I'll get back to Kidman tomorrow. In the meantime, here's
something I left out of the Theron nudography. I honestly don't
know if the ultra-slim woman in this Dior ad (zipped
.wmv) is really Theron, but many say that it is.
Masters of Horror: Jenifer (2005)
A police officer comes upon a man about to decapitate a
young woman. He tells the man to stand
down, but he refuses, and the policeman has to shoot him. Just
before dying, the fatally wounded man offers a cryptic warning
to the officer, whispering "Jenifer." When the detective tries
to comfort the hot-bodied young woman, he finally sees her face, and it
is the deformed face of a hideous beast, or an alien.
Despite his initial revulsion, the policeman can't get the
woman out of his mind. He even fantasizes about her during sex
with his wife that night, causing him to sodomize her
brutally. The next day, filled with pity for Jenifer and
strangely attracted to her, the policeman checks her out
of her insane asylum and brings her home. Jenifer turns out to
be a true beast and eats the family cat. When the police
officer will not return Jenifer to her asylum, his wife and
their son move out. Despite Jenifer's grotesque face, the cop
has sex with her repeatedly. That is repulsive on its own, to
him as well as the viewer, but the matter becomes truly
horrifying when he finds that Jenifer has killed and eaten the
adorable little girl next door. Instead of turning his monster
over to the authorities, he drags her out into the wilderness
and begins a new life with her in a remote cabin, where her
behavior becomes ever more feral until he finally realizes
that he must do something about it.
The actor Steven Weber ("Wings") wrote the screenplay, from
a story in a Creepy comic. I'm going to spoil the ending
without actually telling it to you, by saying that if you've
ever read any old horror comics, you will know precisely how
the story must end after the first five minutes, in which Jenifer's previous caretaker tries to kill her with a meat
cleaver, then tries to warn the police officer (played by
Weber himself).
When Weber got the story accepted for the Masters of Horror
series, he had no idea that it would eventually be directed by
the legendary Dario Argento and scored by Goblin, the group
which scored many of Argento's greatest films. Argento locked in on the
erotic aspect of the story, and amplified it to the point
where the film is actually gorotica rather than straight
horror, in that all of the shock comes either from the sex
scenes or the explicit flesh-eating. In fact, Argento
originally shot two explicit oral sex scenes, complete with
penis-in-mouth close-ups. In the first, Jennifer uses her
gigantic, deformed mouth to pleasure the policeman. In the
second, a teen boy thinks Jenifer is going to give him a
blow-job, but it turns out that her concept of eating dick is
much more literal than he had hoped. The special effects guy
explains in the special features that Dario Argento also had
envisioned a genital close-up of Jenifer and asked for a scary
alien vagina for this scene. The bizarre pussy was dutifully
created, but Dario scrapped the idea before the scene could be
filmed.
The DVD is loaded with extras - three hours worth of
featurettes and documentaries to illuminate a 57-minute TV
show! The film itself includes a full-length commentary by
actor/screenwriter Steven Weber,
and then there are two hours' worth of featurettes, the best
of which is an interview with Dario himself, in which he
explains how the film's pre-production was done via email, and
offers his commentary over the two deleted scenes. The
original version of the teenager scene actually shows Jenifer
gnarling chunks out of the lad's penis. There is also a
screen-to-script featurette and the usual interviews with
the main actors, as well as with the the make-up and special effects
people.
This is obviously not for people who are repulsed by the
idea of watching Jenifer devour human and animal entrails (or
penises!), nor
for people who can't accept the idea of Weber having sex with
a creature with a hot body and a deformed face, but the DVD is
a must-own for people interested in horror comics, gorotica,
or Argento. I'm not particularly interested in any of those,
but I found the film to be watchable. The screenplay is not
expertly crafted, but one rarely gets to see gorotica directed
by a big name director. Of course, my tolerance may be
explained by the fact that I've had sex with some women even
uglier than Jenifer, but then who hasn't, after a few
ill-timed pints? More important, the expansive special
features on this DVD are absolutely fascinating.
The
deleted scenes. As I mentioned above, this is a
must-see, even though there is no female nudity.
Carrie Fleming
Brenda James
OTHER CRAP:
You're on notice!
Today's notes:
That mathematical genius guy proved the Poincare Conjecture by imagining pudding in an infinite number of containers in an infinite number of shapes, all capable of becoming spheres. Once again, the proof is in the pudding.
Bear dicks are shrinking? Aren't they ornery enough already?
New Testament PJs. I'm just not going to give up my Old Testament PJs. Dude, some things are just classics.
Walt Disney's staff decided today that Pluto is no longer a dog, because of the new definition requiring cartoon dogs to talk and to be taller than cartoon mice. Goofy is still a dog, but Pluto has been reduced to the status of dwarf dog.
Yellow asterisk: funny (maybe). White asterisk: expanded format.
Blue asterisk: not mine. No asterisk: it probably sucks.
L'Appartment (1996)
Let's start with the plot, as best as I can sort it out. Max (Vincent
Cassel) has a great job and is engaged. He is on his way to Japan for a
business trip, when he thinks he hears Monica Bellucci in the phone booth of a
club, and drops everything to find her. Seems she is his long-lost love. This
becomes complicated by the fact that Romane Bohringer is sort of piggybacking
on Bellucci's life, and is not only sleeping with Max's best friend, but also
with Max. She is also playing a bad actress in a play. So, for most of the film, which
includes a lot of flashbacks, we have Cassell supposedly leaving for Japan,
and supposedly looking for Bellucci, but actually banging Bohringer, Bohringer
supposedly heading for Rome with the play, but actually boffing Cassell and
his best friend, and Bellucci managing to miss all of the men except the nut
case that may have offed his wife to be with her. Nobody in Japan seemed to
miss Cassell, but then I don't suppose I would either.
The above is my best guess as to the plot. Frankly, I was bored and
confused from the beginning, and still don't understand the ending. I also
couldn't understand the motives of any of the characters. Clearly, however, my
reaction is not typical. Most people seem to agree that this constitutes one
of the greatest French films of all time. IMDb readers say 7.8 based on over
2,000 votes. The "under 18" crowd has it nearly at 9. It received the best
foreign language BAFTA, and was nominated for two Cesars. There also seems to
be an agreement that much of it is an homage to Hitchcock, but in a very
French way.
Here is a litmus test for you. One of the many IMDb rave comments for this
film includes:
"This is an astonishing film: a romantic thriller with a convoluted but
perfectly constructed and devastatingly symmetrical plot, brilliantly
buttressed by the use of recurring visual motifs. Everything in it is
beautifully filmed: the women, the apartments; but more amazing is the
devastating juxtapositioning of images, almost every scene has echoes of
another. This is a story told in light, in colour, in many almost-parallels.
Every time I watch it, it fills me with delight."
If the above makes sense to you, you might well be among the majority of
people who love this first and last film from Gilles Mimouni.
This must be a C+, but is decidedly not my sort of film.
Romaine Bohringer shows
breasts in three scenes, and blurry buns in one of them.
It's time for Flauti's special monthly Spanish movie report, Part
2 (the conclusion) today
Animales Heridos
Aitana Sanchez-Gijon
Cristina Plazas
Patricia Arredondo
La habitatacion del niņo
Leonor Watling
La semana que viene sin falta
Barbara de Lema
Penelope Velasco
Melissa P
Fabrizia Sacchi
Maria Valverde
Tiovovo c1950
Beatriz Rico
Caps from three movies:
1) The seriously robo-hootered Bernadette Perez in Jolly Roger. She plays a
clothing-removal engineer. In real life she is a topless fitness model, with
all the standard equipment;
2) Daniela Costa in Diario de Una Becaria. Bernadette wishes she looked half
this good;
3) Jaime Pressly in DOA ... I grabbed these off usenet and could not resist
working with them a bit. Jaime's rumpus
is a work of art.
And a couple of paparazzi edits. Michelle Hunziker sports a first-rate tushie
of her own,
and then there is a much better scan (than one I sent in last week) of
Rachel
Hunter topless and wearing a thong while diving in some body of water.
