Friday

Contact junior by writing junior@scoopy.com. Contact Scoopy by writing unclescoopy@msn.com. Contact Tuna by writing tuna@scoopy.com Send submissions to scoopy@scoopy.net

To see and use all the Funhouse features, you need Netscape 6.+ or MSIE 5.+.

• Netscape 6.2.2 is available free for download or on CD.
• MSIE 6.0 is available free.

Hey, Scoop:

... I remember a while back someone submitted several pics of Xuxa from Amor estranho Amor where she has a love scene with a young boy.  You didn't post some of them for legal considerations.  I was wondering if the recent Supreme Court decision that simulated sex scenes with minors are NOT illegal means you can post the rest of them.  I've been a Xuxa fan for a while and keep hoping to see that scene somewhere.  It's the only sex scene I know of her being involved in.

I checked my hard drive, and I don't have any unfiled pictures of Xuxa, so if I ever had 'em, I nuked 'em. Any thoughts from our readers?

I don't know. I read that there would be non-USA versions with the original sex scene. I also read that they will be releasing another Monster's Ball DVD in a couple months with a Deluxe Edition and a director's cut. If anyone has more specific info, please let us know.

Thanks for the heads-up. Nothing so far, but we'll all keep our eyes open

Movies:

Amelie is one of the most successful sub-titled films in American box office history. It is also one of the best received by critics, and is currently rated #13 of all time at IMDb. Visually, it is one of the best films ever made - absolute virtuoso work by the director - the inventive camera shots, the imaginative way the scenes are tied together by phones and telescopes, the romantic pictorialization of Paris with vivid reds and greens as if in a post-Impressionist painting come to life. The humor and the sentiment of the story are also successful at a very literate and artistic level. It is the all-time date movie, since men and women think it is a masterpiece (men 8.9, women 9.1), and they like it about equally. No nudity from Audrey Tautou, but quite a bit of nudity scattered here and there.

• Isis Peyrade
• other (1, 2, 3)
• Tautou has been naked in a couple of other films. Here she is in Le Boiteux, and Le Libertin

Storytelling (new to DVD) is covered in some depth by both of us - follow the link for our thoughts as well as the critical summaries. Tuna's pics are below. I've done it before, so I'll leave my images until tomorrow.

Other crap:

• Here is a better version of that Traci Bingham PETA ad
• according to Pravda, pubic wigs are the biggest new fad in California. The Pubic Hair Club for Men. Bill Clinton is not only the company's new president, he's also a client.
• The US Navy is confirming National Geographic's contention that their expedition has found the legendary PT-109
• Strange stuff - examples of Russian humor showing how they view Americans and others.
• JasonRivera.com reviews the classic movie Frankenhooker . Their conclusion - it closely parallels the great Shakespearian tragedies, except with more bloody lawn gnomes. This key difference enabled Frankenhooker to avoid Shakespeare's own Achilles Heel - Marlowe often ridiculed Shakespeare for the severe underutilization of lawn gnomes in his tragedies. Shakespeare's long-lost lawn gnome play was eventually found in France and produced as the movie Amelie. Anyway, their article on Frankenhooker is surprisingly thorough and quite funny.
• This article about Anna Nicole Smith's new show - well, it's just plain sad. I thought it was funny at first, but she's just ... read it and see for yourself. Let's just say that her dream of a MENSA membership will remain unfulfilled.
• Dennis Miller calls it quits on his HBO show
• In 1980, CEO's made 42 times the salary of the average worker. Today it is 475 times. Includes a link which allows you to check out individual companies. I had plenty of experience with this issue, from all sides of the corral. To me, the greatest problem with the corporate world is the interlocking relationships. Directors are supposed to represent the shareholders. In reality, they sit on the boards which determine the compensation packages of guys who sit on their boards and, in return, determine their compensation packages. How do you think that will end up? The other major problem with CEO compensation is stock options, and I was issuing warnings about this problem back in the early 80's.

Roger Lowenstein ("The Failure of Genius") wrote the following about the CEO of Southwestern Bell (who is, by all accounts, a hard-working, competent, no-frills CEO developed internally)

"The CEO's most recent package included an options grant of 3.6 million shares. The present value of these options ... is $61 million. In effect, the board turned the stock decline to Whitacre's advantage, since it chose a time when the stock was down to give him four times as many shares as when the stock was at its peak...

If he does (turn it around)... he will reap tens of millions of dollars merely for recapturing the ground that his shareholders had already lost (on his watch!)"

Given the way stock options work, CEO's can get richest by tanking the stock completely, negotiating for mammoth options, then bringing it back to the original value - thus capturing a fortune while the shareholders break even.

When I sat on compensation committees, I recommended paying the publicly held CEO's on a stock multiple, and removing all bonuses and other compensation - each week, he gets x times the stock price, for example, prearranged by negotiation. You hire a guy on the assumption that he'll make nine million if there's no stock change. If the stock tubes like Enron, he gets minimum wage - exactly what he deserves. If the stock triples, his salary triples and he makes more than A-Rod - but who's complaining in that case? Everybody liked this suggestion, even the CEO's on the committee, but there is a gross accounting flaw in my scheme -  these sorts of payments are simple salary, and therefore affect the balance sheets and the P&L statements. Accountants much prefer stock options since they are "off the books", so to speak - in accounting terms stock options are essentially paid through dilution, directly from the other shareholders to the CEO, and thus are not filtered through the company's profit and loss statements. So it goes.

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.

Storytelling (2001) is the third picture from Todd Solondz. While I enjoyed his first two efforts, Happiness, and Welcome to the Doll House, I just didn't see what he was getting at with this one, and the pace was languid. It is actually two stories. The first concerns a creative writing college class. Selma Blair is dating a fellow student with cerebral palsy. When he submits a heart-felt story about his handicap, the professor, Robert Wisdom, is brutal in his criticism, and the two split up. Blair goes on the sleep with the professor, who ends up having more than a few kinks, and, to get even, she writes a story about their encounter. When she reads it in class, the entire class attacks it as terrible fiction and nothing like real life, even though it was entirely true.

Episode two centers around a rich Jewish suburban family and a wanna-be documentary film maker who is featuring one of their three sons, a High School senior, in his project. Although the second story covers several controversial elements, such as racism, pressure to get into the perfect college, homosexuality, etc, I never found a clear message, or purpose to the story. Ebert saw it as a defence by Solondz of his in-your-face style of film making, and loved it at 3 1/2 stars. Berardinelli was much cooler at 2 stars, and felt that it was too apologetic. Both felt that the documentary film maker character was himself. I wish I could tell you what I thought it was about, but I am not at all sure. Selma Blair starts the film in a sex scene, and shows breasts in bed, and again getting dressed. Later, she shows breasts and buns in the sex scene with the professor. This is a very intense scene, which she later decides was rape, and it aroused the MPAA, even though the exposure is not at all explicit. They demanded cuts to avoid an NC-17, and Solondz, rather than cut the most important scene in this segment, simply obscured the action with an orange geometric shape for the rated version. The DVD release contains both the R and Unrated versions, in both Wide Screen and 4/3. The 4/3 actually shows no additional exposure. This is my sort of film, and I didn't much like this one. The proper grade is C.

• Kim Cattrall, Porky's

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

Third installment of Brande Roderick as she works Inside Club Wild Side. In an earlier scene she had done a guy; here she performs with another babe. Unnamed and uncredited as she is, this mystery babe has one killer bod. Kudos to the casting director.  The run down is as follows:

Collage 1:  Brande bum in a thong bikini
Collage 2:  Brande boobs as mystery babe squirts water on her (the ladies are supposed to be showering on stage)
Collage 3:  Brande boobs
Single frame:  Brande boobs from the same scene as collage 2
Collage 4:  Brande boobs as she sits on mystery babe's lap
Collage 5:  Brande and mystery babe boobs, and some actual contact between the two principals
Collage 6:  Brande boobs and bum, mystery babe boobs and bush
Collage 7:  Boobs and bush from both babes (a famous Dr. Seuss title, I think)
Collage 8:  Full frontal from Brande, boobs from mystery babe

Okay, three Brande scenes down, two to go and then we got five other scenes  from other named actresses and a bunch of nameless but familiar stripper  babes.  This has to be the biggest bang for the nekkid babe buck outside of College Girls Gone Wild, part 23.
 

PETScan and I collaborated on a bunch of scans of Cinema Pets, and by that we do not mean Lassie or Flicka or any kind of talking pig.  Nope we mean the good ol' Guccione-type Pets who did some on-screen work.

First up is Andi Bruce, who to be honest did only one real movie,  Screwball Hotel, although she was in a couple of videos. (One more of Andi)

Second Pet is Angela Nicholas. (1, 2, 3, 4) She made a bunch more movies and got nekkid in several of them

Then there is Ava Vincent, who I gather is a cross-over artist, given to performing in both softcore and hardcore cinematic efforts.

Setting the Way-Back machine for really, really Way Back, there is Corinne Alphen, twice a Pet in the late 70's and early 80's.  First scan is from her later days, after she had married and before she had divorced the actor, Ken Wahl.  The rest are from her earlier appearance in Mr. Guccione's  magazine.  Not only did Corinne pump up the hooters, but she also had some work done on her jawline.  Much more difficult surgery, I hear. (1, 2, 3, 4, 5)

PETScan did the others, but I had the pleasure of doing the next batch.  They are of Funhouse queen Michelle Bauer.  Truth be told, Michelle ought to be given permanent status as Funhouse icon: she did an enormous number of nekkid movies, a couple dozen nekkid videos, a few hardcore thingees and more magazine features than one can safely count without a TI-83 calculator.  And she was frigging hot, especially in her early, pre-robohooter days.  These scans come from those days. (1, 2, 3, 4)

Next up is one of the few women who can give Michelle a run for her nekkid movie money, Monique Gabrielle.  These are from her early, cuter days.

A couple other things found there way from the scanner to the hard-drive. One is a picture of a young Jane Fonda, sunning herself and showing just  a bit of bum.

And the last thing is something scanned for the Hankster.  Tis a couple of pics of B movie bim, Amber Newman, unable to get to the phone 'cuz she is all tied up.

Last week, a London theater company renamed its production of "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" to "The Bellringer of Notre Dame," so as not to offend people with scoliosis

... They had a hunch it would be offensive

... They obviously have no spine

... People with scoliosis hate it when you bend over backward for them

...They'd call him a "humpback," but that might offend whales.

From NY Post, Page Six:

O.J. SIMPSON's ex-girlfriend Christine Prody tricked the double-murder acquitee into making the steamy menage-a-trois video circulating on the Internet. An "entreprenuer" named Tony Styles paid Prody and Playboy Playmate Patty Krupys $10,000 each to lure Simpson to Miami's Mutiny hotel, where hidden cameras caught the sex fest, Styles told writer Anthony Haden-Guest. Styles had previously offered Simpson $500,000 to make a porn video, which he turned down. O.J. can be heard on the tape saying "I'm a sexaholic" and boasting, "I was Howard Stern's boss." You can catch it for $9.95 at www.ojcaught.com.

From NY Post Page Six.  I don't even want to think about this...

ROCKASAURUS Rod Stewart can't satisfy his latest galpal in the sack, she says. Model Penny Lancaster, 31, says she has to constantly pester Stewart, 57, to service her. "He's like, 'Penny, I've just done a show, please,' " the leggy blonde tells London's Daily Mail. "I need it a couple times a day, not a couple times a week like some people." Lancaster blames her age and her "racing hormones. My mum was the same, and it didn't stop until she was about 50 - sort of gagging for it, without being too crude."