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"The Postman", from Tuna
Many people pick this as
the worst movie ever made, and it was a financial
disaster. Domestic gross was aboiut eighteen
million dollars, compared to an eighty million
dollar budget.
I don't know why critics
hated it so much and theatergoers stayed away in
droves. I've busted Costner's hump as much as
anyone, but to tell you the truth, I actually
watched the entire 177 minutes without
fast-forwarding or falling asleep, and there
wasn't that much to capture. Now, I'm not going
to tell you it is Raiders of The Lost Ark, and
I'll be the first to admit it has about five
scenes so artificial and corny as to provoke
unintentional laughter. But it ain't that bad,
and I will say that Costner isn't bad at all in
this. If you don't know the plot, it's the
post-catastrophic future, and Costner roams what
was once the United States, eking out his
subsistence by acting out vaguely-remembered and
misremembered plays for people, wherever he can
find an audience. The catch is that he's the
world's worst actor, and that his whole acting
schtick is basically a complete scam. Now how
could Costner be bad in the role of the world's
worst actor? He was born to play this part. His
bad recitations of incorrect Shakespeare with a
California surfer-jock accent are as bad as his
Robin Hood, but this time he's in on the joke. It
took some guts to make fun of himself like that.
The whole point of the movie is that he's
supposed to be an incompetent commonplace
schlemiel who can rise to greatness with the
proper motive and opportunity, and that inside of
each of us lies the potential for greatness in
some form .
This movie goes on too
long, but if somebody like Spielberg got a hold
of this 177 minute print and judiciously trimmed
it to about two hours, getting rid of the
schmaltz and the jingoism and the worst dialogue,
I'll bet he could make it a good watch.
Tuna liked the movie a
lot, and he is not alone, by any means. There are
many, many positive comments in IMDb, including a
very solid number of voters who gave it 10 out of
10. Here're Tuna's comments:
"I am becoming very
angry at film critics. I just watched The
Postman, after never hearing a thing about it,
and I loved the film. It had a classic struggle
between good and evil, and showed how important
hope is to the human psyche. It also showed that
people will excel given any chance at all.
Despite being set in the future, there were no
grand special effects, and the locations and
photography were beautiful. In the tradition of
the cowboy movie, the villain was simply evil
with no other personality traits, but everyone
else was complex with their own motivations.
The critics, I find out
afterwards, hated this film. We should not give
them this kind of power. What their reviews told
me was that they have too short an attention span
to sit through a 3 hour film, and are too lazy to
think about a story and its themes. Give the
critics 90 minutes (no more) of non-stop action
and ear-shattering special effects, or you are
doomed to a bad review and failure.
It is ironic that some
of the few things that are uniquely American are
not appreciated here. The cowboy movie, the banjo
and Jazz are three examples. The Postman has much
in common with the cowboy movie. The villains
have a costume (like the black hat) and are
totally evil. The hero wears a postal uniform
(white hat) and is reluctantly drawn into the
struggle. The common people eventually rally
around the hero. The man in the white hat wins in
the end, and rides off into the sunset. Along the
way, we get some insights into human
nature."
NEW FEATURE. If you love Tuna's
work but are daunted by the quantity of his
output, this might help. Click here for a
thumbnail index of all of Tuna's pics from this
film. Study the index first, the download the
ones you want
Olivia Williams (#1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #7, #8, #9, #10, #11, #12, #13, #14, #15, #16)
"An
American Werewolf in Paris", from Tuna
What can you say?
Gershwin's incomparable music, Gene Kelly
dancing. Oh, wait a minute, this one has
"werewolf" in the title. Well, it has
Julie Delpy without her top, and Gershwin looked
like shit without his top, anyway.
NEW FEATURE. If you love Tuna's
work but are daunted by the quantity of his
output, this might help. Click here for a
thumbnail index of all of Tuna's pics from this
film. Study the index first, the download the
ones you want
Julie Delpy (1,
2,
3,
4,
5,
6,
7,
8,
9,
10)
"The
School of Flesh", from Johnny Web
Not my kind of movie.
Unbearably talky 1998 French drama where nothing
ever actually happens. The characters just meet
in different places and in different combinations
to talk about things that have occured
off-camera. Although Isabelle Huppert and the
supporting cast know what to do when the camera
points at them, there's just no there there.
Huppert has a strong presence, but she needs
something more to do. She was nominated for a
Cesar for her performance.
Isabelle Huppert plays a
rich, successful, middle aged woman who decides
to pick up the kickboxing bisexual bartender in a
gay bar. She's going to play Henry Higgins, and
mold him to her liking. She takes care of him,
pays his debts, buys him clothes .... blah, blah,
blah .. despite the fact that he never really
seems that grateful or even really to care for
her. They talk about it. She talks about it with
her friends. He talks about it with his friends.
Their friends talk about it behind their backs.
They cheat on each other. They talk some more. It
doesn't work out, largely because he's planning
the same kind of future many young guys plan
(like having kids, for example), and he can't do
those things with a woman older than his mom. If
it sounds like your kind of movie, the production
values are fine, so go at it. The film was
nominated for the Golden Palm at Cannes, but you
know what that's worth. Also nominated that year
were such compelling cinematic fare as "Fear
and Loathing in Las Vegas", and "Dogme
1- Festen", and about seven thousand other
movies.
Huppert is still quite
beautiful at 45, but she is 45, let's face it.
Her jowls sag, her eyes have bags, and her body
had to be shot in dark and/or fleeting shots.
Even her face was mostly shot in filtered light.
I was embarrassed to watch the scene where she
sits on Martinez (number 1), because her butt was
just so flabby. Anyway, her body looks good in
the captures, even in number one, because I got
to choose the two most flattering frames. It was
harder to find face shots. I captured about 50
and only about three of the ones in natural light
were usable (see collage #4), although the dark
scenes lit in red tended to hide her age. To see
what she looked like in her delectable youth,
look downward to GR's collage from "Heaven's
Gate"
(1,
2,
3,
4)
A
couple from Graphic Response
Carla Gugino in
"Jaded". Isabelle Huppert again,
photographed about two decades years earlier than
the ones I did, in "Heaven's Gate"
words and
pictures from Stone Cold
When I was rounding up
the magazines this month, I came to realize
something new, and it scared me. I realized that
heterosexuals are taking over the world. First I
was havin a cupppa coffee waiting for the
newsstand to open, and I heard James Taylor
singing on the radio. And then the first part of
the message came to me. Even though this mofo
sang "Candy Man" ', "Up On the
Roof", 'n "You got a Friend", he
is one a them card carryin straight boys who
sleeps with real women. Then I was haunted by a
picture on the cover of a magazine in the
newsstand - Ethan Hawke and Uma. No, god no, but
it seems like even Ethan Hawke is a heterosexual.
Then I thought of DiCaprio. And then I got the
new issue of Celebrity Skin and I saw the
pictures of Sadie Frost, and I realized the
ultimate shock - even Jude Law is straight. Next
thing you know, some mofo be tellin me that
Liberace and Jacko and Rip Taylor are all real
men, and Paul Lynde was the ultimate stud boy to
a mofo'n harem full of women who couldn't get
enough of him. Keep an eye on your back, li'a
crackas, cuz ya never know when a heterosexual
might be lurking there behind you, ready to take
away yo woman..
Celeb Skin
Here's Sadie's cannons in Skin, offering a two gun salute to
some paparazzi, and Mr Jude Law. I wonder how
Sadie feels about hanging out with someone so
much prettier than her ass.
Skin came up with three
good pictures of Jade Jagger. I like this one, where she does a Sharon Stone
from her chair. These other two are beach shots
of her guns. (1,2)
Here's the best look at
the Jennifer Lopez booty. I think the girl looks better
when she covers that colossus. It plenty big, but
not so tight. She also wearin some serious kinda
ugly-ass Herman Munster shoes.
Here's a surprise, so
you guys with pacemakers better sit down, cuz
this news will blast you like a microwave workin
overtime to do one a them jumbo-ass frozen
sandwiches at 7-Eleven. Ready? Courtney Love
showed some of her shit in a concert. Did you
ever think this day would come. (1,2)
Skin also had three sets
of film captures that I never saw before. I don't
know if you got better ones already, but here
they are Sarah Buxton, "The
Climb" Robin Givens,
"Boomerang" Rosie Perez, "The 24 Hour
Woman"
Interview
I
couldn't find the new Celebrity Sleuth or the new
Vanity Fair. I had to look midtown for Vanity
Fair, because the thirty dollar Juicy Fruit man
don't carry no Vanity Fair, since not a lot of
the bros ask for it, and I didn't have no reason
to visit my dentist. While I was in Bretano's
with no mofo'n new Vanity Fair, I picked up a
copy of Interview, and it had some new topless
pictures of Karen Elson impersonating somebody
named Kiki, some sweet thing from 1920's Paris.
Good pictures and good nudity, but they print
this mofo on toilet paper, so the scans all look
like they underwater and I had to get arty 'n
shit and fuck around with the backgrounds. So
they don't look too good, but Karen jes fine, and
they new looks at her guns. (1,
2,
3,
4)
Femme
Fatales
I don't
know 'em. I just scan 'em. Not bad pictures,
whoever they are. Yvonne Mecialis Yvonne Mecialis Laurie Wallace
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