Permanent Midnight (1998) is a drugs suck comedy based on the autobiography of television writer Jerry Stahl. As the film opens, he is working in a fast food restaurant as part of his drug rehab when Maria Bello pulls up driving the wrong way, asking him for matches. The two end up in a motel room, and he relates his life story to her between sex acts. He achieved a great deal of success in Hollywood, but shot it all into his arm or put it up his nose. He married a Brit (played by Elizabeth Hurley) to get her a green card, and ended up having a baby with her.

Bello shows breasts near the end of the film. Jerry Stahl eventually got clean, as does Ben Stiller playing him in the film. Those who have been reading me for awhile no I am not big on drugs suck films or expository dialogue, but this was well acted enough and humorous enough to hold my interest . IMDb readers have it at 6.1 of 10. Berardinelli noticed that the film covered no new ground, but was well enough made that he awarded 3 stars. Ebert also awarded three stars with similar comments. It has an overall 60% positive at IMDb. This is far from my favorite genre, but the homorous way the story was told, and the excellent performance from Stiller made it watchable. The proper score is C+.

New to DVD this week.

Hellboy has no nudity, but it is one of the most entertaining films of the year, and is on a comprehensive two-disk DVD.

Ron Perlman will not be nominated for an Oscar, because they don't seem to give Oscar nominations for acting in silly movies, but I doubt that you will see a more charismatic and engaging performance this year from anyone.

Here is the comments page.

Harold and Kumar go to White Castle (2004):

New to theaters this week.

Harold and Kumar is a stoner comedy. Although the entire film is based on a case of the munchies, there are more than a few twists on the stoner genre.

The protagonists are neither brain-dead white surfers nor slacker Rastas. The two lead stoners are an overachieving, responsible Korean investment banker and a brilliant Indian guy rebelling against an overachieving family. Their situation reflects why marijuana is smoked by "normal" people, and not just by stereotyped bakeheads. Harold, the investment banker, is wound too tight and keeps too much inside. He can't even summon up the nerve to talk to the beautiful women who flirts with him in the elevator. Burning one on Friday gives him a little escape from his uptight world and lets him retreat into a hidden part of his personality that he would like to be closer to the surface. Kumar, the Indian guy, is a fun-loving slacker, but not because he lacks brains and ambition. He aced the MCATs and has a natural aptitude for medicine. It's just that he's just not ready to join the serious world yet ...

like many of us ...

... including some far older than Kumar's 22.

Although this is not a muckraking film about prejudice and oppressive social conditions, it is an incisive film. It's interesting to note that these two guys are a realistic representation of a whole sub-set of young Asian-Americans. They are not different in any way from bright European Americans of their generation, but the world doesn't see it that way. Although the boys have no accents, are no different and don't attempt to be different from any other Americans, the people in the cruel streets insist on pigeonholing Harold and Kumar into Asian stereotypes. Even their fellow Asians are guilty of this! (Harold doesn't want to hang out with the smart, serious Asian girl who has a crush on him, and he certainly doesn't want to attend a meeting of the Asian Students Society, which bores the shit out of him. He just wants to summon up the nerve to get acquainted with the gorgeous Latina next door.)

Despite the presence of "Finch" in a minor role, this is no sentimental American Pie film. The script is not bound by the limitations of reality. The boys walk out of jail when the racist cops find someone with darker skin to occupy their attention. Their car is stolen by Doogie Howser. They escape from one predicament by riding away on a stoned Cheetah.

And those are the things that actually happen in their surrealistic world ...

the things in their fantasies get really strange ...

 ... Kumar imagines a love affair and subsequent marriage to a giant bag of chronic who wears the official white gloves of 30s cartoon characters. Harold enters a White Castle cartoon for a journey that resembles a scene from Who Framed Roger Rabbit?

The situations and the humor are finely tuned to the generation born in the late 70s and early 80s. The novice screen writers were born in 1977 and 1978, and they know what they're talking about. The boys' neighbors are obsessed, for example, with a movie called The Gift, because it is the one time that Katie Holmes showed her magnificent breasts. Since I am a guy who writes about movie nudity, a long-time webmaster of a celebrity nudity web site, and the father of a young man about the same age as Harold and Kumar, I can tell you that the screenwriters nailed this. If guys their age wrote the NY Times, the first appearance of the topless captures from The Gift would have been announced in bigger headline type than "Hitler Invades Poland". One of Kumar's neighbors is asked to explain how good Katie's breasts are. He responds, "You know the Holocaust? Think of the opposite of that."

(In my review of The Gift, I wrote "Anyway, it's not a bad flick. The script is predictable and especially cliché-ridden, but that's partially balanced off by competent direction, a really good cast headed by Cate Blanchett, and Katie Holmes's breasts. Did I mention Katie Holmes's breasts? The first shot of Katie's redoubtable hooters comes 00:01:06 into the film - before the credits! Now that's entertainment. Not to mention the director's accurate assessment of a valuable asset.")

There are some great comic home runs in this movie. Neil Patrick Harris is brilliant as a twisted version of himself. Harold and Kumar have a brilliant, unprintable discussion about the proper use of nose hair clippers. There are also some wild swinging strikes. As usual in this kind of flick, there are gross-outs which are intended to be funny but end up just gross. There are jokes which don't work, and other jokes which are funny but overstay their welcome.

On balance - well, I thought it was pretty funny, but not as consistently hilarious as some other critics have contended. I'm not sure my opinion matters much. I'm 55 and haven't fired up a doob in about three decades, so I'm not the target audience. This film is intended for the 18-29 audience, especially the guys who burn one occasionally. I think it will resonate with them, as Swingers resonated with guys slightly older who preferred their mind-altering substances in liquid form.

I'm writing this on the day it opens. Box Office Mojo is predicting a $13 million opening weekend on 2000 screens, which implies that it will do $40-50 million overall. It will do better if general audiences respond as favorably as the critics.

• Malin Ackerman shows her breasts.
• An unidentified actress flashes her silicone breasts while cruisin' with the Dooger.

OTHER CRAP:

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

Click here to submit a URL for Other Crap

MOVIE REVIEWS:

Words from Scoop.

.avi's from Shiloh.

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

NOTE: because of a unique combination of circumstances with the Windows media player and some substantial bandwidth theft, we will have to do all of our movie files in zip format. Left click on the files as you normally would to view a picture. When you get a choice, click on "save", and put it on your hard drive in the directory of your choice. UnZIP and play from there.

I know this is not especially convenient, but it allows the film clips to continue. I can protect .zip files from hot-linking in the same way I can protect still images. For some reason, if I protect .avis and .wmvs from hot-linking, they will not play in the Windows media player, and I can't get a satisfactory work-around. Perhaps I will find a better solution, but for now this new policy allows you to continue getting the movie clips you want to see, which is much preferable to my abandoning the clips altogether.

Breathless (1983) - Day 2

Valerie Kaprisky again in Breathless, aka "A bout de Souffle".

• Kaprisky (.avi- zip) (.wmv - zip)

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.

Today from the Ghost...'caps and vids of Paula Trickey playing a 'brass pole enthusiast' and showing breasts and thong views in scenes from the sequel that simply begged to be made..."Maniac Cop 2" (1990).

• Paula Trickey (1, 2, 3)
• Paula Trickey zipped .wmvs (1, 2)

Scoops,
Here are vidcaps of former Pet and occasional B-movie bimbo Devinn Lane in scenes from the adult film "Improper Conduct" (2003). She does a lot in this movie. Two gals and three guys. Babe has put on some weight since she was a Pet in 1999. October, I think. But all the equipment is original.

First up, the softcore stuff. Breasts everywhere, plus a gyno-view in #2 and a back door view in #3.

• Devinn Lane (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8)

These start the more serious, hardcore stuff. The first four are from a scene where a scary-looking Brigitte Kerkove munches Devinn's carpet.

• Devinn Lane (1, 2, 3, 4, 5)

This next batch are from Devinn's first boy-gril scene of the movie. Lots of positions that make her look very good, IMHO.

The 'caps in link #6 finish off the scene the way these sorts of things finish.

Link #7 is a collage of 'caps from a behind-the-scenes extra on the disk. It basically showed everything again, only a lot quicker and from a different angle. It was kind of cool.

• Devinn Lane (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7)

The last batch of goodies from "Improper Conduct". Devinn does a couple more guys and another gal. Plus as a bonus, I threw in 3 collages of Aria Carrera doing what made her famous.

• Devinn Lane (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8)
• Asia Carrera (1, 2, 3)

"Model Lust" (The New Girl)
This 2003 direct-to-video soft porn includes a story, but no one will pay that much attention to it. Released on DVD as The New Girl, it makes clear with the beginning titles, full of attractive naked young women, what you're in for.

The plot, for those that care, tell of a young woman who goes to Los Angeles to "find herself". Hooking up with her cousin, a beautiful model, she is introduced to the model scene and starts posing herself.

In the middle of all this, she is confronted by a man claiming to be an government agent who suspects the photographer of espionage, and asks for her help.

Plot's really lame, but as sexploytation flicks go, I've seen a lot worse.

• Juliana Kincaid
• Diana Espen (aka April Flowers)
• Susan Hale
• Mary Carey & Holly Hollywood

GETTING RICH OFF KABBALAH
They Don't Ward Off Con Men - The New York Post's Page Six reports that many Jewish leaders have condemned the Los Angeles Kabbalah Center for being more interested in selling such things as Kabbalah Bottled Water than in teaching real Judaism. Now, they note that Target.com is carrying red Kabbalah strings, like the ones Madonna and Britney Spears wear. Target guarantees the strings have been to Israel, "to the ancient tomb of Rachel the Matriarch, and returned imbued with the essence of protection" and they "protect against the evil eye." Price: $25.99 a string.