Updates:

• Charlie's French Cinema Nudity site has been updated

Film clips:

Blame it on Rio is rated an anemic 5.1 at IMDB. While Tuna and I conceded that it is an insubstantial movie, we both liked it. Fuck substance, dude. We aren't always in the mood to watch Ken Burns's Civil War. We are often in the mood for: great nudity photographed well,  Michael Caine, Demi Moore topless before the implants, and Brazilian music. Good stuff. (Movie House Review). Here's are three zipped avi clips of the well-stacked Michelle Johnson, and one zipped .avi of the unstacked Demi Moore with Michelle on the beach.

Michelle Johnson (zipped avi)

Michelle Johnson and Demi Moore(zipped avi)

Tremendous HDTV caps of Barbara Crampton in From Beyond, a 1986 H.P. Lovecraft movie starring the ol' Reanimator himself, Jeffrey Combs.

Barbara Crampton (zipped avi)

 

 

Lovin' Molly (1974):

Directed by Sydney Lumet (five Oscar nominations and a lifetime achievement award) from a novel by Larry McMurtry (one win in two Oscar nominations, plus an Emmy nomination), Lovin Molly' should have been a slam dunk for a great movie. Lumet was more or less in the prime of his career, one year removed from Dog Day Afternoon. McMurtry was still basking in the glow of the encomiums heaped upon The Last Picture Show.

It wasn't a great movie, although it has some very nice moments. McMurtry's sprawling story about two men who passed through forty years of life loving the same woman proved to be difficult to adapt into an economical screenplay. McMurtry's "Leaving Cheyenne" had the advantage of an unlimited expanse of printed pages to develop sub-plots and subtext in a leisurely, thoughtful way, as well as to create some beautiful homespun prose which often moseyed into the territory of simple country poetry. The screenwriter just didn't seem to have the heart to cut anything out, so the individual scenes seem rushed and excessively compacted, and the transitions between scenes seem to be dominated by abrupt jumps forward in time. Unfortunately, chronicling the minutiae of events over four decades didn't leave enough time for the proper development of motivation and character, to such an extent that the movie ends without us ever really knowing much about one of the two men who loved Molly (the one played by Beau Bridges). It plays out like one of those a soap opera films from the 50s rather than like a character-oriented 70s piece. If it had been my decision, I would have found a way to minimize or even eliminate the last two acts, particularly given the silly make-up used to age the characters.

The script fails in other ways. The portrayal of Texas rurals seems like the kind of "noble savage" idealization that would be created by someone who had never left Boston. Furthermore, the author chose to replicate the feel of McMurtry's language by simply having it read in narrative voice-over, with each of the three acts narrated by one of the three main characters.

The script problems were complicated by the odd casting of Anthony Perkins as a sane heterosexual from the rural Texas Panhandle. Perkins always manages to seem like a disturbed city boy from New England who is recruited to play a country boy in the school play because the drama teacher thinks it will help him cure his introversion. His love scenes with Blythe Danner were, to understate the case kindly, lacking in electricity. He was supposed to be someone who had trouble expressing affection, but he took it to pathological extremes. Maybe she should have taken a shower to invoke some kind of passion.

I still like Lovin' Molly in some ways. Like many McMurtry stories, it can get inside you and melt your heart in its best moments, and it's easy to understand why the boys loved Molly, as played with feisty unconventionality by Gwyneth Paltrow's beautiful, curvaceous mother, Blythe Danner, who had some talent to match her looks.

But the damned thing just isn't as good as it should have been.

It's been more than thirty years since this film was made, and I'd love to see somebody else try their hand at McMurtry's "Leaving Cheyenne." I still think there's probably a great movie in there somewhere.

 

 

Blythe Danner film clip (1 2) Blythe Danner Susan Sarandon film clip Susan Sarandon

 

Other Crap:

Movie Reviews:

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

"Stoned" (2005)

SPOILERS AHEAD

Stoned is a biopic of a short period of time in the life of Frank Thorogood. Wait a minute, you are thinking, this film is about the death of Brian Jones, a founding member of The Rolling Stones who had just been sacked. That may have even been the film makers intention. However, the film certainly wasn't about the Rolling Stones, as it had nearly none of their music, and even used a Jefferson Airplane song from a later era for a pivotal scene. There was no arc to Jones character in this film, other than his sacking and death. At the start of the film, he was a paranoid recluse addicted to blondes and intoxicating substances. That is pretty much how he ended. Thorogood, however, had a character arc. At the start, he was a rather straight building contractor on the outs with his missus who was sent in to do some remodeling, get away from his wife, and watch over Brian. By the end of the film, he was likely in love with Brian, but sick to death of being teased and tormented, and became angry enough at the end to kill him over non-payment of money he felt he was owed. According to a text at the end of the film, Thorogood copped to the murder on his death bed.

END SPOILERS

The film features breast exposure from Tuva Novotny, breasts and buns, and a little see-through bush from Monet Mazur, and incidental nudity from a variety of other boys and girls.

IMDb readers say 5.3 but based on only 530 votes. As popular a topic as death of a Stones member should be, that is a VERY low vote count. The Region 1 DVD is here, and is a total disappointment. It not only forces you to sit through three trailers before you can start the film, but it is missing the commentary track that made the Region 2 release at least somewhat valuable. A biopic of Brian Jones that revealed a solution to his mysterious death at the end might have been a worthwhile project, especially if it went into some detail about creative decisions in forming the group, and how and why they moved from blues to their own special brand of rock. Of course, this would entail licensing a lot of music from The Stones, and I am guessing they wanted little to do with this tawdry story in which nobody has any class at all. Yes, the story has sex and drugs, and nudity, but there is no buildup to the mystery surrounding the death of Brian Jones, and who the hell wants to watch a biopic about an ugly one-eyed geek named Frank Thorogood? D+

Monet Mazur Tuva Novotny Unknowns