Tuesday


Here and Now

s1e3, 720p

Holly Hunter





Collateral

s1e3, 720p

Jeany Spark






The Young Offenders

s1e2, 720p

Patricia Twomey





Half Magic
2018, 720p, no sound

Angela Kinsey



---------------------

Check Other Crap for updates in real time, or close to it.



"The Leftovers"

s3e8, 1920x1080

Carrie Coon





The Counsellor


Not much in the way of nakedness in The Counsellor (2013). One of Cameron Diaz’s nipples is about to escape


Paris Jefferson

and Penélope Cruz look good.


And random women mill around in swimsuits


Kalifornia

1993

Juliette Lewis film clip (collage below)

Michelle Forbes film clip (collages below)




Scoop's notes:

You are writing a book about mass murderers. Your girlfriend is doing the photography for the book. To complete the project, you would like to have first-hand experiences and pictures of the important murder sites, but you can't afford the cross-country journey on your own, so you advertise for a couple willing to ride-share to California.

And, durn the luck, wouldn't you just know that the only guy who answers your ad is a mass murderer. Hey, what are the chances?

Of course, this allows the filmmaker to plant all kinds of irony in the situation. The scholarly Duchovny pontificates on mass murder to the mass murderin' Brad Pitt, and only listens to Pitt's opinions to humor him. Yadda, yadda, yadda.

Well, what a wacky trip it turns out to be. Every time they stop for gas, Pitt takes a break to kill a few convenience store clerks or customers, then he comes out of the bloody bathroom all messed up like Ace Ventura and says to Duchovny "do NOT go in there - it stinks", and then drags him away before he can see the latest body count.

And ol' Brad has kind of a hair trigger. A landlord asks him to pay his rent? Bingo, he's dead meat.
A waitress a little too snippy? Chop off her head. C-store clerk a little slow with the Slurpee machine? He's toast. Inaccurate TV weather report? Need I say more about the weather-girl's fate?

Of course, he doesn't kill just out of anger. Sometimes he needs to kill for practical reasons. Here's an example. It's Brad's turn to pay for the gas, he has no money, and there's a rich guy heading into the men's room. C'mon, people, was he supposed to welch on his turn to pay? He had to do something, didn't he?
Or what about the time when they surprise an old woman who is living out in the desert. She claims she's a widow, and when Brad stumbles upon her husband in another remote part of the house, looking through a telescope ... Well, the next line of dialogue is something like "Oh, Peaches, you were right, you are a widow". He couldn't let her be a liar, could he?

Juliette Lewis plays the standard issue girlfriend with an IQ under 80, and she can't believe that Pitt actually kills all these people. Pitt tells her the last c-store clerk was still breathing, and so she feels that everything is OK. He's a lucky guy to have such an understanding woman. I mean most women get mad if you have a beer with the boys or leave the friggin' toilet seat up, but she's OK as long as he beats people nearly to death, as long as he leaves them breathing.

Ah, but the irony keeps building up in the story, because Duchovny obviously finds murder to be some kind of an intellectual turn-on until he sees it kinda up close and personal. When he starts to realize what Pitt is doing, and when the risk turns toward him and his girlfriend, the subject is a lot less attractive, and he decides maybe he'd rather write about the great electric trains of the 1950's or something.

There is no comedy in this, by the way, despite some of the bizarre set-ups I've been describing, and I haven't exaggerated much. The movie is not only grave in tone, but almost pretentiously so.

Brad Pitt is once again engaged in proving that he's not just a pretty boy, and turns himself into a mass-killin' Gomer Pyle, with long greasy hair and scars and some kind of backwoods southern accent. He spends most of the movie showing how bad his personal hygiene is. The character is really kind of a caricature, and I don't know how much of that to blame on the screenwriter, and how much on Pitt.

He ends up presenting the character as some kind of psychologically undeveloped monster like the killers in Halloween or Friday the 13th, and I think it might have been more effective and more chilling with some more touches of reality and psychology, rather than allowing the movie to be a thrill-based slasher flick. If we could see him as a more human person, it would be more frightening when his rage turns him into a casual killing machine. But he's so completely creepy that Duchovny's girlfriend has him scoped out before he gets into the car, and has the whole read on him after a short talk with the Pitt girlfriend.





Anna Brewster and Hannah Arterton in Versailles (s2, 720p)

Brewster

Arterton

Virginia Madsen and Mariel Hemingway in Creator (1985, 720p)

Madsen

Hemingway



Peter O'Toole played the part of Peter O'Toole, a charming, boozy, eccentric, rubber-legged, and sentimental actor who seems to carry in his eyes the secret that he has seen everything, enjoyed most of it, and forgives everyone along the way, including himself ... oh, wait a minute ... the character did have a different name and was supposed to be a scientist, but O'Toole plays the same part he has always played in the past 25 years.

It's a really mushy romantic comedy with even more romance in the sub-plots. In the main plot, O'Toole is trying to clone his dead wife, and of course he has to do this in secret away from the eyes of his colleagues. In addition to the near-presence of his late wife, O'Toole is shot into further sentimental reminiscences by watching his young assistant fall in love in stages which parallel O'Toole's own youthful courtship of his true love.

OK, it's corny. Like you were expecting anything else in a Peter O'Toole comedy? Creator is the kind of movie that I normally hate - a sappy love story in which love conquers all, and in which the aged Nobel laureate finally gives up on his 30 year quest to clone his dead wife when he falls in love with a 19 year old nymphomaniac. It even includes a resurrection, flying in the face of my general principle that no good movie can include a resurrection.

Despite the utter silliness of the premise, Peter O'Toole makes it all work. I'm not sure if he's really a great actor, because it depends on your requirements. No matter what he has done since Lawrence of Arabia, he's always Peter O'Toole, so that may rule him out as an "actor." But he sure is good at being Peter O'Toole, and has managed to carry several films solely on the strength of his charm.

The film has another virtue besides Peter. All of the main characters, and several of the minor ones, are both likeable and interesting. Mariel Hemingway was cast perfectly as the nymphet farm girl, and you could actually believe that she had the humor, strength, and integrity to win not just the penis, but the heart and mind of a Nobel Prize winner. Vincent Spano, Virginia Madsen, and the screenwriter created just the right mood and dialogue so that you could see that they really were a couple in love. You don't just see them say "I love you," but you can actually witness them loving each other, and you can see that they clicked perfectly together.

Creator is painless and gentle of spirit. That ain't all bad. Like chicken soup, it won't hurt you any, and you can even watch it with the kids if they can tolerate a little harmless nudity.


And it is funny! Examples:
Peter O'Toole shows his microscopic fertilized egg to a colleague who knew O'Toole's late wife:

O'Toole: Do you know what this is?

Other guy: No ....

O'Toole (offended): Why this is Lucy!

Other guy: Well, you have to forgive me for not recognizing her. It's been thirty years since I've seen her, and she's lost a lot of weight.


=============
Mariel Hemingway, talking very loud to O'Toole, in order to be heard at a party:

Hemingway: I'm just a formal kind of girl. You're Dr. Wolper to me, not Harry. If I slept with the King of England I would say (the rest of the party suddenly quiets, so the other guests can hear only the next line, and not the previous conversation), "Thank you for banging me, your majesty."

Of course, the other party-goers think she is addressing O'Toole. There is shocked quiet until O'Toole's colleague says, "Now THAT'S what I call respect!"

A much underrated and underappreciated film.

I also like author Jeremy Leven's other major film, the equally sentimental Don Juan DeMarco, which he also directed.

Betsy Russell and Phoebe Cates in Private School (1983, 1080hd)

Russell

Cates