Tuesday

Clubland

aka Introducing the Dwights

(2007)

If you have been following recent British Cinema, you probably have the general impression that the UK only exports two types of movies:

Type A: Cold new-style gangster pics with ultraviolence, black humor, heavy working class accents, colorful urban slang, sudden tone shifts, and lots of modern editing and photographic gimmicks - pace shifts, speed-ups and -downs, freeze-frames, extreme color saturation, and so forth. The prototype is Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels.

Type B: Warm small-town stories about eccentric provincials, centered around one individual or small group which struggles to be accepted while doing something unconventional: grannies growing weed, boys aspiring to ballet careers, housewives stripping for charity calendars, and so forth. If Dickens were still alive, he would be writing about these people instead of the city folks who were the eccentrics of his own time. The prototype here is The Full Monty.

Although Clubland is an Australian film, it is driven by British characters, and is a stereotypical British Type B. At age 50-something, an English immigrant (Brenda Blethyn) works in a lowly food service job in Australia, but has not abandoned the dream of her youth, a career as a ribald stand-up comic. Several nights a week she does a vulgar-but-not-too-vulgar act for anyone who will listen. Her ex-husband is also a two-bit entertainer, a C&W singer who once actually had a song on the country charts for three weeks. Although that was the end of his time in the big show, he matches his ex's enthusiasm for performing, and fits every possible gig around his normal job as a retail security guard. The family is rounded out by two sons: the sweet, socially awkward young man who anchors the story, and his brain-damaged but lovable brother.

If the film revolved solely around Brenda Blethyn's character, it would be a failure, because she is utterly unappealing. Blethyn has done a very similar character before, in Little Voice, and received an Oscar nomination for doing it, so she has it down to a science, but the character just grates on the viewer's nerves. She's never really concerned with the happiness of her two sons, but only wants them to conform to her own personal need for an unconventional family life and their support of her career dreams. She treats her shy son's girlfriends with contempt, and does everything possible to drive a wedge between her sons and the outside world in order to keep them in her cocoon. Her ex-husband seems like a genuinely good person, but she treats him with the disgust normally reserved for poisonous snakes near the family pets. Her performing is exactly what you would expect from a woman who has been at it for decades without success. Her lame act seems like one of those nostalgia acts where an old-timer does his familiar vintage routines to bring back memories for his fellow codgers. She's like the elderly Sinatra performing My Way for those who remembered when the song first came out. Except for one thing. Sinatra was resting on his laurels, and this character has no laurels to rest upon. With no material, no laurels, and a generally unpleasant personality, she's obviously destined to spend the rest of her life playing at rest homes and Shriner conventions, but she doesn't realize that because her schtick seems to work just fine in the rooms she plays. Then she gets her big chance at an important audition and the suits find her act uninspiring. That cold blast of reality sets her off on a binge of booze and self-pity in which she abuses everyone around her even more than usual. It's a standard Dickensian formula. She is Scrooge, while the soft-spoken, good-natured son is Bob Cratchet and the handicapped son with a heart of gold is Tiny Tim.

I suppose the ex-husband is the Ghost of Christmas Past. Or maybe he's Marley. Or maybe I'm stretching my metaphor too far.

Fortunately, her story is only a portion of what the movie has to offer. The parallel story, which follows the struggle of her sons to grow up and mingle with the people of the real world, is a pleasant coming-of-age tale. The "normal" son has to overcome severe shyness and a bad case of virginity, but he is fortunate enough to latch on to a girl who has been through enough frogs to spot a prince when she sees one. The girlfriend not only has to deal with his neurotic timidity, but also has to compete for his attention against a needy brother and a mother who wants to hold on to her son by driving away his girlfriends. This portion of the story, relating how the girlfriend overcame all those obstacles to love both a timorous boy and his spastic brother, is handled with subtlety and such close-to-the-bone honesty that you think it must be a verbatim transcription of somebody's own conversations. The warmth and candor of the coming-of-age story manages to push the mother's sloppy, pathetic showbiz dreams into the background. That's a good thing, because mom's life is incapable of carrying a film, but suffices to provide some spice for the kids' somewhat bland romance.

In order to complete the Dickensian portion of the tale, the Blethyn character, like Scrooge, needed some redemption, so the film's finale gave her a chance to say "What day is this?," and her son a chance to respond "My wedding day, sir ... er ... mum," whereupon she ordered everyone an enormous goose, sang a song with her ex-, and allowed the crippled boy to say "God Bless Us Every One."

  • Metacritic: 50
  • Rotten Tomatoes: 53%
  • IMDb: 7.2
  • Berardinelli 3/4
  • BBC 3/5
  • Guardian 3/5

Averaged out, those sources calculate to about two and a half stars, which is fair enough. It's too good to give a thumb down, but not compelling enough to force the thumb upward.

Emma Booth does three sex scenes, but the lighting is darker and the nudity more subtle than I would prefer. Here is the film clip. Collages follow.

 

 

* Yellow asterisk: funny (maybe).

* White asterisk: expanded format.

* Blue asterisk: not mine.

No asterisk: it probably sucks.

OTHER CRAP:

Catch the deluxe version of Other Crap in real time, with all the bells and whistles, here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Millennium Crisis

 (2007)

 

This is a Sci-Fi thriller set in the future. Clare Stevenson works for a job placement agency, but her real objective is to figure out which species she belongs to, because she is convinced she is not really Terran, despite the evidence of her official papers. The evil and mysterious Tao Jones comes around looking for a Bloodmask which, it turns out, is Clare's actual species and was also the title of the film before the distributors changed it.

Jones has a rather simple plan. Since he is a future alien vampire, he needs a steady stream of beings to feed on. He intends to cause a war, and then eat well on the wounded and dazed and confused. Bloodmaskians apparently have the ability to completely imitate any other race, so Jones will use the Bloodmask to imitate an ambassador, and murder another ambassador from another planet, thus starting a war. Clare is captured by one group after another, and deals with many different species as well as many different classes of androids.

Sci-Fi fans will enjoy this, and there is enough in the way of nudity and interesting visuals for the rest of us. While the production clearly suffered from both budget and time constraints, it is still watchable, and some scenes look much better than you would expect given the budget level revealed by writer/director Andrew Bellware in the DVD commentary. He also goes into great detail about lighting, continuity headaches, costume design, and every other aspect of making the film.

The film co-stars Ted Raimi, the brother of the hugely successful director of the Spider-man films.

The DVD will be released January 29th, 2008

Both the trailer and the director's blog contain some nudity.

 

 

Three women show breasts: Christa Kimlicko-Jones, Lindsey Roberts and Jennifer Gordon Thomas.

 

Christa Kimlicko-Jones

 

Lindsey Roberts

 

Jennifer Gordon Thomas

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


Bluebeard

(1972)

 

Today the Time Machine goes all the way back to 1972 for the story of a man, played by Richard Burton, who kept killing his wives. Fortunately for us, they were all beautiful women with great breasts.

 

Joey Heatherton in her best role for nudity, lots of tease then she rips open her top.

Nice titties from very sexy Agostina Belli.

 

Karin Schubert is naked in one brief far off shot.

Marilu Tolo in a see though top and then topless.

"Tiny Tots" from Nathalie Delon.

Okay, Raquel Welch does not get naked, but how do you leave her out.

Brief boobs from Sybil Danning.

Sybil showing her tits to Nathalie Delon.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Notes and collages

Roxanne

Daryl Hannah

In this modern retelling of "Cyrano," Steve Martin is at the top of his comedic game as he secretly woos Daryl Hannah through a handsome third party.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Ghosts of Edendale

A couple, Kevin and Rachel, moves to a new house. Soon Rachel begins seeing things and fears a recurrence of her mental instability.Meanwhile, Kevin starts growing further and further away from Rachel. He is writing a script that overtakes his life and he becomes almost morbidly obsessed with the status of the local community as well as the history of it.

 

Paula Ficara

 

 

 

 

 

 

Alibi

(2006)

No nudity, but three familiar faces in sexy roles.

Selma Blair

 

 

Jaime King

 

 

Debra Unger

 

 

 

 

 

 

'Caps and comments by The Gimp:

France had a golden age of porn, pretty much defined by the career of Brigitte Lahaie. Here she is in an honestly amusing movie, along with some of the women who had been or would become The Six Swedes. They include France Lomay and Barbara Moose. The movie got retitled as Rx for Sex in its American release because it deals with a horny doctor. Clever stuff. Two other semi-famous women in this movie are Monique Carrere and Julia Perrier (aka Julia Perrine). Monique and her large breasts were triple-billed in many French movies, both hard- and soft-core. Julia was one of the first pornstars to be a Penthouse Pet.

Barbara Moose

Brigitte Lahaie

Brigitte Verbecq

France Lomay

 

Julia Perrier


Mika Barthel

Monique Carrere

Sophie Duflot

 

 

 

 

 

Film clips of the women of Adrift in Manhattan. You probably never heard of Marlene Forte (VERY short clip), but if you're reading this page you surely know who Heather Graham is! Collages follow. Two of the Heather Graham collages are crap quality. I did this on purpose, not to make them crappy, of course, but to get them light enough so that the nudity was visible. As you will see in the film clips, the scenes were too dark to get a good look at her breasts without significant lightening. There is, however, a truly marvelous view of her bum! The scene of her being taken from behind is one of my favorites this year.

Marlene Forte

Rollergirl


 

Keith Richard's daughter, Theodora Richards, was fortunate enough to take after her supermodel mom rather than "Keef"

 

Kate Moss hauled out the giant nipples during her Mexican vacation

 

Here's that entire spread of the lily-white supermodel Lily Cole, who could easily join Pale Force.