 |
|
 |
|
Skin Deep (1989):
A fortyish man is married to a sensible, attractive,
accomplished mature woman. He's a successful writer, and his
life should be blissful, but he's burdened by two liabilities: he
drinks too much; and he just can't keep his eyes off younger women.
His most trustworthy confidante is a savvy, compassionate
bartender.
Does it sound a lot like 10, the famous Bo Derek movie? That's
because both films were written and directed by the same guy,
Blake Edwards. Skin Deep could easily be a sequel to 10 with only
some minor tinkering. The main character in Skin Deep writes
popular books instead of popular songs, but he spends about twenty
minutes of the film's running time at the piano, tinkling out mellow
songs, and spends no time writing or talking about books, so it
seems that he was intended to be a songwriter in the first place.
Use a few search/replace actions on the screenplay to change the
character's name to George Webber and his profession to
songwriter, and you would never for a moment doubt that the film
was originally written as a 10 sequel.
For the most part, the Skin Deep characters are
indistinguishable from their 10 counterparts, but the cast has
changed. Dudley Moore has gotten much taller, and is now played
with equally rubbery aplomb by John Ritter. The calm Julie Andrews part
is now played by Alyson Reed, and the wise Brian Dennehy bartender is
now played by Vincent Gardenia in his penultimate film role. There are
several young women this time around, but the hardbody Bo Derek
role has been turned over to somebody with a really hard body,
Raye Hollitt, better known as the muscular Zap from "American
Gladiators."
The tone of the two films is similar as well. Although they are
superficially comedies, there is an undercurrent of sadness
running just beneath the laughter. Skin Deep is the sadder of the
two films, which would make sense if it were a sequel to 10, since
the George Webber character is now older and some of his boozy
regrets are starting to deepen into despair. He starts to pay the
piper for his womanizing while the booze takes its toll on his
psyche.
There are a few very funny set pieces. The funniest takes place
entirely in the dark, when our hero gets caught in flagrante
by a cuckolded rock star boyfriend, and both men are wearing the
guitarist's glow-in-the-dark condoms. The only objects we can see
on an otherwise black screen are two glowing penises. (This gag is
brought back for another goofy laugh later in the picture.)
John Ritter fills in nicely for Dudley Moore. Somewhere between
his usual pratfalls and other slapstick moments, Ritter does some
of the most reflective acting of his career. I do wish that the
author had gone all the way with the character's change of
professions, thus keeping Ritter off the piano. I had no objection
to Dudley Moore's singing in 10, which fit perfectly into a
character who was not a singer, but had other musical talents.
Ritter, on the other hand, is utterly tone deaf. If the songs were
really necessary (debatable) the script might have benefited from
having them performed by someone else. For example, the bartender
already worked in a piano bar, and the role could easily have been
reworked to make him the performer. That change would not even
have required recasting because Vincent Gardenia sang well enough
to handle that role.
I don't seem to connect very well to the comedies of Blake
Edwards. I invariably get interested when I read about them, and
just as inevitably get disappointed. Plenty of people disagree
with me, however, and Skin Deep does have those two imaginative
and memorable scenes,
so this must be a C on our scale ... a
typical Blake Edwards comedy, ranked just below average within his
career output.
The rated films in which Edwards receives a writing credit:
- (7.58) - A
Shot in the Dark (1964)
- (7.39) - The
Party (1968)
- (7.19) - The
Pink Panther (1963)
- (7.19) -
Victor/Victoria (1982)
- (6.98) - The
Great Race (1965)
- (6.94) -
Soldier in the Rain (1963)
- (6.89) - The
Pink Panther Strikes Again (1976)
- (6.84) - My
Sister Eileen (1955)
- (6.79) - The
Return of the Pink Panther (1975)
- (6.43) - Wild
Rovers (1971)
- (6.30) -
Revenge of the Pink Panther (1978)
- (6.25) - What
Did You Do in the War, Daddy? (1966)
- (6.24) - The
Notorious Landlady (1962)
- (6.13) -
Operation Mad Ball (1957)
- (6.13) -
Mister Cory (1957)
- (6.08) - The
Tamarind Seed (1974)
- (6.04) -
Drive a Crooked Road (1954)
- (6.00) -
S.O.B. (1981)
- (6.00) -
Darling Lili (1970)
- (5.99) - Gunn
(1967)
- (5.91) -
That's Life! (1986)
- (5.81) - This
Happy Feeling (1958)
- (5.70) - 10
(1979)
- (5.51) - The
Atomic Kid (1954)
- (5.44) -
Sunset (1988)
- (5.43) -
Skin Deep
(1989)
- (5.32) -
Switch (1991)
- (5.05) -
Inspector Clouseau (1968)
- (5.03) - City
Heat (1984)
- (4.91) - The
Pink Panther (2006)
- (4.91) - The
Man Who Loved Women (1983)
- (4.54) -
Trail of the Pink Panther (1982)
- (4.19) -
Curse of the Pink Panther (1983)
- (4.04) - A
Fine Mess (1986)
- (3.53) - Son
of the Pink Panther (1993)
|
Raye Hollitt
(zipped
.wmv) |
    |
|
Chelsea Field (See
a bit more of Chelsea down in the Catch o'the Day) |
 |
|
Brenda Strong (zipped
.wmv) |
 |
|
Heidi Paine
(zipped .wmv).
There's really not much nudity for such a long clip, but
it's a pretty funny scene. |
  |
Third party videos:
Joanna Pacula in her glorious
prime in Not Quite Paradise.
Zipped .avi
here, a Tuna collage follows:
 |
| Joanna Pacula |
Marina Kalinina in Stay
Alive. I'll bet you have already forgotten this movie. I had. It
came out early this year and did fairly well. That had to be a
surprise because it is no better than any straight-to-vid movie.
(I watched it, but felt that neither the nudity or the movie was
worth a mention.) It has the usual plot about gamers who die when
their characters die. (Zipped
.avi) Kalinina plays the legendary Countess Elizabeth Bathory,
she who
bathed in virgin's blood to say young. (The movie takes place
today. Bathory is part of the game. Sort of.)
Mr Skin made a VHS capture of
Kelly Lynch from
Cold Around the Heart. (Movie
House Review) I'll bet you're wondering was that is important,
given that the film is available on DVD, and the answer is that
the widescreen Region 2 DVD lost the very best shots of Kelly's naughty
bits. (Zipped
.avi) I have not seen the new Region 1 DVD yet. I'll look at it
next week to see if it is an improvement over the German one.
OTHER CRAP:
Movie Reviews:
Yellow asterisk: funny (maybe). White asterisk: expanded format.
Blue asterisk: not mine. No asterisk: it probably sucks.
|
|
|
 |
|
|
Loverboy (2005)
Loverboy (2005) is a Kevin Bacon film staring his wife Kyra Sedgwick, and
even includes both his daughter and son. The cast also includes Kevin Bacon,
Marisa Tomei and Sandra Bullock. Although IMDb lists this as a Drama/Romance,
it was one of the more chilling films I have seen. The story is told in a
series of flashbacks, where the present day is in the front seat of a car.
Sedgwick is teaching her six-year-old son to drive. In the series of
flashbacks, we see how she had a troubled upbringing, and decided she had no
interest in men or marriage, but desperately wanted a child. Her first plan
was to screw a succession of men and give birth to a perfect kid. When that
ended in a miscarriage, she was about to give up, when she was seduced by a
conventioneer, and ended up pregnant. She decided that the resulting child was
her own personal property, and would be raised by her to be an exceptional
child.
Since her parents had left her some money, she could afford to do what she
wanted. Rather than enter him in kindergarten, she does her own version of
home schooling, but her son longs for friends his age and wants to start
school. As the film goes on, we see how disturbed she is. I have known
obsessive mothers like this, which is what made the film such a painful
experience.
Kyra Sedgwick shows breasts, buns, and a hint of bush during the early
stages of the film.
IMDb readers say 5.4. Total box office was $29.7K at two festivals and a
very limited release. Dominic Scott Kay as the son did not impress me with his
ability, but Kevin Bacon in the feature length commentary praised him. He had
the precociousness, but I didn't buy all of his line delivery. This was a very
low budget effort, but that did not show. Bacon did a great job of choosing
locations here. The film affected me, which speaks to how well it was made.
However, it was not a pleasant experience. It is far more interesting than the
5.4 score would indicate.
I will call it a C-.
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
Dann reports on The Tooth Fairy: You
probably think of the Tooth Fairy as a cute little Tinker Bell-like nymph
who flits around replacing teeth put under the pillows of sleeping kids
with coins. Well, in the 2006 version written by Stephen J. Cannell,
she isn't cute...she's an ugly old killer.
Twelve-year-old Pamela comes to a remote
bed and breakfast with her mom to visit Mom's boyfriend who recently
bought the place. She runs into a little girl from the farm next door who
warns her of an evil old woman, horribly disfigured by disease, who years
ago killed young children by luring them with a promise of exchanging a
brand new bike for their newly-lost tooth. When the kids brought the
tooth, she killed them.
After Pamela falls off her bike and loses
a tooth, her new friend warns her that she could be next; the Tooth Fairy
will come for her and her lost tooth. When people in and around the bed
and breakfast start to meet horrific deaths, she beings to fear her friend
may have been telling the truth.
A pretty neat horror flick with some nice
twists, but for horror fans only.
Carrie Fleming |
|
|
|
|
|
 |
Pat's comments in yellow...
Officials in Moscow are worried that the city will be flooded with gambling
addicts after a Russian court struck down a law barring casinos inside city
limits. So they are trying a novel plan: they will hold auditions for actors to
play impoverished beggars who tell passers-by that they were once wealthy
executives who lost everything gambling. They'll be paid the average monthly
Moscow wage to dress like pathetic bums in public five nights a week.
* They're actors...Aren't they already homeless,
impoverished bums?
* The average Moscow wage isn't much, but they can turn it into a fortune by
gambling.
Jif is holding a "Most Creative Peanut Butter Sandwich Contest" (www.jif.com)
for kids age 6 to 12, in which the prize is a $25,000 scholarship, so peanut
butter can pay to send your kid to college. Last year's winner, seven-year-old
Shannon Lewis of Manalapan, New Jersey, won for "Peanutty Pretty Purse Pitas,'
which combined peanut butter, yogurt, pitas, strawberries and bananas into
sandwiches decorated to look like purses.
* Shannon's parents plan to use the money to send him
to military school.
Paris Hilton has sparked outrage by posing in raunchy ad photos in Italy as the
new face of Prosecco, an Italian wine. Andrea Dan, president of Italy's Road
Safety Society, fumed, "She has just been arrested for drink-driving and a few
days later she is promoting an alcoholic drink. What sort of image is that?"
* I believe that's what ad agencies call an "expert
testimonial."
|
 |
|
|
 |
|
