The Naked Truth (1992) is a Nikos Mastorakis entry into what I will call, for lack of a better term, the "Naked Gun" genre. Two friends, both named Frank (Robert Caso and Kevin Schon) fly to Hollywood with the intention of acting, then eventually becoming writers and directors. They appropriate someone else's suitcases at the airport, and get tangled up with an FBI plot to catch a ketchup tycoon/drug kingpin. To escape the airport after seeing a murder, they open the suitcases, and dress in drag from the contents. I won't even try to trace the plot after that point, as it is just as silly and meandering as other films in the genre.

The film is loaded with celebrities, including Zsa Zsa, Billy Barty, Shannon Tweed, Dick Gauthier, Yvonne De Carlo, Erik Estrada, Norman Fell, Lou Ferrigno, Little Richard and Bubba Smith. Unlike others in the genre, this one has nudity, including breasts, buns and a hint of bush from Shelley Michelle, breasts and buns from former Miss USA Courtney Gibbs, and breasts and buns from two strippers. A glance at Shelley Michelle's credits reveals that she has doubled Julia Roberts, Kim Basinger, Catherine Oxenberg and Barbara Streisand.

Like all others of this genre, some of the gags left me cold, but some were laugh out loud funny. My personal favorite was the motto on an LAPD car which read, "We treat you like a king." Then there was little Richard doing the Grey Poupon commercial, but from helicopter to helicopter.

There are no reviews listed at IMDB, which leaves us with the IMDB score of 2.9 based on 37 votes. This was far lower than I expected (I see it as somewhere between 5.6 and 6.4), so I decided to analyze the 37 votes. The first thing I noticed was that the mean score was 6.1 and the median was 5, so this is yet another example of the special formula IMDB applies to the votes. Looking at the demographics was a real eye opener.

Total Votes: 37
Men: 21
Women: 4

Women 18 to 29 2
Women 30 to 44 0
Women 45 to up 1

14 of the 37 voters gave it a 10.

Maybe I am dense this evening, but given that you must be 18 to vote at IMDB, and only 3 of the 4 women voting were over 18, does that mean the last woman voter was dead? Even more puzzling is the total votes. We have 21 men, 4 women, for a total of 25, and then 12 votes from something other than men or women to make the total of 37. Maybe the fact that US and non-US voters only account for 27 of the 37 votes has something to do with it. Evidently, several of the votes are from aliens, male, female, and something else.

This film is no better nor worse than the two Naked Gun sequels or the airplane sequel, and is therefor a C. IF you like the genre, you will get enough chuckles to get through this one with a smile on your face.

Laurel Canyon (2002):

Laurel Canyon is named after a street which has a reputation as a Greenwich Village West, home to the more bohemian types of California artists.  Frances McDormand plays a 50ish hippie, a record producer who is living that Laurel Canyon life, smokin' dope, skinny dippin', and trying to come up with a hit single for a British band whose young lead singer (played by Alessandro Nivola) has become her live-in lover.

They are joined by McDormand's ultra-straight son (Christian Bale) and his even straighter fiancée (Kate Beckinsale), who are both recent graduates of Harvard medical school. The young couple had moved to Los Angeles to live their serious conservative life, Bale to begin his psychiatric residency, Beckinsale to write a Ph.D dissertation about some esoteric application of genetics. The young conservatives had been promised a house to themselves, but when they arrived, Bale found out that his mom would be sharing their quarters because she gave her beach house to an ex-boyfriend. Mom comes with a resident rock band. Beckinsale, therefore, must work on her dissertation while a loud, partyin' rock band plays and parties on the floor beneath her.

As time goes on, Bale finds his mother's life increasingly distasteful. Beckinsale, on the other hand, starts to be seduced by it. This situation is exacerbated when Beckinsale starts to ignore her thesis in order to smoke dope, party with the rock band, and even to have a sexual liaison with Bale's mother. Bale, without realizing what is going on, is struggling with his own attraction to a beautiful fellow resident. (Natascha McElhone)

I regret to say that it is just as good as it sounds, no better. If it sounds like your kind of material, go for it, because it is made by professionals. The only thing that might hold you back from enjoying it is one of those crazy endings where absolutely nothing gets resolved, and it seems like there should still be about another thirty minutes to go.

If it doesn't sound like your kind of material, there's really no extra spin on the film that allows it to rise above the soap opera level described above. The McElhone character is very thinly drawn. She's basically a plot device. The other characters are more like archetypes than real people. The talented Bale is wasted in a one-dimensional role in which he mumbles quietly through most his lines. Only Frances McDormand rises above the script and brings real life to her character. In fact, thatcharacter would be completely lacking in credibility if handled by 99% of the actresses in the world, but McDormand is one of those magical geniuses who can figure out how to deliver bad lines in a way that creates a genuine human character.

It was screened at Sundance and Cannes. Critical reaction was tepid. Nobody really hated it, but it had few enthusiastic champions. Our all-star team basically scored it a 2/4, and none of them really recommended it, but the Rotten Tomatoes evaluation shows 67% positive reviews, a "fresh" rather than a "rotten", so there were plenty of critics that warmed to it. I looked through the reviews at movies.yahoo.com, and they seemed to range from a lukewarm C to a lukewarm B, with universal praise for McDormand. The only score lower than C or higher than B was a D from Rolling Stone (they gave it one star and said it was cliché-ridden).

Based on this description, this film is a C-. Predictable soap opera which wastes Bale and McElhone. McDormand's performance provides the only real spirit.

• Frances McDormand (1, 2, 3, 4)

• Gina Doctor

• Kate Beckinsale (sorry, no real nudity) (1, 2, 3)

28 Days Later (2002):

There is nothing original about the premise of an end-of-the-world zombie movie, but this one is done beautifully. The director is Danny Boyle, who seems to have rediscovered the skewed cult appeal he showed in Trainspotting, after years of minor efforts and minimal productivity, the nadir of which resulted in the atrocious "The Beach".

A man wakes up in a hospital. He has apparently been in a coma for quite some time. He pulls out his IV's and investigates the hospital. It is empty. Ravenously thirsty, he vandalizes a Pepsi machine. He walks out into the streets of London. They are all empty. He finds a newspaper which hints of a plague which was destroying human life. There is no electricity or plumbing or any other services. The city seems lifeless.

Eventually he meets two more humans who inform him that they don't know of any others who are "uninfected". All the other humans seem to be victims of the plague, have turned into flesh-eating zombies, as required by the movie code of conduct. In the course of the bonding between the three remaining humans, the other man (not coma boy) becomes infected. The woman chops of his head. And then there were two. Coma boy spots Christmas tree lights on an upper floor of an apartment building. It must mean there are humans! Zombies don't build generators. It is a man and his daughter, looking for human assistance to undertake a trip to Manchester, where there are radio reports of the last military base

They must then make the trek in an old Taxi, through an ocean of zombies, and when they finally arrive in Manchester, they find that hanging out with sex-starved rogue soldiers is not significantly better than hanging out with zombies.

This film works perfectly for everything but the last ten minutes. After all, how do you end an end-of-the-world movie? The evil soldiers, the good guys, and the zombies square off in a Battle Royale, and ... well, you'll have to see it.

And it is worth seeing. Trust me. I hate zombie movies, but I liked this one. It has impressive shots of deserted London, real wit, an attempt to portray the situation as it might really occur, scary moments, tension, and some genuine moments of emotional truth. Even the freakin' zombies aren't completely irritating.

Ebert and Berardinelli each awarded three stars. Those British critics are tough, averaging only 2 1/4 stars.

There is full-frontal male nudity, but the only naked woman was a topless zombie.

• Topless zombie
• Naomie Harris

UPDATES:

• Charlie's French Cinema Nudity site is updated. Big update this week.

OTHER CRAP:

• The greatest wines come from France and California and ... now ... North Dakota.
• The US Army will confirm the BBC story that Jessica Lynch fired no shots, sustained all her injuries from a vehicle accident, and was actually saved by the excellent medical attention she received from Iraqis!
• The Lamest Sports Ads
• Britney Spears Asks Public to Stop Ogling Her Boobs and Concentrate on Her Vagina
• Cameron Diaz admits Charlie's Angels is about T&A
• Go to the middle of the page and read the user reviews of the Condor S golf balls. Many of them are hilarious.
• accordions are cool. Clooney and Pitt will undoubtedly be playing them in Oceans 12. Dean Martin was never without one.
• Edward James Olmos, the star of the new ``Battlestar Galactica,'' has some advice for devoted fans of the 1970s sci-fi series: Don't watch the remake.. Or anything else with Edward James Olmos in it, except Blade Runner
• Pirates first basemen arrested for clouting the kielbasa, beating the meat, slamming the sausage. That's a crime now? Man, that homeland security is everywhere.
• Angelina Jolie admits that she likes to chew the carpet
• Weekly World News: "Thirty-five men, women and children are buried, embalmed or cremated alive every single day, not in some foreign country, but right here -- in the United States! "
• Belushi remembered by `Animal House' cast 25 years later
• Men follow up on penis enlargement spam
• Dusty Baker fears that President Bush can't take the heat in Africa.

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.

• One more of French actress Isabelle Adjani. Here she is topless in the 1981 movie "Possession".

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

Day 2 of the Heather Graham marathon.

Heather topless in lovemaking scenes from "Killing Me Softly". I just love this woman.

• Heather Graham (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11)

'Caps of Heather Graham in "Killing Me Softly". Oft done, I know... but resistance was futile.

• Heather Graham (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13)

Review for "Walking Tall Part 2"

A "based on a real story", David versus Goliath cop movie. This movie is the sequel to the original "Walking Tall" which starred Joe Don Baker in the role of real life legend Buford Pusser. Buford Pusser was a sheriff in Tennessee during the 1970s. He became famous for his war against the "State Line Mobs" along the Tennessee-Mississippi border. His trademark feature was a long oak club he carried to deal with undesirables on duty.

Pusser was active in the production of both of these movies. He described the films as "eighty percent true" which is a very high mark for so called "true stories in Hollywood. "The first movie had Joe Don Baker playing the role of Pusser. For the second film, Pusser was going to star as himself. It seemed that not long after signing the contract, Buford Pusser was killed in a car wreck while returning home. This left the starring role to be filled by Bo Svenson. Unfortunately Bo just isn't up to the role if you have seen Baker in the first movie. While certainly believable as a Tennessean, he doesn't play the character like his predecessor.

This movie was somewhat of a disappointment after the original film. When I first saw the movie, I found myself always knowing what was coming next. It was a constant sequence of busting illicit whiskey stills, breaking up fights in bars, and dodging assassination attempts by the mob. It seemed like the highlight of the story was his using the oak club to dismantle (with extreme prejudice) a mobster owned custom Camaro in the course of a search warrant.

The DVD version of the film is somewhat of a disappointment. The transfer is marginal at best. The special features are limited. As a slight mitigation, the DVD cost was under six dollars at Suncoast. The movie somehow managed to garner 5.1/10 on the IMDb. Perhaps the small number of vote (80) explains this.

Angel Tompkins plays a role of a seductive killer working for the mob. She makes the movie bearable by breifly appearing topless trying to lure Pusser to an island where her shooters are waiting to kill the sheriff.

• Angel Tompkins

Cameron Diaz

Pink

Lucy Liu

Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen
(1, 2)

Ok, so Cammy got paid 20 million for this flick...you'd think she could afford to buy a pair of shoes to wear on the red carpet (check out links 2,3 and 7).

CHEEESY MISHAPS LEAVES FONDUE ALL OVER THE HIGHWAY
Call In Marlon Brando! - Firefighters in west Wales spent 90 minutes fighting a major blaze on the highway after a truck carrying 10 tons of cheese caught on fire. The mountain of cheese melted and dripped all over the road. Firefighters said they've had to endure hundreds of fondue jokes.