The annual nude scene poll is closed. The winner and the second place finisher won their respective positions by a mile. Pictorial and numerical results will be posted on New Year's Day, as usual.

The Intended (2002)

This is a steamy "Brits in the jungle in the late stages of the empire" movie. It plays out a lot like Tennessee Williams' The Night of the Iguana. I am here to warn you - do NOT buy the region 1 DVD. This is a steamy, sexy movie, but the Region 1 DVD is a version which has cut all the female nudity (while leaving in male nudity!). And that was one heaping helping of important nudity! Janet McTeer did two fairly graphic sex scenes and whipped out her chest, which may be the largest unenhanced chest of any legitimate actress in the world. She is certainly in the same league with Mimi Rogers. The bowdlerization of this film is particularly disturbing since McTeer has done only modest nudity elsewhere in her career, and she really let it go here: first standing up facing the camera in good light; then on her back for a sex scene; then naked again for a woman-on-top sex scene.

Not only is the region 1 DVD censored, but it is a woeful pan-n-scan transfer in which the people who did the panning and scanning made only a perfunctory effort. There are some frames where the faces are cut off, and virtually every frame is composed poorly. It looks so boxed-up that the entire film is probably dangerous for claustrophobics.

I wish The Criterion Collection would get the rights to this and issue it in an uncensored widescreen edition.

OZ did some solid captures from the uncensored version of this film.  I think you'll see why I wanted to see it! Here are OZ's collages:

Janet McTeer

Shooting Gallery (2005)

It's the Paul Newman mix-and-match movie. Take the billiards action from The Hustler and mix it with the con artistry from The Sting, and you have Shooting Gallery. Don't be put off by the fact that it went straight to video or that it stars Freddie Prinze Jr. in the Fast Eddie role. Shooting Gallery is actually well done for a movie with a limited budget

...  but I have to warn you about a few of its eccentricities:

• Although the final solution to the puzzle is clear enough, you will be confused more than once by the identity of the characters and whose side they are really on. It seems that everybody is running a con on everybody else, and yet also hedging their bets by running a second partnership with the "mark." Even when the film is finished and the long con is completely explained, you may not understand how all the minor characters fit in.
• Just about every character is eccentric and speaks in some kind of patois which is further complicated by various quirky verbal mannerisms and accents. There are times when it's hard to understand what the characters are saying, and that can be irritating in a complicated sting movie. Sometimes it seems that the actors are having a contest to see who can act and sound the strangest. You may feel that you have been stranded inside a Benicio del Toro impersonating contest.
• The photography is quite stylized. It takes place in a sleazy section of Nawlins, and the photographic style accentuates the gritty look of the neighborhood. It's dark, it's so deeply contrasted as to look posterized in some sections, and it uses a lot of rock video editing tricks.
• A very substantial portion of the running time is devoted to actual games of 9-ball, so your enjoyment of the movie will be directly correlated to your interest in that game. If you're into that sort of thing, there are some great games with some great shots, and they are actually made by the actors on camera. Heaven knows how many takes some of those shots required, but a lot of it is explained in the various featurettes!

That tells you what kind of movie it is, but still may not indicate how you will react to it.

It is not a type of movie I particularly enjoy. If I were to read what I just wrote, I would be strongly tempted to take a pass. I don't think of  pocket billiards as a spectator sport, and I don't even like to play it that much. I've never been a fan of Prinze. I really get annoyed by movies which try too hard to be eccentric, and I have very little patience with complicated puzzle movies which don't sweat the details of the puzzle. Still, although this film has many elements which normally vex me, I found it reasonably engaging. After a while, I just stopped worrying about the details of the counter-stings, and just enjoyed the atmosphere and some of the crazy characterizations. And Prinze did fine, by the way, as the straight man.

Roselyn Sanchez. No nudity, but she is smokin'. She's the chick who did the banana-eating trick in Boat Trip, kind of a sexed-up Latina version of Sandra Bullock. She needs to stop doing teases and get her freak on.

Stormy Shuff. (Huh?) This is Stormy's one and only screen appearance. IMDb credits her as "naked blond" (which makes sense), but the end credits call her "naked brunette." Whatever. There is no naked brunette in the movie, so I guess this is Stormy, since Stormy is a blond - as shown here and here.

 

Roselyn Sanchez Stormy Shuff

Angels in America (2005)

I watched this for a second time because ... well ... long story. Here's the short version. After I watched Good Night and Good Luck, I re-read some transcripts of the McCarthy committee hearings, I read a biography of Joe McCarthy, and then I watched Citizen Cohn. It was the latter that led me back to Angels in America because both of those productions feature the same conceit: Roy Cohn, on his deathbed, talking unrepentantly to Ethel Rosenberg.

Cohn was Sen. McCarthy's lead counsel while still in his mid twenties, and later became one of America's biggest back-door dealmakers. He was presumed to be gay, and died of AIDS-related complications, but never admitted his sexual preference, remaining in public denial even on his deathbed. (He once dated Barbara Walters, who insisted he was straight.)  The Cohn role was played in each production by a great actor, James Woods and Al Pacino, so I thought I'd compare their interpretations. Pacino brought more vulnerability and a more down-to-earth quality to Cohn, who was well known as the world's biggest asshole. Pacino, abetted by a nuanced script, managed to create at least a tiny bit of humanity in the character, and generated a spark of empathy, although sympathy was out of the question. Woods just played Cohn as a totally aloof, smarter-than-thou, dishonest, and self-absorbed scumbag who thought, even at the very end, that his caregivers were trying to poison him. Despite those differences, there was no denying that they were playing the same loathsome, ungrateful man in the same situations. My first-hand knowledge of the real Cohn is entirely based on the 1950s because I just don't remember what he was like in the 70s and 80s. I can't recall having seen him as a middle-aged man on talk shows or anything like that. Based on my impressions of Cohn in those Army-McCarthy hearings, Woods captured him better, but Woods got to play Cohn in that very era, as well as in the rest of his life, while Pacino never got to play him as a young man, so I couldn't relate Pacino's performance to any anchored reality.

Anyway, the key point is the full frontal and rear nudity from Mary-Louise Parker. (The Emma Thompson nudity is not Emma at all, except for the head. It is a combination of body double and CGI.)

Mary-Louise Parker Emma Thompson

The Path of Evil (2005)

I couldn't get through this movie. One thing that absolutely turns me off is when the actors are so bad that one can't just watch the movie and get absorbed in it. The ludicrous line readings always make me aware that I'm just sitting and watching an artifice. This particular film has some of the worst performances ever captured on tape. Even the guy in the lead role delivers his lines like a fourth grader reading aloud from My Weekly Reader.

The nudity was pretty good, however. Fairly good-looking woman with a good body. The only real minus was the dim lighting.

Wendy Watson

Punch (2002)

This is the Citizen Kane of Canadian Lesbian Boxing Films. Review here. This is a nice bit of nudity from a pretty young woman, although it gets a few creepy points for the fact that it includes a spread-shot and was filmed by her dad. And maybe a few morew creepy points because her dad also wrote the script. And a real lot of creepy points for the fact that the script is about a father and daughter who have an inappropriate pseudo-sexual relationship.

Anyway, here's the zipped .avi (no sound, but nice quality)

Wedding Crashers (2005)

These comments are from Brainscan, and refer to the captures from yesterday's page:

"In your caps of Wedding Crashers...the unknown babes. 

• One of them, in collages 308 and 309, is Rachel Sterling aka Angel Veil. She's in the credits. 

• Another in 300 and 307 looks like Tera Patrick.  No sign of her in the credits, though.

• And 301-303 looks like Ivana Bozolovic...again in the credits. "
   

Other Crap:

Movie Reviews:

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

"Harem Suare"

Harem Suare (1999) is credited to Turkey at IMDb, but is actually a Turkish/French/Italian co-production, and is in French. It is a disjointed story about the last night in a Harem just before the fall of the Ottoman empire. It is related by an old woman leaving the harem to a young woman just entering the harem, and is the story told by an old woman to the harem to pass what is likely their last night before the palace falls. It is the story, of course, about the woman relating the tale to the new harem girl.

Let's pause here momentarily, and think about this one. We start with a young woman about to enter a harem. The old woman she talks to was the subject of the story told before the last harem was disbanded, and includes what happens after the harem is disbanded. This is the worst of the inconsistencies in the plot line. The film, in French with English subtitles and shot in Turkey is beautifully photographed, and the harem sets are wonderful. The story traces the rise of our heroin to favorite of the sultan, giving birth to his child, falling in love with a eunuch, and her fall from power after her baby is poisoned. Marie Gillain, as the girl, does full frontal and rear nudity. Several other women show various body parts in bath scenes, and one unknown shows breasts being prepared for the sultan.

The tale is full of intrigue, and purports to show life inside a harem. I have no way to know if any of this is accurate. IMDb readers have this at 5.7. While the story is disjointed, it is great eye candy, and is somewhat engaging. This is a C-. The plot so not strong, but it is lavishly produced, and has a somewhat unusual theme and setting.

Marie Gillain Unknown