My Condition...

It was the extreme shortness of breath that got my attention. I was admitted to the hospital in atrial fibrillation with a heart rate of 180. They rather quickly drained 1.4 liters of bloody fluid from my right lung. They have subjected me to dozens of tests, and ruled out many possible causes of this, but they still don't know what went wrong. I am still in atrial fibrillation, but with a heart rate under control using 3 drugs. I am home waiting for some of my medication to reach the proper level in my system, then I may have another hospital stay to try and convert my heart to normal rhythm.

I am able to spend some time at the computer, and am again reading my Email.

Tuna

Updates:

• Charlie's French Cinema Nudity Site is updated

Melissa (aka Secret Sins) (1995)

This really isn't a movie at all. It is an aborted 1995 movie that was resuscitated nearly a decade later, presumably to use film already shot to recuperate some losses on expenses already incurred. According to some stories, the director started shooting this in 1995 and never finished.

I'm going to guess that the version available on DVD consists of about 40 minutes of plot development, but the running time was padded out to an 81 minute "movie" in the following way:

1) many scenes are shown again and again, sometimes in flashback sequences, sometimes just in the hope that you won't remember having seen it before.

2) the running time is further padded out by adding a musical score to raw footage and outtakes. There must be five minutes of Nicole Eggert dancing around her new apartment as she unpacks her things. It is my guess that this would have provided five or ten seconds of footage if the film had been completed, but since the running time needed padding, the director simply used everything he shot.

3) I'm just guessing here, but my speculation is that the plot was re-written to whatever extent was necessary to accommodate the details of the scenes they had filmed.

4) The missing parts of the plot were filled out at the end with the dreaded "word slides."

I mentioned that two of the cast members are recognizable: Summer Quinn from Baywatch (Nicole Eggert) and Paulie Walnuts from The Sopranos (whatever the hell his real name is). Unsurprisingly, Paulie Walnuts runs a strip club. Eggert is the star of the film, a hopeful broadway dancer supporting herself by working as a stripper in Paulie's fine establishment until she ends up getting arrested because there is a dead man in her bedroom, and she is found a block away grasping the murder weapon. The murder story is told in flashback from a framing story in which Eggert tells her psychiatrist and her lawyer the details of how her life led inevitably to the corpse in her bed.

• Nicole Eggert (1, 2)
• Denise Faye
• Stripper #1 (1, 2, 3)
• Stripper #2 (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6)
• Model (1, 2, 3)

Monsieur N (2003)

Monsieur N is to Napoleon as Immortal Beloved is to Beethoven. Each film is an imaginative historical speculation which attempts to provide an explanation for the great mysteries surrounding a great man's death and its aftermath. Each film is made more cinematic by placing the costume drama in the context of a mystery film. In the case of  Napoleon, the speculation involves whether he was actually buried in St. Helena or escaped to start another life, perhaps in Louisiana. Just as with Immortal Beloved, the case is based around a comprehensive and plausible interpretation of the known facts, so that the story told in the film might be, but not necessarily must be, true.

The plot of Monsieur N is quite complicated. Neither the British nor Napoleon are happy with the situation surrounding his exile. For the British the arrangement is an economic hardship. Maintaining the guard involves eleven warships and 3,000 troopers at a cost of several million pounds per year. For Napoleon, the arrangement is loneliness and imprisonment. Both sides scheme to improve the situation. The British conspire to poison Napoleon. Napoleon conspires to escape. That may sound like a simple enough plot, but the intrigues sway to and fro like the most complicated Agatha Christie mystery. At one point, Napoleon seems to have an escape within his grasp, and chooses instead to betray his rescuers - because he has decided on an even more devious and subtle plan. He realizes that if he were to be rescued by Bonapartist zealots, he would have to go back to being a great man, and he is not sure that he wants to end his life with more warfare and empire building.

This film is not quite as effective as Immortal Beloved because the Beethoven biography was able to fall back on Beethoven's music to provide additional punch and drama and elegance to the film. Napoleon has nothing on St Helena to provide ambiance except words, so the film tends to be talk, and counter-talk, and counter-counter-talk.

The English language critics were divided by the Ocean. American critics generally admired it, and it is rated a sound 65 at Metacritic, but there was not one good review in the U.K. BBC's 2/5 was the BEST score among the Brit-crits. The film does basically portray the British as the scheming villains of the piece, and I suppose that didn't play well in Britain. I enjoyed all the verbal parrying, and the robust character development, but I'm aware that this kind of talky period intrigue is not for everyone, especially since the talk is in both French and English.

• Elsa Zylberstein (1, 2)

Other Crap:

• Irony and ivory work together in perfect harmony. Ivory poacher smothered in elephant shit. This would be a great story ... if it WAS a story and not the imagination of Weekly World News.
• The Mighty Thor shows how to roll a joint. Thor a doper? I think not. Loki maybe.
• A house made entirely of books. Except the toilet paper - that's made of stucco.
• The Smoking Gun: Author Terry McMillan's messy divorce action pretty much boils down to her contention that she unknowingly got her groove back with a scheming gay guy. The guy, in his response, says Terry tricked him into thinking she was Liza Minnelli.
• Mexican Stamps Racist, Civil Rights Leaders Say. Oh, they're just overreacting. Well, the Stepin Fetchit tribute was a bit archaic, and they may have a point about the watermelon thing, but that Buckwheat stamp was adorable, and you just can't beat Al Jolson!
• This always gets me laughing, and yet ... um ... gotta get a hankie. There's something in my eye. John Cleese and Eric Idle at Graham Chapman's Funeral
• Holey Moley! Looks like Spielberg's still got it. War of the Worlds takes in $21 million on a Wednesday opening (7th best ever). Batman Begins took in $15m on its Wednesday opening.
• I Hate Horses. "Fuck Off Horse Hater Posers! If You Are Reading This, You Had Better Fucking Hate Horses!!!"
• Possibly the most fucked-up commercial ever, basically a Luis Bunuel movie for Stella Artois beer
• Elizabeth Book, the stay-at-home mom with a rose tattoo, has won the right to bare her breasts in her ongoing fight to go shirtless anywhere men can.
• ELEVEN clips from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I don't know about this ... I've been keeping an open mind because Burton and Depp are geniuses, but this is startin' to give off some bad vibes.
• You wanna pass my class? Burn my car. I wish it had been like that in my day. I could have been valedictorian.
• A clip from the bizarre MirrorMask
  • "MirrorMask centers on Helena, a 15 year old girl in a family of circus entertainers, who often wishes she could run off and join real life. After a fight with her parents about her future plans, her mother falls quite ill and Helena is convinced that it is all her fault. On the eve of her mother's major surgery, she dreams that she is in a strange world with two opposing queens, bizarre creatures, and masked inhabitants. All is not well in this new world - the white queen has fallen ill and can only be restored by the MirrorMask, and it's up to Helena to find it. But as her adventures continue, she begins to wonder whether she's in a dream, or something far more sinister."
• Guardian - Arts quizzes - Lit pop. When I submitted my answers, it told me, "You clearly have spent far too many warm summer days indoors writing frightening verse to a buck-toothed girl in Luxembourg. "
• Paris Hilton wants a royal wedding
• Borowitz: U.S. TO CREATE ONE NEW SPY AGENCY FOR EVERY TERRORIST ON EARTH
• WOMEN who play beach volleyball risk being left with saggy breasts
• TV Shows that should be on DVD, but aren't. Let me add to the list: He & She, and the rest of Pete and Pete (only eight episodes are available).
• Y'know, the world is still full of racism, but sometimes it's good to look back and see that we are at least making progress. "Anti-Japanese Propaganda War Posters "
• "SADDAM Hussein is set to sue The Sun over our pictures of him in his Y-fronts. " "He hopes to pocket £1million from us, though that might be difficult unless he pulls his trousers back on."
• Kenny Rogers doesn't know when to fold 'em
• Caliente chica-en-chica accion! Spain's lower house of parliament has voted in favour of allowing gay couples to marry and adopt children.
• "Perspective is everything" department: Al Qaeda slams Al Jazeera for pro-American bias
• The United States is falling ever farther behind Russia in the all-important "nerd gap"
• VIDEO: Angelina Jolie doing the famous "fence" scene in Gia
• Write your own damned comment. Affleck misses J.Lo's toe sucking, and Matt Damon's ...
• You have no right to use the word "koozie"
• Affleck and Garner are married
• Letterman's "Top Ten Surprises In President Bush's Prime-Time Address"
  • "Claimed he had plan to win war, then switched on the bat signal"
  • "Ten minutes of policy, 20 minutes of Karaoke"
  • "It was basically a 50-minute infomercial for new George Bush grill"
• The Weekly Script features both of the Jason Bourne movies.
• ABC pulls edgy reality show after groups complain. ... "ABC has pulled an upcoming reality series in which people with various backgrounds vie to win a house in a white neighborhood, after gay and conservative watchdog groups raised concerns"
• Triumph the insult dog meets J-Lo
• Gettysburg Cemetery Dedication in Powerpoint
• Google's upcoming 2006 press releases.
• Four new clips from Cronicas (Leguizamo's first Spanish language film.)
• The trailer for ME AND YOU AND EVERYONE WE KNOW. I hope they did a better job on the sound mixing in the film than on their web site. Roger Ebert gave this film four stars.
• eBay: Thousands and thousands and thousands of old 45s for sale in a single lot. You have to see this just for the pictures. If you can rent a truck to haul them away, you could buy the entire collection for a few grand.
• The end of a high concept life. Domino Harvey, the inspiration the upcoming Keira Knightley film (Domino), died in her Los Angeles home on the evening of June 27. Harvey was the daughter of the legendary actor Laurence Harvey. She rejected Beverly Hills life as a model to become a bounty hunter.
• "Dancing with the Stars" is a ratings smash!
• An American held hostage in Iran for 444 days says 'there's no question about it' - the country's new president was one of his captors!
• Jacko brings peace and love and his family to the Middle East. He needs to talk one of those sheikhs into giving him enough land to create a new sovereign nation - with its own laws.
• 'Sabrina the Teenage Witch,' is reportedly expecting her first child, whose career is already hotter than her own.
• Sharon Stone is using body doubles for her sex scenes in Basic Instinct 2. Stunt cunts? How proud their parents must be! "Mom, look - here - when she uncrosses her legs - those are my labia!!!"
• Maria is the lads' favourite: "Maria Sharapova has been voted men's favourite female tennis player of the last 20 years at Wimbledon."
• Starter home, 15 car garage ...
• Legal strategy of the month: Flesh-eating aliens were chasing me when I caused a fatal car crash
• Lawmaker's Wayward E-Mail Refers To Constituents As 'Idiots'. He was immediately dismissed from the politicians' union for their one unforgivable sin - telling the truth.
• The trailer for Into the Blue, a film about ... oh, who the fuck cares what it's about? Some underwater treasure and sharks and bad guys. The usual crap. The point is that Alba spends the entire film in skimpy bikinis.
• A new clip from The Island
• Borowitz: COMPETING WITH CANADA, MEXICO OFFERS GAY DIVORCES ... U.S. Tightens Both Borders, and will especially guard its back door.
• Titan dark spot may be a large lake. Don't pack your swimsuit quite yet. Even if they are right, the lake consists of liquid methane.
• The legendary 'DVD Jon' cracked the Google Video Viewer within 24 hours!! That guy is amazin'! He's still only 21 years old!

Other Crap archives. May also include newer material than the links above, since it's sorta in real time.

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.

A nice bit o' variety from the Ghost today.... First up, from 1982 Dramedy "Best Friends", here is Goldie Hawn briefly baring a bit of breast.

• Goldie Hawn
• Goldie Hawn zipped .wmv

Next we have couple of scenes from the John Badham film "Incognito" (1997). Irène Jacob looks amazing topless, while one-timer Maja Ottesen doesn't look too shabby either playing a nude model.

• Irène Jacob
• Irène Jacob zipped .wmv

• Maja Ottesen (1, 2, 3)
• Maja Ottesen zipped .wmv

Finally, we have Victoria Dillard topless in a love scene from the 1992 movie "Deep Cover" starring Laurence Fishburne and Jeff Goldblum.

• Victoria Dillard
• Victoria Dillard zipped .wmv

Yet another all "Hankster Light" day.

Today we return to "Eurotrip" and actually pick up where we left off yesterday with a topless Molly Schade feeling herself up in the pool. I found these at the end of the screen credits, so if you watch the movie don't shut it down early.

Next we have the star of the movie Michelle Trachtenberg (from "Buffy"). She off course does not get naked, but looks sweet in a bikini and a low cut top.

Then its Edita Deveroux & Petra Tomankova topless on the beach.

Next it's Jessica Boehrs toless while getting it on in a confessional at the Vatican.

Finally we have Kristyna Simova & Tereza Brettschweiderova topless in an Orange Juice commercial, from the deleted scenes. Whatever happened to shortening your name for movies?.

• Molly Schade (1, 2, 3, 4)

• Michelle Trachtenberg (1, 2, 3, 4, 5)

• Edita Deveroux and Petra Tomankova

• Jessica Boehrs (1, 2)

• Kristyna Simova and Tereza Brettschneiderova (1, 2, 3)

"Pretty Cool"
The title of this 2001 comedy is also a fair description. It's not a great movie, and it has a tendency to stray into dumbness, but all in all it's pretty cool, especially on the nudity front.

Scientists develop a technique that allows them to give a person the ability to read minds and control thoughts. Due to a computer oopsie, these powers are accidentally transferred to a high school geek.

Without a clue, our geek manages to turn this golden opportunity into something of a mess, but in the process, he gets plenty of lovely young women naked, so it's not a total loss.

Sure, it's been done before, and it's kind of lame, but it's still a cute comedy that provides an excuse to show lots of skin which, with skinmeister Alain Siritzky as the producer, is not unexpected.

• Summer Altice & Cindy Campbell
• Alexis Thorpe
• Cecilia Berquvist
• Holly Sampson & the Women of "Pretty Cool"

Cara Seymour
(1, 2)

Krista Sutton
(1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6)

Guinevere Turner
(1, 2, 3)

Here's the breakdown:
Samantha Mathis shows the briefest bit of nipple in a deleted scene.

Cara Seymour also shows just a hint of nipple while sipping champagne in the tub.

Krista Sutton shows her breasts during a 3-way scene.

Guinevere Turner (who also worked on the screenplay for the movie) shows a little toplessness.

U2 IS "SPOILED"
The Unforgettable Firing - U2 is suing their former stylist Lola Cashman, claiming she stole "iconic" items, such as Bono's hat and hoop earrings, to sell at auction. Wednesday, Cashman testified that Bono gave her that stuff when they were alone and she was dressing him, which is why there were no other witnesses, but she "didn't think it was any big deal." She also stood by a claim in her unauthorized book about U2 that she hesitated to work for them because she thought rock stars were spoiled. She said, "I did believe that, and I believe that now."

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