The Devil Came from Akasava (1971), AKA Der Teufel kam aus Akasawa is a German made spy thriller directed by Jess Franco. While it is rather plot heavy from a Franco film, he managed to get Soledad Miranda topless several times, and completely naked once. The premise is that a mineral has been discovered that turns men into zombies and some metal into gold. Everyone wants it. Miranda is secret service, Fred Williams is Scotland Yard, and Jess Franco plays an Italian agent. They are all dubbed into German in this version, which was made in parallel with the Spanish version. The dubbed German doesn't, of course, give the national accents, which would have made this story full of double-crosses much easier to follow, but don't let the zombie theme put you off, as it was never really developed.

IMDB readers say 5.2 of 10, which may be about right. It is not a typical Franco offering, but it was sporadically entertaining. C-.

I guess it may be my personal prejudice against "talking heads speaking into the camera" movies, but I found this to be a horrible ordeal to get through. The entire movie basically consists of scenes in one bedroom, and some talking heads commenting on the action or related topics . There's nothing terribly wrong with the movie. It has a pleasant, accepting attitude toward sex and humanity, and it was nominated for eight awards from the Australian Film Institute in 2000. I just find the technique precious and boring, although I guess it is a workable way to make a movie if one has no money at all.

I guess there's good news and bad news about the financial considerations for this kind of movie. The bad news: it did zero at the box office. The good news: it broke even.

The film has admirers. Tuna liked the film, and it is rated a fairly high 5.9 at IMDb, including 7.0 by women.

I guess Tuna also liked the sexy stuff.  I didn't. There is a lot of sex, but this woman does nothing for me at all.

• Susie Porter (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7)

Irréversible (2002)

Irréversible caused quite a stir at Cannes this year, prompting people to walk out of the screening in such copious droves that it looked like they were being herded out by Rowdy Yates and Gil Faver. Those people weren't leaving because of ennui, either. They were shocked, and one poor woman was even treated for nausea. The central causes of the outrage: (1) a brutal nine minute anal rape scene in real time, including a violent beating  (2) a gay S&M club where guys are feeling, licking, and fisting each other openly, and the camera is acting as the eyes of the frenetic boyfriend, who is seeking the rapist (3) a realistic scene of one man beating another man's skull in with a fire extinguisher (4) filming technique which involves spinning the camera 360 degrees and other such vomit-inducing techniques.

The basic plot: Monica Bellucci has a spat with her boyfriend (real-life husband Vincent Cassel) at a party, so she leaves in a huff. Here's a good tip for you female youngsters - when in a snit, keep sufficient wits about you to avoid desolate tunnels. In the tunnel, a mad rapist not only violates her, but hits her again and again, turning her into a punching bag in a graphic ultra-violent rage. Nobody in the film seems to care for anyone else. One bystander sees the rape taking place, but walks away and does nothing. The boyfriend hears that there has been a rape, but is unconcerned until he realizes that it affects him personally, at which time he is outraged and decides to take justice into his own hands, as they say.

The camerawork is ... well, the word I have to use is nauseating, but I don't mean to use that word in the figurative sense of "offensive and poorly executed", but in the completely literal sense of "tending to make one feel nauseated". If you get sick on carnival rides or on boats, this is not the film for you.

JoBlo summed it up this way in his review:

the camera work in this film is beyond "hand-held". The first twenty minutes or so features the camera constantly, and I mean, constantly...moving, bobbing, weaving, turning round and round and round...twisting, focusing, unfocusing, featuring nothing, featuring everything...basically everything and the kitchen sink, and yet it really doesn't give you a focused sense of anything on-screen.

If the graphic violence and crazy camerawork aren't far enough off the beaten path for you, you'll be pleased to know that the film is also told backwards, Memento style, in 12 scenes shown in reverse chronological order.

The good news: Italian uberbabe Monica Bellucci is naked a lot. Everyone who has not already done captures from this film soon will, so I tried something different. I eliminated the yellow and red filters, attempting to show the scene in the original ambient light with fairly good flesh tones. While this effort wasn't entirely triumphant, some of the frames are fairly good. I know it turned me on to see Monica in more-or-less natural light.

• Bellucci Thumbnail previews (1, 2)
• Monica Bellucci (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17)

Updates:

• Updates: Amanda Peet, Susie Porter, Tamara Landry

 

Mailbox:

For fans of JAG and Catherine Bell -- the Hot Line episode from 1994 in
which she appears nude is playing on OuterMax (one of the Cinemax channels)
tomorrow night (Sat. 8/2 at 1:35 a.m. EDT to be precise).

I've had this in my Tivo Wishlist for a while, and finally it's on.

FYI,
N.
 

OTHER CRAP:

• New dudes of 'Hazzard': "the big-screen version of 'The Dukes of Hazzard' is still being wrestled into shape. But that's not stopping Ashton Kutcher and Paul Walker from expressing their interest in starring as the fast-drivin' cousins, with Anthony Anderson as Boss Hog, in the remake of the good-ol'-boys TV series that ran on CBS from 1979-85. Kutcher is so into the role that he even dressed up as Luke Duke last year on Halloween. And what about Daisy Duke?
• Homeless driven out of carpark by Beethoven: I think John Tesh would probably do the trick. If not, Yoko and Carol Channing come right behind.
• Bo Derek trading cards
• My dick is so big... jokes
• Arts students 'die young': "engineering and medical students live longer"
• Soundboard dedicated to my personal role model, Lumbergh. (If you don't know what that means, you don't care about the site)
• If your daughter can't decide about college, you might not want to tell her about the academy of topless bartending 
• Pictures from the new Harry Potter movie.
• If you're interested, here's the trailer for The Last Samurai. Edward Zwick doesn't do many movies. It's been about five years since The Siege. I've liked some of his films: Glory, Legends of the Fall, ... About Last Night.

Other crap archives. May also include newer material than the ones above, since it's sorta in real time.

PIRATE COUNTDOWN:

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.

• Sandra Bullock in the most revealing sex scene of her career. Naturally it was made before she became famous, and it's from a movie no one has ever seen called "Fire on the Amazon" (1993).

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

"Solaris"

Women will probably like this movie for George Clooney's butt, which he shows in a love scene. Men will probably like this movie for ending.

I'm a Sci-Fi buff, but this movie never gets there. There are unexplained deaths on a space station. Clooney, a shrink, gets sent to investigate. Once there, he stumbles onto his dead wife (or is she?). What's causing all this craziness? Well, don't look to the movie for answers, because it won't give you any.

There is a scene at the end of the movie that will remind you of "2001: A Space Odyssey", but this is no 2001. Thumbs down on this mess.

• Natascha McElhone

"XX/XY"

Take every man's dream of an on-going three-way in college, complicate it by having the characters get together 10 years later, and you have the ingredients of an excellent movie.

Unfortunately, some weak acting and writing that portrays the characters as kind of shallow cause this movie to be less than it could have been, but by no means is it bad. It's interesting enough to keep your attention, and different enough to be worth watching.

The love making scenes had nudity, but they were shot tight, sometimes blurry, sometimes fuzzy, probably to let the film keep it's R rating. I capped the scenes anyway because they still give you a feel for what's going on, just as they did in the movie.

• Maya Stange and Kathleen Robertson

"GIGLI" CALLED "WORST MOVIE EVER MADE"
All That Glitters Is Not Good - Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck's "Gigli" opens Friday, and so far, it has a "0 percent" positive rating at the RottenTomatoes.com movie review site. One critic called it "the worst movie ever made," another said he had to watch "Glitter" to wash it out of his head, and a third said it confirms the "South Park" guys' claim that a hand puppet is a better actor than J-Lo. Their next movie, "Jersey Girl," is set for release in February, but tabloids quote insiders as saying that J-Lo blames the publicity about their relationship for the bad reviews and is so upset, she's vowed never to co-star with Ben again.