Whenever Scoopy and I disagree on a film, it is an event for me. This is one of those films. First for the areas of agreement.

1) The film has merit
2) It is bad history.
3) Geoffrey Rush was brilliant as the Marquis de Sade.
4) The film reinvents a "kinder, gentler" de Sade to make the character more acceptable to the audience.
5) It was obvious that the film was an adaption of a stage play, in that there was not much action, and there was a LOT of dialogue.

Scoopy was unable to relate emotionally to the film, because the character of the real de Sade is so odious to him that he couldn't accept the fictional version in this film. He compares it to romanticizing Hittler. I can completely see his point. A film romanticizing Hittler would leave me cold, no matter how well made, because I have a lot of emotional baggage associated with Adolph. I would have similar problems relating to a film romanticizing Nixon, or McCarthy, or Bill Gates or Ty Domi (for the Hockey impaired, Domi is a thug who can't even skate, and exists simply to hurt people). The difference is that I had no emotional baggage about de Sade. He probably deserves a place of honor on my fecal list, but I watched the film without the same emotional reaction to de Sade that Scoopy did. Scoopy loved the Rush performance, as did I, but was bored by the Winslett character, the Priest (Joaquin Phoenix), and the Doctor's young wife (Amelia Warner).

For me, the film used the character of de Sade Lite as a plot device, and was really more about the question of whether people, witnessing (reading or watching) violent, sexual and deviant material are incited to go out and commit these acts themselves. I was fascinated by the Winslett character, who was the proof that enjoyment of pornography doesn't make you lewd (she died a virgin). I absolutely fell in love with the Amelia Warner character. She is being held in cold storage in a nunnery til the doctor feels the need of a wife. Being sent away from his circle of friends by Napoleon to put a stop to de Sade's writings, he decides it is time for this wife. She is 16, he is more like 60, and he virtually rapes her on their wedding night, then instructs the house staff to keep her locked in so she doesn't lose her virtue. She gets her hands on a de Sade book, in her words "memorizes it" and then, her education complete, looks for a teacher to give her practical lessons. An architect (really more what we would call a decorator) provided by Napoleon fits the bill. In the one image I included, we see her wiping the results of a blow job off her mouth.

There are critics I respect on both sides of this issue, with Berardinelli at 3 1/2 stars and making many of the same points I am trying to, and others calling it highly over-rated. The film has a green tint, which Scoop found distracting and I thought added to the mood of the film. Is Scoopy right or am I? We both are. Watching films, and reviewing them as well, is completely subjective. Now for the grade. Scoopy saw it as a costume drama and biopic, and didn't give it much crossover appeal. This is one of his favored genres. I don't often like the genre, saw it more as a morality play/drama, and think it has a lot of crossover appeal. My grade, B-.

"Sunshine" proved to be a mammoth project. Fifty three hour epic about the entire history of the human race from nomadic hunter-gatherer to Jimmy Carter. Jeez, that isn't much progress for 20,000 years, is it? Even less if you live in Afghanistan. Actually, this film is a three hour saga of Hungary in the first half of the 20th century (until the 1956 revolution), as seen by three generations of a Jewish family trying to assimilate. Ralph Fiennes plays three roles. What would they have done if one of the three was supposed to have a sense of humor? Well, luckily that wasn't the case, so Fiennes got to do his very serious thing.  Most of the nudity was Fiennes flashing his tallywacker a couple times, but here's  .... 

• Deborah Unger. I'm not sure why, but she dropped the Kara for this movie. She's been Deborah Kara Unger for a long time now. She did a crotch flash without showing her breasts. I think this is the third or fourth movie in which she's done that. Very hot scene in which Fiennes pulls off her drawers and goes down on her in the woods near a tiny train station where they agreed to meet. Deborah looked older than I expected, and it wasn't easy to find a good face shot for my collages. (1, 2)

NOTE: Rachel Weisz also did a brief topless scene, but between the darkness and the motion blur, I couldn't come up with a capture.

The Sci-Fi series "Lexx" is shown on Space in Canada (uncut) and PG rated on the Sci-Fi Channel in the States. Concurrent episodes "Gametown" and "Boomtown" featured Canadian actresses Patricia Zentilli, Janaya Stephens, Roberta Sammutt, Mika Ward and a showed a lot of nudity. The only actress that stands out here is Janaya who played the virginal Marie Osmond in a recent television movie about the Osmond family.

All pics are topless only.

1) You're Different -- And That's Bad
2) The Boy Who Died from Eating All His Vegetables
3) Robert: Dad's New Wife
4) Fun Four-Letter Words to Know and Share
5) The Kids' Guide to Hitchhiking
6) Kathy Was So Bad That her Mom Stopped Loving Her
7) Curious George and the High-Voltage Fence
8) All Cats Go to Hell
9) The Little Sissy That Snitched
10) Why Can't Mr. Fork and Mrs. Electrical Outlet be Friends?
11) That's It, I'm Putting You Up for Adoption.
12) Grandpa Gets a Casket
13) 101 Things You Can Do at the Bottom of the Pool
14) The Magic World Inside the Abandoned Refrigerator
15) Controlling the Playground: Respect Through Fear
16) The Pop-Up Book of Human Anatomy
17) Strangers Have the Best Candy
18) Whining, Kicking and Crying to Get Your Way
19) You Were an Accident
20) Things Rich Kids Have, But You Never Will
21) Daddy Drinks Because You Cry
22) Your Nightmares Are Real
23) Where Would You Like to be Buried?
24) You've Got Hepatitis B, Charlie Brown
25) Valuable Protein and Other Nutritional Benefits of Things from Your Nose

20 Things it takes a Lifetime to Learn

1.Never under any circumstances take a sleeping pill and a laxative on the same night.
2.If you had to identify, in one word, the reason why the human race has not achieved, and never will achieve, its full potential, that word would be "meetings."
3.There is a very fine line between "hobby" and "mental illness."
4.People who want to share their religious or political views with you almost never want you to share yours with them.
5.And when God, who created the entire universe with all of its glories, decides to deliver a message to humanity, He will not use, as His messenger, a person on cable TV with a bad hairstyle.
6.You should not confuse your career with your life.
7.No matter what happens, somebody will find a way to take it too seriously.
8.When trouble arises and things look bad, there is always one individual who perceives a solution and is willing to take command. Very often, that individual is crazy.
9.Nobody cares if you can't dance well. Just get up and dance.
10.Never lick a steak knife.
11.Take out the fortune before you eat the cookie.
12.The most powerful force in the universe is gossip.
13.You will never find anybody who can give you a clear and compelling reason why we observe daylight savings time.
14.You should never say anything to a woman that even remotely suggests that you think she's pregnant unless you can see an actual baby emerging from her at that moment.
15.There comes a time when you should stop expecting other people to make a big deal about your birthday. That time is age 11.
16.The one thing that unites all human beings, regardless of age, gender, religion, economic status or ethnic background, is that, deep down inside, we all believe that we are above average drivers.
17.The main accomplishment of almost all organized protests is to annoy people who are not in them.
18.A person who is nice to you, but rude to the waiter, is not a nice person.
19.Your friends love you anyway.
20.Never argue with an idiot; people watching can't tell which is which.