Wednesday

Shortbus

Shortbus, as it turns out, is represented by an excellent commercial DVD:

  • full-length commentary

  • featurette: making-of

  • featurette: filming the orgy scene

  • 52 minutes of deleted scenes

The key point for our purposes is that there is no female nudity in the deleted scenes, and the "making of" is unexceptional, but ... the special on "filming the orgy scene" is definitely of interest to us. It is only 8 minutes long, so I just made a clip of the entire thing. Here it is, all 135 meg of it.

Here are my thoughts on the movie. I like it, but I caution that it is basically a gay movie with some hetero sex added as a smokescreen.

 

 

Sea of Love

 

Sea of Love in a mainstream erotic thriller from the 1980s, when erotic thrillers were still "all that." The three stars lift a so-so screenplay to memorability.

Al Pacino plays a New York cop (there's a surprise) who's trying to track down a killer. Detective Pacino has three male victims in his case files, and each of them placed a rhyming ad in the personals. Those were the only three rhyming ads. Pacino also has matching fingerprints at two of the crime scenes, but the prints don't match anyone in the database, so the police are at an impasse. Pacino and his partner (John Goodman) come up with a plan: they write their own rhyming ad and arrange to meet every woman who answers it. They meet for a drink in a a public restaurant,  get the woman's fingerprints on a water or wine glass, and move on to the next woman.

Slick plan.

Only one problem. Pacino is has a drinking problem. He runs into one of the suspects on the street, and they hit it off. His loneliness and a head full of booze cloud his judgment, and the fact that it's Ellen Barkin in skin-tight dresses seals the deal, so they end up getting it on ... and on ... and on. But Pacino never got her prints on a glass, so she's not cleared and still may be the murderer! A concatenation of circumstances leads Pacino to become more and more convinced that she might be the killer, even as he becomes more and more involved with her and hopes she isn't. He hits the bottle even harder than before, which further clouds his judgment and accentuates his paranoia.

The film's strength lies in the cat-and-mouse game which the director plays with the audience.

She's the killer. There's a gun in her purse.

No, wait. It's a starter's pistol.

Now Pacino has to explain to her why he just went ballistic, and he has to do so as a guy in love with her, not as a cop.  But he can't tell her the whole truth because she really might be the killer. Or maybe she's just a nice woman and Pacino is really fucking up her life with a bunch of lies and half-truths.

They get through the gun incident. Now here comes another piece of evidence pointing to her, and the cycle continues. Lather; rinse; repeat. Throughout the cycle, Pacino never knows if and when she's going to kill him instead of kiss him, and the audience never knows either. Finally it gets to the point where the evidence is overwhelming. Every clue points to her. There are too many incriminating circumstances to be just coincidences. She must be the killer  ...

You'll have to watch the film to see how that gets resolved. I won't tell you the ending, but I will say that the screenplay was deft. The explanation makes perfect sense, even though I never thought of it as the film developed.

Sea of Love is not a major movie, but is a solid little thriller with deep character development. Pacino's cop is more than just a cardboard cut-out. He's flawed; he's an ass; he's lonely; he's a drunk. The key point is that he's somebody who is known to us. We can probably answer questions about elements of his life than have not been specifically covered on screen. That kind of character development allows the audience to think of him as a member of the family, maybe a cousin who's a pretty decent guy but needs to slack off the booze. We get deeper into the thrills because we're into him.


Additional notes:

Ellen Barkin? That girl may not be so beautiful and her face may be all crooked, but damn was she sexy in her prime! She has always seemed to be one of those actresses who should have been a bigger star. In the late 80s is seemed that she would be a monster A-lister, and then her career just sort of petered out. She just seems to have chosen all the wrong scripts in the 90s, and then suddenly she was 50 years old.

Samuel L. Jackson? Don't watch the film hoping to see him. He has a couple of lines in an early scene unrelated to the central plot. If you're not looking for him you may miss him.

The DVD has some deleted scenes. Two of them are short and unimportant. The remainder comprise a complete sub-plot which was wisely dropped. It concerned a black kid who was fingered as an alternate suspect in the killings. It was nothing more than a red herring, and not a very logical one at that, so the director made the right move in cutting it.


It's a B- on our scale because it achieved both critical and popular acceptance.

  • It was a (minor) box office hit, opening at #1 and staying in the top two for four weeks.
  • It has 82% positive reviews.

Ellen Barkin (film clip). Note: we have traditionally believed that this film contained some body doubling for Ellen Barkin. The director's commentary does not support this position. That's all Barkin's flesh, and some very nice flesh it is. Barkin doesn't have a lot of meat on her bones, but what's there is Grade-A Prime.

 

 

 

* Yellow asterisk: funny (maybe).

* White asterisk: expanded format.

* Blue asterisk: not mine.

No asterisk: it probably sucks.

OTHER CRAP:

Catch the deluxe version of Other Crap in real time, with all the bells and whistles, here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

They're Playing With Fire

They're Playing with Fire (1984) is called a thriller at IMDb. The summary starts, "Is this a sex film with slasher overtones or a slasher film with sex thrown it (sic). The filmmaker never really makes up his mind..."

Actually, neither.

Let's look at the facts.

Sybil Danning, a college English professor married to a impotent PhD who teaches at the same school, invites student Jay Richards to her yacht to earn some extra money. He goes willingly, since he is in lust with her anyway. Once there, she seduces him, then talks him into helping her with a problem. Her mother-in-law and grandmother-in-law are about to cut her husband out of their wills, and she needs Jay to scare them so badly they look incompetent and must be put away. He tries, but their toy poodle discovers him and he almost gets shot. Shortly thereafter, somebody shoots the two old ladies and their TV. Obviously, our two suspects are Danning and her husband, and there is also a weird gardener that has been in the household forever.

Ok, I will grant that the plot has thriller-like elements. Sybil Danning does three nude scenes where she shows T&A. Suzanne Kennedy shows a breast being groped by her boyfriend in a car. So, roger on the erotic. It is looking so far like an erotic thriller. However, I don't think so. I'm pretty sure it was supposed to be a comedy.

Follow my reasoning.

  • When we first see Sybil teaching, she is teaching Macbeth. OK, that could be irony, or a hint at what is to come, helping establish Danning as a red herring.
  • A female lead singer announces that the band is taking a break, and that anyone who doesn't like their music could take the opportunity to hang themselves. Then she offers a rope. That was either a PMS ad, or an attempt at humor.
  • The cast includes Dominick Brascia, who basically plays the part of John Belushi. He is fat, rolls his eyes and everything, and constantly craves pizza, which must include mustard and anchovies. When he needs to take a leak, he says to himself, "good things come in small packages."
  • The ending involves a surprise secret evil twin.

  • Danning, at the end of the film, decides to go for student Jay Richards as a life partner.

Those facts alone spell comedy intent, but the real kicker is below.

There is no way to explain a bound and gagged toy poodle in anything but a comedy. Given that, why am I the only one to figure out that this was a comedy? Because a failed comedy is almost indistinguishable from a film which isn't trying to be funny in the first place. The jokes fell flat, with the exception of the poodle.

IMDb readers say 4.1. That's too harsh, in my opinion. Sybil Danning looked really hot, and spent a lot of time naked. The bound and gagged poodle was almost worth the DVD price alone. It has enough bad movie energy for party fodder. Given all this, I will call it a C-.

The good news is that it is affordable at Amazon Marketplace with a new and a used copy each for less than $20.00. (Interestingly, a used VHS is $49.75.)

 

Sybil Danning

 

 

Suzanne Kennedy

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


Road House

The Time Machine travels today to 1989 for Kelly Lynch, with some flashes of T&A, messing around with Patrick Swayze in Scoop's favorite movie, "Road House."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sublime

Sublime is about a guy named George Grieves, a normal everyday family guy type, whom checks into a hospital for what seems to be a routine operation. After he wakes up from the procedure he find that there is something wrong with the hospital he is in, that the people there and the hospital itself seem to full of evil secrets of sexual and maniacal terrors involving the staff and patients. Unable to convince others that there is something oddly wrong going on, George soon realizes that the only person who can stop it is himself.

 

Katherine Cunningham-Eves

 

Kathleen York

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Crank

 

 

Amy Smart

The actual breast shot (right) is a body double

 
 

 

 

 

 

 

Notes and collages

"Farscape" - Part 3

... lots of cleavage and beautiful women in this smart sensual sci-fi TV series which got cancelled because the special effects cost more than the ad revenue could cover

I highly recommend this series for rental or purchase based on the obvious love put into this production. Some of the episodes are a bit odd in terms of psychological focus, which I really could have done without, yet the imagery is so lush I give it three thumbs up in an overview.

When the series got cancelled the fan-based impetus of a two-part mini-series to wrap up the loose ends did exactly that in a spectacular manner!

Virginia Hey, Ep 8

Virginia Hey, Ep 9

Virginia Hey, Ep 10

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lynn Whitfield in The Josephine Baker Story. Beautifully photographed HBO biopic.

Drew Barrymore in Dopperganger (comprehensive film clips). (Massive download - 150 meg). Samples of the six videos are seen below

Paparazzi - Sienna Miller topless in HQ versions

 

Paparazzi - Beil in a bikini, hangin' with Jeter - HQ versions
The paparazzi catch Evangeline Lilly with her complete butt exposed. (HQ version)
Just for laughs -  here's a pretty young Canadian model. See if you can guess who it is without looking at the file name.
Teal Roberts in Beverly Hills Cop 2

Spanish Speakers

Ingrid Rubio in Haz conmigo lo que Quieras  
Maria Valverde in Melissa P

 

 

 

 

 


Pat's comments in yellow...


Borys Cezar of Poland started a website for lazy Catholics that lets
you confess your sins from home.  The "virtual confessional" asks you to type in your sins and click "yes/no" on whether you regret them and intend to correct them.   Then a screen says, ""We are connecting you with the Lord God, please wait... Your sins are being transferred, please wait...Congratulations, your sins have been forgiven."  Cezar said he's a Catholic himself and didn't mean to offend, but officials shut down his site and he's facing a heavy fine or jail for offending religious feelings.

*  It could be worse: his first idea was to launch a Muslim cartoon website.


Tuesday, in a long-awaited document, the Pope slammed the door on marriage for priests, writing that the celibate, all-male priesthood is "a priceless treasure."

*  As opposed to a pirate treasure, which comes with a lot of booty.

*  Yes, the brotherhood of celibate priests is a rare treasure, and getting rarer all the time.

*  Priests are like basketball players: they can be fathers, but not husbands.



The London Daily Mirror reports that producers of a Comic Relief
benefit at the historic County Hall were ordered not to hand out their trademark red clown noses because they may be a fire hazard.  A show insider called it ridiculous, but a spokeswoman said because of the age of the building, nothing that's a fire risk or could cause damage if dropped is allowed, and that includes bottles, newspapers, and ... clown noses. 

*  If your clown nose caught on fire, couldn't you put it out with a bottle of seltzer?  Or stomp it out with your giant shoes?