Here's a zipped
.mpg of Julia Stiles's kinda sorta topless scene in Edmond.
Edmond is a David Mamet play adapted into a screenplay by Mamet
himself. IMDb
listing. It was made with a ten million dollar budget,
features an excellent cast, and it is currently playing in a
theater near you - provided you live next to one of the
whopping two theaters in the USA where it is showing!
Here are three more frames from the clip (others
in yesterday's edition)
Here's a zipped
.avi of pretty Sarah Alexander
(of "Coupling") appearing stark naked in some British
comedy show.
This zipped .avi
is
Malin Ackerman ("Harold and Kumar")
making nice-nice with Emmanuelle Chriqui on an episode of
Entourage, s3e6.
The Royal Tenenbaums
I got the urge to watch the Royal Tenenbaums again last night
when I spotted it on the shelf. Little did I know that the
special features include some full-frontal nudity! I don't know
who this actress is, but she played "Cinnamon" in a deleted
scene.
As for the movie ... well, it's a terrific movie, but it's
eccentric and special and may or may not be your cup of tea.
If you were a lit major at any time, or just love
literature, you are probably aware that the 20th century legend J.D.
Salinger wrote more than just Catcher in the Rye. I sort of stumbled
upon his other writing because, like just about everyone
in my generation, I read Catcher in the Rye and related to it. I then resolved to read
everything else Salinger had ever written.
It
wasn't that good a decision.
Most of what he wrote was about a dysfunctional family of Jewish/Irish
urban geniuses, the Glasses, whose lives bear no resemblance to
anything on the planet earth. These stories are contrived and
insubstantial twaddle. The humor is basically New Yorker Magazine
insider humor, the kind of stuff that makes pink-clad girls named
Muffy and stout good fellows named Biff twitter politely in
recognition of finely tuned irony. Not only did I find Salinger's
other works disappointing, but it has always been a complete mystery
to me that the author of this bullshit could have written Catcher in
the Rye. Salinger took the material much too seriously, which made it
all just too precious, but there was a core of good material there if
anyone had taken the time to see the real potential for humor in a
family of child geniuses grown into neurotic, eccentric, and
unsatisfied adults. That's essentially what Wes Anderson has done with
the Royal Tenenbaums, his own family of Jewish/Irish prodigies.
This film was created by people with tremendous talent
- talent at a level not at all short of genius. It is one of
the most aesthetically consistent films I've ever seen. The set and
costume designs are outstanding, especially in the attention to the tiny
details of the Tenenbaum's lives. The photography is lush, and the DVD
transfer may be the best I've ever seen. The script can be witty, sad, clever, and even laugh-out-loud funny.
There's only one thing about the film which may scare you away. It is
a good comedy, but it may not be your kind of comedy. Ask yourself how much time you
would like to
spend with neurotic,
self-obsessed rich geniuses, even when they are being ridiculed? Do you like the characters of P.G. Wodehouse or Edward
Gorey, or Salinger's Glass family? Can you relate to John Irving's
novels or the cartoons in The New Yorker? If so, the humor here will be right
up your alley - you'll see refined, soft-spoken, well-educated, dysfunctional
intellectuals exchanging lifeless, passionless, clever words masked in gentle
tones, but hiding condescension, contempt, and altogether too much
self-loathing. Obviously, some people found the film impossible to
relate to. Other types of filmgoers adored the film,
and just couldn't get enough of these characters. The split of
opinions was reflected in the scores from the major print reviewers in
the UK, who assigned every score from 10/10 to 4/10. I can see why
some critics were unenthusiastic. I found most members of the Tenenbaum
circle, like Salinger's Glass family,
to be interesting companions for a time because of their
eccentricity, but I also found them tiresome before they had taken
their leave.
Except for ol' Royal Tenenbaum
himself, the family patriarch. I never got tired of him, or of Gene
Hackman's brilliant portrayal.
The Royal
character is so engaging that it won me over into this film's camp and
got me through the slow parts. Royal is really nothing more than a refined slacker and scoundrel. He can't even remember the
last time he told the truth, and he lies so much that even he doesn't
always know which of his pretenses contain a germ of truth. Tossed out
by his wife for infidelities and his general lack of integrity, he lives
in a hotel room for many years, totally ignoring his family until he hears that
his wife wants to divorce and remarry. He then concocts a series of
preposterous schemes to get back into his family's good graces,
including hiring his hotel's bellhop to impersonate a doctor in order to
certify a phony cancer diagnosis. His children, knowing him well enough, are
suspicious of his sincerity, especially given that his case of stomach
cancer (six weeks to live) is accompanied by his inexplicable
ability to wolf down three double cheeseburgers with the works.
The film is basically about Royal's bumbling attempts to make up for
all the years of neglecting his family. Given his obvious lies and his
total lack of social skills, virtually every one of his schemes
backfires, and therein lies the humor. And yet he does attain some
measure of success. His eventual growth as a person
is bittersweet, and it is limited, but he does make progress, and he tries
so hard that we find ourselves rooting for him even though we know him
to be a
complete lowlife. After Royal confesses that everyone thinks he's an
asshole, his wife's suitor says "I never thought you were an asshole,
just a callous sonofabitch." Royal responds with a sincere thank you!
That's about as close as anyone has ever come to saying something nice
about him.
"The Piano Tuner of Earthquakes is the breathtakingly beautiful and long-awaited second feature from the Brothers Quay. On the eve of her wedding, the beautiful opera singer Malvina is mysteriously killed and abducted by a malevolent Dr. Droz. Felisberto, an innocent piano tuner, is summoned to Droz's secluded villa to service his strange musical automatons. Little by little Felisberto learns of the doctor's plans to stage a 'diabolical opera' and of Malvina's fate. He secretly conspires to rescue her, only to become trapped himself in the web of Droz's perverse universe..."
The overall box office was solid (11% above last year), but its strength lay in a fine field of holdovers, and not in the new films. Every new release performed below expectations, while every holdover beat its prediction.
Lady in the Water was predicted to float above the others, but sank to third
The raunchy Clerks 2 had finished a promising fourth on Friday, but sank to seventh or eighth on family-friendly Sunday (It is in a virtual tie with Superman for 7th. Either one may end up in the spot when the estimates are replaced by actuals.)
Neither of this week's live action comedies could unseat either of last week's. (You Me and Dupree and Little Man finished above Clerks and Super Ex-Girlfriend.)
Pirates stole some more records. It became the first film ever to reach $300m in 16 days, and it had the third-highest "third weekend" of all time, behind Spider-Man 1 and Shrek 2.
In retrospect, the decision to keep Super Ex-Girlfriend away from critics was the wrong one. It got decent reviews, even some very good ones, which might have helped a box office substantially below expectations.
Yellow asterisk: funny (maybe). White asterisk: expanded format.
Blue asterisk: not mine. No asterisk: it probably sucks.
Welcome Says the Angel (1996)
This is a "drugs suck" movie from Zero Pictures, a studio which got its
name from its typical budget, which always fits easily within 4 digits. The
story is basically about a guy's attempt to get the girl he just met off
heroin.
That's about all you need to know. For those more curious, complete
spoilers follow:
Joshua (Jon Jacobs) is seen asleep on the side of the highway as the film
opens. His motorcycle is laying on its side. He hitches into Hollywood and
lands in a seedy bar. There, he meets bartender Charlie (Leroy Jones), who
will figure again in the story, gets falling down drunk, and goes home with
Anna (Aysha Hauer). She lets him sleep in her bed with her, but not touch her.
The "apartment" is an old commercial building with one room, and her bed is
inside a car chassis. He wakes up in the morning chained to the bed, where he
is kept captive while she leaves, returns with food, shoots up on heroin more
than once, and has sex with him. She finally releases him, expecting him to
leave. He does, then returns. Seems he is taken with her. She awakes the next
morning chained to the bed with her stash missing. We get to watch her
withdrawal in near real time.
Once she is over the withdrawal, she decides to give straight a chance.
But, Remember Charlie? Yup, he is the pusher, and, in what I saw as the most
real plot point in what was a pretty honest plot to begin with, he convinces
her to sample his latest score of China White. Joshua comes home to find her
near death but manages to revive her. They film ends with an exhausted Joshua
embracing her.
End Spoilers
The film is not rated high at IMDb - only 2.5. Is that fair? Who knows?
They put every penny of their $2,000 budget on the screen, and all of the
characters were believable. The story was also completely believable. On the
other hand, the photography was grainy, it was a character piece about
essentially unpleasant characters doing unpleasant things, and I am not fond
of "drugs suck" films no matter how good they are. I do applaud Zero Pictures
for creating a place where would-be film makers can realize their visions
without any money, and I will continue to see their films.
Objectively, this is a D-, but it may be of interest to anyone interested
in the "drugs suck" genre, or in zero budget film making.
During the course of the film,
Aysha Hauer shows all of her body parts.
Elke Sommer in Deadlier than the Male. No
nudity but, hey, it's Elke.
Eva Herman appearing on Wer hat's gesehen
(no nudity)
Katja Bienert in Fabian (1979). Nice!
Laura Morante in Dov'è
mio figlio?
A Public Service Announcement.
I usually write these things to amuse ever so slightly and ever so
briefly. But today's blather is different. I am here to warn
my fellow readers of the Fun House. Run away. Run away. Run the fuck
away.
When should you run away, you ask. Whenever you see the cover for a
movie entitled H. G. Wells's War of the Worlds (2005). Everyone knows
that Gilbert and Sullivan wrote a competing version of WOTW, so
keeping these things straight is important. This version, which
followed a masterly bit of storytelling from the 50's, and came out
the same year as the blockbuster version from Spielberg, is the single
worst movie I have ever watched. Ever. Let's put that in some
context, shall we? Last movie I reviewed was Rent-A-Girl. And not
too long ago I did this thing called Moonshine Love. Ah, the days of
Moonshine Love. I wish I could say I had watched Moonshine Love last
night for one good reason -- then I would not have watched H. G. Wells'
War of the Worlds. I would consider that a vast improvement in my
life.
Perhaps it would be best to start by comparing this wretched hunk of
donkey shit to the Spielberg movie. We all know how that one,
with Mr. Katie Holmes in the lead, started off right nice. 'Twas
almost an hour's worth of serious entertainment. Things blew up real
good, a host of actors portrayed a people in panic; and Spielberg did
a great job of pushing the pace to get across the impending doom of
individuals and, in the end, of humankind. Righteous good stuff. But
then the former Mr. Nicole Kidman gets into a basement with Tim
Robbins and the two of them act the living fuck out of the scene and
the whole shebang turns its toes to the sky and dies. What follows is
garbage...the worst of storytelling. Oh well, it was a good first
hour.
And this version? The first minute is serious entertainment, with the
lovely Tinarie Van Wyk-Loost stepping out of a shower and drying off,
all the while talking with C. Thomas Howell (that's right...you read
that correctly....C. Thomas Howell).
All that is worth watching in this movie is Tinarie Van Wyk-Loost, who
looks more than a bit like Angelina Jolie,
topless and smiling. Nothing following this scene is worth a nanosecond of your
time. From the time her towel goes
around her bod and all her charms get covered, the movie degenerates
into the single most atrocious, incompetent, boring piece of
movie-making
in the history of the universe and other things. It is
claustrophobic, with the camera showing us the edge of destruction.
So often that camera stays right smack on the face of the noted
thespian, C Thomas Howell, as he gazes upon horror rather than show us
the damn horror. And when it finally swings 'round to reveal what he
has seen, the view is fleeting. Why? Because the jackasses who
made this thing spent 11 cents on special effects. The effects are
horrible. They are wretched. They are inane. Just like the people
assigned to do them. Were CT an actor in any sense of the word, all
this might have been less obnoxious ... this tactic of having him
portray horror with his face. Oh, I agree that aged face is a
horrible sight, almost as appalling as seeing him in blackface a
couple decades ago. But the tactic of
living out the horror in the lines of another's face does not work.
Not one little bit.
The makers of this movie decided to go Mel Gibson on us. They have
turned the original's light-handed approach to the wisdom of the
Almighty into a heavy angst-ridden struggle by an Australian preacher
as he tries to make sense of aliens killing His people. You get
minute after minute of bathos and faux piety and the kind of internal
and eternal struggle that is covered nicely in a class of 5th-grade
Sunday
schoolers. This stuff is so god-awful the Mrs. and I howled in pain
as one scene after another plumbed the same depths with an intellect shorter
than the former Mr. Mimi Rogers. We wore out the frickin' FF button. I am sending the
producers of this movie a bill for its replacement.
I could go on. The silly-ass bastards hired Gary Busey's son to play
the quintessential Gary Busey role of a crazed military commander.
All the boy had to do was watch one or two of his dad's later efforts
and then imitate him as best he could...which turned out to be not so
good. They also hired the lovely Tinarie to play Howell's wife and
the mother of their 10-yr-old son. Tinarie is 26 years old right now.
She was at most 24 when the movie was filmed. And she looks younger.
That would have made her 14 when the kid was supposed to be born.
Fourteen... as in years old.... as in the age of Jerry Lee Lewis's
cousin when he married her. All that suggests the producer needed
to read more carefully. Tinarie is from South Africa, not South
Carolina.
Perhaps all that is wrong with this making of War of the Worlds can be
summed up in one scene. CT and the Aussie preacher are making their
way through the Virginia countryside to Washington DC. CT has to get
there to see if his child-bride and his son (played by his real-life
son) are still alive. But are they hauling ass, moving with any
alacrity, adopting a pace that befits their mission? No way, dude.
They are walking at a pace that a couple of octogenarians who have
discovered true love in their last years might achieve on a
particularly bad, arthritic day. And then, for no reason we
could see, they stop. Dead stop, no movement, right there in the
middle of things.
Oz's film clips are in yesterday's edition, in the top (Scoopy)
section.
Snapshot
Sigrid Thornton is a well-known actress in Australia. Snapshot (1979) was one
of her earliest movies and she is shown topless as she goes for a paddle in the
local bay.
Sheba, Baby
Sheba, Baby (1975) is disappointing from a nudity point of view.
All we have is a lot of cleavage from Pam Grier
and some unknowns.
Return to Paradise
We see side nudity from Anne Heche
and Is Issayira
in Return to Paradise (1998).
Aunt Agatha's Apartment
There's no visible nudity in Aunt Agatha's Apartment aka Rent Control (2002).
We see some nice cleavage from Carmen Electra
and we see a topless Melissa Joan Hart from behind.
The Long Riders
Pamela Reed
and some unknowns
are all seen topless in The Long Riders (1980).
Constantine
They worked hard to make sure nothing is shown by Rachel Weisz in Constantine
(2005).
Alexander
Rosario Dawson is completely naked in Alexander (2004)
and there are some minor pokies by Angelina Jolie.
Eye for an Eye
No nudity in Eye for an Eye (1996).
Sally Field
Wanda Acuna
and Charlayne Woodard
are shown in various stages of undress.
Greedy
Again, no nudity but we see some sexy caps of Olivia D'Abo
and Nancy Travis
in Greedy (1994).
Dirty Dancing
Jennifer Beals looks good in Dirty Dancing (1987), with some nice pokies and
other sexy scenes.
Room 6 (2006)
I'll fly in the face of conventional
wisdom here, because most of the critics and viewers hated this 2006
supernatural thriller, while I liked it a lot.
Amy is a teacher who is terrified of
hospitals, because of something that happened to her as a child. Even now,
it's not unusual for her to have horrific nightmares about hospitals. When
she and finance Nick are involved in a traffic accident, and he is badly
injured and taken away by ambulance, she must face her worst fear, by
following him to the hospital. One slight complication: she wasn't told
the name of the hospital he was taken to.
Amy is unable to locate Nick in any local
hospital. She is aided by the driver of the other car, who is himself
trying to locate his sister taken to the same unknown hospital. Finally,
the driver, who is an ex-hospital orderly, finds out that they were taken
to St. Rosemary's. That is also a problem, since St. Rosemary's closed in
the 1920's amid rumors of Satanic rituals being performed by the staff on
patients. When Amy and her new friend finally do locate St. Rosemary's,
she gets far more than she bargained for.
The best part of this movie is the ending.
While very sad, it explains everything, and the whole movie suddenly
becomes clear. It's quite a ride, and I enjoyed it.
