Olivia (1981) -- When Ulli Lommel arrived in Arizona to begin Boogeyman II, he ran headlong into the London Bridge, which, for some reason, he hadn't known was there. He was so taken with that fact that he decided to write and make a film about the bridge moving from London to the Colorado River, and a girl who grew up near the bridge and moved with it. He wrote the script, cast his wife, Dupont heiress Suzanna Love in the lead, and told the cast when they arrived that their were still making a movie, but that it had changed a little. Love had her own money, and financed many of his films.

Love's mother was a hooker who worked in the shadow of the bridge, and was killed by a John. Cut to 12 years later, and she is in an unhappy marriage, still dreaming of the prince her mother promised her, while reading the story of Rapunzel to her. She starts talking to her dead mother, who tells her to start picking up men while her husband is working, and she meets an American consultant who is there to help decide the fate of the bridge. Her husband finds out, has a big fight with the boyfriend, and falls off the bridge in the struggle.

Cut to several years in the future, and the American consultant is back in the US with the bridge, and runs into Love, who is now selling real estate. Then we have a bunch of nudity from Love, including full frontal, a resurrection, and a couple of murders. Ulli, in the interview included on this DVD, talks about how the MPAA unjustly gave him an X, while giving Body Heat an R. HE blamed a double standard, which gives the benefit of the doubt to major studio big budget films. Although there is truth to this, Ulli mixed violence with sex, which is a real no no, and this film is no Body Heat. He sees it as his finest film.

IMDB readers have it at 3.7 of 10. The concept was probably not bad, but it would have required a great deal more talent to make a good film of this story. C-.

Nada (1974):

This the the last of the Claude Chabrol collection with any significant nudity, so you'll probably be relieved to know that I won't be talking about him again for a while. To be fair, two of the films which I didn't write about, The Butcher and This Man Must Die, were actually quite good. They were both made in 1969, as was The Unfaithful Wife, the story which later became Unfaithful, with Richard Gere and Diane Lane. That's quite amazing, when you think about it. Chabrol has 30 films with enough votes for an IMDB score, spanning more than 40 years of filmmaking, and three of his top six films were made in one year. Another of his top eight, La Rupture, was made just a few months later. He was on quite a roll there for about 18 months:

1. (7.46) - Boucher, Le (1969)
2. (7.33) - Une affaire de femmes (1988)
3. (7.24) - Cérémonie, La (1995)
4. (7.11) - Femme infidèle, La (1969)
5. (6.96) - Cousins, Les (1959)
6. (6.94) - Que la bête meure (1969)
7. (6.74) - Enfer, L' (1994)
8. (6.72) - Rupture, La (1970)

The ones in yellow are in the boxed Claude Chabrol collection, along with: Nada, Les Biches, Innocents with Dirty Hands, and Ten Days Wonder. (The last two feature English-speaking actors, Rod Steiger and Orson Welles, respectively, but neither is any good.)

Nada is not like the others in the collection. It is not a personalized story of murder or revenge, but a political tale of international intrigue, comparable to a Volker Schloendorff or Costa-Gavras movie. A group of terrorists capture the American ambassador to France and demand a ransom to finance their cause. The terrorists comprise brutes, drunks, cowards, and alleged idealists with no specific ideals. The police match the stupidity of the terrorists and add brutal over-reaction to the mix. Everyone bungles every possible move on both sides until every major character is dead except the higher-up politicos with "deniability".

If the movie has any point, which I doubt, it seems to be that we are all conniving, brutal, and cynical fools, irrespective of the politics we embrace. The film has some of the elements of a political thriller, and some elements of a black satire ala Dr Strangelove, but is not especially good at either, and is completely lacking in subtlety.

• some very naked and very beautiful anonymous woman (1, 2)

• Mariangela Melato, who is neither very beautiful nor very naked, but was a fairly big star. She played the Madonna part in the original version of Swept Away. (1, 2)

UPDATES:

• Updated volumes: Romy Schneider

• New volumes: Sofia Shinas, Seka, Ludivine Sagnier, Theresa Ann Savoy, Jill Schoelen, Hannah Schygulla, Paola Senatore, Penelope Milford, Jessica Moore, Melissa Moore, Barbara Moore, Mary Millington, Zora Kerova, Ina Klink. Keira Knightley, Linda Kozlowski

OTHER CRAP:

• VOICE PURPORTING TO BE BIN LADEN DISPUTES AUTHENTICITY OF VOICE PURPORTING TO BE SADDAM
• Summaries of the Sunday comics, for those too lazy to read them. Except these summaries are a bit ... um ... demented.
• Mouseketeer-turned-diva update. Boring article, but great pictures
• What's in style this year? Nipples. Come to think of it, they never really go out of fashion.
• Saying she felt transformed by adoptive motherhood, actress Angelina Jolie discussed her history of self-mutilation, bisexuality and the aftermath of a broken marriage in a televised interview set to air on Friday.
• President Bush is against slavery. Next week he hopes to take a strong anti-cancer stance, if Rove tells him its OK.
• Rumors of Katherine Harris's death have been greatly exaggerated
• Corey Feldman has his own font
• It turns out that Stonehenge is a giant twat. This started an English tradition which is now continued by Tony Blair.
• Those Puppetry of the Penis guys have made $28 million!
• 10 Best Sports Movies. Columnist is named Mike Hunt.
• At 113 Years Old, Cubs Fan Holds Out Hope: she saw the Cubs win their last series - 94 years ago, goin' on 95
• whatever happened to .... Darva Conger
• Britney Spears has finally made it official: She's not a virgin. She still insists she has only had sex with one man in her life, assuming Timberlake can be called a "man".

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

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 Lawdog or Junior or C2000 or Realist or ICMS or Mick Locke, or somebody else besides me)
• If there is no asterisk, I wrote it, but am too ashamed to admit it.

"Son of the Beach"....BJ Cummings. Notch Johnson. Anita Massengil. Howard Stern. That's all you need to know about the show. What you are going to get with every episode is humor so puerile as to approach and oft cross the line into the infantile. And you get babes in thongs and lingerie and all kinds of semi-revealing, pokitudiness clothing. What's not to love.

First season of the show is on DVD. Three DVD's to be exact. I got the first of em. Given my predilections to cap Hefmates, this was a frigging goldmine. Not only do you get your Jaime Bergman as the clueless BJ Cummings (a Clintonian virgin, whose intial-laden nickname was given to ber by the men's volleyball team), you also have the Dahm Triplets as wordless androids, and Victoria Silvstedt in a short set of outtakes. And there is also the luminous Leila Arcieri, cute as a button Kim Oja with legs up to her ears and pokies of the first magnitude, and a bunch of buxom guest stars in bikinis. I ask again, what's not to love.

Thirty-five collages, gentlepeople. Hefmates first...as it should be.

Jaime Bergman spends a lot of time in a bikini. No! Who woulda thunk? But of her 13 collages, only four or five are of such scenes. For you see, the show often stops dead in its tracks so that Jaime and Leila can parade around in lingerie or thongs of some sort. I live for that kind of stuff.

So you see cleavage and pokies and bum. Lots of bum. My favorite is the third collage, showing Jaime climbing a ladder. Most fun I ever had piecing together a collage. A true labor of love. Most of you will also like the penultimate collage, from episode 6, which shows Jaime eating a banana in a way that bananas were meant to be eaten.

• Jaime Bergman in Episode 1 (1, 2, 3)

• Jaime Bergman in Episode 2 (1, 2, 3, 4)

• Jaime Bergman in Episode 5 (1, 2, 3, 4)

• Jaime Bergman in Episode 6

• Jaime Bergman in Episode 7

• Jaime Bergman and Leila Arcieri

Victoria Silvstedt shows up in some outtakes. In this collage she lifts up her shirt, revealing her robohooters covered in little pastie devices that should have been outlawed in the previous century.

• Victoria Silvstedt

The Dahm Triplets play android lifeguards sent in to replace Notch Johnson's unit, which is not the largest, but is the best. The triplets do a bangup job of striking a pose and shutting the fuck up... as all twenty-year-old people should.

• Dahm Triplets in Episode 6 (1, 2, 3)

• Erica and Jaclyn Dahm

Leila Arcieri looks terrific in every scene of every episode. For episodes 1 and 2 and in the outtakes Leila's two-sizes-too-small bikini top is a work of art. But things get even better in episodes 3, 4 and 5 as the decision was made to put her into some booty-revealing lingerie. The best collages are from episode 5, as they show off Leila's killer rumpus in all its glory.

• Leila Arcieri in Episode 1 (1, 2)

• Leila Arcieri in Episode 2 (1, 2)

• Leila Arcieri in Episode 3

• Leila Arcieri in Episode 4

• Leila Arcieri in Episode 5

• Leila Arcieri in out takes

Kim Oja plays the necessary role of the logical, Midwestern girl who gets and is confused by all the double entendres. She spends a little time in some lingerie and gives up serious pokies.

• Kim Oja in Episode 1

• Kim Oja in Episode 2

And then there are the guest stars, most of whom are little known outside of their hometowns.

One you will recognize, however. She plays a sorority girl in episode 2, one whose bikini top cannot hide the fact them hooters is man made, y'all. The babe is Cerina Vincent, who would go on to play the preternatually nekkid foreign exchange student with shifting accent in Not Another Teen Movie. Never before had I seen a bod more obviously tooled with while covered up, but Cerina's does look more natural when liberated.

Other guests in bikinis include Joanna Bocalso, the exuberantly attractive Kristen Miller, Natashia Williams and Nina Grace Cho.

• Cerina Vincent in Episode 2
• Joanna Bocalso in Episode 4
• Kristen Miller in Episode 2
• Natashia Williams in Episode 3
• Nina Grace Cho in Episode 1

So, what's the bottom line? Well, despite the deliberately low aim of the show's humor, it is not often obnoxious. I laughed more than I groaned.

And the babes... well, they look oustanding. A real winner of a DVD, IMHO.

AMERICANS FOR OBESITY!
Conservatives Who Like Food Stamps? - The Washington Times reports that the Free Congress Foundation, a conservative think tank, is opening a new policy center, "Americans for Obesity," to defend Americans' right "to stuff themselves until they burst, whether the government and the trial lawyers like it or not." They say obesity is a lifestyle, not a medical condition, and their office overflows with cookies and donuts. The center will be equipped with sturdy chairs, double-wide doors and its own Krispy Kreme store. They plan to fund it by asking all overweight Americans to donate $1 a year, which should raise $100 million.