Thursday

Tuna
"Down the Barrel"

Down the Barrel (2003 video) is waiting for 5 votes at IMDB. It is also waiting for a cast list, plot description, reviews, and anything else there. It is the story of a young woman, Tara Price, who escapes an abusive step father and comes to Hollywood to become a star. Her first day, a street bum steals her suitcase with everything she owns. A starving, tortured artist, Matthew Grant Godbey, offers her a place to stay. He is not without problems of his own, which include gambling debts, and a former lover from his days working as a gay prostitute, who is powerful, connected, and wants him back. One of his creditors owns a strip club, but is in debt to the former lover, who applies pressure on him to get Godbey back. Eventually, Price is forced to work at the strip club. She narrates the story from behind jail cell bars. Also look for Luke Perry of 90210 fame as Godbey's best friend, and a gay male hooker.

This is a real stinker start to finish. Price eventually warms to the role, but Godbey won't ever let her close to him, and is a sleaze, such that you can identify with and root for him. Jade shows breasts and buns as a hooker in the strip club. The 4/3 transfer is nothing special, and I found the ending especially irritating. D.

  • Thumbnails

  • Jade (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10)

  • Johnny Web (Uncle Scoopy)

    Great uncensored stuff!:

    One of our contributors, Tomscaps, came up with some astounding stuff - X-rated uncensored versions of music videos

    • Here's Trailer Ras, Long Beach Dub All-Stars (rated x to xxx) (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10)
    • Here's Molotov, Rastaman-Dita (rated r) (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6)

     

    29 Palms (2002):

    Not a good movie, but a fascinating DVD.

    This film has some problems, but you might like 29 Palms if you're really into the whole Tarantino thing. It's basically a Tarantino clone set out in the middle of nowhere - the desert between Los Angeles and Las Vegas. There is the germ of a good movie here - some capable performers, some bizarre humor and characters, and some really imaginative uses of desert locales - run-down motels with lawn chairs in the swimming pool, breathtaking views, rinky-dink jails, shabby casinos, and a remote bus station which has neither passengers nor buses.

    A law clerk finds out that his judge is about to alter his position on an important ruling. Instead of ruling in favor of some Indian casino rights, the judge will rule against them, despite the fact that the Indians have paid the judge handsomely for his co-operation. Obviously, the Vegas gambling interests paid him more to change his mind. The judge can't afford to have the clerk tell the Indians what he's discovered, so he takes pre-emptive action. He goes to the tribal chieftain with a ludicrous story that his clerk is an undercover FBI agent about to spill the beans on their racketeering. The Indians then try to kill the alleged agent, but end up killing his girlfriend instead, so they decide it is time to call in a professional hit man to finish the job. The Indians give the hitman an athletic bag filled with money, and the REAL film begins - following what happens to the bag.

    The rest of the plot seems to come straight out of Tarantino or a Guy Ritchie movie like "Snatch" or "Lock, Stock ... "

    The hit man is robbed by a security guard. The security guard is robbed by a crooked cop, who sends the money to a backwater bus station in the town of 29 Palms. The judge's clerk, running away to 29 Palms after having narrowly avoided the attempted hit by the Indians, ended up with the bag by accident, not knowing what it was. Yeah, I know, that coincidence was a bit too much to believe, but the film is basically a black comedy. Flush with his new-found cash, the clerk then buys a car, and two more bags which look exactly the same as the original and fills them with books, so that he can use them as decoys. He picks up a hitchhiker.

    From that point on, the film is a violent and often incoherent chess game between the security guard, the crooked cop, the Indian gangsters, the clerk, the hitchhiker, and the hit man, with the three bags changing hands several times and all of the characters coming together, separating, then coming together again.

    The reason I found this DVD interesting is not because of the movie itself, which has some good elements and demonstrates a lot of talent, but is just too confusing. The best part of the DVD package is the story behind the filmmaking. There is a full-length commentary by four of the producers, which is surprising for a movie that (to my knowledge) never played any commercial theaters. There are also two very long summaries, obviously written by somebody intimately involved with the film, which explain the complicated plot and the equally complicated dream scenes. By reading these two synopses, it is possible to get a better understanding of the plot, and to distinguish between the film's reality segments and its flights of imagination.

    But there's a problem - and a lesson. The plot summary in the "bonus features" is not the same as in the actual movie. The written synopsis includes many additional elements which were obviously trimmed to make the film's running time more economical, to make the plot more coherent, to eliminate some unnecessary additional confusion, to get rid of a political agenda which ran through the sub-text, and to remove some elements which just plain didn't work.

    The cuts provided some benefits for the film. For example, the film lost a completely silly plot twist in which the hit man turned out to be the real FBI agent. That didn't work. Even in a comedy, it wasn't plausible to claim he was a good Fed after some of the things he did earlier.

    The cuts also created some continuity problems, as cuts often do. For example, there is a lame sub-plot about the security guard having become impotent from an incident portrayed in the movie. In the DVD version of the film, the dirty cop calls the security guard "limp dick over there" when they first meet. Huh? We get the joke, but how could the cop know about that so that he could make the joke in the first place? Obviously, a transitional scene was cut.

    Compared to what I saw on the DVD, I have read some grossly inaccurate plot summaries written by authors on the internet, and I have to believe that's because different versions of the film were seen by those authors between the Spring of 2001, when the film was first made, until now, some two and a half years later, when the film is finally seen by the general public on DVD.

    So there you have it. Tarantino gone wrong. An excessively complicated plot and a bunch of trims. A crazy conflict between producers and their director that resulted in a $1.5 million dollar film costing $4 million and never getting a theatrical release.

    The result: a film that looks like it might have had some real potential, but got lost along the way.

    The cool thing: the complete DVD package allows you to study how it all unraveled.

    It is really interesting to see all the different options that the filmmakers had in front of them, and to second-guess them on the final cut, especially on the last five minutes of the film, which confused and disappointed me. Could they have done better? Maybe. I don't know. But it is fascinating to watch the movie, then to read the summary (thus realizing which decisions they made), then to hear how the decisions got made, and to think about the result. Whether or not they could have done better with the footage they had, I'll bet you the writer and the director have had a lot of time to think about it, and wish they could do it all over again. What they ended up with is not  a very good movie, but I'll bet they could make one if they had another chance.

    No major reviews on line. There is an interesting review at filmcritic.com that degenerated between some ugly words between the reviewer and the film's producer. It's clear to me that they must have seen two different versions of the film, because their conflicting versions could both have been correct at one time, depending on which cut was screened.

    C- for the movie, but a hearty C+ for the total DVD package.

    I wish there had been some real nudity instead of this tease crap. Sorry.

    • Rachel Leigh Cook (1, 2, 3)

    • Gail Monians (1, 2)

    • some stripper (Maybe a nipple. Maybe not.)

     

     

    Chicago (2002):

    I've done this movie before. It was nominated for millions of  Oscars, winning about a hundred. (The real numbers are 13 and 6, respectively. ) You know I'm gonna hate it, because it is practically a love-poem Bob Fosse. I fell asleep more than once.

    I just wanted to get a couple of frames I missed the first time around. No nudity.

     

     

    OTHER CRAP:

     

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

     

    PIRATE COUNTDOWN:

    days left until International Talk Like a Pirate Day (Sept 19)

     

    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.

  • Jr.
    "Final Destination 2" (2003)
    Scoop summed it up best in his review when he said the first was a good, guilty pleasure movie, but this one really isn't worth watching.

    The one good thing about this movie...completely gratuitous nudity from a blonde with big robo-hooters.

    • Odessa Munroe (1, 2, 3, 4)

    Dann
    'Caps and comments by Dann:

    "Summer Lovers"

    It's Girls Gone Wild Greek style, circa 1982.

    A very young and beautiful Daryl Hannah and her boyfriend go to the Greek islands for a summer vacation and find uninhibited people and breathless beauty. They wind up in a menage with a French archaeologist also there for the summer.

    It's lightweight fun with some decent 80's music. Daryl's nudity was brief and limited, but Valerie Quennessen was much less modest. In addition, there were plenty of nude beach babes which so I made a "Various" collage.

    Variety
    Josie Davis The former "Charles in Charge" star all grown up and nude in scenes from Nicolas Cage's directorial debut, "Sonny". Check out yesterday's update for Tuna's review and more great 'caps of Josie.

    Renée Zellweger
    (1, 2, 3, 4)

    No nudity, but she sure did look pretty good for her Oscar nominated performance in "Chicago" (2002). 'Caps by Twitchy.

    Katya Santos
    (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7)

    Maui Taylor
    (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16)

    A cool find by Señor Skin...two young, beautiful and busty babes topless and in love scenes from the Filipino movie "Sex Drive" (2003).

    Pat Reeder www.comedy-wire.com
    Pat's comments in yellow...

    ASHTON AND DEMI POSING NUDE?
    Dude, Where's My Pants?! - Britain's Daily Star tabloid reports that Demi Moore is planning to pose for another nude photo shoot, and this time, she's talked her boytoy Ashton Kutcher into posing with her. They quote an anonymous "pal" as saying that Ashton isn't inhibited about showing his body, and he doesn't mind his girlfriend doing it as long as he's with her. However, the tab also claims that Demi's ex, Bruce Willis, is furious about it, and thinks Demi should concentrate on being a mom and reestablishing herself as an actress and keep her clothes on for a change.

  • But that would be a waste of a lot of really great plastic surgery!
  • Demi doesn't like being photographed nude, but she just can't keep her clothes on for more than 1/500th of a second.
  • Let's hope this doesn't inspire fellow cradle robber Woody Allen to pose nude with Soon-Yi.
  • She'll be in a sexy pose, and he'll be lying face-down on a bearskin rug.


    "GIGLI" MAKES HISTORY
    J-Lo KNEW It Would Set A Box Office Record! - "Gigli" disappeared from theaters last Thursday, but not before making bad movie history. From its first weekend to its second (and last), its box office take dropped 81.9 percent, the biggest second-weekend drop in history. By its last day in theaters, "Gigli" was averaging $38, or about five viewers, per theater per day.

  • And they all demanded a refund.
  • The theaters could've sold tofu at the concession stand and made more money than that.


    BATHROOM SCALES MAKERS RAISE THEIR LIMITS
    "Health?" - With over two-thirds of Americans and more than half of Canadians overweight, makers of bathroom scales are having to ratchet up the high end of their scales' capacity. The industry standard limit was 270 to 300 pounds, but Health-O-Meter is now introducing scales with a top limit of 330 to 400 pounds. A spokesman said, "400 seemed a reasonable number," but if consumers need a higher capacity, "we have the technology to do it."

  • Why? If you weigh over 400 pounds, you won't be able to see the scale anyway.
  • Over 400, it should just read, "Aw, screw it."
  • They've even got a talking scale that says, "Dear God! Get OFFA me!!"
  • Available now at Wal-Mart!


    MEN BEING PRESSURED TOO MUCH FOR SEX
    I'm Goin' To Germany! - A Potsdam University survey of 400 German men aged 15 to 25 found that one in four complained of feeling uncomfortable pressure from women to have sex. A Norwegian professor who analyzed the study said that changing social norms are causing men to experience sexual harassment, and the increased demand by females for satisfaction is making men in their 20s suffer problems such as impotence or loss of sex drive. He said men wanted women to be more aggressive like men, but now it's "too much of a good thing."

  • Women have got to learn that "no" means NO!
  • Freud always wondered, "What do women want?" I think we've got our answer!
  • I'm betting the 15-year-old weren't complaining that much.
  • I suddenly understand how American soldiers whipped the German Army twice.