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The Passion of Beatrice: (1987)
This is a very dark and nihilistic look at what the
Middle Ages might really have been like, centering around a brutal
knight who abuses his children in various unspeakable ways. The point
is that human nature is not very far removed from the nature of the
territorial beasts whence we sprung. For our purposes, the important
thing is that a young Julie Delpy spent a good portion of the film
very naked. Here are three (zipped .avi) clips made by Charlie (1,
2,
3)
Hostel: (2006)
Hostel is Eli Roth's anticipated follow-up to his
phenomenal success with Cabin Fever. It is a spin on one of the
traditional set-ups for horror films: Americans are in Eastern Europe
to pick up chicks, and seem to be having phenomenal success until it
all turns really ugly. In this variation on the theme, the Eastern
European beauties are used to lure various unsuspecting tourists into
situations where they can be drugged, kidnapped, and used as unwilling
victims in an evil scheme similar to snuff films. Various rich people
pay the Slovakian entrepreneurs vast sums of money to set up whichever
demented acts they would like to commit upon untraceable victims. That
consists mostly of being able to inflict pain and death upon fellow
human beings.
Your basic family film! Severed limbs, eyes dangling
from their sockets, oozing viscera, drills with bloody bits, tables
full of arcane blades - the full package of explicit gore in the
Herschell Gordon Lewis tradition. Just think of it as 2000 Maniacs,
with Eastern Europe playing the part of the Southern U.S.A.
Although it is at heart an exploitation film, it is
also a film with a serious point to make about exploitation in
general. The Americans who go to Eastern Europe to wave a few dollars
around and exploit the locals find that somebody else has paid the
locals a lot more for the privilege of exploiting American students!
The American backpacker characters don't give any thought to the poor
victims of the pay-to-play industry when they are the ones paying,
early in the film. It is only later, when they find that they are in
the middle of the food chain rather than at the top, and that those
with more money can exploit them as easily as they exploited the
anonymous prostitutes in Amsterdam, that they gain any sensitivity or
insight. By then, of course, it is a bit late for their epiphany to
have any value.
If nothing else, Hostel should permanently scare off
any viewers from the notion of backpacking through Europe to sample
its underground pleasures. Stick with the museums and old cathedrals,
kids.
The trailers bill the movie as "inspired by true
events." Well, sorta. Here's the scoop. Director Eli Roth says that he
found a Thai website that advertised "murder vacations," in which
tourists had the chance to torture and kill someone for $10,000. Roth
showed the site to Quentin Tarantino, whereupon the two developed the
idea for this film. Tarantino and Roth told an Icelandic interviewer
that they do not know whether the offer was genuine.
As you can guess from the plot description, audiences
and critics were sharply divided into those cultists who found it an
effective genre film and those more mainstream viewers who found it
generally repulsive. It must have had some fairly broad appeal because
it opened in the number one spot in the very first weekend of this
year, and pulled in $47 million altogether. It also pulled in positive
reviews from such white bread publications as Hollywood Reporter,
Entertainment Weekly, and Variety, none of which can be accused of
being targeted at Fangoria readers.
I joined a lot of those other people with mainstream
sensibilities who found themselves engrossed in the story and admiring
the atmosphere achieved by the film. I wouldn't say I liked it, but I
sure got more involved in it than I expected, given that I would have
read the description and passed on it if watching it were not in my
job description. I suppose that Eli Roth is never really going to make
the kind of film that appeals to me, but nobody said all films have to
be for me. In fact very few films are made for us old geezers. To a
great extent, film is a medium for the young to talk to the young, and
while I wish the kids could find healthier things to talk about, I
have to concede that there are lots of people who love creepy films
like this, and Roth has both the talent and the inclination to make
such exploitation movies the way they are supposed to be made: with
imagination, solid storytelling, sound technical skills, and
transgressive amounts of violence and sex.
There was one nice feature on the DVD for us nudity
lovers. The film has a scene in an Amsterdam bordello in which the
backpackers see silhouettes of sex acts and posed models through
paper-thin walls. The DVD brings the camera around to the other side
of the walls, where real Czech porno stars were actually stark naked,
posing and making whoopee, throwing their shadows on the thin walls.
Two film clips (zipped .avis, done by third parties):
Caps and Collages:
Other Crap:
Top 100 Unsexiest Male Celebrities - Carrot Top finished way
down in 16th place, Clint Howard in 22nd. Madden and Vitale finished
in the second fifty.
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Gilbert Gottfried
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Randy Johnson
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Roger Ebert
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Dr Phil
If you're Japanese, and you're just learning how to speak naughty
English, don't miss this essential lesson.
The newly-live website for X-MEN: THE LAST STAND
Clerks II "Making of" intro by Kevin Smith
The final installment in Silent Bob's yarn
about Jay's addiction
My own personal nominee for the next Nobel Prize:
Scientist creates 'hangover-free alcohol'
It's official - West Virginia has the most toothlessness!
Make sure your girlfriend is always at the right place with these GPS panties
Australian cheerleaders told to cover up ... Aussies - they look like
Americans, but they're really Commie bastards!
Comedy Central is scared
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More about the cartoon wars, South Park, and Muhammad
Soccer's governing body insists it has no power to stop forced prostitution in
Germany, which is expected to increase during the World Cup.
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Oh, humbug. If baseball can bring peace to the Middle East, it's the least
soccer can do ...
101 Uses
for a Bjork
Bugs Bunny- The Rabbit of Seville
The trailer
for Down In The Valley , with Edward Norton and Evan Rachel Wood in a story
about a fish out of water (cowboy in big city). Despite the age difference,
Norton and Wood play lovers.
The Weekend Warrior's analysis of the upcoming weekend.
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Three new movies this week. He thinks they will finish 1-4-5, with the top
spot going to Silent Hill.
If you're interested (and patient), nine Rapid Share clips
of Juliette Marquis in This Girl's Life: (1,
2,
3,
4,
5,
6,
7,
8,
9)
Hilary Duff has vowed never to strip off for the sake of her acting career.
Photos & Visual Art by Christopher Gilbert, who is one fucked-up dude.
Jeff
Goldblum Scatting
Sometimes you have to know when to pick your spots.
Nutburger accuses Buzz Aldrin of faking his moon landing. Buzz knocks his teeth
out.
Four new clips from The Da Vinci Code (1. "Enter the site" 2. "Previews")
Pujols ties all-time record with homer in fourth consecutive at-bat.
TomKat news:
Colbert Report:
Daily Show:
Kimmel:
Other spoofs and comedy sites:
Movie Reviews:
Yellow asterisk: funny (maybe). White asterisk: expanded format.
Blue asterisk: not mine. No asterisk: it probably sucks.
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Americano (2005)
Habitat (1997) is a Canadian Sci Fi cliché.
Teenager Andreas Symes and his scientist parents move into a new home in
Pleasantown. It is a post-apocalyptic world where the ozone is completely
depleted, and daytime is toxic. Most life is gone and that which remains,
including human life, has had to adapt. Daddy wishes to continue his work on
accelerating evolution to save the planet. Andreas, tired of being the "new
kid" and feeling left out and odd, hates this. The experiment goes awry, but
wonderfully so, and their house becomes a living rain forest. Daddy himself
vaporizes, and becomes part of the house. He moves up and out to become part
of the cosmos, but not before attempting sex with Alice Krige while he is
still a house. Alice takes to wearing transparent clothes, and convincing the
neighbors she is strange. Meanwhile, Andreas has gotten the attention of the
prettiest girl in town (Laura Harris), her Neanderthal father - the school gym
coach, and the bully who wants to be her boyfriend.
Even if this is your genre, I suggest keeping the remote handy to get
through the slower moments.
C-.
IMDb readers say 4.3.
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LC looked at some TV this week.
First: Michie Ito in Masters of Horror |
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Miho Ninagawa in Masters of Horror |
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Sharon Stone in Huff |
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Some strippers in Huff |
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The Skin-man looked at a young Kim Cattrall in
1985's City Limits, |
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and Brittney Powell in 1996's Fled |
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Pat's comments in yellow...
Monday, the White House held its annual Easter Egg Roll on the lawn, and for the
first time, gay groups snapped up the first-come, first served tickets to that
gay couples and their children could attend. Despite President Bush's
opposition to gay marriage, he didn't try to bar them. But the gay parents
avoided open protests, and Mr. Bush wasn't present. Laura Bush and several
cabinet secretaries were there, but the most famous people the gay parents came
in contact with were giant costumed children's characters such as the Easter
Bunny, the "Ice Age" stars and Curious George.
* And Tinky-Winky, the gay Teletubby, although he wasn't
really invited.
UC Davis Sports Medicine and Nutrition researchers are doing a study of the
effectiveness of three different types of carbohydrates on endurance athletes
such as cyclists, and how they affect energy, blood glucose levels, weight,
heart rate and other factors. The supplements will be carb gels, sports drinks
and jelly beans. Funding for the study is provided by the Jelly Belly Candy
Company, which is also supplying the jelly bean
"carbohydrate supplements."
* Prediction: the most effective supplement will be jelly
beans.
* How could something named "Jelly Belly" not be good for an athlete?
Photographer Frederick Potter of Calgary, Canada, discovered that Canada Post's
new program that allows people to print their own personalized postage stamps
does have its limits. He said he was excited when the program launched, so he
tried to have stamps made of his art photos of his wife, Oleanna, topless with
Canadian Maple Leafs over her breasts. They were rejected as inappropriate.
Potter called it "arbitrary censorship," and asked if they'd brand a baby on a
bearskin rug as pornography. But Canada Post said it wasn't porn, but that the
use of the Maple Leafs violated Canadian flag etiquette.
* He may try again in October, after the leaves have
fallen.
In Vanity Fair's new "Green Issue," Julia Roberts is lauded for her recent
conversion to environmentalism. The articles note that although Roberts is "an
admitted latecomer" to caring about the Earth, she's now gone whole hog and
believes that "little things make a difference." She owns a Prius, uses a metal
cup when she goes out for coffee to avoid using Starbucks Styrofoam cups, is
building a solar-powered house and she "religiously" returns grocery bags to the
store for a nickel.
* Or if she doesn't have time, she sends her limo
driver.
* Question: how many trees were cut down to print this issue of Vanity Fair?
Police in London are investigating claims that George Michael struck
three different vehicles while trying to park his SUV *
Oddly enough, he rear-ended all three of them |
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