Monday

 

 

  • * Yellow asterisk: funny (maybe).

  • * White asterisk: expanded format.

  • * Blue asterisk: not mine.

  • No asterisk: it probably sucks.

OTHER CRAP:

Catch the deluxe version of Other Crap in real time, with all the bells and whistles, here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Black Book

(2006)

Zwartboek (2006) stars the amazing Carice van Houten in the role of her career as a Dutch Jew active in the WW2 resistance. The film opens many years after the war. Van Houten is teaching school in an Israeli kibbutz when a woman on a tour recognizes her from their time together in WW II Holland. Van Houten then recollects the film's main story. It is an amazing yarn about how she survived the Nazi occupation in very unusual ways, and the tale is populated with characters that run contrary to WW II film stereotypes, but are all based on real, historical figures. There is a nice Nazi, crooked resistance fighters, rampant anti-Semitism among the Dutch who are helping the Jews, and surprise after surprise to unravel.

In this work that was over 20 years from concept to fruition, co-author/director Paul Verhoeven got it right. He not only produced a masterpiece, but has gotten the credit he deserves for it, except from the American academy. Zwartboek is currently rated 8.0 at IMDb with 15,919 votes, and earned $4.4M in a US release, this for a Dutch language film with subtitles running 145 minutes. It may well be the best film I have seen from 2006. If you haven't seen this, I strongly recommend it.

 

 

Carice van Houten

 

Halina Reijn

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


Snow White

2005

No, this is not the children's tale of Snow White. This is a foreign flick with Julie Fournier playing a model who gets topless frequently and even flashes some bush. She's cute and we even have some artsy "Babe in Bondage" shots.


 

 

 

 

 

 

Notes and collages

The Lair of the White Worm

1988

Amanda Donohoe

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Ruins

2008

No slashers, no chain saw killers, no psychotics intent on torturing their victims psychologically; The Ruins is just good ole' creepy-crawly horror, and it's very entertaining.

Best friends Stacy (Laura Ramsey) and Amy (Jena Malone) are on vacation in Mexico with their boyfriends when they meet another tourist, a German, whose brother is on an archeological dig at a Mayan pyramid that is unknown and not open to tourists. He offers his new friends a chance to visit it. After enduring an 11-mile "taxi" ride into the wilderness (the cab was a beat up pickup----they got to ride in the back), and trekking through 2 miles of jungle, they find the Mayan pyramid. They also find their friend's brother, but they find a few more things they most certainly didn't expect.

This is exciting old-fashioned horror, and it will definitely make your pulse race. I highly recommend it.
 

Laura Ramsey Jenna Malone

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

101 Reykjavik

2000

A 30-year-old Icelandic man still lives with his mother and spends his days drinking, watching porn and surfing the net. Lola, his mother's Spanish flamenco teacher (Victoria Abril), moves in with them for Christmas. On New Year's Eve, while his mother is away, he ends up having drunken sex with Lola and getting her pregnant. The man's mother returns and breaks the news that she and Lola are lesbian lovers and will raise the baby together. He tries and fails to commit suicide, but eventually matures and gets a job, although he never does leave his mother's house. He stays with the two women and their (his) baby boy.

Part 2 (conclusion)

Hanna Maria Karlsdottir

Ingibjorg Gunnarsdottir

Thrudur Vilhjalmsdottir

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pics

Sienna Miller heard that there were some people in small-town Italy who had not yet seen her naked, so she rushed there on a relief mission.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Film Clips

A sampling of Julie K Smith in a quasi-hardcore home movie called Pamela the Re-enactment. (1997) You can get the IMDb summary here. If you would like to download the entire film, it is available here (it's almost a gig in size.) Some samples are found below.

Some crazy-ass Asian erotica: Maj Katajima in The Brutal Hopelessness of Love. Sounds like a real "feel good" film. This 2007 effort is the latest from the legendary Takashi Ishii, who wrote and/or directed the Angel Guts movies back in the 70s and 80s.

Brenda Scott in a weird little 1970s artifact called Simon, King of the Witches (1971), which featured some members of Andy Warhol's factory. One IMDb comment spelled it out nicely: "Fans of high Hippie Couture and silly psychedelic effects (dig the trippy "walking into the mirror" effect) have some good stuff here to treat their eyes with. (If you liked the look of "Psych Out" or "The Trip" you'll have a ball.)"

Samples below: