"Teaserama" from Tuna

Teaserama, a burlesque film featuring Betty Page and Tempest Storm was just released on a digitally mastered DVD by Something Weird Video. Although they were unable to clean off all of the specs and other blemishes, they did manage a very watchable image quality with excellent focus and color saturation, especially considering that this is a 50 year old film. Also on the DVD are other Betty Page shorts, and a feature length commentary with the owner of Something Weird Video and David Friedman. If any of you watch this DVD, I suggest doing it with the commentary on. Friedman is probably the greatest living expert on exploitation cinema, burlesque, and carny. He knew nearly everyone in the business personally, and can relate anecdotes about all of them. Although he did not produce any burlesque films, he did work in burlesque, and met most of the performers.

Burlesque films were not intended for theatrical release, but were used as fill in burlesque houses between performances. He thinks of burlesque as a unique art form, where they would alternate a stripper with the other acts which were mostly comedy sketches. Each act was introduced with a card girl (in this film, Betty Page is the card girl, as you will see from the top section of the images). The strippers never showed any nipples, and never took off their bottoms. The idea was to tease and entertain. Betty Page never worked burlesque. She was primarily a still photo model, and specialized in B&D. Indeed, her performance in this film is not especially good, but she does a great job of looking like Betty Page.Tempest Storm, on the other hand, was one of the best of the women who toured the burlesque houses. Not only was she attractive, but she had instant rapport with her audiences, and was master of the tease.

It was, ironically, the exploitation film that killed burlesque. Burlesque house owners felt that it was really naked women that their patrons wanted, and found that showing films had many advantages. There was no worry about performers not showing up, there were no cat fights, you could show the same films over and over, there were no payroll worries, and there was actual nudity. I have included one image of a female impersonator, something that was not common in burlesque. Friedman also made a very interesting comment near the end of the film. They were talking about the fact that this 50 year-old film was being re-mastered using amazing technology, and that a film that old was still popular. Friedman pointed out that technology in film making has advanced at a far faster rate than creativity. They can do nearly anything now with special effects, advanced lighting, camera techniques, and computers. The problem is that there are not, as he put it, enough creative people to fuel the furnace the technical people have created. This goes a long way towards explaining how talented Indies can produce a more enjoyable film than a major studio with megabucks for effects.

I was uncharacteristically conservative in the number of images I created, leaving many frames on the cutting room floor. For this reason, I am including all of them, 4 to a page, for those really big Page and Storm fans, and those curious about the other performers on this film. I also left a lot of material on the DVD for other imaging artists.

Thumbnails

Betty Page (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9) Tempest Storm (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6) Vickie Lynn Extra Frames (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24)

"A Zed & Two Noughts"

A Zed & Two Noughts (Zoo) is a Peter Greenway film, which automatically means several things.

• He made exactly what he wanted to make
• The plot is not important
• He is interested in imagery and music and exploring themes
• It is very unusual
• It is hard to understand with only one watching.

So how is this different from other Greenway films. There is no use of insets. The themes he is exploring are duality and coping with grief. The plot is straightforward. Twins suffer the loss of their wives in an auto crash. Both work for the Zoo. In an effort to understand what is happening with their wives and cope with the grief, they start using time lapse photography to study things decaying. They also have relations with the Zoo prostitute, Frances Barber, (zoo prostitute? Don't ask me), and the driver of the car their wives died in. The woman has lost a leg, and has the other removed before the end of the movie. She also gives birth to twin boys, supposedly the brothers are the fathers.

Examples of the duality theme include twins, the idea of symmetry, and tons of puns (double meaning). Did I like it? It is way too soon to tell. I will need to watch it several times before I know. It is certainly less accessible than Pillow Book. The images and music are very memorable.

Thumbnails

Frances Barber (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8) Guusje Van Tilborgh (1, 2)

"Manhattan" (1979) and "Love and Death" (1975)

No nudity at all in either movie., but two of Woody Allen's best movies. The stylish B&W Manhattan is a love-poem to New York, Gershwin and young girls. Since I'm a New Yorker, Gershwin is perhaps my favorite composer, and my last flame before Elya was 19 years old (I was 44), I don't have any trouble relating. I found Meryl Streep to be incredibly beautiful in this movie, although I've never thought of her that way in any other film.

Love and Death is perhaps my favorite comedy. Brilliant satire of so many things that nobody else would touch - intellectualism, Tolstoy, Bergman. If you are into those things, just watch it and laugh your head off. Also a beautifully filmed, costumed and directed movie. Intellectual Russian coward goes off to fight, against his will, in the war against Napoleon. Score by Prokoviev and also featuring a famous folk orchestra in the festivity scenes. Woody's masterpiece, in my opinion.

"Partners in Crime" (2000)

This is either a series pilot or a straight-to-vid about a local detective (Rutger Hauer, now weighing in about 250) who has to subordinate his kidnapping case to the FBI. The FBI sends their hottest hot-shot to oversee the investigation and it's - his ex-wife (Porizkova). When the investigation gets under way it all points to - Rutger Hauer!!

Sound cliched? You bet it is. Totally predictable, right down to the cutesy precocious daughter and the animal-loving grandma. But actually not a bad way to pass 90 minutes. Pleasant enough fluff. Just check your mind at the door. By the way, although I've never been very kind to the acting efforts of supermodels, I have to make a lone exception. Porizkova is terrific, and the only runway babe I can think of who could convincingly play a genius, take-charge, type-a investigator. She may end up a great star, given the right breaks. Porizkova "Beautiful People" (1999)

I believe that this new British movie was somewhat overrated. (Very high score at IMDb). It has about a zillion intersecting plots, and it was 44 minutes into the movie before I had the slightest interest in any of the characters or plots, and by then I had hit the FF buttom several times. Then something magical happened. A xenophobic lower-class British junkie nods out at the airport, and through a concatenation of events, he ends up being part of a UN parachute food drop to Bosnia. His experience in Hell changes his life profoundly, and the aftermath of his visit is a restored bond between himself and his successful father. That subplot turned out to be very moving, indeed, but I never did really care about any of the other characters. For me the beautiful moments in this movie were superb, but the movie overall was too disjointed and slow.

I would love to see that one subplot expanded into feature length. My favorite revelation in the movie: a junkie can be very useful in a war-zone, because the doctors are always running out of anesthesia, and a junkie has the perfect solution - his smack. So the lowlife scumbag inadvertantly becomes a hero as the bullgoose battlefield anesthesiologist.

"Room With a View" (1985)

As I wrote yesterday, life continually challenges everything we once held onto with certainty. When I was but a lad, we felt that nobody could ever beat Shirley Temple's record for most pouting in one movie. But Helena Bonham Carter absolutely schooled the little nipper in her role in "Room with a View"

Strange though it now seems to you younger guys, we were also under the distinct impression years ago that Maggie Smith and Vanessa Redgrave were two completely separate people.

If you like Monty Python, you'll immediately recognize Daniel Day-Lewis' perfect impression of Terry Jones as one of the upper class twits. Lewis is quite funny in this movie, in an over-the-top, one-dimensional, Jerry Lewisesque way. But I did laugh, and I never really thought of him as a funny guy.

This is a beautifully photographed costume drama where everyone prefaces every sentence with "Oh, I do say, my good man ..... ". E.M. Forster wrote the novel, and the film did what it could to maintain some balance between the reality embodied by some characters and the broad satire embodied by others. If you get used to this whole suspension of disbelief issue and just have fun with it, you might like it. It was written and directed by the same team as Howard's End, Remains of the Day, and The Bostonians. Actually, if I had known that I would have skipped it. However, you may have a different view, and if you like those films, you will undoubtedly enjoy this one as well.

The first half hour or so make for an excellent travelogue of Florence, if you've never been there.

It has about as much nudity as any mainstream movie ever, but unfortunately it's all lads waving their tallywackers. Not one faint hint of female flesh.

Kimberly Knight
(1, 2)

Nicolette
(1, 2, 3, 4)

Julie Strain
(1, 2)

Kathy Pasmore
(1, 2)

In a nutshell, this film is a shocker. Anastasia Brown, Kimberly Knight and Nicolette star as three strippers travelling in a wagon heading for a mining camp. Unfortunately, the wagon breaks down and they are stranded in a ghost town. Whilst there, they are harassed by a man and his two sons. One of the sons ends up being the love interest for Nicolette.

They are also harassed by Julie Strain who is plays an inept American Indian. She stays in the one spot throughout the entire film and tries shooting arrows and throwing tomahawks at them. All her scenes were solo, as though she wasn't there when the rest of the film was made. It's that bad. There is also one scene that has been edited in at the wrong spot.

The only other female is Kathy Pasmore. I think she is there to demonstrate how high breasts can go when you are lying on your back.

For those interested in nudity there is a lot. There are changing of clothes scenes, outside shower scenes and, of course, the stripping scene.

As Tuna also said 'Not every film that is "so bad" is "good."'

Not having seen the Director's cut I can't answer this question directly. However, I do have a collage from the version that appeared on Pay TV. C2000's cap definitely came from the movie that we saw. Apparently, the Pay TV version was different than the version released in cinemas.

Bonus Pics
Kylie Minogue and Martine McCutcheon from The Sun's weekend paper, The News Of The World.

Kylie
(1, 2, 3)

Martine
(1, 2, 3, 4, 5)

Tatiana
(1, 2, 3, 4)

I don't know who Tatiana is, but she has nice breasts.