The Seduction of Inga (1969), aka Inga 2, is Joe Sarno's sequel to his popular Inga, again staring Marie Liljedahl in the title role, and begins where Inga leaves off. This was Liljedahl's last film, as she retired upon its completion. Inga has been left by Karl in the city, living in a cheap boarding house run by a madam. She is nearly out of money, and is being pressured into turning tricks to pay her rent. Her neighbor, a young wannabe song writer and performer, gets her a job as secretary to a rich middle aged author.

Inga falls for the author, the songwriter falls for her, and the author has a thing for young girls, including his daughter, whom he had a long, incestuous affair with. Inga is naked through much of the film, and shows breasts and buns and a hint of bush. Liljedahl was an excellent actress and could have had a long career if she had chosen to do so. Inger Sundh, as the incestuous daughter, shows breasts in a sex scene, and does a fairly hot lesbian scene with Liljedahl. An unknown seduces the songwriter after he thinks Liljedahl has dumped him and two unknowns have a lesbian sex show in the madam's apartment. After Sarno finished the film and submitted it to the producers, someone cut in some harder core inserts that clearly don't match, so we have breast and bush closeups of Inga and Greta's characters. Sarno claims all of the lesbian footage was shot by him, and that Liljedahl did show headless bush in that scene.

The sound track was meant to appeal to a younger audience, and Sarno contracted two young Swedish rock musicians to compose it, Peter Himmelstrand and Björn Ulvaeus, who later joined two other musicians and formed ABBA. The original R US release and the grindhouse version with the inserts are both in the rather well done 2 DVD set from Seduction Cinema, as well as tons of special features, and another Sarno film. The original release is a very noisy and damaged 4/3, and the grindhouse version is letterboxed and in generally better shape. Sarno shot in Sweden as he felt he got the best possible crew for the least money, and he was already fluent in the language.

IMDb readers have this at 6.0, but only based on 7 votes. It is one of the better late 60's sexploitation efforts, as it had a real story, character development, and higher production values than was the norm in that genre. Sarno was very adept at lighting a scene, liked closeups, and seemed to have a fascination with the psychology of incest, making this a classic Sarno film. This is a C+ as an excellent example of 60 sexploitation, bordering on art film. It is more of interest today from an historical perspective.

The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988)

I suppose Terry Gilliam must be the most underrated writer/director in history. He's only made nine films, all of them pretty damned good, and three of them in the all-time IMDb Top 250, yet he's never in the discussion when people debate about the greatest living directors.

Here is his directing resumé:

1. (8.40) - Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)
2. (8.00) - Brazil (1985)
3. (7.90) - Twelve Monkeys (1995)
4. (7.40) - Fisher King, The (1991)
5. (7.30) - Meaning of Life, The (1983)
6. (7.00) - Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998)
7. (6.90) - Time Bandits (1981)
8. (6.70) - Adventures of Baron Munchausen, The (1988)
9. (6.04) - Jabberwocky (1977)

He is also credited as a writer in all of those films except The Fisher King. There is not a bad film on the list. There is nothing even close. Even the disappointments are worth one's time, and even the worst moments of the disappointments are impossible to fast-forward through.

To me the key issue about Gilliam is not just that he is a funny man with an astounding and unique imagination, though he is those things, but that his body of work is a celebration of mankind.

On the surface, one might assume the opposite, that Gilliam is cynical to the point of despair. His imaginary worlds are all dystopic. They are chaotic and dehumanizing places ruled by the brutal and corrupt. All his humor seems to derive from a view that the only way for the human spirit to cope with chaos and hopelessness is with laughter. Underneath that veneer, however, Gilliam inevitably sees the brighter angels of our nature. His societies may be vile, perhaps as an extension of the real societies that we build, but his individuals can be noble, and willing to fight against monstrous odds, even at great personal peril. When I watch Gilliam's films, I always get a sense that we humans have failed, but that we should not have, that we should have been much more, and might yet be if we can suppress that portion of our DNA that still belongs to the territorial apes we once were.

Terry Gilliam is what Jonathan Swift or Cervantes would have been if they had lived in a time when artists created movies.

Gilliam has made great films but Baron Munchausen, to be honest, is not such a great film. It is one of Gilliam's most tepid offerings, and one of his most confusing and silly. Yet it is still a good film because there is just so much to enjoy. There is Gilliam's astounding visual invention. There is Uma Thurman's beauty, Eric Idle's comic timing, Sara Polley's childish adorability, and a marvelously theatrical lead performance by John Neville. There is the celebration of our ability to dream, the condemnation of irrational authority and power wielded cynically, the recognition of the power inherent in forgiveness, and in hope. Most of all there is the ubiquitous notion that the individual is important, that he cannot normally win a victory over the ruthless, soulless power of entrenched demigods, but there is great nobility and value in the fact that he tries.

And sometimes, no matter how quixotic his quest, he may even prevail.

• Uma (1, 2, 3)

The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)

By the time Oscar nominations roll along, the academy seems to forget about the films released in February and March. That's a shame, because Eternal Sunshine is a terrific movie, and would make a credible and creditable Oscar candidate.

What would you do if the woman you love went to a mind-erasure service and had them remove all traces of you?

Well, I know the answer in real life, but this is the movies.

In real life, you would be sitting in the catbird's seat. Assume your relationship has been having problems. That's why she had her mind erased in the first place, right? Having erased the memory of all those sour moments, she is now free to fall in love with you again, not knowing about the bad times, not remembering the mistakes you made, not aware of some of the ugly things you said in the heat of an argument. You, on the other hand, are aware of the erasure, know what went wrong, and if you are a thoughtful person, can avoid the worst problems. You've been given a second chance. 

This movie isn't about that.

That's way too logical and predictable to come from the disordered mind of Charlie Kaufman.

He is an eccentric man, possibly completely mad, as were many of the greatest writers in history. Melville was nutty as a fruitcake. Dostoevsky and Gogol, likewise. Blake? Don't even go there. The advantage of madness is that it pushes a mind to wander where other minds would not go, to invent outside the boundaries of reality. This is not an especially desirable characteristic for a doctor or a judge, but it can be the wellspring of originality for painters and writers. This is precisely what created the old cliché about the thin line between genius and insanity - both geniuses and madmen see what others cannot. Both ignore objective reality and the boundaries of convention. Screenwriter Charlie Kaufman is one or the other ... or both ... it doesn't really matter.

Kaufman doesn't take the logical, predictable path I followed above, and the very fact that he has no grasp of reality is precisely what makes him so uniquely effective. Reality would have screwed up this story.

When the man in this film finds out that his woman has erased him, instead of viewing it as a fresh opportunity to relive the good times and avoid the mistakes, he thinks that the only way to purge his malaise is to have her erased from his mind as well. The procedure itself takes a few hours, and this film is about what goes on in the man's unconscious mind as his memories are being erased. Somehow, he becomes aware of the erasure process from deep in his drug-induced coma, and he tries to hide some of the good memories from the scientists and technicians who are mapping his brain. He even tries to wake up, as if in a bad dream, and tell them to stop. The technicians have their own issues as well, and get distracted from the process, so the man becomes free - at least temporarily - to poke around in the memories of his romance, and its relationship to other events that made him into the man who entered that romance in the first place.

Along the way, he comes to understand who he is, and why things didn't work out. In the process of doing so, he comes to an understanding that the early promise of a new love is inevitably doomed to face crisis and pain, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing, depending on how the partners handle it.

That's an extremely oversimplified summary. The script is filled with nuances, quirks, and interwoven sub-plots, and is sculpted in such a clever way that the film even includes some of the best elements of the mystery and thriller genres.

I confess that I usually get bored by films that have a character wandering in and out of dreams and memories, but I never lost interest in this film for a second. The main deal drove forward at exactly the right pace, with just the right cards hidden. The sub-plots, although sometimes seeming to be irrelevant at the time they were introduced, all served a purpose in the master design.

In a sense, it is a work of great literature that just happens to be in a convenient "genre film" format, ala Blade Runner. It is also remarkably entertaining.

Just see it.

• Kirsten Dunst (1, 2, 3). Not much nudity, but a look at Dunst's breasts is always appreciated.

Other Crap:

• A stunning brunette claims she is carrying twins fathered by pop star Michael Jackson.
• Madonna enrolls at Oxford
• Green Day debuts at No. 1 for first time.
• "Aftermath of Hurricane Charley reveals message from God on billboard. "
• "Ultrasonic mosquito repellers all have one thing in common: none of them work. At all."
• Kids visit Margaritaville - Virginia grade schoolers accidentally served alcohol at lunch
• CBS kicks ass in the ratings during premiere week
• How to Debate George Bush - By AL GORE
• Kim Jong Il sings. A musical clip from Team America: World Police.
• Connery calls it quits?
• Recreating the legend of the Booger Dance
• James Bond is officially an American now, will henceforth be known as "Jimbo".
• "Germany should have quotas for the radio airtime to be dedicated to pop sung in the native language". The article is illustrated with a picture of David Hasselhoff, whose popularity has apparently killed off all the local talent. I can relate. How can they possibly hope to compete with Hasselhoff? Their only choice is to ban his music and end his hypnotic control over their lives.
• Eight clips from Friday Night Lights, Billy Bob's flick about Texas high school football, our official state religion.
• The trailer for Going Upriver: The Long War of John Kerry
• The trailer and a little featurette action for Raise Your Voice, the latest Hilary Duff flick: " 'Raise Your Voice' stars Hilary Duff as Terri Fletcher, a small town girl with the voice of a big-time singer. When a personal tragedy interrupts her steady life, Terri defies her father's wishes and secretly heads off to spend a summer at a Los Angeles performing arts academy. But the school brings a whole new set of challenges for Terri, who suddenly finds herself part of a highly competitive program in an intimidating new city. Though initially overwhelmed by her new surroundings, Terri rises to the occasion with the help of some newfound friends, an encouraging teacher, and a first love that captures her heart. "
• Here's a second trailer for Christmas with the Kranks, this years obligatory Tim Allen Christmas movie
• Jon Stewart shouts out to his stoned slacker audience, and debate rules will keep Bush from ball-scratching.
• Rosie Perez tells The Daily Show that she likes naked pictures of supreme court justices. And, I would guess, vice-versa. Possibly excepting Judge Souter.
• Meryl Streep to star in "All the King's Men" remake with Sean Penn, Jude Law.
• Salma Hayek bringing popular Colombian 'telenovela', Ugly Betty, to US.
• Cynthia Nixon's mystery girlfriend is a mystery no longer.
• Porn stars hate Dick, want to lick Bush.
• Remember that break-in into the home of the Hilton girl? Take a guess at the outcome. Turns out there is another Paris Hilton sex tape. I can't believe it. How gullible do you think I am? Next you're going to tell me there's more than one movie where Hugh Grant plays a stammering and falsely modest twit!
• Spot the things wrong with this story: France's Virginie Dedieu performs during the solo exhibition in the Synchronized Swimming World Grand Prix. I suppose everything is very, very wrong with this story, but my main questions are these: if there is only one person doing it, and she is not in the water, then (1) how can it be synchronized? (2) how can it be swimming?
• Saddam declares candidacy for Iraq elections - and is favored in the polls!!! "If Iraq has a democratic election and the plurality of voters want Saddam back, then what will the United States do?"
• Canadian wrestler Bret 'The Hitman' Hart will return to Toronto on a different stage - as he portrays the Genie of the Lamp in 'Aladdin, the Magical Family Musical'". Or maybe his performance just a new and very elaborate type of sleeper hold.
• 'Ravaged' is named Florida's official State Adjective
• An offshore bookie has suspended betting on the winner of the second season of NBC's 'The Apprentice,' citing an 'unusual betting pattern on two contestants'
• Useful link for work: Top 11 Reasons Why You Just Saw Porn on my Computer Screen
• Fox News attracts more viewers than all its rivals combined
• Jay Mohr's Secret To Success: Banging Tom Cruise?
• Defamer claims to have intercepted Lindsay Lohan's IM messages. Or not.
• If you grew up in New York in the 60s, your youth was framed by the voices of Cousin Brucie, Murray the K and Scott Muni. A part of your youth disappeared today. 'The Professor' of Rock, Scott Muni, dies at 74.
• This week's movies: Woman, Thou Art Loosed - 33% positive reviews. (Only three reviews.) Despairing drama about child molestation.
• This week's movies: Ladder 49 - 31% positive reviews. "Smothered by the heart-on-sleeve melodramatics of the storytelling, which seems intent on leaving no cliche unused and pounding each of them home."
• This week's movies: Shark Tale 20% positive reviews. Reviewers were cruel: "By this time next year Shark Tale will be on a sale rack at Wal-Mart for $5.99, probably as part of a bargain double-pack with Ice Age."
• Theater Counts for this week's movies: Shark Tale - 3500, Ladder 49 - 3000, Woman, Thou Art Loosed - 325, I Heart Huckabees - 4. Whoa - big rollout for that Huckabees flick! (It's a pre-release. Wide release is October 15)
• VINTAGE NUDE Field Basketball Kentucky GIRLS GONE BAD
• How to tell if you are an obnoxious jerk. One sign: you stubbornly perform the Heimlich maneuver on people who aren't choking.
• The first sign of the Apocalypse
• The trailer for Spin: "'Spin' tells the story of a boy who loses his parents in a plane crash, is taken in by his uncle, who then leaves him for ten years in the care of his Hispanic ranch hand and his wife. Once in high school, Eddie reconnects with a girl from his past, and their growing interracial relationship teaches the sometimes-sullen Eddie to think of others before himself."

Other Crap archives. May also include newer material than the ones above, since it's sorta in real time.

Click here to submit a URL for Other Crap

MOVIE REVIEWS:

Words from Scoop.

.avi's from Shiloh.

.wmv files made by Scoop from Shiloh's .avi's.

NOTE: because of a unique combination of circumstances with the Windows media player and some substantial bandwidth theft, we will have to do all of our movie files in zip format. Left click on the files as you normally would to view a picture. When you get a choice, click on "save", and put it on your hard drive in the directory of your choice. UnZIP and play from there.

I know this is not especially convenient, but it allows the film clips to continue. I can protect .zip files from hot-linking in the same way I can protect still images. For some reason, if I protect .avis and .wmvs from hot-linking, they will not play in the Windows media player, and I can't get a satisfactory work-around. Perhaps I will find a better solution, but for now this new policy allows you to continue getting the movie clips you want to see, which is much preferable to my abandoning the clips altogether.

Perhaps these tips will help if you have trouble with the codecs for these movies:

Shiloh says:

FYI when I hypercam vids to make the file size smaller I use DivX MPEG-4 Fast-Motion for the video compressor, then I use virtualdub to compress the audio. The properties for the vids says the video codec:  DivX Decoder Filter & audio codec:  Morgan Stream Switcher which I'm not familiar with. When I compress the audio with virtualdub I use MPEG Layer-3.  A friend of mine told me about compressing the audio about (6) mos. ago. Like I said previously, only been capping for a year & a half & I'm no expert. Hopefully this info will help members with the proper codecs for my vids.

 

When I cap big brother's I use hypercam mostly & sdp & asfrecorder if the set up allows me. I stopped using camtasia cause the file sizes were always too big, could never figure out the process, over my head lol, plus it cost too much to buy in my opinion.

A reader says:

You mentioned that some users were having trouble with the videos on your site. There is a tool designed to determine what codec is needed for a video. http://www.headbands.com/gspot/ Hope this is useful to you or your users.

Scoop says:

I made the .wmv versions of each video. The codecs for these: Windows Video V8, Windows Audio 9. The upside of these is that you know the codecs, and they'll play in the Windows Media Player. The downside is that they are slightly larger, and slightly lower quality.

Comments and vids by Striplight:

A couple more vids straight out of the top drawer for you.

• Firstly Sophie Marceau in "Beyond the Clouds". This is where she clambers out of bed to see if Malkovich has really buggered off. Fantastic! Her,  I mean. (.wmv zipped)

• Then there’s Esther Hall in “Sons & Lovers”. Only a brief flash of the three - the full stand up frontal bit earlier in the drama is so badly lit I can’t seem to create anything worthwhile from it. But this is nice. (.wmv zipped)

• Yekaterina Golubeva in "Twentynine Palms" (2003).

  She is a relative unknown to me, despite having 13 film credits prior to this film. She gives it all up in this one with some of the most revealing sex and nudity I've seen in a mainstream film. The film itself was like watching paint dry. Very long, boring scenes done in real time.

Be sure to pay Graphic Response a visit at his website. www.graphic-barry.com.

Found an early Julie Strain performance in a videotape called "Teasers" (1993). Plot goes like this. I don't mean a summary of the plot, or an overview of the plot, I mean the plot. Would be safer to say: screenplay of the movie goes like this:

Two college guys who look 35 go into a titty bar to celebrate something or other. Gal strips (she is played by Melody Johnson, a pale blonde who moves as though this was the not the first time she'd taken off her clothes in public). Drunk guy next to them gets up, walks away and leaves his credit card behind. College guys take credit card... because they wouldn't mind if someone took a credit card of theirs and used it for his own purposes, nope not one little bit. They go home and call up seven strippers to come over and do their jobs.

All seven do. Cops show up after number 7. Take boys down to the station (which, remarkably enough, has the very same carpet as their living room), where the female cop proceeds to strip and the boys are let loose, sadder but wiser or happier and stupider. I'm not sure which.

That's it. All the plot development of My Dinner With Andre done by mimes. Maybe less.

But nine gals take off their clothes. Seven of them do bang-up triple B performances; and for those who like the sight of bare naked tushies, eight of the gals do the shakin-the-booty thang. One of the gals is the goddess of B movies, Julie Strain, and several others (Lisa Comshaw, Ashlie Rhey, Amy Rochelle, Lauren Hays and Melanie Armstrong) went on to be staples of the B movie industry. If you had never seen a direct-to-video erotic thriller and planned never to do so, but you wanted to see what the women in those movies looked like, this would be the tape for you.

And even though it is a videotape, the lighting and close-up camera work make for fairly decent caps.

The litany of stripping goes like this:

Amy Rochelle starts out as a French maid. Triple B. This was early Amy, when her body was perfect and composed entirely of carbon compounds, not that silicone shit.

• Amy Rochelle (1, 2, 3, 4, 5)

Annette Burger has the longest stripping scene... almost ten minutes in duration. And I can see why. Terrific rumpus and a pair of robo-hooters that are actually pretty darn attractive. Gal did two other movies, both erotic thrillers and got nekkid in them, too.

• Annette Burger (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9)

Ashlie Rhey starts off dressed like a school girl. Not for long. Triple B of Ashlie very early in her career.

• Ashlie Rhey (1, 2, 3, 4)

Holly Spencer plays the cop stripper. Worst camera work of all the gals... not much to cap, even though she is more than okay looking.

• Holly Spencer

Julie Strain was 30 when she made this movie, but she looks fantastic. Triple B, with the accent on the rear half of the sheebang.

• Julie Strain (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6)

Lisa Comshaw, also early in her career and looking mighty fine, if you ask me. Triple B

• Lisa Comshaw (1, 2)

Melinda Armstrong, wearing a wig of short brown hair. Melinda was the focus of the Bikini Summer movies and has done a lot of strip and wiggle disks. Here she strips. And she wiggles. But even though she takes off her knickers, there's another pair of knickers underneath them. WTF?

• Melinda Armstrong (1, 2)

Melody Johnson plays the original stripper. Not much of her bum shown, but her frontal surface is most well-photographed.

• Melody Johnson (1, 2, 3)

A perfect follow up from yesterday....Today the Ghost takes a looks at "Ski School II".

• Shannon Lee Brown...a very cute brunette looking fantastic wearing only a tool belt and a hard hat. (she kinda reminds me of Lexa Doig) This is her one and only IMDb credit. (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8)
• Shannon Lee Brown zipped .wmv

• Wendy Hamilton, the former Heffer (December '91) bares breasts and bum...mostly while standing nekkid in the snow and painting. (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16,)
• Wendy Hamilton zipped .wmvs. Links 1-3 feature her painting in the nude. #4 is from a love scene. (1, 2, 3, 4)

NUGENT SLAMS ROCKER VOTE DRIVES
Weighty Thought - Republican rocker Ted Nugent scoffed at the vote registration drives by P. Diddy and other rockers and rappers. Nugent said telling people to "just get out and vote" when they know nothing about the issues is like saying, "'There's a child drowning in the river. Just do something. Here, I'll throw him a cinder block.' Well, at least you did something."