Sunday

In a Dark Place

If you want to see my comments on the Leelee/Tara movie, here's the Movie House article.

 

Third party videos:

  • Tania Saulnier in Slither (Zipped .avi). New movie. Comes to DVD Tuesday.
  • Vera Farmiga in Down to the Bone (2004) (Zipped .avi) More Farmigamania! This is the movie which earned her a surprising Best Actress nod from the LA film critics last year.  Pretty damned hot sex scenes. If she were more famous, she would have finished far higher than 17th on our annual list of best nude scenes. If Kirsten Dunst had done this, it would have been Top 5. If Alba, it would probably have been #1 running away. This also comes to DVD Tuesday
  • Kari Wuhrer in Phoenix. (Zipped .avi) Nothing special about this movie, but this is an HDTV clip, and it'll look great on your big screen! Read Tuna's brief review and see his captures in the May 24, 2005 edition. Below is a sample capture from the HDTV clip.

 

OTHER CRAP:

 

The vagaries of political polls: Hillary Rodham Clinton is a strong candidate for the Oval Office. Without the Rodham? Eh .. not so much.
  • Maybe voters thought they were asked about Dennis Rodman, who would make an excellent president.

MONTY Python star Terry Jones has bowel cancer, although doctors believe they have caught it at an early stage.

  • Jones directed the cult classic Life of Brian, and co-directed the troupe's other films.

The trailer from Conventioneers, which takes a page from the legendary Medium Cool and blends a fictional story with documentary footage from the 2004 GOP convention

  • "Tells a Romeo- and-Juliet story of a Republican man who falls into a politically forbidden relationship with a Democrat woman who is protesting the Bush agenda. As the Convention draws near, one of her activist colleagues must reexamine his politics when he is hired as a sign language interpreter for the very man he’s working to defeat: President George W. Bush."

Four clips from Babel, the acclaimed drama from Alejandro González Iñárritu

Two new clips from Saw III

GREEN ACRES - Arnold the Pig Stars in a Play

Slow Motion Video - man hit in head with water balloon

Ask the White House - Submit Questions to Republican Luminaries - KATHERINE HARRIS: UNIVERSALLY BELOVED CONSERVATRIX (Whitehouse.org)

Answers to the eternal questions. Did you ever wonder why evolution produced men with two hands, not one or three? The answer can be observed at a very early age.

LMAO> 13 Reasons Not to Drink With Friends

Fla. Boater Stabbed in Chest by Stingray ... Here's the kicker: the stingray jumped into his boat.

Kim Jong-Il Sorry for Nuke Test, checks into rehab

Robbie Williams flashes his butt at MTV Latin America

Criminal masterminds steal New York Mayor's car

 

 

 

 

Movie Reviews:

Yellow asterisk: funny (maybe). White asterisk: expanded format. Blue asterisk: not mine. No asterisk: it probably sucks.

 

The L-Word, Season Three, Episodes 1-4

It is that time again. The 3rd season of the popular Showtime lesbian-oriented soap is being released on DVD. Two obvious changes have taken place.

  1. They have experimented with different photographic styles, sometimes to great effect.
  1. The vignettes they open each episode with no longer have anything to do with the episode, but depict great moments in lesbian history, although not quite so great as the invention of sensible shoes or the opening night of the WNBA. Episode one, for instance, has a bunch of women gathered in a Palo Alto living room examining their "who-whos." One becomes uncomfortable, and another follows her into the kitchen and seduces her.

The plot is barely moving. Jenny is returning with a new woman (Daniela Sia) in tow, Alice is still obsessing over Dana, Shane continues to be the most together of the crowd, along with her girlfriend Carmen, Bette is still out of work and not getting along with Tina, and they have additional controversy regarding the baby and parenting. Kit is making bad decisions about the club, and even worse decisions about men. It is pretty clear that Dana will have breast cancer in the next few episodes and be written out of the show, Daniela is destined for a trans-gender operation, Bette and Tina will separate again, and it looks like Shane and Carmen will get serious.

(Yawn.)

Now that I am 1/3 of the way through my third season of this series, I am ready to draw some conclusions.

1) Lesbians seem incapable of sustaining committed relationships.

2) Lesbians don't have any better idea what they want than hetero women.

3) Lesbian isn't a homogenous term, but rather encompasses many groups, many of which don't get along.

4) Gossip is the number one topic at any lesbian gathering.

 

We have some breasts and buns in the first three episodes.  (Episode 4 has no nudity.)

 

Katherine Moennig: Breasts in Episode 1
Katherine Moennig: See-thru in Episode 2.
Jennifer Beals: Right breast in Episode 1.
Lauren Lee Smith: Right Breast in Episode 2.
Sarah Shahi: Buns in Episode 2
Erin Daniels: Right breast getting a mammogram in Episode 3.

I hope things pick up, or getting through the remainder of this season will be a real chore. I have never much cared who someone wants to rub their genitals against, but I don't enjoy most of these women.

 
 

 

 

 

Today is a "Caps & Clips" double "Babes in Bondage" day. From "Hangman" we have Madchen Amick and Stephanie Moore.

Madchen (two .wmvs zipped together) has great legs and is naked in love scenes, though we really don't see anything, then dangles from the end of a rope. She is rescued (and in fact she put herself in this "Damsel in Distress" scene).

Stephanie Moore (zipped .wmv), our second "Babe in Bondage" is topless and in panties only, dead in a hangman's noose.
 
Dann reports on The Notorious Bettie Page:

The life of one of the most famous pin-up and nude models of the 1950s is outlined in this 2005 docudrama starring Gretchen Mol, who was definitely made to resemble the real person. The movie gives a fascinating look into the times, filled with senate investigations and prudish attitudes towards nudity.

Following a disastrous marriage, Bettie Page moved to New York to take up acting. She began posing for pin-ups as a way to make money. She also did some nudity, then eventually got involved with a brother and sister who made bondage photos for the fetish community.

Bettie's career continued to flourish when she went to Miami and met Bunny Yeager, a famous model turned photographer who got her a spread in a hot new men's magazine, Playboy. She was 32 at the time, but Bunny suggested giving her age as 25.

She returned to New York and continued to do bondage work, but eventually drew the attention of the Senate Smut probe in 1955, which also put the brother and sister out of the bondage business.

The movie drags at times, but Gretchen Mol's performance is outstanding, and it's a great look at the '50s. Most of the movie is fittingly in black and white, but the Miami stuff is in color, which was filtered to look like the bright and over saturated Technicolor movies of the '50s. Included on the DVD is a short clip called Presenting Bettie Page, a clip of the real Bettie Page that appears to have been shot on 16mm film. It's silent and in pretty bad shape, but still interesting to watch.

Gretchen Mol Bettie Page

 

 

 

 

Notes and collages

Susan George in Straw Dogs

If I were to pick the top one hundred films of all time, "Straw Dogs" would be on that list (for reasons I can't describe without revealing the plot of the film.)  This is a quirky film about a dull mathematician and his very hot young wife on a working holiday (for him) taking up temporary residence in her old home town. This scene is a critical moment in the plot where she gets pissed at her husband for not appreciating her sex drive...

 

 

 

 

Jade Parfitt

Here's a nice collage of Martina Stella in La Freccia Nera, an Italian mini series.