That 70s Girl (2003) is a Seduction Cinema direct to vid Misty Mundae short. It is long on boring nudity and simulated sex, and features Misty as a hippy chick, who rents a room in the home of straight sisters Julian Wells and Kelli Summers. Along with her girlfriend, A. J. Kahn, she seduces first Summers and finally wells, turning them into hippy chicks. There is little room for story, however, as most of the screen time is taken up with nudity and sex.

Girl shower masturbation -- Mundae
Girl/Girl -- Mundae/Kahn
Girl/Girl/Girl -- Mundae/Kahn/Summers
Girl Shower masturbation -- Wells
Girl/girl/girl -- Wells, Mundae, Summers

Music is provided by The Pink Delicates, with Misty Mundae. Mundae, Sumers and Wells show everything. Kahn shows breasts only this time around. This was not one of their better effort. It is a mere 45 minutes long, and was originally shot as a pilot for Skinemax. The shooting style was very irritating, in that it was mainly skin closeups. There was no attention to continuity. The tiles in the shower changed in 24 hours from dark green to pink, for instance. This is barely adequate for Mundae completeists. D.

Stage Beauty (2004):

The 17th century was a period of turmoil for England. The enlightened rules of Elizabeth and James, the age of Shakespeare, ended early in the century, to be replaced shortly after by a grim and ugly period in which England had no king at all. Oliver Cromwell fomented a civil war, deposed the king, beheaded him, and established a rule of strict Puritan rectitude. It was scarcely more than a generation after the colorful pomp of Elizabethan glory when England degenerated into a place where clever social badinage, lavish wigs, outlandish make-up, colorful costumes and sexual misadventures had about as much place as they do in the Amish community at harvest time. In fact, England was transformed into Amish heaven.

Well, you just knew that wasn't going to last, so eleven years after the king was beheaded, the Puritan revolt crumbled and Charles's son was invited back from the continent to assume the monarchy once again. Freedoms were not only restored, they were expanded. The period after the Puritan republic is called the Restoration, and it was marked by the kind of excessive behavior that inevitably occurs when a period of severe repression is followed by newly permitted freedoms.

If you have a decent education, you have undoubtedly come across the knowledge that in Shakespeare's time the stage roles of women were played by men. When The Restoration came about, the people were hungry for new thrills and new forms of bawdy abandonment - like seeing a beautiful woman's cleavage on stage, for example. The result was a royal edict permitting women to take the stage as women, followed soon after by a proclamation forbidding men to play female parts.

Which brings us to our story.

There was en entire generation of actors who were schooled specifically in the art of portraying women. They were great stars, celebrated by all classes of society. When the new ideas took hold, these actors found themselves cast aside overnight, stripped not only of glory, but of their very livelihood. In truth, this change did not happen in a weekend, as portrayed in the film, but the time-frame compression gave the story a much sharper focus.

The film is about the last of the great male actresses, Ned Kynaston, a real historical character whose story was documented in Pepys's Diaries. It is also about the first of the celebrated female actresses, Mary Hughes, who is purely fictional. As the screenwriter would have it, the two of them also overcame many obstacles, not the least of which was his confused sexuality, to become lovers. In addition to the boy-meets-girl element of the film, the dramatic conflict comes from the fact that Kynaston is laughably unable to act the male parts and Hughes simply can't act at all, and has become a star simply because of the novelty of her gender.

The premise is a spectacularly good one, but the film doesn't dig in as deep as it might. It has an excellent story to tell, and delivers some pretty solid comedy along the way, but the romantic angle really seems cobbled into the story and that makes the film quite uncomfortable in spots.

It seems to me that the story would have worked much better if Kynaston had been pictured as a highly educated and refined man whose job of playing sophisticated ladies was lost to the unsophisticated prostitutes and tarts who succeeded him in the roles (similar to the would-be actress who played the king's mistress in this film). There was no good reason to make Mary Hughes a nice, star-struck middle class girl, and it was much too contrived (and probably unrealistic) to make her a sexual innocent and Kynaston's lover as well.

In a way, this film makes me feel disempowered as a reviewer, because I liked it. It sparkles from time to time, reflecting its obvious inspiration, Shakespeare in Love, which was also about the English stage and gender confusion. But this is not Shakespeare in Love, despite some of the same cast members. (Tom Wilkinson and Rupert Everett, for example.)  

• It's too campy and sexually ambiguous to please the people who might enjoy a heartfelt  romantic comedy as a date film. Shakespeare in Love had a great romance targeted at universal audiences. ("This is not real, Will, 'tis a stolen season".) Stage Beauty has confused sex involving contestants in a Cher look-alike contest.

• Having shut out the date crowd, the film also made the boy-meets-girl element too damned sappy and mainstream to please the arthouse crowd.

Game over.

I don't know why the author felt it necessary to bring these various mis-matched people together as lovers, but the resulting script resulted in a pretty good movie that simply has no audience to speak of. As much as I enjoyed the historical spectacle and humanity of it, I just can't picture anyone I'd recommend it to, except movie critics, and even then not British movie critics, who savaged it.

Frankly, the story probably should have been told on Masterpiece Theater rather than in a theatrical release.

• Claire Danes (1, 2, 3, 4)
• Claire Danes movies (zipped .wmvs) (1, 2). Nice scenes. Well worth watching.
• Zoe Tapper
• Zoe Tapper movie (zipped .wmvs).

Other Crap:

• ODB DOA. RIP.
• The Incredibles had the seventh best "second weekend" of all time. Each of the top 15 films on this list did at least $250 million in total gross. The films in positions 5-9 (the two above and the two below The Incredibles) averaged about $350 million.
• The lost city of Atlantis has moved yet again. Actually, this discovery sounds promising.
• Ther "I'm Not Kidding" Department, case #1156. The conservative Christian campaign to change the name of Interstate 69.
• You probably know that the USA and India rank 1-2 in the world in the number of computer programmers - but can you name #3 and #4? You may be surprised, especially by #4
• Watch two scenes from "All About Anna". The first scene is boring, but be patient. In the second scene, Gry Bay and her lover get completely naked and do some very naughty things!
• Tom Hanks has been enlisted to play the lead in the Da Vinci Code. Jean Reno is the next guy they want.
• Commander Buzz Corry dead at 84. Ed Kemmer was one of the very first nationwide TV stars in live broadcast history. (Space Patrol is regarded as the first West Coast show to be broadcast live nationwide on Saturday mornings.)
• Trial reveals spammer techniques. Interesting article, if you wonder where all that junk e-mail comes from.
• This week's movies: late news. Kinsey - 93% positive reviews. Frankly, I don't know which week Kinsey belongs to, if any.
  • According to Box Office Mojo, Kinsey is only in five theaters in the entire USA, but it has already been reviewed by several dozen critics, and has already attracted the wrath of religious conservative groups. Although the reviews and the averages per screen have been excellent, Fox Searchlight continues with an exceedingly modest expansion plan. In other words, it is not coming soon to a theater near you.
  • Fox Searchlight is now sitting on two films (Kinsey - 93% positive reviews - and Sideways - 97% positive) with heaps of critical praise and minimal distribution.
• Iran tells guillible Europeans it will suspend uranium enrichment. This is a good strategy for them. If they develop uranium enrichment and admit it, they are subject to possible U.N. sanctions. If they continue with the program and deny it, they will be able to hustle the Europeans for technical and financial aid, including help in developing Iranian nuclear energy for {cough} power generation.
• This week's movies: late report. Seed of Chucky - 31% positive reviews. There were no pre-release reviews because The Chuckster was not pre-screened for critics. That is usually a very bad omen. I haven't seen the film. Roger Ebert's review is excellent and funny. He says that the movie is really two separate films: one half is actually quite funny when Jennifer Tilly is on screen, but the other half fails miserably when the puppets are at bat.
• The Incredibles has another ... well ... incredible weekend at the box office.
  • It took in another $51 million, roughly equalling the take of the four new releases added together.
  • The Bridget Jones movie did look strong in its limited release, with an average of $16,700 per screen (actually higher than The Incredibles)
  • Among the 2000 screen films, Alfie was the weak sister with a total of only $2 million in its second weekend.
• MEDIA 8 ENTERTAINMENT - upcoming movie schedule.
• Playmate Gallery - Marilece Andrada, March 1998 staplegirl and former Baywatch Babe - Courtesy of PlayboyPlus.com!
• Four free short videos from Playboy's Amateur Home Videos!
• The Weekend Update site has now posted the complete Update from the Kate Winslet show
• Is it just a coincidence that the Clinton Library looks like a mobile home? I thought so, until I noticed that the ticket-takers are ol' Cletis and his coon dog.
• Crooked Timber: The British American Project. Why England, Ireland, and America should be one country.
  • The countries have a lot to give to one another. Great Britain would enter as three states, Northern England, Southern England, and Scotland. Northern Ireland and The Republic of Ireland would both become part of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Wales would become an independent country. Y'know, he's half kidding, but there is a lot of merit to what he is saying. The Neocon Red State lads, the fellas who are now calling the shots, would never allow it, of course. That would be six new democratic Senators, and would automatically apportion about 1/6 of the electoral votes to the new guys - all new Blue States.
  • As long as we are just spouting theoretical crap, there might be a way to make it happen politically. Before the Civil War, both sides would agree to admit a free state or territory if there was a corresponding slave state or territory, and vice-versa. Conservatives might agree to a new form of Missouri Compromise. They might admit the liberal, secular UK to the union if a conservative, religious country (say Poland, for a very realistic example) could be admitted at the same time.
  • The current name of the country is The United States "of America". It would have to be changed to the United States of the Atlantic or something. Something with an "A". Gotta keep the "A" so you don't have to order new stationery and towels.
• Are you already bored with Japanese octopus porn? Looking for something really different? You might try Ulli's Roy Orbison in Cling-film site: "Hello, and welcome to my homepage. My name is Ulrich Haarburste and I like to write stories about Roy Orbison being wrapped up in cling-film. If you have written any stories about Roy being completely wrapped in clingfilm please send them to me and I may put them up on the site. If you have a site with stories about other pop stars being wrapped in cling-film, mail me and we can exchange links. "
• Indignant conservative groups are protesting this week's opening of the film 'Kinsey', denouncing it as propaganda seeking to glorify the researcher they blame for inspiring the sexual revolution.
  • "Instead of being lionized, Kinsey's proper place is with Nazi Dr. Josef Mengele or your average Hollywood horror flick mad scientist," said Robert Knight, director of Concerned Women of America's Culture & Family Institute. "Kinsey mocks Christianity and condones immorality," added another spokesperson.
  • Jeez, I wasn't planning to see the movie until I read that, but now I'm curious. I guess the conservatives plan to draw a lot of attention to the film with protests, drawing on the same masterful battle strategy used by Bill O'Reilly to make Al Franken's crappy book a major best-seller.

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
 

Just a few clips today...

Die Mediocren (1995)

First there are two clips of Jasmin Tabatabai in 1995's "Die Mediocren". This German actress from Iranian descent has her own volume in the Encyclopedia. In the clips her boyfriend tells her she is too German and that doesn't go down too well with her.

• Tabatabai #1  (.wmv zipped, .avi zipped)
• Tabatabai #2  (.wmv zipped, .avi zipped)

True Woman (1999) - Part 5

I don't know where I was the second week of January, 2003 and I really don't know what I was doing, but on the 10th and 11th of that month, Tuna sent in his typical kick-ass caps of a movie entitled, "Sexy Movie." Haven't a clue how they escaped my attention, but almost two years later, as in last week, I looked at the same movie and grabbed a whole lotta caps from it.

Why? Well, because I didn't know Tuna had already done it, but that's pretty silly. In this business Tuna is the Simpsons. You'd be right 98% of the time you started to cap a movie if you would just say to yourself, "Tuna's done it."

And because it has a whole lotta nekkid babes in it. Including former Heffer, Katie Lohmann... which makes this officially the 12th movie I've capped with Katie Lohmann in it. That's a bit odd, I know, but everyone should have a hobby.

• Katie Lohmann (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10)

Other nekkid babes include two pornstars: the one-named gal with a nose the size of most porn-studs' schlongs, Kaylynn, and the former candidate for governor of California, Arnold... no, I mean Mary Carey. There is some logic behind casting two pornstars since Sexy Movie is a movie about the making of a (porn) movie, and who better to cast in that case?

In addition to Katie and Kaylynn and Mary, a few other gals get their kits off:

1) The enigmatic Amber Ambrose, who appears nowhere else in the history but is as cute as a button with a natural form that ought to be exposed more often. She may have used other names in other ventures but Googling her did me no good.

• Amber Ambrose (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7)

2) Dawn Arellano. She appeard in one of the Married People, Single Sex movies. Not what anyone I know would call a classic beauty.

• Dawn Arellano (1, 2)

3) Belinda Gavin, who here uses the name, Kylie Biscayne. She's a brunette with rather hard-looking facial features but a very well-toned shape.

• Belinda Gavin (1, 2, 3, 4, 5)

4) Nicole Glen, a blonde with robo-hooters (I am shocked to find such a specimen in a Skinemax feature). Short scene in which she lifts up her shirt, thank you very much.

• Nicole Glen

5) Three uncredited gals, showing off their chests as they make their collective way to audition.

• Unknowns

So what did I think? There is a lot to like about this movie. At no point does it take itself the least bit seriously, there is an extraordinary amount of flesh, Mary Carey plays a dumb, buxom blonde as well as Bruce Willis plays Bruce Willis, which he does in every movie. And the DVD extras, including a behind-the-scenes feature make it pretty clear that the porngals did some of what they are usually paid to do.

Take the scene capped in the 10th collage of hers: a supposedly sport-humpin scene with some canine approach. Now, I'm no expert, but there is something so obviously faked about these kinds of scenes when the couple is just going through the motions. But here? Well, I'm not one to impune the moral fiber of professional, classically-trained actress but it seems to me Ms. Carey and her mate were conjugating a few verbs, if you catch my drift. I'll send in some clips soon so you can... catch my drift, that is.

Bottom line is I've spent far worse times than I did in watching Sexy Movie. So if you get the urge, especially if you want to see what Mary Carey looks like in her natural element, this would be the movie for you.

Here are the porngals. A few comments are warranted:

Kaylynn is nekkid a lot.. a whole lot.. but I put together only the most explicit of her scenes (can you say "gyncocam"?) because she just isn't attractive. Oh her frame is just fine: she's slim and has a rather attractive caboose. But that shnoz! She could be a direct descendant of Jimmy Durante with a honker like that. I know. I'm shallow. If you like her, she's oft-unclothed in this movie and has done several dozen hardcore things.

• Kaylynn

And the Mary Carey sport-humping (cough, cough) scene. It goes along and she's grinding away and then, just as its supposed to end, the scenes cut to her in a fountain, getting her face sprayed with water. I don't get it. She's boffing a guy, he looks very, very interested and then the scene cuts to her having all this wet stuff on...her...face. Oh, I see. Calling Dr. Freud.

• Mary Carey (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14)

Paradise Falls season 2, week 9
More lesbian and hetero action. There may be a threesome next week. There are four weeks left.

• Danielle Hampton: lesbian sex with Michelle Latimer again.
• Chantale Quesnelle: great bikini and hot pants two sizes too small.
• Cherilee Taylor: boobs and butt in softcore sex scene.

Rescue Me: episode Butterfly
A mixture of "venus butterfly" cunnilingus and "zeuss juice" viagra.

• Andrea Roth: hands over boobs getting her shamrock tickled.
• Jill Latiano: mega cleavage.

"Canvas" (1993)
Crime drama about art theft.

• Cary Lawrence: partial boob.
• Melissa Pallascio: full frontal.
• Annie Juneau: leg.
• Denise Martin: obligatory topless stripper.

Cleaning up my hard drive...

• Amalia Leandro: partial boob in an episode of Exhibit A.
• Ingrid Kavelaars: braless pokies in an episode of First Wave.
• Sophie Avingaq: nude and pregnant in Glory & Honor.
• unknown: uncredited dead hooker topless in Da Vinci's Inquest episode The Strange Inside. Can anyone identify her?

"The Hillside Strangler"
2004 was a good year for the Hillside Strangler. There were two movies made about them, and yes the Strangler was a "them" rather than a "him". I haven't seen the other one, but this version is down, dirty, and nasty. It focuses on the killer and their victims; very little is shown about the police efforts to find and capture them.

For those that are unaware, two cousins in 1978 kill a hooker for revenge after she rats them out to a gang for starting a competing escort service. They rape and kill her, and then decide it's kind of fun, and start taking revenge on other hookers, then finally just women in general. This kept on for two years, and they collectively became known as "The Hillside Strangler".

The director said his intent was to not glamorize or glorify the killers, and in that he certainly succeeded. C. Thomas Howell and Nicholas Turturro made these characters about as unlikeable as possible, and the brutal rape and murder scenes in the Unrated version make this an extremely unpleasant movie to view. They made a crime film, but what they got was a horror film.

• The Victims of "The Hillside Strangler" big version (about 970k!)
• The Victims of "The Hillside Strangler" smaller version (about 400k)