The Boost (1988) begins as James Woods and Sean Young are living in New York in near poverty. She supports him, while he tries to make a good score selling tax dodges. Everything changes when he applies for a director of marketing job for a new shopping center. The committee hates him, but one of the members, a huge investor, likes his style, and invites him to move to LA and work for him selling real estate tax dodges. They arrive to be greeted by a limo at the airport, driven to their Beverly Hills house complete with pool, and it turns out that Woods is a great salesman, and it is a sellers market.

Success goes to his head, and when the IRS threatens to kill tax loopholes, he is left several hundred thousand in debts, and no earning power. It is at this time that he tries his first hit of coke. The rest of the film traces their decent into the world of drugs, leading to a unique and startling conclusion, that drugs suck. I have no idea why so many film makers think "drugs suck" is a good enough premise for a film. While I have liked a few of them very much, such as Clean and Sober, which had a lot of facts right, but managed some believable redemption at the end, and supplied enough humor along the way to keep the viewers from suicidal despair, and Days of Wine and Roses, which was an early and accurate look at alcohol addiction, it is one of my least favorite movie themes. There was nothing wrong with the way the film was made, and the acting was just fine. It is just not a story I needed to see, and taught me nothing about drug addiction.

Sean Young shows breasts, and a distorted bush shot swimming nude in their pool. IMDB readers have this at 5.5 of 10. Ebert gushed over it, calling it a modern day Death of a Salesman, and awarded 3 1/2 stars. Total US gross was $750K, which had to be a small percentage of the budget with filming on both coasts, lots of locations, and a large cast. If you like the drugs suck genre, this is a good one, I suppose, based on the novel Ludes: A Ballad of the Drug and the Dream. Other than a fairly young Sean Young showing her body, there was nothing for me in it. C.

Diana Ross

The new issue (#28) of Celebrity Sleuth is out, and he has the all-time supreme layout on Diana Ross. (1, 2, 3, 4)

OTHER CRAP:

• J-Lo and B-Af shocked celebrity-watchers by announcing they were putting their wedding on hold because it had become a media circus. Instead, they plan to get married in a simple ceremony with a judge. Of course, it will be while that same judge is presiding over the Kobe trial.

• Yoko to get naked for peace again. Maybe it's time to give war a chance.

• People ask me which game should be the next one added to the Olympics, and my answer is always consistent. Nude twister. In fact, it could (and should) be played in both the Summer and Winter Olympics.

• DAVID BOWIE says he refuses to accept a knighthood from the Queen. Wait a minute, I thought he WAS the queen.

• After debuting at the top of the box office last weekend, Paramount's Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star, starring David Spade, has been plunging rapidly during the week. In fact, the film had already fallen to second place on Sunday, behind MGM's Jeepers Creepers 2. By Monday, it had fallen to sixth place. On Tuesday it was down to seventh place.

• Anka Romensky, Playmate for February 2002, Free Nude Gallery Courtesy of PlayboyPlus.com!

• Yahoo! Movies Exclusive: Kill Bill Trailers, Slideshow, and Interviews

• 1939 chosen as top year for films. "Gone With the Wind", "Wuthering Heights'', and "The Wizard of Oz''

• POLICE ACADEMY 8 is in the works.

• Dennis Miller jabs Democrat all-stars

• When District Attorney Robert M. Carney cleaned out an evidence locker in the county courthouse, he found the expected flotsam and jetsam of prosecutions: old legal files, murder weapons, blood samples and confiscated drugs. He also unearthed an old controversy: a copy of 'Deep Throat,' a groundbreaking adult movie seized from a State Street theater 30 years ago in an anti-obscenity crusade."

• I guess the Cheech and Chong reunion will have to wait - "Comedian Tommy Chong has been sentenced to nine months in federal prison" Oh, sure he's been convicted but I won't truly feel safe until those big steel doors close behind him. Can you believe the U.S. government has nothing better to do with our tax dollars?

• CHRISTIAN BALE IS THE NEXT BATMAN Jeez, they actually made a great choice! Bale is perfect for the role, although I was hoping Tom Green would edge him out.

• The Toronto International Film Festival reviews of Wonderland (2003), the story of porn star John Holmes and the Wonderland murders (for which he was tried and acquitted).: "The question that the film festival response may begin to answer in Toronto is whether an audience will want to spend nearly two hours living those doomed, vacant lives vicariously. "

• The trailer for Wonderland (2003): Val Kilmer, Kate Bosworth, Lisa Kudrow, James Cox

• Miami Dolphins Cheerleaders

• How to stay out of the way of the RIAA

• Golf cart driver faces DWI charge

• Sports the way you like it - completely made up

• Philadelphia Eagles Cheerleaders

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 inclusion in Other Crap

PIRATE COUNTDOWN:

Link goes to (where else) TalkLikeAPirate.com - now with new English-to-Pirate instant translator

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.

• Here is an important piece of nude cinema history...Hedy Lamarr topless and far off full frontal nudity in scenes from "Extase" (1932) aka "Ecstacy" (1940) (USA).

• Much less historic is Paulina Porizkova topless and giving us a full dorsal view in scenes from the Tarentino-esque movie "Thursday".

Be sure to pay Graphic Response a visit at his website. www.graphic-barry.com.

watchusdie.com (2002) is a straight to video monstrosity. Now, to be sure, someone had a great idea. Make that half a great idea.... no, two halves of two very different great ideas. Yep, that's what someone had.

First half of the first great idea was to take the old murderer-in-a-locked-house concept and update it so that the house is the setting for a dorm-cam website. So now thousands of voyeurs get to see the murders unfold. What you need, then, is a first-rate screenwriter and a director like a young Spielberg to make it all work. That half of the first great idea evaded the producer, however. So what you get is muddled, stupid, banal, boring can of week-old nightcrawlers left out in the sun.

Best advice: throw that mofo away. BTW, if you are a veteran of stripper-murder movies, you will know who done it by the end of the second reel.

First half of the second great idea was inherent in the dorm-cam set-up. Fill the damn house with some fine-lookin' wimmin and get their clothes off.... just like the people in Chicago vote, which is to say early and often. That way the right folk (i.e. fellow Funhouse readers) won't care this isn't a modern Rear Window.

Yet even here the makes of watchusdie.com screwed up at levels seldom seen outside NASA and the Bush administration (sic). Only two of the seven inhabitants give up top-shelf goodies in a couple of shower scenes. Three others show some bum, yet the best looking one of them all gives up nothing, and a former Hefmate-turned-Pet keeps her frigging clothes on. Since that former Heffer is a woman who seems as comfortable with her clothes off as most of us do in a baggy sweater and overalls, the failure to call for some el primo nudity is beyond strange. It's perverse.

The rundown, from most exposed to least, goes like this:

Amy Miller, who appears often in the Hefmag and is credited in the bios as being a former Hefmate...Wrong!... does a looooong shower scene . Amy looks like a young Anna Nicole Smith, up to and including her mega-monster-robo-hooters. If you likes em large and you doesn't care about the elemental content of them hooters, you will like these. First four collages are hooters only, the fifth is hooters and bum (you will notice there is no bush. That's right: direct to video, no reason for the MPAA to rate the thing, and there just ain't no bush). Sixth collage is from the DVD extras, a behind-the-scenes look at a poorly-edited part of the movie, in which Amy shows off bum in a bikini.

• Amy Miller (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6)

The second woman to do the shower scene thing is Mariangela Spiezia. Far be it for me to complain when a decent-looking woman with a small, attractive bod shows it off in a movie. But if I'm making this puppy and I'm planning on two of the gals getting nekkid, Mariangela is not at the top of my list. In fact, not to put too fine a point on things, she is at the bottom of that list. But here she is, topless in a nice enough shower scene.

• Mariangela Spiezia.

Although she fails to give up top goodies, Tiffany Remley shows off a killer caboose. Tiffany is a real-live fitness model, whose pride and joy is her bum, and so she gives a real nice view of it, first in a french maid's outfit and then in a thong. The thong view was shot by the main camera (collage 2) and by the behind-the-scenes camera (collage 3).

• Tiffany Remley (1, 2, 3)

Jenny James was the first murder victim, done in before she or anyone else gave up any goodies at all. But in the still photo section of the DVD, she poses nicely. You can see Jenny nekkid in the Hefmag, since she was in one of those girls of some NCAA conference.

• Jenny James

Erin Cottrell woulda been my choice for one of the two shower scenes. She's a strawberry blonde with acres of freckles and (apparently) a kick-ass body. But we get to see her in lingerie only. Oh, the humanity!

• Erin Cottrell

That leaves the central character of the movie, a woman with a great smile and a fine-looking frame. Her name is Jennifer Cooper. Collage 1 shows her giving up some cleavage, while collage 2 shows her doing the kiss thing with Amy Miller.

• Jennifer Cooper (1, 2)

What's the bottom line here, you ask? As entertaining drama, this movie isn't one star... it isn't even zero stars. It's somewhere in the negative numbers, perhaps double digits. More important for our purposes is the relatively small amount of exposure and complete lack of heat to this thing. So that even by erotic thriller standards, it's an F- and digging its way passed G and H and landing squarely on I... for idiocy. All you need to know is this: the initials of the movie may be WUD, but that's the last thing you're gonna get by watching it.

"Wolf Girl"(2001) aka Blood Moon

• Victoria Sanchez: nude and almost as hairy as Robin Williams.

"La Fille seule"(1995) aka A Single Girl

• Catherine Guittoneau: one-timer having explicit hot monkey love with Herve Gamelin from several Emmanuelle movies.

MEG RYAN DEFENDS NUDE SEX SCENES
"You've Got T*ts" - At the Toronto International Film Festival, Meg Ryan defended her decision to star in "In The Cut," a violent erotic thriller in which she does steamy nude sex scenes. The 41-year-old queen of romantic comedies scoffed at the suggestion that she was baring her body to revitalize her career or change her goody-goody image. She said that out of 30 movies she's made, only seven are romantic comedies, "so I don't know what the typical Meg Ryan movie is."