What_Was_She_Thinkin'? (29 Oct. 1999) was the 9th episode of Cinemax soft core series Pleasure Zone, and is the last of the 7 that have been released on DVD. The four sex scenes with two women formula is back. A guy is on his way to meet his pleasure zone date, and fantasizes a sex encounter with his dream girl, Cheri Lacey. When he gets there, his date, Brandy Davis, is having sex with an old boyfriend, and was not expecting a Pleasure Zone date until the next evening. She keeps our hero waiting outside her door while she finishes with the boyfriend, and then invites him in. (Sex scenes two and three there). It is hate at first sight. He likes large, big breasted brunettes, wants to take her out for a drink and the best steak in town, and is a religious staunch republican. She, on the other hand, is a petite blonde with moderate sized breasts, an atheist, vegetarian, non-drinker, and, worst of all, a Democrat.

They start flashing each other by way of defending their body types, and next thing you know, they have a whole night of great sex. When they log in to Pleasure Zone the next morning, they discover that the date was a computer slip-up, but decide to stay with each other. Both women show all three Bs, and the lighting was good. This was a very good episode in terms of nudity, and Brandy Davis has real charisma in front of the camera. This is on the high end of C for the genre.

This Italian adaptation of the Marquis de Sade's masterwork (120 Days of Sodom) has managed to stay controversial for nearly 30 years. It was first screened in Britain at the Old Compton Street cinema club in 1977. It was shown in its full uncut version without a certificate. After a few days, the cinema was raided by the police, who confiscated the print and threatened to arrest the cinema owners for indecency.

The director, Pier Paolo Pasolini, stayed completely faithful to Sade's text, but relocated the story from the France of the 1790s to the last days of Fascist Italy in the mid 1940s. By doing so, he posited that the treatment of the people at the hands of the Fascists was unchanged from the way the people had been used by the old aristocrats in the Days of Kings. In both cases, the people merely existed as sub-human slaves, for the pleasure of the state and the plutocrats, to be the property of the rich, or even to be sent to war to defend the other property of the rich.

For those of you unaware of the historical background, Mussolini was deposed and arrested in July of 1943, after which Italy negotiated an armistice with the Allies. The Germans intervened, taking all of Italy's major cities, and liberating Mussolini, who was then established as Hitler's puppet in a "new" Italy (RSI), which was headquartered in Saló in Northern Italy, near Venice. This lasted until 1945, when Il Duce was killed. The German-controlled Italy of the 1943-45 period was called the "Republic of Saló".

Many people claim that this was predicted by Nostradamus in this quattrain:

Weep, people of Milan, Lucca, Florence.
When your great Duc will climb on the chariot.
To move the seat closer to Venice,
When the Roman columns will be replaced.

The film is in four parts, following a "Circle of Hell" structure loosely patterned after Dante's "Inferno".

1) Young people are rounded up by the Fascists. Some are made into collaborators, others into prisoners. All are transported to Salo, to serve as the slaves of four perverted nobles.

2) Circle of Mania: the young people are used for the carnal pleasure of the nobles.

3) Circle of Shit: the young people are forced to consume and otherwise engage in contact with various excremental functions, further degrading them and establishing their complete subservience to the nobles.

4) Circle of Blood: the young people are tortured and killed in grisly ways, thus showing that they are not even considered human by their masters, but rather creatures whose very existence is solely for the amusement of the powerful.

This film has been banned and censored for years, and is recognized as one of the most perverted of all time. That's somewhat misleading. It isn't really as shocking as people have made out. The young people are naked all the time, there are many rapes, and there is some explicit shit-eating. In the final portion, there are some flesh-burnings, a scalping, a tongue removal, and an eye-gouging. On the other hand, the sex is not XXX explicit, in that there are no erections or penetrations or even gynecological camera angles. The only explicit gore is the scalping, which looks realistic. Other than that, you can see much more explicit gore in the Italian cannibal films.

It was to be Pasolini's last film. He was murdered in still-unexplained circumstances shortly after the film was completed. The resultant publicity, as well as the bans and censorhip, gave Salo a mystique which it did not otherwise merit, and transformed an obscure art film into a coveted and widely discussed cult item.

The prestigious British Film Institute, perhaps to atone for the film's long banishment from the UK, has dedicated a very comprehensive website to this film, including comments by the director, excerpts from Sade's book, and a history of the film's distribution. Here is the main page, and here is a history of the censorship of the film in the UK and elsewhere.

• Thumbnails (1, 2, 3)
• Images (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47)

2 Fast 2 Furious (1975)

The critics really split on this one. Roger Ebert said three stars while James Berardinelli offered a half of a star and a nomination as one of the worst movies of the year.

Depends on what you expect from a film. It's a brain dead megabudget ($76 million) sequel with preposterous action and cheap thrills. Makes no sense at all, but has lots of adrenaline, and is very slick and colorful. Pure popcorn. Lots of people liked it, and it did $127 million at the box.

I thought the best review was offered by - John Venable, SUPERCALA.COM, who said,  "It's ridiculous and knows it. It's the Dukes of Hazzard for the rave/glowstick generation."

No nudity.

• Devon Aoki - bikini
• Eva Mendes - bikini

Mailbox:

Uncle Scoopy,

I think personal views of a movie all depends on your frame of mind while watching it for the first time. If a movie is hyped too much,  there's no way it can live up to your expectations (eg. "Citizen Kane").  If you go into a movie thinking it's going to suck, it probably will  (look at all the reviews for "Gigli"). If you saw "Dumb and Dumber" for the first time while in a somber mood, you probably thought it was
shallow and stupid. If you were giddy the first time you saw "Unforgiven" you probably thought it was slow and boring. But if you were the mood for a laugh-out-loud comedy or a slow, tense western, respectively, your view of these movies would dramatically change.

The best way to watch a movie for the first time is with no expectations (not the same as low expectations) and in a genre for which you are in the mood. The first time I saw Austin Powers, I had no idea what it was  (I had been in Europe for 4 months), except that it was a Mike Myers comedy. I liked his movies from "Wayne's World" to "So I Married an Axe Murderer" and was in the mood for a comedy. I immediately fell in love with it. Contrariwise, I first saw "A Clockwork Orange" within hours of being in a car accident with my sister (the car was totalled and she was taken to hospital briefly for observation). It was about 5 years before I could watch that movie again.

OK, there's my 2 cents.

DS
 

OTHER CRAP:

• A group of libertarians announced a project Wednesday to get 20,000 Americans to move to New Hampshire and work to transform it into a 'free state' with fewer laws, smaller government and greater liberty.

• 70% of Americans want an independent counsel to probe White House leak. Hell, save some money. Give me ten bucks, and lock me in a room with Bob Novak for a half an hour.

• Rush Limbaugh's football career is over

• Elle Macpherson has checked into a rehab clinic. With picture.

• Movie Criticism for the Retarded - the Top 10 Scariest Movie Clowns

• Citing the results of an unrestricted online poll, Gov. Jim Doyle Tuesday overruled an advisory panel and told the U.S. Mint to put a cow, wheel of cheese and ear of corn on Wisconsin's commemorative quarter. The Governor apparently didn't realize that many, perhaps most, of the votes for that design were from non-Wisconsinites who were making fun of Wisconsin. My vote, for example. (The poll allowed anyone, from any state or country, to vote as many times as he liked.)

• Actress Halle Berry announced Wednesday she has separated from her husband, R&B singer Eric Benet, after less than three years of marriage

• Zeta's lookin' good in Intolerable Cruelty premiere

• DRUDGE REPORT 2003: "BLITZ ON RUSH LIMBAUGH TO INTENSIFY ON THURSDAY WITH CHARGES OF DRUG ABUSE... AFTER DAY OF INTENSE MEDIA BASHING ON LIMBAUGH SPORTS QUOTES /// NATIONAL ENQUIRER TO ALLEGE IN BOMBSHELL REPORT: 'RUSH LIMBAUGH IN DRUG RING'... HOUSEKEEPER WORE WIRE IN SET-UP, ... ENQUIRER ALLEGES ABUSE OF TENS OF THOUSANDS OF PILLS... NEW YORK DAILY NEWS SET TO SPLASH PAGE ONE THURSDAY, NEWSROOM SOURCES TELL DRUDGE. "

• Rumor has it that the Mouseketeer Queen is on the cover of Esquire, wearing no pants, duplicating a famous Angie Dickinson pose!

• Minnesota woman still can't believe what the postal carrier brought her last week -- a postcard mailed 34 years ago. I can understand her surprise. That's pretty damned quick delivery by Minnesota standards.

• People assume Tarantino is drunk because he babbles incoherently on Leno. In reality, babbling incoherently is a tradition among film directors. He's just the new Antonioni.

• Weekly World News: Elvis spotted at Graceland

• Mouseketeer in Green Top with Very Nice Pokies

• Bustamante's Campaign Implodes: "She (Bustamante's sister) strapped on a burrito to her loins and called for white men to come up on stage, take a bite out of the burrito and absolve themselves of 500 years of the white man's guilt." Hey, now I wish I lived there so I could vote for him!

• The poverty level for a family of 4 in the Bay Area is more than $70,000!

• Colin Farrell details his former drug use. "I ended up on a shrink's couch, and he told me to write down how much I did in a week - 20 [tabs of Ecstasy], 4 grams of coke, 6 of speed, half an ounce of hash, three bottles of Jack Daniel's, 12 bottles of red wine, 60 pints," he tells Radio Times magazine. "And 40 [cigarettes] a day."

• URL says it all: InvestInMyChest.com.

• BS - How To Build An Atom Bomb at home with just ordinary household ingredients, like table salt and 50 pounds of weapons-grade Plutonium

• Tom Mabe telephones the telemarketers at their convention

• Pentagon to order a blimp 25 times size of Goodyear's.

• "Max" Tops List Of Most Popular Dog Names In NYC

• Houston Texans - Cheerleaders

• Sam Raimi gearing up for Spiderman 2

• Is Madonna's new video a blatant rip-off? Guy Bourdin's estate seems to think so, and The Smoking Gun has the dope.

• Wow! Frodo could have saved a lot of time with Mapquest!

• Authorities were trying to determine whether a man actually was bitten by a rattlesnake in a Wal-Mart, as he claimed.

   

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 inclusion in Other Crap

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 Lawdog or Junior or C2000 or Realist or ICMS or Mick Locke, or somebody else besides me)
• If there is no asterisk, I wrote it, but am too ashamed to admit it.

As close as The Gimp can figure, the following are the most capped women in The Funhouse with numbers greater than 80 are:

Actress	Number of movies	Number of times capped
Kari Wuhrer	19	121
Nicole Kidman	9	106
Sophie Marceau	19	14
Rosanna Arquette	16	96
Shannon Tweed	30	94
Julie Strain	51	91
Jennifer J Leigh	14	88
Kate Winslet	7	83

A couple of things stand out...

Kari Wuhrer has no movie capped twenty times. Her highest number, for Vivid, is 14. But she has eight movies capped at least ten times, which is remarkably consistent. Kate Winslet beats that record, however, as every movie in which she has appeared in the buff has been capped ten times (recall the median number of times a movie has been capped is two). Kate is the Hank Aaron of nekkid babes.

Nicole Kidman's naked days are probably over, but if she made one more movie along the lines of Dead Calm, she would take over first place.

Sophie Marceau and Rosanna Arquette are exceptional for overlapping reasons.

Most of Sophie's movies are not available as Region 1 DVDs, which means the large cohort of North American cappers has difficulty capping them, yet she is close to second place. If and when those movies do come out in Region 1 or region-free formats, there is good reason to predict she will become number 1

Two of Rosanna's best performances (The Executioner's Song and The Wrong Man) are not available in DVD. When they do hit the market... and the Wrong Man is my personal pick for movie I would most like to see on DVD... Rosanna could make a serious push for first place.

Okay, enough of that bullshit. Today's stuff is more of me digging out from movies capped for other reasons. In fact, something of a theme pops out: these are the babes, most often capped because they appeared in movies with A-list nakkid women. Think of them as going along for the ride.

Top among them has to be Debra Cole, because every time Jennifer Connelly has been capped in The Hot Spot, there was Debra. In what may be a first, I have isolated Debra and cut out Jennifer, even though that should be a high crime or misdemeanor.

• Debra Cole

Second are the list are two women from Eyes Wide Shut, Julienne Davis and Lisa Leone. I realize there is a third, masked woman, but I never got that far into the movie because it was so unremittingly, self-consciously and overwhelmingly gawd-awful. Thought I'd never say that about a Kubrick movie.

• Julienne Davis (1, 2)
• Lisa Leone

I suppose, in aggregate, the legion of nekkid babes in Showgirls has been capped most often as side dishes to Elizabeth Berkley. First among them is Gina Gershon.

• Gina Gershon

Other familiar names in that group include Rena Riffel and Bobbie Phillips. Rena has the distinction of appearing in both high-profile stripper movies, Showgirls and Striptease. I more than kinda like her and, when I first saw it, was tres impressed with her gynocam performance (collage 1).

• Rena Riffel (1, 2, 3)
• Bobbie Phillips (1, 2)

Two women who had nice topless scenes in Showgirls were Bethany Chesser and Maria Diaz, playing showgirl hopefuls. Dame Elizabeth appears topless in Maria's first collage.

• Bethany Chesser
• Maria Diaz (1, 2)

Joining Bobbie Phillips as primo backstage eye candy were Dante McCarthy and the ever popular, never to be forgotten Uncredited Stripper. Long may she live.

• Dante McCarthy (1, 2)
• Uncredited Stripper

HUFFINGTON DROPS OUT OF RACE
Leaving In A Huff - Tuesday, TV pundit and anti-SUV campaigner Arianna Huffington, who was pulling about 2 percent in the polls, withdrew from the California governor's race. She didn't throw her support to someone else but said she'd work against the recall because it's the "one way now to defeat Arnold Schwarzenegger."