Jenna Lewis honeymoon tape

• Here are all the details.

Here are some collages

• Here is a highlight reel (zipped .wmv)

Belphegor - Phantom of the Louvre

Believe it or not, this film is available on Region 1 DVD because of Amazon Canada. I haven't ordered it for three reasons.

a. It ships in three to five WEEKS!

b. It costs $35 including shipping and handling. OK, I realize that those are 35 pink and lavender beaver dollars, but that's still gotta be too many bills even in real money.

c. It is Belphegor - Phantom of the Louvre

Having noted all that, I should also point out that Sophie Marceau shows her shapely bum, which almost cancels out the negatives.

Almost.

Here's the film clip of Sophie showing her goodies to Belphegor himself (zipped .wmv)

La Petite Lili (2003)

In the late nineteenth century, the Russian doctor/playwright Anton Chekhov wrote his first major play: The Seagull, a middlebrow tragicomedy about a family gathered at a seaside estate to see a new play written by the son of the house. He is one of those impassioned would-be artists who hopes to shatter what he sees as the clumsy, artificial existing conventions of the traditional theater. His mother is a famed but fading diva of the very commercial theater tradition which her son despises. Mother's lover is a successful novelist,

The actual performance of the play is a disaster which never even gets to the end of the seemingly interminable opening monologue, a pretentious bit of dreck about how the souls of all living creatures have merged into one soul. It includes lines like, "That great world soul is I. In me are the souls of Alexander, Caesar, Shakespeare and Napoleon, and of the lowest worm." The mother is predictably bored and talks to her son during the performance. The successful writer defends the young playwright while actually scheming to steal his lover, the beautiful provincial girl who stars in the play. When it becomes clear that play is abject failure, the young actress does turn her attention to the successful novelist, who seems to be able to aid her career. Tragedy ensues.

In La Petite Lili, the French director Claude Miller has updated the play to modern day France. Chekhov's young playwright has become an avant-garde filmmaker in his 21st century avatar. The mother and her lover are a popular actress and her favorite successful commercial director. The young girlfriend is a provincial girl who dreams of escaping to film stardom in Paris. The screening of the film goes just as badly in this movie as the first performance of the play went in Chekhov's version of the story. In fact, the film-within-a-film even uses some of Chekhov's overblown monologue from the equivalent play-within-play. Mother and son quarrel. She calls his gloomy film a ''a provincial Bergman ripoff," which was true enough, but probably not the kind of thing a nurturing mother should tell her son. When the son leaves the room, mom calls him a ''pretentious little fool, boring us silly.'' Sweet gal. Following the screening, the young actress realizes that the avant garde life is not for her, and promptly takes up with mother's lover.

SPOILERS AHEAD

The parallel between La Petite Lili and The Seagull does not continue indefinitely, however. The film finds a way to twist Chekhov's melodramatic ending to a sort of ironic pseudo-melodrama. In the play, the young man eventually kills himself. His girlfriend runs off with the established writer and, even after the affair and her career burn quickly out, she will not return to the young man, despite his willingness to reconcile. The Chekhov story ends with a character saying, "Get Irina (the mother) away from here. Konstantin (the son) has shot himself." In the film, the young man does not stay true to his ideals, and does not shoot himself. Instead he sells out and becomes a mainstream commercial filmmaker using blue screen effects, colored filters, and syrupy music. He writes a movie in which he re-tells the story of the very weekend when he screened his first film for the family and lost his lover, and we therefore get to watch the same story performed a second time with his artistic spin, and with the mother and the girlfriend playing unflattering versions of themselves! The final twist of the film is that the fictional retelling of the events goes right back to Chekhov's version. In the young auteur's big budget film-within-a-film, the character representing him does hold on to his ideals, and does kill himself, whereupon Chekhov's famous closing line is used virtually verbatim!

All of that sounds fairly interesting until you think about it and realize that it isn't really very cinematic. La Petite Lili is more interested in reflecting on Chekhov than in trying to show how his genius works in our time, and it is better at commenting on films than in actually being a film. In other words, I won't quarrel with the high IMDb score because I really found the movie fairly interesting as a talky bit of literary and film criticism, but you have to realize that I am interested in that kind of thing. I think it is probably not very entertaining as a stand-alone film for those who aren't really interested in the intellectual process of adapting Chekhov, so if you don't care about the mechanics of that process and aren't even familiar with The Seagull, you may find this a talky, boring slog lightened only by Ludivine Sagnier's unique beauty.

By the way, I don't recommend the Region 1 DVD even if you share my interest in the project. It seems like a leftover from the early days of DVD. There is a widescreen version, but it is letterboxed rather than anamorphically enhanced, and is filled with interlacing and motion blur. Furthermore, there are no audio or subtitle options. You must watch it in French with very large English subtitles that cover up too much of the image and cannot be removed. This would be irritating in any case, but is especially annoying in a letterboxed film, because the subtitles could have been placed down in the black space!

Ludivine Sagnier

Today we have a little variety....

We kick it off with Madeline Stowe in "China Moon" Not a bad movie. Certainly better than most of the crap that I 'cap :-) Nice legs from Madeline and oh yes she gets topless, and then totally naked.

Madeline Stowe

Next up from "Leno" last week, Carmen Electra flashing the boobies around.

Carmen Electra

Debra Messing with some leg on a 'Leno" from probably a couple of months ago.

Debra Messing

We wrap it up with one quick"Babe in Bondage", the legendary Uschi Digard in "Ilsa She Wolf of the S.S.".Warning kind of bloody.

Uschi Digard

"Dallas 362"
On the simplest level, Dallas 362 is a "buddy film", but the 2003 drama is a lot more, and it's very good. Rusty and Dallas are best friends, so close they call themselves brothers. The twenty-somethings are constantly getting into fights, which forces Rusty's mother to have to bail them out of jail. Rusty's father died years ago in a rodeo accident, so desperate Mom turns to her therapist boyfriend for help. As the two men become friends, Rusty begins to question his pointless life but yearns to return to the rodeo. He had quit after his father's death at his mother's insistence. This is a fun movie to watch, with lots of comedy and action, and very good story and performances. The characters are sympathetic and likable, so that the watcher really cares about what happens to them. A very good flick.

Kelly Lynch

"Don Juan DeMarco"
Lots of sexy women with a hint of nudity in Don Juan DeMarco (1995). There is some full frontal nakedness in a harem, but the view is from too far away. The sexy women are Talisa Soto, Maria Geraghty, Geraldin Pailhas, Rachel Ticotin, Patricia Mauceri and Jo Champa. Rachel's naked bum is probably a body double as you can tell she is wearing knickers when you can see her face.

Talisa Soto

Maria Geraghty

Geraldin Pailhas

Rachel Ticotin

Patricia Mauceri

Jo Champa

Harem girls

"Head Over Heels"
Head Over Heels is the reason why, generally, supermodels should stick to catwalks. The models are topless but there's no visible nudity. The ladies in question are Sarah O'Hare, Shalom Harlow, Monica Porter, Ivana Milicevic, Tomika Fraser and an unidentified lady.

Sarah O'Hare

Shalom Harlow

Monica Porter

Ivana Milicevic

Tomika Fraser

Unknown

"Project X"
Some pokies by Greta Baldwin in Project X (1968).

Greta Baldwin

"Dragnet"
No visible nudity but Susan Deemer, Julia Jennings and some unknowns look good in Dragnet (1987).

Susan Deemer

Julia Jennings

Unknowns

"The Rose"
Plenty of pokies by Bette Midler in The Rose (1979), and maybe a breast has popped out in the fourth collage. Some sexy cleavage by Sandra McCabe.

Bette Midler

Sandra McCabe

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.

Currently on disability. If you'd like to get in touch with him, his email address is tuna@scoopy.com

If you have your own site or blog, sign up today and earn some extra cash in 2005 by promoting the Fun House!