NEW FEATURE:

LAWDOG and THE GIST

Scoop's take on the young actors:

Robert Downey Jr is to acting as Brady Anderson is to home run hitting. Brady once hit 50 homers in a season, something no Atlanta, Milwaukee or Boston Brave has ever done (including Mathews and Aaron), something Lou Gehrig never did. Downey turned in a performance as Chaplin that was beyond good. But for both Brady and Downey, their second best performance was pretty disappointing.

Norton is in his own league. I agree with his ranking on top.

Cusack is the young Kevin Spacey. Neither guy is a Streep - I don't think you will see them playing Lithuanian female dwarves, but both guys bring a real person into their characters, and that's probably the most important thing an actor can do.

People don't like Dicaprio, but his portrayal of Rimbaud was as accurate as Downey's Chaplin. Unfortunately, (1) nobody knows or cares. (2)it's mostly because Dicaprio and Rimbaud are the same guy. If you read any descriptions of Rimbaud's looks and public behavior, you'd think they were talking about Dicaprio.

The Gist and Lawdog

Members' bonuses. Midsummer Night's Dream

This is some excellent filmmaking. It's difficult to bring a new spin to Shakespeare, and sometimes you wonder why people try, but this is an excellent 19th century interpretation, beautifully filmed.

The casting is quirky, but quite effective. Most of the actors just chose to speak in their natural accents. Kevin Kline just hung on to his American "r's", and Anna Friel made no effort to change her thick Lancashire accent into standard RSC English. I guess it doesn't matter, since they are supposed to be Greeks at the turn of the 20th century. I thought both Kline and Friel were good in their roles, once I got used to their speech. Some other strange casting: the Walter Winchell guy played Puck. He still looked like Walter Winchell with silly ears. I kept expecting him to deliver the news to Mr and Mrs Athens and all the ships at sea. Rupert Everett played Oberon in a brooding, soft-spoken, vaguely malevolent way that was reasonably effective. I didn't find either of those guys distracting, though. I thought the two best performances came from Sam Rockwell, a tiny American (marvelous in the offbeat "Lawn Dogs") who is a dead ringer for a young Paul Simon, and who milked the small part of Flute for a lot of emotion, and Calista Flockheart, who successfully negotiated both the accent and the iambic pentameter.

One other observation: the Razzies guy missed a hilariously bad performance from Sophie Marceau. Luckily she only has a few lines, so it doesn't affect the movie, but our whole room broke into laughter when she said "but, soft ....". I think Kevin Costner has found his co-star for Postman II, if the postman goes back to being a travelin' bad-Shakespeare guy.

Sadly the nudity, although beautiful and tasteful, is PG nudity. There is no nudity from Pfeiffer at all, but can you blame me for shooting a couple of Pfeiffer? She's 41, but she's radiant.

The official title of the movie is "William Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream". Undoubtedly, this is to distinguish it from the many competing versions out there, like Harold Robbins', Mickey Spillane's, and Steven King's. I think most people don't really know that many of Shakespeare's titles, so I would have called a certain abysmal movie "William Shakespeare's The Cable Guy"

Calista Flockheart

Anna Friel

Michelle Pfeiffer

Extras

Members' bonuses

wrote his own commentary today:

With all of the characteristics of a cult film, Nude for Satan is a very well-made DVD conversion. The film is a send-up of Gothic Horror and uses an amazing amount of nudity in the process. Today is the first of three for this film, with 8 composite images of the star -- Rita Calderoni. Note the papier-mache and pipe cleaner spider in image 4.

(#1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #7, #8)

Blinky's searches focus today on Chandra North. The first two and the last three are quite good.

(#1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #7, #8)

commentary and pictures by

The Honte

Hi! Here are the next four caps from "Constance". The movie is a pretty straight-forward sex movie, without all that much of a script. Not much time is wasted on anything that isn't related to sex (well, actually, I don't think a single scene isn't about sex, when they are not doing it, is the female storyteller reading letters about the sex). The story is basically about Constance, a young woman (portrayed by Anaïs) who comes to the house of Lola (Katja Kean) to learn about the joys of sex.

His work is available at www.honte.net, a bi-weekly newsmagazine. Very good site. He specializes in Scandinavian celebs, but also features a whole range of international topics. many of his back issues are available as well.

Anais Kean both both

Tuesday's girl: Leilani.(#1 , #2 , #3 , #4)

The Sun also ran another Rachel Hunter article, with this semi-nude.

WhyScan's Page Three report appears here exclusively, and every day if I don't screw up! His earlier posts are archived in our subscription area. Click here to sign up, get info, or log in

PLUS

Fred specializes in "outing" the harder action from the wholesome girls of Page Three and Playboy Newsstand Specials. Here are today's comments:

"It seems that I may have confused Karen White with Judy Jago in my last post, so this is Karen with Monika Hajkova (Porn Actress Katty Mass) & Jasmine from Club International Aug. 1997. Here's a couple of extra pics of Monika. They do establish Monika's porn credentials, but I just like pictures of Monika and couldn't figure any other way to sneak them into a post.

The three together (#1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #7, #8, #9, #10, #11, #12, #14, #15, #16) The other Monica pictorial (#1, #2, #3)

Members' bonuses. Wild Wild West

And so our new releases go from the top of the Kevin Kline food chain to the bottom. Wild Wild West is "The Betsy" of it's own era:

Both films spent a zillion dollars and hired the best and/or most popular actors in the world

Both films turned a great actor (Olivier, Branagh) into a silly cartoon. Olivier at least kept some humanity in his role, despite his poor accent and the flashbacks where he had to play a young man. Branagh was just atrocious. This is a shame, because the original Doctor Loveless, the tiny Michael Dunn, brought a great deal of complexity to the role. Educated and refined, he was more than just a obsessed madman, and he was a greater man than West in many ways, but he could not forgive West his young, strong, straight back.

The Betsy at least had some good nudity from some beautiful women. Wild Wild West only had a brief look at Salma's butt. This could have been a good movie, but it degenerated into 100% techno-gimmickry, at the expense of characterization. Kline, Branagh, and Smith might have kicked some ass with a good script, but they just had nothing to build on. I can't believe I sat through this twice. Oh, well, at least the Salma collages came out pretty nice.

Salma

Garcelle Beauvais

Members' bonuses

Wednesday

Members' bonuses. Midsummer Night's Dream

Members' bonuses. Wild Wild West