Shadows in the Sun

An uptight corporate book editor flies from London to a small town in Tuscany with the mission of enlisting a reclusive Salinger-style former writer to end two decades of literary abstinence. While the city boy is in Italy:

• The simple and warm people of Tuscany melt the editor's frosty uptight city ass.
• The editor learns much about writing from the crusty old writer, enough to rediscover his own desire to write.
• The editor also learns much about life from the legendary writer. The two men form a relationship very similar to that of the lusty Zorba and the shy Basil in Zorba the Greek, so similar in fact that the two men even have a variation on the "teach me to dance" scene. In another classic Zorbaesque scene, the lusty writer offers to sign the contract if the uptight editor will kiss his ass in a crowded cafe.
• The writer (Keitel) also has a really smokin'-hot daughter (Claire Forlani) and the handsome young editor (Joshua Jackson) predictably falls in love with her.
• The writer eventually rediscovers what he had lost from his own life.
• The editor eventually rediscovers what he had lost from his own life as well. And I don't just mean his artistic sense of abandon, or his writing talent, or the love he had been missing. He also becomes part of a new family, and a new community, and a better system of hair care, then discovers the Fountain of Youth and the cure for cancer, and finally locates both Judge Crater and Amelia Earhart, who are living in the same modest Tuscan village.

As you have undoubtedly already determined, this film manages to incorporate just about every possible arty chick-flick cliché. It's Under the Tuscan Sun meets Winter Passing meets Zorba the Greek. As if all that weren't phony enough, the hot daughter speaks with an Italian accent that would embarrass John Cleese. Mind you, she has been raised by one parent - an American - for the past twenty years, so she would be very unlikely to have any accent at all while speaking English. That alone should have been enough to dissuade the director from allowing the character to speak broken English, but he certainly should have put his foot down and stopped it when he heard Forlani assay the dialect.

If the elements above actually appeal to you, or at least fail to scare you off, the film's execution is not bad. You've seen it all before and you're probably heard every line of dialogue and seen every set piece in other, better movies, but it's filmed and performed with heart by pros, so the story will find an appreciative audience among those with a taste for more sentimental movies, especially among younger women.

Whether is is your kind of movie or not, you do NOT want the Region 1 DVD, which is some kind of Disneyfied version of the original movie, which was called The Shadow Dancer. The film has been truncated, censored, and cropped!

First matter: it has been formed into a TV-friendly aspect ratio through pan-n-scan cropping. The original theatrical aspect ratio was 2.35:1. The DVD version is presented in a 4:3 TV version. That is, as you might imagine, a very big difference.

The cropping has an especially deleterious impact on this film's outdoor scenes, which often consist of expansive panoramas of the beautiful Tuscan countryside.

What's worse that that, at least for those of us who think Forlani is one of the world's great beauties, is the fact that the film has been censored. Claire's topless scene has been cut, and (far less significant to most of us) Harvey Keitel's standard obligatory nude scene has also been cut!

To tell you the truth, I am no longer as outraged about that as I was originally. I looked closely at the Forlani nude scene, and realized it didn't really matter since (1) you can't see jack squat anyway (2) it probably isn't Forlani at all! You can draw your own conclusions, but I'm just about 100% sure that it is not Forlani. The following capture is a 4x enlargement from the sex scene. Even though her face is clearly visible, my opinion is that it's just a pretty girl who looks something like Forlani. Forlani has a very distinctive profile, and this doesn't seem to be it:

The following images and this film clip are NOT taken from the DVD, but from the film clip by Devilworks. Pay especial attention to the face of the girl in the movie clip version of the sex scene. Forlani or not?

Stolen Sex Tapes

2002

Stolen Sex Tapes is "couples erotica" presented in the thriller format, light on the thrills.

Sydnee Steele plays a local news commentator known for a short editorial at the end of each broadcast. She has paid her dues, and is so good that she is about ready to sign a network deal. The newscaster has hired a new agent to find her the best network deal, and has even slept with her to improve her motivation, but she has a small kink that might spoil her plans. She tapes all her sex acts. This becomes a huge problem when she gets robbed, and the missing items include sex tapes of her and her political candidate boyfriend, who had been unaware of the taping.

The person who stole the tapes did so for someone else, but watches them with his girlfriend, after which the two have great sex, and he decides to ask for more money. We are to assume that the thief works for the political opponent, who is a sleazebag.  So, who was behind the theft? Will Sydnee get her job? Will her boyfriend win the election without resorting to dirty campaigning?

Syndee Steele shows everything, first in living color and then B & W when the tapes are played. Bobbi Harper, as the agent, shows everything in the girl/girl with Sydnee, and then has sex with the network guru. Cecelia Simon shows everything as the girlfriend of the thief. An unknown hooker shows everything offering a dirty story to discredit the political opponent.

IMDb readers say 4.0, but based on nearly no votes.

This is a C. It will never break into my top soft core list, but is not a bad watch. It's a decent genre effort, and should get you laid if you watch it with someone of the appropriate gender.

It is now available from RLDVDs.com on a dual region (1 and 4) DVD with the original English soundtrack, and optional Spanish subtitles. The DVD also has an English trailer and a "making of" faaturette, also in English. Click on the picture below for purchase details.

 

Cecilia Simon

Bobbi Harper

Sydnee Steele

unidentified

GAL

The GAL was the Spanish government's anti-terrorist wing. They killed the members of ETA, who were in France under politic asylum. After France started treating them as terrorists, the GAL were quiet for a year when suddenly an innocent man was blown up in France. He was not their first innocent victim.

Journalists Manuel (Jose Garcia) and Marta (Natalia Verbeke), working under editor Pablo (Abel Folk), get an anonymous tip and are soon on the trail of GAL head Ariza (Jordi Molla). As the complex tale unwinds involving high-level government corruption and incompetence, both of the journalists get roughed up by heavies. The movie moves between present and past, introducing a plethora of lawyers, mercenaries and politicians.

Sadly Natalia only uncovers the government's plot and not her luscious body, but some uncredited girls show a lot of skin.