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"Braveheart" (1995)
I guess the middle of the last decade was the great era of Scottish epics, with Rob Roy and Braveheart delivering a one-two punch.
Braveheart is the better movie, owing almost exclusively to the energy of its producer/director/ star, Mel Gibson.
Oh, there are better actors and better looking guys. There are more impressive presences, and there are directors who would have done a much better job with the feel of the period.
But you know what? I don't care. Because Mel Gibson has a charm and charisma that sells the whole package, and that matters more than anything else.
George Brett may not have been the greatest hitter of his era, but there wasn't anybody I'd rather watch because he was just a big kid playing and loving the game, with his heart right out there on his sleeve. Mel Gibson is the same kind of guy - just a kid in a toy store - making this movie because he was in love with the sheer romance and idealism of the story.
And it is an epic for the ages. How can one go wrong with the pure hearted legend, William Wallace? As one of the Scottish nobles says to his son, it's easy to admire a man who never compromises, even though the world is really built by more political creatures. Known to us only through epic poetry, Wallace never bent his ideals, never fought for anything except his country and his friends and his heart. He never took any estates or spoils, and he never made any deals. Would that our own age produced such a man. Wallace was Churchill with more than a hint of Patton, a fierce and inventive warrior who outfoxed and outfought the English at every turn, and lost only when betrayed by sycophantic schemers among the Scottish ranks. That makes for a helluva movie.
Sure it's corny, oversimplified, old-fashioned and one-dimensional, and it hooked me in for all three hours.
Does he take the history seriously? Hell, no. Screw the details. We wouldn't know the difference anyway. How many experts are there in the customs and battlefield techniques of 13th century Scotland? Point is that the movie isn't a history lesson, but a pictorialization of an epic poem. Epic poems are almost all feelgood chauvinistic bullshit to begin with. They are meant to fill us with pride and inspiration, and they do so with raw emotions and sweeping entertainment. Gibson tells a great story, and does so with such open faced enthusiasm that he just dares you not to get caught up in it and root for Wallace.
The battle scenes are fantastic, perhaps the best example on film of making combat strategies clear to the audience. Unlike, for example, Luc Besson's Joan of Arc movie, where one couldn't understand the strategies of the battles, and one couldn't even tell which side the combatants were on, Gibson makes the tactics crystal clear, as if you could stand on the hill with the kings, watch the flanks, and make the moves and counter-moves. And the fierce battles only last as long as necessary to portray the essence of the combat.
Simple, economical, effective.
The big weakness of the film is that it writes the Scottish characters beautifully, with all the humor and treachery and nobility and fellowship one would find in a real group of such men, but the script badly underestimates Wallace's opposition. The sheer monstrosity and incompetence of the English gives us a clear emotional choice in the identification of sides, but ignores the complex reality of human nature. It just isn't a black and white world, no matter how much it would improve the story if it were.
Wallace's nemesis, Edward 1 of England, was written as the very antithesis of the honorable Wallace, completely without honor and compassion, constantly scheming, telling any lie or pulling any double-cross necessary to get his way. The part was played with gusto by ol' Number Six himself, Patrick McGoohan, who did his best to bring some complexity to a poorly-written cartoon character.
The king's son, in the usual movie cliche, is pictured as a weak-willed namby-pamby. I did love one scene, though, in which he decides to assert some independence in state discussions by naming his beloved school chum as his senior advisor. His father, upon hearing this news, puts his arm benevolently around the new advisor as if to seek his counsel, and then promptly and casually throws him out of a high castle window to his death. End of discussion.
Sophie Marceau was supposed to be in it as well, as the wife of the sissy Heir Apparent, but I'm pretty sure they just used a stuffed dummy with Sophie's face painted on it, because I never saw her move a facial muscle, and she delivered her lines with the same expressiveness as those Cylons in Battlestar Galactica. I suppose this was her concept of how royalty must have behaved.
My only other complaint is that there wasn't enough of this woman, Catherine McCormack, a terrific actress who brought her own part to vivid reality, but who was bumped off about ten minutes into the flick. Damn, she has a nice figure, but they shot the love scene in such darkness that I had to spend altogether too much time to get a couple images with some color and visibility.
Catherine McCormack
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DVD info from Amazon
"Dark City" (1998)
Rufus Sewell, who appears despite all evidence to the contrary NOT to be Joachim Phoenix, plays the part of a murderer who awakens in his bathtub.
At least he thinks he might be a murderer. Some people think he is, but he doesn't remember anything about anything. In fact, nobody in town seems to really know much about anything. They aren't sure how to find other parts of town, or the towns they grew up in. Oh, yeah, and nobody can remember the last time they saw daylight, but they don't seem to worry about it.
As it turns out, the humans are all subjects in a massive experiment by The Strangers, a group of powerful aliens who re-create the City every night in different ways, and re-engineer the memories of its inhabitants, so that they can study the effects of the changes on the people they alter.
Sewell is the only fly in their ointment. His mind and body have adapted faster than anticipated, and he has developed defenses against The Strangers. He is developing some of their own powers, and with his human nature also intact, is emerging as a being even stronger than they.
How will it get resolved? Well, that's why you watch it. It's a SF epic, ala Blade Runner, mixed with a film noir murder mystery, and all taking place in a world somewhere between Fritz Lang's Metropolis and Tim Burton's Gotham City.
Except it's not about our past or future. It is a truly exceptional work of the imagination, which
refabricates an entire world constantly, none of it really based on real human cities, but on an amalgam of past, present, future, and never-will-be.
Is it good? Yes, exceptionally good. Perhaps a work of towering genius. In style, it is as good as any movie I've ever seen.
And the substance ain't so bad, either. Underlying the SF/horror veneer is the ultimate question of whether, in fact, there is any reality. But that philosophical question is perhaps less interesting that the psychological one - if you erase a mass murderer's consciousness and give him Albert Schweitzer's memories, will he become solely the philanthropist, or will something in his genetic composition steer him back to murder? And what about our surroundings? If you change them, do you change us? Probably, but if so, how much? We really don't know the answer to these questions, and
ultimately that's what The Strangers need to know if they are to understand individualism. (They possess only a collective consciousness.)
Has anybody really noticed this film? Not many.
The film pulled in only $14 million at the box office, on a $27 million budget.
It did get some good reviews. (Ebert, for example, hailed it as a masterpiece.) But it won no significant mainstream awards, and is largely forgotten only two years after its release. Like Blade Runner, it may influence generations of filmmakers yet unborn, but for now it's just a great secret.
DVD info from Amazon
Melissa George. One more thing to like about the film. The nude scene is perhaps the brightest in the film. That may be a first. And this woman looks great naked.
Dark City
Melissa George
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| Stone Cold
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Words and pictures from Stone Cold:
Scoop, I ain't got shit to say except this. I like this book. "Photographs", by Demarchelier, which is the source of a lotta pictures that you crackas have admired over the years, and which has big versions of the pictures. (In fact, too mofo'n big for my dinky-ass scanner), and which is a lot of
supermodels wif no mofo'n clothing to obstruct your line of sight to the essential supermodel good shit.
Nadja Auermann bare-ass nekkid
Naomi Campbell nipple-peek
Helena Christensen starkers
Cindy Crawford one topless and one of her sweet booty
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Alice Dodd near-nekkid
Janet Jackson, famous hand-bra
Elle Macpherson bare-ass nekkid
Kate Moss topless
Tatjana Patitz' nekkid booty
Claudia Schiffer, almost showing the guns
Christy Turlington, showing the guns
(Scoop's note. I'm sure Stoney would recommend that you kick the shit out of your accountant and steal his copy, or throw the book out the library window to an accomplice, but if you get the urge to own a legal copy, here's the book info from Amazon.)
| Graphic Response
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"Sirens" is something of a legend in the Fun House because of Elle's famous extra pounds and all of the other wonderful on screen nudity. However, what is often overlooked is the fact that despite Hugh "The Stutter King" Grant being the star, it's still a well-made, entertaining, and beautifully filmed movie that proved to us all that Elle not only looks great, but she can also act.
Elle Macpherson
Tara Fitzgerald
Portia de Rossi
| Oz
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Abbess
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Josefa
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Lucita
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Sinful Nuns
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Rosario
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Comments by Oz:
"The Sinful Nuns of St Valentine"
The Sinful Nuns of St Valentine or Le Scomunicate de San Valentino is one of those delightful Italian movies from the 1970s. It contains everything you need - nudity, torture, whippings, lesbians, sex, and religion. This is all wrapped up in a convent. Unfortunately, I don't know the names of the actresses - the names were not matched to the characters. This should be outlawed. The IMDb was no use in this case.
The basic story is one of unrequited love. Lucita was sent by her father to the convent to become a nun in order to stop her marrying her boyfriend. He turns up and is hidden by the verger. Josefa is Lucita's room mate and finds out that Lucita is hiding her boyfriend. She blackmails Lucita into a lesbian love scene.
Josefa is killed and, when Lucita is accused, she is brought before the Italian inquisition. This allows there to be a bit of torture. In an unrelated matter, one collage shows Rosario being punished. This allows there to be a whipping scene.
The unknown in this is the Abbess. She turns out to be a modeled after a black widow spider. She makes love to men, including the boyfriend, and then kills them. Naturally, the boyfriend escapes the expected fate. The Italian inquisition finds out about what is happening and seals all the nuns up in their convent as punishment. Their depravity as they gradually die of starvation is shown in the other unidentified collages.
All up, an enjoyable movie.
| | RDO
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"Greed"
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Tanya Pohlkotte
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RDO returns with scenes from two movies... First up, "National Lampoon's Favorite Deadly Sins".
The name National Lampoon used to be synonymous with comedy. Well times have changed. Nowadays, if you can't find anyone to distribute your really bad, straight-to-video movie....simply drop of a nice check at the Lampoon offices. Poof! The next thing you know your Tom Arnold, Corey Feldman, or Andrew Dice Clay masterpiece shares the moniker of some of the funniest movies ever! And that means guaranteed rentals!
Actually, Scoop's review in the IMDb isn't all that negative. "Lampoon's" favorite sins are Lust, Anger and Greed, and according to Scoop, the "Greed" section is funnier than you night expect. Other sources also say that if you're a fan of the Dice-Man, you'll probably enjoy the "Anger" segment too.
| Jean-François Blanchard
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Girlfriend
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Escapee
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Tuna talks about Jean Rollin quite often. Personally the Euro-crap erotic horror genre isn't my bag, so I'll just stick to commenting on the scenes we have for review today. Today's Rollin feature is 1982's "La Morte Vivante".
Here are the basics...girl dies, radioactive leak brings girl back from dead, girl kills everyone in her way as she searches for her lesbian lover.
If these preview 'caps are any indication, looks like you're in for mild blood and gore with lots of full frontal nudity if you rent this puppy.
| | Akira
| | Samantha Mathis |
Scenes from "American Psycho". I missed this one in the theatres but heard several positive reviews. The DVD should be released today, so look for more preview vidcaps and reviews over the next few issues.
| | Chloe Sevingy |
| | Various ladies |
| | Reese Witherspoon |
| | Burkittsville
| Drew Barrymore
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Lucy Liu
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A sneak peek at Lucy and Drew from the upcoming "Charlie's Angels" movie.
| | The Funnies by Number 6
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Holmes and Watson
Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson went on a camping trip. After a good meal and a bottle of wine, they lay down for the night and went to sleep. Some hours later, Holmes awoke and nudged his faithful friend.
"Watson, look up and tell me what you see."
Watson replied, "I see millions and millions of stars."
"What does that tell you?", Holmes asks.
Watson pondered for a minute, and then replied:
"Astronomically, it tells me that there are millions of galaxies and potentially billions of planets..
Astrologically, I observe that Saturn is in Leo..
Horologically, I deduce that the time is approximately a quarter past three..
Theologically, I can see that God is all powerful and that we are small and insignificant..
Meteorologically, I suspect that we will have a beautiful day tomorrow..
Why, what does it tell YOU?"
Holmes was silent for a minute, then spoke. "Watson, you idiot. Some jerk has stolen our tent."
VIRUS ALERT
If you receive an email entitled "Badtimes," delete it immediately!
Do not open it. Apparently this one is pretty nasty. It will not only erase everything on your hard drive, but it will also delete anything on disks within 20 feet of your computer. It demagnetizes the stripes on ALL of your credit cards. It reprograms your ATM access code, screws up the tracking on your VCR and uses subspace field harmonics to scratch any CD's you attempt to play.
It will re-calibrate your refrigerator's coolness settings so all your ice cream melts and your milk curdles. It will program your phone auto dial to call only your mother-in-law's number. This virus will mix antifreeze into your fish tank. It will leave dirty socks on the coffee table when you are expecting company. It will replace your shampoo with Nair and your Nair with Rogaine, It will cause you to run with scissors and throw things in a way that is only fun until someone loses an eye. It will rewrite your backup files, changing all your active verbs to passive tense and incorporating undetectable misspellings which grossly change the interpretations of key sentences.
If the "Badtimes" message is opened in a Windows95/98 environment, it will leave the toilet seat up and leave your hair dryer plugged in dangerously close to a full bathtub. It will not only remove the forbidden tags from your mattresses and pillows, it will also refill your skim milk with whole milk.
**WARN AS MANY PEOPLE AS YOU CAN.**
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