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Update:
Charlie's French Cinema Nudity site has been updated
Nicole Kidman career review, Part 6 of 6
The last straggler has arrived. Bangkok Hilton.
This is a six-part mini series (45 minute episodes, so it runs
four and a half hours altogether). Kidman plays a young woman in
search of her father, whom she has never seen or met. During the
course of her search, an unscrupulous drug dealer sets her up to
be an unwitting drug mule by hiding some heroin in her luggage in
Thailand. She gets caught red-handed at the Bangkok airport, and
is quickly arrested and imprisoned. The penalty could well be
death, and Thailand is not known for its scrupulous attention to
petty little legal niceties like "guilt" and "innocence." Her
experience is harrowing, ala Midnight Express, and she even gets
to watch some others sent to the firing squad, although they seem
to be no more guilty that she, thus making their executions seem
all too close to her own situation.
I suppose if this were striving to be a great movie she would
have been found guilty and shot at sunrise. This is a soap opera
mini-series, however, so her long-lost father comes out of hiding
and helps her to escape from the prison called the Bangkok Hilton,
and in so doing he exorcises some demons from his own past! To
make the viewing catharsis complete, Kidman and her dad then
concoct a scheme to trap the drug dealer who got her into all the
trouble in the first place.
That seems a bit contrived and melodramatic, doesn't it? If
only life really worked like that. I was expecting them to conquer
world hunger and bring lasting peace to the Middle East as well.
Oh well, it's just supposed to be a story, not a cautionary tale,
and the series is actually fairly entertaining. Some good points:
- Several young Australian actors appeared in this before they
became famous. In addition to Kidman, there was Noah Taylor and
Agent Smith.
- The ever-dependable Denholm Elliott assays the role of
Kidman's father.
- There are some impressive location shoots.
- There's a ripe young Kidman, age 21 or 22, flashing a little
flesh.
Overall. Not so bad at all.
Here's the zipped .wmv.
Here are the collages:
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Nicole Kidman |
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Vanessa Walton |
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Assorted Video Clips:
Rachel Blakely in Love Until.
(Zipped .wmv) The captures from this film, as well as the others
below, represent material which had not yet been in the Encyclopedia.
Emily Mortimer in Young Adam. (Movie
House Review - It's an arthouse movie. I was impressed by it,
but didn't find it pleasant to watch. Tuna didn't like it at
all, but conceded that it was made with style. In other words, we
just had different degrees of the same opinion, except I thought
the positives outweighed the negatives. ) This may be the
craziest sex scene ever performed by mainstream stars. Obi-Wan
canes the living daylights out of Mortimer, then covers her with
condiments, then takes her from behind. (Leaving her panties on -
that part I don't get.) More from this film tomorrow. (Zipped
.avi)
OTHER CRAP:
Movie Reviews:
Yellow asterisk: funny (maybe). White asterisk: expanded format.
Blue asterisk: not mine. No asterisk: it probably sucks.
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Deadwood (Pilot ... 2004)
The box set of Rome included an HBO sampler of the pilot episodes of
Deadwood, Big Love, Entourage, and Deadwood. I saw nothing of merit in either
Big Love or Entourage. Deadwood, however, was marginally more interesting. It
sets a record for profanity, including Calamity Jane with her favorite word,
cunt, and has the gritty look and feel of the real West. It takes place in
Deadwood, an illegal mining town on Indian Land in South Dakota. The era is
just after Custer's strategic misstep at Little Bighorn. Timothy Olyphant's
character gives up marshalling, and, with a partner, heads for Deadwood to
make it rich with a hardware store. Wild Bill Hickok arrives at about the same
time. Saloon owner Ian McShane controls all of the corruption and sin in what
is a completely corrupt and sinful town.
I have to admire HBO for giving the Western another chance, and it seems
they have a hit on their hands. The San Francisco Chronicle felt that it took
four episodes for the series to get started, which could be why I was less
than thrilled with it. The good news in the pilot episode was full frontal
nudity from Paula Malcomson as a hooker who ventilated the head of a John who
hit her.
IMDb has this at 9.6. It is now in its third season, and has won numerous
awards.
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When Closer came out in 2004, Mrs Brainscan tricked me into seeing it. She
mispronounced the title, knowing that with images of Rollie Fingers and Goose
Cossage and the incomparable Bruce Sutter in my mind I could be led to this
particular pool of water without further threat or bribery. A cesspool as it
turned out. Closer is tedious. It is the very definition of tedious. In God's
dictionary, right next to tedious, is a scan of the DVD cover to Closer. And
think what that took. Clive Owen is God. The rest of Sin City is bang-up good
stuff, but the long sequence with Clive Owen is just flat-out brilliant. He is
amazing. I wish I was Clive Owen. And in Closer he is tedious...what he says
is tedious, what he does is
tedious. Maybe the sight of Natalie Portman's private parts stunned him...it
would have stunned me, I am
sure...and so we can blame her for it all. Seems only fair since she gave up
the goods but convinced the
powers that be to cut or cover those goods right up. It's all her fault.
People talk in this movie...all the time for minutes on end. This is a movie
about the chattering class, but the class is held in high esteem rather than the
contempt it deserves. One spends about twenty minutes
in this movie, listening to people to chatter and wondering WTF is going on.
But one gets over that and
spends the rest of it wondering if it is ever going to end. You saw other
people leaving the theater as you
came in so you suspect it will end someday, but you begin to have your doubts.
Just as you think, Mission
Accomplished..with the mission being to survive...another insurgent conversation
pops up, filled with anger and betrayal and angst so thick you can scribble on
its surface with a big ol crayon. Yes you can.
Only two scenes save it from being entirely unwatchable. In both, Ms Portman
plays a stripper.
A noble profession, cinema stripper. Usually very interesting people with
hearts of gold and bodies to match, and the willingness to let us see both. Not
Nat's character. Shallow and stupid and ready to pull aside bra or panties only
when the camera is pointed at Mr Owen's head. What could have saved the first
scene is a different camera technique. I am thinking, perhaps, it might be
re-shot entirely from Mr. Owen's
point of view. Just a suggestion, mind you. And the second scene, when her
erstwhile boyfriend finds her
dancing at the strip club? Shoot, just make that puppy go on for another couple
of minutes, with Nat parading around in a thong, showing off the greatest
looking bum that is not otherwise attached to Jessica Alba...I would have paid
to watch that movie again and again and again.
But no. The director and Nat had other ideas. I do hold to the theory that no
movie is so beyond salvation that a nekkid Natalie Portman couldn't save it.
But Closer challenges this conclusion. An almost
nekkid Nat comes nowhere close to saving this film. I would trade it, Nat's
rumpus included for a movie
about a closer like Fingers or Gossage or the incomparable Bruce Sutter. There
were two other films entitled Closer made in 2004...maybe one of them is what I
am looking for.
'Course, none of this pissing and moaning kept me from capping the living
bejeebers out of Nat's bare rumpus scenes. Why? For obvious reasons, dude.
Collage 6 comes as close to showing an unemcumbered breast....two frames in the
whole dang movie.
I am also sending along a whole bunch of paparazzi edits. There is Ms Portman
again in her buzz-cut days, the divine Jessica (Alba), the equally divine Josie
Maran, the simply mortal Christina Ricci...and say what you want about her... a
goddess in her own right, Paris Hilton.
| Christina Ricci |
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| Paris Hilton |
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| La Alba |
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| Josie Maran |
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| Natalie Portman |
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| Eva Herzigova |
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Dorm Daze 2 Once again LC leads
the pack with the first caps from this cinema classic.
| Jasmin St Claire |
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| Julia Beatty |
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| Lola Davidson,
Suzy McCoppin, and
Heather Storm |
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| shower chicks |
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Deadwood
Here's Sarah Pachelli in the episode which aired
Sunday
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Two great things about Carol Bagdasarian.
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Her siblings were three chipmunks named Alvin, Theodore, and Simon, which is
to say that her dad is Ross Bagdasarian, aka Dave Seville, aka the "dad" to
the chipmunks.
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She's showing her great chest to Chuck Norris. Come to think of it, Chuck
Norris probably has to tell woman NOT to show him their breasts.
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As she is today, Marcia Gay Harden always gets
to play a certain type. You know her. She's the irritating sincere chick who
corners you at a party and wants to talk to you about world peace, religion,
and the GATT negotiations while you want to break free and hit on the chick
with an IQ of 27 who looks like Anna Kournikova. But there was a time,
believe it or not, when Marcia could play the chick you'd want to hit on.
Here are two examples:
Marcia Gay Harden in 1991's Fever. I think the
one of her in the lingerie (r) is really sexy. |
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Marcia Gay Harden in 1992's Crush. |
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