Monday

Sex and Lies in Sin City

Sex and Lies in Sin City is a made-for-Lifetime film which recreates the circumstances of the scandalous death of Ted Binion, son of the Las Vegas pioneer "Benny" Binion, who opened the Horseshoe Casino back in 1951, when Vegas was still in its infancy. Benny originated the World Series of Poker in the early 70s, and Ted ran the Series for many years.

Ted was know around town as someone who might have been a great man if he could have kept his excesses in check. He made friends easily, was exceptionally brilliant, and had a good heart. Unfortunately, he could never live up to his potential because of his drug habits. He liked to smoke, and not just some harmless reefer. He liked to chase the dragon, which has nothing to do with whether he liked Bruce Lee movies, but rather refers to his favorite recreation - snorting heroin fumes.

He OD'd at age 54 in 1998, under circumstances strange enough to lead the police eventually to conclude that his overdose was forced upon him by his stripper girlfriend and her lover, a Binion friend and business associate. The pair, Sandra Murphy and Rick Tabith, were tried twice for his murder, as well as for plotting to loot the stash of Binion's underground vault. Matthew Modine plays Ted Binion, and effectively shows both the man's charm and his drug-fueled madness. Mena Suvari and Jonathan Schaech play the couple accused of Binion's murder.

I've read quite a bit about that case. If you want to catch up, the Court TV (now truTV) site, as always, offers an exceptionally thorough overview. The movie presents various possible interpretations of the circumstances surrounding Binion's death, but it does lead the viewer to accept one particular interpretation over the others, and it portrays the accused killers with a significant amount of sympathy. I'm not convinced that the presentation was fair. In developing its point of view it ignored some key evidence that led the police to believe that Binion died in one place and was dragged to another, after which there was a deliberate cleansing of the path between the two places.

Still and all, the fact remains that the evidence against the murderers was circumstantial, and prosecution witnesses in the first trial later admitted that they had been paid to "play ball." The Nevada supreme court ordered a retrial based on some errors made by the judge in the first trial, and the second trial led to "not guilty" verdicts on the murder charge and a conviction on the larceny. In my opinion, the defendants should have been found not guilty of the larceny charges as well, although I believe they actually did it. Tabith said that he was emptying the vault based on the explicit orders of Binion, and his story was backed up by the fact that Tabith was the only person who had the combination beside Binion, therefore the only person who could have opened it after Binion's death. Tabith claimed that he was emptying it to get the money safely to Binion's daughter. While that seems unlikely, there is no crime in doing unlikely things, and the police could never prove he had any other motivations. In fact, he talked to the local sheriff three times that day about the excavation, although he did not tell John Law the whole truth. As for Murphy, her conviction on the larceny charge was total nonsense. It is logical to assume that she was guilty, but the evidence simply did not support that. The whole case against her is that Tabith called her several times while he was unearthing the silver, thus establishing their conspiracy. That's ridiculous for two reasons: (1) the prosecutors never proved that Tabith was committing the crime in the first place; (2) the prosecutors never proved that the couple were talking about the silver. Phone records proved that they had talked on the phone as frequently as 20 times a day, so why would the long excavation period be any different from any other time of similar length?

Did the lovers actually conspire to steal the silver. Probably, and Tabish had done similar things in the past, but there certainly was "reasonable doubt," and that is the basis of legal guilt or innocence.

Did the lovers commit the murder, either by planning it or by deliberately failing to call for help when they knew Binion was ODing? I don't know. After studying all 25 pages of the Crime TV report, I still can't come to a conclusion either way. It does appear that the accused pair covered up some details of their involvement and lied about others, but it also appears that there were plenty of shenanigans in the prosecution's case, which would indicate that the prosecutors wouldn't have had a case if they had played fair.

Hey, it's Vegas. Everybody was scamming everyone else.

Who lied the most? Flip a coin.

 

Nudity:

Mena Suvari did not technically get naked, but this scene went about as far as it could have gone without nudity. Suvari looked beautiful, was tremendously sexy, and exposed almost her entire butt. You DO want to see it.

 

  • * Yellow asterisk: funny (maybe).

  • * White asterisk: expanded format.

  • * Blue asterisk: not mine.

  • No asterisk: it probably sucks.

OTHER CRAP:

Catch the deluxe version of Other Crap in real time, with all the bells and whistles, here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Whole Nine Yards

2000

Amanda Peet film clips (collages below)

This was the #2 nude scene of 2000 in our annual poll. It might have won most years, but nothing was going to top Katie Holmes in The Gift.

Natasha Henstridge film clips (collages below)

 

 

 

 

 

 


Malibu Express

1985

Part 3

More of the boobs from "Malibu Express." First up Lorraine Michaels with a little lovemaking in the shower. Caps and a clip.

 


Barbara Edwards takes her turn in the shower. Caps and a clip.


Then Barbara is joined by Kimberly McArthur. Caps and a clip.


 


 

 

 

TV Land

Over in TV Land more of the great legs of Amy Robach on the "Today Show.


 

Then Amy is joined on the couch by Jenna Wolfe. Cap and a very short HD clip.


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Notes and collages

"Unhappily Ever After"

Nikki Cox

Season 4, episode 18

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Girls of Sunset Strip

(1993)

Coming your way will be clips from a strip-and-wiggle disk called Girls of Sunset Strip. Not your typical fare in that the girls in question include a bunch of B-movie regulars. They would be Kim Dawson, Mimi Fallace, Monique Parent, Nenna Quiroz (who often gets cinema nekkid as Lisa Throw) and Tanya Poole.  And there is this other gal named Crystal Nelson. 

The disk suffers from one huge fault - stupid camera tricks.  Post-production editing added all sorts of unnecessary and obscuring features to the nekkid gals, as if the producers were attempting to show they could put out a work of cinematic art.  Sheesh.  I edited out that shit, leaving the gals in all their glory.

DVD bonus features included three clips of other disks in which Julie Strain. Lorissa McComas and Shauna O'Brien get down to their birthday suits.  With Kim, Julie, Lorissa and Monique, you have to figure this disk includes actresses in a few hundred B movies. 

Today: Nenna Quiroz
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pics

Some interesting material today.

The top story is obviously Jessica Biel in Powder Blue. We'll be seeing lots more of these scenes. To me the most impressive thing about Biel's shape is the hourglass waistline, which makes her muscular shoulders look even bigger. Look at that view of her from the rear.

Jennifer Aniston continues her lifetime quest to get naked constantly without ever revealing anything (below right). The movie is Rumor Has It

This is that Hipster Grifter chick (Keri Ferrell) that the online 'zines care about for no good reason that I can determine.

Superduper model Doutzen Kroes. She is fifth on the list of the world's highest-paid models. (1) Gisele (2) Heidi (3) Kate Moss (4) Adriana Lima. Doutzen is the youngest of the five by far. She's 23. Gisele and Lima are 27. Heidi and Moss are 34.

Brigitte Lahaie in The Escapees

Denni Parkinson is Richard Branson's girlfriend. She's also stark naked in this photoshoot, including some HQ full frontals.

 

Film Clips

Dushku in The Alphabet Killer, in 720p this time.

(Sample right.)

Two naked babes on French TV: Clara Morgane and Axelle Parker. According to Wikipedia, "Clara Morgane, born Emmanuelle Aurélie Munos, is a French singer, media personality, TV host, and a former porn star.) Our kind of gal. Axelle is a current porn star.

Imogen Bailey in Man-Thing

Capri Cavalli - nude scene in the unrated version of Sex Drive. (The unrated version consists of the regular version plus inserts of irrelevant naked women.)

A very young Penelope Cruz in Serie Rose. I believe this was her first nude scene.

The women of Crazy Animal, a Troma film which features guest appearances by former scream queen Brinke Stevens and the distinguished Shakespearean, Sir Ronald Jeremy Hyatt, who is known to most of you by his everyday name, Ron Jeremy. I have a copy of this film, but have not watched it. I'll give it a shot tomorrow. Maybe I'll write about it if I can think of something interesting to say. (Yeah, I know that criterion has never affected me before.) It sounds insane:

"Ricky tracks down some allegedly bad frat boys, ties them up and sings them cheesy 80s heavy metal songs until they confess to their crime... well, one of them confesses to his crime... but just as he confesses, he breaks free from his ropes and begins going on a killing spree!"

The women are Anise Fuller, Danica DeCosto, Lene Pedersen, Maria Zyrianova, and an assortment of unidentified chicks.