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"U-Turn (1997)
Oliver Stone made U-Turn just before Any Given Sunday. He was trying to make a small Western film noire. Whether or not you think he was successful, according to the critics, seems to depend more on whether you think this was a worthy project for a talented director than on the film itself. It was made for $19 million, and shot in the planned 42 day schedule. It opened on 1,230 screens, and grossed about $30 million in the US alone. 2,799 IMDB voters give it 6.4/10. It features a stellar cast, every requisite plot element, and his usual photographic and editing tricks are not very distracting. Many of the plot elements are predictable, as they are cliches in the genre, but there are so many that some are bound to surprise you. Pace was good throughout, and the Arizona small town and desert scenery were photogenic.
Sean Penn stars as a petty crook whose "1964 1/2 Mustang convertible" breaks down, and he coasts into a one-horse Arizona desert town. The only auto mechanic in town (Billy Bob Thornton) agrees to work on the car, and Bobby Cooper (Penn) wanders around town while he is waiting. Along the way, he encounters a blind Indian (John Voight) who always has some sage advice, a young woman who is always flirting (Claire Danes) to make her boyfriend jealous, a whiskey drinking sheriff (Powers Boothe), and an older man (Nick Nolte) and his young wife (Jennifer Lopez) who both try to hire him to kill
the other. He is also robbed, beaten, pistol whipped, swindled and screwed. All of the performances were top notch, although this film is more plot than character-driven. All in all, I give it three stars, worth renting, but not in Stone's top 5 films.
The exposure is from Lopez. Although it is limited, she looks as good as always.
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Jennifer Lopez
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"Casual Sex" (1988)
Casual Sex is a romantic comedy staring Lea Thompson as Stacy and Victoria Jackson as Melissa. Stacy wakes up the the fact that casual sex is not such a good idea when she notices the headlines in every magazine at the checkout about AIDS. Melissa has always been afraid of sex, and has "never had an orgasm with someone else in the room." Stacy complains that, now that she is afraid of sex, she doesn't know how to relate to men at all.
The two of them decide to vacation at a health spa, lots of men, all healthy. Will they find love, or lust, or fulfillment? This light adaption from a play was produced mainly by women, and is an interesting view of dating in the AIDS era from the girls perspective. Like most play adaptations, it is a little talky, but not as bad as usual. The actresses are attractive, the photography good, and the art direction also good. It is any easy watch, and I think Maltin had it about right at 2 1/2 stars. IMDB readers were not as kind at 4.8/10.
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Lea Thompson
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Victoria Jackson
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| Johnny Web
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"Dish Dogs"
It's pretty hard to screw up a coming of age comedy too badly. Nobody expects them to be that good to begin with, so all you have to do is keep the mood light and the breasts bare.
OOPS! Dish Dogs seems to have missed one of the essentials. It takes itself seriously. Its surfer boys aren't fun lovin' stoners, but budding philosophers who are trying to pare away all the inessentials in their lives so that they can concentrate on having their epiphany. So they surf only for the intrinsic zen value, and they wash dishes because it is the simplest, least demanding thing
they can do, allowing them plenty of time to think.
So they even turn down hot babes and good jobs because babes and money distract a man from his life's quest.
Yawn.
There's only one sin in the coming of age comedy market - boredom. And this has altogether too much of it. I guess it really isn't possible for a movie in this genre to be pretentious, but this movie comes close, with at least 15 quotes from famous philosophers. It's the Road House of surfer flicks. It takes itself so seriously that it has commentary on the DVD. Commentary? About a 96 minute Matthew Lillard movie that never got released? Oh, come now.
Say, here's a tip for you youngsters. If you want to make a comedy - it will really help if you try making it funny. Just food for thought.
Having said all that, I need to point out that there is a very good reason to rent this movie. That reason is Shannon Elizabeth. If you don't recognize the name, you'll remember her as Nadia, the gorgeous Eastern European babe whose nudity was broadcast over the internet in American Pie. In this movie she was a little younger, fresher, and had not yet had her breasts or nose altered. And she looks even better here than she did in American Pie. Plus, freed from the responsibility of her inept Pie accent, she was free to simply act as herself, and that self is very charming. She doesn't need to play Lady Macbeth in this film, and she has an electrifying smile.
Now here is a summary of the plusses:
Shannon Elizabeth works as a stripper in the film, and her entire routine is shown on camera. (She kept the bottom on.)
Shannon Elizabeth is topless some more in the deleted scenes, trying on bras in a changing room, and asking for an evaluation of each.
There is also a music video on the DVD, and Shannon Elizabeth is also topless in that, with at least two more camera set-ups not used in the movie. (Bottom images in collages three and four)
Shannon Elizabeth also spends much of the music video playing frisbee on the beach in a bikini, which is not as good as Shannon playing naked, but is better than any other human activity involving frisbees.
Now, those are some pretty strong plusses. I don't know about you guys, but I can watch this woman with her clothes on. And when she takes 'em off, she has my undivided attention. In fact, I think all movies should feature a couple minutes of her naked. On The Waterfront, The Seventh Seal, The Muppet Movie, Battleship Potemkin - pretty much anything could be improved by Shannon's bod.
On the negative side, it includes two of the all-time lowlights in the history of cinema:
Matthew Lillard sings an entire song. I can't describe how bad this is. He makes Shatner sound like Ezio Pinza.
Brian Dennehy wears a skin tight wet suit. Now that's entertainment.
Consensus rating: a hair under 2 stars. 43 from Apollo. 64 from Apollo members.
IMDB summary: 4.9 out of 10. Yes, that is a fair assessment of the movie, if one ignores the extra five points that I added for Shannon's body.
DVD info from Amazon. As I pointed out above, the DVD includes tons of extra features. They all stink, but
there are tons of them, and many include pictures of Shannon Elizabeth naked, discussions of Shannon Elizabeth nudity, songs about Shannon Elizabeth naked, and proposals for world peace centering around all mankinds' mutual admiration for Shannon Elizabeth nudity.
Shannon Elizabeth
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"Ilsa, Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks"
This is one of the very best exploitation movies ever made, and I recommend it wholeheartedly if you like this type of movie. Don't be fooled by the fact that it is a sequel to the dreary cult favorite, "Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS". There is no comparison bretween the two movies.
This one has a big-budget look. I don't know how they managed to get these sets and to design these interiors so lavishly, but they did it. It even has helicopters in it, and not in stock footage, but in scenes filmed especially for the movie. The images are sharp, the colors are clear and vivid.
It has great stunts. Four stars to the stunt co-ordinator, who has a real guy fall off a building right down into the camera, and another guy on fire for many, many seconds.
It has humor. The guy who plays El Sharif is hilariously and intentionally over-the-top decadent, and the funniest thing about the movie is a hilarious Henry Kissinger impersonation. (The good doctor visits the Middle East to negotiate about oil production quotas and, of course, to plant a spy.)
It has Uschi. And a lot of other women, almost always naked. There is a lot more nudity that I didn't capture because I didn't know who the hell they were.
Oh, there are some negatives. It has some poorly choreographed fight scenes and some wooden acting, but those are minor flaws. It is just plain good ol' fashioned sleazy-ass fun.
IMDB summary: 6.4 out of 10. Tuna's favorite exploitation film, "The Erotic Adventures of Zorro", is a 6.0. "I Like to Play Games", the Citizen Kane of softcore, is a 6.0. "The Lickerish Quartet", the intellectual Seventh Seal of softcore, is 5.9. So Ilsa is way up there in the exploitation pantheon. My favorite, "Wild Things", is a 6.8, but
"Wild Things" had a $20 million dollar budget, so I don't know if we can allow it in the competition. Can anyone name a higher-rated exploitation flick?
DVD info from Amazon. Excellent DVD transfer in widescreen (actually it's in 1.66 aspect ratio, enhanced for 16x9 screens). It has a funny full-length panel discussion commentary with Dyanne Thorne, the director, and another star, and it's moderated by a comedian! The commentary alone is worth the price of the DVD, but don't buy it from Amazon. They have it priced over 25 bucks. I picked it up in the previously-viewed section at a local retailer for nine bucks.
Boyd
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Digard
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Joi
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Other News....
Charlie's site is updated today
| Oz
| | Today's comments by Oz:
The theme for today's contribution is strippers. Does America really have as many strip joints as shown in the movies? It seems that every town with a more than a few hundred people seems to have a bar with strippers! Sometimes the bar is just about the only place in the town.
Jr. here:
Actually Oz...Yes, America really does have that many strip clubs. One extreme example is Portland, Oregon, home of over 200 strip clubs and topless bars! But yes, we do enjoy our "gentlemen's entertainment" on this side of the ocean!
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Chantal Gray
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Chantal stripped in a 1975 British film called The Human Factor. I don't think I've seen a more dynamic strip tease. She was continually moving hard and fast the whole time in her burlesque-type strip. With no poles in sight I'd give her a 9 out of 10. She was probably a professional stripper, not an actress. I can't remember what the rest of the film was about.
The rest of the strips have a same degree of sameness - swing on a pole and flash your tits.
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Angelica Trevena
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Angelica did her strip in The Don's Analyst.
| Andria Martel
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Teri Weigel and Tracey Burch
Elizabeth Gracen
Voodoo witch
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"Marked for Death"
This film stars Steven Seagal doing what he does best - killing the baddies, and with that certain style. The stripper was Andria Martel. She got herself killed because she tried to kill Seagal's partner. This is shown in the second collage.
There was some additional nudity in the film. Firstly, there was some by a voodoo witch (is that what they're called?). Unfortunately, I couldn't work out what her name was. She is shown trying to cast a spell on the bad guys, complete with chook blood. It didn't do any good. She was beheaded by the person she was trying to hex.
Teri Weigel and Tracey Burch are just bedfellows with one of the bad guys - who in turn was killed by Seagal.
Not nude, but Elizabeth Gracen is shown as she was about to be executed. She played Seagal's sister in the movie so, naturally, he managed to rescue her just in the nick of time.
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Angel Tompkins
Carrie Snodgrass
Lisa Vice
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"Murphy's Law"
Angel Tompkins played the ex-wife of Charles Bronson. He has trouble dealing with her new lifestyle as a stripper. She ends up dead and Bronson is framed for the murder. He spends the rest of the time with Carrie Snodgrass finding the real killers. Lisa Vice played a good time girl with one of the mob bosses, as you can see from the collage.
| Serenity
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On a completely different note, a few months ago there was a humorous picture in the Fun House showing the 'dangers' of nude sky diving. Obviously, Serenity (aka a porn star) had not seen the picture. On a recent Wild On episode, she tried something similar. The collages
were from an indoor sky diving place in Las Vegas. You can see the difference an implant makes!
| Marianna Hill
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Unknown
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Jr Here...Apparently there was a small mix up on Wednesday and some of Oz's images from "El Condor" never made it to press, so here is second look. This time with all of the images.
Marianna Hill appeared in the Fun House a while ago but I've expanded on the number and size of images capped. El Condor is set last century when the Mexicans were prominent in the American south-west and it is centred around a Mexican fort. Marianna plays the 'willy warmer' of the camp commander, although her sentiments are elsewhere. The fort is being attacked at night and she performs a public striptease in her bedroom to distract the Mexican defenders. It works, quite understandably.
Prior to all this, the Mexican soldiers performed a raid on a local village looking for women. The rest of the collages show some of the local women they found before they themselves were killed.
| | Brainscan
| Eugenia Silva
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Billy Piper
Remedios Cervantes
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Cindy Manion
Kim Dawson
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Comments by Brainscan:
A real odd collection for you today.
Eugenia Silva is a Latin American fashion model, posing in the B & W scan with some guy named Iglesias. There seems to be as many of those boys south of the border as there are Baldwins in North America.
Billy Piper appears to have such trouble keeping her nipples covered, which makes no sense given the limited force exerted against her clothes.
And then there is Remedios Cervantes, former Miss Spain and hostess of a Spanish television show. In our second year of college a bunch of buddies and I had to repeat a Spanish Lit course because we just couldn't get Don Quixote. So the instructor went very slowly over that book in a make-up class. Well, I remember that class and what we called it every time I see this woman's name.
Then there a couple of B movie bims that Tuna capped over the past couple of weeks; I did some editing and pasting and here you are.
| | Schmutzfink
| | Ashley Laurence |
Topless scenes from the movie "Tripplecross". Check out this line up, it looks like the roster for the washed up all-stars...Including Michael Paré, Billy Dee Williams, and Patrick Bergin.
| | Zerha Leverman |
Quite a few topless scenes from the movie "Valentine's Day". This was actually on cable a few nights ago, but it was way too dull for me to sit through it. From what I saw, these images are all you need.
| | Kate Luyben |
Gettin' it on on oh so classy leopard skin sheets from the movie "Misbegotten".
| | Claire Stansfield |
Butt in the shower 'caps from "Wes Craven's 'The Mindripper'" (a.k.a. "The Outpost")
| | Leslie Stevens |
From the movie "Mobius".
| | and ...
| Natalie Portman
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Comments by Akira:
She looked so great in this movie I just had to do a bunch of collages. The movie covered five years of time so there were a lot of different looks in it.
| | Sandra Hess |
Scenes of Sandra showing off almost everything from "Endangered". You may not know her name, but you have probably seen her in such bad movies and TV series as: "Beastmaster III: The Eye of Braxus", "Mortal Kombat: Annihilation", "Pensacola: Wings of Gold", and of course the David Hasselhoff TV movie "Nick Fury: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.".
| | July Delpy |
Topless images from "Killing Zoe", by Megabit.
| | Jennifer Lopez |
A great scan with excellent pokie visibility by Megabit.
| | Olympics Roundup
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