A Midsummer Night's Dream (1968) is a Royal Shakespeare Company production of Shakespeare's play about love and faeries. Judy Dench, as the Fairy Queen Titania, is topless the entire film. This is a faithful rendering of the play in best Royal Shakespeare tradition, including emphasis on the rhyme rather than the meaning of the words. The video quality is absolutely horrible. Costuming in the only unique aspect of this production, as most of the women were dressed in 60's London mod. Ian Hold as Puck was a bright spot. Dench was an odd choice for Titania, as fairylike is not the first adjective that comes to mind when I think of her.

IMDb readers have this at 6.1. The words are still Shakespeare, so it has some merit there alone and the staging was not bad, but the condition of the DVD made it nearly unwatchable. D.

Other Crap:

• Surf the net and the waves at the same time.
• Traditional British road rage - with a longbow.
• Howard Dean tells Tim Russert: "the thing that really bothered me the most is the insinuation that the president continues to make to this day that Osama bin Laden had something to do with supporting terrorists"
  • Osama? Terrorists? No. Lovely guy. He was a smashing bloke. He used to buy his mother flowers and that. He was like a brother to me. I mean, he didn't want to nail my head to the floor. I had to insist. He wanted to let me off. He'd do anything for you, Osama would.
• Dick Tracy says he would be a better governor than The Terminator. One word: magnetism.
• HIRE-A-KILLER.COM
  • "We have been in the business of contract killing for over 50 years, and are continuously revolutionizing the field. We are pleased to offer you unprecendented expertise, highly competitive rates and a user-friendly approach to doing business. With our pioneering technology and new highly accessible website, taking out a contract on someone's life has never been easier!"
  • Testimonial: "My kids were pressuring me about my will and would talk about what they would do with the money in front of me. So I called Hire-a-Killer and had them killed in a tragic accident. I used the money from their life insurance to go on a cruise! Thanks H.A.K.!
  • "Q: I'm an aspiring contract killer. How can I get a job with hire-a-killer.com?

    A: Hire a killer is very selective about choosing its employees, however, as our business expands, we will be interviewing candidates to add to our expert team. Send your resume to jobs@hire-a-killer.com

• Wow. Just wow. What a story. A particle accelerator is being used to reveal the long-lost writings of the Greek mathematician Archimedes, work hidden for centuries after a Christian monk wrote over it in the Middle Ages.
• "Hacker Hunters: An elite force takes on the dark side of computing " Soon to be a WB series.
• Here's a video of the Channel 2 reporter dropping the F-Bomb during a live report. (More details in link below)
• F-word costs TV guy a job
  • : "TV reporter Arthur Chi'en was canned by WCBS/Ch. 2 yesterday after he shouted the F-word at two meddlers who horned in on his live shot. Chi'en was in the middle of a 6a.m. broadcast about MetroCard scammers when two men sneaked up behind him with a sign promoting radio shock jocks Opie & Anthony."
• A few jillion pictures of Scarlett Johansson almost but not quite falling out of her top. This site requires a free registration but, in my opinion, this gallery alone is well worth the couple of minutes you will waste on that.
• The ALL-TIME Top 100 Movies per TIME Magazine.
  • They certainly came up with some obscure choices, but you have to applaud their effort to make people aware that the film canon is far more encompassing than we realize. I've never heard of some of these, so that will pique my curiosity, and maybe I'll learn something.
  • I like the fact that the authors have reinvigorated the sagging reputations of some outstanding films like Kind Hearts and Coronets.
  • Interesting to see Miller's Crossing make the list. When that film came out in 1990, it was ignored by the Academy and moviegoers alike, but its reputation keeps growing - and deservedly, in my opinion.
• Laura Bush in Jerusalem
  • . Laura wrote in the visitor's book at the Holocaust Memorial: "Each life is precious. Each memory calls us to action to honor those lost. We committ ourselves to reject hatred and to teach tolerance and live in peace. Thank you.''
  • ... "committ" (???) Does Hubby write her material?
• MovieJuice reviews Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith
• Representatives of the nation's top psychiatric group approved a statement Sunday urging legal recognition of gay marriage. The document clarifies that the association is addressing same-sex civil marriage, not religious marriages. It takes no position on any religion's views on marriage. Massachusetts is the only state that allows same-sex marriage. Eighteen states have passed constitutional amendments outlawing same-sex marriage.
• Hey, Men! Tired of wearing the same shredded, dirty underwear day after day? Now you don't have to with the Men's Underwear Repair Kit!
• Chinese man pulls car with ears while standing on eggs. Man, those Chinese will do anything to keep car pollution under control.
• The president of the Cannes jury says this year's films sucked deeper than a snake bite response team
• Bored? Drunk? Why not ride the human catapult?
• Are you a victim of mantropy? There is help available at Mantropy Control
• Ellen Degeneres Doubles Up on Emmys
• Sith pulls in $108 million for the Weekend Box Office
  • That did not break the all-time Spider-Man record, but Sith's $108 is actually far more impressive than Spidey's $114 because Sith opened on a Thursday, Spidey on a Friday. Therefore Sith's midnight showings went into Thursday's totals. If Sith had opened on Friday with the same totals at the midnight showings, the weekend box office would have been $124 million, easily eclipsing the record.
  • Sith's total for the four day weekend was an incredible $158.5 million. That's an average of forty million per day for four days. Prior to this there had only been three forty million dollar days in all of history. Each one of Sith's first four days is among the top 15 days of all time. Thursday and Saturday are number #1 and #4 of all time.
• Absolute proof that George Bush is the anti-Christ.
  • I guess this guy didn't get the memo that 666 was a typo, and the "number of the beast" turned out to be 616. So I guess Dubya would be the typo-Christ. The actual anti-Christ turned out to be Jimmy Carter.
  • Ya gotta love the failure of nutbars to see the obvious. He says that George Bush adds up to 666 in Hebrew, and challenges anyone to name any other leader in history, past or present whose name adds up to 666. Well, I think I can handle the math on that. Assuming that George Bush really does add to 666, I'm gonna lock in "the President's dad" as my Final Insane Jeopardy answer.
• Today in Uncle Scoopy's Guest House: Dina Meyer in Poodle Springs
• Headline of the day, maybe of all time, goes to The Sun: "Bush probes Saddam's pants"
  • You probably think I made that headline up. I did not, nor did I fabricate this quote. Bush's spokesman said: "He has been briefed. He wants to get to the bottom of it."
• LinksDaily.com just collects interesting photos and images (and a few videos).
• Burrito Poetry.
  • You'll enjoy this if, like me, you've always wondered about the two great "lost works" of Western Civilization: Aristotle's Comedics, and Shakespeare's Cycle of Burrito Sonnets.

  
  "Shall I compare thee to sensible snacks?
  Thou smells't more savory, yet maketh more wind"

• Chinese pirates hawking latest `Star Wars' just days after premier
  • "Counterfeiters were selling illegal DVD copies of the latest Star Wars movie on Beijing streets Sunday, just three days after the movie opened in Chinese cinemas. The copies, priced $2.40, were being offered by vendors out of shoulder bags on Beijing's main avenue. The pirate copies were slightly blurry but appeared not to have been filmed in a cinema, as many of China's imported fakes are."
  • If the pirated DVD's are not "cams," I suppose these are the same "workprint" copies which have been circulating throughout IRC and BitTorrent sites for the past few days.
• Here are the domestic and international trailers for The Beautiful Country
  • 'The Beautiful Country' follows the story of Binh, a shy Vietnamese man in his 20s who embarks on a personal journey with a young beautiful woman, Ling, aboard a refugee ship to America in search of a better life and Binh's estranged American father."
  • Stars: Bai Ling, Tim Roth, Nick Nolte
  • Bai Ling was to have had a small part in Revenge of the Sith, but was cut out. She felt that she was cut because of her decision to pose for Playboy. Here's the story.
  • I guess the Playboy spread might be the explanation, but even though many web sites have reported it as a fact, it was merely her surmisal. Lucas denied it by saying, "She was cut out of the movie very early on. My daughter's in that same scene. My daughter was cut as well." The Lucas explanation sounds more logical. The film is quite long, and I would guess Bail Ling was cut simply because her scene was relevant neither to plot development nor tie-in deals.
  • Although, in all fairness, I was disappointed to see it cut, because I was hoping to buy the "George Lucas's Daughter" action figure.
• It is a sad day for lovers of bad movies. Screenwriter Ed Kelleher, offbeat screenwriter, dies at 61
  • And what a career he had! Some of his better reviews included "barely coherent," "ridiculous dialogue," "inept," and "deliriously insane."
  • His less favorable reviews probably used words normally reserved for the mouth of Regan when she's facing an exorcism.
  • If the obit is accurate, he and I went to the same college as undergrads. Based on his 1943 birthday, he would have graduated from Fordham a year or two before I arrived, so I never knew him and frankly, I never heard of him until today. I looked him up in the Alumni Directory, and he was not listed.
• Is Your Meat Smarter Than Your Pet?
  • Scientists in the UK have shown that barnyard animals are actually smarter than anyone in the House of Lords
• Laura Bush now an unofficial diplomat in the Middle East and elsewhere.
  • As Andy Borowitz pointed out, she could not be more qualified for international diplomacy. She is probably the single American with the most experience at communicating with someone who can't speak English
• Borowitz: SADDAM'S LOOK-ALIKES PROTEST UNDERPANTS PHOTOS ... Pix Reflect Poorly On Them, Ex-Dictator's Doubles Say
• Racial Switch Halts 'Huck Finn' Production
  • A black Huck Finn and a white Jim might be OK for a high school production of Mark Twain's classic tale, but those performances had to be edited out of a C-Span talent show after the copyright holder objected to the cross-casting, arguing that a racial switch was contradictory to the integral nature of the characters.
  • I guess they never saw Frank Sinatra sing Ol' Man River in Till The Clouds Roll By
  • Oh, wait a minute - maybe they did!!!
• Looking for a science project? Why not build a fly-powered airplane?
• "Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine" is a cockroach-controlled mobile robot system.
  • The system uses a living Madagascan hissing cockroach atop a modified trackball to control the three-wheeled robot. Infrared sensors also provide navigation feedback to create a semi-intelligent system, with the cockroach as the CPU.
• Technology in reverse - record your .mp3s onto ... vinyl 33 1/3 records.
• Greece wins Eurovision song contest in Ukraine
• This is the busty woman who won the Eurovision contest. HELENA PAPARIZOU | official website

Other Crap archives. May also include newer material than the links 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.

A few more video odds n' ends from the Ghost today. Zipped .wmvs as usual.

• Beverly D'Angelo, topless in shower from the first of the National Lampoon "Vacation" movies (1983).

• Nancy Lynn Vaughn shows all 3 B's in this sex scene from an episode of the late night series "Passion Cove". (1, 2, 3)

"Ghost Lake"
There's a chance you'll like this 2004 horror flick just because it's so bad. I've seen better acting in porn flicks, the script is dreadful, and the plot, which really isn't all that bad, doesn't save the film.

Wracked by guilt when her parents die of a gas leak while she's out partying, Rebecca (Tatum Adair) goes to the family's summer cabin to deal with her grief. Soon she starts to see visions of her dead parents and others. What she doesn't know is that 100 years ago, local residents were accidentally drowned when a dam was built and the town was flooded to create the lake. Now, the souls are getting restless.

What somewhat saves this thing is it's badness. You'll want to keep watching just to see the next bit of nonsense. A couple nude scenes by Tatum help a little, too. All in all, though, pretty bad stuff.

• Tatum Adair

The movie is called "Secret Sins" aka "Melissa". Mostly filmed in 1995, the production apparently ran out of money and the project was shelved for several years. Eventually someone decided to finish it up and dump it onto the home video market. According to the email in my inbox, this was just released last week and is available from NetFlix.

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