Taking Lives (2004) is a serial killer on the loose story, this time in Montreal. Angelina Jolie is an FBI profiler brought in to assist. Lets start with the best parts of the film, namely Jolie's breasts, which she exposes in a long and very hot sex scene. Ok, so much for good things. I found the plot utterly predictable, and when it neared the end without revealing the surprise identity I was expecting, I was ready to trade in my DVD drive. That's how sure I was. Well, I still have the DVD drive, and the story went precisely where I knew it had to from about the 30 minute point in the film.

Ebert loved it at three stars, but had an awful lot of negative comments. Berardinelli was not impressed, especially by the ending, and awarded 2 1/2 stars. IMDb readers say 5.5 of 10. There is really nothing wrong with the performances, the problem is with the plot. There was one gratuitous but very effective startle moment. If you are a lover of the thriller, chances are you will stick with this one. While I like the genre, predictability is a very bad thing in my scheme of things. This is a C.

I reviewed this movie when it came out, and I spoiled the hell out of it, so I won't repeat that here. Don't click on that link if you want to see the film and don't want it spoiled. The following is the non-spoiler stuff.

The general consensus on this Angelina Jolie thriller was that the plot was horsebleep and all the details were sloppy (people speaking with French accents instead of Quebecois accents, according to the French-speaking reviewers), but that the mood and atmosphere were quite effective, ably supported by the performers.

Those that liked the film said that the thriller genre functions "in the moment", and that therefore it works if it can develop a unique atmosphere while leading you through its moments effectively, even if you think about it later and realize it didn't add up.

Those that disliked the film said - hey, get real! All the atmosphere in the world doesn't make up for a crappy grade-B plot that combines preposterous operatic flourishes with logical gaps -  unless, of course, the director is named Welles, and the movie is called Touch of Evil.

I was in the second camp, but Roger Ebert was in the first, so that probably shows you that I know jack shit.

I finally concluded that the film started out with great promise, resembling David Fincher's SE7EN, but ended up being an Ashley Judd movie without Ashley Judd.

In watching the DVD, I did have soften my opinion based on two things. (1) Amazingly enough, I have to concede that Ethan Hawke was a creepy and effective villain, kind of in the Norman Bates tradition of insidious guys who are soft-spoken but "off". (2) Ebert was certainly right about the atmosphere - the cinematography and lighting are quite effective, the locations in Quebec are gorgeous, and the DVD really brings that out.

• Angelina Jolie. (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7) OK, she may be a little weird, but that is one photogenic woman!

Tiptoes (2003 or something. Made in 2002. Never released.):

Here's a bit of a puzzler for you. Imagine a glitzy, A-list romantic comedy from the Hollywood factory. Matthew McConaughey plays the lead of course. Opposite him will be one of the following:

• Reese Witherspoon

• Kate Beckinsale

• J-Lo

• Kate Hudson

In this case, the co-star is Beckinsale.

Now suppose that the cast is rounded out by Patricia Arquette and the dependable veteran character actor Gary Oldman. The film might be OK, or it might suck mightily, but surely you would have heard of it, right?

Wrong.

This movie was so bad that the investors took it away from the director the minute they saw it, and hired somebody else to try to salvage a final cut. When they looked at that result, they abandoned all hope.

What's wrong with it? The short answer is that it is an ABC Afterschool Special on Dwarfism.

You see, McConaughey's brother and parents are little people, and he has not informed Beckinsale of this fact. When Beckinsale gets pregnant, and finds about Matt's family, she fears that the baby may be ... um ... really short! Possibly even shorter than Christian Slater.

At this point, we are treated to about an hour's worth of dialogue in one of two formats:

• Various people plead for tolerance from Beckinsale with well-meaning but maudlin and condescending comments about little people. You'll get the general idea if you imagine all the speeches that Gandalf gave to Frodo about how the size of a man is not measured by the length of his legs, but by the length of his dick ... oh ... I mean the size of his heart. Or something. This dialogue is made all the more embarrassing because it is just so sincere.

• Beckinsale and McConaughey get everything out in the open and discuss the genuine physical and social problems associated with dwarfism - "you know, little people shit", as one character points out. Instead of using the Gandalf method here, they use the PSA dialogue technique. "Say, Babs, did you know dwarves are 93% more likely to be the victims of earthquakes than people of average height?" "Why, no Hank, I didn't. That's great info. Are there any other Fun Facts about dwarves that I should know?"

I mentioned earlier that Gary Oldman was in this movie. How does he fit in? He plays one of the little people. And he is also McConaughey's fraternal twin brother.

You read that right.

All of the dwarf roles are played by real dwarves, except Oldman, who walks around on his knees like Jose Ferrer playing Toulouse Lautrec, absent the absinthe. The extremely talented Peter Dinklage is on hand to play the other um ... large small role, but Dinklage is apparently the only actor under 4'6" who has any talent, so the 5'10" Oldman had to be recruited for the most significant dwarf role.

The Oldman charade doesn't really work. Oldman is a terrific actor, and gives it some moments, but the scenes with his legs just out of the picture are cropped uncomfortably, and his arms are just way too long. Oh, yeah, Oldman is also more than a decade older than his "twin"  McConaughey, and looks every bit of it and more.

Anyway, Beckinsale not only gets convinced that little people are cool dudes, but she gets so convinced that she dumps McConaughey and falls for Oldman!

I'm not sure I want to take this review any farther.

It doesn't surprise me that the investors took this from the director and then shelved it altogether. What does surprise me is that anyone thought this was a good idea in the first place.

As the Cat in the Hat said when he found out he was making lewd references about the kid's mom  ...

"Awkward"

• Patricia Arquette (1, 2)

OTHER CRAP:

• Moms hold 'nurse-in' at Starbucks. They want Starbucks to make the right to breast feed a matter of policy. I support their efforts. First of all, it lets me look at breasts while getting my coffee. Second, it comes in handy if Starbucks runs out of cream. "Hey, lady, squeeze a little in this cup, willya?"
• POKER: Murphy faces down two aces - and takes control.
• Box Office Mojo - Box Office Forecast for this weekend. There doesn't seem to be much buzz around AVP, but this forecaster seems to think it will hit $30 mill for the weekend. He thinks Bourne will be very strong, finishing in fourth place in its fourth weekend. Like many, he thinks Yu-Gi-Oh will bomb.
• NBA Owner In Sex Scandal. It isn't really much of a scandal. It's a very rich old man who paid a young tootsie to clean his pipes. Somehow I think that this may have happened once or twice before before in human history. The scandal is that HE sued HER.
• Nudes Readers to Reveal the Bare Facts: "Starting nightly on Aug. 16, Get Lucky TV will broadcast via satellite to European audiences the daily news read by a series of nubile young women who will gradually -- but tastefully -- remove their clothes on camera. "
• Paramount, Summer 2005 - "'Mission: Impossible 3,' which has been plagued by director problems, is out, and 'War of the Worlds,' directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Tom Cruise, is in. "
• Latino Review looks at We Don't Live Here Any More.
• This week's reviews: Alien vs. Predator - no reviews. Huh? It opens tomorrow - in fact it opens at 12:01 tonight so it will be open by the time most of you read this - and no critic has seen it yet? That can't be good, can it?
• This week's movies: Yu-Gi-Oh! - 0% positive reviews. Will it get the first perfect zero since Benigni's Pinnochio? Stay tuned.
• Court Settlement Makes Dirty Harry's Day
• N.J. governor, saying he's gay, resigns office. Tony Soprano starts to wonder about the late Big Pussy.
• Borowitz: IN FIRST INTELLIGENCE FAILURE, NEW CIA CHIEF DID NOT KNOW HE WAS BEING NOMINATED
• Four free short videos from Playboy's Cheerleaders & College Girls!
• Playmate Gallery - Kimberly Stanfield, July 2001 - Courtesy of PlayboyPlus.com!
• British supermodel Kate Moss has commissioned a specialist in rock portraits to come up with a painting of her with Elvis.
• The Daily Show looks at Republican efforts to get Nader on the ballot.
• The Daily Show looks at new CIA head Porter Goss
• The Daily Show looks at This Week in God - Feminism, and Mecca Cola
• Russian scientists have allegedly said they have discovered the wreck of an alien device at the site of an unexplained explosion in Siberia almost a hundred years ago
• We need to get to the bottom of this! August is 'National Anal Sex Month'. It's the one month when you're allowed to get a little behind at your job.
• Goss on his own lack of CIA credentials: "'I couldn't get a job with CIA today. I am not qualified. I don't have the language skills. I, you know, my language skills were romance languages and stuff. We're looking for Arabists today. I don't have the cultural background probably. And I certainly don't have the technical skills, uh, as my children remind me every day: 'Dad you got to get better on your computer.' Uh, so, the things that you need to have, I don't have."
• The Sun catches J-Lo in a bikini
• Former Screw magazine publisher Al Goldstein is living life as a homeless person.
• MoveOnPlease.org: Democracy Inaction (National Lampoon's spoof of MoveOn.Org's website.)
• Welcome to Celebrity Cemetery
• President's Congratulations to His Little Brown Nephew George P. on the Occasion of His Marriage to an Ann Coulter Impersonator WHITEHOUSE.ORG
• JoBlo reviews that cinematic masterpiece, The Brown Bunny
• Google Web Alerts - because they now have the entire internet under their thumb!
• Stop us if you've heard this before: Tom Sizemore is in trouble with the law.
• The Straight Dope: If spaghetti is Italian, why is it sold by Franco- American? Also discussed - if the Italians had pasta before they had tomatoes (tomatoes came from the New World to Europe around 1522) - then what did they do for sauce?
• More "artistic" naked chicks
• The Online Film Critics Society'sTop 100 Overlooked Films of the 1990s
• Sofia Coppola, the first American woman to ever be nominated for Best Director, is set to direct Kirsten Dunst in Marie-Antoinette
• "Dog bites man" department. Griffey done for the season with torn hamstring. Who would have dreamed?
• The Straight Dope: Who was the stupidest U.S. president? You may not realize that Dubya scored in the 88th percentile on his SAT's (he scored 566, 640, which is equal to 640, 640 by the current scoring scale), and is not even close to being a candidate for this dishonor. The prime contenders in the 20th century would be Harry Truman, Warren Harding, and Ronald Reagan. Possibly JFK. Kennedy was no whiz-kid, his 119 IQ lower than Dubya's estimated 129. ( Bush's score can be inferred from his SATs. See this link for the conversion chart from pre-1974 SAT scores to IQ. Dubya's actual SAT score was 1206.)
• Kerry Denies He Had Sex With Olsen Twins
• Here's a bigger version of one of those those Charlotte Church paparazzi pictures
• British Goverment orders parody web site removed! (So the Guardian kindly reprints it)
• For your specialized porn needs: 1418 sexual fantasies about Tonya Harding.
• POWER POKER, Part 4: Sam's girlfriend said it best: "don't ever call"
• MTV's sequel to Pimp My Ride - Pimp My Bride
• You Can't Be Serious! McEnroe's TV show hits a Perfect Zero rating - twice. Double fault.
• This week's movies: Danny Deckchair (limited release) - 50% positive reviews.: "The limp movie seems to be an attempt by an Australian to mimic a bad American romantic comedy, and, unfortunately, he succeeds admirably.'"

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

Click here to submit a URL for Other Crap

MOVIE REVIEWS:

Words from Scoop.

.avi's from Shiloh.

.wmv files made by Scoop from Shiloh's .avi's.

NOTE: because of a unique combination of circumstances with the Windows media player and some substantial bandwidth theft, we will have to do all of our movie files in zip format. Left click on the files as you normally would to view a picture. When you get a choice, click on "save", and put it on your hard drive in the directory of your choice. UnZIP and play from there.

I know this is not especially convenient, but it allows the film clips to continue. I can protect .zip files from hot-linking in the same way I can protect still images. For some reason, if I protect .avis and .wmvs from hot-linking, they will not play in the Windows media player, and I can't get a satisfactory work-around. Perhaps I will find a better solution, but for now this new policy allows you to continue getting the movie clips you want to see, which is much preferable to my abandoning the clips altogether.

Various

• Lost and Delirious. Not a great movie, but with some great nudity. Jessica Pare and Piper Perabo. ( .avi- zip) (.wmv - zip) .

• There is some outstanding nudity from the Natasha Henstridge character in Steal. Unfortunately, it was done by a body double. Ah, sunflower, weary of time! Just a few years back, Natasha spent just about the entire movie naked in Species. ( .avi- zip) (.wmv - zip) 

• J-Lo's nudity in Money Train is just about non-existent in the widescreen version, so here's a look at the full screen rendering. ( .avi- zip) (.wmv - zip) .

Perhaps these tips will help if you have trouble with the codecs for these movies:

Shiloh says:

FYI when I hypercam vids to make the file size smaller I use DivX MPEG-4 Fast-Motion for the video compressor, then I use virtualdub to compress the audio. The properties for the vids says the video codec:  DivX Decoder Filter & audio codec:  Morgan Stream Switcher which I'm not familiar with. When I compress the audio with virtualdub I use MPEG Layer-3.  A friend of mine told me about compressing the audio about (6) mos. ago. Like I said previously, only been capping for a year & a half & I'm no expert. Hopefully this info will help members with the proper codecs for my vids.

 

When I cap big brother's I use hypercam mostly & sdp & asfrecorder if the set up allows me. I stopped using camtasia cause the file sizes were always too big, could never figure out the process, over my head lol, plus it cost too much to buy in my opinion.

A reader says:

You mentioned that some users were having trouble with the videos on your site. There is a tool designed to determine what codec is needed for a video. http://www.headbands.com/gspot/ Hope this is useful to you or your users.

Scoop says:

I made the .wmv versions of each video. The codecs for these: Windows Video V8, Windows Audio 9. The upside of these is that you know the codecs, and they'll play in the Windows Media Player. The downside is that they are slightly larger, and slightly lower quality.

A while back I did some caps from a very, very wierd tape called Hellcats in High Heels 2. Capped only one segment of it, one of the less bizarre sequences in which former Heffer Elke Jeinsen (May '93) got herself topless. Well, lo and behold, what arrives in my snailmailbox but a DVD of Hellcats in High Heels 1, 2 and 3. Didn't bother with 1... not much to look at. Did up Elke again and all the other gals in 2...that's today's little goodie...capped 3 and will send it along one of these fine days.

No plot to this disk. Just a bunch of women, some of 'em real tough looking. Most of them topless, few showing bum and one of them doing the gynocam thing. The Elke caps are way better than the ones I foisted on you guys lo those many months ago. Trash the old one; keep these.

The other gals include a few familiar faces. Nikki Nova and Taylor St. Clair are getting they bodies painted (Nikki is a frequent explicit model and sometime B movie babe; Taylor is a former B movie gal and more recently a pornabie). Roaxanne Hall poses demurely, which I gather it out of character 'cuz IMDb has her doing nasty stuff in adult movies.

Rest of the women are new to my eyes. Some spanking, some fire-eating, all that crazy stuff. The strangest one is Olivia Outre, who seems to have a very bad habit.

• Elke Jeinsen (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7)

• Nikki Nova

• Taylor St. Clair(e) (1, 2)

• Roaxanne Hall

• Kernie Elkins

• Madelyn Sin

• Olivia Outre

• Renae Bryant

• Rhea Roma

Today from the Ghost...a few vids (zipped .wmvs) of some Euro-babes.

• Italian babe Chiara Caselli stripping down to reveal full frontal nudity in a love scene from "Al di là delle nuvole" aka "Beyond the Clouds" (1995). (1, 2)

• She often uses an American accent, but Claire Forlani is actually from the UK (and she is also a favorite of both Scoops). Here she is topless and baring her bum in a love scene from her first movie, "Gypsy Eyes" aka "CIA Trackdown" (1992). Click here for the Scoopy.com review. (1, 2)

• French actress Sandrine Bonnaire shows off her beautiful natural breasts and goes full frontal in scenes from the French film "Police" (1985). (1, 2)

SHATNER TO PLAY CAPTAIN KIRK AGAIN
This...Is...ABSURD! - William Shatner may appear as Captain Kirk on UPN's "Star Trek: Enterprise," even though it's set 100 years before Kirk is born. Shatner suggested the plot himself, which involves a time travel war between enemies from different eras.