Wednesday

 

Other Crap:

URL says it all: DickCheneyGunClub.com

 

Magic does the trick in upcoming thrillers - Hollywood is focused on hocus-pocus.

 

Letterman: Top Ten Dick Cheney excuses.

  • "Until Democrats approve medicare reform, we have to make some tough choices for the elderly"
  • "Made a bet with Gretzky's wife"
 

Late Valentine??? Consider Bloody Tampon Heart Earrings
 

 

Oh, no ... Jason Vorhees Lives! ... Not only will he live, but his creator will be Michael Bay.
 

 

Video: Conan in Finland
 

 

Frozen Dead Guy Days

  • "Mark your calendars and don�t miss the fun! The fifth annual Frozen Dead Guy Days winter festival will be held March 10-12, 2006."
 

Tom Cruise, Katie Holmes Deny Breakup Report (She's seven months pregnant.)

 

 

From the mailbox ... "Hey, Scoop. How was this done?" ... (Answer: I don't know. It's a video of Sarah Michelle Geller flashing her boob in a supposed outtake from SNL. I guess it's a fake, but it's fun to see!)

 

 

Three clips from The Second Chance

  • Ethan Jenkins (Michael W. Smith) and Jake Sanders (introducing Jeff Obafemi Carr) are both passionate pastors who worship the same God from the same book--but that's where the similarity ends. White and well-to-do Ethan is comfortable in his music ministry at the media-savvy suburban mega-church, The Rock; Jake is a street smart African-American who ministers to the gang members, teen mothers, and drug addicts of the urban Second Chance. When they are suddenly thrown together in a tough neighborhood and forced to work side by side, Ethan discovers there is no boundary between the streets and the sanctuary. But can the faith these two men share overcome the prejudices that divide them to give themselves and a struggling urban church a second chance?

 

 

Six clips from Eight Below, Disney's latest doggie movie.

 

 

Two trailers for The Break-Up, an unromantic comedy starring Vince Vaughn and Jennifer Aniston.
 

 

The Daily Show rags on the Olympic opening ceremony

 

 

Jon Stewart talks to astronaut Mike Mullane

 

 

The Daily Show's Cheney-bashing report, Part 1

  • Whittington is the first person to be shot by a sitting Veep since Alexander Hamilton

 

 

The Daily Show's Cheney-bashing report, Part 2

 

 

The Daily Show's Cheney-bashing report, Part 3

 

 

Conan O'Brien Meets Finnish President
 

 

Saddam tells court he's on hunger strike

  • Fiendishly brilliant. He starves himself to death to beat the hangman.

 

 

Headline of the day: "Lobster in pants hard to disguise" ... unless you are George Clooney, in which case you can put Groucho glasses on the lobster, thus disguising it as your penis.

 

 

"Police: Bus driver tosses complaining rider into traffic"

 

 

Bode out after straddling slalom gate

  • "American Bode Miller was disqualified from the Alpine combined Tuesday for straddling a gate in the first slalom run, just when he seemed to have built a commanding lead for his first Olympic gold medal."

 

 

Just in time for Valentine's Day Viagra Cupcakes

 

 

Various offbeat Jessica Alba pictures, as she recreates famous Hollywood moments.

 

 

VIDEO: Katie Couric pooped on by birds while Roker watches and laughs
 

 

KonoPizza? Is it a great Hawaiian snack? Nah, it's pizza in a cone.

 

 

The Bust Doctor?
 

 

Actor Mel Gibson adds bowling alley to his Fiji hideaway island.

  • Of course, they are talking about an "Australian-born" Mel Gibson. As I recall, the famous movie star version of Mel Gibson was born somewhere in upstate New York. "Upstate" is defined, of course, as "north of the Bronx."
 

Scores' Strippers Rate Celebrity Tippers
 

 

VP accidentally shoots Republican

  • Vice President Dick Cheney on Saturday accidentally shot one of his Republican hunting companions, 78-year-old Harry Whittington, during their annual "Dirty Hippy Hunt" at a ranch just southwest of Corpus Christi.
 

Letterman: Top Ten Signs You're Watching A Lame Olympics Opening Ceremony

 

Six clips and the French trailer from Don't Come Knocking

 

Watch the first eight minutes of National Lampoon's Pucked, starring Jon Bon Jovi

  • "Frank Hopper (Bon Jovi) is a former lawyer, long-term loser and constant dreamer - and frankly, probably just not all that bright. When he receives a credit card in the mail, he believes he's hit the jackpot. It's not long before he's working his way toward financing his dream - an all-woman hockey team. He's also put himself in debt to the tune of more than $300,000. Naturally, he winds up in court when his plan backfires."
 

"HOMELAND SECURITY DEPARTMENT UNVEILS CHENEY ALERT SYSTEM ... Color-coded System Would Warn Nation of Future Attacks by Veep"
 

 

An R-rated clip from The Hills Have Eyes
 

 

The Smoking Gun has the first official report from the Cheney hunting accident

 

 


Movie Reviews:

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

 

 

 

Bad Timing (1980)

This was covered by Scoopy when it was released by Criterion in what he says was a wonderful edition. I screened another version, and mine was less than that, mainly too dark, and a little soft focus. The film was buried by Rank, the production studio, as being "sick, sick, sick." Scoopy gives the entire plot, including spoilers in his in-depth review. A young women in Austria is rushed to a hospital. She is nearly dead from an overdose of booze and pills. The police suspect that her boyfriend, Art Garfunkel, isn't telling them everything because too much time elapsed between when she called him and when he called for an ambulance. The rest of the film intercuts scenes of the doctors trying to save her life, the police questioning Garfunkel, and flashbacks to what really happened.

Garfunkel was a visiting psych professor, and the girl, Theresa Russell, was a free spirit. Garfunkel wanted to own her. Her attitude was clearly summed up in a note she left him, "I wish you would love me more, and understand me less." Russell does full frontal and rear nudity. Ellan Fartt, a one film wonder, shows breasts and buns as an exotic performer. IMDb readers say 6.9, and the film now has a strong following. While I usually like Nicolas Roeg's work, especially Walkabout, this one was far too predictable for me, the constant intercutting absolutely killed any chance of any momentum, and supposed shockingly sick scene I found rather ho-hum and underplayed.

This is a C and only for a select audience.

Theresa Russell

Ellan Fartt

 

Passion (1999)

Passion (1999) is a semi-biographical film about the Australian pianist, composer and musicologist Percy Grainger. It focuses exclusively on the event of 1914, when he was the toast of London. This was, of course, an ominous year, with war imminent, and Grainger was not a typical Londoner.  To begin with, although he was a grown man, he was totally devoted to his syphilitic mother/manager. On top of that, he was wont to wear homemade clothing which consisted entirely of toweling. Strangest of all, he used self-flagellation to help him concentrate, and as a sexual outlet. After he tried unsuccessfully to seduce his best friend's fiancee (Claudia Karvan), she lined him up with a piano student (Emily Woof) who would become his lover, assistant, confidante, and S&M partner.

The aim of the film is summed up in the title. Take away any of Grainger's passions, and he would not have been Grainger. Constraining the film to one year was a good move, in that it presented his character clearly and believably, without going on for hours. I suspect, most, like me, will want to know more about him when it is over.

Performances are excellent. Karvan and Woof were more than equal to the roles, and Richard Roxburgh nailed Percy Grainger. Barbara Hershey, as his mother, was too close to his age, but pulled off the characterization anyway with a strong performance.

IMDb readers say 5.5. This is a C.

Directly after the events pictured in the film, the Guns of August were fired and England entered into World War 1. By September, Grainger had moved permanently to the US, where he soon became a citizen, was a pioneer in electronic music, and became most famous for collecting, rearranging and popularizing folk music. His mother committed suicide in 1922, by leaping melodramatically from the Aeolian Building in NYC.

Emily Woof shows breasts and buns, and maybe just a hint of bush in whipping scenes.

Scoop's notes:

An interview with director Peter Duncan. One of the most interesting things revealed in the interview is that Roxburgh and Woof prepared for their roles by undergoing real whippings from a professional dominatrix.

Rose Aldridge Grainger, Percy's mother, was 52 when 1914 began.  Barbara Hershey was 51 when Passion was released. She was, therefore, almost exactly the right age to play the role. The problem with the age gap resulted from hiring an actor slightly too old to play Percy. Roxburgh was 37 when the film was made, making him too old to be Hershey's son, but the real Percy had been 31 when 1914 began, the right age to be either Barbara Hershey's son or Rose Grainger's.

One of Grainger's most notable achievements was his role in turning an obscure folk ballad named Air from County Derry into one of the most widely-recognized songs in the world. (It's now universally known as Danny Boy.) His successes were by no means restricted to the field of music. Among his diverse and eclectic accomplishments, one of the most unusual was his invention of the sports bra, but his most unusual had to be the invention of a new form of purely Anglo-Saxon English stripped of all French, Latin, and Greek influences. (He would refer to himself not as a vegetarian, for example, but as a "meat-shunner."

Percy Grainger's "official site." I don't know how official it really is, but it is filled with interesting material, including rare family photographs from Ella Grainger and Percy's estate.

A very informative essay: Percy Grainger plays Grainger

 
 

 

 



Today the old Time Machine travels back to 1975 for Director Nino Mastorakis's "Island of Death," which he freely admits he made only for the purpose of making money. Shot in Mykonos, it is nicely restored and full of nudity and violence. The film starred Jane Ryall a cute blonde (not natural as you will see). According to Mastorakis she was very shy, although you would never know it from the scenes you see here, as she displays every inch of her body.

Part two tomorrow.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Vejiita looks at Kari Wuhrer in Vivid

Valerie Rojan in Serie Rose

Rosette in Serie Rose

Pascale Pellegrin in Serie Rose

Diane Niderman in Serie Rose

Anne Fontaine in Serie Rose

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dann reports on Afraid of the Dark

If you're not willing to pay very close attention, and keep an open mind about what you're seeing on the screen, this 1991 French/English psychological thriller will drive you nuts, and at the end you'll have no idea what you've just seen.

A young boy wanders a London neighborhood, keeping an eye on his blind mother's support group friends, all of them also blind. When someone starts slashing blind women's faces with a razor, he becomes even more vigilant, hoping to help his police inspector father solve the horrible crimes.

A young boy wanders a London neighborhood, feeling desperately alone as he faces surgery on his eyes to stave off blindness. Since no one in his family is blind, he feels very alone. His father is a florist, but soon, he fears, he won't be able to see any of his father's beautiful creations. As his mother and father try to console and reassure him, he lapses deeper into despair.

That's about all I can tell you without revealing the ending, and that's assuming I really understand the movie myself. One more hint, though. In the two paragraphs above, I am NOT talking about two different boys.

Claire Holman

 

 

 

Jennifer Decker in L'Amour Dangereux
Natasja Vasko  in Evilenko

Melanie Griffith in a see-through teddy. I saw some comments elsewhere about this pic, to the effect of "she still looks hot." I guess you could say that, but I found this picture sad and kind of creepy.


Pat's comments in yellow

Hollywood's Davie-Brown Entertainment has launched a new celebrity-evaluation index for advertisers called the Davie-Brown Index.  Other researchers rank celebrities for popularity, but they are the first to rank influence, or how likely someone is to buy a product because a celebrity endorses it.  Under the DBI, Tom Hanks and Oprah Winfrey scored highest as the stars who can most influence consumer purchases.

*  Why do you think the cover of "O" magazine is ALWAYS Oprah? 

*  Oprah can get people to buy books that aren't even true! 

*  If Tom Hanks can sell us anything, why couldn't he sell us Tom Hanks in
"The Ladykillers"?

*  It depends on the product.  If you're a marriage counselor, don't hire
Robert Blake.  But if you sell guns and ammo...

*  And Now, Bill Clinton For Cialis...