Monday

Tuna
"Sexy American Idle" day 2

Sexy American Idle (2003) or American Idle. Last night, we had Anoushka as a talent judge, and Julian Wells, who played both a contestant and a judge. Tonight, Misty Mundae, AJ Kahn, and CJ DiMarsico, all three contestants. Mundae mostly sang, and, in the deleted scenes, played guitar. Normally, that would not be worthy of mention, except that she was really playing it. She managed G, C and D, and an alternating base finger pick. That is as many chords as some early 60s groups played. Further, she was playing on a very nice looking Martin 28 acoustic. Notice that I have diplomatically not said anything about her singing.

AJ Kahn is half of a dance duo with Darian Caine, who didn't show anything. CJ DiMarsico did a dance number that was really more of a strip. Other contestants included a gorilla who would dance when his trainer whipped him, the town mayor, who thought he could dance, and an old geezer. Two male judges included an Ozzie Osborn caricature, and the town insurance salesman. The two announcers were as strange as the judges. All of the women showed breasts and partial buns.

While they clearly had fun making this, that was not enough for me. Many of the jokes were just to low rent and the situations too over the top, although I did smile in places. A better joke writer could have made this a much better movie. It is still awaiting 5 votes at IMDb. I might have appreciated the satire more had I seen the TV show it is lampooning. The set includes a companion music CD, and a free offer of a hard core version. Simply wrap a $5.00 bill around the included order card, and mail it to them for you free DVD. This is a high D+ or very low C-. The idea was ok, the pace was pretty god for the most part, but they needed much more talented comedy writers.

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  • AJ Kahn (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8)
  • CJ DiMarsico (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18)
  • Misty Mundae (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6)

  • Johnny Web (Uncle Scoopy)
    The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969)

    Here's a sure bar bet winner for you.

    Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid was actually released in October of 1969, at which time, there was a particularly syrupy movie song which was played at least once per hour on all Top 40 radio stations throughout the United States. In fact, although it was not a rock or R&B song, but a sappy love poem set to insipid music, it actually rose to #2 on the record charts, and stayed on the charts for 12 weeks, alongside The Rolling Stones, The Temptations, and Sly & the Family Stone.

    Can you guess what it was?

     If you can get the other guy to guess "Raindrops Keep Fallin' On My Head", he buys the beer.

    The correct answer is "Jean", the theme song from The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, as sung by some sap named Oliver, and written by the even sappier would-be poet, Rod McKuen. Needless to say, if you were into real music at the time, the appearance of "Jean" on a radio was an occasion to throw your beer at the offending device, since the song consisted of the perfect combination of syrupy music which would cause any self-respecting elevator to eject its MUZAK cartridge, and lyrics which could have been written by a 12 year old girl. Except of course that a 12 year old girl could have written "Jean", but would have thrown the poem away once she re-read it. Rod McKuen never had that much sense.

    As Dave Barry once wrote, the lyrics to "Jean" should have been:

    Jean, Jean

    You're young and alive

    (which beats being old and/or dead)

    Mr Oliver and Mr McKuen, by the way, probably contributed as much to bad music as any two men in the 20th century. I suppose that the two songs which most often appear on All-Time Bad Lyrics lists are "Seasons in the Sun" and "Good Morning Starshine". McKuen actually wrote the awful lyrics to "Seasons in the Sun" ("skinned our hearts and skinned our knees"), and Oliver had a big hit singing the even worse lyrics to "Good Morning Starshine". (Actual lyrics: "Gliddy glub gloopy nibby nabby noopy, La la la lo lo, Sabba sibby sabba nooby abba nabba, Le le lo lo, Tooby ooby walla nooby abba naba").

    For these two giants of bad music to team together on one song was a serendipitous concatenation of circumstances which may never be re-created, so we who were there can only marvel at our fortune.

    Oliver had two or three more truly awful hits, then disappeared for two decades, but his name came into the public eye again in the '90s when he became one of only three groups or artists (along with Paul Anka and the Captain and Tennille) to have more than one song named among the notorious "Worst 100 Singles of the Last 25 Years," by David Browne and David Hinckley for The New York Daily News. Both "Jean" and "Good Morning Starshine" made the list.

    You go, girl!

    Oliver passed away of cancer in 2000, aged only 54.

    Rod McKuen, on the other hand, may live forever, and is still writing, although it has been about 20 years since anyone published any of his books, and nearly thirty years since he has had a music credit listed at IMDb. If you want to read his unpublished stuff, here is his home page.

    Getting back to the narrative for a moment, "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head" doesn't usually make the Worst 100 lists, but the competition is incredibly stiff. It ain't easy to top Mack Davis and Richard Harris, not to mention McKuen and Oliver. "Raindrops", however, did go on to be an even bigger hit than "Jean", reaching number one at one point, and appearing on the charts for nineteen weeks. While not quite as sappy and irritating as "Jean", it became even more intrusive.

    =============

    One thing that fascinated me about this quaint movie is the character of Miss Jean Brodie, because I knew a woman exactly like this. I mean EXACTLY like this. She was a teacher at an private women's college in upstate New York in the late 60's. She talked exactly like Maggie Smith in this film - the same pompous and commanding pronouncements, the same arrogance and egocentricity, the same mannered and affected style. Precisely the same except for Brodie's Scottish accent. They both rattled on and on about Florence, Italy and Dante when it was irrelevant to their subject matter. They both had repeated catch-phrases. The woman I knew preferred hyphenated Homeric epithets as her personal catch phrases, like "the great white-walled city of Florence". She was just as eccentric and passionate and "progressive" as Jean Brodie. Her name was Francesca Guli. Francesca was just as certain of her convictions as Jean Brodie. Thankfully she had much less malevolent convictions, and was teaching universtity students. By the way, Francesca was semi-famous, in that she had a few books of poetry published in limited editions (I have one of her books, signed by her - it's a children's book about Dante as a child - what else?), and you can probably find some references to her somewhere on the internet.

    What is my point? I'm getting there.

    If I had never met Francesca, I would say that Miss Jean Brodie is an unrealistic over-the-top character. But I know, or knew, a woman exactly like her. I therefore conclude that one of two things must be true. Either (1) this actually is a realistic portrayal of a certain type of woman who existed in the middle 20th century, or (2) Muriel Spark's novel, the source of the character, must actually have been based on Francesca. I do not think the second could be true, which leads me to conclude that the first is correct. There were others like Francesca. Perhaps many others.

    The essence of the character of Jean Brodie is summed up perfectly by Tuna. She has strong, passionate opinions about everything, and they are usually wrong. She has contempt for any Catholic. She is an ardent supporter of Fascism. She encourages one young girl to die for Franco. When she's not screwing up the girls with Fascism and bigotry, she's leading them into having sex with older married men. She leads the girls with such certainty, delivers her pronouncements with such a complete absence of self-doubt, that many students seem to follow her willingly and unquestioningly, however silly her causes.

    This creates an atypical film. In certain ways, it is preaching anarchy to the "caring teacher" genre. On the surface, it is one of those films where the renegade teacher fights against the repressive system to bring her students more enrichment and to give their lives more value. Beneath the surface, however, it subverts all of our expectations, because in this case the system is acting in the best interests of the students, and the caring, renegade teacher is screwing the kids up.

    To use the old cliché, Jean Brodie is a teacher who really cares. The problem is she cares about all the wrong things, and has all the wrong attitudes toward those things!

    The film, by the way, is essentially a talky stage play that was brought to the screen with no particular cinematic flair. It is a good, solid play, typical of the times in British Drama, but it has very little plot development and far too little humor, and is only for those of you who are really into the theater and in-depth character studies. 

    • Pamela Franklin (1, 2)

     

    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:

    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.

    Shiloh

    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.

     

    The Other Side of Midnight, Day 2

    • Marie France-Pisier, "The Other Side of Midnight" #7 ( .avi- zip) (.wmv - zip) . Topless. Oral sex implied off camera.

    • Marie France-Pisier, "The Other Side of Midnight"  #8 ( .avi- zip) (.wmv - zip) . Full frontal nude (I guess) but subtle.

    • Susan Sarandon, "The Other Side of Midnight"  #1 ( .avi- zip) (.wmv - zip) . Topless, but too subtle.

    • Susan Sarandon, "The Other Side of Midnight"  #2 ( .avi- zip) (.wmv - zip) .  Great scene. Sarandon is wearing a nightgown in a rain storm. One of the sexiest scenes she ever did. (THE sexiest not involving any sexual contact with Catherine DeNeuve)

     

    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.

    Graphic Response
    • Emmanuelle Béart, the beautiful French actress probably known best for co-starring with Tom Cruise in "Mission Impossible" (1996). Here she is baring absolutely everything in scenes from "La Belle noiseuse" aka "The Beautiful Troublemaker" (1991).

    Be sure to pay Graphic Response a visit at his website. www.graphic-barry.com.

    Spaz
    'Caps and comments by Spaz:

    "The Takeover" (1995)
    Video starring the very svelte Canadian actress Cali Timmins.

    • Cali Timmins: showing her A-cups in love scene. (1, 2)


    "Hard Evidence" (1995)
    Another movie starring Cali Timmins this time with Greg Evigan. For some reason April Telek is used as Cali's stand-in even though April has much bigger boobs.

    • Cali Timmins: once again showing her timbits, major buns and pokies, long love scene. (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12)


    "Night Friend" (1987)
    Another drama about runaway hookers.


    "Johnny's Girl" (1995) (TV)
    Movie about a teenage girl played by Exotica's Mia Kirshner who works at a strip joint mopping the floors. Yeah, right.


    "Sister-in-Law" (1995) (TV)
    Tamer PG-rated version of Bloodknot also starring Kate Vernon as the deranged bunnyboiler.


    "Liberty Street" (tv series) (1994-1995)
    Short lived tv series about a bunch of Gen X'ers living in an apartment building. The pilot titled "X-Rated" attracted the wrong audience who left in droves.


    "11th Hour" (tv series)
    Finally caught Tanya Reid in a tight sweater.


    "Cornered" (2001) (DVD)
    Low budget drama about an Italian boxer who wants to be a gymnast. This guy has real identity problems.

    Crimson Ghost
    NOTE: We currently have to do all of our movie files in zip format. Instead of viewing them online, save the zip files to your hard drive in the directory of your choice, un-zip and play from there.


    Today the Ghost pays tribute to B-movie actress Denice Duff. Here she is topless in a variety of scenes from 3 of her movies.

    • Denice Duff, topless in a shower scene from "Subspecies II: Bloodstone" (1993). (1, 2, 3, 4)
    • Denice Duff zipped .wmvs from "Subspecies II: Bloodstone". (1, 2)

    • Denice Duff in black undies, showing cleavage and giving up some breast views in scenes from "Phoenix" (1995). (1, 2)
    • Denice Duff zipped .wmvs from "Phoenix". (1, 2)

    • Denice Duff topless again, this time in scenes from "Warlords 3000" aka "Dark Vengeance" (1992). (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9)
    • Denice Duff zipped .wmvs from "Warlords 3000". (1, 2, 3)

    Variety
    Christina Venuti Dragonscan 'caps of the busty brunette going topless in a scene from the alleged comedy "Susan's Plan" (1998). Scoop took a look at this one a while back, and his comments were right on target. Click here for his review.

    Fanke Janssen
    (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6)

    The "X-Men" star making a guest appearance on the excellent FX network show "Nip/Tuck". No nudity, but she does look good and even strips down to her bra in links 4 and 5.

    Natasha Richardson (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14)

    Señor Skin 'caps of Mrs. Liam Neeson topless in several scenes from the 1990 movie, "The Handmaid's Tale".