Notes:

I'm taking some "working vacation," which means I'm still at my desk, but only 6-8 hours a day instead of 16. So I should be here with breaking news

Updates:

Charlie's French Cinema Nudity Site is updated.  According to his e-mail, "I sent it early as I have some cars to set on fire..."

Other Crap:

Movie Reviews:

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

"Bolero"

Bolero (1984) is a John Derek film staring his wife Bo. It supposedly uses the silent film romance genre as inspiration, and is, of course, designed to show off Bo's body. Derek graduates from university, inherits a bunch of money, and takes off with her chauffeur (George Kennedy) and her best friend (Ana Obregón) to lose her virginity to a real sheik (since she can't have Valentino). She finds her sheik, but he falls asleep during the foreplay, so it is time for plan B, which is go to Spain and hook up with a bullfighter (Andrea Occhipinti ). He is tough, but she finally manages to seduce him, only to have 4 tons of angry pot roast nearly neuter him. He, of course, wallows in his sorrow, and who can blame him? Not only does he have to put up with making the rest of the film watching Bo try to act, but he can't even screw her.

Bo is a modern young woman, college educated, and equal to the problem, and instinctively realizes that the way to put lead in his pencil is to learn to fight bulls herself. I will have to say that the plot shares the same level of excellence as Bo's acting. I first say this on a heavily edited and poor quality VHS, which there was no good reason to watch. This DVD is an improvement, in that it is an unedited version and a very good transfer. Couple that with John Derek's ca,era skill and wife Bod looks, and the film succeeds as eye candy.

The nudity is plentiful. Derek shows everything, as does Olivia d'Abo in her second role as a gypsy Lolita also in love with Occhipinti. Obregón, Mirta Miller as a cook who has a thing with Kennedy, and an unknown gypsy also show breasts.

IMDb readers have this at 3.6. It was nominated for 10 Razzies, and won six of them. It is rated #61 in the bottom 100. Frankly, that is a tad unfair. Yes, d'Abo had not yet mastered English, and Bo's attempts at acting were laughable, but I am not so sure the writing was hopeless. Had it been made with performers up to the task, it could have had the same energy as Perils of Gwendoline in the Land of the Yik Yaks or Jane and the Lost City. Unfortunately, Bo couldn't pull off simple facial expressions with any credibility, so high camp was well out of her range. This is a C-, strictly on the merit of the eye candy.

Ana Obregón
Bo Derek
Mirta Milles
Olivia D'Abo
Unknown

Hello Scoopy !

It is high time for this week's update on the HBO/BBC series "Rome" (2005).

In episode 2 "Titus Pullo" we see how the plot thickens and all the characters and their actions are starting to fall in place.

Caesar and his legions are still on the other side of the Rubicon, but not for long anymore, and we get an explanation why he ultimately did cross the river and marched on Rome.

On a more down to earth level we see two of his soldiers, officer Lucius Vorenus and his friend, legionair Titus Pullo, back in their native city Rome. Titus is a happy bachelor and we can see him checking out the brothels in this clip.

Lucius Vorenus is a happily married man, or so he thinks, and he sees his wife Niobe (Indira Varma) again for the first time in 8 years. She's holding an baby which she claims is their 14 years old daughter's. Indira might show a breast feeding the baby but you never see her face and her breast in the same shot. Based on the caps of Indira in "Kama Sutra" in the back issues and the Encyclopedia I think it might be her though. Wait a minute, wasn't her daughter supposed to be the mother? Please check it out for yourself in this clip.

Finally Caesar's sister Atia, played by Polly Walker, puts on quite a vocal performance while improving the family's relations with Mark Anthony, tribune of the people, whose support they can really do with. In fact her mother is so loud that her daughter Octavia complains about it over dinner with mum and Mark by imitating her mother's moaning. While Polly doesn't display much in this clip, it's still worth checking out her performance.

All in all I am getting a better picture of Roman society and politics after just two episodes of this TV-series than in six years of studying Latin in high school. So I shall definitely be watching again next week!

-ICMS

UPDATE: CHEERLEADERS DENY SEX REPORT
Mmmm, Sexy! - The two Carolina Panthers cheerleaders accused of punching a woman who caught them having sex in a bar restroom are getting lots of offers, including from a Penthouse spokeswoman who says they are "working very diligently" to get them to pose nude. But the story may be less titillating than it seemed. They now deny that they were having sex, and another woman who was in the bathroom claims they were dressed, and one just seemed to be helping the other, who was sick from drinking too much.

* Penthouse suggested that maybe they were just too drunk to remember having sex...
* It would be a lot more lucrative just to claim they had sex. I don't want to see cheerleaders vomiting naked...Although there's probably a website for that.

COMPETING SECRETS FOR A LONG LIFE
Allingham Sounds Like A Rolling Stone - Two of the last nine surviving British veterans of World War I were honored at the National Army Museum in London, but when asked their secrets of a long life, they had very different answers. Bill Stone, 105, said his secret is clean living, a contented mind and trust in the Lord. But Henry Allingham, who is 109, credited it to "cigarettes, whisky and wild, wild women."

* And some other fun stuff he just can't remember.
* Doctors warned him that stuff would kill him, but they're all dead now.
* Stone is a few years younger, but his life has seemed a lot longer.

TV HAS MORE SEX, MORE HIDDEN ADS
"Joey" Threw Off The Curve - A Kaiser Family Foundation study claims that U.S. television now airs twice as many sex scenes as it did seven years ago. In a sample week of shows on ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, the WB, PBS, Lifetime, TNT, USA and HBO, the researchers found that 70 percent had some sexual content, defined as talking about sex or any touching from kissing to intercourse. That's nearly 3,800 scenes relating to sex, or about 4.5 scenes per hour.

* Not even Hugh Hefner on a Viagra bender has sex 4.5 times per hour.
* These people are so prudish, if a cowboy kissed his horse, they counted it as bestiality.
* One thing any teenage geek can tell you: talking about sex is NOT sex.

Rising Tide - Another thing that's up in television is product placements. A Neilsen study found that NBC snuck in more plugs for products than any other network. This year, there were 21,286 ad placements in NBC shows, more than double the number last year.

* Mostly Trojan Condoms...
* So that's why the CSI coroners only use genuine Acme scalpels for their autopsies!
* "The Apprentice" is a one-hour product placement ad for Donald Trump.