Wild Roomies (2004) is a trite comedy about a born loser, A. J. Buckley. He is working at Binkos copy store, and comes home to find his girlfriend, Miranda Bailey, in bed with his roommate. He swears never to have another roommate. Cut to several months in the future. He is living with a new girlfriend, and dreaming of making it rich with an invention or by writing, and is fired from Binkos by a kid much younger. Then, he gets word that his uncle has died, and the two head to California.

They find that his uncle has willed them a nice car and a huge mansion, but all of his money went to his favorite stripper. They only way they can keep the mansion is to take in roommates, as there is still a few months on the mortgage. She rents to a boy toy based on his looks and charm, and he rents to a sexy blonde for about the same reason. The roommates fight constantly, the boy toy parades a series of bimbos through the house, and the couple's relationship is threatened by jealously.

We see breasts from Crystal Lett, Miranda Bailey and Tricia A. Cruz, all in short parts. IMDb readers have this at 4.3 of 10. The comments at IMDb are very negative, and the ending seems to have irritated everyone the most. Most who wrote claimed that they characters were not sympathetic, but I submit that the ending would not have been as galling if they weren't involved with the characters. There is nothing wrong technically with this film, but comedies need to be funny, and something that people can relate to. While there were some smiles, there was not a real laugh out loud moment i the entire film. This is a D. Not badly made so much as badly conceived.

The Seventh Sign is one of those "end of the world" movies filled with a hodge-podge of myth, fiction, mumbo-jumbo, and biblical literalism. What do you call movies in this genre? Theological thrillers? Occult mysteries?

The signs from the Book of Revelation have started to occur one by one, and the impossible is happening throughout the world. The rivers are turning crimson with blood, the desert is covered with ice in the very spot where Sodom once stood, birds sing out of tune, rain clouds hide the moon, movie reviewers quote Bobby Rydell songs, and Gigli has been re-released to glowing reviews and record box office receipts. The final sign of the Apocalypse will occur when a baby is born with no soul. Demi Moore is carrying that baby. She's kinda disappointed about that whole end of days thing because she is really counting on the future. In fact she's having that baby in 1988 specifically so she will have a playmate for Ashton Kutcher in 2004.

The soulless baby birth and end of the world event will happen on February 29th because, you know, God really cares about the technical calendar peculiarities of one group of people on one tiny planet in the middle of the vast universe.

But there is a catch. Like all women in supernatural stories, Demi has lived many lives in the past. In one of those lives, she was in the court of Pontius Pilate, and was offered a chance to die in place of Christ. She declined. Now she has a second chance. If she is willing to die in childbirth so that her baby might live, the baby gets a soul, and mankind gets off the hook scot-free.

That's a pretty generous deal from God, and one that will force Him to create a second apocalypse at some time in the future, using the same old signs, in order that the prophecies may eventually be fulfilled. There is just nothing more bothersome than a Judgment Day with a false start. For one thing, who's going to believe Him next time if he says, "just kidding" this time?

There are some other forces at play in the plot, because - well, because they had to pad this sucker out to feature length. There is one of Pontius Pilate's soldiers, who is still alive and cursed to wander the earth for all eternity, so he would kinda like that Judgment Day to hurry up a bit. And then there is a retarded kid who is about to be executed for killing his abusive parents because God told him to. Finally there is an angel who is watching over Demi. This part is played by Jurgen Prochnow. Talk about "signs"! That was a bad one for the movie. As I have written elsewhere, Prochnow's picture on a DVD box has precisely the same meaning as a cow skull next to a water hole.

I honestly can't give you a single reason to watch this movie. When it isn't relying on cheesy faux-apocalyptic nonsense to pad out the running time, it plays out like like a Sunday morning religious TV drama about the power of faith. (Demi was not a religious person when the film began, and she saved the world by finding faith in Jesus!)

• Demi Moore (1, 2)

The Fearless Vampire Killers (1967):

I reacted to The Fearless Vampire Killers about the same way that I did to Ace Ventura, Pet Detective. For the first half hour, I found myself thinking "geez, this is dumb. It's just unsophisticated, slapstick, Catskills-style comedy performed in dime-store Halloween costumes. It's the same humor as Gilligan's Island". As the film progressed, however, I found the film ever more dumb until it broke through my barriers and I started smiling at the sheer exhuberant stupidity of it. After a while, I was actually laughing out loud in a couple of places. Yes, the humor is sophomoric, but it's winning - in a way.

In some ways it's a great shame that Roman Polanski didn't become a director of comedies. Of course, we would have lost all of his dark masterpieces like Chinatown and The Pianist, but Polanski showed some signs in this film that he might have been the greatest director ever to create comedies. He obviously has great comic timing, as he demonstrated in his writing and direction as well as in his starring performance in this crazy parody of the Dracula/Von Helsing battles. And he is Roman Polanski. He has an outstanding eye for set design, editing, and scene composition. Therefore, he might have become the greatest director of the four decades to dedicate himself to comedies.

Think about the direction in comedy films since the 60s. Terry Gilliam's direction kept getting better and better and Woody Allen became a good director, but Mel Brooks was just serviceable, a bit above the TV sitcom level, and Kevin Smith barely knows how to remove the lens cap. Imagine if someone with the filmmaking sense of Tarkovsky had the humor of Mel Brooks. Could those characteristics co-exist, possibly even blend amicably into something truly wonderful? I guess we are not destined to find out. This film wasn't anywhere near the "wonderful" stage, but it did occasionally show the possibilities inherent in Polanski's unique combination of talents. The comic potential in his talent was never developed. Well, I guess you don't need me to tell you that Polanski did not go on to become the Shakespeare of wacky pratfalls.

What happened?

In 1969, his beautiful, sweet, adoring, pregnant wife was brutally murdered by the so-called "Manson family" during a deranged orgy of violence which may be the most famous murder case of the 20th century. Polanski's wife was Sharon Tate, the model and actress who was also his co-star in this film. Many people have speculated that Sharon's murder changed Polanski so profoundly that he could never again find the light side of his nature, driving him ever deeper into the darkest aspects of his personality. I don't know if any of that is true, although it seems to make perfect sense, but I do know that he never made another film with the warmth and humor and sweetness he exhibited here.

• Sharon Tate in the movie (1, 2)
• A couple of small sample images of Sharon Tate, just for reference. (1, 2)

Other Crap:

• Six new clips from the thoughtful road picture, Sideways.
• The stamp boys have gone all postal over stamps.com. The do-it-yourself stamp program has been suspended, will be re-evaluated. I think they have to find out a way to keep this program going. It has been a phenomenal success, and is about the best marketing idea in the past two decades. They just need to find some way to censor the craziness.  
• Dollywood's largest attractions to be scaled down. (reduction surgery on her famed Jumbo Jacks)
• The first page of the original draft of the Republic of Texas Constitution is on display - after spending years in a box labeled "miscellaneous 19th-century papers."
  The King is back!! Captain Kirk has finally delivered his long-awaited recording masterpiece. Hear William Shatner's sensational version of 'Common People' now!!!!
• Pancho's is long gone from the desert, but Gordo finally gets his picture up on the wall of Virtual Pancho's. He was 77 when he passed.
• Nixon portraits not welcome in Norwegian parliament. You think they would have kept up the one of Nixon bowling with the red ball. (Featured in The Big Lebowski.)
• ELECTION CLONE'O'MATIC: Mix and match the DNA of the Presidential and VP candidates.
• An interview with method actor Christian Bale
• This is a very cool picture. (And very naughty)
• Supreme Court hangs up on telemarketers
• URL says it all: SatanForBush.com. This is actually pretty funny!
• The Smoking Gun: Kobe Police File Released : "Memos detail accuser's story, Shaq slur, and a soiled t-shirt "
• The trailer and a clip from Vera Drake: "London, 1950 - Vera Drake lives in a small flat with her husband Stan, and their grown-up son and daughter, Sid and Ethel. The family is not rich, but their combined incomes make for a reasonable life. Vera is a cleaner, Stan a mechanic in his brother Frank's garage, and Ethel works in a light-bulb factory. Sid is an apprentice tailor. The Drakes have something money can't buy: they are a genuinely happy family."
• Four clips and two interviews from the creepy thriller, Saw.
• Current Electoral Vote Predictor 2004: Bush 295, Kerry 243.. Changes: New Mexico is back in the Kerry column, but Bush picks up New Hampshire, temporarily breaking Kerry's stranglehold on the Northeast. (Bush is ahead by one point there. He barely won New Hampshire in 2000 as well.)
• A featurette for A Love Song for Bobby Long : Southern Gothic drama. "Set in a forgotten section of New Orleans, Purslane Hominy Will (Scarlett Johansson), a jaded teenage loner, returns to the city of her childhood upon hearing of her mother's death. Expecting to find her mother's house abandoned, Pursy is instead shocked to discover that it is inhabited by two men whose lives took a wrong turn years before. Friends of her mother's, Bobby Long (Vinny Barbarino), a former literature professor, and his protege/biographer have been firmly rooted in the dilapidated house for years with no intention of leaving. When all three stand their ground, they are forced to try to live together, setting the stage for the story of three people and their unlikely home. As time passes, Bobby, Lawson and Pursy are surprised by the secrets they discover about themselves and their histories, revealing the seemingly small choices that have inextricably intertwined their lives"
• The trailer for Five Children and It. The brilliant Kenneth Branagh seems to be kind of down on his luck lately, reduced to co-starring in a kiddie flick with a goofy-looking muppet from Jim Henson's Creature Shop. BBC said, "The sole bright spot on a lacklustre canvas is comedian Eddie Izzard, whose semi-improvised contributions as 'It', the film's 8000-year-old, wish-granting fairy, recall the inspired lunacy of Robin Williams' genie in Aladdin."
• The trailer for Brothers
  • "Michael has everything under control: a successful military career, a beautiful wife (Connie Nielsen) and two daughters. His younger brother Jannik is a drifter, living on the edge of the law. When Michael is sent to Afghanistan on a UN mission the balance between the two brothers changes forever. Michael is missing in action - presumed dead - and Sarah is comforted by Jannik, who against all odds shows himself capable of taking responsibility for both himself and the family. It soon becomes clear that their feelings have developed beyond mutual sympathy. When Michael comes home, traumatized by being held prisoner in the mountains of Afghanistan, nothing is the same..."
  • TRIVIA FROM IMDb: This is the first time Connie Nielsen has acted in Danish in many years. Nielsen has been living in the USA, and doesn't ever speak Danish in her everyday life. Director Susanne Bier thought Nielsen's accent was more Swedish than Danish and made her take Danish lessons, but the result of the lessons turned out to be pretty good (though still with a little accent).
• Actress Janet Leigh has died at the age of 77, presumably not from multiple stab wounds incurred while showering.. She is survived by her daughters, actresses Jamie Lee Curtis and Kelly Curtis.
• Two American researchers, Richard Axel and Linda B. Buck, were awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine for pioneering work on the sense of smell.
• A funny parody of the Nigerian Scam e-mails
• Yesterday we had a free gallery of the 1999 Playmate of the Year. Today it is 2001. Brande Roderick Playmate Gallery - Courtesy of PlayboyPlus.com!
• Four short videos from Playboy's Beach Babes!
• Roger Ebert reviews "Going Upriver: The Long War of John Kerry"
• Star Magazine exclaims: "PARIS HILTON WANTS NEW BOOBS!"
• Incredible pic from the Astronomy Picture of the Day: Cloud Sculpting Star Cluster
• Weekly World News: "LAURA BUSH: 'WHY I'M VOTING FOR JOHN KERRY'"
  • "I'M VOTING for John Kerry for President because sooner or later, when it becomes politically expedient, he shares my views on everything. He's not hard-headed like my husband.
  • "And he's not always saying, 'I answer to a Higher Power! It is the Lord's will!' when I fuss at him for forgetting to put the toilet seat down."
• Virgin Atlantic Offers Upper Class Passengers Double Beds Onboard. When I used to fly first class a lot, I always chose my airline based on two things (1) the number and quality of movies available in the personal entertainment system (2) the amount of contact allowed with the lapdancers in the champagne room.
• GALLUP: Kerry Pulls Even With Bush at 49%-49%. I guess Newsweek's poll wasn't as bad as suspected, because Gallup produced similar results. Gallup says, "There is little question that Thursday night's presidential debate has made a significant difference in the presidential race." Bush's lead of eight points on September 24 has now dissipated into a dead heat. The sampling error is plus or minus three at 95% confidence.
• Fox News apologizes for Cameron's crazy fabricated Kerry quotes about manicures. :
  • "It was a poor attempt at humor", said Murdoch's designated lackey.
  • The Guardian article continues (immediately slipping from reporting into editorializing), "The "metrosexual" story taps into a persistent theme underlying the election race, in which the Republican party and its supporters in the media have sought to make a campaign issue of the candidates' perceived masculinity. At the party's convention in New York last month, California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger called Mr Kerry's advisors "economic girlie-men".
  • If that is true, why are the Republicans pussy-footing around? Are we to believe that they aren't even any good at dirty campaigning? Ol' LBJ at least had some balls. He would simply have said that Kerry was a homosexual (LBJ would have pronounced that word "homersexshill") and that his wife was obviously a fag-hag providing him with a convenient beard. Except Lyndon would have used much more colorful terminology. Lyndon's general theory, as applied to this case, could be summed up as follows- "I don't care if Kerry smokes the sausage or not. I just wanna hear the sumbitch call a press conference to deny it!"
• Which will keep you drier, running through the rain or walking?

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 Other Crap

MOVIE REVIEWS:

Words from Scoop.

.avi's from Shiloh.

.wmv files made by Scoop from Shiloh's .avi's.

NOTE: because of a unique combination of circumstances with the Windows media player and some substantial bandwidth theft, we will have to do all of our movie files in zip format. Left click on the files as you normally would to view a picture. When you get a choice, click on "save", and put it on your hard drive in the directory of your choice. UnZIP and play from there.

I know this is not especially convenient, but it allows the film clips to continue. I can protect .zip files from hot-linking in the same way I can protect still images. For some reason, if I protect .avis and .wmvs from hot-linking, they will not play in the Windows media player, and I can't get a satisfactory work-around. Perhaps I will find a better solution, but for now this new policy allows you to continue getting the movie clips you want to see, which is much preferable to my abandoning the clips altogether.

The Hays Code, Hollywood's self-censorship system, was adopted in 1930, but did not really have absolute hegemony over all the studios until 1934, when the Catholic Legion of Decency was formed. Nudity disappeared completely from Hollywood in 1935, not to re-emerge until the mid 60s.

A few naughty scenes did snuck past the gatekeepers in the early 30s. In addition to Loy's bath in The Barbarian (1933), there were the notorious Fay Wray scenes in King Kong (1933), Claudette Colbert's breasts in The Sign of the Cross (1932), full frontal and rear underwater nudity from Maureen O'Sullivan's body double in Tarzan and his Mate (1934), and Hedy Lamarr's frontal nude scenes and breast close-ups in the Czech-made Ecstasy (1932). 

This is the last batch of caps I have from the H2OOOOH disk. It's nothing but a bunch of oft-topless, sometimes nekkid beautiful gals posing. Nothing else. Sorry.

How long each is given to strut her stuff can range from a couple of minutes to several. Tis long enough to do a thorough job, not so long as to bore one into hitting the FF button. Lots of slow pans, too, which allowed your friendly capper to put together some real montages.

The featured players for the day are:

Amy Miller, frequent Hefmag model, taking a shower with Roxanne Galla, frequent Hefmate model. How frequent? Or should I ask, what's the frequency? Maybe Dan Rather knows.

• Amy Miller and Roxanne Galla (1, 2)

Cherie Roberts, tiny gal with exotic features. A full-frontal extravaganza.

• Cherie Roberts (1, 2)

Crystal Beddows, topless in a partially retracted ski suit. Crystal has the kind of build women pay good money for... as we shall see in a second. When I capped these I was thinking how odd it was that all the other women posed in water but here Crystal was with no water in sight. Not a bit. Only her and some trees... and snow. Doh!

• Crystal Beddows (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8)

Jamie Palazzolo, with another kind of natural build women pay good money for. Topless, with a small amount of furry bits showing.

• Jamie Palazzolo (1, 2, 3)

Jennifer Korbin, topless in 2 an 4, full-frontal in 1 and 3. Number 3 is one of the montage things I was talking about.

• Jennifer Korbin (1, 2, 3, 4)

Katia Corriveau. Absolutely fabulous woman. Spectacular face, spectacular form. F...ing flawless.

• Katia Corriveau (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6)

Natasha Yi. Asian version of Katia. Wish her segment had been way longer.

• Natasha Yi (1, 2)

Rebecca Switzer. Robohooter alert from a segment in which the cameraman could not find the focus button.

• Rebecca Switzer (1, 2)

Roxanne Galla, topless with rose petals in the tub. Okay, so that good money I going on about earlier? It was Roxanne who spent it. Compare her face and chest in the Amy Miller caps with these. Looks like a flight of bubble bees stung her lips after the former and before the latter; and it seems she got ahold of one of those Japanese phones with the augmenting ring tone.

• Roxanne Galla (1, 2, 3, 4)

Shamron Moore in a triple-B portfolio. Shamron was one of the Hefmag's cyber girls of the week or month... sorta like being the digital Hefmate. Shamron should have gone to Roxanne's surgeon.

• Shamron Moore (1, 2, 3)

Shayna Lee, giving up frontal stuff, including a peak at the nether regions.

• Shayna Lee

Teresa Politi, who looks a lot like Teresa Langley aka Corey Lane... so much so, I'm betting it's her. Teresa starts out with a very wet shirt (collage 1) but winds up taking it off, mostly.

Actually....I just Googled Teresa Politi and sho' 'nuff she is Teresa Langley, aka Corey Lane. And she thought we'd never find out. Ha!

• Teresa Politi, aka Teresa Langley aka Corey Lane (1, 2, 3)

Today from the Ghost...a few odds n' ends in video clip form.

• Angie Dickinson zipped .wmvs from the 1974 classic "Big Bad Mama". She's toples in both with brief full frontal nudity in #1. (1, 2)

• Debbie Rochon. Here is the Canadian born B-movie babe topless in a scene from "Dead & Rotting" (2002). (zipped .wmv)

• Elisabeth Shue, topless in a scene from 1998's "Cousin Bette". (zipped .wmv)

"Twentynine Palms"
Beautiful, artful photography doesn't save this 2004 movie because they left out something: a story. For most of the movie, we see the key players wondering around the desert looking for photo shoot locations, fightling like hell in spurts, and making love. While the photography is awesome, it's also plain damn boring except for a few violent love-making scenes, and even these aren't all that great, although a couple were pretty explicit.

This film is billed as a horror film, and the horror is what suddenly happens during the last twenty minutes. Even this made no real sense, but the gruesome ending was probably the best way to end a really bad movie.

Have your fast forward button ready, and perhaps you can come up with about 10 minutes of movie worth watching. The real horror here is that they made this movie at all.

• Katia Golubeva

BILLY JOEL MARRIES CHICKLET
Only The Bad Die Old - Saturday on Long Island, in front of 100 celebrity guests including Donald Trump, Billy Joel, 55, married his fiancee Kate Lee. Lee, 22, is only four years older than Joel's daughter, who served as maid of honor.