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Tuna
"Fever"

Fever (1999) is a modern psychological thriller with the mood of a noire film. The story centers around Henry Thomas, starving artist and adult ed art teacher, who lives in a dump of an apartment building. When he finds that his landlord was brutally murdered during the night, he is not completely sure he didn't do it while sleepwalking. As more murders are committed, he increasingly looses his grip on reality. We see the world through his point of view, which is very claustrophobic, and frequently muddled and confused. Some of the shots of New York are very nice. It was written and directed by Alex Winter (Bill of Bill and Ted), and mostly succeeded. I found the ambiguous ending a little disappointing. Critical opinion was divided. IMDB readers have it at $5.6 of 10. After brief attempts at the festival circuit, it went to VID.

The exposure is provided by Marisol Padilla Sánchez ( L.A. Confidential / Traffic / Dementia) as his figure model and girlfriend, where she shows all three Bs. It must have been my mood, but I was totally caught up in the story, and trying right along with the character to figure out exactly what was going on. Your mileage my vary. C.

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  • Marisol Padilla Sánchez (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8)

    "Left Luggage"

    Left Luggage (1998) is an oddity, in that it did very well on the festival circuit winning several awards, then bombed with the critics, but found a popular audience with IMDB readers giving it 7.3 of 10. The story concerns several Holocaust survivors and their children living in Antwerp. The main character is Chaya (Laura Fraser), a young college student, and every bit the modern girl. Her parents did not raise her to be religious. HE father turned his back on his heritage after the war and tried to forget, while her mother buried herself in baking cakes, and weaving to forget. A wise Jewish friend gets her a job as nanny for a Hasidic family, thinking it would be a valuable learning experience for her.

    She has a hard time putting up with the rules of the house, but falls for their 4 year old son, who has not yet spoken. She sticks it out, and finds a way to get along with the mother, played brilliantly by Isabella Rossellini. The experience had something of the desired effect, as she gained understanding of her heritage. This was clearly seen in a scene where she and her best friend go skinny-dipping. In the course of the conversation, her friend finds out that she is Jewish, after making some rather rude anti-Jewish remarks, and instantly becomes an ex best friend. Both she and the girlfriend (Heather Weeks) show all three Bs in a quick and mostly blurry swimming scene. The title comes from the fact that her father put everything important to him in two suitcases, and then buried them, when escaping the Nazis. Only now, he would like to find them again, as he is ready to remember the past, but he can't find the location. The title is also symbolic, of course, for the emotional baggage that the families portrayed are carrying around.

    It is a slow paced, gentle story, and the character of Chaya, and several others are quite likeable, so the story involved me emotionally, so the tear jerker ending had full effect on me. Admittedly, not for everyone, but if you like character driven drama and have any interest in the culture, you might want to try this one. C+

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  • Heather Weeks (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6)
  • Laura Fraser (1, 2, 3, 4)

    "Forbidden"

    Forbidden (2002) is a straight to vid softcore that mostly got it right. The plot is typically simple. At his bachelor party, the grooms best friend hires two strippers, but he declines to have sex with them. He sneaks out of the party, meets a young woman outside the hotel, and ends up having a night of perfect sex with her. Cut two years into the future. He and his wife are obviously not still in bliss mode. The are to spend a few days with the same best friend and his date. Who is the date, but the same girl he has never forgotten from his bachelor party night. He wants the girl, she want shim, and his wife, it turns out, wants lots of men, and has had several.

    There are two naked strippers in the opening scene in poor light that I did not bother with, but Renee Ria as the dream girl, Tracy Ryan as the wife, and Inari Vox as a flashback first lay for is friend all show the three Bs. IMDB doesn't seem to have discovered this one as yet. The film has naked women on screen in good light for most of the running time, and some of the sex scenes sizzle. The sound track is not as overpowering as is the norm, and they used very little fancy camera work and reasonably normal lighting. The only real problem was lots of motion blur, and some focus problems, but with the constant exposure, there were plenty of clear frames to choose from. Plot, D, but overall, the film delivers what we watch soft-cores for, so C.

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  • Inari Vox (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9)
  • Renee Rea (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)
  • Tracy Ryan (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21)

  • Johnny Web (Uncle Scoopy)
    Movies:

    I checked my penis after watching the notorious menopausal film, How to Make An American Quilt, and it was almost off, but still capable of being surgically re-attached. The one thing that kept it from falling off was this Joanna Going nudity. I suggest watching this movie on an airplane, because the barf bags are already at your fingertips.

    • Joanna Going (1, 2, 3, 4, 5)

    Updates:

    Honte's Swedish and International celeb site is updated

    Other crap:

     

    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.

    ICMS
    And now for something completely different...

    A Russian film. A region 5 disk, although it also plays on my region 2 dvd-rom drive. Now you're probably thinking how did ICMS come up with that. Well, about six weeks ago on a Russian nude celebs site I stumbled upon some vidcaps of a naked actress in some very intriguing situations. The film was this year's "Vojna" (war) and the actress was Lithuanian born Ingeborga Dapkunaite. Some of you may recognize her from Seven Years in Tibet and Mission Impossible starring Tom Cruise. The film only premiered in Moscow on March 14, so I had practically no hope of finding it on DVD already. But then I found Russian "internet-magazin" www.rushall.ru and they had it on their opening page ! Although the website is in Russian only and I don't understand a word in Russian I finally did manage to click all the right buttons and the DVD arrived at my doorstep straight from St. Petersburg. Now let's take a look what the film is about.

    So "Vojna" means war in Russian and we're dealing here with the war in Chechnya between the Russians and the Chechens. The movie starts with soldier Ivan Yermakov (Aleksei Chadov) telling us his story in flashbacks in what looks like a prison room. We see him arrive in a Chechen camp just when the Chechens are cutting off another soldier's head. We see how the Chechens mistreat their prisoners continuously and hold them captured in very bad conditions. Then we see John (Ian Kelly) and Margaret (Ingeborga Dapkunaite), a British couple, brought in. They're Shakespeare actors and were captured near the border with Georgia. They're put in the same hole in the ground as the other prisoners, among them a from the waist down paralyzed Russian army captain and a Jewish businessman, where they all have to answer nature's call in the same bucket in the same place. Luckily this is not shown explicitly in the film.

    Our soldier is also the only one who speaks English and therefore Chechen warlord Aslan needs him to surf the net on his laptop, another proof that Al Gore didn't invent some mind numbing thing but something that stretches the mind. We also find out -and this is for me the most interesting part of the movie- why the Chechens are fighting the Russians. We learn that the Chechens have their spies in all places in Russia and have people abducted for ransom to finance their war. At this point Aslan realizes he won't get much money for a simple soldier and an actor and decides to set Ivan and John free so they can raise the money. If they're not back in two months he says he'll rape Margaret and then cut her head or ears off.

    We then witness how Ivan and John each go their own way. Ivan returns to his hometown in Siberia after having visited the captain's family in St. Petersburg. John goes to England to the Ministry of We don't give a damn about our Citizens and ends up selling everything he owns to raise the money. He also accepts money from a TV-station and in turn he has to film the whole deal. Those are the black and white images seen throughout the movie. Then he goes back to Moscow and heads for a ministry there but they refuse to help him as well. Ultimately he heads for Ivan in Siberia and pays him to help liberate Margaret. Together they travel trough Russia where we get a picture of corruption on every level in that country. I sincerely hope it isn't as bad as pictured here. But worse, they find no-one willing to help them on their mission.

    So our two men decide to take on the Chechen rebels on their own armed with only one shotgun. They coerce a Chechen to help them, so our trio is now ready to free Margaret and the captain. They succeed in doing so but on their return they're attacked by the Chechens and nearly defeated. Then it's time for the deus ex-machina thing, a satellite phone with which they call the Russian army for help. This army was pictured as not very effective earlier in the movie, but this time they're here in a tick to assist our little group successfully. By now the film that had started more or less as an analysis of the Chechen war and a sociological study of Russian society has turned into an full scale action movie with explosions and helicopters everywhere. It is fully clear that the director, Aleksei Balabanov, has become a true Russian patriot and there is is no longer room for the Chechen POV, "all Chechens are bandits".

    While he's at it the director also gives a huge sneer to our "justice" societies. Ivan is well and truly in prison as we suspected from the start. The reason: when he fought the Chechens with John he was no longer a soldier but a civilian. And we can't have civilians taking the law into their own hands, can we. He ends up as the accused and the accusor is the Chechen whom he coerced to help him. We see that the other side can abduct people, beat and mutilate them and rape Margaret in total impunity. When he does similar things to liberate hostages after having asked in vain the authorities for help, he becomes the bad guy in our system. You know what I read in the paper the next morning after I watched this movie? "Husband of pestered teacher threatens pupils and faces court action". I wasn't surprised. Fiction and reality came together.

    The movie lasts 120 minutes and although at times more of a caricature, I was never bored and wanted to know the outcome. As you can see in the raw vidcaps the pictures are all nicely composed and well lit. The action scenes in this sometimes violent movie are always realistic. There are no holes in the plot either and the actors all do a more than decent job. The film is rated 8.3 in the IMDb with only 23 votes. I would rate it around 7.3 or B.


    The Nudity:
    Ingeborga Dapkunaite has two nude scenes and not much else. In her first nude scene she had previously asked for a bath. Now the Chechens didn't have much bathing facilties in their camp, so they dragged her to a whitewater river and pushed her in the icecold stream with a rope around her neck. We hear her crying in terror but by the look on Ingeborga's face I had the impression she liked it. She is apparently a respected stage actress turned movie actress, so one can only admire that she accepts such a minor role with practically no dialogue in which she has to be stark naked in a chilling mountain river. Her second nude scene occurs near the end when she's liberated from the hole. Apparently the Chechens had just raped her and she is found still very weak but stark naked covered in mud and some fake blood under a blanket with the army captain on whom she had a crush. Our heroes drag her out of the hole naked as jaybird of course. A real trooper our Ingeborga. I can't wait for a remake set in Afghanistan with Julia Roberts playing Ingeborga's part.

    • Ingeborga Dapkunaite (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8)

    Viktoriya Smirnova plays Ivan's girlfriend in Siberia and shows breasts and buns while getting out of bed.

    The DVD itself is a splendid anamorphic widescreen transfer with beautiful menus. The picture is clear and sharp, the sound is DD 5.1 and DTS and there's even an audio commentary by Aleksei Chadov in DD 5.0 ! The commentary track however, like the extra's, has no (English) subtitles, so I couldn't understand a word of it. There's also a copy protected Sony CD with the soundtrack that refuses to play on your computer. The only downsides are the lack of English subtitles on the commentary and the extra's and the exorbitant price, certainly for Russian standards. Shipment included I paid over 40 Euro for this DVD and other DVD's aren't much cheaper in Russia. I would have expected quite the opposite in a country where people's wages aren't exactly high.

    That's it for now. I hope that my little incursion into Russian cinema was interesting enough to please you.

    Hankster
    Scoop,

    Today we follow cute little Amy Lindsay as she does a strip tease in "Forbidden Sins". Starting in undies (links 1-4) and finally getting topless (links 5-9).

    Variety
    Dina Meyer It may be a stunt butt, however it's still our first look at the Stallone movie "D-Tox". Oddly, this film opened in Europe as early as January, but won't be seen in US theaters until November!

    C2000 also added in his email that only the top first frame survived the final cut, and the remaining scenes (with today's nudity) were 'capped from a trailer found on another DVD.

    Jennifer Love Hewitt Showing off a little leg and her tummy while out on the town.

    Julie Andrews Mary Poppins' famous one and only topless scene from "S.O.B" (1981)

    The Sorell Twins The bad acting, but nicely topless twins, Alicia and Annie provide the only nudity in the straight to video flick, "Cruel Intentions 2".

    Courtney Peldon
    (1, 2)

    A few 'caps by Nicnac of the young actress looking extremely hot in only undies from "MTV's Undressed". Fun Housers probably remember her pierced prosthetic breasts in "Say It Isn't So".

    Sarah Michelle Gellar Plunging neckline at the MTV Movie Awards, by nmd.

    Linda Cardellini
    (1, 2)

    aka Velma in the "Scooby-Doo" movie. Here's a rare find by nmd, Velma in swimsuit from the TV movie "Dying to Live" (1999).

    Celeb Gossip
    * ANGELINA AND BILLY BOB REPORTEDLY SPLIT
    Hollywood superbabe ANGELINA JOLIE has reportedly split from her husband BILLY BOB THORNTON just days after adopting a baby.

    According to Britain's DAILY STAR newspaper, the TOMB RAIDER beauty confessed to photographers in Los Angeles that her three-year marriage is over.

    It's rumoured the 29-year-old will now seek custody of the pair's newly-adopted Cambodian baby son MADDOX, who she showed off for the first time earlier this week.

    Meanwhile, five-times wed Thornton, 46, is staying in Memphis, Tennessee, where he is recording a new solo album.

    The OSCAR-winning GIRL, INTERRUPTED actress is now thought to have moved out of the family home in Beverly Hills into the nearby FOUR SEASONS hotel.

    But friends of the couple do not believe Angelina will have to face a gruelling court battle with THE MAN WHO WASN'T THERE star Thornton over the custody of little Maddox.

    One pal says, "If they have split, there is no way Angelina will give up custody of Maddox.

    "Fortunately, I do not think Billy Bob is the kind of person to drag the issue through the courts. He won't stand in her way over the child."