Updates:

• Several dozen new individual volumes have been added to section B of the Encyclopedia. They are highlighted in yellow. I know that Section B is getting clumsy, but I need to keep plugging through all the individual volumes before I can see how to create the main Encyclopedia page. It seems to me that there is still a great benefit to having everything on one page, even though it is not so beautiful to look at, so I am keeping that in mind.

Havoc (2005)

Havoc is a vision of the differences between the real world of urban Latino gangstas and the bored mainstream teen culture, which emulates gangsta styles in order to impress their peers and fight off their boredom. The dramatic conflict centers around two girls from upper middle class families who become involved with the tattooed roughnecks of the barrios. The story begins with a antagonistic conflict on beach turf, proceeds to a dangerous drug-buying expedition into East L.A., which tempts the girls with the allure of the bad boys, and eventually leads them back into the barrio for the initiation rite into the Latino gang, which is basically an advanced version of spin the bottle. Of course, the consequences are disastrous for many of the people involved.

Many of the story's main storylines end unresolved. The Latino gang leader is marched off in cuffs to face a questionable rape charge, but his ultimate fate is not shown. One of the girls tries to commit suicide and (presumably, but not certainly) fails. The gangs meet one last time, and shots are fired, but that particular scene takes place in a blackout, and the result is left to our imagination.

The film is driven by an intense gangsta soundtrack and a dark, grungy look, with many scenes occurring in alleys and backyards at night, or in dimly-lit clubs and hotel rooms. The gloomy, threatening ambiance is meant to accentuate the sense of danger felt by the "fish out of water" when they leave their comfortable, expensive homes and come face to face with real gangstas. The sub-text of the film is the struggle of young people to achieve a sense of belonging, and the extreme lengths they will go to find a peer group to supply the kind of familial support and acceptance that they don't get at home or from their peers.

The director has previously established a reputation only for documentaries and is new to fictional films, but the team which created Havoc was not without a heavy lifter. It was written by Stephen Gaghan, who won an Oscar and a BAFTA for his script for Soderbergh's Traffic, and was once offered the coveted job of adapting The DaVinci Code. (Gaghan actually finished off the Havoc script after the original author was killed in a private plane accident.) This film, despite the final draft by Gaghan, is nowhere near an award-winning standard. It is basically the 2005 version of those 1950's films where the sweet cheerleaders in bobbysox would ditch their quarterback boyfriends to hang out with some guys with leather jackets and duck-tails. You remember those. The hoods and the jocks would come to blows. Meanwhile, the former girlfriends of the hoods would make life miserable for the cheerleaders who stole their boyfriends. All of those same elements are present here, updated for the new millennium.

I would have told you that the film is annoyingly predictable, especially in light of the expectations generated by the standards of an Oscar-winning author, but one particularly trite device takes the film beyond the status of mere annoyance and places it squarely within the pantheon of flat-out irritation. While all the events unfold, a student filmmaker from the suburban group is making his own documentary film, in which he asks the usual Dr. Phil questions of his contemporaries and gets an assortment of jaded, cavalier, and shallow responses.  I'm not sure if the documentary-within-a-film device is more hackneyed than the evil twin, but even if not, it must surely edge out amnesia, last minute rescues, and evil dwarves for the runner-up spot in the Miss Cinema Cliché pageant. It almost goes without saying that the evil dwarves get the congeniality award.

The biggest news about this film is not what is in it, but what is not. In the past year or so, the prevailing internet meme has been that the uncut version of this film had an Anne Hathaway masturbation scene with some surprisingly explicit close-ups, and a scene where she walks around naked showing everything front and rear. Did these scenes ever exist? I am not in a position to say. Are they on the unrated DVD? Not at all. Everything in the unrated DVD has already been widely circulated on the internet. In terms of nudity, it includes only female breasts and male buttocks. In terms of sexual activity, it portrays and suggests copulation of various types, but that is not unusual for an R-rated film. At one point, a threesome scene seems to include penetration in both of Bijou Phillips's lower orifices, but Bijou's lower body is obscured by another man's head. Nothing is shown explicitly. There is an inordinate amount of drug consumption and foul language, but we've heard all that before. In fact, if this "unrated" cut were to be submitted to the MPAA, it might earn an NC-17, but I would not be surprised at all if it were to receive an R.

 

Bijou Phillips Anne Hathaway Some other chick

Other Crap:

Movie Reviews:

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

"Bikini Chain Gang "

Bikini Chain Gang (2003) is a Fred Olin Ray effort written and directed by him, and produced by his wife. It is a comic spoof of the Women in Prison genre. Beverly Lynne is wrongfully convicted of armed robbery when the "Livng Dead Bandit" sticks up the bar she is waitressing in, and her boss, angry over her refusal to give him head, tells the police she was in on it. The prison has the usual lesbian prisoners and horny Matron. When Lynne is about to be given a new trial, the Livign Dead Bandit visits the matron, wanting Lynne killed. The plan doesn't quite work, and we learn the identity of the bandit, but not before everyone has sex with everyone else.

It is a three B performance from Beverly Lynne, Nicole Sheridan as the matron, and Belinda Gavin, Jassie and Brooke Taylor. IMDb hasn't discovered this one as yet. Fred had tongue firmly in cheek on this one, and never pretended that it was anything more than a lowbrow soft core sex comedy. This one barely meets genre requirements. C-.

Belinda Gavin Beverly Lynne Brooke Taylor Jassie Nicole Sheridon

XBOX MALFUNCTIONS
Throwing It Out Windows - After waiting in line until midnight or paying thousands of dollars online, some buyers of Microsoft's new Xbox 360 game console are complaining that they're malfunctioning. Problems include various error messages appearing, the screen going black, or the unit overheating. Microsoft said such problems are "par for the course" for a new product.

* ...If it's from Microsoft.
* "360" refers to the circles you make as you go to the store, bring it home from the store, take it back to the store...
* They may be overheating from friction because geeks have been rubbing their thumbs against them for 72 hours straight.
* Kids will know what they're getting for Christmas if the box under the tree starts smoking.
* Teenagers looking to have fun over the holidays will just have to commit actual grand theft auto.

NEW YORKERS DON'T KNOW THEY'RE FAT
Who's Going To Break It To Rosie O'Donnell? - A study by New York City's Department of Health and Mental Hygiene found that 1 million New Yorkers are obese, but nearly two-thirds of these obsess New Yorkers don't think they are obese.

* That's because two-thirds of the people surveyed were men.
* They think they just feel huge because their apartments are so tiny.
* This explains why New Yorkers mistakenly think that 200 people can fit on a subway car.