When Will I Be Loved (2004) is abysmal. It is a remake of Indecent Exposure, and that is one of the better things about it. To make sure the audience doesn't miss the connection, Neve Campbell uses the name. As near as I can tell, the entire film was adlibbed. Most of the film intercuts between stories that will eventually merge, insuring that no scene can ever build any momentum. Campbell is moving into a high rent Manhattan apartment with her parents money. Her boyfriend, a cheap petty hustler, sets her up with a rich Italian Count about three times her age, hoping to get the $100K the count has offered for an evening alone with her.

Rather than balk at the proposal, she decides to get even with both. Campbell shows breasts and buns in the opening and closing scenes. Frankly, were it not for the intercutting, the opening shower masturbation scene might have been worth the watch.

HELPFUL TIP

If you find yourself with this DVD, go top the special features, and watch the entire opening scene, as that is the only thing of merit in the film. The score is incessant and weakly performed Bach and Beethoven. There is a feature length commentary, and it easy to see how director James Tobak made such a god awful film. His commentary is at least as bad. Introducing the isolated sex scenes in the special features, he admits that, after watching the film again, it wasn't really about what he thought it was.

Unaccountably, this is at 5.7 at IMDb. Ebert, unaccountably, gives it four stars. It is almost like Tobak ghost wrote the review for him. Apologies to those who seem to have found some merit here, but I entirely missed it. Also, there was not a single person to like in this film. D.

A Love Song For Bobby Long (2004):

You must be aware of the American Southern Gothic tradition which encompasses such important writers as Carson McCullers, Flannery O'Connor, Truman Capote, and Tennessee Williams. The stories generally involve characters who are either romantic eccentrics or once-great people gone to seed through excessive alcohol drinkin', 'n' givin' up on theyselves on account o' some terrible failure in life or love. They live in crumblin' plantation houses, and their lonely lives now consist of droppin' their g's, rehashin' their memories, 'n' meetin' together with other castaways, exchangin' some speechifyin' which is empty, but mighty purty and right flowery. To add atmosphere, there's usually a passel of folks who have bought Colonel Sanders's old white suits from Goodwill and wear them at all times while moseyin' through the genteel decay of the old parts of Charleston, Savannah, or N'awlins. Most of 'em, even the richest and most educated characters, have white trash cousins who are secretly married to their other white trash cousins, or even to their own daddies. You can also count on the fact that the families are hidin' some other secrets far more macabre than incest. God knows what. It might be that there are insane people chained up in the attic, or it might be that ol' granny is still sleepin' with granpa's corpse. You name it. If Charles Dickens were to be transplanted to the middle of the 20th century, he'd feel right at home in the American South.

This grotesque mythic structure is part of the literary ethos in the South, sparking its worst excesses, but also its grandest successes. Even the incomparable William Faulkner was not untouched by the norms and conventions of Southern Gothic, although his greatest works soared far above the genre.

A Love Song For Bobby Long is such a story, New Orleans division.

Oh, before I begin discussing the movie, there's another thing you foreigners may not know about American Southerners. Let's discuss the name "Bobby". Up north it is more common to find a Bob or Rob. You can find a Bobby or two up north as well, but they are usually little kids, and just about 100% of them are really named "Robert". In the South, it is common for "Bobby" to be the name of an adult (in the case of this movie, even a once-distinguished English professor), and the name on his (or her!) birth certificate may even be "Bobby." It ain't always a nickname, down here, podner. Iff'n you meet a Larry down here, his birth certificate may be stained with chicken grease and BBQ sauce, but if you can still make it out through the smudges, it'll probably say "Larry", not "Lawrence." If you meet a "Billy Bob" down here (a strong likelihood), don't expect his real name to be "William Robert."

That shit's too hard to spell.

No, just kidding. We can spell down here, but William Robert Thornton is too inaccessible, too pompous, too New England.

For some reason, we exempt "Charles" and "David" from the "stuffy Northerner" rule. Southerners often have "Charles" or "David" on their birth certificate, and they are rarely called "Charlie", "Dave", "Davy", or "Chuck."

The one syllable attached middle name is more of a Texas thang. We're different in Texas. Our state was part of the Confederacy, but is not at all genteel. We raise our voices to whoop out loud, and are not nearly so polite as the refined people in the Deep South. We think of ourselves as rough-hewn Westerners, not genteel Southerners, or maybe just as Texans, since this massive state used to be a country, and is still as large as the largest countries in Europe. You'll find a Jimmy Don, Donny Earl, Billy Ray, Betty Jo, or Billy Bob around every corner in the Lone Star State, but we aren't like the decaying plantation aristocrats, who seem to prefer the implicit reverse snobbery inherent in having the simplest and humblest possible name, like Jimmy or Huey or Bobby. The mannerly Southerners also seem to feature uniquely Southern creations like Arlen and Beau(regard). Beauregard is kind of a universally Southern name, isn't it? Just as you know Alistair is not an American, you can be sure Beauregard is not a Northerner.

Enough side-tracks.

Bottom line: it probably should say "Bobby Long" on his driver's license, not "Robert Long," but a legal document is addressed to him as "Mr. Robert Long."

The story begins as a young girl named Pursline is sitting in a white trash trailer park in Florida, eating peanut butter dipped in M&M's. She finds out that her estranged, alcoholic mother has died, and heads off to New Orleans for the funeral. She doesn't make it in time, but finds out that her mom has left her something as a legacy - one third of a disgustingly filthy, unheated, run-down shack near the French Quarter. It seems that momma's two roommates each own a third as well. One of them is Bobby Long, once a brilliant literature professor, now a hopeless drunk. The other is Lawson Pines, once Bobby's teaching assistant, then his confidante, now his fellow alkie.

The story is simply about the three of them learning to live together and maybe helping one another to a better place in life. On the way, they all get drunk and say cruelly honest things to one another, and then they get all guilty and serious and dramatically reveal all their secrets to one another, including the horrible event that caused Bobby to go from boy genius to hopeless derelict. Since Pursline is hazy on the identity of her father, I suppose you can probably figure out the biggest secret of all about five minutes into the film.

The narration and dialogue are heavy with the weight of stylized Southern-fried prose. It begins, "Tahm was never a friend to Bobba Long ..." The film ups the preciousness ante with a constant exchange of literary references between Bobby and Lawson, as they try to stump one another in an ongoing game of quotes from their favorite authors.

The film moves slowly, takes a long time to get into, and ends rather melodramatically, yet I did eventually get drawn into its world. Somewhere in the middle I got hooked in, started to like the characters, and even liked the way they turned their artificial phrases. My eventual involvement was a real triumph for the actors, because they were working with some eccentric material which was difficult to make credible. This script could easily have degenerated into something like a high school performance of Streetcar Named Desire, but John Travolta, Gabriel Macht and Scarlett Johansson all brought some charisma to their parts, and managed to do a remarkably good job at breathing life into the affected dialogue. Although I know that old smelly alcoholics and 9th grade drop-outs don't really talk like this, all three of these performers functioned well enough to convince me that they do, and all of them were smart enough to underplay the most florid and melodramatic writing. They were supported by some fine cinematography by Elliott Davis.

Is it a film for everyone? No. Will it be a blockbuster? No. It seems like it was made in about 1962, and it's too much like a filmed book rather than a purely cinematic project. But it did turn out to be a pleasant and easy watch for me, I found that the time passed quickly, and when it was over I did not regret investing my time into this project. If you don't mind an all-too-Southern and all-too-literary piece of very old fashioned movie making, you might give it a shot.

• There's really no nudity here, but I suppose you'll forgive me since it's Scarlett Johansson (1, 2) and she has one enormous breast almost out there.

The Presidio (1988):

Not a bad little flick about an investigation that overlaps military and civilian jurisdiction, with Sean Connery as the crusty military authority and Mark Harmon as the civilian cop. Besides the conflict of authority, the other twists are that Harmon used to be Connery's trainee, and that Harmon starts to date Connery's daughter. As I said, it's an OK movie. The reason I bring it up is that this film clip is not available on the Region 1 DVD. I don't know where the hell it is available, but it is obviously authentic (it's identical to a scene in the film, but slightly more explicit footage). It's a nice angle on Meg Ryan's chest when she was very ripe.

We had this discussion two years ago, and here's the summary:

"The German version of the DVD is in English, French, German, Italian, Spanish and Hungarian, but is 94 minutes. The US release is 96 minutes and the UK version is 95 minutes.  Spain seems to be selling the German version and Italy seems to be selling the same version. Canada has the US version at 96 minutes, and shows it as being out of stock at the manufacturer. Australia also has the 95 minute version, with the same languages as the German, but region 4. Based on the above, you will get an English soundtrack no matter where you buy it, but it is pot luck which version might have the added footage."

Note that 94 minutes in PAL is equivalent to 98 minutes of theatrical footage because of the 4% PAL speed-up, so the European DVD may be the way to go, but I am simply not able at this point to say "version X has the added footage"

I am, however, able to show you what it looks like:

• Meg Ryan (zipped .wmv)

Other Crap:

• When a car hits a moose, it doesn't work out for either of them. (Several pictures)
• Deutschland uber Alice! Under Germany's welfare reforms, any woman under 55 who has been out of work for more than a year can be forced to take any available job - including in the sex industry - or lose her unemployment benefits.  
• The Filthy Critic, in one of his best rants, reviews that sensitive masterpiece, Alone in the Dark. "There are no words in English to describe how fucking awful it is except, perhaps, in the songs of Cannibal Corpse. (Lowest rating, but ...) In retrospect, please add one finger to every other review I've ever done, because none deserve as low a rating as this."
• FilmJerk's Early Report for January 25, 2005. Detailed coverage of all films scheduled to be released in the upcoming four weeks, including screen counts, running times and ratings, plus additional info about films scheduled between now and May.
• Borowitz: "CHENEY REMEMBERS AUSCHWITZ, FORGETS SUIT"
• URL says it all, but maybe I should explain anyway: LuridFridge.com (Sleazy refrigerator magnets, most from retro paperbacks.)
• The URL says it all: porn-bread.com
• The Rare Carniverous Siberian Tiger Rabbit. Raised by Napoleon Dynamite for its magical properties.
• The last small town in Louisiana gets phone service - paid for by the rest of the state
• Hide and Seek wins the Weekend Box Office January 28-30.
  • Are We There Yet? dropped to second, but showed tremendous staying power, dropping only 8% from last week! Based on that measurement, "smallest drop in the second week", that movie is one of the top 20 performers since Box Office Mojo started monitoring such things.
  • Clint Eastwood's Million Dollar Baby put up some respectable numbers and finished a very solid third.
  • The expanded distribution of Sideways was not as successful as the Eastwood flick, and it took in only about 2/3 as much per screen. That film took in only about six million for the weekend, finishing well behind week six of the Fockers and week seven of The Aviator.
  • Critics called Alone in the Dark an hilariously amateurish debacle, the studio released it virtually unpromoted, and it has no A-list star, so it delivered predictably dismal box office results - only two million dollars from 2100 screens, opening in 14th place.
  • Say Sayonara to Elektra after another disastrous drop-off.
• Pimpdaddy's "Let me tell you 'bout Yo Mama.." jokes.
• Jesus is with us always
• Star Wars Episode III: A Lost Hope [Revenge of the Sith parody]
• Newspaper headline of the day: Clinton licks Beavers
• The ancient Chinese Art of Melon Sculpture
• The Directors Guild of America named Clint Eastwood best director for 'Million Dollar Baby.' Eastwood beat out Martin Scorsese, a six-time nominee who has never won.
• Living room window not public, Canadian Supreme Court rules
• Some new character banners and a bazillion stills from Be Cool, the sequel to Get Shorty.
• Female interrogators tried to break Muslim detainees at the US prison camp in Guantanamo Bay by touching them sexually, and wearing thong underwear.
• Jacko updates
  1. "MICHAEL Jackson's own advisers may have leaked damaging grand jury transcripts that provide graphic details of the alleged child molestation charges laid against the one-time superstar."
  2. Jury selection alone may take a month!
• "It's vulgar and not anatomically correct -- frogs don't have a penis." (See link immediately below for further info and discussion)
• Dave Barry digs up a picture of The UK's controversial frog penis.
• The Heart of Redness. A humorous response to the "Red Sea" article below.
• Voyaging on America's "Red Sea."
• You want to know how it ends without going to see it? The Movie Spoiler is your man. (Site also includes a link to The Book Spoiler.)
• The Biology of B-Movie Monsters

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

"A Passion to Kill" (1994)

Scoop's notes:

I can't address how the foreign markets set their priorities, but I've been reading the trades in the USA.

There may not be a will.

It's an interesting story.

When the DVD market began in the 90s, the producers and retailers figured that it would be just like the VHS market, with the profits coming from these segments in descending order:

1. New releases
2. Porn
3. Catalogue film titles
4. Children's titles
5. Other

For a while both DVD sales and rentals tended to follow a similar profit model, and since production follows profitability, catalogue film titles were being systematically re-issued, albeit mostly on low-cost bare-bones DVD's to keep the costs in line with modest sales expectations. Slowly but surely, the complete history of  cinema was working its way onto DVD.

Then the sales curve took an unexpected turn, and the DVD market became radically different from the VHS market.

TV shows had not been very popular issues in the VHS days. Repeated playing and simple aging cause a significant deterioration of the quality of video tapes. Even more important, VHS tapes just take up too much space. A complete set of The Simpsons, for example, all umpteen years,  would be cumbersome and shelf-consuming on both retail racks and home bookshelves.  DVD changed that. A single season of a favorite TV show can be fit into a boxed set smaller than a hardcover book, and can be expected to last indefinitely. TV shows, at least for Americans, are similar to songs in their correlation to our memories. We watch the old shows and remember what our parents said about them, how we made out with our girl in front of the set, the old buddies who used to pop open a beer and watch with us, and the way shows interacted with the global and personal news of the times. They bring back those glowing, nostalgic memories of home and hearth, friendships and families.

Producers started releasing some old TV shows on DVD sets, and retail sales started going through the roof. After years of unsatisfied demand during the VHS years, consumers couldn't get enough of their favorite TV shows, and were snapping them up for themselves and for gifts. The new world order of profitability looked more like this:

1. New releases
2. TV shows
3. Porn
4. Children's titles
5. Catalogue film titles
6. Other

There was also an overall market shift from rentals to sales. Because of the practical considerations of size and deterioration, video tape ownership had never been highly popular in general. In fact, many titles were "priced for rental" at outrageous amounts not even affordable to individual consumers. Blockbuster may have been willing to pay sixty to ninety dollars to have a copy of a catalogue title, but consumers surely were not. The DVD market has changed that as well.

The DVD business did not turn out to be that similar to the VHS business. The size and durability of DVDs has made ownership convenient and a good value, so the ratio of sales to rentals is much higher in DVD than in VHS. The major consumer demand built up during the VHS years has been for old TV shows, many of which were not in syndication and had not been seen for years. TV shows have not been the only winners from the market transition. Kiddie titles have also generated some very impressive sales. These are typical sell-through items since ownership is such a good value for parents. Unlike adults, small kids can watch the same show dozens of times and still ask to see it again the next day.

In the course of the market shift, the losing segment has been the non-classic movie catalogue titles. The great classics still get issued in box sets with additional features, but the run-of-the-mill films simply get ignored. There is no great economic pressure to issue "Warm Summer Rain" or "Isadora" or "In Praise of Older Women", for example. The market is moving away from rental toward sales, and those are basically rental titles. There may be people like us who want to see the nudity, but a single rental is sufficient to accomplish that. There are simply not a lot of people who just have to have those movies in their collection. But even if those titles did have some sales potential, the sales forecast would be MUCH smaller than for classic TV shows, and there are plenty of highly popular TV classics still unissued (plenty more years of Seinfeld yet to go, for example!), so the high priority projects attract the time and money of the producers, while the non-classic movie titles just stay on the back burner. Those titles I mentioned probably will get issued on DVD some day, but right now the producers have bigger fish to fry, and even if they could instantly produce the old movie titles they'd have a hard time moving them into stores because the retailers have better sellers to fill up that finite amount of shelf space.

A very special thanks to Brainscan for suggesting the theme submitting nominees for this week's new poll...
Best performance playing a stripper.

As far as what is "The Best", I'll let the readers decide. Is "Best" the sexiest dancing? or is it the most convincing (could they do this for real at a club)? Email Scoopy Jr. with your comments or suggestions.

Here is our list of nominees...A-list gals who have all played clothing removal specialists on film.

Pamela Anderson in "Barb Wire"
Lolita Davidovich in "Blaze"
Rae Dawn Chong in "Fear City"
Melanie Griffith in "Fear City"
Emmanuelle Seigner in "Le Sourire"
Elizabeth Hurley in "Kill Cruise"
Shannon Tweed in "Dark Dancer"
Jennifer Dale in "Stone Cold Dead"
Elizabeth Shannon in "Dish Dogs"
Jennifer Connelly in "Requiem for a Dream"
Mia Kirshner in "Exotica"
Joan Collins in "Fearless"
Casandra Peterson in "Working Girls"
Mary Steenburgen in "Melvin & Howard"
Meg Tilly in "Dancing at the Blue Iguana"
Daryl Hannah in "Dancing at the Blue Iguana"
Charlotte Ayana in "Dancing at the Blue Iguana"
Lucy Liu in "City of Industry"
Eva Grimaldi in "Inferno"
Valerie Perrine in "Lenny"
Julie Andrews in "Darling Lili"
Sheree North in "Gypsy Moths"
Elke Sommer in "Danielle By Night"
Helena Bonham-Carter in "Dancing Queen"
Brigitte Fonda in "Scandal"
Natalie Portman in "Closer"
Catherine Oxenberg in "Time Served"
Elizabeth Berkely in "Showgirls"
Gina Gershon in "Showgirls"
Demi Moore in "Striptease"
Sally Kirkland in "High Stakes"
Lynn Whitfield in "Josephine Baker Story"
Diane Lane in "Big Town"
Grace Jones in "Vamp"
Penelope Ann Miller in "Carlito's Way"

The Zero Woman series is one of the great guilty pleasures. Imagine the James Bond series if: a) James were a woman. Bond. Jane Bond; b) She were licensed to kill and took that shit seriously. Kill is what she does. Sorta like Jason Bourne before he started developing a conscience; c) With each movie in the series a new actor were cast as Bond. That's what happens with Zero Woman... different gal every time.

Some things are similar in the two series: both principals bed the occasional babe or two or three, their superiors do not understand them and the dialogue is laughable. And like the more recent members of the Bond series, Zero Woman is pretty grim stuff. Still, it's a hoot to watch.

The fourth in the series was Zero Woman: The Accused. The female assassin in the supersecret Zero Division... gal goes by the name of Rei...has something of a personal life in this one, and more like Bourne than Bond, it is an unpleasant, almost tortured existence. Along the way she is accused of murder... so that document permitting her to kill is more of a temporary permit than a license, I guess...and she picks up a homeless androgenous guy who can't get it up when he likes a gal, but then she finds the real killer who's a gal she has bedded... and is anyone really reading this stuff?

Bottom line is this: Rei is played by Mai Tachihara with much less of a detached coolness than the Reis of earlier and later chapters. Too bad. But Mai gets topless in three scenes, one of which lasts for a good minute and a half. Not too shabby. Transfer could have been better but the movie is still more than sort of worth watching.

• Mai Tachihara (1, 2, 3, 4)

• Cameron Richardson looking great in a bikini on "Point Pleasant".

• Lindsey McKeon showing some nice cleavage during a guest appearance on the WB series, "One Tree Hill". (1, 2)

• Mischa Barton showing lingerie and black undies cleavage on "The O.C.". (1, 2)

• Noa Tishby, the actress/singer/model showing off some wonderbra cleavage on last week's episode of "Las Vegas". You can catch her on the big screen later this summer in the upcoming movie "The Island" (2005), starring Ewan McGregor and Scarlett Johansson, directed by Michael Bay.

"Employee of the Month"
2004 comedy/drama/caper flick starts off in one direction and ends in another.

A guy who has been a bank employee for two years is suddenly (and wrongfully) fired. That evening, his finance dumps him. She found a pair of thongs --- not hers --- in his jacket pocket, and he spends the night in a motel. The next morning, as he arrives to work out his last day, disheveled and downtrodden, the bank is robbed.

All this happens in the first two-thirds of the movie, and there are some very funny bits, although it does drag in some places. Then things get very twisty and take off in a totally different direction. This is what really makes the movie worthwhile, but I'm not going to reveal any of it except to say that if you don't watch the end credits, you'll miss the finale of the movie.

Not perfect, but a decent effort worth watching.

• Fiona Gubelmann

Fanboy purists may disagree, but the new Galactica is a MUCH better version (I'm not even considering effects, budgets or filming techniques). The cast has some talent, the dialog is no longer cheesy and the lead characters are all fairly normal people. Most have secrets and personal issues like regular people. A far cry from the original series featuring nothing but clean cut do-gooder heroes.

Here is the breakdown:
Toplessness...links 9,10,11,15,16,17 and 24
Rear or thong views...links 3,8,14,18 and 19-23
A little bit of both...links 1 and 2
A hint of pubes...link #6