Saturday

Tuna
"Asunder"

Asunder (1998) starts off as a relationship film/chick flick, and progresses into a thriller. I rather liked the first act. The interesting aspect of this film is that it is based on a black novel, and features an all black cast (except for one Latina), but could have easily stared any nationality with only a few changes in dialogue to account for cultural differences. As the film begins, two couples are at a carnival. Blair Underwood dotes on his very pregnant wife Marva Hicks, and they are enjoying the company of his best friend, Michael Beach, and his wife, Debbie Morgan. In a Ferris wheel mishap, Hicks falls to her death, and the baby also doesn't survive. Underwood stays with his friend and his wife after the funeral, and seems at least as upset at losing the baby as he is at losing his wife.

Turns out there is a reason. He really has a thing for, and a past relationship with, his friends wife. She recently had an abortion, because she wasn't sure who the father was, meanwhile her husband, who had an affair of his own, very much wants a child. Things get very much worse when Underwood believes it is his baby. Morgan shows the side of a breast in a sex scene, and Desiree Marie Velez shows breasts several times during an extended scene.

IMDB readers have this at 4.3 of 10. The few reviews rip this movie to shreds. While I agree that there was really no new ground covered, I saw a few positives, and watched it without the fast forward. First, I enjoyed Debbi Morgan's performance, as she effortlessly communicated with nothing more than facial expressions. Second, it was technically well photographed, and the DVD transfer is nearly perfect. This combination of some nudity, a barely watchable film, and a beautiful transfer earn it a C- ... not a great film by any means, but not the piece of total trash the reviews would lead you to believe it is.

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  • Debbie Morgan (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9)
  • Desiree Marie Velez (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15)

    "Summer Fling"

    Summer Fling (1996) is the US release of an Irish coming of age film originally titled The Last of the High Kings. For some reason, IMDB credits a Danish film company, which is contrary to both the credits and the DVD packaging. Jared Leto fears he has failed his senior exams, and will not be admitted to college. The possibility of having to get a job, rather than going to school and chasing women leads him to decide that he better make his summer memorable before his grades arrive. Memorable would definitely include sex with one of the two school heart throbs, Lorraine Pilkington, or Emily Mortimer, and he doesn't much care which. Calling his family odd is a massive understatement. His father is a stage actor, and pops in for the occasional visit on his way to a new show in another town. His mother, played by Catherine O'Hara, is the head of the household, and by far the high point of this film. She is a dyed in the wool Irish Catholic, and misses no opportunity to put down the bloody "Proties." Leto has a sister his own age (Christina Ricci), a younger nerd brother, a small sister, and a small brother who is severely mentally handicapped, but is the only one in the family he truly likes.

    O'Hara is politically active, fights the Protie neighbors, and meddles constantly in her kids lives. Leto finally gets together with Pilkington, who shows breasts in a rather amusing and believable sex scene, then gets several surprises.

    IMDB readers have this at 6.2 of 10, with women scoring it much higher than men. Apollo says 71, with a 77 from readers. Comments at IMDB are either very negative, or very positive. I personally enjoyed it on several levels. The characters were odd but believable, O'Hara was a hoot, and there was a lot of Irish culture in the course of the film. This is a solid C as a quirky foreign coming of age film.

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  • Lorraine Pilkington (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12)

  • Johnny Web (Uncle Scoopy)

    Avanti! (1972):

    When you think of screen nudity, the names "Jack Lemmon" and "Juliet Mills" probably don't pop into your head. Perhaps they should, just based on this film. They went skinny dipping, Lemmon took a bath, and they had an apres-sex scene. By the time the film was over, everything had been exposed except Lemmon's willie.

    I'm sure you all know who Jack Lemmon is. For you younger people, the British actress Juliet Mills was the sister of Hayley Mills. They were a couple of English actresses who started their careers as child stars, and had syrupy sweet Disneyesque images. I guess you might compare them to the Olsens today, sorta. As an adult, Juliet had starred in a sappy North American TV series called Nanny and the Professor. She wanted to give her career more depth and to demonstrate she could handle a mature role, so Avanti! was the role that was to change her career around, breaking her away from her lily-white.

    I can't say that it really helped her career. Two years later, she was offered the lead in an insane Eurocrap movie in which she played the mother of Satan's child, and then she basically headed back to television for the rest of her life, except for an occasional bit part in some obscure movies.

    Mr Lemmon did somewhat better after the film, and his popularity continued unabated.

    Avanti! is a Billy Wilder comedy and while it is not up to the level of his other Jack Lemmon comedy classic "Some Like it Hot", it isn't so bad either. The humor is badly dated, and you may not find it funny unless you are trapped in a time-warp and still like the old-fashioned style comedies written by people like Neil Simon. I didn't think it was very funny, but I still liked the movie. It is an old-fashioned style of moviemaking that I miss. Wilder took a spectacular locale, placed three essentially nice human beings in that locale with a story conflict, and really explored those three characters in depth, spicing the stew with colorful local characters and customs.

    Lemmon plays a harried American businessman who is in Italy to arrange for his father's body to be transported back to the states. Mills is there for a virtually identical reason, except that the deceased is her mother. It turns out that Lemmon's father and Mills's mother were lovers who had spent 10 years visiting the remote Italian resort for exactly one month each year. Mills was aware of her mother's fling, but Lemmon is now in shock because he thought his father, a powerful CEO, was a devoted husband and a pillar of abstemious puritan virtues. The dramatic/romantic arc of the film is for Lemmon to accept what his father was, then to lose some of his own pompous moral rectitude. It is the duty of Ms Mills to loosen up Lemmon's uptight corporate ass.

    The sub-plots generate most of the humor in the film, and basically involve the buttoned-down and efficient corporate American trying to get the laid-back Italians to snap to attention as of they were his employees back in Baltimore. He wants his father's body back in Baltimore for a magnificent funeral which will be attended by every important person in America, including Henry Kissinger. He wants everything processed within a time frame that is ludicrous by Italian standards. The locals resist his bullying, and go about their normal process of filling out meaningless paperwork, taking all-day lunches, and scamming off every dollar they can scam from him. The director of the local hotel, who is the other main character in the film, uses his local knowledge and personal contacts to navigate the Italian culture and bribe the right judges.

    Billy Wilder is one of the greatest writers and directors in Hollywood history. There are six films in the IMDb Top 250 which were directed by Wilder in which he also receives a writing credit. That includes three of the Top 50!

    1. (8.59) - Double Indemnity (1944)
    2. (8.59) - Sunset Blvd. (1950)
    3. (8.50) - Some Like It Hot (1959)
    4. (8.39) - Apartment, The (1960)
    5. (8.29) - Stalag 17 (1953)
    6. (8.28) - Witness for the Prosecution (1957)

     

    Avanti! is not one of Wilder's best (he was 66 at the time it was made), but mediocre Wilder is still a pretty easy watch. I found it a very pleasant way to pass two hours. And it must hold Wilder's personal record for the most nudity in one of his films.

     

    UPDATES:

    • Updated volumes: Josie Bissett, Elizabeth McGovern, Kelly McGillis, Frances McDormand, Catherine McCormack, and all the miscellaneous women whose last name begins with I.

    • New volumes: Isabelle Illiers

     

    OTHER CRAP:

    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.

    Graphic Response
    • German actress Angela Winkler going full frontal in scenes from "The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum" (1975).

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

    Brainscan
    'Caps and comments by Brainscan:

    Three hotties from two movies.

    First batch o' caps of an actress playing a stripper in Guy Ritchie's Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. Others have identified her as Laura Bailey, former fashion model, whose spoken lines were left on the cutting room floor. Well, if one scene had to stay and the other had to go, we are all glad this was the choice Mr. Madonna made. We get toplessness and some serious bum exposure from a babe whose body fat concentration is oh maybe 1%. Be advised that the fuzziness in the top half of collage three is a by-product of the camera's focal plane, which was on one of the movie's many bad guys instead of the babe. Now that's a poor decision, but not nearly so poor as, say, remaking Swept Away.

    • Laura Bailey (1, 2, 3)


    Then we have the two topless wrestling babes in Old School. Others have done such a mahhhvelous job with this scene, all I could think to do that might be semi-novel is to split up Lisa Donatz and Corinne Kingsbury into separate collages. So I did.

    Well, I didn't keep them entirely separate. A couple of collages have both Lisa and Corinne in all their college-girl glory. I'm figuring about 11 out of 10 guys prefer Lisa because, after all, she is a blonde. Reminds me of the old joke that if you put a blonde wig on a rat's ass, most guys will ask it for a date. Me? I prefer Corinne because she ISN"T a blonde.

    • Corinne Kingsbury (1, 2)
    • Lisa Donatz (1, 2, 3, 4)
    • Lisa Corinne (1, 2)

    Hankster
    'Caps and comments by Hankster:

    Day 3 of the Heather Graham marathon.

    Today it's Heather in the most 'capped scene from "Killing Me Softly. But like Brainscan said yesterday, how can you resist doing even more.

    Variety
    Erinn Bartlett
    (1, 2, 3)

    The beautiful blonde topless and also in a wonderbra scene from "Girl Fever" aka "100 Women"...the sequel to the Michael Davis movie "100 Girls".

    Amanda Craig Although I'm not really sure why, CBS is still doing "Big Brother" and series 4 just recently started. Here is a collage with the contestant topless in the shower (taken from the web feed), plus a few images of her in a bikini top and in a hot tub.

    Amber Smith and Erika Michaels
    (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6)

    My apologies to the Amber fans for missing these the other day. Here is a lesbian love scene from "The Midnight Hour" aka "Tell Me No Lies". As we've mentioned before, this movie is ultra-low budget and ultra-lame. But hey, at least it's chock full of high quality nudity!

    Andie MacDowell
    (1, 2, 3, 4)

    A major find from Herr Skin! MacDowell topless in scenes from 1993's "Ruby Cairo". We have been looking for this film since the beginning of time.

    Pat Reeder www.comedy-wire.com
    Pat's comments in yellow...

    BASEBALL PLAYER FINED FOR BEATING MEAT
    Is He A PETA Member? - Pittsburgh Pirate Randall Simon was fined $432 for disorderly conduct for hitting a young woman dressed as a giant sausage with his bat. It happened Wednesday night at a Pirates-Brewers game, during a popular event where four people dressed as an oversized bratwurst, hot dog, Polish and Italian sausage were having a foot race. As they ran by the dugout, Simon swatted the Italian sausage, who stumbled into the hot dog, and both fell and scraped their knees. Simon said he was just playing around and didn't mean to hurt anyone.

  • Still, it's against the law to slam the sausage in public.
  • Actually, he had a big bet riding on the bratwurst.
  • The poor sausage felt like she'd been through a meat grinder.
  • The hot dog also suffered a bruised bun.
  • The sausage had to undergo meatball surgery.


    DUMB CRIMINAL ROUND-UP
    He's Only A Two-Bit Thief - A man tried to rob a Dollar General store in Nashville, Tennessee. He said he had a gun and grabbed a female clerk by the throat to intimidate the staff. But then he grabbed one of the male employees, who realized he was actually unarmed and wrestled with him. The other male workers piled on and called the police. When the cops arrived to arrest him, they found him the way the workers left him: on the street corner, stripped naked with his arms and legs duct-taped together.

  • Turns out you can get a lot of duct tape for a dollar!
  • Duct-tape: it solves ANY problem!
  • He's very hairy, so ripping off the duct tape was worse than going to jail.
  • This guy should stick to robbing 99-cent stores; he's not ready for the dollar store.


    DEPP SAYS HE'LL GIVE HIS KIDS POT
    He'll Take A Toke First, To Be Sure - Johnny Depp told GQ that if his kids want to smoke pot when they're older, he'll get it for them to make sure it's good quality and safe. He said out on the street, they might get pot with PCP in it, and "two days later, you're beating yourself in the head with a tennis racquet, wearing a towel, quoting Poe. You don't want that for your kid."

  • No, nevermore!
  • Personally, I think it would be nice to see a modern teenager who can quote Poe.
  • That's so detailed, it's got to be the voice of experience.
  • His kids will be saying, "I want some pot just like the pot I got from dear ol' dad!"