Toy Soldiers (1984) is a drama action with a vaguely familiar story. Some rich Beverly Hills kids are yachting for spring vacation under the command of an ex marine. They play a practical joke and sail away from him. One of their number is injured, they take him ashore for help, and end up imprisoned by Central American revolutionaries and held for ransom. One escapes. The government is little help, and her father supports the government. Their is nothing left but for her to convince the ex marine to take her and a handful of friends in for a rescue.

The lead is played by Terri Garber (General Hospital, Santa Barbara). She shows breasts while in captivity. She and her two female friends (Mary Beth Evans and Tracy Scoggins) have serious see-through action during a beer fight on the yacht. The film is a watchable if predictable plot, and is well photographed, making it an easy watch. IMDb readers have it at 5.8 of 10. It was partially filmed in Mexico. This is a C, a good genre effort with glimpses of three well-known TV actresses.

Open Water (2004):

I have written about this many times before. Comments here.

The Region 1 DVD is chockablock with goodies. Lots of deleted scenes, two full-length commentaries, some featurettes. Generally a good job for those of you interested in the film.

• Blanchard Ryan (1, 2, 3, 4, 5)

The Results:

• Our annual favorite: The top 20 nude scenes of 2004.
• If you care to see the actual numerical results of the balloting, it can be found here.

Other Crap:

• Author Arthur C. Clarke talks about the tsunami from his home in Sri Lanka.
• Good news for Fond du Lac - new data shows that meteor isn't going to hit earth in 2029.
• The scoop on Minghella's next project. He's really trying hard to find some more ways to film The English Patient with different costumes.
• The year's best jazz records.
• The Best 100 Toys of all time. Their ranking doesn't matter, but it is fun nostalgia.
• Village Voice's 2004 Film Poll Winners. They picked Dogville as the #3 film of the year. Here's Scoopy's rule to determine whether you should be a film critic. If you can not name at least 100 films in 2004 better than Dogville, you should seek other employment. If you really still want to be a movie critic, there's always The Village Voice, where a lack of taste and knowledge is no impediment.
• Jet Li survives the tsunami.
• Headline of the day: Professor objects to mountain sex. I tried that, but either I wasn't man enough or the mountain was frigid.
• The trailer for The Edukators. "Jan, Peter and Jule are living out their rebellious youth. They are united by their passion to change the state of the world. Jan and Peter become "The Edukators," mysterious perpetrators who non-violently warn the local rich their "days of plenty are numbered." Complications follow when vulnerable Jule ends up falling for both young men. Reckless choices result in danger. An operation gone wrong and what was never intended to be a kidnapping brings the three young idealists face-to-face with the values of the generation in power
• On the set of The Fantastic Four with Stan Lee and the cast.
• The best of signs, the worst of signs. "A collection of photos containing humorous, bizarre, and or confusing signs from around the world."
• Supermodel Petra Nemcova barely escapes Asian tsunami. She does have some fairly serious injuries. She clung to a palm tree for eight hours until rescuers arrived. Her boyfriend is still missing.
• Google Zeitgeist summary for 2004. What were the most important searches of the year?
• Various home movies of the tsunami striking. All show the same chilling sight - tropical beach, sunny day, then chaos.
  • unknown beach
     
  • Sri Lanka
     
  • Patong Berach
     
  • Phuket
• Deformity of the week!
• The illegal drug Ecstasy 'may ease fears of dying cancer patients'
• Get an inflatable tavern, so you'll have a place to hide from your inflatable lover.
• Disneyland: 50 Years of Souvenirs
• Reported Paige Davis sex tape is apparently not her!. Web site says: "We have been able to confirm through various sources that the woman in the sex tape we have is NOT, repeat NOT Paige Davis of TLC's Trading Spaces. She looks and sounds almost exactly like Ms. Davis, but is certainly not her." (Frankly, neither the confirmations nor the denials have had any type of credibility so far.)
• WTF??? This is some creepy shit. The meaning of Russian Prison Tattoos. There are some nekkid chicks, but they aren't exactly likely to make you forget Kim Basinger.
• Weekly World News: "SCIENTIST CREATES DIAMONDS FROM DOG POOP! "
• Liza Minnelli a headbanger. Spinal Tap to sing show tunes.
• 2004's top 10 entertainment stories.
• Fallujah.US - Raw video footage from the U.S. military offensive in Fallujah, Iraq, 2004. The webmaster had this to say, "I've just been sent a new raw and uncut video. Insurgents try to drive a bus into a bunch of marines and the marines light the bus up and fill it with holes. Amazing to watch but towards the end they take the camera and inspect inside the bus, blood etc. I kind of felt sorry for the Iraqis once the survivors were being treated. When they were being fired on, I wanted them to get hit, but once they were wounded, I wanted them to live. It's very interesting to watch the marines fire on them and then treat them for their wounds just minutes later. It's like someone just flipped a switch. They go from trying to pick them off to pulling them out of the burning bus in an instant."
• Mayor of Bogota uses Mimes for Crowd Control. "20 professional mimes shadowed pedestrians who didn't follow crossing rules: A pedestrian running across the road would be tracked by a mime who mocked his every move. Mimes also poked fun at reckless drivers. The program was so popular that another 400 people were trained as mimes." Excellent! Social programs that require a lot more mimes. Bring 'em to San Antonio, and we'll toss 'em in the river with the others. When we do mime toss on the Riverwalk, it is almost impossible to throw more than four in the river in one day. If we had another 400, the possibilities would be limitless!

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:

Here are the latest movie reviews available at scoopy.com.

• The yellow asterisks indicate that I wrote the review, and am deluded into thinking it includes humor.
• If there is a white asterisk, it means that there isn't any significant humor, but I inexplicably determined there might be something else of interest.
• A blue asterisk indicates the review is written by Tuna (or Junior or Brainscan, or somebody else besides me)
• If there is no asterisk, I wrote it, but am too ashamed to admit it.

Words, pictures, and vids from ICMS

Heaven's Prisoners (1996)

This is an amazing feat. Two years before the release of the original Caligula (1979), starring former Pet of the Year, Anneka di Lorenzo as the Empress Messalina, the sequel Caligula II is released, starring Anneka di Lorenzo as the Empress Messalina. Caligula II goes by many names... the version I rented was called Messalina, Messalina (1979) and what a messalina it is. How much of a mess, you ask. A much bigger mess than the original.

That's possible because the makers of Messaline, Messalina decided to turn it into an Italian sex farce. And that means you're going to have all manner of chubby bug-eyed short guys running around in sexual situations that no chubby bug-eyed short guy would ever find himself in. This is the definition of Italian farce, whether on the big screen or the small: Homely guys and beautiful women doing the nasty. How very funny.

The sorta dramatic backdrop to it all is the same as that seen in the BBC production of I Claudius: Messalina humps anyone, male or female. The powers that be get pissed off and her husband, Claudius, orders an end to it all in the most final fashion. The comedy isn't funny, the sex isn't sexy, the drama isn't dramatic. We call that an 0-for-3.

Anneka sports a pair that have grown since the days of Caligula. She shows them off a lot (collages 1-4). And you see some bum (collage 2) and a bit of the furry stuff when she and Lori Wagner once again meet and great one another. Yet the Lori-and-Anneka scene is way tamer than the one in Caligula. So much tamer and more poorly photographed that the scene holds your interest for a good 30 or 40 picoseconds before you go hunting desperately for the remote. You can see the best of it in Anneka's collage #5.

Lori also does a triple B performance, in the days before two Good year blimps were inserted into her chest...for ya see, Lori became a pornstar and even did John Wayne Bobbit on film, after his snap-off tool was snapped back on.

What compounds the complete waste that is Messalina, Messalina is the quality of the DVD. Let's grab a tape off the shelf, said the guy who bankrolled the transfer. So they did. An oft-rented copy by the look of it. Noise and hairs and faults and lines, the kind of stuff that makes a DVD worth watching.

So as I was FFing through this movie I thought of the old joke about heaven and hell in Europe. Heaven is where all the Italians are lovers, hell is where they are mechanics. Or even worse, movie producers.

• Anneka di Lorenzo (1, 2, 3, 4, 5)

• Lori Wagner

"Wild at Heart"
People who like character studies of unique personalities must have loved Wild at Heart, because director David Lynch's 1990 film is overflowing with oddballs, which is part of what makes it so great.

Sailor (Nicolas Cage) and Lula (Laura Dern) are in love. Lula's mother shows her disapproval by hiring a hit man to kill Sailor. Unfortunately, the hit man failed his proficiency test, and Sailor winds up killing him. Apparently, self defense is unacceptable in North Carolina, because Sailor is sentenced to two years for manslaughter.

Nothing much changes when Sailor is released. Lula picks him up at the prison, and Momma picks a new hit man. As Sailor decides to break parole and take Lula and himself to California, Mommy Dearest is arranging for not just one but two hit men. In a nice touch, the second hit man is also to kill the first hit man. These folks are nothing but weird.

This is an excellent, fun-to-watch piece of insanity with lots of excitement, some good sex scenes and nice nudity, and a great story. I was able to find an unrated version, but there doesn't appear to be a full screen version released on DVD. That's a real pity, because you just know in some of the shots in the sex scenes, the wide screen cuts off Laura's perky boobs.

• Laura Dern
• Charlie Spradling
• Mia M. Ruiz & Valli Leigh
• Lisa Ann Cabasa

Scoops,
Here's another batch of 'caps from European TV:

"Deadwood"
Deadwood was hyped in Australia as the best, most realistic American western ever but I thought it was just dull. Full frontal nudity by Paula Malcomson, topless nudity by some unknown prostitutes and some see-through breast shown by Molly Parker.

• Paula Malcomson (1, 2)
• Molly Parker (1, 2)
• Unknowns

"The Stepford Wives"
The Stepford Wives was one weird 70s film. Some very nice see-through views of Katharine Ross along with plenty of pokies (she never wore a bra). There are also some nice caps of Paula Prentiss.

• Katharine Ross (1, 2, 3, 4, 5)
• Paula Prentiss (1, 2, 3)

"Sin"
Some rear views of adult actresses Jessica Drake and Brianna Banks in Sin, as well as some bikini ladies.

• Jessica Drake and Brianna Banks
• Bikini babes

"Going Down"
No visible nudity in Going Down, just some nice caps of Christina Larkin, Hope Riley, Reneé Estevex, Kristin Novak and Lynette Fame.

• Christina Larkin
• Hope Riley
• Reneé Estevex
• Kristin Novak and Lynette Fame

"Confessions of a Dangerous Mind"
It's the same again in Confessions of a Dangerous Mind with caps of Drew Barrymore, Julia Roberts, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Jennifer Hall.

• Drew Barrymore (1, 2)
• Julia Roberts
• Maggie Gyllenhaal
• Jennifer Hall

"Intolerable Cruelty"
Yet again in Intolerable Cruelty. Kristin Dattilo and another group of ladies are down to their underwear but Catherine Zeta-Jones, Kiersten Warren and Stacey Travis are the eye candy.

• Kristin Dattilo
• Catherine Zeta-Jones
• Kiersten Warren
• Stacey Travis

"Helen of Troy"
Sienna Guillory shows some see-through breast exposure and as well as her buttocks. Katie Blake shows that the ancient Greeks invented elastic and there's a bit of nudity by some other women.

• Sienna Guillory (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7)
• Katie Blake
• Unknowns