Friday

Ten Inch Hero

2007? 2008? 2009?

This film really got my curiosity going. After all, it contains one of the year's top ten nude scenes, and it's rated 8.0 at IMDb. Good movie, good nudity ... it has to be a winner, right?

Not exactly. I failed to look below the surface.

Drilling down through the IMDb ratings reveals some interesting anomalies.

  • First, the top thousand voters score it only 5.1. This group is immune to ballot box stuffing because it consists of the people like me who who cast votes on hundreds or even thousands of movies and have no axe to grind for any single film or any single studio. The opinions within that group may be wrong, but they are honest in that the members of the group are not selling anything and do not stand to profit from their votes.
  • Second, women score it 1.7 higher than men. A gap of 1.0 qualifies a film as a serious chick-flick, and 1.7 is up there in the estrogen stratosphere. That's the third-highest score that I know of, trailing only Sex and the City (2.4) and Dirty Dancing (1.9), easily beating such vaginocentric films as Beaches (1.2), Ya-Ya Sisterhood (1.2), and Traveling Pants (1.1).
  • Third, the scores drop significantly after the teen years. People under 18 score it 9.4. The score drops to 8.4 in the next age group, which still includes some teenagers. It falls further to 7.1 in the first demographic group to include no teenagers.

Oops.

It's essentially a tweener flick, a sentimental rom-com filled with hackneyed stock characters whose individual sub-plots all come to predictable happy endings. Imagine four episodes of a WB series strung together into feature length, and you'll have the right idea. An aging hippie/surfer runs a sub shop near the beach, and his crew consists of four young people. (They sell five-inch heroes and ten-inchers. And the ten-inchers stimulate some lively and ribald, if obvious, banter with hunky customers. Get it?) The five main characters who work in the sub shop all find their true loves in the last few minutes of the film, almost simultaneously. If you watch the first five minutes of the film and can't figure out exactly what will happen to each character, it is an indication that you have never seen any other films.

Having said all of those mean things, let me add that I did not find it an unpleasant film to watch, and not just because of the lively sex scenes involving the gorgeous Danneel Harris. There's nothing wrong with a little open-hearted syrup now and then. I prefer watching films with some sweet sentimental moments to those films with guys waving guns in each other's faces the whole time, or those films where everyone is a gay junkie who is either dying or suicidal. The main characters in this film are decent human beings who form strong friendships, support one another, and learn from their mistakes. As I watched it alone, I found some of the badinage funny enough to make me laugh out loud involuntarily, and I felt better after having watched it. So it's got that whole "feel good" thing workin' for it.

That 5.1 score from the top thousand IMDb voters is too low, representing evidence of a bias toward guy-flicks in that group. It is much better than the sorts of films scored in the 5.1 range because it is pleasantly entertaining enough that a wide range of people could watch it without reaching for the remote. On the other hand, it is also unexceptional and predictable, and an overall score of 8.0 should be indicative of an all-time classic, which Ten Inch Heroes simply is not. Dial M for Murder and Patton, for example, are rated 8.0. Clearly this film does not belong in that company. A reasonable rating would be about 6.0.

There are three dates listed above because Ten Inch Heroes was first screened at festivals two years ago, in the spring of 2007, and has still not been distributed in North America as of the end of 2008, neither to theaters nor on DVD. (It was released on a Region 2 DVD in Scandinavia in October of 2008.) The film's MySpace page says it "releases" in the USA in February of 2009. The authors of that page don't define what they mean by that, but I'm assuming it means a DVD release rather than theatrical distribution. If I were a theatrical distributor, I would not take a chance on this. While I personally enjoyed the R-rated aspects of the film (two sex scenes and lots of suggestive dialogue), those elements will work counter-productively for the film in North American theaters, given that it will play best with girls 10-17 and the presumptive R rating will prevent them from buying a ticket.

 

 

 

The top ten sex scene from Danneel Harris. The video quality is nice, but I messed up the audio synch somehow.

 

  • * 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.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

LA Confidential

1997

Ultra HD film clips, samples beneath

Amber Smith

Marisol Padilla Sanchez

 

Shawnee Free Jones

 

 

 

 

 

 


We're stuck in TV Land for today. Too much Holiday cheer for anything else.

 

"Two and a Half Men"

Jenny McCarthy with some nice cleavage

 

 

"Late Night"

Today it's Jennifer Aniston giving Dave Letterman a leg show.
 

 


 

 

 

 

 

 

Notes and collages

 

Skins

2007

Cathy Barry

 

 

 

Per Wikipedia:

Cathy Barry (born September 28, 1967) is an English pornographic actress.

In 2004 Barry underwent a breast implant operation that was broadcast live. It was reported as being the biggest breast enlargement operation to be performed in the UK. The surgeon performing the operation was later called before his hospital's ethics committee.

In 2007, Barry won the award for Best British Performer at the ETO Awards show. Later that year, Barry was nominated for Best Female Actress in the UK Adult Film Awards for her role in Cathy's Diaries 9. Though she did not win the award, she was given a lifetime achievement award at the 2007 UK Adult Film Awards.

She recently appeared in the Unseen Footage, from Episode 6 of Skins, playing herself. She sleeps with Chris and then, upon hearing about his love for his teacher, promises him a cheque for £700 so that he can pursue said teacher on a school trip to Russia.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Solo Dios Sabe

2006

A great find from Mr Moronic. If you loved the beautiful Alice Braga in City of God and/or Blindness, here's your chance to see a lot more of her.

Alice Braga film clips. Collages below.

 

 

El Nido Vacio

2008

Eugenia Capizzano film clips. Collages below.

 

Astronautas

2003

Teresa Hurtado film clips. Collages below.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pics

 

Andrea Davis in Suzie Heartless (2008)

  

A baker's dozen of Lohan in her black bikini. Nothing very revealing, but the picture quality is OK.

One of those Olsen Twins kinda sorta almost showing something.

 

Film Clips

Mena Suvari in Sex and Lies in Sin City. There's no real nudity, but you can see pretty much all of her butt in her stripper shorts. Hot! Sample right.

Sinead McCafferty in The Day the Earth Stopped. Sample right.

Isabel Blais in Borderline