crown.

Prusova has declined to comment, saying only: "It's my own business."

A fellow model told Czech daily newspaper Blesk: "It was just a game. When Katerina was 16 she let herself be filmed and photographed with her boyfriend during intercourse. Those shots then got lost and someone now wants to ruin her career."

The photos have not yet been published but an anonymous person is asking £1,000 for them and Blesk has confirmed their existence.

All girls participating in the beauty contest had to sign contracts stating they had never been involved in erotic modeling.

Lawyers are now examining the situation and the competition's president Miloslav Zapletal, who has refused to comment on the scandal, will make the final decision.

Previous Miss Czech Republics believe that Prusova should be forgiven. Monika Zidkova, Miss Czech Republic 1995 and also Miss Europe, said: "I would certainly give her a chance and keep her as this year's beauty queen. Everyone has a past."

Next, nude theater is coming to Georgia. The Playbill will remind the audience that there's no two-drink minimum and they're not supposed to toss dollar bills at the actors...

Anti-nudity students lose Grapes of Wrath battle
Students in the US wanting a ban on actors appearing nude have lost a fight with university chiefs.

Around 500 students at Georgia's Kennesaw State University signed a petition asking for the ban.

They wanted to ban two nude scenes from a production of The Grapes Of Wrath. The university's president has backed the theatre department. Students say the university is in a conservative part of the country.

Head of the anti-nudity campaign, Rachel Brooker, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution: "Nudity is nudity, no matter how it is done. I think it's inappropriate."

The play is a faithful adaptation of John Steinbeck's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. Halfway through the first act, the character of Al Joad strips then jumps into a pool of water to bathe.

At the end, the Rose of Sharon character breast-feeds a starving man after her baby is stillborn. The nudity is essential to the story, director Laurence Ruth says.

She said: "The play is not about nudity. The play is about the indomitability of the human spirit, holding the family together."

Student leader John Legg said: "The area we live in is definitely less open to this than, say, New York. It is a more conservative community. I don't think it's going to be received by the community as artistic."

University president Betty Siegel said: "We hope that people will judge this play on its artistic merits and make their own decision whether to see it."

Laura Akin who plays Rose of Sharon said: "I hope they will be able to look past this and come and see the show and even if they close their eyes, grasp the meaning of what we're trying to do."