TV Round-Up

Boardwalk Empire offered the first look at some flesh from Julianne Nicholson.

Hung started right off with a sex scene between Tom Jane and Kaitlin Doubleday. She doesn't show much - maybe a bit of areola, maybe not - but it's a hot scene.

A Very Harold and Kumar 3D Christmas

This film recounts the third adventure of two likeable Asian-American potheads. This time the boys (now men) manage to shoot Santa Claus, then save him (and Christmas) with emergency medical treatment. I didn't much care for the second film in this series except when Neil Patrick Harris was on film, but I enjoyed the first one, and I felt this one was approximately as good. It's damned funny. NPH is brilliant again as a Bizarro-world version of himself. The film is also creative. The lads have a new side-kick: a robot whose only imperatives are to make waffles and protect Kumar. There's ironic use of 3D, and a semi-ironic claymation scene which plays out very much like the Stay-Puft Marshmallow sequence in Ghostbusters. The film also has a good heart to go with its jokes, and together those elements form the sine qua non of Scoopy amusement.

It's rated a very solid 7.2 at IMDb, which makes it the highest in the series, although all three scores are similar (7.1, 6.7, 7.2). It pulled in 72% positive reviews per Rotten Tomatoes, which is just about as high as an offensive, lowbrow stoner film is ever going to get.

But I'll be damned if I know anybody I'd recommend it to.

Let me explain:

It's a sentimental family Christmas movie which carries a hard R rating for good reasons. So you tell me - excepting me, who the hell is the audience for this thing?

The people who are out looking for a warm film with sentimental messages about Christmas, friendship, and faithfulness in marriage will find all those things. They will also find violence, sex, nudity, obscene language, drug abuse and casual child abuse.

The people who are looking for a stoner film will find all the necessary elements here, but those are the dudes who ridicule their parents for watching It's A Wonderful Life. Underneath its silly, gritty exterior, this film IS It's A Wonderful Life.

The people who would enjoy both a stoner film and a Christmas film are too young to get into the theater.

So the entire target audience consists of emotionally retarded adults like me.

I'm not really expecting a $200M blockbuster here. Because holiday films have a longer-than-average shelf life, this one may manage to top the theatrical recepits amassed by the previous film in the series, which grossed $38M, but I wouldn't bet on it. It should do better on cable and/or DVD, where the teenagers in the real target audience will be able to watch it with impunity. Assuming that "impunity" means "some giggle weed."

These clips are cam quality

Paula Garces

Chernisse Yvette and Cassie Keller

the requisite naked nuns