Lustfull Addiction (2003) is a Seduction Cinema remake of a 1969 Nick Phillips film, both versions of which are on the same DVD. Also included is a CD sound track. The film stars Ruby LaRocca, and features Darian Caine, and Misty Mundae. Mundae also wrote and directed. Think of it as a lesbian drugs suck film. As it opens, LaRocca is screwing her pusher for partial pament. HE falls asleep, and she grabs his entire stash and splits, where she runs into Mundae. Mundae follows her home, and 90% of the film is one long drugs and lesbian sex marathon between the two. They run out of drugs, and Mundae leaves to score some more. LaRocca gets tired of waiting, and brings Caine over, where she exchanges sex for drugs.

Mundae does eventually return, LaRocca OD's, and then her pusher shows up and gives Mundae an overdose. The only dialogue is voice-over, supposedly the thoughts of LaRocca. Much of the photography is out of focus. Mundae shows breasts, buns, and a little bush. LaRocca shows everything, and Caine shows breasts. This will please those of you who like Lesbian kissing, as there is a lot of it between Mundae and LaRocca.

It is awaiting 5 votes at IMDB, and no reviews are available. As long time readers know, I am not fond of "drugs suck" movies, and this one, despite a running time of only 74 minutes, seemed to run forever. It was shot on digital video, and is not visually impressive. D+

Movies:

The Truth About Charlie (2002) and Charade (1963)

The studio managed to make lemonade out of this lemon. The Truth About Charlie is a weak remake of Charade that bombed miserably at the box office. They released a 2-sided DVD with Charade on the reverse side, thus making the package worth a look

I guess The Truth About Charlie must have seemed like a sensible project to director Jonathan Demme. On the surface, it met the basic remake criteria pretty well. 1963's Charade was an excellent film, but not so excellent that remaking it would cause a scandal or violate treasured memories.

Charade is one of those really corny old-time Hollywood studio movies made in the dying gasp before the modern director/auteur era began in the USA. One small element will serve to illustrate my point about how the film belonged to the old, romantic, Hollywood era. The film has quite a lovely, Oscar-nominated theme song. Imagine how it was used in the film. One scene took place next to a carousel. Guess which song the carousel played over and over as the horses spun dizzyingly. One scene took place on a dinner cruise through Paris. Guess what the wandering minstrels were playing. One scene takes place in a Paris cabaret. I'll bet you can figure out what's coming next. That was a familiar device in the old studio films.

In short, Charade was a pretty good pseudo-Hitchcock film, albeit made without Hitchcock, in fact made by a director who specialized in syrupy musicals, not thrillers.

Perhaps the modernization of the film could have lifted it to glory, but there was one problem in trying to improve it. The script wasn't really that good. Charade was only terrific in the first place because it featured the magical pairing of two unique performers: Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn. Take away those two, replace them with Doris Day and Fred MacMurray, and it is a mediocre film, not number 166 of all time at IMDb. The comic banter between Grant and Hepburn was also scripted well, but it was those two performers who really made it shine.

The trick, therefore, in doing a remake, is to get some charismatic performers that can bring that Grant/Hepburn charm ...

... um ... like Mark Wahlberg and Thandie Newton.

You see where I'm going with this? If you go to a Minneapolis production of Camelot, it's just a musical. If you see it on Broadway, it's an event with Richard Burton and Julie Andrews and Robert Goulet. The actors in Minneapolis say the same lines, but they just don't have the unique chemistry that made the play JFK's model for his administration. Think of The Truth About Charlie as the Minneapolis road-show version of Charade. Nothing really wrong with it, but nothing to make you want to see this instead of the original.

In my opinion, director Jonathan Demme gummed the remake up with lots of unnecessary gimmicks. Do you remember how Mike Myers worked Bert Bacharach into the Austin Powers movies? I think that was cute, and I hope he does it as long as the series lasts, but those films are supposed to be comedies. The Truth About Charlie is supposed to be a mystery, yet the director keep tearing down that fourth wall to introduce Charles Aznavour, the legendary French singer and star of Shoot the Piano Player. Marky Mark puts on an Aznavour album to seduce Thandie - and there's Aznavour singing away in Wahlberg's apartment, like Bacharach in Austin Powers. Creep[ily enough, he's watching the lovers. Later, Aznavour sings away on camera in the film's finale, again a part of the action.

There are stylistic gimmicks as well, including lots of jittery facial close-ups and unnerving cuts, and the usual Tarantino scene with 20 guys in a circle all pointing their guns at each other. The original movie may have been corny, but at least it had the elegant majesty of an old Hollywood picture. The remake had a feel of an older director trying to show he could still be really hip with some jazzy new-fangled techniques. I overrated The Truth About Charlie at a C+ the first time I reviewed it. It is a C-, and barely so. Frankly, I found it quite irritating.

• Olga Sekulic
• Thandie Newton (1, 2, 3)

Anarchy TV (1997)

According to the opening title screen, Anarchy TV was based on a "true story" of radicals who took over a public access station. When their propaganda resulted in zero ratings and no attention from the media, they decided to deliver their message while doing nude aerobics, thus giving them a soapbox.

I think this was supposed to be a media spoof like Al Yankovic's UHF. Or maybe it was supposed to be an earnest political polemic of some kind, supporting those radicals who really did all this in real life. Frankly, I didn't know whether they wanted to make fun of the anti-establishment people or sympathize with them. Those characters spend an awful lot of time talking about serious topics like racism and murder and corporate profits, so I think we were supposed to appreciate their point of view. Unfortunately, all of their points were so heavy-handed, and supported with such loopy evidence and wacky conspiracy theories, that the radical characters ended up neither funny nor sympathetic.

The performing would be about average in an episode of Scooby's Laff-a-Lympics. Alan Thicke does his best Dick Dastardly, and all four Zappa kids provide additional Hanna-Barbera style subtlety in minor roles.

This film would be a complete and utter failure except that it includes full-frontal nudity from a bunch of attractive people: Jessica Hecht (the lesbian who stole Ross's first wife on "Friends"), Tamayo Otsuki, Matt Winston, Jonathan Penner, and a bunch of unnamed naked prisoners.

• Jessica Hecht (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8)
• Tamayo Otsuki (1, 2, 3, 4)

Other crap:

• WHOA! That wacky corporate magnate, Saddam Hussein, owns a big chunk of Elle, Car & Driver, Women's Day and other magazines.
• The sexiest album covers of all time
• Nude volleyball angers game makers
• the poetry of Donald Rumsfeld
• nude supermodel HQ
• 80 days that changed the world
• Jay was more silent than Silent Bob in a court-mandated ruling that he must attend rehab
• Actor Jim Carrey's ex-wife wants a judge to award her more child support, saying that their daughter must get by on a mere $10,000 a month and cannot afford her own bodyguards and personal trainer. JimBo, you cad!
• celebrities, and the lapdancers they love
• is there really a market for celebrity DNA?
• Paul McCartney told to keep the noise down so he doesn't bother the pope
• Microsoft, having wiped out its competitors in Office Suites and Browsers, would now like to rule the world of internet search engines.

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 Lawdog or Junior or C2000 or Realist or ICMS or Mick Locke, or somebody else besides me)
• If there is no asterisk, I wrote it, but am too ashamed to admit it.

• Going all the way back to 1966 for these topless and bare bum 'caps of UK actress Jane Birkin, in scenes from "Blowup".

Be sure to pay Graphic Response a visit at his website. www.graphic-barry.com.

• Francesca Rettondini, the beautiful Italian actress lookin' great topless. (1, 2, 3, 4, 5)

• Julianna Margulies, the former "ER" star soaking wet and showing some pokies (1, 2)

TRUCK TIRES STUFFED WITH MARIJUANA
The Cheech And Chong Of El Paso - A man and woman from El Paso were arrested in Denton, Texas, while driving a pickup truck whose tires were full of over 50 pounds of marijuana. They were stopped for speeding, but the driver was so nervous, the cop searched the truck bed and found the spare tire was so heavy, he could barely move it. It had metal boxes full of pot welded around the wheel inside it. A drug-sniffing dog also discovered that the tires on the ground had more pot than air in them. Police said the driver admitted it "rode rather rough."