Tuesday

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:

  1. (7.58) - A Shot in the Dark (1964)
  2. (7.39) - The Party (1968)
  3. (7.19) - The Pink Panther (1963)
  4. (7.19) - Victor/Victoria (1982)
  5. (6.98) - The Great Race (1965)
  6. (6.94) - Soldier in the Rain (1963)
  7. (6.89) - The Pink Panther Strikes Again (1976)
  8. (6.84) - My Sister Eileen (1955)
  9. (6.79) - The Return of the Pink Panther (1975)
  10. (6.43) - Wild Rovers (1971)
  11. (6.30) - Revenge of the Pink Panther (1978)
  12. (6.25) - What Did You Do in the War, Daddy? (1966)
  13. (6.24) - The Notorious Landlady (1962)
  14. (6.13) - Operation Mad Ball (1957)
  15. (6.13) - Mister Cory (1957)
  16. (6.08) - The Tamarind Seed (1974)
  17. (6.04) - Drive a Crooked Road (1954)
  18. (6.00) - S.O.B. (1981)
  19. (6.00) - Darling Lili (1970)
  20. (5.99) - Gunn (1967)
  21. (5.91) - That's Life! (1986)
  22. (5.81) - This Happy Feeling (1958)
  23. (5.70) - 10 (1979)
  24. (5.51) - The Atomic Kid (1954)
  25. (5.44) - Sunset (1988)
  26. (5.43) - Skin Deep (1989)
  27. (5.32) - Switch (1991)
  28. (5.05) - Inspector Clouseau (1968)
  29. (5.03) - City Heat (1984)
  30. (4.91) - The Pink Panther (2006)
  31. (4.91) - The Man Who Loved Women (1983)
  32. (4.54) - Trail of the Pink Panther (1982)
  33. (4.19) - Curse of the Pink Panther (1983)
  34. (4.04) - A Fine Mess (1986)
  35. (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:

The weirdest 50's Cigarette Ad ever
... water skiers smoke while skiing, all the while exchanging romantic glances

Important documentary: How to protect your car from theft.

I have a feeling this site will not last long. Every episode of The Simpsons since the beginning of time

ABC.com is now streaming the most recent episodes of many of their most popular shows for free

The Top 50 DC Comics Covers of 2006

"Jihad" car commercial upsets U.S. Muslims
  • "A car commercial proclaiming a jihad on the U.S. auto market and offering 'Fatwa Fridays' with free swords for the kids is offensive and should not be aired, Muslim leaders said on Sunday."

Uwe Boll beats the crap out of Lowtax from Something Awful:
The business bib - so you look good on a webcam.

The BBC looks at "Beijing's penis emporium"

From the "last vestiges of empire" department: "THOUSANDS of pubs could run out of beer this Christmas - because too many kegs are being lost or stolen."

Headline of the day: Tiki loses Winky

JACKASS 2 NOVELIZATION PROVING EXTREMELY DIFFICULT TO WRITE

JACKASS CAST MEMBERS DIE FROM TAINTED SPINACH

The trailer for Harsh Times, a new crime drama starring Christian Bale and Eva Longoria

The trailer for VAN WILDER 2

Close Up of the so-called "Face on Mars"

Bin Laden returns from the dead
  • Note: the metric-challenged AFP has the feet-to-meters conversion wrong. 6'5" actually rounds off to 1.96 meters, not 1.92. The latter would be about 6' 3 1/2"

College Football's Bottom Ten
  • Ten teams so bad they couldn't beat Rice.

100 Years Ago

 

 

 

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-.

 

Kyra Sedgwick

 
 

 

 

 

 

 

Anna Nicole Smith in the immortal cinema classic, Anna Nicole Smith Exposed. She came up with the title herself. Only took her three weeks.

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

Chelsea Field in Dust Devil: the Final Cut, another film unfairly ignored at Oscar time

 

Jolene Blalock in Slow Burn

Here's a high quality version of the picture which many people believe to be Christina Ricci.

This is Jennifer Leigh, not Jennifer Jason Leigh, in The Feeding

This is Marisa Tomei in Factotum

 

 


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."