"Sunset Grill" (1993)
I just happened to
stumble into an old copy of this. The quality of the tape
precluded doing many captures, but I thought I'd mention
it. (RDO did some good captures, which are in the
encyclopedia) Nude scenes from three different women:
Lori Singer, Alexandra Paul, Sandra Wild. All three
actresses got naked, but in the case of Paul and Singer,
the scenes were cut tastefully to avoid pubic exposure.
In fact, Singer got up from one energetic love scene
where the lovers were obviously in the later stages of
intercourse, the director cut away too slowly, and you
could see that she was wearing a thong!
As for the movie, well, let me tell you. In the
Olympics they won't let a 150 pound man wrestle against a 170 pound man
because it just isn't a fair match. But in the movies,
one drunken stumblebum private eye armed with a BB gun
can overcome all of the following:
1. Several corrupt INS officials
2. The Mexican border federales.
3. The world's richest man and several doctors, who
are running a scam to use illegal immigrants as unwilling
heart and liver donors.
4. The world's richest man's connections, which
"go so high up the ladder God can't see the
top"
5. Thugs who look like a cross between Dolph Lundgren
and Andre the Giant, and are better armed than the Iraqi
army.
6. Treacherous girlfriends.
7. Incompetent associates.
8. Sarcastic bartenders.
Yes, a very realistic movie.
Stacy Keach plays, or maybe I should say overplays,
the world's richest man, and he says that ripping hearts
out of living victims is OK because:
* They are doing it for a good cause, to give the gift
of life to senior members of the Republican Party and
other equally important members of society.
* The Aztecs did it, and these victims are descended
from the Aztecs, so they're kinda culturally prepared for it.
OK, fair enough. I was having some problem with it,
but then when he explained the Aztec thing, I could
relate to it. I think I've pointed out that in an earlier
life I was an Aztec. In fact, I still hold the Aztec
record for finishing second in the Aztec games for 32
consecutive years.
In a bizarre example of reverse genetic engineering,
the Aztecs would rip out the hearts of the winners, since
only the finest specimens were adequate propitiation
for the Gods.
I remember giving many a heartfelt interview with Shirley Maclaine, when she was a reporter for the
Aztec Times, in which I apologized to my
fans and those who bet on me, explained that I couldn't
fathom how I blew a 40 yard lead in the 100 yard dash,
and promised to train much harder for the next year's
games, because I was really looking forward to having my
heart ripped out so I could join those gods.
IMDB
summary: 3.9 out of 10. It's bad, but probably not
that bad. That incredibly bad Minnie Driver in the desert
movie, "Slow Burn", is rated 5.8. The Demi
Moore with two lives movie, "Passion of Mind",
is rated 5.3. And the very bad thing called "Very
Bad Things" is 5.8. So the marker territory for bad
movies is in the 5's, and this one is in the same league
as those turkeys. The 3's are reserved for very special
people, like Ed Wood (his three most famous movies are
all about 3.3), and John Derek (between 2.7 and 3.1).
VHS
info from Amazon. Not available on DVD. Not
recommended, in either case, except for nudity.
Here's one Singer collage. (And not a very good one, I'm sorry to say. RDO's in the encyclopedia are much better.)
"Candyman" (Follow-up)
As I promised, I read "The Forbidden",
Clive's Barker's short story which formed the basis for Candyman.
As usually happens when you check the
written source material, the problems in the movie plot
were NOT present in the original story. To refresh your memory, there
are two major flaws in the plot of Candyman:
1. THE MOVIE: Candyman
starts killing people again to bring back the fear and
belief that people used to have in the Candyman legend.
But then he sets up Helen to take the fall for the crime,
thus assuring that everyone in the world will think there
is no Candyman, and that she is the killer - exactly the
opposite of what he said he wanted.
THE STORY: This doesn't
happen in the story. Candyman kills, Candyman wants the
blame, because he wants people to believe in him and fear
him.
2. THE MOVIE: Candyman
has to babysit an infant for 30 days while Helen is in
the prison psychiatric hospital.
THE STORY: Needless to
say, this doesn't happen in the short story. Candyman
simply kills the infant - simple, direct, evil - exactly
what you'd expect from him.
The details in the
story are more gruesome, of courzs, but they also follow the correct
internal logic, and are fully consistent with the
motivations of the characters.
By the way, all the
background story- educated black son of a slave, killed
by white guys because he dared to love a white woman -
was fabricated for the movie. In the story he has no
special grounding in reality. He's simply a legend with a
hook-hand and a chest full of bees. In this case,
however, I think the romance of the movie story was a
bona fide cinematic twist, a good artistic liberty, and
explained his presence at Cabrini Green.
I don't really
recommend "The Essential Clive Barker", by the
way, unless you are a rabid Clive Barker fan. It's more
of a scholarly treatise, an exercise in self-analysis
written by Barker about Barker. He defends his points
with excerpts from his books. This is interesting, but it
was very hard for me to get involved with the excerpts. And if I did?
They ended, and Barker was moving on to
another point, leaving me to wonder what happened. Only four short stories are printed in
their entirety. I'll end up finishing the book someday,
but not now. The lure just isn't as strong as if I were
involved in a story.
"A Map of the World"
Powerful themes and
great acting are sometimes not enough when marred by
heavy-handed execution. Sigourney Weaver is a Wisconsin
housewife who babysits her girlfriend's daughters one
day, and one of the girls drowns in the pond.
She can't cope. Of course, the town gradually turns
against her, as much for her strange behavior after the
incident as for the incident itself.
But worse, she's a school nurse, and she ends up going
to jail when accused of abusing another child, because
her farmer husband can't raise the enormous bail. And the
husband has to run his farm while he single-handedly
raises two little girls, because nobody in the town will
assist a child abuser. And of course, the townspeople
spit on him and paint hateful graffiti on his farmhouse.
And the real criminals in jail look down on her, because
they think she's a child abuser.
So, they're really having a bad hair day.
Then her farm suffers from three biblical plagues, her
husband runs off with a cheerleader, and she and her
children are sodomized by runaway insane AIDS victims.
And then she is led into the Pentagon war room, sees that
button which starts a nuclear attack, and OOPS! - she
causes the end of the world! OK, none of that last part
happened, but do you take my point? She's hit bottom. The
bottom of the bottom. The point at which drama becomes
melodrama, and pathos becomes bathos.
The Sigourney Weaver character is both highly complex
and quite unlikeable. If you watch the critical scenes a
second time, you'll see that her own self-absorption
really did cause the death of the little girl in her
pond. While the toddlers were unattended, she stopped to
daydream about a painting she had made when she was a
child - the famous "Map of the World". If she
had not done that while looking for a bathing suit, she
might have saved the girl. When her self-sacrificing
husband comes to visit her in prison, she wants to talk
about her spiritual growth and the books she's been
reading instead of asking about him, her friends, and her
children.
This is complex character development, to be sure, but
it makes it difficult to feel the emotions you're meant
to feel when the sappy background music strikes the
appropriate chords.
The movie is about how it all gets resolved. The film
has plenty of strengths, to be sure, but these strong
themes surely presented a big challenge for a rookie
director and, in my opinion, it could have used a subtler
touch. Especially the background score.
Box office: one half million dollars,
on a very limited distribution scale. Not the kind of
movie designed to appeal to the mainstream young, male
entertainment-seeking moviegoer.
Awards: No Oscar nominations, but the
writers were nominated for some smaller awards for best
screen play adapted from another medium, and both
Sigourney Weaver and Julianne Moore were nominated for
various acting honors.
Consensus: about two and a half stars
on the average, but the reviews were sharply polarized.
For example, Ebert gave it a sparkling three and a half
stars. Berardinelli gave it a dismal two. And you could
justify either of those ratings just as easily. Perhaps
one individual could see it both ways on two different
days, depending on one's own mood.
The movie features a great deal of nudity from
Sigourney Weaver
(1,
2,
3,
4,
5,
6)
and David Straithairn.
IMDB
summary: 6.8 out of 10.
Rotten
Tomatoes summary. 57% positive, and 67% from the top
critics.
DVD
info from Amazon. There is no special feature of great merit on the DVD, but the print is a good one, and the aspect ratio is 16:9.
|
Tuna
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"Storyville"
Storyville - The Naked Dance (2000) is the first ever documentary of the
infamous legal red light district in New Orleans named Storyville. Funded
partially by the Corporation for Public broadcasting, I have no idea if it
ever appeared on PBS. It is not listed at all at IMDB. In the late 1800's,
New Orleans was teaming with sailors, immigrants, and merchants of all
sorts. This meant money, and as one of the narrators said, women can smell
money. The ladies of the night poured into the harbor area, creating a port
area so bad there was a killing every ten minutes.
Determined to clean up the city, and especially its port, the city council
decided to create an area for the prostitutes on the outskirts of town.
Actually, it was just behind the French Quarter, and became known as
Storyville, after Alderman Sidney Story, one of the main supporters of the
plan. At it's peak, Storyville boasted 2,000 prostitutes in 16 square
blocks. There were two main varieties of establishments, cribs and
mansions. The cribs were small rooms with a bed and a washstand used be the
affordable women. (See the tops of unknowns 1 and 2). The mansions (see top
of unknown 3) were run by madams, and counted nearly every man of position
and/or wealth in New Orleans among their customers. Many had specialties.
Probably the best known was Lulu White, who put on a specialty show with
one of her young female employees and a dog. (See images below).
In addition to the easy sin of every variety, Storyville became the home of
a new and socially unacceptable new music called jazz. Two of the more
famous musicians to come out of Storyville were Louis Armstrong, and
Ferdenand Lemont, better known as Jelly Roll Morton, the Windin' Boy. Every
"mansion" had a piano player (called professor), and the patrons enjoyed
fancy meals, dancing, and then went upstairs.
Storyville thrived 'til WW1. They wanted to draft every able-bodied young
man, but one of every two had VD. The solution? Close Storyville. So, in
1917, the War Department made it illegal for a prostitute to be within 5
miles of a military installation. Not everyone left without a fight. Lulu
White converted her place to a chicken restaurant, where the Creole
waitresses were also on the menu, and provided most of the profit. Even
Lulu could not hold out forever, and Storyville was eventually demolished
and housing put in its place.
This DVD is essentially a series of still images from the era, with
narration by historians and people who actually worked in Storyville. As
one of the narrators said, "You want to find out sumpin, you don't need no
book. Find you an old person. They tell you." The narration is fascinating.
VD was very prevalent and incurable (see graveyard in unknown 1). The women
often got pregnant. The children were called "Trick Babies," and lived in
the attics of the mansions. Remember this is the Victorian era, where
Ladies were for marrying, and didn't have any sexuality. Women who liked
sex were already whores, and other occupations for women were not very
attractive. With the advent of the flapper, the "working girls" had serious
competition. The rare photos are not only explicit, but give a real feeling
for the era. The music is all early jazz, and was a total delight for me.
The running time is 60 minutes. I suspect you have already made a
rent/buy/ignore decision by now.
Thumbnails
Thumbnails Part 2
Lulu White
(1,
2)
Unknown
(1,
2,
3,
4,
5,
6,
7,
8,
9,
10,
11,
12,
13,
14,
15,
16,
17,
18,
19,
20,
21,
22)
"Love Letters"
Love Letters (1988), due to be released next Tuesday, September 26, marks
the first nude appearance by one of my personal favorites -- Jamie Lee
Curtis. Not only did she get naked, she spent a lot of the film naked. She
works as a DJ at the local public radio station, doing a classical music
show. As the film opens, she is visiting her mother in the hospital. Her
mother gives her an opal ring she has never seen, saying she wants Jamie to
have it, and never could wear it anyway.
Soon, her mother dies, and we find out more about the ring. Jamie is going
through her mother's things, and finds a box of love letters from a boy
friend Jamie knew nothing about. It seems the boyfriend had been totally
devoted to her, but she was unwilling to leave her alcoholic husband and
daughter, even though she loved him. As Jamie is reading the letters, and
learning things about her mother she never knew, and about the depth of
love and devotion from the secret boyfriend, she starts an affair with a
married man.
We see Jamie in the bath, and later naked with the boyfriend several times.
The transfer could be better, and the story is a little slow, dealing
mostly with the emotions women feel both being married to a man who is
having an affair, and sleeping with a married man. In that way, I think
women will enjoy this one more than men. I perked up when Jamie's nipples
were staring at me, but nearly dozed off the rest of the time. If this is
any indication, next Tuesday is going to be a good one for exposure.
Thumbnails
Thumbnails Part 2
Jamie Lee Curtis
(1,
2,
3,
4,
5,
6,
7,
8,
9,
10,
11,
12,
13,
14,
15,
16,
17,
18,
19,
20,
21,
22,
23,
24)
Stone Cold
|
From the new "Femme Fatales"
Delia Sheppard
Delia Sheppard
Jennifer O'Dell
Rachel Blakely (Possible nipple, but probably just cleavage and shadows)
Blackshine
| Stephanie Seymour
(1,
2,
3,
4,
5,
6)
|
A December, 1990 edition of Marie Claire. No nudity. Partial breast exposure in #2 and #6.
| Emmanuelle Seigner
(1,
2,
3,
4,
5,
6,
7)
|
Mrs Polanski in German Vogue, October. No nudity, large downloads. (Actually, there may be a see-through nipple in the first one, or maybe not.)
| and ...
| Sex and The City
(1,
2)
|
Two caps from Elliffen Grafix. The first is SJP pokies from "The Turtle and the Hare". The second is Cattrall nudity in "The Monogamists"
| Joely Richardson
(1,
2,
3)
|
Three new "Lady Chatterly" collages from Scanman
| Pam Anderson (1)
|
Cafe, October, 2000. With new beau, supermodel Marcus Schenkenberg
| Football Humor
|
Q: What do you call 47 people sitting around a TV watching the playoffs?
A: The New Orleans Saints
Q: What do you call a 350 pound Packer fan?
A: An anorexic.
Q: What do you call a Minnesota Viking with a Super Bowl ring?
A: A thief.
Q: Where do you go in Chicago in case of a tornado?
A: Soldier Field. They never get a touchdown there.
Q: Why did the Nebraska linebacker steal a police car?
A: He saw "911" on the side and thought it was a Porsche
| Olympics Roundup
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