Pacific Heights (1990):

John Schlesinger directed this real estate thriller.

Did that catch your attention? Look at it this way. It's probably the BEST real estate thriller. It's the Citizen Kane of Real Estate Films.

Drake (Matthew Modine) and Patty (Melanie Griffith) are an unmarried couple who are looking in San Francisco for their first place to co-habitate. Like many of us, they end up buying a property far beyond their means, a classic from the 1880s, by convincing themselves that it is a wise investment, and that they can make it affordable by renting out two downstairs units. The rental scheme seems reasonable to them, given that the vacancy race in their neighborhood is virtually zero, so they sink all of their life savings into buying the Victorian house and fixing it up, only to end up renting one of the units to a professional scam artist.

Carter Hayes is very familiar with the law, and uses it to his advantage. He finds overextended yuppies, rents from them, then does everything he can to be as annoying as possible. He ducks the rent, makes noises at all hours, scatters roaches through the walls and plumbing, and changes everything that the landlords have tastefully created. He hopes to accomplish one of two things. Either he gets the landlords to overreact in a way he can sue them for, or he simply forces them to miss their financial obligations, either way affording him an opportunity to obtain the property for himself at a price far below its market value.

According to one comment at IMDb:

Pacific Heights is required viewing in all Apartment Management courses in San Diego County. It is a chilling tale of decent but uneducated and unprepared new owners with a dream unknowingly up against a seasoned player in the professional renter game. This viewing requirement is one of the tools used to introduce starry-eyed management newcomers to the harsh and not-so-easily apparent world of the sick, the dangerous and the sue-happy portion of the rental market who will try to get the management stripped of all their personal assets and possessions, fired and possibly jailed.

This is billed as a thriller, but that description only applies to the last ten minutes or so, Before that, it's an annoyance movie. Carter Hayes (Michael Keaton) just keeps getting more and more irritating until we are forced to despise him and root for the yuppies. That isn't as easy to do as it is to conceive, because Matthew Modine's good guy doesn't seem even remotely sympathetic, and his reactions seem so exaggerated and panicky that you may end up rooting for Michael Keaton's bad guy - just because he isn't a complete wuss. The film might have worked better if the script had taken the time to develop the three main characters, allowing the audience to bond with Modine in some way, and allowing Keaton to be a real flesh-and-blood villain, more like a cold-blooded pragmatist and less like a cartoon bad guy. In a rather odd twist in the last fifteen minutes, Keaton switches from merely annoying into full-bore threatening. He grabs himself a nail gun, starts holding it to Melanie Griffith's head, and crosses the line from manipulative to psychotic.

To Keaton's credit, he did what he could with this script and made the film much better by his presence. Given his picky attitude toward projects, however, it's difficult to see what he liked about the role in the first place. I suppose he just wanted a chance to be a bad guy because he did this at the peak of his success, between his two Batman movies.

There's just not much to relate to in this movie. How much can the author expect me to care whether some virtually anonymous yuppies can make an enormous mortgage payment on a $750,000 home? What if they fail? Do they face being cast out into the humiliating world of sub-standard $350,000 housing -  or even (gasp!) an apartment? Will they lose their Starbucks card? This suffering ain't exactly on the same level of empathy as The Pianist.

Beverly D'Angelo is in the opening credits and one more very short scene. She is not credited. Unfortunately, her famous beaver shot is NOT on the widescreen Region 1 DVD, which is framed more modestly. The capture below in collage #1 is actually OZ's capture from the full screen version. I made the other two from the DVD

Beverly D'Angelo

 

Final Destination 3 (2006):

I haven't seen this one, but here's a zipped .mov file of the uncensored sunbathing scene, and below are two sample caps of Chelan Simmons. The film opens Friday, and is expected to top the weekend Box Office

Chelan Simmons

Other Crap:

"Some DVD titles pass the Canadian customs test, some don't."   The site says:

• Those rejected for importation included the DVDs "Give Me Gape #2," "Horny Hot Dog," and "Tonsil Train 3." Among the productions deemed acceptable for Canadian eyes were "Total Access--Yes I'm Catholic," "Uncle You So Big," and "My Sister's A Sex Dwarf!"

 

Judge issues restraining order against noted mobster Paris Hilton

• "Brian Quintana, 37, had testified that Hilton accused him of planting unfavorable stories in the press and had shoved him three times, threatened him in numerous phone calls and told him she would have him killed."

 

"'Banned' Aphrodisiac Soda To Be Sold In Stores"

 

The Filthy Critic reviews the Matador, and talks about his own dream of becoming a torero

• I never worked as a matador, but I've been a webmaster. That's pretty similar. In both cases, you wear pink socks and dance around a lot of bull shit.
• Of course, in the case of webmasters, it's because the red t-shirt got mixed in with the whites at Quick Wash.

 

The trailer for Battle in Heaven

• "Marcos, a general's driver, is haunted by the tragic outcome of a child kidnapping he perpetrated with his wife. In his troubled search for relief, he confesses to Ana, his boss' daughter... "
• The film itself includes unsimulated sex acts, but the trailer only hints at them.
• This trailer is probably not safe for a work environment. Besides containing some brief nudity, it is also very loud.

 

The trailer for Art School Confidential, a dark comedy from Terri Zwigoff.

• "Jerome goes off to art school convinced that he'll become a great artist. Instead, he comes to learn that he has undeveloped talent and watches the girl of his dreams fall in love with another artist. He is then inadvertently accused and arrested for being a murderer and thus becomes the celebrity artist he always dreamed of being."

 

The trailer for Fragile, a new horror-mystery entry.

• "Calista Flockhart stars as a nurse who takes a new job at a desolate children's hospital during its closing days. She struggles to keep the kids safe and uncover the mystery behind apparent attacks of an unknown origin that hurt the kids so that they cannot leave the premises."

 

The international trailer for Fearless, the new Jet Li movie.

 

A pretty cool nature video - a dog and a goat fight over a feeding area.

 

Urban exploration - abandoned railroad line NYC area.

Montana, Bradshaw deny skipping SB XL over cash

 

Police bust NHL gambling ring

• "Phoenix Coyotes assistant coach Rick Tocchet financed a nationwide sports gambling ring in which about a half dozen current NHL players placed bets"

 

The Smoking Gun has the Pellicano Wiretap Indictment and a concise summary of the case.

 

The Weekend Warrior's box office forecast for the upcoming weekend.

• He thinks that the new releases will take four of the top five slots, headed by Final Destination 3.

 

"POLL: MOST AMERICANS FEAR OPRAH ... Tops Terrorism, Global Warming in University of Minnesota Survey

 

"Scientists say they have found a real-life 'Lost World' in an Indonesian mountain jungle"

 

• I need to take them thar scientist fellers to West Texas if they really wanna see a lost world.

 

Another one of those "combined" trailers: Top Gun: Brokeback Squadron

 

"If brains were french fries, Britney couldn't fill a Happy Meal."

"Deputy Ed Johnson was in uniform. He was also sitting in his marked patrol car. So he was a bit surprised when a man approached Friday and allegedly offered to sell him some cocaine."

Scarlett Johansson and Keira Knightley Nude Pictures from Vanity Fair

World War II - Color Photos

• They are real, but there is a natural tendency to think they are from a movie or re-enactment.

Hungry? Print Yourself Some Bacon

Funny TV commerical about the "meet market" process

Here is the latest free Yeti-Penguin game

Pirate DVDs mock Chinese government's "Geisha" ban

Muslim Clerics Say Cartoon Misrepresents Islam As Violent; Threaten Violence

The trailer from Ask The Dust, which stars Salma Hayek and Colin Farrell, and has been directed by Robert Towne

• Passion and ambition drive two dreamers in 1930s LA. Their love affair is ferocious and hot-blooded as they fight the city and themselves to make their dreams come true.

P Diddy has changed his name again

• He will now be known as Alistair Windsor III.
• Or maybe just "Diddy"

Movie Reviews:

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

(1, 2, 3)

Gomez & Tavares (2005)

Roseanne Barr told Attitude magazine that she used to have a photo of George Clooney's private parts dressed as Groucho Marx.  A young Clooney was a regular in the early days of the "Roseanne" sitcom, and he had a goofy sense of humor.  One night when they were all drunk, John Goodman took a photo of him naked with a pair of Groucho glasses over his crotch. They kept it on the show's fridge with a magnet over it until one day, someone stole it.  Roseanne said she keeps checking eBay to see if anyone's selling it, but it's never shown up.

*  Nuts!

*  You can tell it's not the real Groucho...He was Jewish.

*  It looks a bit like Groucho.  Close, but no cigar

...More like a Tiparillo.