Tuesday

Tuna
"The Fortunes and Misfortunes of Moll Flanders"

The Fortunes and Misfortunes of Moll Flanders (1996) was a joint British American PBS production of the classic Daniel Defoe novel directed by David Atwood. It starred Alex Kingston in the title role. It is being released on a Canadian 2 DVD set that includes an e-text version of the complete novel. For those who haven't read the novel or seen the film, Moll was born in prison. Her mother was arrested as a thief, but pled her belly (they didn't hang pregnant women). Moll was taken from her, but mom was sent to Virginia to the colonies. Moll was raised in one foster home after another, finally landing with gypsies. She ran from them, and found a place as a young girl in a good Christian home, where they raised her almost as one of their own children.

Everything went well until she turned into a sexy 18 year old, and both the sons of the family wanted her. The older one seduced her promising marriage, while the younger one actually wanted to marry her. The older brother talked her into marrying the younger brother, and convinced his parents to bless the union. Unfortunately, her husband died a few years later, and she left for the big city, a merry widow. Next, she married a man who wanted a playmate to help him squander money. Unfortunately, they were too good at it. He left for France to escape debtors prison, and she was again in search of a husband to support her. She didn't let the fact that she was still married stand in her way.

This time, she picked a sea captain from Virginia, and everything would have been fine, but she discovered that his mother was none other than her long lost mother, and incest was too much for her, so she went back to England. She posed as a wealthy woman, and married a man posing as a rich Irish land owner. On their wedding night, they each discovered that the other was essentially penniless. He became a highwayman, and she went off looking for another man. Her misadventures continued there, until she was finally reduced to being a thief, and was eventually caught and sentenced to be hanged. I will leave the plot there in case some of you want to see it.

Kingston is topless several times in each of the four segments of this mini-series. Acting, costumes, art design, locations and photography were all outstanding. It is, of course, 4/3, as it was made for TV. It is rated 8.0 at IMDB, but TV shows tend to be rated higher than other films. It won a BAFTA for original music, and was nominated for three others, including best actress. With four segments of nearly 90 minutes each, it is a time commitment to watch. If this is your kind of entertainment, it is a faithful telling of the story, and is a top notch production. If you normally don't like period pieces such as this, you will probably find it tedious. C.

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  • Alex Kingston (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, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37)

  • Johnny Web (Uncle Scoopy)
    MOVIES:

    Quick - who's America's best comic actor.

    Hint - 15-30 years ago, he was America's best serious actor.

    Who'd'a thunk it?

    Robert De Niro is one funny motherfucker. The first half hour of  Analyze That had me laughing out loud constantly. DeNiro is a mob boss, and his life is in danger in prison, so he concocts a plan to be released. This plan requires him to fake insanity. In the first 30 minutes of this film, he spends the entire time pretending to fail IQ tests and impersonating the entire cast of West Side Story. You ain't seen nothin' 'til you seen De Niro spinning around and waving his arms like Natalie Wood, singing I Feel Pretty with a phony-baloney Puerto Rican accent.

    In the next 30 minutes of the film, DeNiro is looking for a legitimate job ("you want da fuckin' car or not?"), finally landing a position as consultant to a mob TV show which is a lot like The Sopranos, except that the Don is an Australian guy - Anthony LaPaglia, who actually is Australian, despite all his years of playing Americans.

    There isn't any nudity, although it is an R for language, based on the fact that every sentence includes the f word. (For example, De Niro tells Billy Crystal that his wife "ain't exactly Emily Fuckin' Post in the etiquette department".) They filmed two scenes in a strip club without including any flesh, even though one of the strippers is trying to turn Billy Crystal on.

    The rest of the film can't compare to the first 30 minutes, but it was still one of the funniest movies I've seen in a while. Probably since the last film DeNiro was in.


    Oh, yeah, I found a bit of nudity today. Just a bit.  Femme Fatale has a pretty dumb plot, but you have to give Brian DePalma credit for A+ filmmaking in two respects. (1) That guy sure knows what to do technically. This film is storyboarded flawlessly,  looks and sounds magnificent. (2) He loves to photograph beautiful women in sexy scenes.

    That's not a bad combination of talents. He's a guy who knows exactly what to do with a camera, and what he chooses to do with one is to photograph naked women. He's our kinda guy!

    Disregarding the debatable merits of the movie, we can agree that Rebecca is about as sexy in this film as any mainstream actress has ever been. Girl is beautiful, has a magnificent figure, shows it all, and knows what to do with it.

    She also does a surprisingly good acting job. I don't think Judi Dench needs to retire quite yet, but Becca did just fine as the designated evil woman required for a noir. If you watch the original evil woman - Barbara Stanwyck, who is shown in a brief old clip with Fred MacMurray in the first scene of this movie - you'll see that she was no Dench herself, but she delivered what she needed to, and I'd say that Becca does as well. Plus, as De Niro might say, I didn't see Stanwyck dancin' around in no see-through panties on the Big Fuckin' Valley.

    Took me all day to do this stuff, so I'll have to do the movies tomorrow.


    OTHER CRAP:


    OTHER NON-CRAP:

    Back in the day, I used to love books. I guess I still do, but I don't have much time for 'em now. I still keep about 25 of my favorites on the bookcase next to me, where I can reach them while I'm working at my desk.  Those include Total Baseball, the Oxford English Dictionary, Peter Biskind's "Easy Riders, Raging Bulls", Dan Jenkins's "Semi-Tough", Nabokov's "Lolita", Dave Friedman's "A Youth in Babylon", Dave Barry's "Book of Bad Songs", and "Hollywood Hi-Fi", a book by George Gimarc and Pat Reeder.

    Pat who?

    Pat Reeder is a guy whose name is not familiar to you, but who affects your life every day. He's the guy who fucks up your modem and ruins your internet access.

    (No, just kidding, Pat).

    He's actually the guy who writes the jokes that your DJ tells every morning during your drive to work. He's also the guy who wrote the first few episodes of Barney the Dinosaur, although we can forgive him for that because he's a Texan, and was really shit-faced, and somebody dared him to create a purple dinosaur kiddie show. We know that the manly code of Texas honor requires drunks to accept all dares. He's also the guy who writes those Comedy Wire things that you see on the bottom of this page from time to time. If you wonder why your DJ and the Fun House tell the same jokes, Pat's the reason.

    The book I mentioned earlier, "Hollywood Hi-Fi", now out of print, is a tribute to all the worst albums every recorded by so-called celebrity singers like Bill Shatner and Crispin Glover. Pat's the one guy who loves Bill Shatner as much as Junior and I do. You can't get that book at the moment, but Pat has a new book out called "Nine Hallmarks of Highly Incompetent Losers."  It's a "reverse self-help" book that helps the reader attain success by avoiding nine stupid mistakes made by failures and idiots.  He illustrates his points with over 200 hilarious-but-true stories from his syndicated radio service, "The Comedy Wire."

    If you like weird news and dumb criminal stories, or if you've ever been forced to suffer through a boring business/self-help book like "Who Moved My Cheese?", you'll love "Nine Hallmarks of Highly Incompetent Losers."  It earned four stars from Wireless Flash News, and will be in bookstores nationwide next spring, but you can get the jump on the rest of America and get it now through Pat's website.  Cheaper than Amazon and every copy is personally autographed! 

    Click here (http://www.comedy-wire.com/bookorderpage.html) for a book excerpt, Real Audio updates on "Losers In The News," samples of the Comedy Wire and more. 

    FREEBIE ALERT!  Be the first Funhouse denizen to order a copy via credit card and win a free year's subscription to the Fun House. That's a whole year of access, completely free. If you pay $39.95 per month, that's worth more than $450! Plus the damned book costs less than thirteen bucks to begin with, including an autograph! Just mention on the order form that you saw it in Uncle Scoopy's Funhouse. (If you're not a member now, and are reading this on the free version, you'll have to prove that you're 18, or the second guy will get the prize.) This Sunday, Pat will let me know who got in first, and we'll announce the winners in next Monday or Tuesday's edition, depending on how long it takes to verify that the winner is old enough.

    And remember, I receive no cash for sending you there.

    Although, to be honest, the gold bullion he sent me will be as good as cash as soon as I can scrape the serial numbers off of it.

    Here's a taste, from Chapter 1: "Never Plan Ahead"...

    ...No organization, no matter how big or sophisticated, is immune to the pitfalls of bad planning.  Here are a few examples of what can be
    accomplished when a large group of professionals pool their talents and resources to spend a mountain of money on a poorly-planned project...

         One of Israel's leading architects was hired to create a new library for Israel's Academic Engineering College.  He wanted to show off by filling it with his unique design ideas,  including strips of clear Lucite in the floors and ceilings to let in sunlight all the way down from the
    roof to the lobby.  Only after it was built did he realize that men on lower floors would be able to look right up the skirts of women on the
    floors above them.  The brilliant architect admitted that he had gotten so wrapped up in 'innovative computerized planning' that he never stopped to think about why women object to glass ceilings...


     

    Here are the latest movie reviews available at scoopy.com.

    • The yellow asterisks indicate that I wrote the review, and am deluded into thinking it includes humor.
    • If there is a white asterisk, it means that there isn't any significant humor, but I inexplicably determined there might be something else of interest.
    • A blue asterisk indicates the review is written by Tuna (or Lawdog or Junior or C2000 or Realist or ICMS or Mick Locke, or somebody else besides me)
    • If there is no asterisk, I wrote it, but am too ashamed to admit it.

    Brainscan
    'Caps and comments by Brainscan:

    As Turkey Day approaches I have been busy. Today's offering is a major source of that busy-ness. It is the Grand Dame of Hefmates, Pamela Anderson in Barb Wire.

    So, okay, I says to myself. Take an hour or so, grab a bunch of frames from this movie, make sure you look in the deleted scenes and then stick em all together in a dozen or so collages. No problema.

    Oh, sure. A bunch of frames? How about 450? About 4 frigging hours (things do go slowly when you go through a movie one.... frame.....at.....a......time. The DVD is a picture-perfect transfer, the cinematography was dynamite and Pam... well she is Pam and tho I was never before a fan, I am now. She even done real good actressing in the movie, as her former and future hubbies would probably say. Seriously. I liked the movie, even when Pam had her clothes on, which was all the time except the first four minutes and in a very long bunch of outtakes. At those unclothed times she is wet. Real wet. Hosed down. Why, you ask. Because she works one night in a strip joint...in the year 2014... and her act is to get hosed down. Never mind.

    So 450 frames. Forced myself to select and to group things together into 34 collages. 24 of which are here today. Pam is topless only; there are some bum shots but those are for another time. The other ten collages I am saving for a special Turkey Day treat. The things I do for the love of nudity.

    Hankster
    'Caps and comments by Hankster:

    Today a different version of Frankenstein. From 1984 it's "Frankenstein 90", a French movie, which if you can stand the subtitles, is really quite a charming movie with a different twist. The star is Fiona Gelin, who in the first two caps shows us a little boob. The next three caps have Fiona as a "Babe in Peril" as dear old Frank played by 60's French pop star Eddy Mitchell decides he wants a little loving. The final two caps have three dead strippers hanging on meat hooks. These ladies will eventually be built into a bride for Frank.

    • Fiona Gelin (1, 2, 3, 4, 5)
    • Topless unknowns (1, 2)

    Variety
    Lindy Booth
    (1, 2, 3, 4)

    'Caps and comments by The Night:

    Lindy is probably best known as the blond girl that plays "Claudia" in the Tia Carrere syndicated series, "Relic Hunter".

    Here she is showing off some goodies that some breast men would die for! Beautiful exposure in scenes from the Canadian movie, "Century Hotel" (2001).

    Elizabeth Nottoli
    (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9)

    Excellent scans of the gorgeous Italian model, actress and all around babe. Topless in all, a hint of pubes in links 8 and 9.

    The Hitlon Sisters Paris and Nicky Hilton, the young socialites and heiresses to the Hilton Hotel empire. Some see-thru nipple exposure scanned by Squiddy.

    Kathleen Turner Brief nip slip and 'caps of her playing with a large dildo in scenes from the odd, high-camp Ken Russell film, "Crimes of Passion" (1984). Thanks to HBS.

    Glenn Close Vidcaps of Close topless and with a really bad 80's perm in 'caps from "Fatal Attraction" (1987), also by HBS.

    Britney Spears Britney wearing a revealing denim bikini top from an appearance in FHM magazine.

    Verona Feldbusch A sexy wonderbra pose from the the former Miss Germany (1993) turned actress.

    Pat Reeder www.comedy-wire.com
    Pat's comments in yellow...

    WOMAN FACES PRISON OVER SEX TOYS
    Keeps Your Sex Life Fresh! - Kathleen Grubbs was stopped for alleged DUI in White Oak, Texas, but she may face up to two years in prison for felony obscenity after the cop found 17 "obscene" items in her car, including vibrators shaped like male genitalia. Grubbs is a rep for Slumber Parties Inc., which sells sex toys to housewives at Tupperware-style parties. State law makes it illegal to "wholesale promote" obscene items, defined as items created primarily to stimulate sexual organs. The law allows police to assume that anyone with six or more such items intends to sell or promote them.

  • No wonder Anna Nicole Smith moved out of Texas.
  • It's just like selling Tupperware: you're touting the miracle of plastic.
  • If she was a little drunk, well...it helps to be drunk when you're selling vibrators.
  • The cop stopped her because he could tell she had a buzz on.


    NEW MICROPHONE MAKES BAD SINGERS SOUND GOOD
    It Gets Your Voice 'N Sync - IVL Technologies, a Canadian company that holds patents on lots of studio devices that make bad singers sound good, has packed them into a microphone-shaped device called the Karaoke TV Star that will sell at Wal-Mart for $69.95. It plugs into a TV and makes even the worst voice sound good. It not only corrects pitch, it can make a man sound like a woman and vice versa, lower your voice to a Barry White rumble, or make it so high, it sounds like you've been sucking helium. A spokesman said many recording artists use their technology - "far too many."

  • Or depending on how you look at it, not nearly enough.
  • The Bee Gees have used that "helium" setting for 30 years.
  • Know what this means? Britney Spears can finally sing live!
  • They have a heavy-duty industrial model called "The Shatner."
  • Michael Jackson could stop taking estrogen to make his voice high!...But he doesn't want to.


    BORDELLO REALITY SHOW
    World's Greatest Mom! - If you thought reality shows couldn't get any sleazier, HBO will soon air "Cathouse," a documentary taped in a legal Nevada brothel. The producers used hidden cameras to film 50 customers as they haggled with prostitutes at the Moonlite Bunny Ranch, including a couple celebrating their 15th anniversary with a threesome and a mom hiring a hooker for her 22-year-old virgin son. Amazingly, most later signed releases agreeing to let the film be shown. A Syracuse University media professor said it shows that some people crave "slobbering attention" so much, they'll sacrifice their privacy and dignity just to get on TV.

  • If they didn't crave slobbering attention, they wouldn't be at a bordello.
  • Can't those people just go on "Dr. Phil"?
  • The whores didn't mind being on TV...They've already appeared on "Temptation Island" and "The Bachelor."
  • Many of them will be making a second TV appearance on "Divorce Court."