Madame Hollywood (2002) is a very weak T & A piece totally unknown to IMDb. It stars Mia as a midwestern girl who comes to Hollywood with her boyfriend hoping to become and actress. She end sup without the boyfriend, but running a brothel. As the film opens, we see two vice cops listening in on Katie Lohman with a John. They bust Mia, and the rest of the film is her statement to the police.

She ran ito the usual sleazy casting directors, and eventually came home to find her boyfriend in bed with another woman. She went to work as a stripper, and eventually started turning tricks. The strip club owner, played by adult star Hershal Savage, was taking too high a percentage, so she and three other girls quit and opened the brothel. She manages to charm the vice cop, who didn't really like being a cop anyway, and everyone lives happily ever after.

Mia shows breasts in several scenes, including one where she proves she doesn't know the first thing about stripping. We have breasts and buns from Lohman during the opening scene, Shauna O'Brien dancing for a trick, and Brandy Miller, also proving she doesn't know how to strip.

This is talky, there is no heat in any of the sex or strip scenes, the plot is paper thin and predictable, the music is way too loud and intrusive, and the video quality is not good. On the other hand, all of the characters were likable, and the acting wasn't glaringly bad. With a nipple count of 8 in 60 minutes, it delivers the minimum for the genre, and is hence a low C-.

Waiting to Exhale (1995)

I suppose that IMDb is probably the best site on the internet if you measure that by the difference between it and its nearest competitor. If you score IMDb at 100, I don't know if the next best film site is even a 25. I love the site and have visited it every day for years and years. Why am I saying this. I guess cuz I'm about to trash some elements of the rating system. The IMDb rating system has its flaws. It is dominated by films which appeal to young, white males. The most egregious example of that is that the execrable toy commercial known as Return of the Jedi is rated among the top 250 films of all time.

Waiting to Exhale is a chick flick, by any definition, including our official objective measurement. (The IMDb male score minus IMDb female score is 1.0 or more). It is a black chick flick. To elaborate, it is a gentle, mature black chick flick about powerful, educated, upper middle class women. To top it off, it does a healthy bit of male-bashing. In other words Waiting to Exhale is on the South Pole if IMDb's fan boys are on the North, so this puppy ain't never headed for the Top 250.

It's actually a pretty decent flick, much better than you'd expect from the 5.1 score at IMDb. It pulled in more than sixty million at the box office, Roger Ebert scored it at three stars and Rotten Tomatoes says it got 50% positive reviews.

Now don't get me wrong, lads, I didn't enjoy it that much myself. Like most of you reading this, I'm into sports and guns and hookers and poker and fast cars and sizzling steaks and tall glasses of scotch and other manly, big penis stuff. This film has no squinty-eyed shoot-outs in dusty saloons, no car chases through the L.A. river, no gross belly laughs, and no sharks with frickin' laser beams. It has minimal nudity, and all the sex is presented from the women's point of view. In other words, it is missing all the things that make both life and the movies worthwhile. Watching it is like hanging out with Oprah for a couple of hours, pretending to be mature and evolved enough to meet her standards. But although it is not my kind of movie, I can recognize that the script tried to show the real problems faced by people in this demographic. Even the most successful and beautiful women find it as hard as the rest of us to find love, and have to kiss a lot of frogs before they find a prince. This is not an especially profound insight, and it is not particularly easy to sympathize with these women who have material comfort and each others' deep friendships for spiritual comfort, but at least the film tried to speak honestly about their lives, and the box office showed that many women were able to relate to the film's messages.

It was directed by Forest Whitaker in a quiet, understated and subtle way that kept the film from degenerating into a sassy, high fivin', "you go, girlfriend" kind of thing, which it could easily have become. On the other hand, a little less dignity and a little more energy and humor might have made the film work better for me, because on the day I saw it, I left my vagina in my other suit.

• Lela Rochon (1, 2, 3, 4)

California Split (1974)

This is a film about obsessive gamblers. The review today was written not by me, but by our poker wizard, a professional gambler himself, Silver Dollar Sam. Full review

It's a Bob Altman film. As you know, Altman had two periods of genius which occurred before and after a long dry spell. Altman was a whiz from 1970 to 1975 or 1976, and then again from 1992 to the present, more or less. In between those periods ... eh ... not so much. This is from Altman's first period of genius, the 70s, when he churned out M*A*S*H, Nashville, and McCabe and Mrs Miller. In fact, this was the film he made just before Nashville.

The only (extremely dark) nudity comes from Alyce Passman, who had never been in anything before, and has been in nothing since.

• Alyce Passman (1, 2)

Dodgeball (2004)

I've talked about this before. Funny movie! Full review

There's no nudity in the movie or in the special features. The only thing I wanted to talk about today is the alternate ending on the DVD. The theatrical release ends with a great triumph for the underdogs. Just as they lose the match, the bad guy gets called for a foot fault, and the good guys come back to win, get a trillion dollars, etc.

In the director's original ending, there was no foot fault. It ended with the bad guys congratulating one another. No softening of any kind. Bad guys slapping fives, run credits. The director fought to keep that ending, but the studio made him re-shoot.

Wow! Artistically daring stuff! The film would probably not have done as well commercially, but that would have been just about one of a kind!

• Christine Taylor (1, 2)

Other Crap:

• Firefox users ignore online ads, change the internet business model. This coudl be a very big deal, because many sites rely on ad revenues to maintain viability. If Firefox gains share and clicks fall, ad revenues may fall. Then there will have to be, as the business geeks say, "a new paradigm". Somehow, I think we and the internet will survive.
• Ultimate anti-spam guide: 11 products tested. (ZDNet)
• Did you think the movie Dodgeball was just kidding around? Fox Sports Net has signed on to televise the World Rock Paper Scissors Championship.
• Eliminating all questionable totals, the record for homers in a year is re-set at 49. Ted Kluzewski now holds it, along with Harmon Killebrew and F. Robby.
• Homeland Security nominee was a deadbeat NYPD officer in 1987.
• Former Miss Norway hangs around downtown Oslo in the buff. That might not seem so weird to you if you've never spent a December in Oslo. (Note: "Neste bilde" means "next picture". There are a bunch of them.)
• Indiana Man Killed By One Of His Pet Wildebeests. Hey, in Indiana, this was big Gnus.
• Staying put: Cubs, Nomar agree to 1-year deal. Nomar got all the Red Sox heartbreak, none of the glory. Signing with the Cubs secures his commitment to heartbreak.
• Parents who oppose New Brunswick's middle school sex education curriculum say the program's resource material includes internet links to pornographic websites.
• Interesting question. It never occurred to me to question this, but now that you mention it ... did Vikings really wear horns on their helmets?
• Michael Moore Urges Democrats to Embrace Hollywood.
• The Candy Critic. Everything you ever wanted to know about sweets. Check that. WAY more than you want to know.
• Ten minutes from the new Adam Sandler comedy, Spanglish
• C-grade celebrities hope that a peace rally will re-invigorate their careers.
• The U.S. Supreme Court ruled today that San Diego officials were right to fire a policeman who sold sexually explicit videotapes of himself in uniform. The unsigned, unanimous opinion reverses a Court of Appeals decision by the ever-wacky 9th Circuit.
• The follow-up story: Teen passes away. Dying wish for Cameron Diaz blow job never granted.
• Here's the trailer for Dark Water, Jennifer Connelly's new film. : "Based on a film by the successful Japanese filmmakers who created 'The Ring' comes this haunting, chilling film about a young mother who goes to extreme lenghts to keep her daughter safe. Dahlia Williams (Jennifer Connelly) is starting a new life; newly separated with a new job and a new apartment, she's determined to put her relationship with her estranged husband behind her and devote herself to raising her daughter, Ceci. But when the strained separation disintegrates into a bitter custody battle, her situation takes a turn for the worse. Her new apartment - dilapidated, cramped, and worn - seems to take on a life of its own. Mysterious noises, persistent leaks of dark water, and strange happenings cause her imagination to run wild, leaving her to wonder who is behind the endless mind games. As Dahlia frantically searches for the links between the riddles, the dark water seems to close around her. But one thing trumps all others in Dahlia's world: no matter what it is that's out there, nothing is going to harm her little girl."
• Fallujah.US has added more raw video footage from the US Military Offensive in Fallujah
• I'm not really sure why you would want this, but here, in Adobe-friendly format, is just about every Beer Logo you can imagine
• Think there's no good reason to visit Cleveland as a tourist? I guess you haven't heard about the Contraception Museum, one of the very few places where you can find out what crocodile dung and beaver-testicle tea have in common. In fact, if you need to know that, your choices are pretty much just the Cleveland Contraception Museum and the Clinton Library.
• Woody Guthrie's Hanukkah songs.
• Craig Ferguson to replace Craig Kilborn. He beat out the others on the short list: Craig T Nelson, Jenny Craig, and the woman who used to be Batgirl.
• Paris Hilton covers Lennon's "Fame", Blondie's "Heart of Glass". Do you believe this album will not be ready for Christmas? This would have been my Christmas present to everyone on my list. Now you'll all be getting "Hung for the Holidays" instead.
• Baby Spice as America's next pop diva?
• Posh Spice as the Virgin Mary? Yes, in wax. Madame Tussaud's has created a nativity scene from their wax celebrities.
  • "David and Victoria Beckhams' waxworks take the role of Mary and Joseph. President Bush, Tony Blair and The Duke of Edinburgh are the Three Wise Men and Kylie Minogue is the Guardian Angel. Other celebrities to feature in the nativity are Graham Norton, Samuel L Jackson and Hugh Grant as shepherds."
  • I did like the idea of one of the shepherds looking like "Julie Andrews on heroin", but it turned out that the story was mistaken. The third shepherd wasn't really a wax Hugh Grant. It was the real Hugh Grant.
  • Samuel L Jackson as a shepherd? "This here's the Sheep Dog. When you absolutely, positively got to round up every motherfuckin' sheep in the herd, accept no substitutes."
• The Daily Show looks at the new troop levels in Iraq. Jon says the military is calling up reservists who haven't served since the 1960s.
• The best new Christmas song --- Denis Leary's Merry Fuckin' Christmas.
• Army-Navy Football Game: Full Text of President Bush's Pre-Coin Toss Remarks (WHITEHOUSE.ORG)
• The Pirelli Calendar for 2005. (Slow loader)
• Here's the trailer for Appleseed: "With eye-popping, in-your-face visuals, 'Appleseed' boasts a new form animation called '3D Live Anime.' A combination of groundbreaking three-dimensional computer animation, in conjunction with two-dimensional character animation recreates the best qualities of traditional cel-based anime. Set in the year 2131, after most of the world has been devastated by war, 'Appleseed' chronicles the battle between mankind and bioroids, a race of cybernetic pseudo-clones designed to aid humans in domestic capacities. But when ideologies flare and aggression rises to the surface, the thin veneer of peaceful coexistence is shattered."
• Ray Charles receives seven Grammy nominations. Death can often be a good career move. Look what it did for Elvis.
• Colin Powell's new job? Film critic. He and The Filthy Critic should do a syndicated show together, like Siskel and Ebert.
• Uma Thurman becomes the new face of Louis Vuitton.
• Princess Diana considered fleeing royal life with her palace bodyguard lover Barry Mannakee.
• This story has two parts: the first part is that a family put their late grandfather's ghost and cane up for sale on e-bay. The explanation was a cute story and the auction fetched $105. Here's the actual e-bay link.
• Now here's MSNBC's version of the story - Ghost cane nets $65,000 on eBay. So which is it? $105 or $65,000?
• Misheard lyrics for Christmas Songs (aka Mondegreens)
• More crazy-ass behavior alleged against Naomi
• Weekly World News - "World's Priciest Hooker Charges a Million Dollars Per Night"
• A new clip from The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou
• Here's a useful Google Utility - unsafe search. It performs a full search and a safe search, and then shows you only the difference between the two!!

Other Crap archives. May also include newer material than the links above, since it's sorta in real time.

Click here to submit a URL for Other Crap

MOVIE REVIEWS:

No "Damsels in Distress" today, just a little "Hankster Lite".

First up the always delectable Heather Locklear with some cleavage in "Return of Swamp Thing".

• Heather Locklear (1, 2)

Then we move on to Amanda Detmer with an almost but not quite topless scene in "Saving Silverman".

• Amanda Detmer (1, 2, 3, 4, 5)

Part 2 of 2.

The second batch of 'caps featuring scenes from "Sexo con Amor", a very good sex comedy from Chile.

Sigrid Alegría plays a teacher who is having an affair with the father of one of her students.

María Izquierdo plays a wife that isn't interested in sex anymore, so she leaves her husband always horny.

Javiera Díaz de Valdés plays a niece of Maria Izquierdo who comes from France and had a thing for her uncle ever since she was a little girl, so she keeps teasing him, making him even hornier.

• Sigrid Alegría, baring all 3 B's. (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12)

• María Izquierdo, topless in the tub. (1, 2, 3, 4, 5)

• Javiera Díaz de Valdés, toplessness, plus brief pube views in links 1, 8 and 10. (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10)

"Lost Reality"
National Lampoon has a reputation for outrageousness, and their 2004 direct-to-video spoof of reality shows is about as twisted and brazen as you'll find. I'm one of those that think reality shows are total garbage, not to mention totally staged and unrealistic, but I will admit that the contents of this movie left me rolling on the floor.

Supposedly, the film is a compilation of vignettes of episodes that never aired, and were sent to National Lampoon in reponse to a call for submissions early in 2004. I personally suspect some were staged just for the movie, but either way, they get the point across.

Episodes include segments of Amazing Racist, where a racist purposely offends minorities to see if he gets the crap beaten out of himself, The Whore, where guys who think they are on a dating show are interrupted in the middle of sex to be told that the woman is a prostitite (who then tells the audience what a crummy lay they were), Casting Couch, where women are convinced to read plots for scripts not containing nudity - in the nude, Caught Stealing, where contestants must steal things without getting caught, American Porn Star, where contestants compete in front of the all-porn-star judge panel, Take That Drug, where contestants binge on drugs until the last person stands, and several other equally outrageous segments.

Totally gross, crude, immoral, offensive, inappropriate, and oh yes, funny. Even if none of these were real, they make a point and they make you laugh.

• Casting Couch
• The Whore
• American Porn Star

"Further Tales of the City" (2001) (miniseries)
Sequel to Tales of the City this time with alot of male frontal nudity.

• Laura Linney: boobs and bush.
• Sara Bradeen: boobs.
• Mary Kay Place: cougar cleavage.
• Barbara Garrick: legs only this time.
• Francoise Robertson: pokies, kissing Barbara.
• Sandra Oh: legs.

"I-Spy" (2002)
Eddie Murphy buddy movie co-starring some guy who resembles Nick Nolte.

• Famke Janssen: sleeping in her skivvies.
• Kendall Saunders: tight tank top.

"Shanghai Noon" (2000)
Jackie Chan western-comedy with buddy who also resembles Nicke Nolte.

• Eliza Murbach: cleavage. The brunette on the right is Kendall Saunders.
• Kate Luyben: mega cleavage.

"Ordinary Magic" (1993)
This could have passed as a family movie if it wasn't for a Glenne Headley's doing her when-harry-met-sally impression.

• Glenne Headly: clevages, dark sex scene.
• Cara Pifko: bikini.

"Paradise Falls": Season 2, week 12
This week it's Michelle Latimer's turn to show some skin. Next week is the season final.

• Cherilee Taylor: doing what all wiccans do, mixing potions while topless in the kitchen.
• Michelle Latimer: boobs almost falling out of her domitrax outfit while getting spanked.

Scoops,
I nearly fell out of my chair!

I was watching the tube the other day, and a commercial comes on for Winners stores (Canadian division of TJ MAXX... Who do I notice playing the everyday Mom in a nice, button down, floral print dress, but Catalina Larranaga!

Thought I was nuts for a second, but I'm certain it's her, and it's relatively new too. Kinda strange considering I thought she was still getting regular work from the Skinemax field, and didn't think she had any Canadian ties....

Just wondering if anyone can confirm.

-DA

Subject: Catherine Zeta-Jones

Scoops,
Up here in Canada, on Showcase they recently showed "Sheherazade", Catherine Zeta-Jones' first movie (also called "1001 Nights").

Unfortunately, it seemed edited as the famous airplane scene was missing. Is there an edited version? Can anyone shed a light on this?

-H

BUSHES MEET P. DIDDY
So Embarrassed, He Nearly Died - Sean "P. Diddy" Combs ran his "Vote Or Die" campaign to defeat President Bush, but he didn't realize that the White House tour he took over the weekend would be conducted by George and Laura personally. The New York Post reports that Bush kept saying, "So you're Sean Combs?" When it was revealed that he and Laura share a birthday, the President suggested they celebrate jointly next year. P. Diddy said, "I'll arrange that," and as he left, said, "You have a nice house."