Updates:

• I added another 400 new pics to the encyclopedia - 53 new volumes in section B. (Last two days'  changes in yellow)

The 40-Year-Old Virgin (2005 - unrated DVD)

These comments and nudity summaries refer to the unrated DVD:

Like our founding fathers, there are certain truths which I hold self-evident. You know, simple truths like "we have an inalienable right to liberty," and "any dish with sour cream in it will taste pretty good," and "Jessica Alba is smokin' hot." In fact, my self-evident truths are not that different from those of the founding fathers. They had no way to know about Jessica Alba, but all of them were known to cast lustful eyes at Dolly Madison, especially that rapscallion Jefferson. What the hell do you think they meant by "the pursuit of happiness"?

One of my self-evident truths is that comedy is as worthwhile as drama or tragedy. Write down why you think art is important. When you are satisfied with your definition, you will see that it applies to comedy and drama equally. You might have written, for example, "it offers us insight into the human condition," or "it entertains us," or "it allows us to understand others better." No matter what you have on your list, there is no reason why comedy cannot do it just as well as drama. Taking the point a step farther, you might even argue that comedy is even more worthwhile than drama, since (1) making people laugh makes them feel good, and that's a positive contribution to humanity (2) many doctors contend that laughter is therapeutic in many ways and for many conditions.

Furthermore, a universally praised comedy is more of an achievement than its tragic or dramatic equivalent because it is more difficult to make people laugh than cry. Hell, it's easy to provoke tears. Show children being brutalized. Show people dying needlessly, before their time. Show a faithful dog waiting patiently for a gentle and beloved master who will never return. 100% effective.

Dying is easy.

Comedy is hard.

The tragedy formulas work on everyone, so it is possible to create a drama with nearly universal appeal. The faithful dog trick works on everyone from Hitler to Mother Theresa. Not so with comedy. Because there is no universal formula comparable to the tragedy rules, it is difficult to make comedies with universal appeal. The ability of a comic to turn jokes into laughter is contingent on the preconceptions of the listeners. Ask Mort Sahl, whose job was to ridicule those in power. He was feted as the funniest man in the world when Eisenhower was in power, then was relegated to smoky half-empty nightclubs when his job became to make pointed barbs about JFK. Ask Dennis Miller, universally regarded as one of the greatest comic minds in history until he turned his sharp barbs at liberal America. They didn't stop being funny, but their core audiences stopped laughing. A comic has to tailor his material in order to get laughs, and he had better know his audience. The ethnic jokes - no matter how brilliant - will be booed by the PC nutburgers. The sex jokes will be poo-pooed by the religious nutburgers. And don't plan on a career in comedy if you're planning to use your wit against liberals. Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert, who love to rail against stupidity on both sides of the aisle, actually get catcalls from the audience when they use their wit to make even the most obvious points, if their jokes are contrary to the liberal canon - for daring to notice that Rosa Parks has been wildly overrated by history, or that John Kerry is a stiff-ass douchebag. They are funny and sophisticated men, but their audience just wants more Bush=chimp jokes.

Which brings us to award season. It is reasonably easy to obtain consensus on the effectiveness of dramas, but next to impossible to get people to agree on comedies, so the awards always follow the path of least resistance. Deep Throat advised Woodstein to "follow the money," but that only works in politics. When it comes to movie awards, the resident nabobs almost never follow the money, because the money follows comedies and fantasies, and the elders of the cinema church simply don't consider those worthy. (They finally had to break down and award Return of the King when it became obvious that they'd look like complete fools if they ignored one of the supreme achievements in the history of cinema, but I don't believe they will ever award a true comedy, no matter how good it is.)

When was the last time that a comedy won Best Picture? No, I don't mean one of those character-based films like Tootsie, or a musical comedy like Chicago, but a comedy that actually makes people laugh. Where are the Farrelly's Oscars for There's Something About Mary and Dumb and Dumber? Where are Groucho's Oscars for Duck Soup? Where is Leslie Nielsen's Oscar for playing Frank Drebin in Police Story? Where are the Oscars for those guys who wrote Airplane?

They must be in the mail.

Mel Brooks does have a screenwriting Oscar for The Producers and Woody Allen has two, including one for Annie Hall, which also won him Best Director. Woody is just about the only comedy writer who doesn't get the door shut in his face by the H'wood establishment. He has something like 13 "best original screenplay" nominations, including some for mediocre movies. (Alice??)

The British, to their eternal credit, do a much better job of recognizing comedy. They do not treat comedy writers as equals, but they do occasionally let them sit with the adults. In 1994, they gave the original screenplay BAFTA to Harold Ramis and Danny Rubin for Groundhog Day, as they well should have, over The Piano and In the Line of Fire. Groundhog Day was not even nominated for an Oscar! In 1997 the Brits gave the Best Picture award to The Full Monty over Titanic. I'm not sure that I support that decision, but the point is that at least they were inviting comedy to sit at the big boy table. (For the record, the Brits have been more accepting of fantasy films and other genre movies as well, awarding Best Picture awards to The Fellowship of the Ring and The Usual Suspects in years when the Yanks were honoring A Beautiful Mind and Braveheart.)

Which finally brings us back to The 40-Year-Old Virgin. Let us imagine a different world. It is one in which comedies are treated as equals and therefore receive at least half of the Oscar nominations, and includes a filter that prevents tragedies or dramas with a few funny lines from getting any of the comedy nominations. In such a world, The 40-Year-Old Virgin would be nominated for Best Picture. It is not only a very funny movie, but it is also involving, and tremendously perceptive about human relationships. It is one of the two funniest comedies (with Wedding Crashers); it is one of the two or three best movies among the comedy entries (with Broken Flowers and Wallace and Gromit); and is the only film which is a shoo-in for both lists. Essentially it is the best comedy of the year, which would automatically earn an Oscar nomination in a good and just world.

The film provided Steve Carell with a chance to to come off the comedy bench and become a star. He stepped up and slugged it out of the park. He just plain nailed this role as well as it could be done, and he did 90% of it without trying to be funny in any obvious way. He just delivered his lines in character and trusted the material and his supporting cast. He played the Mary Tyler Moore role. Right choice. And some good acting as well.  He played the entire part well within the limits of credibility. If you watch this movie, you will never doubt for a minute that he really is a virgin. 

The basic plot is that three rowdy retail guys find out that their 40-year-old colleague is a virgin, and they resolve to get him laid. Various well-intentioned but stupid attempts fail for various reasons, but our hero does eventually find a girl on his own. Unfortunately, he is too timid to have sex with her because he has no idea what he's doing, and he's too intimidated to admit his virginal status. That's about all there is to it. Pure and simple premise. The brilliance is in the execution, the balls-to-the-wall humor, and the empathy we establish for the characters.

I liked the DVD extras just as much as I liked the film itself. Basically, there isn't a bad minute anywhere. The deleted scenes and outtakes are just as funny as the film itself. The scenes were deleted for one of two reasons: (1) in some scenes, the guys improvised a lot of different jokes and kept the one they liked best, so the others got deleted;  (2) in other cases, the material was too naughty or the lines were too hard to understand. The full-length commentary is also funny, and even some of the completely unrelated material (Seth Rogan's "My Dinner With Stormy") is a hoot!

According to IMDb, Jamie Elle Mann has only been in two movies. The 24-Year-Old Virgin and The 40-Year-Old Virgin!!

 

Jamie Elle Mann

Laura Botrell

Catherine Keener

Stormy Daniels

Kimberly Page

Other Crap:

"HILLARY SUPPORTS GIVING FLAGS RIGHT TO VOTE" ... Attempt to Position Herself as Centrist, Observers Say

Poetry in Translation

• This is cool. Type in a sentence. Google translates it to German, then French, then back to German, then back to English again.
• Here is my answer: "we a small number, us a small number, we provide fortunately brothers." Can you guess what I typed in?

Here's a gazillion of those Kelly Brook pics without any annoying ads, or for that matter any annoying Billy Zane. (Well, maybe one arm here and there.)

Colin Farrell treated for medication dependency, exhaustion

The National Board of Review of Motion Pictures gave its best-picture award Monday to "Good Night, and Good Luck"

• "Two performers who underwent significant transformations for their roles received the top acting honors from the National Board of Review: Philip Seymour Hoffman as Truman Capote in 'Capote,' and Felicity Huffman as a preoperative transsexual in 'Transamerica.'"

'Brokeback Mountain' won three of the top four awards from the New York Film Critics Circle

• Best Picture: Brokeback Mountain
   
• Best Director: Ang Lee, Brokeback Mountain
   
• Best Actor: Heath Ledger, Brokeback Mountain
   
• Best Supporting Actor: William Hurt, A History of Violence
   
• Best Screenplay: Noah Baumbach, The Squid and the Whale
   
• Best Actress: Reese Witherspoon, Walk the Line
   
• Best Supporting Actress: Maria Bello, A History of Violence
   
• Best Cinematography: 2046 (three different men)
   

"A COMPLICATED dance, a bite on the rump and ferocious backward kicks are all part of the wombat's lovemaking repertoire"

• Either that, or they are rehearsing for Kung-Fu Hustle 2.
• In my experience, that makes wombats eminently qualified to become stewardesses

Family Guy - Brian proves Peter's fatness with a scientific demonstration

"Lately I've noticed a weird trend in gossip blogs: mustache sightings on female celebrities."

Star Gazing - The results of Slate's TV celebrity contest.

• "Slate recently asked readers to put their pop-culture knowledge to the test by asking them to match up 15 past and present notable TV stars with photos of their equally notable features. The answers are posted."

Christmas shopping? Here's one for less than ten bucks. "Introducing our unique 'Pocket - Get off the Phone Excuse Machine'."

• This little device gives you '6' different sounds that will help you out of the tightest spot - and get you off of the phone 'fast'. Freedom is just 'the press of a button' away."
• The six sounds can be tested at the web site.

The Bacardi Rum site has the teaser/trailer for Miami Vice

• Know what? Michael Mann invented this style, and he's still the master, but it seems stale now. That means the film will rise or fall on the script, not the style. But then again, I guess they all do.

Actual numbers on Howard Stern's move to Sirius

• "Since Stern announced his move last year, subscribers for the $12.95-a-month service have increased from 600,000 to more than 2.2 million ... less than 20 percent of the audience for his enormously successful syndicated show. Stern says he was told that recruiting 1 million listeners was the break-even point for Sirius, although he's not counting."

"Andy's anagram solver"

Video: The Badger Box

• A candid camera video based on the ol' "I have a scary animal in this box" trick

The teaser trailer for Mission: Impossible III

"Kate Beckinsale says she strips for her husband via an internet webcam when she is away filming."

VIDEO: Mr Bean taking a quick look at the story of Jesus.

Vintage video: The Quick Bunny plays Atari

France: a country in chaos ... The O'Reilly France Boycott: Three Years Later

Paramount Buys DreamWorks for $1.6 Billion

NFL Football Playoff Race - if the season ended today

• The Steelers would get the sixth seed over the Chiefs and Chargers
• The Cowboys would barely sneak into the last spot in the NFC bracket

AFI chooses the Top 10 films of 2005

• Their list: Brokeback Mountain, King Kong, The 40 Year Old Virgin, Capote, Crash, Good Night and Good Luck, A History of Violence, Munich, The Squid and the Whale, and Syriana.
• I realize that it is difficult to fit everything into the Top 10, but Sin City, Batman Begins, and Cinderella Man probably belong up there somewhere.

Here's how they stack up so far (Monday morning) at IMDb. Bear in mind that Munich is not yet rated. Syriana, on the other hand, is absent from the list because it is rated too low.
 

Wikipedia prankster confesses to implicating an innocent man in the Kennedy assassination

Zero-Gravity Sports Closer to Reality

Movie Reviews:

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

Criminal Woman Killing Melody (1973)

Criminal Woman Killing Melody opens with Reiko Ike walking into a club, and trying to massacre a Yakuza gang single-handed with a sword. She is, of course, arrested, and is morose in prison. He unwillingness to tell her story ends in a cat fight with Miki Sugimoto, who is more or less the cell boss, and is the girl of a Yakuza leader. Like the famous fight in Cool Hand Luke, the less experienced Ike is not very effective, but never quits. The fight ends in a draw. Cut to several years into the future. Ike is out, and is after revenge with the entire Yakuza mob that killed her father, a minor drug peddler for them, and then raped her. Three former classmates join in, and they plot to give the Yakuza a financial screwing, and then do them in. Naturally, Sugimoto is the moll of the very Yakuza leader that Ike wants to take down.

The plan is to convince the gang she is after to fight against a rival gang. Again, this is full of nudity, sex, and BD/SM, as well as the required cat fights between Ike and Sugimoto. Both women show breasts in several scenes. In all of these films, the girl gang members have intimate tattoos identifying them as gang members, in this case, breast tattoos.

The first cat fight in the film goes on forever, and the film is bookended with another at the end. We see a liberal dose of political corruption, which is normal in the Pinky Violence films. These films came about when the studios were in sharp decline due to TV, and decided to give the public something they couldn't see on TV, namely sex and violence. It worked, but even more importantly were made by a studio system, and were hence the best quality time and budget would allow. Director Norifumi Sazuki knew how to dress a set, choreograph a scene, and pick color palettes, and and his worst scenes are well done, with the best ones very nicely executed.

These films aren't nearly as dated as American exploitation of the era, possibly because they are about the lower rungs of society, who have not made much progress. The women are shown as anything but demure and subservient, and hence might be popular with female audiences. Sazuki also tries to show the conflict between traditional Japanese values, and the reality of these street girls' lives. He frequently shifts rapidly from violence to sex to suspense to comic relief, which could be very jarring, but, with him, simply keeps you interested, as you will nearly never be able to predict what is coming next.

Both Ike and Sugimoto show breasts. This is another B-. I highly recommend the Pinky Violence Collection which includes four of the best of the genre, a CD of Reiko Ike songs, and a good deal of textual information.

 

Reiko Ike

Miki Sugimoto

Jessica Alba

Great job on finding Welcome to Arrow Beach, Scoop!  I love Meg Foster.  Might be spooky looking but I don't scare easy. 

Sexpot is a comedy with a Black Widow premise: gal marries rich men and then kills them.  One o the dead guys has three daughters played by Jane Hamilton (pornstar Veronica Hart), Jennifer Delora and
Christina Veronica.  Each of them gets nekkid a couple of times but this puppy is found only on videotape so I worked only on the scene in which all three have their bras pop off.  Christina had gravity-defying
hooters...well worth a look or two.

And then there are a few collages of Baelynn Neff and two Hefmates, Susanne Stokes and Buffy Tyler, in Frostbite.  Speaking of body parts that defy gravity.
 

Baelynn Neff	Buffy Tyler	Suzanne Stokes
Suzanne Stokes	Suzanne Stokes	Christina Veronica