Copying Beethoven (2006):

Since the only nudity in this film is a middle-aged man (Ed Harris), the review doesn't really belong in the Fun House. Read it at the Movie House.

The Book of Revelation (2006):

I mentioned yesterday that I would take a look at this. I'm kinda sorry that I did.

A very handsome heterosexual ballet dancer is kidnapped by three hooded women and forced to submit to their every sexual whim for twelve days. They make him masturbate. They make him dance for them. They sit on his penis while he's chained to the ground. The sodomize him with a strap-on. And so forth.

He is totally traumatized by the experience, but when he reports it to the police, they react the same as those cops on South Park reacted to the kid who was seduced by a hot female teacher. (They call him in, not for questioning, but to give him a medal as "the luckiest boy in the whole world.")

When the cops laugh him off, he decides to take matters into his own hands, which means that he resolves to undress every woman in Australia until he finds the ones with the matching birthmarks and tattoos. He doesn't seem to realize that the kidnappers know his face, and are not likely to agree to a sexual liaison that will allow him to identify them. Then he tries a different tactic - just following every woman in Australia to see if any of them do anything suspicious. As you might guess, the innocent ones are not particularly pleased that some stranger is stalking them. Then he gets an inspiration from his doctor. Since his kidnappers sedated him, and that required some medical knowledge, he resolves to look at every nurse in Australia until he finds the right one.

Oh, brother. Master detective, that lad.

The plot isn't a complete write-off. The script does manage to create some suspense by setting up the film as a series of puzzles. First he disappears. He goes out for a pack of smokes, and never returns (shades of Rabbit Angstrom). Of course everyone wonders where he has been and assumes he has run away, so the film begins as a missing persons case by showing various police procedures and indulging some intense hand-wringing from his friends. He is never seen in this portion of the film. Then he returns and is obviously in shock, so we wonder what the hell is wrong with him, but he won't talk about it at first, and the script reveals very slowly what has happened to him. So that's mystery number two. The third mystery involves his quest for the identities of his tormentors.

When we finally see what happened to him in captivity, we realize that the entire film is basically a female sexual fantasy gussied up with a psychological thriller plot to make it cinematic and set in the world of ballet to pass it off as High Art. The guy has a spectacularly good body, and the camera takes it all in. He even masturbates on camera, and the film shows everything but the money shot. Well, the female director was at least willing to share, and two of his captors get naked as well,. In fact,  one of them does quite a hot masturbation routine, so we guys at least have something to do while our dates are tickling the taco.

As if the ballet background and the sexual abuse theme were not sufficiently arty to justify the sex scenes, there are other arthouse elements as well. There are those sorts of scenes that Tarkovsky and Bergman love where a person is alone on a city street with the sound of his footsteps, even though it seems that the street should be teeming with people. And then there is Greta Scacchi as the mistress of ballet, who is diagnosed with cancer during his traumatic quest for the kidnappers. Scacchi had been his friend and mentor but he just ignored her while he was obsessed with his womanhunt. When he finally gets back to see her, she is barely recognizable, obviously a chemotherapy patient, and this shocks him out of his own self-absorption. 

So women have the full panoply of arthouse armor to defend against attacks that the film is exploitative! Women sure need a lot of justification to jerk off. Hell, we can do when we see some particularly well designed power tools. Or even if we don't. If all the artiness is not sufficient justification when they tells their friends that they watched this film, the ladies may also note that the cinematography is beautiful and colorful.

In fact, it seems too beautiful for the dreary subject matter, as if the entire point of the film were really not to present the grim story, but to photograph the hunky guy ...

oh ....

Oh, let's be kind. We guys have been using films to satisfy and expand our sexual fantasies for years, and it would not be hard to find several movies which do so under the guise of art, even from the greatest directors. (Peter Greenaway and Stanley Kubrick spring to mind.) So let's let the women have this one.

 

Here are the all of the kidnapping scenes which have female nudity. (Zipped .wmv)

And here are a few sample captures. I hope LC got these IDs right, because I just followed his identifications without verifying them.

Zoe Naylor

Odette Joannidis

 

THIRD PARTY VIDEOS

• Taryn Power in Tracks. (Three zipped .avis). Tuna liked this Henry Jaglom film very much. (Movie House Commentary)

• Isild le Besco double bill. The French star in La Ravisseuse (multiple zipped .avis) and Backstage (zipped. avi)

OTHER CRAP:

Catch the deluxe version of Other Crap in real time, with all the bells and whistles, here.

MOVIE REVIEWS:

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

Night of the Warrior (1991)

Night of the Warrior (1991) is a kickboxing film staring Lorenzo Lamas. Yes, he fights, but he's also a Renaissance man, with a big heart, love for the common man, and a passion for street photography, especially of the homeless. In fact, he eventually finds his true love (played by his real-life wife Kathleen Kinmont) working in a greasy spoon.

The dramatic conflict is that Lamas borrowed money from Anthony Geary to purchase a nightclub for himself and his mother. He had agreed to pay back his debt in no-rules fighting competitions, and won his final fight to own the bar free and clear. But Geary was not finished with him. Geary was approached by a rich Korean with a lucrative offer for more fights, so he will do anything in his power to get Lamas to fight again. The bad guys are really, really bad, our hero is really virtuous, and the film inevitably leads to a last fight then a final showdown.

IMDb readers say 3.3, which might even be a little high. An actioner should have much more action, and a love story should have much more nudity. The transfer is unremarkable, the music is bad, the plot is sappy, and the fight choreography is uninspired.

This is a D. At max.

Kathleen Kinmont shows a nipple in a very dark sex scene.

Ashlee Simpson falls out of her top while on vacation

According to a survey by the British website Pogo.co.uk, the most popular New Year's resolution is to quit smoking, following by losing weight and eating healthy.  They also found that about a third of
resolutions get broken within the first week, 14 percent last one day, and one in seven gets broken within a few hours.

*  The solution: Resolve not to keep your resolutions.



A short clip of two cops in Baja, Hungary, doing a goofy hip-hop dance together and shooting the finger has become a hit on YouTube.  Hungarian police told Reuters that it started out funny, but they began getting complaints.  They are now investigating the hip-hop cops to try to determine their identities, whether they are real cops, and if they've broken any rules and should be punished.

*  If it's illegal to dance like a white dork in a hip-hop video, arrest
Kevin Federline.

*  One of them appears to be Michael Richards.

*  Actually, this is just a promotional clip for the new Fox show, "Hip-Hop
Cops!"

LINK!  See it here:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jw5NhDVFmt8


Columnist Cindy Adams claims that Britney Spears' label, Jive Records, is unhappy with the five songs she's recorded so far, and sessions for her next CD have been halted.  They're afraid her behavior is alienating her fans, and they can't decide whether it's worth paying to redo the songs and finish an album that nobody will buy.

*  Actually, they halted the sessions because halfway through the fifth song,  Britney passed out.

*  This story is really shocking...I had completely forgotten that Britney
Spears used to be a singer!


Britain's More magazine claims that Britney Spears is commissioning a nude portrait of herself.  A source said Brit loves the movie "Titanic," especially the scene where Kate Winslet poses nude.  She wants to be
immortalized, too; but she wants it "tastefully done," so she's looking for the right artist to paint her nude body.

*  How about Earl Scheib?