Watermelon Woman (1996) is a black lesbian film by a black lesbian film maker about a black lesbian film maker making a film about a fictitious black lesbian actress. As she researches the "Watermelon Woman," she finds out that she had a sexual relationship with a white female director. The film maker also has a sexual relationship with a white woman. There is one sex scene between them, wherein writer/director/star Cheryl Dunye shows breasts and buns, and Guinevere Turner shows one breast.

Dunye works in a video store, and has a side business shooting weddings, etc, with her best friend who also works at the video store. Her dream, however, is to become a film maker, and she is in search of an idea. The two order unusual videos, claiming a customer requested them, dupe them at home, then return them. This is where Dunye learns about the Watermelon Women, and decides then and there that she is the subject of her film.

I suppose the film is full of insights into what being a black lesbian film maker means, but no lights came on for me. I saw the same relationship and friendship problems I see in any reasonably honest film. In short, despite the rather racy characters, the film was far too normal for me. It won some awards in specialty festivals. Berardinelli gave it high praise and awarded 3 stars. He especially liked the way it didn't focus on the bedroom, and also on the excellent recreation of old black and white footage supposedly of the Watermelon Woman's early films. I was left with the impression that Dunye has something to say, but I didn't quite get the message. IMDb readers have it at 6.2 of 10. I will give it a solid C as a gay/lesbian genre film. At least it dared to be different, and the character development of the leads was good.

Japanese Story (2003)

The basic structure of this film is familiar. It's a tragic romance in the form of a three-act play.

Act 1: They hate each other. An Aussie woman and a visiting Japanese man are at odds over their cultural differences. She talks too loud. He's too arrogant and patronizing and sexist. Yadda yadda.

Act 2: They love each other. They end up bonding when they are stuck together in the desert. They form the uneasy beginning of a romantic relationship.

Act 3: They lose everything. He dies in an accident while they are deep in the outback. She has to go through the very difficult process of carrying him back to their vehicle, driving his corpse back to the nearest town, and seeing how his body is handled in a small town with no doctor, in which the undertaker preserves bodies in an ice house. She spends the rest of the film dealing with grief, and her own guilt about his death, and his widow. (Turns out he was married with two children.) She is sometimes overwhelmed by the sense of having lost someone before getting to know him as well as she wanted to.

Japanese Story is only about 95 minutes long, but it took me about 8 hours to watch it. I watched 20 minutes, then surfed the web for Other Crap, then watched 10 minutes, then checked the ball scores, then another 20 minutes, then went out to work on my spikes for a while (I play volleyball), and so forth.

I won't say it isn't good. That would not be fair, but I just couldn't get through this Aussie movie, despite the fact that it won just about every award the Aussie Academy had to offer, and features an excellent performance from character actress Toni Collette, who got to play the romantic lead for a change. Lots of respected critics loved it, Tuna really liked it (see below), but I just couldn't ever get into it.

Why? Well, most important, it is one of those movies that only shows a very few scenes, but virtually shows them in real time. People gather to talk, one woman walks out of the room silently. The camera follows her every footstep. She changes her mind and walks back in to say something. The camera follows her every footstep. I guess it's just me, but I really prefer some compression in my movie scripts. As I see it, fealty to Aristotle's unity of time makes for mighty boring viewing. That sort of direction makes my life difficult enough when it involves city scenes, but this film also used that technique in the desert. Car driving, driving, driving, driving, driving .... I got the goddamned point. Car keeps driving through nowhere. Great vast, dirty, red expanses of nowhere. Point delivered. Move on.

If this sort of pacing doesn't bother you (it didn't seem to bother many critics), then the film may be your cup of tea more than it was mine.

There was a second reason that it was irritating. It has a bizarre, patronizing view of Japanese culture. It assumes (as I guess many Westerners do) that because the Japanese come from a fairly rigid culture, that they cannot really ever leave Japan, because they expect the rest of the world to adapt to their ways when they arrive on foreign soil. You know, I find this completely illogical, as well as contrary to my own experiences. Japanese businessmen have been successful throughout the world, both in forging local relationships and in devising solid business systems. Of course they have their own ways of doing things, and they adhere to those ways when they are among one another, just as we adhere to our ways when we are the only ones in the room, but Japanese businessmen are educated very well in general. Now when we are going through school, we learn that other people have different ways of looking at life, and that other cultures have different signs of respect and disrespect, and arrange their priorities in different orders. We learn that our ability to adapt to other cultures affects our likelihood to make a sale in their country. Why do we assume that the Japanese are not privy to this same wisdom? Why do we assume that Japanese people do not also take those same courses in Sociology and World Geography and Marketing, and learn the same things we learn. I just have to assume that the Japanese out of Japan are not generally the cloistered and inflexible buffoons pictured in movies.

We have one Japanese man visiting Australia by himself in this film. Is he going to assume that all Australian women are his inferiors and that he should let them carry his baggage for him? Is he going to do all the traditional Japanese bowing and handing the business card with two hands, and acting like a Japanese caricature from a 1930s movie? Are intelligent Japanese people incapable of functioning outside their own culture? I don't think so. He hasn't been living in a monastery, for heaven's sake. I think he is aware that Australia is not a part of Japan, and he would therefore make an effort to adapt to Aussie customs, probably reading up on local customs in advance, just as an American, Brit, or German would do if he called on someone in Indonesia, for example. I reckon he would realize that Australian women can be CEOs and scientists. If he were stuck in the desert with his life in peril, I don't think he would refuse to use his cell phone to call for help, because of the shame of getting stuck out there. Hey, the Japanese may have a rigid and tradition-oriented culture, but that doesn't mean they are stupid and want to die for no good reason.

At one point, the Japanese guy turns to his Aussie companion and says, "your country is so big, and there are so few people." You mean that just dawned on him after a week or so in Western Australia? He wasn't aware of the size and population of Australia from his studies back in Kyoto? He wasn't aware that just about all of non-coastal Australia, especially the mining area, is a vast expanse of mostly uninhabited outback? Give me a break. We would never believe that a Dutchman or a Swede would be this naive. Why would we accept it from a Japanese character?

Furthermore, a really savvy Japanese businessman would never say something like this in Australia to an Australian, because it plays right into the Xenophobic belief of some Australians that the Japanese want to buy up Australia because they are running out of room in their own country. The Japanese know that this flaming paranoia exists, and they would not deliberately fan that flame.

Frankly, I found this whole portrayal to be a well-meaning but subtle, patronizing racism.

I had two other, more minor, objections to this film.

1. The scene transitions drove me crazy. I mentioned before that there are very few scenes, but each one is explored deliberately. That technique means that there are sometimes very large storyline gaps between scenes - too large, in my opinion. One example: after the two mismatched companions escape the desert, they head back toward civilization. The two of them have never kissed or held hands. They stop driving when it gets dark. CUT. New scene begins - the Japanese guy is lying in bed on his back, shirtless, and the Aussie woman is playing with his nipples. She gets undressed, then puts on his pants, then mounts him. No talk, no kissing, no handholding. Straight to the chase.  I guess I should probably praise them for an innovative approach which avoided all the clichés, but I felt uncomfortable. I looked away in embarrassment as if I felt they shouldn't have been there together, and I wondered how they got to that point. Seemed very ungainly to me.

2. The finale of the movie consists of his voice reading a letter he wrote her, a note which she was supposed to read after he boarded a plane back to Kyoto. He did end up on that plane, of course, but he was in a pine box at the time. The sad Japanese music plays. It sounds like all the notes are made with different cowbells. Based on this movie, I have concluded that  Christopher Walken would love Japan because he would never need more cowbell. As the voice-over speaks the words of the letter in pidgin English ... well, I don't really have to tell you what it said. If I had been directing this movie, I would have nuked the "letter from the dead" in a New York Minute. Now that the 1930s are over, this technique should be restricted only to Mariah Carey movies.

(In case that reference was too obscure, they used the same cliché in Mariah's "Glitter")

It would be unfair for me to say that the movie is not good. Too many people liked it, and I take away many great memories of it. The spectacular redness and rugged emptiness of Western Australia. His death in the billabong. The small-town part-time coroner who stores bodies like cases of beer.

The iconography was memorable.

The movie, however, good as it may be (and I'm not convinced it is that good), has a very tiny but very appreciative audience. I tried to like it because it is just so earnest, but I couldn't.

• Toni Collette (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7)

OTHER CRAP:

• This page asks- why is America falling in love with Lindsay Lohan? The accompanying picture goes a long way toward answering the question. Did you see her in that Harry Potter skit on SNL? Unlike most guest stars on that show, and even the regular cast members, she had her character nailed perfectly, all of her blocking down pat, and all of her lines memorized - no looking off at cue cards. She's only 17 years old, and she kicked the asses of all the "pros" on that show. And of course, the picture speaks for itself. Girl definitely has a future, if she keeps her head on straight.
• HALLE as CATWOMAN - "OPRAH" FOOTAGE - (Laughable)
• The following article contains some major spoilers for SPIDER-MAN 2 and if these rumors are true, SPIDER-MAN 3.
• The Movie "Major League" happens in real life - featuring the Montreal Expos.
• Childless couple told to try sex. A German couple who went to a fertility clinic after eight years of marriage have found out why they are still childless - they weren't having sex
• Two teaser/trailers for Catwoman. The hat is silly, but otherwise it doesn't look as bad as folks have been saying.
• The five part formula for a successful sports movie.
• More pictures of John Kerry's daughter under the flashbulbs at Cannes
• Husband convicted for having consensual sex with his wife. Huh? The problem stems from Georgia's unique legal code. In that state it is legal for a 13 year old to marry without her parents' permission, but she is not old enough to consent legally to sexual activity! {{bullshit}} cough {{blowjob}}
• Cannes screens the most sexually explicit mainstream British film in history. Nine Songs is from Michael Winterbottom, who previously directed Jude, the Thomas Hardy adaptation starring Kate Winslet.
• New TV spots for Around the World in 80 Days
• Photo highlights from the 2004 San Francisco Bay to Breakers nekkid foot race Well, some people got nekkid. Looks like about a dozen or so, out of 80,000.
• Secretary Rumsfeld briefs the troops on newer, kinder, gentler interrogation procedures.
• The Virtual Theremin. I'm not sure why you would want one, but here you are.
• The English-to-American Dictionary
• A public service announcement from legendary San Diego anchorman Ron Burgundy
• Kevin Smith on Green Hornet and his other projects.
• NASA does NYC: one huge, spectacular satellite image (2607 x 1964px, 3MB). The first thing that caught my eye was how obviously one can identify the Metropolitan Museum of Art from space - (well, if you are a Manhattanphile).
• The 100 most amazing things on earth, according to Stuff Magazine, include robotic lobsters and Donald Trump's hair.
• Here's the real reason for the crazy manipulation of American Idol results - influencing odds and results on offshore betting sites. As Deep Throat told W&B - "follow the money"
• BBC reviews Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 in some detail. No real surprises, but a fairly detailed description of the contents.
• Alleged comic Jay Mohr writes a tell-all of 'SNL' backstage tales
• Playmate Gallery - Julia Schultz, February, 1998 - Courtesy of PlayboyPlus.com!
• Four free short videos from SPICE TV UNCENSORED!
• The Encyclopedia of Farts
• JoBlo does Cannes - Part 4
• JoBlo does Cannes - Part 5
• Nothing to sneeze at: Sosa sneezes twice, misses a game, maybe more.
• Michael Moore screens Farenheit 9/11 at Cannes
• Private spaceship sets altitude record
• Pretty Maids - Nude and Bikini Housecleaning
• URL says it all: Send-A-Bird.com
• A tearful Jessica Simpson learns she's going to die
• Former banker pleads guilty in NASCAR scheme
• Marion Jones: Bar me from Athens and I'll sue: "The five-time Olympic medalist said she would go to court if the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency bars her from competing in the Athens Olympics without a positive drug test."
• Man Overdoses On Sauteed Cicadas. Now that's good Cajun cookin' y'betcha.
• A new sex term for you to learn: "toothing". It's not what you think.
• E3 Booth Babes
• Hotel Charges $1,000 for Omelet.
• British law enforcement thwarts £40 million robbery at Heathrow.
• The top earners in the world of sports - who's worth it?.
• Bumpkins believe a one-day gas boycott will bring down gas prices and hurt oil companies.
• More excerpts from Lynne Cheney's literary softcore masterpiece, Sisters!
• Ronald Reagan's vintage Chesterfield Cigarette advertisements
• Bush says terrorists are behind his low approval ratings in Newsweek poll. "Plus which, disapproval of me sends the wrong message to our troops. Besides, I doesn't read Newsweek"
• Janice Dickinson has slept with every guy in Hollywood, and the hottest of the Hollywood studs is - Jon Lovitz. Yeah, Lovitz, that's the ticket.
• Playing with time. Extreme time-lapse photography.
• Craig Kilborn interviews Patrick Stewart. Great interview.
• Osama Pool - how close to tthe election will bin Laden be captured? You make the call.
• History of the English Language
• The SNL Harry Potter sketch with Lindsay Lohan.
• FallonFey.com has added the Olsen Twins show 5-15-04. This was Jimmy Fallon's last show, at least until his other careers tank.
• Stats about all US cities - maps, race, income, education, crime, weather, area codes, zip codes, similar cities

Other Crap archives. May also include newer material than the ones above, since it's sorta in real time.

Click here to submit a URL for Other Crap

MOVIE REVIEWS:

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 there isn't any significant humor, but I inexplicably determined there might be something else of interest.
• A blue asterisk indicates the review is written by Tuna (or Junior or Brainscan, or somebody else besides me)
• If there is no asterisk, I wrote it, but am too ashamed to admit it.

Words from Scoop.

.avi's from Shiloh.

.wmv files made by Scoop from Shiloh's .avi's.

Sherrie Rose

• In Me and Will (.avi, .wmv). Sherrie wrote, directed, produced, and starred in this film. I haven't seen it, but it scored a respectable 5.6 at IMDb, and drew a few decent comments.

• In Me and Will (.avi, .wmv)

• In Devil in the Flesh. (.avi, .wmv)

The Shout

• Susannah York in The Shout. This is, frankly, one of the most fucked-up movies I've ever seen. And I'm not even sure if it's "kinda cool fucked up", like Donnie Darko, or just plain fucked-up, like Glam. (avi, .wmv) .

• York. (.avi, .wmv)

• York. (.avi, .wmv)

• York. (.avi, .wmv)

Perhaps these tips will help if you have trouble with the codecs for these movies:

Shiloh says:

FYI when I hypercam vids to make the file size smaller I use DivX MPEG-4 Fast-Motion for the video compressor, then I use virtualdub to compress the audio. The properties for the vids says the video codec:  DivX Decoder Filter & audio codec:  Morgan Stream Switcher which I'm not familiar with. When I compress the audio with virtualdub I use MPEG Layer-3.  A friend of mine told me about compressing the audio about (6) mos. ago. Like I said previously, only been capping for a year & a half & I'm no expert. Hopefully this info will help members with the proper codecs for my vids.

 

When I cap big brother's I use hypercam mostly & sdp & asfrecorder if the set up allows me. I stopped using camtasia cause the file sizes were always too big, could never figure out the process, over my head lol, plus it cost too much to buy in my opinion.

A reader says:

You mentioned that some users were having trouble with the videos on your site. There is a tool designed to determine what codec is needed for a video. http://www.headbands.com/gspot/ Hope this is useful to you or your users.

Scoop says:

I made the .wmv versions of each video. The codecs for these: Windows Video V8, Windows Audio 9. The upside of these is that you know the codecs, and they'll play in the Windows Media Player. The downside is that they are slightly larger, and slightly lower quality.

• Toni Collette, going topless and showing rear nudity in scenes from the Aussie film "Japanese Story" (2003). Collette's performance was praised by the critics (both Ebert and Berardinelli gave it 3 1/2 stars), and the Australian Film Institute honored her the Best Actress in a Leading Role award. The film won 8 AFI awards total including Best Direction and Best Picture.

Be sure to pay Graphic Response a visit at his website. www.graphic-barry.com.

Scoops,

It's Cleavage Day. Not to be confused with a celebration of Ward and June's family.

Angie Harmon looking mahvelous. I wouldn't mind embarassing myself in the Super Bowl if I could home to her.

• Angie Harmon

Ashley Williams. Haven't a clue who she is, other than the sister of "Father of Bride" babe Kimberly Williams.

• Ashley Williams

Michelle Trachtenberg. Okay, cleavage AND pokies.

• Michelle Trachtenberg

And Lindsay Lohan in the latest pics of her in that top meant to leave nothing covered. Girl knows how to get in the public's eye and stay there.

• Lindsay Lohan (1, 2, 3)

• Amanda Prentice topless (non-implants) and a hint of pubes in some pseudo-sex scenes. (1, 2)

• Angela Davies (aka Adult actress Avalon) showing all 3 B's. (1, 2)

• Katie Lohmann, the former Heffer (April '01) gets it on and also shows breasts and pubes (there' even a hint of a gyno-view).

• Mia Zottoli (aka Ava Lake). Showing all.

• Tracy Ryan, Katie Lohmann and Jamie Lynn plenty of boobs, bums and some even a little bush.

• Tracy Ryan, Mia Zottoli, Katie Lohmann and Jamie Lynn. Looks a like another standard Skinemax moment where a bikini contest becomes 4 girls pawing at each other. Complete with quick edits and 4 minutes of music. (1, 2)

• Amy Lindsay shows plenty of breast and bum views (plus pubes in links 10 and 11) in a couple of pseudo-sex scenes. (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20)
• Amy Lindsay .wmvs (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8)

• Michelle Bauer, the 20+ year B-movie vereran topless and baring her bum. (1, 2, 3)
• Michelle Bauer .wmv

• Amber Newman and Shannon Malone get it on in a 3-way. Both ladies bare breasts and Malone shows a bit of pubes in links 18 and 25. (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26)
• Amber Newman and Shannon Malone .wmvs (1, 2, 3)

Jen Wettlaufer
(1, 2, 3)

Maria Cilea

As for the cinematography, well, this is probably what it would look like if National Geographic got into softcore pornography. It would appear that tit and ass shape landscapes abound in nature, and the filmmakers use the cliche with devastating effect.

KRISPY KREME SUED BY STOCKHOLDERS
Tankin' Donuts - Krispy Kreme Doughnuts, the big Wall Street success story of 2003, has hit a hole. The low-carb diet fad hurt business so much, profit estimates were lowered, which caused stock value to drop by a third. Now, shareholders are suing the company for misleading them. They claim Krispy Kreme managers underestimated the competition from Dunkin' Donuts, told them the low-carb trend would have no effect, and expanded much too fast.