Friday

Tuna
"The Groomsmen"

The Groomsmen (2001) languished on the shelves for three years, and has finally been released on DVD under the name What Boys Want. It is a mixture of raunchy comedy and romantic comedy, and both aspects worked well for me.Christopher Wiehl comes home with anniversary presents for his girlfriend (they have been living together for three years), only to find her in the shower with their female letter carrier and a strap-on dildoe. Next comes the news that one of his longtime friends, a confirmed bachelor, is getting married the following weekend. Three of them travel to Santa Barbara from San Francisco for the Wedding, as they will be groomsmen. The film is mostly about these three.

Wiehl is a serial monogamist. His friend Alex Nesic is a cocksman. He owns Wilt Chamberlain's old car, and is out to break his sex record. Duane Martin is Mr. uncool, who can always manage to say and do the wrong thing. Nesic needles Wiehl about his girlfriend, and about his need to commit. The argument ends up in a bet. If Wiehl can't nail a horny bridesmaid for a one night stand, Nesic gets to nail his virgin sister. If Nesic can't go all three days there without getting laid, Wiehl gets his car. Things get more interesting when Wiehl discovers that the bride to be is the old girlfriend that he has been secretly pining for since High School. Seems she still feels the same way about him. Her fiancee, it turns out, is more interested in her rich father's money than in her.

So, will Wiel get laid, will Nesic keep it in his pants despite lots of opportunity, will Martin finally get it together, and who will end up married to whom?

Marilyn Sue Perry, as the Sapphic letter carrier, shows breasts. Jennifer Gareis (The Young and the Restless) shows breasts, and partial buns in a bathing suit. Gabriella Harding, as the stripper for the bachelor party, shows breasts and buns. IMDb readers have this at 5/6 of 10. The only on-line review didn't seem to like the raunchyness of the film, but most of the comments at IMDb are very positive. The film had great pace, snappy dialogue, lots of sight gags, some physical humor, decent acting, great camera work, and was over way before I was ready to stop watching it. One of the IMDb comments suggests that if you like American Pie/Road Trip raunchy comedies, or Pretty Woman romantic comedies, you should give this one a chance. That is not a bad definition of a date movie. I found myself laughing out loud more than once, and the only thing that was predictable about the plot was the ending, and they even managed some surprises there. This belongs on the list of essentially straight-to-vids that don't suck.This is a solid C.

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  • Gabriella Harding (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14)
  • Jennifer Gareis (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15)
  • Marilyn Sue Perry (1, 2)

    "Quackser Fortune Has a Cousin in the Bronx"

    Quackser Fortune Has a Cousin in the Bronx (1970) is one of those quirky UK comedies that I am so partial to, this time set in Dublin. Quackser (he made noises like a duck as a baby, and he isn't partial to his given name) is not well educated (they kicked him out of school because he was getting too big) is now 30 and still living at home. His father wants him to work in the local foundry, like most of the men in his area, but Quackser would rather work his own job, which is following horse-drawn deliver wagons collecting the dung, then selling it door to door as fertilizer.

    He is nearly run over one day, and nearly ruins his cart, when a sports car narrowly misses him. The next day, he meets the girl who was in the car, played by Margot Kidder. She is an American, attending Trinity College, and is fascinated by Quackser. Quackser's mother has tried to tell him that Dublin is replacing all of the horses with motorcars, but Quakser is in denial. His adventures with Kidder, and the way he copes with the end of the horse draw carts is far more entertaining that it probably sounds.

    Kidder shows breasts and buns in a sex scene. IMDb readers have this at 6.1 of 10. You have to love the 70s, when even PG films like this one had clear nudity from known stars. Your enjoyment of the film hinges on how you relate to the main characters. I find it delightful. The proper score is C+, as a UK comedy full of quirky characters. Gene Wilder was wonderful in the role of Quackser. What he lacked in education, he more than made up for in heart.

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  • Margot Kidder (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13)

    • Johnny Web (Uncle Scoopy)

    Twentynine Palms (2003)

    COMPLETE SPOILERS:

    Twentynine Palms is an arty, experimental kind of film from Bruno Dumont.

    The New York Times wrote:

    The filmmaker has described ''Twentynine Palms'' as a horror movie, and its final fit of retributive fury recalls ''Psycho.'' But Mr. Dumont is not a brilliant sleight-of-hand entertainer like Alfred Hitchcock. A former philosophy professor, he is a serious and apparently humorless Hobbesian aesthete who uses film as a pulpit to drive home his messages about the human capacity for violence and cruelty.

    I suppose a lot of you already realize that you need to avoid this film, unless you're really into that whole humorless and pessimistic Hobbesian aesthetic. Whatever that means.

    If you're curious, I'll describe the film in detail to give you its full, rich, Hobbesian flavor.

    A couple drives a red Hummer through the desert. He's an American photographer who seems to be scouting a shooting location in the desert. He's a new kind of photographer in that he doesn't seem to own any photographic equipment. She's his Russian girlfriend. He doesn't speak Russian and she doesn't speak English, so they communicate in halting French.

    They drive. He talks on a cell phone while she sleeps. His conversation is tedious. "Yeah, I'm going to Twentynine Palms. I'll see you when I get back." They stop to get gas. They fill the tank in real time. They stop and watch a train go by. The camera is placed in a stationary location while each train car passes in real time. The cars all seem identical. When the train passes, they cross the tracks and wander among a farm of windmills. They drive some more, speaking little. They go to a motel and mess around in the swimming pool. They debate about where to eat. They pause a long time between questions and answers. They go to a Chinese restaurant and order their food in real time. They sleep.

    The next day, they stop and wander through the desert naked, again in real time. They attempt sex with minimal success. They climb some rocks. The lie down in the sun. They walk back.

    We are now 40 minutes into the film, and that is all that has happened.

    In the next 50 minutes or so, they have some great conversations. I think I may have misled you earlier. I should have said that they fail to communicate in French. They buy an ice cream. She says it is good. She says it is not good. She says she loves short hair, Marine style. She says she'll hate him if he wears his hair short. She is clearly not in her right mind, but the film doesn't really explore that in any way. It just is so. She catches him masturbating over a Jerry Springer show in which a man admits raping his daughter. She asks him if he would rape their daughter. He looks at her with disgust.

    They walk to a supermarket and back in real time. They have VERY loud sex in real time. When he climaxes, he screams like Johnny Weissmuller in the Tarzan movies. They drive through the desert some more. They sit around a hotel room some more. She wanders around outside at night. He goes out to find her. They sit separately for a while, then they have a wrestling match in the middle of the street. They sleep.

    The next day, they drive through a very rough stretch of desert. Nothing happens. Suddenly they are rear-ended. A pick-up trick drives them off the road. The random strangers from the truck pull them out of their Hummer, strip the woman, beat the man with a baseball bat, then sodomize the man. They do not rape the woman, but they force her to watch the man getting raped. The evildoers drive off.

    The couple struggle back to their hotel room. He lies down. She goes for a pizza. Apparently she gets the wrong toppings, because when she returns, he stabs her to death ...

    That isn't quite the ending. If you're really hooked, you can rest assured that there is even more rich ore from the same vein of existential angst.

    You can tell Dumont is a foreigner, can't you? Talk about clueless.

    Those pick-up truck dudes have to be the world's luckiest guys, eh? They decide to pull over a random Hummer in the desert, and

    (1) The people in the Hummer never see them coming, even though the two vehicles are literally the only things moving in the open desert for miles.

    (2) The people in the Hummer do not own a gun.

    Who in the American desert, armed with nothing more than a baseball bat, would take a chance on pulling over a Hummer? That is suicidal. You have to assume that no sensible people would take a Hummer deep into the unpaved parts of the desert without guns and flare pistols and knives and cell phones and other forms of protection. Yes, the photographer and his girlfriend were not sensible people, and could have been in the desert unprotected, but the crazy rednecks could not know that in advance. They had no idea who was in the vehicle!!

    Obviously, Mr Dumont went to the Lars van Trier school of screenwriting, which says, "before making a movie about Americans, don't bother to find out how they actually behave"

    I'll shut up. I guess you probably have figured out by now whether this is your kind of movie.

    My own verdict: utter crap. Dumont is clueless. and didn't even bother to think up events which might have some possibility of occurring. The film is tedious and disjointed for all but the last 20 minutes. In that final segment, it is filled with behavior which is unmotivated and illogical. It makes such legendary pointless films as Zabriskie Point (which this film resembles) seem to be as incisive and eloquent as Henry V. 

    On the other hand, many, many critics disagreed. Some felt that it showed the tedium of life and the randomness of violence and other such high-falutin' concepts. I guess that must be true, in the sense that this film is random and tedious, thus proving the existence of those concepts, and some people liked it, this showing that certain humans are drawn to tedium and improbable events.

     

    The Sopranos

     

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    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.

    Shiloh

    Words from Scoop.

    .avi's from Shiloh.

    .wmv files made by Scoop from Shiloh's .avi's.

    Various

    • Here's one for us old guys. Natalie Wood in Splendor in the Grass, looking eerily like her daughter Natasha Gregson Wagner (.wmv, .avi)

    • Rarely seen clip of Lara Flynn Boyle in Past Tense. I've never been a big fan, but she's hot here! As far as I know, this film is not on DVD. If you know otherwise, please let me and Tuna know. (.wmv, .avi)

    • Vaitaire Bandera in Stargate. She looks fookin' incredible. (.wmv, .avi)

     

     

    Perhaps these tips will help if you have trouble with the codecs for these movies:

    Shiloh says:

    FYI when I hypercam vids to make the file size smaller I use DivX MPEG-4 Fast-Motion for the video compressor, then I use virtualdub to compress the audio. The properties for the vids says the video codec:  DivX Decoder Filter & audio codec:  Morgan Stream Switcher which I'm not familiar with. When I compress the audio with virtualdub I use MPEG Layer-3.  A friend of mine told me about compressing the audio about (6) mos. ago. Like I said previously, only been capping for a year & a half & I'm no expert. Hopefully this info will help members with the proper codecs for my vids.
     
    When I cap big brother's I use hypercam mostly & sdp & asfrecorder if the set up allows me. I stopped using camtasia cause the file sizes were always too big, could never figure out the process, over my head lol, plus it cost too much to buy in my opinion.

    A reader says:

    You mentioned that some users were having trouble with the videos on your site. There is a tool designed to determine what codec is needed for a video. http://www.headbands.com/gspot/ Hope this is useful to you or your users.

    Scoop says:

    I made the .wmv versions of each video. The codecs for these: Windows Video V8, Windows Audio 9. The upside of these is that you know the codecs, and they'll play in the Windows Media Player. The downside is that they are slightly larger, and slightly lower quality.

    Dann
    'Caps and comments by Dann:

    "The Girl of Your Dreams"
    This fascinating 1998 Spanish comedy/drama covers a period that many prefer to forget, and from a perspective that many are unfamiliar with. Spain's Franco was aligned with Germany's Hitler, even as civil war brewed in his own country. During this time, a group of Spanish filmmakers travel to Berlin to film their version of a hit Andalusian musical.

    Confronted with the realities of Nazi Germany, and treated as inferior by their German hosts regardless of being allies, the film company tries to cope while the leading lady falls in love with a German prisoner who is assigned to work as a movie extra.

    With an interesting historical background, this effort includes good acting and a very well-written and sometimes amusing story. It is in Spanish, but the sub-titles don't detract from a very good movie. Oh, yeah, and Penelope Cruz gets naked, which helps even more.

    Variety
    Maribel Verdú
    (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8)

    		Flautista 'caps of the Spanish actress topless and showing a brief rear view (link #2) in scenes from "Carreteras secundarias" (1997).

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

    Tammy Morris
    (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6)

    		From "Freddy Vs. Jason" (2003), the "final" chapter of the two 80's horror movie series.

    Munroe shows off her her robo-boobs and bum, and Morris is topless.

    As Spaz pointed out a few days ago:

    Katharine Isabelle's uncredited shower double is Canadian stripper Tammy Morris. Tammi-with-a-'y' isn't your average stripper, she's the lapdancer who allegedly performed a sex act on Ben Afflect which caused a 10.5 earthquake in Hollywood resulting in the breakup of Bennifer and J-Lo.

    Andrea Del Rosario
    (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15)

    		Señor Skin 'caps of the Filipina actress topless and full frontal (link #9) in scenes from "Lupe" (2002).

    Pat Reeder www.comedy-wire.com
    Pat's comments in yellow...

    U.S. OLYMPIANS TOLD NOT TO WAVE AMERICAN FLAG
    Suck My Jingo! - A paid consultant to the Olympics is telling American athletes not to wave the U.S. flag if they win because it might upset or provoke other countries that don't like us. Other athletes can wave their flags if they win, but USOC acting president Bill Martin said American athletes have to be sensitive to charges of jingoism, so they're being "educated" as "to the appropriate behavior."

  • The "appropriate behavior" for an American athlete at the Olympics is to KICK THE OTHER COUNTRIES' ASSES!
  • I can think of an appropriate use for a flag POLE right about now.
  • Better yet, our athletes should deliberately lose...That will make the other nations love us AND feel better about themselves.


    WORLD'S FIRST DICTIONARY OF PHOBIAS
    AKA Ted Baxter's Disease - Jornal da Globo reports that Igor Rafailov of Pernambuco, Brazil, has written what he says is the world's first dictionary of phobias. It covers everything from puppetphobia (the fear of dolls) to felinephobia (the fear of cats). Ironically, the longest entry, hipomonsteresquipedalophobia, is the fear of reading or saying long words.

  • Victims of that die of fear when the doctor tells them what they have.
  • That's especially common among radio announcers.
  • There's a picture of George W. Bush next to that entry.
  • Someone else would've already done this book, but everybody was afraid of it.


    "AMERICAN IDOL" NEWS
    Result To Be Determined By A Bookie Named Spicolo - Last night, Hawaii's favorite Jasmine Trias was voted off "American Idol," leaving it as a duel between Fantasia Barrino and Diana Degarmo.

  • It was a shocking result: the two best singers actually got to stay!


    Thumb Screwed - Paula Abdul plans to sue a nail salon that allegedly gave her a bad manicure and punctured her thumbnail. She said she got a painful infection that forced her to have her nail surgically removed and nearly cost her her thumb. A manager at the salon told "Celebrity Justice" that they think the injury may have happened elsewhere.

  • So they're pointing the finger elsewhere?
  • Simon Cowell insists that he's never nailed Paula Abdul.
  • They think she may have pulled her own thumbnail off to take her mind off the terrible singing she has to listen to.


    BRITNEY CLAIMS SHE'S BI
    We Don't Bi It - Britney Spears is saying "me, too" to Janet Jackson's confession that she was once in love with another woman. Spears told German FHM magazine, "I may not brag about it as much, but as far as sex goes, I've done similar things to what Janet Jackson has done."

  • What, lip-synched on "Saturday Night Live"?
  • Granted, Justin Timberlake isn't very masculine, but getting groped by him doesn't count as lesbian sex.
  • Britney has an aching, yearning, uncontrollable need...for publicity.
  • If Britney wants to copy Janet, let's see her have a wardrobe malfunction.


    MADONNA'S BIZARRE NEW TOUR
    Jesus! - The Sun reports that Madonna wants her "Re-Invention" tour to be her most controversial yet. Some of the numbers will include a line of scantily-clad pregnant women during "Papa Don't Preach," simulated lesbian sex as she tangos with a female dancer, bomb sounds and huge video images of Iraqis being slaughtered during "American Life," a cover of "Imagine" during which she will break down crying in front of photos of starving children, and even her own "electrocution" on stage as she twitches in an electric chair. Then she'll rise from the dead during a song inspired by Kabbalah. The best seats will cost $300.

  • I'd pay $500 if it just ended with the electric chair.
  • But it's worth it, because think how much you'll learn about religion and foreign policy.
  • She needs the money to pay copyright royalties to Alice Cooper.
  • She's already rehearsing crying over the starving children... She just imagines they're her career.