This top section includes Scoop's site notes, images, vids, web finds, and meandering prattle.
FILM CLIPS:
Two more great scenes from Animal House, also (Movie
House Review) in high definition zipped .avis. First, Pinto debates with
himself over whether to fuck Sarah Holcomb after
she passes out. Second, Otter has removed the bra of the well-appointed
Lisa Baur when several panicked people join them in
the car.
A very brief zipped .avi clip of Kattia Ortiz in
Entourage, season three episode three.
There is no female nudity in Clerks 2, but Rosario
Dawson looks great bouncing around in her dance number. Review below.
CLERKS 2:
I took the young members of my family to the advance showing of
Clerks 2 in Austin. That includes my son, my daughter, and my niece.
They range in age from 15-22. That may gave some of you an indication
that I totally lack parenting skills insofar as I exposed
impressionable youngsters to such raunchy material, but ... well ...
setting aside my own personal failings for a second, the point of this
paragraph is supposed to be that they all loved it, and it is the kind
of anarchic film that the youth of every recent generation probably
have embraced.
In other words, Kevin Smith has
delivered a film that will please his target audience, which
consists of his existing fans and the next generation of
rebellious youth who comprise his future fans. That is an
accomplishment. When Smith wrote Clerks some dozen years before,
it was a film that reeked of sincerity. It reeked in other ways
as well, but what made the whole thing really work, and
eventually to become a cult classic, was that it was true. It
captured the angst of high school graduates trapped in
go-nowhere lives with unflinching accuracy. The dialogue
included plenty of geekspeak, raunchy and unbridled sex talk,
and various other politically incorrect notions of all kinds. It
was exactly how those characters, reasonably intelligent people
in that generation and in those situations, really talked, as
opposed to a sterile Hollywood notion of what their lives ought
to be like.
Kevin knew that life. He lived that life. He
was a bright, funny, thoughtful, politically incorrect guy who had
worked as a clerk.
The big question with Clerks II centered
around Smith's ability to stay in touch. Unlike the situation in
Clerks, when his characters' lives and his life were similar (he made
Clerks by putting some $28,000 on his personal credit cards and
selling his comic book collection), they have now gone in separate
directions. Dante and Randal are doing the same things at 33 that they
were doing at 21, except they are all too aware that they have now
worked temporary jobs for more than a decade. Jay and Silent Bob have
been through addiction and rehab, and are still leaning against walls
selling drugs. Smith, on the other hand, is now a multi-millionaire
hotshot director with a sexy actress wife and a collection of
Hollywood pals. When he was 21 he knew the very guys he was writing
about. Presumably he doesn't know many people like Dante and Randal
now (although he certainly knows somebody like Jay, because his friend
Jason Mewes has essentially been writing the Jay part with his own
life), and can no longer write their lines through the filter of his
own passion. Could Smith stay sufficiently in tune with his characters
to retain the edge of the original?
My
answer to that question has to be a wishy-washy "I don't know."
I don't know jack straws about which subjects are discussed by
33-year-old slackers, or whether they regret and/or justify the
abandonment of their dreams. I can tell you, however, that I was
persuaded by the characters and situations. They felt sincere to
me. Whether or not Kevin really understands thirty-something
slackers, he still feels their pain, and his characters still
seem vivid and honest. He's brought some thought to the small
details of character as well. Randal, for example, can't quite
remember which characters were which from the books in his
required high school reading, and thinks that Anne Frank is
Helen Keller. To cite another example, I presume Kevin knows how
to pronounce "bestiality," but none of his characters do, and
that is exactly as it should be. If Kevin no longer feels the
passion of the clerks, at least he still has compassion for
them. I think that is all you can reasonably expect until an
impoverished and older comic book geek comes along and maxes out
his own credit cards to make a film.
In the meantime, it's fair to say that this
film will be remembered for other elements besides the sincerity
of the portrayals and the story arc of the characters. It is,
after all, a comedy, and its primary evaluative criterion must
therefore be laughter. There was a lot of that in Austin. You
have to understand that the audience in Austin consisted of
Smith fans who had ponied up at least thirty bucks apiece to
participate in an agape, so one cannot really measure the
film fairly by their reaction, but I can certainly report that
they did love it. In fact, they loved the jokes so goddamned
much that they kept laughing through subsequent funny dialogue.
Indeed, it made me squirm in my seat a couple of times to hear
the audience laughing at material that clearly did not work,
like a very lame attempt to diss Hayden Christensen simply by
having a guy do a robotic delivery of "Name: Maniken Skywalker.
Ruining series with shitty acting." If they'll laugh at that,
they'd probably laugh at Roberto Benigni's Pinocchio if Kevin
put his name on it as a producer.
Having observed that, let me add that my
family members joined the rest of the audience in giving the film a
resounding "whoo" and all thumbs pointed heavenward. My 22-year-old
son is a big movie buff and has seen all of Kevin's films except
Jersey Girl, and he thought Clerks II to be high on the Kevin Scale.
My 20-year-old daughter is a film fan, but is not really familiar with
Kevin's films. She was whooping and hooting along with the die-hard
Kevin addicts. My more conservative 15-year-old niece loves movies,
and loved this one, although she was shocked a few times by outrageous
sexually-oriented material, especially of the interspecies variety. In
other words, there's some seriously raunchy shit in this flick. Those
of you with more evolved parenting skills than my own may want to take
note of that. If I had to do it all over again, I might not have
invited the youngster, even though she had a great time.
As for me, well, I loved the humor as well,
for two primary reasons:
Originality. You know that I watch just
about every freakin' movie that comes out, and I probably do
watch every single comedy that I know of, and not many of them
make me laugh any more. Part of comedy's essence is surprise,
and very few movies deliver lines and situations that I
haven't already seen or couldn't have created myself. Most of
the films which are supposed to be funny are either
gimmick-based situation comedies or gross-out comedies with
by-the-numbers hack dialogue. On the other hand, Kevin's
situations are grounded in real people who must abide by the
laws of the natural universe, and his dialogue continually
manages to seem fresh.
Edge. Another part of comedy's man-juice
is shock. Most of Hollywood's so-called comedies are about as
edgy as the annual Pablum-Fest, as sponsored by the
Pennsylvania Gathering of the Brotherhood of Quakers.
Hollywood has generally been sanitized for my protection, and
transgressive comedy now seems to have been banished from
films and broadcast, having been herded by the censorship
Nazis into the comedy ghetto of nightclubs and satellite radio
- except for the works of Kevin Smith and Parker/Stone. Bless
those guys. Societies need loud voices to challenge their
taboos, and Kevin has one of the loudest. Of course, he's not
just outrageous and loud. He's also one funny motherfucker.
It all boils down to this. I like the
structure of the film and find the characters genuine, at least within
the limited evaluative capacity of a 57-year-old former corporate
president trying to measure how sincerely young slackers are pictured.
I also laughed a lot. The audience of Kevin fans was totally pleased
with the experience. The youngsters in my own family had a great time
and all three found the film far better than they expected.
So I guess the thumb count, as Jay might
put it, is all way the fuck up.
Sidebar:
I deliberately restricted the notes above to
my thoughts about the movie itself. Let me add something about the
entire experience, because Kevin was there for Q&A after the
screening. I'll make it short and to the point: you just can't go
wrong by attending a live presentation by Kevin Smith. He has a great
rapport with the audience, is quick on his feet, is very funny,
improvises well, is totally candid, and gives far more of his time
than anyone could reasonably expect from a guy with a busy schedule.
He went on and on and on like an Energizer Walrus, even though he had
commitments the next day in a different city. That is brilliant
marketing on his part, of course, but he also seems to enjoy the
experience immensely. One suspects that he loves his fans as much as
they love him, which is very much indeed.
Info from MySpleen.net: Here's the very rare pilot for Patton Oswalt and Brian Posehn's failed comedy central pilot "Super Nerds." Patton stars as a geek who works at a comic book store (owned by John Ennis as a Russian(?) immigrant). Brian plays his friend who hangs out at the comic book store. Kind of a "Welcome to Eltingville" meets... um, some sitcom? thing. Sarah Silverman plays an old classmate who comes into the comic book store and has a crush on Patton.
"After multiple dirty bombs are detonated, spreading deadly toxic ash across Los Angeles, Brad (Rory Cochrane) inadvertently quarantines his wife, Lexi (Mary McCormack) outside their new home by safely sealing himself inside. With the city under siege and Martial Law in affect, Brad and Lexi struggle to survive with little supply, limited time and no information all the while separated by thin doors and thinner sheets of plastic. When 'help' finally does arrive, it appears to be anything but."
Based on one of the most audacious scams in media history, the film stars Richard Gere as writer Clifford Irving, whose "autobiography" of reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes turned out to be a total fabrication -- complete with forged letters and fake interviews.
When American brothers Todd and Jan Wolfhouse (Eric Stolhanske and Paul Soter) travel to Germany to spread their grandfather's ashes at Oktoberfest, they stumble upon a super-secret, centuries old, underground beer games competition—Beerfest—the secret Olympics of beer drinking.
The teaser for The Prestige, the Christopher Nolan-directed suspense thriller starring Hugh Jackman, Christian Bale, Michael Caine and Scarlett Johansson
Yellow asterisk: funny (maybe). White asterisk: expanded format.
Blue asterisk: not mine. No asterisk: it probably sucks.
"Pirates" (2005)
Pirates (2005) XXX rated version is, as I suspected, amazingly good for an adult film, and deserved all of the 24 awards it garnered, including AVN awards for:
Best Video Feature
Best DVD
Best Director - Video
Best Actress - Video
Best High-Definition Production
Best All-Girl Sex Scene - Video
Best Special Effects
Best Actor - Video
Best Music
Best Supporting Actor - Video
Best On-Line Marketing Campaign
I will not add additional images, as all of you know what boning looks like, and that is exactly what was removed from the R version. The proportion of hard core footage to story is much better than usual here, meaning that the sex in the XXX version doesn't have time to get tedious. The 3 disk collector's edition contains the film in both normal and HD versions, and an entire disk of special features.
This is the best XXX film I have seen from the last 25 years, and, I hope, signals a trend towards porn with plot. The genre this time is XXX, and this is the highest possible C+.
First up from the Ghost...Stayce Allison shows off her robo-goodies in scenes from her one and only film credit, 1997's "Legend of the Mummy".
Stayce Allison
Next up, a semi-familiar face in the B-movie world. Here is Teresa Hill, topless in scenes from "In the Heat of Passion II: Unfaithful" (1994). You may recognize her from "Puppet Master" parts 4 and 5, "Cruel Intentions 2", "Van Wilder" and of course the cinema classic "Bio-Dome"!
Teresa Hill
'Caps and comments by Dann:
"Basic Instinct 2" (Unrated)
Boy the critics hated this one! Sharon Stone, looking amazing at 48, reprises her role as Catherine Trammel in 2006's Basic Instinct 2.
Set after the end of the original, Catherine is now in London, and people are once again dying around her, as she writes novels about them. As in the first movie, she escapes the long arm of the law, and a psychiatrist appointed by the courts to examine her becomes entranced with her.
Same basic story as the original, Sharon Stone looking as sexy and being as bitchy as ever, lots of fun as she sticks it to the man. It's this simple: if you liked the original, this one isn't bad, and if you hated the original, forget about this one.
Sharon Stone
Flora Montgomery
Today from Mr. Nude Celeb:
The ladies of "Backbeat"...the 1994 Beatles movie that tells the story of the Lads from Liverpool as they play the clubs of Hamburg in the early 60's (before they hit it über-big).
Finola Geraghty
Unknowns
Sheryl Lee
Starbase comes through with a nice rarity....Here is actress/model Fiona Scott showing a little toplessness in scenes from an episode of the short-lived series "Wolf Lake". So why is it a rarity? Because this show originally aired on CBS, and we all know how prude the big-3 networks are these days.
The Skin-man hijacked Hankster's Time Machine and took in back to visit 1979's "Spaced Out" aka "Outer Touch". No budget + disco music + rollerskating nekkid babes = classic 70's drive-in comedy/sci-fi! Here is Glory Annen.
One more from the Skin-man...here is Donna Rae Hazlewood going topless and full frontal in scenes from movie no one has ever heard of, "Bothered" aka "Realm of the Bizarre" (1993).
Pat's comments in yellow...
OLSEN TWINS: CRIMINAL CHAIN SMOKERS
Virginia Slims, I Bet - If Mary-Kate Olsen didn't ruin the Olsen Twins'
wholesome image with her eating disorder and drug rumors, this should finish it
off: FemaleFirst.com claims that at the Culver City, California, offices of their
billion dollar production company, they chain smoke for hours on end. Worse,
in California, smoking in offices is illegal.
* But they CAN'T stop smoking! They'd gain weight!
* They're trying to quit: that's what the drugs are for.
* Oh come on, it's no big deal! They've been doing it since they were five!
BRITNEY & KEVIN BACK IN BUSINESS
A Giant Blob Of Talent - Britney Spears told Harper's Bazaar that to the
media and fans, "I'm not supposed to be this huge pregnant superstar," but she's
not retiring. She said, "After this baby, I'm going to get really intense"
with working out and dieting, and get back on stage.
* Let's hope the guys reinforcing the stage work intensely, too.
* Or she could do something her kids would enjoy, like playing the title
role in "Barney On Tour."
What Can She Say? He's A Workaholic! - She added that she's "so proud" of
husband Kevin Federline for working so hard on his rap album. She didn't
comment on a story from TheScoop.com claiming that she's given him permission to
rent himself out by charging up to $20,000 just to show up at clubs and parties.
He's reportedly earned $700,000 in the last four months just by showing up
and standing around.
* That's the definition of success: when they pay you for what you would do
anyway.
* Actually, he charged one club owner $20,000 to show up and $680,000 to
leave.
* It's amazing! He gets paid, and he doesn't even have to impregnate
anybody!
* If it keeps him out of the recording studio, it's worth every penny.
TOP 50 SIDEKICKS OF ALL TIME
Me Gettum Angry! - Next week's Entertainment Weekly lists the top 50
sidekicks of all time. The list includes Art Garfunkel (#25), Tattoo of "Fantasy
Island" (#9), Napoleon Dynamite's pal Pedro (#22), and Dr. Watson (#6). Counting
down the top five: Ethel Mertz, Chewbacca, George Costanza, Robin the Boy
Wonder, and the #1 second banana, Ed McMahon, who guffawed at Johnny Carson's
jokes for decades on "The Tonight Show." Somehow, the Lone Ranger's sidekick
Tonto failed to make the list.
* The EW writers thought Ed McMahon invented the phrase, "You are correct,
kemosabe!"
* George Costanza was more than a mere sidekick...He was "Master of his
Domain!"
* Ed McMahon ranked #1 because he was the only one on the list who didn't
believe he was actually the star.
* Kevin Federline topped the list of "Top 50 Useless Appendages."