The List must be a direct to video, as it is still shown in IMDB as in production. It was released today on DVD. A high class call girl (Madchen Amick) is arrested with her client, a judge. In court, she reveals that she has a client list and videos of her other clients. The presiding judge, Ryan O'Neal, has just been nominated to the supreme court. We soon find that the arrest was part of an elaborate blackmail scheme by Amick. Her client list includes many prominent judges, powerful attorneys and even the governor. This is a good enough set-up to make a decent film out of, but they didn't. Ryan O'Neal gives an incredibly bad performance, and the plot meanders through intrigue and murder without arousing any real interest.

Madchen appears in her black lace unmentionables, and Catherine N. Blythe gets naked as O'Neals wife. I give this one a thumbs down.

This is an odd movie. It's basically a dark comedy that postulates this theory:

The normal behavior of men in the pursuit of wealth and women is only a hair's-breadth away from total bestiality, exemplified by the violent metaphors used to describe sexual, sports, and business dealings. The Braves slaughtered the Yankees, I cut off his balls on that deal, I fucked her brains out.

The step across the final frontier, to a point where the metaphorical expressions become reality, is not as large a step as we may think. The behavior may be residing within each of us, capable of emerging, but strongly forbidden by the rules of civilized behavior.

Patrick Bateman crosses that line. He is willing to kill a man who has a more elegant business card than he. He is willing not just to ruin lives, but to end them as well. He is a new kind of totally amoral sociopath, the ultimate extension of the "me decade". Some guys surf the internet for a hobby, some guys collect coins, he murders people. And he works long and hard to be good at it. The first overachieving, workaholic yuppie mass murderer.

Oh, well, it's all in the tone. Christian Bale plays the entire role as a young good looking version of Bill Murray, all mock sincerity, all of his lines dripping with irony, either in the character's attitude toward other characters, or in the attitude of the author toward the character.

To clarify, he waxes ecstatic over Huey Lewis and the News. The character may or may not be sincere in his love for the world's worst-ever rock group, but the author of the lines surely is not. By the way, Huey withdrew "Hip to be Square" from the sound track album, but his reasoning - "movie too violent" -didn't seem to present any awareness that they might have been making fun of him, since he's now been declared the favorite rock artist of mass murderers as well as aged Republicans.

Anyway, I cancelled my sound track order. Without "Hip to be Square", gosh darn it, it just isn't the same. I did run a link to the sound track info below, but this movie has to have the worst musical selection since "Priscilla, Queen of the Desert".

I laughed a few times, but the target is an easy target, and the satire is therefore obvious. How hard is it to satirize an era filled with amoral coke-blowing self-absorbed Huey Lewis fans. It's about as difficult as making fun of Stalin, or making Alzheimer's jokes about Reagan. I didn't find that the humor "got" to me in any visceral way. It's just kind of vicious smirking, the same kind of attitude Patrick Bateman would have had for the filmmaker if their roles were reversed.

Although the film is awash in violent and sexual themes, there is virtually no explicit nudity, and virtually no explicit gore. I didn't even do any captures, since Akira did the unrated version yesterday, and I only have the R-rated version. If I get the other version, I'll work on the captures.

Anyway, don't see the movie if you're expecting great music, nudity and violence. Do see it if you always thought those yuppies were all really psychos, and you really enjoy black comedy. I didn't really "get it", but you younger guys will probably be able to relate better.

Box Office: released in selected theaters (1236 screens) in April. Total box office: $15 million, respectable on a total budget of $8 million.

IMDB summary: 7.2 out of 10.

Rotten Tomatoes summary: 60%. 42 positive, 28 negative.

DVD info from Amazon

Sound Track info from Amazon

Book info from Amazon

This is a movie about a basically good guy who gets "caught up" in the seedy side of life. His first mistake, drug dealing, was his own fault, and he paid for it.

The second mistake was sheer craziness. A demented friend offered to invest in a new business, and they go to the bank to get ten grand. The only problem is that the friend plans to make the withdrawal with a handgun, and our hero gets "caught up" driving the getaway car.

The third time, he gets "caught up" with a beautiful woman who looks exactly like the wife he left behind when he went to prison. And I mean exactly. Sound like a silly enough plot twist? Well, the dead ringer is into all kinds of ugliness, and our hero finds himself being shot at by crooked cops, real cops, rasta diamond thieves, crazed security guards, small-time hoods, and everybody else in L.A. except Charlton Heston. And that's only because Heston couldn't find him.

It's a film which relies on scores of "left field" plot twists to keep driving it forward. Nothing is as it seems, and each revelation seems even more forced than the previous one.

Luckily, the film has some positives:

1. The narrative is very straightforward and traditional, which helps us follow the convoluted plot and keep up with the twists. Any narrative experimentation could have been fatal to comprehension.

2. The exotic beauty Cynda Williams looks good with her top off, and takes out her mammoth chest in a fairly lengthy sex scene with the lead.

3. There is some humor which fits into the context of the plot. This redeems the film significantly.

Some of the characterizations are sub-par, and the various twists are too cliched to really startle us as the filmmaker hoped they would. To my way of thinking, the film lacks the energy, drive, enthusiasm, and musical savvy that mark the work of the best African-American filmmakers. Instead, it moves with a dreamy, slow, poetic force punctuated by barely enough irony to keep the audience aware that the filmmaker doesn't take this all that seriously.

I don't think it's a very good film, or very memorable. But it's one of those that make an OK watch when you need to kick back and turn off your brain for a while. Maybe first-time director Darin Scott will be able to channel his raw talent more effectively as he matures in the craft.

Catherine Zeta-Jones

Helen Hunt

Michelle Angelo
(1, 2, 3, 4)

Okay, that's done, but for the same low price I added a few extras:
1) Helen Hunt as seen in Esquire. Haven't a clue what the photographer was thinking. This woman has skin so pure it makes porcelain jealous but the man with the camera shoots her with high-speed 35mm film and then blows it up so every grain on the film surface can be seen. There oughta be a law, but rather than prosecute I cleaned up the scan and left it looking like... Helen Hunt;
2) Michelle Angelo. She appeared in a couple of movies with names such as Street of a Thousand Pleasures and Nymphs Anonymous (most nymphs I know have used pseudonyms); she also posed for what has to be 300 magazine shoots during the late 60's, so that every damn men's magazine that comes into the shop from 1967 and 68 has a couple of pages of her in it. I picked out a couple of representative scans.

That's right! For all of us who grew up 80's, in a nut shell, this movie single handedly sums up everything we thought was cool and popular as well as nerdy and stupid!

Of the 4 great John Hughes films that defined my teenage years ("Sixteen Candles", "Breakfast Club", "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" and "Weird Science") "Science" was the best. "Ferris" is a regarded by most as the best of the bunch, but I disagree. For as cool as "Ferris" was as a character, he was also a manipulative little prick that anyone with half a brain would have told to fuck off. "Club" was a bit too preachy, and "Candles" starred Molly Ringworm. So that leaves "Science" as the clear winner by default.

Besides...the heroes were geeks. They were kids with acne from the suburbs. Not really complete losers, just unsure of themselves. Exactly like we all were at age 15.

The basic plot...2 nerds make a girl on their computer that comes to life. She has some magic powers, and uses them to teach Gary and Wyatt how to be confident about themselves. In addition, along the way she shows them that popularity and being cool come from within, and are not really measured by the things we have or the company we keep. Considering that this was the the peak of the me decade, that was actually a pretty strong statement, especially for teens.

Ok, so the basic story is complete Hughes...suburbs, mild dysfunction, moral, happy ending, credits. But where this movie really shines is in 4 places...

Muff (Northern Ireland)
Bastard (Norway)
Twatt (Shetland, UK)
Dildo (Newfoundland, Canada)
Wankie (Zimbabwe)
Climax (Colorado, USA) Also North Carolina
Lickey End (West Midlands,UK)
Shafter (California, USA)
Dongo (Congo - Democratic Republic)
Dong Rack (Thailand-Cambodia border)
Donk (Belgium)
Intercourse (Pennsylvania, USA)
Brown Willy (every schoolboy's favourite, Cornwall,UK)
Lord Berkeley's Knob (Sutherland, Scotland)
Stains (Near Paris,France)
Turdo (Romania)
Fukum (Yemen)
Fuku (Shensi, China)
Wanks River (Nicaragua)
Wankendorf (Schleswig-Holstein, Germany)
Shag Island (Indian Ocean)
Sexmoan (Luzon, Philippines)
Hold With Hope (Greenland)
Beaver (Oklahoma, USA)
Beaver Head (Idaho, USA)
Wet Beaver Creek (Australia)
Pis Pis River (Nicaragua)
Tittybong (Australia)
Dikshit (India)
Middle Intercourse Island (Australia)
Chinaman's Knob (Australia)
Gobbler's Knob (Kentucky, USA)
Beaverlick (Kentucky, USA)
Morehead (Kentucky, USA)

Honorable Mention (not a town):
Big Bone Lick State Park (Kentucky, USA)

Non-Sexual, but still pretty F'd up town name:
Monkeys Eyebrow (Kentucky, USA)

COMPUTER HAIKU Imagine if, instead of incomprehensible geeky text strings, your computer produced error messages in haiku. (As if there were a difference? Actually some of these are quite funny.)

First snow, then silence.
This thousand-dollar screen dies
so beautifully.
* * * * *
With searching comes loss
and the presence of absence
"My Novel" not found.
* * * * *
A file that big?
It might be very useful.
But now it is gone.
* * * * *
The Web site you seek
just cannot be located.
But endless others exist.
* * * * *
Chaos reigns within.
Reflect, repent, and reboot.
Order shall return.
* * * * *
Aborted effort.
Close all that you have.
You ask far too much.
* * * * * The Tao that is seen Is not the true Tao, until You bring fresh toner. * * * * *
Windows NT crashed.
I am the Blue Screen of Death.
No one hears your screams.
* * * * *
Stay the patient course.
Of little worth is your ire
The network is down.
* * * * *
A crash reduces
your expensive computer
to a simple stone.
* * * * *
Yesterday it worked
Today it is not working.
Windows is like that.
* * * * *
Three things are certain
Death, taxes, and lost data.
Guess which has occurred.
* * * * * *
You step in the stream,
but the water has moved on.
This page is not here.
* * * * *
Out of memory.
We wish to hold the whole sky,
But we never will.
* * * * *
Having been erased,
The document you're seeking
Must now be retyped.
* * * * *
Rather than a beep
Or a rude error message,
These words "File not found."
* * * * *
Serious error.
All shortcuts have disappeared.
Screen. Mind. Both are blank.

Another rimshot special
Mary Poppins couldn't have said it better... Ghandi, a spiritual man walked everywhere on bare feet, so he had tremendous caluses. He also ate very little, so he was frail, and his strange diet gave him bad breath. So what did that make him? A super calused fragile mystic plagued with halitosis.