Underworld (1996) is billed at IMDb as a comedy thriller. I can nearly understand the thriller part, but, if it is indeed a comedy, I just didn't get it. During the opening credits, we have gratuitous breast exposure from a lingerie model, intercut with several machine gun massacres. Evidently, this all takes place in some alternate universe without police. After a stroll through gratuitous topless showgirls, we are introduced to the two main characters, Johnny Crown (Denis Leary) and Frank Gavilan (Joe Mantegna). Crown was just released from prison, and is taking advantage of father's day to kill everyone he feels is remotely responsible for the brain death of his father.

Gavilan meets him as requested, and goes with him in his limo. Other than the odd mass murder break, including one in the limo, the rest of the film is filled with endless psycho-babble, where we learn that Crown and Gavilan have known each other for a long time, that Crown and Gavilan are not their real names, and that Gavilan is looking for someone named Richard Essex. Then there is a delightful little episode where a bunch of thugs watch a stripper and shoot up a bar out of boredom, then kill each other. All of this is planned by Crown, who also enjoys playing with some, but not all, of his victims before they meet their demise. Crown also tries to cause a reconciliation between Gavilan and his estranged wife (Annabella Sciorra). Watch for Abe Vigoda as Galivan's father, and Tracy Lords as a singer.

We have breasts from Heidi Schanz as the lingerie model, breasts and buns from stripper Tracey Mannen, and breasts from three showgirls credited as Christine Anthony, Thomasina Grieve and Diana Vlaskalic, but with no way to tell them apart. IMDB readers have this at 4.4 of 10. I suppose the hook is supposed to be wondering what will happen to Galivan, and will Richard Essex ever be found. Comments compare the style to Tarrentino, but not favorably. This is a D.

Some may have noticed some common threads in the last few projects. They all come from the same boxed set, all involve crime in some way, all have nudity, and all are somewhere between not very good and godawfull. All are passable 4/3 transfers, and none are available seperately.

Alfie (2004):

The original swingin' London version of Alfie was the vehicle that carried Michael Caine to stardom, and a career that would result in nearly three million more movie roles.

Why anyone felt a remake was appropriate is way beyond my capacity of understanding. But they made one. I think if you read my review and Tuna's at The Movie House, you get the right perspective on the film. This is one movie where I feel that our site has the best review available. There's nothing wrong with it at all, and it has its moments. I mean at least it doesn't star fuckin' Affleck, and it has some nice nudity.

But when I finished it, I thought, "Why did they think I would like to spend a couple of hours of my life watching that?"

I still don't know that answer.

Competent, but dull, and anachronistic.

• Sienna Miller (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6)
• Jane Krakowski (1, 2)

The L-Word:

Today we caught up to the March 20 Episode.

Prior to this scene, the second season of L-Word had been quite tame, but this got them back on track. Very hot sex scene between Erin Daniels and Katherine Moennig. Zipped .wmv

Other Crap:

• Florida Teacher Voyeur Nabbed. Cops: Golf coach spied female students from gym ceiling perch
• Superman in "Billion Dollar Limited", a cartoon from the WW2 era. Two more follow.
• Superman in Electric Earthquake
• Superman in The Mechanical Monsters
• Lots of new pics in Batman Begins. I'll say this for 'em. In order to create an official web site, they hired a webmaster who knows his shit.
• Letterman's Top Ten Questions Congress Forgot To Ask Baseball Players. My favorite: "Why don't the Mets take performance-enhancing drugs?"
• David Spade wearing the penis nose as he impersonates Owen Wilson
• Weekly World News reveals: TOP CIA INTERROGATOR IS AN S&M DOMINATRIX
• "The Pat O'Brien Voicemail (.wma format), in which the television host is heard telling some woman exactly what he wants through what we're guessing is more of a chemical haze than Kuwait saw in all of the 90s."
• X-RATED - Adult movie posters of the 60s and 70s. (This may be a repeat, but since I can't remember, no harm in doing it one more time.)
• Mischa Barton now appears on two O.C.s, the second one being Other Crap. And this time she's topless.
• Ice Princess Michelle Trachtenberg shows off some of the royal jewels.
• Guys and Dolls: A complete recap of the music portion of SXSW
• "Lowell" will be the new Spiderman baddie. Reaching past some of the better known villains like Kingpin and Shocker, Church will play "Dumb smirky guy", a villain who superpowers involve complete control over gallstones.
• From our "be still, my beating heart" department: Affleck to make directorial debut.
• Giant Colon Teaches Cancer Prevention. Wow, the world really is getting politically correct. In my day, we just called our health teacher a "big asshole." I have to admit "giant colon" sounds better.
• "The Roller Cycle, personal power accelerator, puts you on the cutting edge of inline skating and skateboarding with a 1.5 horsepower engine propelling you safely up to 25 MPH"
• Police flush out three suspects in pursuit of Albanian Toilet Gang. They had previously been known as the Estonian Toilet Gang until Estonia's toilet got clogged up.
• The Credit Card Prank II - does anyone ever check to see if the signatures match?
• GOVERNMENT OF ESTONIA COLLAPSES, both guys resign.
• No bull: animal rights group to stage 'running of the nudes'
• 'Python's Spamalot' wows audience." The best thing about the article is the picture of the five surviving Pythons, who were all there for opening night. (The sixth, Graham Chapman, has been dead for 15 years.)
• Parker Bowles Doesn't Want to Be Queen, will instead take the title of "Royal and Ancient Scullery Maid."
• Bonds says he may miss this entire season following knee surgery. Given the fact that Barry is full of beans, I wouldn't place much money on this bet.
• A new reality show will see pop acts from the 70s, 80s and 90s battling it out for the public vote. Sorry, but I didn't see Terry Jacks on the list, presumably because he skinned his heart.
• Sandra Bullock discusses the sexy power of shooting an automatic weapon, and the impressive size of her weapon compared to Jon Stewart's tiny one.
• Senior Daily Show Ethicist Dr. Stephen Colbert weighs in with his near-expert opinion on the Schiavo controversy.
• Jon Stewart looks at our Senate's "Commitment to life"
• The Daily Show's Bob Wiltfong profiles a man working hard to legalize gay marriage, just so he can oppose it.
• A gallery of walls with stuff written on
• US FDA Defect Action Level Handbook. Scroll down to the acceptable limits in food and find the wonderful facts about the tolerance levels for insect and rodent fragments.
• Does anyone remember a DC comic called Brother Power The Geek?(December 1968)
• GALLUP: Public Overwhelmingly Supports Removal of Feeding Tube for Terri Schiavo
• DAWNMARIEONLINE.COM
• Uncle Scoopy's Guest House features Luther the Geek today. Strange movie. I thought it was laughably bad, but the genre sites seem to love it. The link goes to my comments and, more important, to some nekkid pics of Stacy Haiduk (Lana Lang in TV's Superboy). The Luther the Geek DVD includes a lot of outtake footage, much of which involves Ms Haiduk without her clothing, and that includes full rear shots and partial lower frontals which were not seen in the previous releases of the film.
• Tom Waits on his most cherished albums of all time
• Mohamed Fayed is on a charm offensive, albeit in his own unique fashion.
  • In a Channel 4 documentary next week, he calls Prince Philip, 'a sick, diseased German Nazi bastard from nowhere' and 'a murderer.' He describes some members of the Cabinet as 'cocksuckers' (but only the ones he likes), dismisses Tony Blair as 'a failed lawyer', and asks rhetorically how Prince Charles can sleep with a woman 'who looks like a crocodile'."
  • He may have a point on that crocodile thing.
• Sex doesn't sell. Serious, adult sexuality, at least, is a turn-off for movie audiences. "Increasingly, if a movie is rated R," says producer John Goldwyn, "audiences won't go."
• Here is the Fantastic Four footage that was shown at Showest
• WEHT.net: The Online Compendium of 'What Ever Happened To' and 'Where Are They Now?
• The Art of James Bond
• Urban Legend: Photograph shows a 12-foot-long, 1000-lb. hog dubbed 'Hogzilla.' {{{}}} Status: Real photo; inaccurate description.
• The Beer Can House in Houston will be restored because it is considered "national folk art." You poor Europeans, with your prissy museums and castles. Come here to Texas and we'll show you what REAL folk art looks like. And it tastes as good as it looks!
• A trailer and a whole bunch of other crap about Valiant, including several clips, "le teaser", and "le making of" ...
  • "The animated comedy tells the story of a lowly wood pigeon named Valiant, who overcomes his small size to become a hero in Great Britain's Royal Air Force Homing Pigeon Service during World War II. The RHPS advanced the Allied cause by flying vital messages about enemy movements across the English Channel, while evading brutal attacks by the enemy's Falcon brigade."
  • If you run into an ad, click on "Passer la publicité" to ... um ... pass by the publicity. See, French isn't so hard.
• Here's a new clip and McConaughey's blog from Sahara. This is Matthew's attempt to be a new version of Indiana Jones. Who knows? He may just have enough laid-back charm to pull it off. Steve Zahn is his comical sidekick.
• The trailer for The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants.
  • I don't know what this is about, but I know it's a PG story about four 16 year old girls, so I'm gonna take a wild guess that it isn't a sequel to Leon: The Professional.
• The trailers and two new clips from Kung Fu Hustle
  • "A hapless wanna be gangster, Sing, must overcome his inability to wield a knife and demonstrate his mettle in order to become a member of the notorious Axe Gang. The Axe Gang, meanwhile, want to reign supreme by occupying the most coveted territory, which is a sacred street protected by an unlikely cast of characters, many of whom are highly skilled kung fu masters disguised as ordinary people. After several encounters with thugs and a fearsome adversary known as the Beast, Sing overcomes his inadequacy and realizes he is the greatest kung fu master of them all, destined to protect the sacred street."
• The trailer for the all-black version of The Honeymooners
  • It has the usual plot: Bus driver Ralph Kramden (Cedric the Entertainer) and sewer worker Ed Norton (Mike Epps) hatch a get-rich-quick scheme to get them out of Brooklyn and onto easy street. Standing by their husbands are devoted wives Alice (Gabrielle Union) and Trixie (Regina Hall), who help their guys make ends meet by waitressing at a neighborhood diner.
• "Cock o' lada - The first drink out of a cocktube" Sounds like a horny Eastern European car.
• I, Ron Jeremy (Ron Jeremy's blog. It's actually kinda cool, in a goofy Ron Jeremy kind of way.)

Other Crap archives. May also include newer material than the links above, since it's sorta in real time.

Click here to submit a URL for Other Crap

MOVIE REVIEWS:

Here are the latest movie reviews available at scoopy.com.

• The yellow asterisks indicate that I wrote the review, and am deluded into thinking it includes humor.
• If there is a white asterisk, it means that there isn't any significant humor, but I inexplicably determined there might be something else of interest.
• A blue asterisk indicates the review is written by Tuna (or Junior or Brainscan, or somebody else besides me)
• If there is no asterisk, I wrote it, but am too ashamed to admit it.

Here is a short list of nominees (including most of the nominees from when we first ran this poll).

Denise Richards, Neve Campbell, and Matt Dillon in "Wild Things"
Sharon Stone and Michael Douglas in "Basic Instinct"
Kim Basinger and Mickey Rourke "9 ½ Weeks"
Kathleen Turner and William Hurt in "Body Heat"
Ellen Barkin and Dennis Quaid "The Big Easy"
Rebecca DeMornay and Tom Cruise in "Risky Business"
Jessica Lange and Jack Nicholson on the table in "The Postman Always Rings Twice"
Rene Russo and Pierce Brosnan in "The Thomas Crown Affair"
Halle Berry and Billy Bob Thornton in "Monster's Ball"
Hudson Leick and Ryan Alosio in "Denial"
Madonna and Willem Dafoe "Body of Evidence"
Julianne Moore and Mark Wahlberg in "Boogie Nights"
Demi Moore and Rob Lowe in "About Last Night"
Glenn Close and Michael Douglas in "Fatal Attraction"
Maria Schneider and Marlon Brando in "Last Tango in Paris"
Jennifer Jason Leigh and Robert Romanus in "Fast Times at Ridgemont High"
Antonio Banderas and Angelina Jolie in "Original Sin"
Carré Otis and Mickey Rourke in "Wild Orchid"
Laetitia Casta and Joaquín Cortés in "Gitano"
Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland in "Don't Look Now"
Jane March and Tony Leung in "The Lover"
Jane March and Bruce Willis in "Color of Night"
Béatrice Dalle and Jean-Hugues Anglade in "37°2 le matin" ("Betty Blue")
Kerry Fox and Mark Rylance in "Intimacy"
Caroline Ducey and Rocco Siffredi in "Romance"

Email Scoopy Jr. with more nominees, comments or suggestions.

Here are the results of our most recent other polls...
The Top 20 Nude Scenes of 2004
The Best Nude Film Debuts of the 80s
The Best Nude Film Debuts of the 90s
Which actress has been the most convincing playing a stripper.
Who has the best bum in Hollywood?
Best All Time Television Comedy
Best Nudity in an Oscar-winning performance.

First up from the Ghost today....

Here is Peggy Sands aka Peggy Sanders aka former Heffer Peggy McIntaggart going topless in scenes from the 1990 movie "Far Out Man", written by, directed by and starring Tommy Chong.

• Peggy Sands (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7)
• Peggy Sands zipped .wmv

Next up, B-babe Lisa Boyle topless in one of her early and uncredited roles. Scenes from "When the Bullet Hits the Bone" (1995).

• Lisa Boyle (1, 2, 3)
• Lisa Boyle zipped .wmv

Last up from the Ghost, a couple of 'caps and clips from the absolute stink fest that is "House of the Dead" (2003).

Scoop and I were just talking about this the other day. Here is a movie that NOBODY liked. Everyone from the top critics all the way to the die-hard horror fans hated this movie. In fact it currently ranks at #33 on the IMDb bottom 100. Yet somehow, director Uwe Boll was not only allowed to show his face in Hollywood again, but he was given a bigger budget, a couple of semi-stars (Christian Slater, Tara Reid and Stephen Dorff) and distribution on over 2100 screens for his follow up stink fest "Alone in the Dark" (2005).

"Alone in the Dark" did even worse at the box office, and is currently #22 on the IMDb bottom 100! Yup, you read that right! In 2 years one guy has made two movies that rank as some of the worst ever! But has that stopped him? NO! He is currently in post production on one film ("Bloodrayne") and is already slated to direct two more movies in 2006!

Our conclusion...this dude has something on somebody. Dirty pics, drugs, hookers...something. Or perhaps he's just a member of the Stonecutters. After all, they made Steve Guttenberg a star.

On to the nudity...

"Smallville" co-star Erica Durance aka Erica Parker goes topless and shows thong views. Sonya Salomaa is also topless.

• Erica Parker aka Erica Durance (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6)
• Erica Parker zipped .wmvs (1, 2)

• Sonya Salomaa (1, 2)
• Sonya Salomaa zipped .wmv

"800 Bullets"
Part modern comedy, and part spaghetti western, this 2002 Spanish production has the best of both, and is very entertaining.

A young man steals his mother's credit card and takes off to search for his long-lost father. To do this, he must go to Almeria, where his grandfather, an alcoholic one-time stunt double to Clint Eastwood is staging elaborate Western shows for tourists on abandoned film sets.

Rumors say the old man accidentally caused his son's death doing a dangerous stunt. As the kid grows close to his grandfather, they join forces to fight the rich landowners who want to turn the old sets into a modern (non-Western) amusement park.

Well done, and lots of fun.

• Yoima Valdés

Genevieve Howard
and
Bianca Lishansky
(1, 2)

MICHAEL JACKSON TRIAL UPDATE
The Blanche Dubois Of Motown - Monday, for the second time in two weeks, Michael Jackson appeared late in court. This time, he was just a few minutes late and he was fully dressed, but he hobbled slowly into court, accompanied by brother Jackie and a bodyguard who helped him ease into a chair, and by a doctor in scrubs. He sat trembling, suddenly grabbed a wad of tissues and began sobbing, and was excused to the bathroom, returning after a 45-minute delay. Speculation is that he was suffering back pain.

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