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Film clips:
Three clips (zipped
.avi) of a young, ripe Mia Kirshner
in Adam Egoyan's arthouse masterpiece, Exotica
Slow Burn (2003)
What's wrong with this picture: A film is made in 2003, with a
budget of fifteen million dollars and a solid cast of players just off
the A-list like Ray Liotta and Taye Diggs. The cinematographer is the
guy who did Memento and Insomnia. It features Star Trek's Commander
T'Pol topless, thus creating curiosity and fanboy appeal. It gets a
decent (6.1) IMDb rating.
Yet it takes two years to get to the Toronto film festival, and
another year to make it to DVD - in Finland! WTF? Well, I haven't
seen the movie, but there are some suggestions that it may not be
entirely original.
Variety said, "What begins as a moderately interesting set of
interconnected mysteries involving race and identity soon grows eye-rollingly
laborious, not to mention increasingly derivative of
Christopher
McQuarrie's Usual Suspects script."
eFilm Critic
was more direct: "Wayne Beach may have read in the ripoff
handbook that ten years may be the official moratorium on when you
can outright steal a major film from front-to-back. Although it’s
easy to question why do it to one that’s earned the status of a
modern classic, the one I would ask is – just how big are your
balls? Interrogations and a Keyser Soze wannabe are enough to draw
comparisons to the Oscar-winning screenplay from 1995, so why invite
further ridicule by littering the third act with the near-exact same
conclusion. From the belief that one character is Danny Luden, then
another, than the interrogator’s realization that the first wrong
guess he made wasn’t the last to the guy being right under his nose
only to have a car waiting for him outside complete with flashbacks
and the filmmakers having fun with chameleon metaphors and lens
gels."
Reel Film Reviews
went straight for the jugular, by calling it "a flat-out ripoff of
The Usual Suspects."
OTHER CRAP:
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"Some 5,000 AOL employees, or about 26
percent of the company's 19,000-person work force, will lose
their jobs within six months as a result of restructuring"
Colbert: "The Peace Corps identifies the
people who hate America, then ships them overseas."
Colbert talks about World War III because
you don't get much War On Christmas action in August.
Daily Show:
Alert: the Rapture Index is at 156
"Daily Show: Stewart - Slow News Day: The
CNN News Center has a new weather center! Alert! Alert!"
"Daily Show: It Takes a Bombed-Out Village"
- "Our biggest mistake in Iraq? Sending
an army when we should have sent Oprah."
"Daily Show: Stewart - Elderly Army
Recruitment"
- Hey Elderly! Join the army! Because
when you have a gun, people HAVE to listen to your stories!
"Daily Show: Stewart - Elderly Army
Recruitment"
- Hey Elderly! Join the army! Because
when you have a gun, people HAVE to listen to your stories!
The Daily Show:
"Join the army and spend your midlife
crisis in an actual crisis."
"Daily Show: New York City is into its 28th
straight day of 150 degree temperatures."
Danny DeVito analyzes the acting technique
used by Jon Stewart in Death to Smoochy
...
Danny DeVito, Part 2
This Week's Movies: Update
- The Descent: 83% positive reviews,
2100 theaters
- Tallagega Nights: 70% positive
reviews, 3800 theaters
- The Night Listener: 41% positive
reviews, 1400 theaters
- Barnyard: 34% positive reviews, 3300
theaters
Set down that Bud Light and have a Lenny
Bruce beer ... "made with
obscene amounts of malts and hops"
Best reason yet to dial 9-1-1:
A 44-year-old woman in Aachen, Germany,
called the cops on her husband in the middle of the night,
complaining that he was not satisfying his sexual obligations
Cheerleader Guy kicks off the important
part of the NFL season: the cheerleading part.
Battle of the Beach - Eagles vs Dolphins
Volleyball
The 11 Best Chappelle's Show Skits of All
Time (with video)
An optical illusion - the Big Spanish
Castle - B&W or color?
Kokpar is a traditional Kazakh game played
on horseback, in which two teams of players compete to carry a
headless goat carcass into a goal.
Why does the moon have a strange bulge?
- It saw a really cute asteroid naked?
The new Captain Kirk in Star Trek XI will
be ...
- Actually, this is quite a good
choice. Now that they've announced it, I can't come up with a
better one.
The trailer for The Pusher Trilogy - Part 1,
a Danish Crime Saga. Because when you think of crime films, you
think of Denmark.
The trailer for A Night At The Museum,
a comedy starring funnymen from many different generations: Ben
Stiller, Robin Williams, Dick van Dyke, and Mickey Rooney.
Watch WWE wrestling star John Cena in the
trailer for 'The Marine.'
Several trailers for Jet Li's new film,
Fearless
The trailer from "Tenacious D in The Pick
of Destiny" |
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Movie Reviews:
Yellow asterisk: funny (maybe). White asterisk: expanded format.
Blue asterisk: not mine. No asterisk: it probably sucks.
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Wanda (1970)
As the film opens, Wanda is being divorced by her coal miner husband, and
agrees in court with kind of a whimper. From the courtroom, she goes directly
into a bar where a traveling salesman buys her a drink. Cut to him trying to
sneak out of a motel room without waking her.
Wanda clearly is vegetating her way through life, not worried about
anything except her next drink, and with no ambitions or dreams, until she
meets an armed robber who enlists her aid. Even though the robber is twisted
and not very pleasant to her, he introduces her to something she can finally
feel good about doing.
Obviously, this can't result in a happy ending.
This 1970 effort is sort of a road movie, but really more of a character
piece about Wanda, and it is very grainy, giving a documentary feel. It was a
maiden directorial effort from Barbara Loden, who wrote, directed and starred,
making her perhaps the first woman to perform all three functions in a
significant film. For those not familiar with her, she is also known as Mrs.
Elia Kazan, and appeared in Splendor in the Grass, as well as some early TV
shows. Assuming Loden's intent was to present a realistic portrait of her
Wanda, she accomplished her goal. Unfortunately, this Wanda would not be on
many people's party invitation list, which may explain why theatergoers
avoided this film in droves.
IMDb readers have scored it a solid 7.0 and critics have generally
applauded it. The few obscure reviews available use phrases like "forgotten
masterpiece" and "landmark example of independent cinema." Given those
facts, the
genre must be "art house films," and our proper grade must be C+,
but
only lovers of art house cinema will appreciate it.
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Dann reports on 2005's
Frankenstein Reborn: ... a
better-than-average B-movie version of the classic, set in modern times.
In a psychiatric hospital, doctors are
evaluating a scientist accused of brutal murders. He insists he is not the
murderer, and tells a wild story of science gone wrong.
He claims to have discovered the secret to
regeneration of dead cells, and was experimenting on crippled subjects and
helping them to improve dramatically. Unfortunately, there were side
effects of headaches and terrible nightmares. After being forced to kill
the subject in self-defense, the scientist brings him back to life with
even more dire consequences. The monster that results is not a Boris
Karloff style Frankenstein monster, but he's plenty nasty looking
nonetheless.
This movie is interesting and surprisingly
well done. Well maybe not surprising, because it was produced by The
Asylum, and I've noticed that their movies, while they are B-movies,
always seem above average. They also produced H.G. Wells' War of the
Worlds, a much better version than the mega-bucks Tom Cruise
version released at the same time, and they've had several other good ones
recently.
Eliza Swenson |
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The Funhouse has been chock full of clips from movies that shoulda been
transferred to DVD but exist on videotape only. A lot of real nice performances.
Well, here are a dozen clips in six zip files from two movies that will make no
one's list of "If Only it Were on DVD".
The Happy Hooker goes to Hollywood
Happy Hooker is the cinematic equivalent of cotton candy. Not the pink
kind, either. Nope, it's all blue stuff. No sign of substance...all air and
sugar...mostly air. Several gals do get topless but the scenic views are
chopped up into tiny segments, a few seconds long. Both
Dana Baker and
Dawn Clark are
victims of this sort of editing, so you better focus
fast.
Marilyn Joi has a
bit more topless screen time than the other gals. BTW, all of these gals play
Xaviera Hollander's entourage (Xaviera is played by Joey Heatherton).
The bountiful
Raven Delacroix gets used as an ice cream dish but shows up for about two
seconds of camera time.
The Centerfold Girls.
This one is just a mean-spirited mess. The principal sources of nekkidness
are former Heffer
Ruthy Ross and long, lean beauty,
Tiffany Bolling.
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Pat's comments in yellow...
The Minor League Newark Bears baseball team is holding a promotion tonight to
educate fans on baby safety. It's called "Britney Spears Baby Safety Night."
They will pass out info on child car safety seats, give away a free car seat,
and fans who bring a baby or a baby toy, or who dress as a baby, get in
free.
* And tonight only, dropping the ball will not be counted
as an error.
Josephine Doherty of Surrey, England, set a new world record by getting
married in a gown that weighed 392 pounds. The huge dress had a 60-foot train
that took eight groomsmen and five bridesmaids to carry
* She's now on record as the heaviest bride since Star
Jones.
On this day in 1966, John Lennon made his ill-fated remark about the Beatles
being bigger than Jesus, which led to churches holding mass burnings of Beatles
records.
* But sadly, not Yoko Ono records.
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