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Updates
Park
(2006)
Park is an unreleased film which has made the rounds at a more than few film
festivals (18 at least count!), to mixed reactions. If I had to sum it up in a
sentence, I would say it's the comedy version of Crash. Both are ensemble pieces
about a short period in Los Angeles, both involve interweaving and
interconnected stories. The one-word titles are even complementary. One is about
crashed cars, the tragic side of life; the other about parked cars, the comic
side.
There are five vehicles parked in an obscure hilltop park overlooking L.A. It's
not much of a park, basically just dirt roads, scrub brush, and few dried-out
picnic tables, but it has a great advantage for Angelenos who know about it.
It's just about the only place in the metropolitan area where one can escape
from the modern world. There are no strip malls, no conveniences, no gangs. It's
a place where people go to get away from other people. The five vehicles are:
(1) a small car with a young woman driver who has come there to kill herself;
(2) a pet grooming truck with a shy, nerdy driver and his sexy partner, upon
whom he has a predictable crush; (3) a smarmy lawyer who has come there for a
sexual assignation with the sexy pet groomer, unbeknownst to her shy partner;
(4) the lawyer's wife and her friend, who are spying on the unfaithful lawyer,
intending to teach him a lesson; (5) four young people who have come to eat
lunch, which the men would like to do naked.
The film starts out quirky, but makes a major tone shift near the middle,
switching from a cynical black comedy with offbeat characters to a sentimental
rom-com with typical situation comedy dialogue and predictable romantic
couplings with happy endings. I suppose the soft-hearted denouements were meant
to increase audience appeal, and the strategy seems to have worked since Park
won the audience award at two festivals. That's usually a sign of some
marketability, but the film has never been able to negotiate a theatrical run.
C-.
Its appeal to you will ultimately hinge on your appreciation for TV situation
comedies. It can be a pleasant enough way to kill some time, but has no depth or
originality and is nothing to drive out of the way for.
Melanie Lynskey and Anne Dudek show their breasts in the naked lunch. The other
two nude scenes are man-meat. Izabella Miko does a long sex scene with William
Baldwin, but shows nothing. Baldwin appears in seatless underpants. Dagney Kerr
has sex in a tub with David Fenner, and shows nothing, although he provides full
frontal and rear nudity.
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Anne Dudek |
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* Yellow asterisk: funny (maybe).
* White asterisk:
expanded format.
*
Blue asterisk: not mine.
No asterisk: it probably
sucks.
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OTHER CRAP:
Catch the deluxe
version of Other Crap in real time, with all the bells and whistles,
here.
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Beauty Queen Butcher
Public Service Announcement
Beauty Queen Butcher! (1991 Video) Unrated Special Edition has no
nudity, nearly no violence and no gore. It is the story of four beauty
contestants in the Miss Slough contest who ridicule a fat contestant,
and then kill her cat. She gets even.
So how is the film? One reviewer put it much better and more
succinctly than I could.
"I would rather watch my own dog lick his nuts for 118 minutes than
to watch this film again."
Je t'aime moi non plus
(1975)
"I love you, I
don't." the English translation of the title, was also the title of a song recorded by director Serge Gainsbourg
and his then girlfriend Brigitte Bardot. She asked that it not be
released, and he agreed. Later, he re-recorded it with his new
girlfriend, Jane Birkin, and it became a runaway best seller. The
song was thought to include references to anal sex, and was erotic
enough to piss off the pope, and censors in many countries. It was
obviously the inspiration for the film script.
A gay garbage truck
driver, Joe Dallessandro, and his boyfriend stop at a truck stop,
and he is instantly attracted to Johnny (Jane Birkin) the waitress,
who looks almost like a boy. When asked about her name, she answers
that it is because she has no tits or big butt. She works for a
creep, and the truck stop is remote, so she is lonely and love-starved.
Joe begins pursuing her, but his boyfriend is insanely jealous, and
Jane's boss warns her that her new beau is gay.
Since the film is French, the cast naturally includes Gerard
Depardieu. To give you an idea how omnipresent Depardieu is in
French cinema, he has 141 credits, 9 in production for this year,
and already has one in preproduction for next year. This time, he
sees Joe's boyfriend, and says that he knows the guy wants him to
fuck him up the ass, but he has sent many boys to the hospital that
way, and now prefers his horse.
Not unexpectedly, Joe and Jane develop additional relationship
problems. Joe can't bear the thought of vaginal sex, and his early
attempts at anal sex are so painful to her she ends up screaming and
gets them thrown out of hotels. They finally consummate their mutual
attraction in the back of his dump truck. Just when you think we are
heading for a happy ending, things go wrong.
This is not an easy film to categorize, but I guess it is a love
story centered around Jane Birkin's boyish figure. Jane and the cast
engage in plenty of sex, nudity, and raunchy talk, and Birkin's
husband admits he had some trouble with jealousy directing her in
this film. It is an easy watch even with the subtitles, as it
is not heavily dialogue based, and everyone in the cast can act. The
lighting and camera work ranges from very good to outstanding, and
the story is certainly not the same old Hollywood formula.
This is a C+, recommended for those interested in something
different.
IMDb readers have this at 6.3.
It is available from RLDVDs.com in a
region 2 PAL in French with English subtitles.
Jane Birkin does full frontal and rear nudity. Several unknowns
show various body parts, and we also have male full frontal.
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Notes and collages
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One Way
The movie starts with a teenage girl running from some teenage boys who are trying to rape her. They catch up to her and, when they are doing it, a guy in a military uniform (Michael Clarke Duncan) comes out and kills every one of them with a machine gun, with approval from the girl.
Years later we start looking into the story of Eddie Schneider (Til Schweiger), a successful young man who is married but also fools around with other women. He works with Angelina Sable (Lauren Lee Smith) who one night gets raped by one of the guys in the Firm, Anthony Birk (Sebastien Roberts). They go to trial, but Eddie lies, giving Anthony an alibi, since this blackmails Eddie with pictures of his infidelities. Angelina loses the trial, and decides to kill herself, but when she is just going to do it, someone from her past appears,
the guy in the uniform, but is all in her head.
That makes her stronger and she goes and rapes Anthony with a strap-on and then shoots him dead. Everything works great, but then Eddie ends up in prison for Anthony's murder and with a lot of evidence against him.
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Kelly Brook
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Film clip: Jodie Foster in
The Brave One. Barely worth a look, or maybe not at all, because it is
the size of a postage stamp, bootleg/cam quality, and probably a body
double. But it's more info than we had yesterday, and she's obviously a
major star. |
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Film clip:
Barbara Crampton and Kathleen Kinmont in Fraternity Vacation. The clip
is poor quality (VHS), but you absolutely want to have it in your
collection, because there has never been a full-screen DVD. On the DVD,
this scene shows only breasts, but in the full-screen version, it provides
full frontal and rear nudity from both women. Also look for a young Tim
Robbins playing a douchy guy. (And an incredibly tall one at that.) |
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Alicia Silverstone in the print version of her vegetarian ad |
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Michelle Nordin in the pilot for Californication - this time in High
Definition (Sweet caps)
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Here's Milla Jovovich in a gazillion raw caps from the HD trailer from
Resident Evil 3. While she is never naked, she has dark nipples under a
flimsy shirt.
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The Comedy Wire
Bryan Rocco of Vineland, New Jersey, was nearly killed by an onion
ring, but a car crash saved his life. He was driving back to work in a company
car while eating a Burger King chicken sandwich and onion rings when a ring
stuck in his throat and cut off his air, and he blacked out. The car went out
of control, swerved across the road, and hit a tree. The air bag deployed and
struck his chest, dislodging the onion ring. Rocco said the next thing he knew,
he woke up on his
side, facing backward in a totaled car.
* Then he called 911, as soon as he finished eating the
onion rings.
Paris Hilton is finally doing that charity work she promised after getting
out of jail: She said, "I have, like, a million clothes and more than 500 pairs
of shoes, so I'm going to give a bunch of them to orphanages and children's
hospitals. I never wear anything twice."
* Heck, she has thousands of panties that she's never
even worn once.
Thursday, the Senate voted 3-1 to condemn MoveOn.org for its attack ad on
Gen. Petraeus
* They then voted to condemn "JessicaAlbaNaked.com" as
a "big rip-off."
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