Tom Sizemore sex tape, part 6:

We will carry it in eight parts, as it was posted in Usenet. Part Six is just more of Sizemore and the three hookers in various combinations

Various Positions (2002):

Various Positions relates the story of a love affair between Josh, a college student from a conservative Jewish family and, Cheryth, a completely secular young half-Jewish woman who moves into the neighboring dorm room. Josh's parents are orthodox, and extremely punctilious in their observations of Jewish law. His father, for example, is considering disinterring every body in a Jewish cemetery because a non-Jew was unknowingly buried there. As conservative as they are, his parents seem like atheists compared to his younger brother, who appears to be only about fourteen years old and yet has apparently memorized the entire body of Jewish law and teachings from the time of Moses to the present day, including all various scholarly interpretations and debates.

Josh is not very religious, but he respects his parents, so when he's around them he hides his 7-Eleven Ham Burritos and plays the unleavened bread game. Needless to say, Cheryth is just not Jewish enough for Josh's family. No surprise there. Moses wouldn't have been Jewish enough for this group. Josh's dad offers him three options: get Cheryth to convert to orthodoxy, dump her, or be banished forever from their family. In some cases, Josh's answer might have been a middle finger, but this is a complicated situation. First of all, he truly respects his dad, who survived the holocaust to become a famous attorney, and his mom, who was instrumental in the founding of Israel. In addition, he really doesn't know Cheryth that well. He likes her. He loves her as much as a man may love a woman he just met, but he's also seen worrisome elements of her personality and Josh wonders if their tenuous love connection is deep enough to make him turn his back on his family.

How does the dilemma get resolved? Well, I reckon you'll have to watch the movie to find that out, but I can reveal that the film does not offer any simplistic Hollywood solutions. Dude, it's not a Reese Witherspoon movie. It's complicated, like life itself.

In fact, this film is about as far from a Hollywood movie as any North American film can be. That presents measures of good and bad. The strongest element of the film is that the script is about lovers who have to make decisions which will affect the rest of their lives, long after the events portrayed in an 81 minute movie, rather than the Hollywood approach of  "lovers embrace, music swells, closing credits scroll because they are back together and nothing else matters, dammit!" The obverse side of the anti-Hollywood coin is that Various Positions has about zero commercial appeal, and lots of moments which ring of "Hey, kids, my dad has a barn, let's put on a show!"  It was written and directed by a Canadian film school student. The film's star also wrote some of the musical score. It was filmed entirely on digital video in mundane locations. The budget appears to have been in the range of eleven dollars - and that's not eleven greenbacks, but eleven dollars worth of pink and purple Beaver Bucks. In spite of that nagging amateurishness, however, the film is at least an earnest attempt to portray real people trying to work their way through difficult situations, and it portrays life as complex rather than simple. It does not offer a facile "love conquers all" message, not does it scorn parents who adhere to traditional values despite the pressures of the modern world. There is much to be said for that, even when the situations are not easy for us to identify with.

Can I say it is a bad movie? Absolutely not. It has merit, but its quiet successes will be celebrated by only a tiny audience. I would never have watched it if Carly Pope had not done a sex scene, and I found it both tedious and painfully amateurish at times, but I also liked and admired it at other times.

These are my Carly Pope collages from the film
Somebody else did this one
From the file names, I assume that the same guy who did that picture also did this film clip (zipped .avi)

The Pyx (1973)

So what the hell is a pyx, anyway?

Well, it's a real thing, with an obscure religious purpose. Let me explain with an analogy.  Suppose you want to take your wife to Applebee's for her birthday because she really likes the hot taco salad, but she's too sick to travel. You can go by yourself and pick her up a take-out order, which Applebee's will pack in a styrofoam container to keep it warm on the trip home.

Now suppose you are a Catholic, and your wife is too sick to go to Mass, but she wants to participate in the sacrament of Holy Eucharist (communion). Well, like Applebee's, the Catholic Church has take-out orders which can be delivered to shut-ins. They do not, however, stick a consecrated host in a styrofoam container. I'm pretty sure they would consider that disrespectful, since they believe that the consecrated host is the body of Christ himself. Instead, they deliver the blessed hosts in something called a pyx. There are many different kinds, but the most common type looks just like a pocket watch, except that when opened it contains no mechanical parts, but merely a small piece of unleavened bread. Many of them are intricate and ornate, and they are usually formed from various combinations of gems and precious metals.

So how do you write a script about such a thing?

Something like this:

A police detective in Montreal investigates the mysterious death of a hooker. Her nearly naked body is found on the sidewalk in front of a high-rise building. She either jumped or was pushed from the roof. The detective believes that the explanation of her death will hinge on determining why an heroin-addicted prostitute, who was not even a practicing Catholic, was clutching something so esoteric as a pyx.

Once you learn what a pyx is, you can probably solve this mystery quickly. Let's see, I think we can assume that a non-religious junkie hooker was not bringing the sacrament of Holy Eucharist to the sick. So what else might one need a consecrated host for? How about a black mass?

The film is told in two separate stories, cutting between them almost at random until they converge inevitably. On the one hand, we watch the detective try to solve the crime. On the other hand, we flash back to watch the hooker's final days. As we see how she died, the story cuts back to the detective, who has finally figured out what we just saw, and is bursting in on the killer, handgun drawn. The hooker's half of the movie is resolved with no supernatural elements. She is recruited for the black mass, she rebels when asked to defile the consecrated host, runs from the room, tragedy ensues, and she is back on the sidewalk where we first saw her. There is no indication that the Satan-worshippers are anything but deluded maniacs. On the other hand, the final face-off between the detective and the senior satanist seems to veer the film ninety degrees away from the straightforward police procedural which it has been, and to imply that the maniacs may really be in contact with pure eeee-villlll.

Or not.

To cut to the chase, this film is not worth watching in its current condition. To begin with, some scenes are completely irrelevant to either of the parallel stories (an argument between the detective and his girlfriend, and various "driving to the destination" scenes, for example). That might not be so bad except that those irrelevant scenes are also banal and utterly boring, so you would have to struggle to keep your concentration on this film even under the best of conditions.

Unfortunately, we do not have the best of conditions. If the film itself is merely bad news, the DVD is a catastrophe. Although the DVD includes a widescreen version, the picture quality is inferior to the worst video tape you have ever seen. It looks like a movie taped from broadcast TV, then dubbed and re-dubbed until your copy is several generations removed from the original. Every scene is filled with noise. Some dark scenes are nearly solid blackness, while some bright scenes are nearly pure white. Not only that, but the aspect ratio is not correctly represented, so you will see a film consisting entirely of very thin people. The sound is not much better than the picture, with voices sounding hollow and sometimes appearing to be dubbed poorly.

Having recited that litany of problems, let me also state that there are some interesting elements to the film:

• Christopher Plummer plays the police detective, and brings a modicum of professionalism to the film. On the other hand, Plummer is not one of those energetic Shakespearian actors like Olivier or Richard Harris. His brand of professionalism is stiff and aloof, and that makes some tedious scenes even more tedious.
• Karen Black plays the junkie hooker, and she walks through her last few minutes on screen wearing nothing but see-through lingerie. (The character also has two rear nude scenes, but these seem to have been performed by a body double.)
• Miss Black also composed and sang several songs for the soundtrack. Her numbers sound sort of like a cross between Buffy Saint-Marie and Enya, thus lending some scenes a spooky, warbling folk vibe.
• Speaking of music, the Gregorian chant accompanying the black mass is some of the strangest stuff I've ever heard. In some cases the sound editor slowed down the human voices to a bass growl in order to make them sound spooky. The effect was pretty creepy, so that decision made some sense. What didn't make sense is that he also sped some of the voices up, and that section sounds like a 33 1/3 record played at 78. This is supposed to be a tense scene, but I challenge you not to laugh out loud when you hear the speeded-up music.

Or maybe that sound editor didn't really speed up some stock Gregorian chant. Maybe he just used the famous Chipmunks Unholy Sabbath album. Yeah, I guess that would explain why Satan keeps saying, "Alvin! Alvin!!!!"

Karen Black

Karen Black's body double

unknown

Hi

This is Soledad Miranda from Jess Franco's film "Eugenie"

(She is credited as "Susan Korday")

Today we've got 4 clips of a lesser known actress. She's from Britain and responds to the name of Juliet Stevenson.

The reason why she isn't better known can probably be best summarized in this personal quote frrom her biography page in the IMDb: "I'm hardly Hollywood material - they're interested in youth and perfection and I lay no claims to either. It's not a place that's particularly interested in talent.".

At any rate, she got all hot and steamy, and full frontal too, in 1993's "Secret Rapture", as you can see in these clips.  (1, 2, 3, 4)

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.

HURRICANE KATRINA CHARITY NEWS UPDATE
Or, Hey, Some Blow... - Some stores are starting to refuse debit cards provided to hurricane victims by the Red Cross if they don't like what the users are buying.  One Illinois retailer said people were buying jewelry and a TV/DVD player, which was "totally and morally wrong."  An Atlanta store changed its policy after a card user spent $360 on a Playstation and games.  There were also reports of charity cash vouchers being used to pay tabs at Houston strip clubs.  But a club spokesman said after all they've been through, they should be allowed to relax and buy a beer.

*  ...And 45 lap dances.
*  Actually, in a Houston strip club, a Red Cross debit card isn't enough to buy a beer.
*  In their defense, it WAS a waterproof DVD player.


DO NEIGHBORS COMPLAIN ABOUT YOUR BLOWING NOISES?
Well, Blow Me Down! - The new Weekend Wall Street Journal reports that many towns have banned or restricted leaf blowers because of environmentalists' complaints about the fumes and deafening noise.  But frustrated suburban lawn warriors are now fighting back with new high-tech blowers that are powerful but much smaller and quieter.  The paper checked out several, including the Stihl BR-500 ($459.95), which weighs 8.8 pounds and emits just 65 decibels at 50 feet, about the noise level of a conversation.  But it blows air at 181 mph.  Hurricane Katrina peaked at 175 mph.

*  To blow any harder, it would have to star Ben Affleck. 
*  It's expensive, it weighs less than nine pounds, and it emits a blast that can clear an entire yard.  We already have something like that: it's
called "a baby."

 
NEW BOOK TREND: "MATRON LIT"
AKA "Science Fiction" - The London Daily Telegraph reports that the hottest new trend in romance novels is no longer "chick lit" but "matron lit": books about widows or divorcees in their 40's or 50's who find new love.  Older writers who were dumped by publishers are being snapped up again, and say they're thrilled to be able to write about mature women with interesting lives instead of young singletons they don't understand.  One author said her next book even includes a romance between two 80-year-olds.  The man is afraid of kissing because his dentures might come out, and when he gets down on his knees to propose, he can't get up.

*  He probably shouldn't mention that he can't get up until after the wedding.
*  In the Hollywood movie version, they'll be played by Colin Farrell and Angelina Jolie.
*  It's like "Bridget Jones," except the men in these books LIKE women in granny panties.


SCOOBY-DOO SUFFERS CARTOON VIOLENCE
Ruh-Roh! - Florida corrections officer Eddie Bronson took his daughter's photo with Scooby-Doo and Shaggy at Universal Studios theme park in Orlando, and he claims he was "petting" Scooby.  But witnesses say he grabbed the costumed actor's head, shook it, and pulled him down by the snout.  Scooby pushed Bronson away and started to walk off, but Bronson allegedly punched him from behind, damaging both the costume and the actor's head.  He was arrested.  His employer, the department of juvenile justice, will review the case before deciding whether to discipline him.

*  It makes no sense!  If he'd punched Scrappy, that would've made sense!



007 GETTING A MAKEOVER
And He'll Fight Hilary Swank - Paul Haggis, a writer on the upcoming James Bond movie "Casino Royale," told the Hollywood Reporter that 007 is being reinvented as a younger, more realistic character.  Haggis, who wrote "Million Dollar Baby," said, "It's going to be good...He's 28.  No Q, no gadgets."

*  He's a 28-year-old male and he owns no gadgets?  What's realistic about that?!
*  Instead of Q, he'll hang out with a rapper named P.
*  He'll still have lots of sex, only with women who are ugly and drunk.



SHEEN WAS A "GIGANTIC ASS" 
And He's Back Because Of Her Great Ass - Charlie Sheen said he may reconcile with wife Denise Richards, who dumped him because "I was a gigantic ass."  Sheen said one of their biggest problems was that he was so obsessed with watching baseball, he never helped with their first son.  He said he finally realized that "sports highlights" shows are for parents, so they can do more important things during the ninth inning, like bathing the baby.

*  "Bathing the baby" is his euphemism for "having sex."
*  He should become a Royals fan...They always go do something else during the ninth inning.
*  They split because he watched baseball?  I assumed it was because he was a player.
 

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