Sunday


Notes
NOTE TO ALL: Scoopy Jr writes the bulk of the commentary these days, while Uncle Scoopy continues to add his daily column, Contact junior by writing junior@scoopy.com. Contact Scoopy by writing unclescoopy@msn.com. Contact Tuna by writing tuna@scoopy.com Send submissions to scoopy@scoopy.net

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Tuna
"Two Shades of Blue" (2000)

Two Shades of Blue has been covered by Scoopy (see the archives). It stars Marlee Matlin (whose double gets naked) and Rachel Hunter who gives us a peek at her breasts. There might be more exposure in the film, but the DVD was cropped top and bottom to make us think it is widescreen. There are so many continuity problems in this one, that, after watching it, I am only guessing at the plot. A writer, Hunter, has just finished a Steamy novel. Her rich boyfriend/publisher has just hired a hit man using a Relay Operator because those calls enjoy far more protection from the police than normal ones. Matlin, the deaf DA, has somehow gotten the tapes anyway, and frozen his assets pending his arrest for murder. So, so far, we have a deaf lawyer working as a DA who obtains protected conversations and freezes a suspects assets without due process, then doesn't have him arrested. Meanwhile the publisher hires the same hit man to off Matlin. At this point, we get a great red herring, as someone else who accessed the Relay Operator calls tries to blackmail the publisher (played quite unconvincingly by Gary Bussey).

Someone breaks into Bussey's apartment, kills someone, and starts a fire. Hunter is framed for the murder, and just about every other crime in the state. She goes under cover as a Relay Operator, and magically gets every relay call Matlin places on her shift. Hmmm ... my head hurts. If any of you care about the plot from here, rent it I guess. One continuity problem that jumped out at me was in the relay calls. At the end of every statement, the hearing person in the conversation says "Go ahead," and the operator ends reading the deaf person's side saying the same thing. In every relay call I have ever had, the operator insisted on the "Go ahead" every time, and even asked "Is that a 'Go ahead?'" if I forgot. In the lengthy relay sessions here, they drop the go ahead pretty quickly. After all of this, you may ask why I did this film. I did it because it has the single best effort from a stunt woman ever put on film. Matlin, naked to at least below the breasts, and/or her body double, naked to nearly the navel, is pushed off an upper floor balcony. The stunt woman manages to get dressed on the way down.

Even after I posted my vote of 1 at IMDB, they are still waiting for 5 votes.

  • Thumbnails

  • Marlee Matlin (1, 2, 3, 4, 5)
  • Rachel Hunter (1, 2)

    "American Yakuza" (1994)

    American Yakuza is a largely ignored direct to video that was released on DVD recently. Three mobs, the Mafia, the Yakuza and the FBI are at war. Viggo Mortensen plays an FBI agent who infiltrates the Yakuza, and does it so well that he is accepted into the family. He even beds the head of the family's God-daughter, the lovely Cristina Lawson. When the FBI elects to let the Mafia wipe out the Yakuza, Viggo feels more loyalty to the Yakuza. The "Unknown" is just decoration for one of the many killing scenes.

    Lots of John Woo style gunplay here, as well as some sword work, but what is interesting is the conflict Viggo feels between loyalty for the FBI, and the loyalty and respect he has come to have for the Yakuza. The art direction is very nice, the pace is good, and there are worthwhile plot elements. This is another of those films that is damned for not being a perfect 10, but is very watchable.

  • Thumbnails

  • Cristina Lawson (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7)
  • Unknown (1, 2, 3, 4, 5)
  • Johnny Web
    Chat and news from Johnny Web

    Some further information on Claire Wilbur, who was mentioned in Snowblind's column yesterday in conjunction with the movie "Score". (Details from an anonymous but 100% reliable source).

    Snowblind mentioned that "Score" was her only credit.

    Ms Claire "Cat" Wilbur won an academy award in 1976 for producing a documentary short called "The End of the Game", about the vanishing Lion population in Africa.

    The next day, the New York Post ran a story about Wilbur's prior appearance in the softcore Radley Metzger film, and this caused her great embarrassment, and virtually dashed her hopes for a legitimate career. She retired into private enterprise outside the film industry.

    Before the film, she also starred in an off-broadway production of "Score", and her co-star was an unknown actor named Sylvester Stallone.

    "Foxfire" (1996)

    A female bonding picture, which is basically an exploitation movie with a glossy package.

    It is slickly directed and well performed, but ultimately it's just another of those one dimensional us-against-the-world flicks made to target a specific target audience.

    In this case, the target is teenaged girls. Everyone in the movie who is not a teenaged girl is an evil and manipulative character. The adults are all pigheaded fools who always stand up for each other and can never recognize the truth no matter how obvious it is. The boys are bullying monsters without conscience, and if you piss them off, they'll rape you.

    Only in the company of teenaged girls can anyone find solace and human warmth and (most important for us) firm ripe breasts.

    And all that comfort may easily be found by hiding out together in an abandoned house, since school will suspend the girls even though they are in the right and have tons of witnesses. And while they wile away the hours in the abandoned, fully-furnished house, no parents will really care where they are or really notice that they are gone.

    Luckily for us, the filmmakers didn't want to shut out the lucrative market of young males, so the female bonding in this movie consists of what female bonding always should consist of in the movies. The women light some candles, take off their tops, and look gorgeous in the candlelight. And, better still, only the ones with really great looking breasts take off their tops, thus making for even closer bonding.

    Aristotle had his unities and I have mine. This movie did reasonably well at obeying the Scoopian Unities of Time and Space and Nudity, Unity Seven of which states: (translated from the original ancient Greek)

    "Bonding on camera between females shall occur topless whenever such females have really attractive knockers"

    Unfortunately, the film violated Unity Eight, which states:

    "Such bonding also to occur bottomless unless the females in question have really fat, flabby butts or ugly boils or something."

    THE PLOT:

    Weak, nerdy girl is molested by Bio teacher.

    Who should ride into town but The Girl With No Name (Jolie). Unknown origin, clad in leather, with boots shot in close-up, ala a Sergio Leone western. That Leone theme continues throughout the movie with plenty of squinty-eyed close-ups.

    Anyway, Jolie teases the abusive bio teacher in his own classroom, saves a frog from dissection, then exits through the window of his classroom, like Robin Hood taunting Nottingham. Later, at detention, she kicks his frog-dissecting ass when she catches him putting his hands on the shy girl.

    Of course, the girls are punished with four weeks suspension by the moronic and arrogant principal, even though they just rescued one girl from being molested, and four other girls witnessed the act. And, of course, the girls accept their punishment without taking the case to their parents or the police because those adults are all part of that adult conspiracy thing.

    Later, Jolie kicks the asses of some football bullies and destroys their car. But of course, she is sentenced to juvie hall by an arrogant and moronic judge, even though she simply rescued one of the other girls from a gang-bang.

    Then she kidnaps a neglectful abusive father at gunpoint.

    Finally, after she has given all nerdy girls everywhere a new sense of empowerment, she sticks out her thumb and rides out of town on an 18 wheeler. Oh, I know that ripping off and modernizing all this imagery from "A Fistful of Dollars" was kind of cheesy, but I thought it worked in an iconic kind of way. I could have bought into it as a neo-Western if it just had a capable script.

    When Jolie leaves, the shy girl becomes a confident sexual dynamo, the girl afraid of heights goes tightrope walking on some scary suspension bridge girders, the heroin addict is cured, and everyone's water is turned into wine. The end.

    Good script, eh? This is the only film script that Elizabeth White has ever written and, God willing, it will be the last, because the inventive director and the capable cast, working with the raw material of a powerful Joyce Carol Oates novel, could have delivered some punch here - if they only had a real script to work with. You almost wish they could get another chance, because they went to summer film camp and made a bad ash tray from great clay.

    For a woman who does nude scenes so frequently, Angelina Jolie doesn't have much of a body, does she? Her bosom is gorgeous, and that's what the nude scenes always focus on, but she's not exactly a gym rat. Of course, she's a show stopping beauty and a charismatic performer, so nobody really notices a little extra around the middle, do they?

  • Jolie (1, 2, 3, 4)
  • Hedy Burress (1, 2, 3)
  • Jenny Shimizu

    Box Office: limited release (218 screens) in late August, 1996. Disappeared quickly with less than a million dollars in gross. Actually, this movie might do better if re-released now that Jolie is a name.

    IMDB summary: 6.3 out of 10.

    DVD info from Amazon. The quality of the DVD transfer is good, but there are no special features worth mentioning.

    Sound Track info from Amazon. Not recommended.

    Book info from Amazon. The film is based on a book by Joyce Carol Oates. "Foxfire: Confessions of a Girl Gang", which takes place in the 1950's (Oates was born in 1938, so she's writing about the context of her own teenaged years) . Oates' book is respected for its realistic characters and situations, and takes the girls through the rebellion of youth, from petty theft, to prostitution, and ultimately to criminal violence. I haven't read the book, but after reading about it I ended up ordering a copy in paperback, despite my cool reaction toward the movie.

  • TomCat
    Eurofilms

    Anica Dobra in "Wildfeuer" this actually won "best cinematography" at the Bavarian Oscars in 1992, just edging out "The Devil in Lederhosen", "The Kids in the Beer Hall", and Mozart's forgotten Bavarian opera, "The Magic Accordion". Damn, sounds good, and that was the one year I skipped the Bavarian Oscars.

    All kidding aside, it won some German film awards as well, for both the cinematography and the sound track, but I've never heard of it.

  • Barbara Blanc in "The Witness Run". A 1997 Italian thriller. Seems to be a grade-b, no IMDb listing.
  • The Britney Report
    Thumbnails
    (1, 2, 3)

    Ms. Spears
    (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8,
    9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14)

    Ahhh...the nuttiness of the day is definitely Britney up to her usual "I'm so naughty" on-stage anticks. This time it was at the MTV Video Music Awards.

    Sadly, the VMAs could almost be considered legitimate awards. After all, much like porn has driven new developement on the internet, videos have driven new development in movies. Many of the most creative direction has come fresh, new visual artists who get the chance to experiment with music videos. (Spike Jonze is an excellent example) Unfortunately, just like everything else on MTV, the only focus is "what is popular that will make money right now." It doesn't have to be good, it just needs to be popular. Personally I think MTV is the spawn of Satan, and is about 65% responsible for all of today's youth related problems (the other 35% being bad parenting).

    Ok, maybe that's a bit much...but it is definitely the epitome of all that is fake, shallow, and pop. Or maybe I've been in LA too long and it's starting to get to me!

    Moving on to the hooplah...Britney apparently came on stage fully clothed, but that didn't last long. From what I've been told, she did so much shaking of her money maker, that it was very difficult to make 'caps. However...due to the wonderful skills of all of the folks who contributed these image, there are some great images of the teen "diva" thrusting, gyrating, and barely dressed.

    In my Scoopy Jr. opinion, nudity is not far away!

    Highlights:

  • First up, some Tuna-esque thumnails. Many of the images are very similar, so I thought I'd offer up a preview sheet before folks waste time downloading.
  • Link #4 is Britney and Christina together at the podium. Something about this picture just strikes fear in my soul. Isn't there some Trekkian law about not allowing two supreme forces of evil occuping the same point in Space-Time?
  • Link #6...I had no idea she was so buff. Oh, and there's also a lot of cleavage here.
  • Link #11...is currently being debated as a nip slip. I don't think so, but I'll let everyone form their own opinion
  • Link #14...awesome picture! This is my pick of the litter.
  • ICMS
    Brigitta Callens
    (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8)
    Excellent follow up from yesterday...Comments by ICMS:
    Just a few comments on Brainscan's Brigitta Callens contribution. The topless picture that Brainscan cleaned up beautifully should be real!

    Here is the story: Brigitta is Miss Belgium 1999 and she posed for a topless picture for the Flemish magazine Ché ( indeed named after Ché Guevara ! ), so the language is not Spanish but Dutch. I mentioned her in my July 21, 2000 contribution when sexy pictures of her appeared in another mag and on TV when she was due in court because of excessive speeding. I also wrote that she came off lightly and that the D.A. appealed against the verdict and I wondered if she would take it all off then. And guess what happens : this Ché magazine appears by end August, just a few days before the appeal is due.
    But what is so special ? Well, she is topless on only 200 covers of the magazine, (Link #1) on all the other covers ( 90000 as they claim themselves ) she has her hands covering her breasts. Quite a scam from this magazine I think, I payed as much for the rag as the few lucky ones. On newsstands you couldn't see she was topless because there was a silvergray layer, that you had to scratch off, covering her assets. I left some remnants of that layer on the scan I made from my copy. (Link #2)
    Lucky for the rest of us there is the internet and I found a scan of the topless cover in one of the newsgroups. It was a bad scan though but I'm grateful someone posted it. I even doubt if there were many average people who got the topless version. On TV we even had our federal Minister for Public Office, socialist Luc Vandenbossche, waving his topless copy around and I bet that appeal's judge also got this version. The verdict in court : the $ 500 fine was upheld plus she got her driver's license suspended for 8 days ( instead of the usual 15 days, I already told she should have taken it all off ).
    At one point people didn't believe there was a topless version and that's when we had the minister waving his copy and the bad scan appearing on the net. Maybe they posted it themselves!

    The rest of today's scans are the other pictures from Brigitta's spread in Ché. She obviously has a new look now.

    RoSSol
    Jonna Järnefelt

    Sari Puumalainen

    Comments by RoSSol:
    From the video previews: We have here Jonna Järnefelt and Sari Puumalainen baring their breasts in the film Hylätyt talot, autiot pihat (a neat short title that is clear for everyone with or without the knowledge of Finnish... Okay, it means Abandoned Houses, Deserted Yards.)

    It's a miserable WW2 war film by Lauri Törhonen but to his credit it must be said that I love his director's trademark: nude women. Whether or not they are needed for the plot, they will be there, always. Just counting quickly I summed up 11 topless or nude women in those films of his I've seen. And next to none of them are bad looking!

    In this one too there is more nudity than what is seen here. I'll cap the scenes properly sometime in the future, when this gets out on video.

    RDO
    Soledad Miranda
    (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9)
    Comments by RDO: Here's the first installment from Jess Franco's follow-up to Vampyros Lesbos. This is "She Killed In Ecstasy) featuring the same two ladies from "Lesbos": Soledad Miranda (billed as Susann Korda) and Ewa Stroemberg. Haven't gotten to Ewa yet.
    Cleopatra on "Xena"?
    (1, 2)
    Comments and pics by Crow: These didn't come out to well, but this last season seems to have seen the Xena show slipping in some actually nudity, aside from the slips. Surprised more ppl dont cap this show, but then again, if I hadn't caught this replay, I wouldn't have either.

    Jr's tips: #1 is Jospehine Davison, #2 is Lucy Lawless. Some folks may remember that I was once a Xena fan. But that was long ago. I think the last time I watched the show was over a year and a half ago. Is it even still on? I really only watched it for the occasional Callisto episodes. and of course because Bruce Campbell is the king of the B genre!

    Winona Ryder
    (1, 2)
    By Akira....Tim Burton said he cast Winona in this movie because he wanted to see her in a cheerleader outfit. Good casting call!
    Frederique
    (1, 2, 3)
    Three fantastic topless pics of the supermodel.
    Zoe Apostolopoulou
    (1, 2, 3)
    Great scans of the beautiful Greek model.
    Maggie O'Neil An excellent find for our UK readers. These images highlight Ms. O'Neil's nude scene from 1995's "Killing Me Softly". In these frames by Demon, we see some excellent topless views and a nice posterior shot as well.
    Claire Hackett More for the UK folks...Claire going topless in these frames from "Gallowglass", by Watty.
    Imogen Stubbs Beautiful topless images by Watty from "Blind Ambition".
    Kim Cattrall Now who would have guessed it...Kim showing off the goods from "Sex and the City". All sarcasm aside, I still give her full points for lookin' pretty darn good nekkid for a woman in her 40's!


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