Curse of the Erotic Tiki (2004) is a soft core comedy from Fred Olin Ray, which IMDb is currently listing as Bikini a Go Go. Most of the comedy is in the character names. The two heros are Janet (Beverly Lynne) and Brad. We also have a Mr. Rogers. Brad and Janet are going steady, but are both very conservative, until Brad finds the erotic tiki necklace at work in a bikini shop. The necklace is given to Janet, and wearing it turns her into a wanton. The two blonde bimbos who own the bikini shop, Stacey Burke and Caily Taylor, don't need any necklace to drop their clothes and their inhibitions. Nikki Fritz is the real owner of the magic tiki, which was inadvertently sent out with a Hawaiian short shipment to the store. She wants it back, and tasks her anatomically correct cyborg to satisfy her, then retrieve it.

All four women give a three B performance, including girl/girl, girl.guy, and girl/girl/girl scenes. They have an optional hooter horn on the DVD, which sounds each time a sex scene is about to start. Frankly, it is unnecessary, as there is less than 10 minutes in the entire running time that have no nudity. The color palette is bright, and very saturated, and the video quality is very good. If the story were more than just a premise, this could be a decent film, but, as is, it certainly delivers on naked women and simulated sex. C.

Updates:

• Charlie's French Cinema Nudity site, aka Chuques Chiques, is updated.

Short Cuts (1993):

Robert Altman is considered to be one of the greatest film directors in history, and Short Cuts is rated fourth best among the 34 theatrical films with a rating at IMDb.

1. (7.79) - Player, The (1992)
2. (7.79) - MASH (1970)
3. (7.68) - Nashville (1975)
4. (7.59) - Short Cuts (1993)
5. (7.51) - 3 Women (1977)
6. (7.47) - McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971)
7. (7.30) - Gosford Park (2001)
8. (7.26) - Long Goodbye, The (1973)
9. (7.06) - Images (1972/I)
10. (7.00) - Vincent & Theo (1990)
11. (6.89) - Cookie's Fortune (1999)
12. (6.79) - Thieves Like Us (1974)
13. (6.75) - Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean (1982)
14. (6.65) - Wedding, A (1978)
15. (6.56) - Secret Honor (1984)
16. (6.44) - Streamers (1983)
17. (6.38) - Brewster McCloud (1970)
18. (6.29) - Company, The (2003)
19. (6.28) - California Split (1974)
20. (6.11) - Countdown (1968)
21. (5.87) - That Cold Day in the Park (1969)
22. (5.86) - James Dean Story, The (1957)
23. (5.82) - Kansas City (1996)
24. (5.76) - Perfect Couple, A (1979)
25. (5.71) - Gingerbread Man, The (1998)
26. (5.40) - Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull's History Lesson (1976)
27. (5.27) - Fool for Love (1985)
28. (5.09) - HealtH (1982)
29. (5.02) - O.C. and Stiggs (1987)
30. (4.82) - Popeye (1980)
31. (4.82) - Prêt-à-Porter (1994)
32. (4.82) - Dr. T & the Women (2000)
33. (4.55) - Quintet (1979)
34. (4.32) - Beyond Therapy (1987)

So it it really that good? Yes and no.

It is the best of films; it is the worst of films ...

It has a great script. Altman made Short Cuts from a group of stories (actually nine short stories and a poem) written by Raymond Carver, one of the great voices of the American working class. Raymond Carver was born in 1938, which means he was too young to experience the Great Depression, but he grew up in a home without indoor plumbing, so he was essentially an anachronism, a man who lived a Depression-era lifestyle even though his life was actually happening during America's sunny post-war prosperity. The people he observed were struggling to break even.

Carver's family consisted of blue collar laborers in Yakima, in the part of Washington State east of the Cascades, in the heart of America's fruit basket. His dad was an alcoholic mill worker who died young, his mom worked in diners and general stores. Their story is mirrored in the film's characters played by Tom Waits and Lily Tomlin. Fascinatingly, the Earl and Doreen characters in Carver's short story, "They're Not Your Husband", were not that similar to Carver's parents, but Altman out-Carvered Carver, and brought the characters into line with episodes from Carver's other stories, as well as his life.

Altman didn't so much adapt Carver's stories as use them for inspiration in a multi-layered process.

• Step 1: Altman played with the material.

  • In a couple of cases, Altman stuck very close to the original stories. "A Small, Good Thing" is about a baker who lashes out in a campaign of anger against a rich couple who stiff him on a designer birthday cake, only to find out that the cake is forgotten because the birthday boy has been in a serious car accident. "So Much Water Close to Home" is about three fishermen who refuse to allow their weekend in a remote spot be disturbed by the body of a nude, murdered woman in their fishin' hole. They tether her to a tree and keep on castin'. (It's a story that no longer makes sense in the era of cell phones, but as it was told, they would have had to hike four hours to the nearest phone.) Altman kept close to the original in both cases.

  • In the case of the other stories, Altman modified and combined the original characters and plots.

  • In another case, Altman simply made up a story that seemed to belong in Carver's world, like the relationship between a selfish, aging jazz singer and her haunted, cellist daughter. The daughter is obviously in need of attention from the mother and some mental health professionals, but the self-absorbed mother can't see that through her own prism of boozy remembrances. (Frankly, the film could easily have dispensed with this story and those two characters.)

   

• Step 2: Altman interwove the stories.

The only thing holding the stories together originally was a theme of modern urban alienation. Altman took the Short Cuts and wove the unrelated stories together. He formed a cinematic novel from the short stories. The car which struck the little boy was driven by the diner waitress, for example. Each story formed a some kind of link to some other story, as Altman and his co-author concentrated on making the transitions and connections. Sometimes the links are tight, sometimes a background character from one story just shows up as a background player in another story. Sometimes the sub-plots have a resolution, sometimes they are open-ended and just drift off when the film's focus shifts.

Altman then placed the story in a definite time and place - in Los Angeles, not in the fruit country, in a period of a few days, starting with a medfly scare and ending with a strong earthquake.

I believe Altman and his co-author Frank Barhydt did a tremendous job on the script, and that makes the film work. Very effectively. If the script had been awarded as the "Best Sceenplay Adapted from Another Medium", I would not have breathed one peep of protest. It is that good. Its only weakness is a melodramatic tendency to take the easy road to audience sympathy, with dying children and bloody murders and the like. I forgave that tendency toward the operatic because the film was so good at handling so many real moments in people's lives, and because it has a lot of wicked humor to balance off the bathos.

The Academy chose to nominate Altman as Best Director, but ignored his screenplay. The Golden Globes had it the other way around, which makes more sense to me. Having already heaped encomium on the film, I have to add that Altman the director was not nearly as effective as Altman the screenwriter.

There are some really sloppy moments here. Altman has never really learned how to film an action scene. Let's face it, that's not his thing and normally wouldn't matter, but it causes some confusion here. Two examples come to mind (1) Chris Penn beats a girl to death far from the camera (I think), but I couldn't really tell if that is what was happening. We later hear an announcer say that the girl was a casualty of the earthquake. But two people, including her girlfriend, saw him beating her, didn't they? Why didn't they report it? I didn't get it. (2) In the car accident, it is obvious - make that VERY obvious - that the car stopped as much as ten feet away from the boy.  Since the script required the youngster to walk away from the accident, I thought that she didn't hit him at all.

As far as I can see, there was no artistic reason to make these scenes ambiguous. They are just not filmed very well. Altman should have brought in a consultant who knows about such things.

In addition, I get very irritated by Altman's obsession with non-actors and bad actors. I don't know if he thinks these people bring some kind of street cred or something, but they often get stuck messing up a good scene by acting like a deer in the headlights. The most egregious example in this case was Lyle Lovett, who walked and talked like Robby the Robot. Altman had some great actors in the film: Jennifer Jason Leigh, Robert Downey Jr., Julianne Moore, Jack Lemmon, Bruce Davison, and Frances McDormand, to name a few. When the good actors are on screen, this film absolutely sparkles. I mean it just grabs your heart. The scene between Jack Lemmon and Bruce Davison is made emotionally rich by the pauses and nuances that good actors create. But one of the most powerful scenes in the film  - the confrontation between the angry baker and the angrier mother of the dead child - is really ruined by the fact that the two actors are Lyle Lovett, a non-actor, and Andie MacDowell, who is not much better. I really wish that Altman would abandon his fascination with non-actors, and I wish he would keep his potential over-actors (Tim Robbins, Matthew Modine, Madeleine Stowe, and Fred Ward, for example) under better control.

Finally, the film is more than three hours long. It surprises me that Altman couldn't find anything to cut, because I'll betcha I could knock out 20 minutes from it, show it to people who have seen it, and they'd never know it was missing. The drunken, washed-up lounge singer warbles song after song in real time, while she is in the story's focus rather than in background. She could easily be shown singing the first few bars, followed by a change of focus to the conversations in the lounge. Not only would you never notice the change, but the film would probably be better because ... well, to be charitable, this woman can't sing for shit any more. She began her singling career in 1937, and this film was made in 1993. I know she was supposed to be over the hill, but that point can be inferred about ten seconds after she opens her mouth.

I guess I'm quibbling. I like this movie. A lot. Even at 187 minutes of meandering plotting, I rarely lost interest in it. In fact, the only time I lost interest was during Annie Ross's interminable songs. The actual character interaction is fascinating. If you liked Magnolia or American Beauty, but would like a little more humor mixed in, this is your kind of film.

The Criterion DVD is a beauty. Just about everything you could possibly want.

• Disk 1 is a newly remastered high definition transfer of the film. Widescreen anamorphic.

• Disk 2 has numerous features: some short deleted scenes, the trailers and ads, new conversations between Altman and Tim Robbins, a feature-length "making of" documentary, a PBS documentary on the life of Raymond Carver, a BBC segment on the development of the screenplay, a hour-long radio interview with Carver, and more.

• The package also includes a souvenir booklet written by a top film critic, and the complete peperback version of the Carver short stories.

Female nudity report:

• Julianne Moore shows her red pubic hair and her bum. (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6)
• Madeleine Stowe shows her breasts in two scenes. (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6)
• Lori Singer does a full-frontal nude scene, albeit seen through a fence and far from the camera. (1, 2, 3)
• Frances McDormand is seen topless and naked from the side. Her bum and pubic hair are seen in a quick glimpse.(1, 2, 3, 4)
• Some unnamed woman plays the naked murder victim (1, 2, 3, 4)

Mailbox and a possible corrected ID:

I meant to write on the first of the month, when you noted your nine years with the site. I've been with you for much of that time, and I've noticed an interesting phenomenon in the last couple years: more and more stretches of prose between the image links. I don't know how many of your visitors skip the words and head for the pictures, but I find myself realizing that I would actually pay a subscription for a site that had only your reviews, without any of the images. I also have to admit to hypocrisy. I often quote you in discussions with my friends, but I tend to conveniently forget which critic I'm quoting ("I don't remember; I just know I read it online somewhere") rather than admit that I got my opinions from a site that still exists largely to publish photos of naked actresses. Peter only denied Jesus three times; I've long since left the saint in the dust on the denial front.

Now the correction: a few weeks ago you identified the topless woman on the boat in the remake of Dawn of the Dead as Luigia Zucaro. Wrong. She played the naked woman wandering around the wrecked bus toward the beginning of the film. The topless woman on the boat was (and I have IMDB to back me up on this) Kim Kerns.

Thanks again.

Jerry Stemnock

Scoop's reply:

1. I don't blame you. I wouldn't quote me either, except, of course, for the fact that anything I type is ipso facto, quoting me. I'm trapped in the Mudd's Robot Paradox. But if I had a choice ...

2.  I turn this ID matter over to Spaz, master of all things Canadian, to determine which one is the Canadian Zucaro. Spaz, what's your verdict?

 

Other Crap:

• Bill Simmons of ESPN looks forward to the second half of the NFL season
• I have no idea who Aida Yespica is, but her 2005 calendar is HOT!
• David Beckham buys Posh a two million dollar platinum vibrator. Mick Jagger says he also wants to buy one.
• First "Chasing Amy", then "Gigli", now a whole club full. What is the deal with Ben Affleck and lesbians?
• You can stop looking. The Boulder, Colorado police have found Waldo. (Check out the file name - waldo1.jpg)
• Is U.N. secretary-general covering up Oil-for-Food scandals? One suggestion is that Annan himself may have been skimmin' off the top, when a lucrative contract was handed to a company that employed Annan's son. So far it's just rumor and innuendo, but it may get juicy.
• A Google Image Search for Bill Maher's girlfriend: "Coco Johnsen". Her lawsuit didn't mention that she was a NUDE model. It seemed to stress the airline flight attendant portion of her career.
• NYC electronic sign reads, "Pretty girls don't ride the subway"
• Bin Laden expert resigns from CIA to speak openly. "Author Michael Scheuer, former chief of the CIA's Osama bin Laden unit, announced Thursday that he had resigned from the agency so he could speak openly about terrorism and what he sees as the government's failure to understand the threat from al-Qaida."
• It has been confirmed that Hef's big surprise celebrity pictorial for December turned out to be the Wild Thang herself, Denise Richards
• Why British newspapers are so much better, example #1084. The headline "I love a bum spank", accompanied by a photo of her spankables.
• Kerry still has a chance - in New Mexico!
• With production scheduled to begin early next year, the $100 million film, THE GOOD SHEPHERD, has lost financing. The CIA flick was to have been a Leo DiCaprio starrer, directed by Robert DeNiro
• One of the oddest advertising concepts of all time - using porn stars and golf to sell Playstation 2
• The Village People followed up one of their biggest hits with the lesser-known "In the Air Force"
• Revolution Studios is negotiating to acquire 'Freedomland'.
  • If they can acquire it from Paramount, Revolution's Joe Roth would direct. The movie would mark a change of pace for Roth, more known for comedies like 'America's Sweethearts' and the upcoming 'Christmas With the Kranks'.
  • The gritty 'Freedomland' deals with the aftermath of a carjacking that becomes a racially charged media sensation. Richard Price has adapted his best-selling book into a screenplay. Julianne Moore and Samuel L. Jackson are in talks to star.
• Madonna has been named one of the most powerful Jewish Americans.
  • That's odd. She doesn't look American. (And she certainly doesn't sound American). Moreover, she claims she isn't Jewish.
  • J.J. Goldberg, editor of a Jewish weekly called The Forward, said, "She's probably the world's best known practitioner of Judaism right now."
• "Nicole Kidman is desperate to become pregnant."
• Tommy Lee says he prefers to have sex with plump women.
• Check out production designs and watch the trailer for the long-awaited film version of 'The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'
• Clooney won't attend awards shows unless he's nominated. I guess that places him in the "low risk" category for the Oscar ceremony unless they re-release Batman & Robin.
• John Ashcroft Resignation: Letter from Attorney General John Ashcroft Resigning His Position as America's Top Muslamoid Gulag Warden . (Whitehouse.org)
• John Ashcroft Sings: Ashcroft & Bacon Gospel Album: TRUTH Volume One, Edition One
• The Daily Show's Samantha Bee reports on the death of 'terrorist / freedom fighter' Yasser Arafat.
• How to fake having a girlfriend.
• The Playmate Gallery takes a trip back to 1966, Courtesy of PlayboyPlus.com!
• Four free videos from Playboy's Cheerleaders & College Girls!
• National Lampoon looks behind the scenes at Revenge of the Sith. "My uncle held the job of Leia's golden bikini buffer"
• Here, finally, is the trailer for Elektra
• Democrats already focused on how to lose in 2008. Even as you read this, they are combing through the ranks of New York and Massachusetts ultra-liberals in search of the candidate who will be the least acceptable to Middle America. They are really hoping to find an atheist lawyer who used to be a college professor.
• Tony Soprano wants out of the mob.

Other Crap archives. May also include newer material than the links 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.

Perhaps these tips will help if you have trouble with the codecs for these movies:

Shiloh says:

FYI when I hypercam vids to make the file size smaller I use DivX MPEG-4 Fast-Motion for the video compressor, then I use virtualdub to compress the audio. The properties for the vids says the video codec:  DivX Decoder Filter & audio codec:  Morgan Stream Switcher which I'm not familiar with. When I compress the audio with virtualdub I use MPEG Layer-3.  A friend of mine told me about compressing the audio about (6) mos. ago. Like I said previously, only been capping for a year & a half & I'm no expert. Hopefully this info will help members with the proper codecs for my vids.

 

When I cap big brother's I use hypercam mostly & sdp & asfrecorder if the set up allows me. I stopped using camtasia cause the file sizes were always too big, could never figure out the process, over my head lol, plus it cost too much to buy in my opinion.

A reader says:

You mentioned that some users were having trouble with the videos on your site. There is a tool designed to determine what codec is needed for a video. http://www.headbands.com/gspot/ Hope this is useful to you or your users.

Scoop says:

I made the .wmv versions of each video. The codecs for these: Windows Video V8, Windows Audio 9. The upside of these is that you know the codecs, and they'll play in the Windows Media Player. The downside is that they are slightly larger, and slightly lower quality.

Words, pictures, and vids from ICMS
 

Hostess (1975)

Can I interest you in some nudity from a country that no longer exists ? I am talking about the German Democratic Republic, the communist workers' paradise. I don't think they had girlie magazines there because that was considered exploiting women. Of course when those women were naked in a movie for practically no reason it was presumably considered art and that must have been okay for the people's eyes. And so a certain Roswitha Marks (what's in a name) ended up showing all 3 B's in the 1975 movie "Hostess". Her comrade Annekathrin Bürger went only topless in the same flick but to the tones of what must have been some very hip Seventies music in a communist country. 

• Roswitha Marks (.wmv zipped, .avi zipped)
• Annekathrin Bürger (.wmv zipped, .avi zipped)

True Woman (1999) - Part 3

Meanwhile poor Shu Qi, who didn't have the luck of being born in a socialist paradise, continues to be cruelly exploited by capitalism in this third clip from her DVD True Woman. Luckily she didn't need the authorities to protect her against herself and free enterprise, and look, she is successful by being her own woman and choosing her own path to stardom.

• Shu Qi - #3 (.wmv zipped, .avi zipped)

That's all for today, I've rambled on long enough already.

Yours faithfully,

ICMS

Today the Ghost takes a look at the grade Z flick "Galactic Odyssey" aka "Starquest II" (1997). This movie is a complete waste of time that is lost somewhere in between a mega-lo budget sci-fi flick and a Skinemax movie. Basically, they hired some decent actors that really needed the work. However, the producers didn't bother spending any money on a script, sets or even film. But they did have a lot of stock footage from several other mega-lo budget Roger Corman movies from the 70's!

• Gretchen Palmer shows robo-boobs and a fully nude side view as she rides a dude. (1, 2, 3, 4)
• Gretchen Palmer zipped .wmvs. Yes, that's Freddy Krueger watching them in clip #2. (1, 2)

• Jeannie Millar...the exotic B-babe topless and showing thong views in 4 different scenes. (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25)
• Jeannie Millar zipped .wmvs. Plenty of strip and wiggle action. Freddy looks on in #4. (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6)

• Kate Rodger, toplessness plus side brief rear views in a love scene. (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6)
• Kate Rodger zipped .wmvs (1, 2, 3)

Raquel Gardner
(1, 2, 3)

Shauna O'Brien
(1, 2)

Leeann Tweeden
(1, 2, 3, 4, 5)

Other points of interest...Skinemax babe Shauna O'Brien also appears without the after market big'uns.

MADONNA DENOUNCES MATERIALISM
Lotsa de Hypocrisy - Madonna is about to bring out her fifth Kabbalah-inspired children's book. It's called "Lotsa de Casha." It's about an Italian greyhound named Lotsa de Casha who is stinking rich and thinks only of himself, but he's unhappy. The moral is that wealth is overrated and can't buy happiness.