This story is based upon a working hypothesis about the death of Brian Jones, the founder of the Rolling Stones, who died in his swimming pool about a month after having been sacked from the group. The official account of his death has always been treated with suspicion, not just because of the natural 60s attitude of disrespect toward authority, or the natural tendency to assume cover-ups and seek conspiracies when celebrity deaths are involved, but because some things just didn't make a lot of sense. Jones drowned in an relatively small 80-degree swimming pool when he had very little drugs or alcohol in his system, despite the fact that he was a championship-caliber swimmer. The coroner ruled it a "death by misadventure," whatever that means. I think it means, "He's a rock star and he destroyed himself. That's what they do, isn't it?"

The writers and director acquired the rights to four books about the end of Jones's life, including the account of his girlfriend, Anna Wohlin, who was at the estate the night he drowned, and helped fish him from the pool. They went one step farther. Another woman was present at the estate that night, a nurse who had promptly disappeared from the public eye for forty years until these filmmakers hired a private detective to track her down and give her side of the story, which had never been told since the perfunctory contemporaneous police investigation.  Only when the authors felt that they had a story which conformed to all the reports in all their sources, and reflected the accounts of all the eyewitnesses, did they assemble this script. You have to give them credit for a story well researched. Is it true? I don't believe we will ever know for sure, but it is plausible.

The director also assembled a cast which evoked the cast of real characters, and employed a cinematographer who went to a great deal of time and trouble to capture the feel of the 60s with period equipment and film stock. In fact, he used many different lenses and film stocks to create different moods in different contexts, and to help the audience navigate through the labyrinth of times and places which form the back-story.

So, the director, writer and cinematographer put a lot of careful effort into a film about my favorite rock group. Why the hell didn't I actually enjoy the film? A few reasons:

1. The film is over-produced. Too many different cinematographic tricks, too much arty editing, flashbacks within flashbacks - like the work of a film school senior trying to demonstrate the breadth of his mastery, but at the expense of coherence and narrative.

2. Although the film does finally offer some interesting insight on the mystery of Brian's death, it takes 84 minutes before it even lets on that there IS a mystery. Given the framing structure of the film, I was led to believe that the flashback story was going to explain the psychological deterioration of the principal that led him to an excessive lifestyle, hence deathstyle. You know, your basic "drugs suck" movie. Turns out it has a completely different story to tell, but takes a very long time to get to it. Too long, in my opinion, and too little energy is expended on the way.

3. This point is the deal-breaker. It's a film about the Rolling Stones, but the filmmakers couldn't acquire the rights to the Stones major hits of the period. As a result, the director had to resort to a few atmospheric scenes of the boys covering old blues standards (as they did in their inchoate stages), one cover version of "Time Is On My Side," and some other period songs. Saddest of all, the other songs were not always appropriate. For example, "White Rabbit" is the soundtrack for a drug-taking scene in 1965. Oops! Not only has the song turned into a dead horse in general, best avoided completely because it's an instant 60s cliché, but it is a 1967 dead horse, the music of a substantially different musical era, one which had not begun in 1965.

Hollywood Reporter hit it right on the head in their review - the film has plenty of sex and drugs, but no rock 'n roll. That left me with the same feeling about this film that I had about that Sylvia Plath biopic with Gwyneth Paltrow. Both films had some good production values and performances, but you shouldn't make a Sylvia Plath film without permission to use her poems, and you shouldn't make a Rolling Stones film with Jefferson Airplane music. That's just wrong.

This film was released three weeks ago is still playing in the USA, but is already on DVD in the UK after a November theatrical run.

Monet Mazur

Tuva Novotny

Unknowns

 

Other Crap:

Movie Reviews:

Yellow asterisk: funny (maybe). White asterisk: expanded format. Blue asterisk: not mine. No asterisk: it probably sucks.

Event Horizon (1997)

Event Horizon is an overly expensive British Aliens clone, loaded with special effects. Basically, all it lacked was a credible script, and they might have had a film. I must admit that I am not fond of movies that are long on glitz and short on meaning, nor does setting the film on a dark and elaborate spacecraft make it more palatable, but this one is a real mess. A rescue ship is sent to Neptune to rescue crew members of the Event Horizon, a ship that disappeared years before. They learn that it had a new gravity drive that folded time and space over upon itself, making it possible to cover any distance instantly, and they learn that from Sam Neill, who was the original architect of the ship. He will be doing double duty as the villain, as the "space monster" this time is the ship itself. Apparently, it escaped the universe entirely, and became a living, breathing evil entity.

Most of the film deals with crew member hallucinations, and flashes of fireworks, as they try to sort out what is going on, and find a way to return home.

IMDb readers have this at 5.8. It amassed worldwide earnings of $47.1M, which sounds good until you see the budget of $70M. Ebert and Berardinelli both say 2 stars, I think it was a total waste of $70M, but, I admit, it is not my sort of film. This is a low C-, barely adequate for genre buffs.

Scoop's note: Ebert had a great line about this film. He said it was filled with foreboding and afterboding, but not enough actual boding.

Holley Chant, as Neill's dead wife, shows breasts in her suicide scene (one of his flashbacks).

False Lady (1992)

False Lady), or "Ai ye nu peng you," is a Hong Kong Category 3 comedy built on a familiar premise, a man ending up in a woman's body. Ah Man (Chung Ling Lee) has the world by the short ones. He is a successful real estate broker with a cute girl friend GiGi (Git Goo), a great roommate/buddy/coworker John (Michael Tiu Dai Yue), and a boss he can manipulate (Charlie Cho). After business cocktails, he, his girl and John are attacked by three robbers. Ah Man makes short work of them with his kung fu prowess, which is described in the subtitles technique by technique, including flies stretch legs, yellow dog pissing and dragon swing tail. Then a woman angry over the noise they are making accidently drops a piss pot on his head. An angel makes a mistake, and he leaves his body, but is told he shouldn't be dead, and to hurry back. It is too late, as he has already been cremated. He sees a hit and run victim under a tarp, and decides to use that body in place of his. Unfortunately, it is a woman's body.

He changes from Ah Man to Mandy (Wing-Chi Chan), and tries to resume life as usual. At first, he wants bigger boobs, but after seeing a video of the operation, changes his mind. His job is easy to resume, as he knows all about the bosses philandering, especially with his secretary, Hung Chun. Charlie Cho and Hung Chun are going at it hot and heavy in the office, and Mandy calls his wife, Wai Jan Goo, to come over quickly. She "correctly" determines that his illness is horniness, and practicably rapes him. Note that she is well past her "best if eaten before" date. Meanwhile, Hung Chun is stranded naked on the balcony. She falls face first into wet cement several floors below. Mandy comments that it is a good thing she has big tits, or she would have broken her nose.

Another office worker, Yuet Sin Lee, has the hots for John, John is falling for Mandy, and Mandy still wants Git Goo, who has move don to living men. Yuet Sing Lee has a birthday party, and dusts the door knob of her bathroom with aphrodisiac powder. It infects many party guests, but John, with Mandy's help escapes her clutches. In a fight scene analogous to the one near the beginning, with the same three hoods, Mandy adds another kung fu technique, " monkey steal peach," which is essentially "grab testicles and twist."

There are only 5 votes at IMDb, obviously by Hong Kong Category 3 lovers. Again, this is much more enjoyable than typical US soft core fare. While the final sex scene went on way too long, most of the sex was played for humor, making the time fly by. If you like soft core and comedy, and don't mind forced subtitles, you should enjoy this one. C+.

 

Git Goo - full frontal and rear

Wing-Chi Chan - full frontal and rear

Hung Chung - full frontal and rear

Yuet Sin Lee - full frontal and rear

Wai Jan Goo - breasts and buns

A tribute to Spanish cinema:

"A Golpes"

- Juana Acosta

- Maria Reyes Arias

"Ausentes"

- Ariadna Gil

"Un rey en la Habana"

- Yoima Valdes

- Paulina Galvez

"La Spagnola"

- Lola Marceli

"Semen"

- Leticia Dolera

"XXL"

- Cristana Castaño and Estrella Zapatero

- Monica Godoy

- Miriam Diaz Aroca

Brainscan returns with a few more video clips (zipped divx avi) of former Heffer and Pet, Victoria Zdrok in scenes from "Satin Smoke". Victoria bares all as she wiggles around the house and then in the back of limo.

Brainscan adds: "Perhaps I ought to mention that in all these clips Vicky carries around a cigar and gets seriously nekkid. The only thing that change is the setting...a den, a rooftop and then a limousine. Triple B performances in all locales; tame stuff...no gynocam...but a thorough search for freckles and moles over all of Vic's external surface."

(1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8)

 

TheSmokingGun.com posted a shocking deposition by Denise Richards against estranged husband Charlie Sheen.  She said she had been pressured to keep quiet to protect his image, but she needed a restraining order.  She claimed Sheen had shoved, cursed and threatened her in front of their kids; is addicted to hookers and gambling and was checking his pager for his betting results while she was getting a C-section; subscribes to a website for sexual hookups where he's posted a photo of his penis; and visits gay porn sites featuring both very young girls in pigtails and braces and young boys, all of whom look underage.  Sheen denied the charges, saying Richards was trying to torpedo his image.

*  His image as a wholesome, responsible drunk, drug user and sex addict
who dates porn stars and hires hookers.

*  Actually, compared to what I thought he did in private, that makes him
sound better.


 

Nehemiah Nunez of Allentown, Pennsylvania, reports that he was walking home at 1:37 a.m. when a man pulled a gun and demanded money.  He told police he handed over a quarter, and the man fled.  Police are searching for him.


*  He's not considered a dangerous criminal, just a two-bit thief.



British-born Helen Evans moved to Brisbane four years ago to marry her Australian boyfriend, but she's facing deportation because she's not fat enough.  She's always been tiny and weighed only 37 kg (81 pounds when she applied for citizenship.  She was told she had to prove she had no health problems and gain 10 kg (22 pounds) or be deported.  After $1300 worth of tests, she found she had a gluten intolerance and she's since been able to gain 13 pounds.  She said people think it's laughable when she tells them she's had to go through all this because she's too thin to be an Australian.    

*  No wonder Nicole Kidman moved to America.




In Livingston, Montana, hunting safety instructor John Lundberg
will be disciplined by Fish, Wildlife and Parks officials for using live
ammo in a hunting safety demonstration.  He told 50 kids how, in the
excitement of the hunt, people can load the wrong ammo into a gun.  To
demonstrate, he loaded a 28-gauge shell into a 20-gauge shotgun, which
promptly discharged, blowing a hole in the library ceiling.  Putting a good
spin on it, Lundberg said that lesson in how quickly a mistake can turn
dangerous was "something that will stay with those students for a long
time." 

*  Just like the scars from the falling plaster.

*  He really is a good hunting safety instructor...He taught Dick Cheney.