Friday


Notes
NOTE TO ALL: Scoopy Jr writes the bulk of the commentary these days, while Uncle Scoopy continues to add his daily column, Contact junior by writing junior@scoopy.com. Contact Scoopy by writing unclescoopy@msn.com. Contact Tuna by writing tuna@scoopy.com Send submissions to scoopy@scoopy.net

Books
Videos
DVD
Electronics
Search by keywords:
In Association with Amazon.com
Use this search device to seek additional information from amazon.com about any of the books or movies you read about here.
Site News
The second half of the Volume S update is now complete - about 550 more additions, making 1000 new ones added to the volume in the past two weeks.

Volume S now includes an astronomical 3000 entries

Entertainment News
Fromt the mail bag....

Here's another article which I found at www.AnotherUniverse.com. However, I don't know if you would classify this one as funny, scary, or just plain stupid. Fortunately, the "Daily Buzz" also gives credit to where the information was found (so you know it's not just some guy making it up).

-D

Travolta Ready For Battlefield Earth 2

John Travolta would like to make a sequel to last summer's box office bust, Battlefield Earth. When asked last week whether he wanted to make a sequel to the film based on L. Ron Hubbard's science fiction novel, Travolta replied, "Sure. Yeah."

"The bottom line is that I feel really good about it," said Travolta, who was out promoting his latest flick, the comedy Lucky Numbers. "Here I was taking big chances, breaking a new genre. ŠThe book stood for something classic and this [sequel] hopefully will too."

The Saturday Night Fever and Pulp Fiction star seemed nonplussed by Battlefield Earth's poor box office performance and that fact film critics universally panned it.

"I am so thrilled, believe it or not, at the outcome because I didn't believe I could get it done," Travolta said. "When I felt better about everything was when George Lucas and Quentin Tarantino and a lot of people that I felt knew what they were doing, saw it and thought it was a great piece of science fiction."

"My whole career has been based on trying something new," he added. "If I don't try something new, I worry."

--E! Online/Reuters

In the immortal words of Count Floyd..."Pretty scary, eh kids?"

Tuna
"Octopussy" Update

The Funhouse has the best and brightest members on the Internet. Not only was Martin Harris able to identify the Unknown as Tina Hudson, but he pointed out that MGM did release Never Say Never Again, but not as part of the boxed sets. Since it features one of my personal favorites, Kim Basinger, look for images next week.

  • Tina Hudson (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8)

    "The Jerk" Revisited

    This was a very good day for email. Ken also wrote to tell me that Never Say Never Again was available on DVD. Spotting it in a local video store was evidence of a good eye, but the second half of his message removed all doubt. It seems the motorcycle stunt rider (Catlin Adams) in The Jerk had a nipple slip. Sure enough, I found it right where Ken said it would be. Looking frame by frame, her costume was on our side twice. The scene is at night, the scene was dark, and the exposure was only a few frames. Good catch, Ken. I will make no apologies for being a huge Steve Martin fan, whether he is playing Steve Martin, or actually creating a character. This is one of his best in my opinion. For more information on this film, look for my review in the archives.

  • Thumbnails

  • Catlin Adams (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9)

    "The Serpent and the Rainbow" (1988)

    The Serpent and the Rainbow (1988) is directed by Wes Craven, and shows it in the excellent imagery and special effects. It is a fictionalized account of a real Ph. D. in ethnobotany, Wade Davis, who studied voodoo in Haiti during the reign of Papa Doc Duvalier to learn the secret, and possible medical applications, of a zombification powder. Craven has created a visually effective film, and concocted a plot that I enjoyed. Dr. Dennis Allen (Bill Pullman) is sent to Haiti by a pharmaceutical company to find the secret of the zombification powder. His contact in Haiti is a local psychiatrist, Marielle Duchamp (Cathy Tyson), who grew up in Haiti and has one foot in science and the other in Voodoo. She is also a radical opposed to the dictator Duvalier's regime.

    I enjoyed this. attractive locations, good photography and good art direction are always a plus, but I also enjoyed the exploration of voodoo, and the love story sub-plot between Duchamp and Pullman. Maltin rates it at 2 stars, but admits that people who like Craven will call it a three. Ebert must like Craven. USMDB rating is respectable 5.9/10.

  • Thumbnails

  • Cathy Tyson (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10)
  • TomCat

    The first two movies from TomCat's Renata Dancewitz collection, which includes the work of others

    This is a joint Polish-German project called "Der Teufel und die Jungfrau" in German. (The devil and the virgin). This is a short film, less than 30 minutes long, about an innocent girl, who we see bathing naked in a stream. A mysterious stranger shows up, a quiet man who does nothing but paint. One day he shows the young girl his painting of her bathing naked. After she loosens up, he proceeds to educate her about ... um ... life outside the farm. Who could he be? Oh, I don't know, let's see ... let me think .... could it be ...........SATAN!

    various captures from scanman and @b@, and some newspaper articles scanned

  • Dancewicz by @B@ (1, 2, 3)
  • Tom Cat's Dancewicz (1, 2)

    Renata Dancewicz in "Polkownik Kwiatkowski" (1995)

    Renata starts out as the girlfriend of a polish solder, Captain Kwiatkowski, just after the second world war. The new Polish communist government takes over, and life changes.

    Some years later, Kwiatkowski comes back into the picture and introduces himself as Colonel Kwiatkowski, a vice-minister. He is able to help many people and corrects some of the stupidity of the new authorities but eventually he is captured and imprisoned.

    Renata co-stars with Marek Kondrat in both of these movies.

  • Renata Dancewicz (1, 2)
  • Renata Dancewicz by Scanman (1, 2, 3, 4, 5)
  • Glenda Jackson in "The Music Lovers" (1, 2)
  • Johnny Web

    The Trigger Effect (1996)

    A film more notable for what it might have been rather than what it was.

    One of the most brilliant things about that famous TV series "The Twilight Zone" was that people were often afraid of nothing. And that was more frightening that the reality of any plastic monster. As an example, filled with unexplained dread, people would walk through empty streets. When in the right mood, people are terrified by every curtain blown by the wind in an upstairs window, by what might be hidden by every approaching corner. The fear would be fueled by paranoia.

    I can't remember anybody since then who was as effective at exploiting unfounded or unrealized fear as Mr Serling, but this movie tries to recreate that sense of palpable tension that Serling loved.

    It starts in the normalcy of everyday irritations. People cut in front of other people in line, spill coffee on other people, carelessly bump into people, talk too loud in the theater. People get irritated, they scare other people, or they are scared by other people. Kyle Maclachlan is terrified of two tough-looking black guys who call his wife a bitch for saying "shh" to them in the theater. The couple moves to different seats. We can tell that the black guys have forgotten the whole incident by the end of the movie, but Kyle is afraid to walk by them. Kyle walks to his car, and there is no reason for him to be afraid, but fear is in the air. The shadowy underground garage is filled with tension. Why? Do they think the two black guys will attack them? What the hell are they afraid of ? The answer is nothing. Nothing happens.

    The irritation and fear demonstrated in the prologue at these miniscule things is the director's way of introducing a question. How irritated would we get at each other if something really bad happened?

    It does.

    A mysterious blackout occurs, and for reasons nobody understands, it affects phone lines, and all radio and television stations, so there is no communication. Nobody understands what is going on. Rumors travel like spreading brush fires. It's the commies, the martians, whatever ..... The social fabric starts to decay. People start to ignore the normal conventions of society. There is some looting, some excessive gunplay, some more paranoia. The nights are particularly frightening. People don't trust each other. Is their fear founded? Is it paranoia? Because there are some legitimate reasons to be afraid, the fear builds upon itself, and people find more reasons to be afraid and distrustful.

    Great set up, abetted by spooky and imaginative directorial techniques. This was the first film that David Koepp ever directed, but he shows some tremendous polish. The guy has some knock-out talent, and a wonderful sense of what is ominous.

    • The POV shot. But whose POV is it?
    • The shadow barely glimpsed behind the curtain. Or was it there at all?
    • The innocent knife. But whose hand is it in?

    Koepp is the master of the red herring! In fact he shows almost too much polish at this, as if every scene were too slick and too contrived. Koepp has been a writer, and a good one (Carlito's Way, e.g.). He's worked with most of Hollywood's top directors, Spielberg more than once, and he has studied them well. On top of the rich pictorialization he learned from them, he adds his own sense of mood and symbols. It's a great looking film and maintains the tension throughout.

    Only one problem. He doesn't know how to get out of it. His own script falls apart in a ho-hum conclusion to a rich set-up, like a ball team loading the bases then failing to score. So it's not an especially good film, but it is a very promising one.

    Koepp later directed Stir of Echoes, which also impressed me in a lot of ways, but which also just barely missed the mark. I hope he doesn't get discouraged by his lack of a big hit, and keeps at this sort of film, because I think he's going to get it just right pretty soon, and it's going to be a great ride when he does. I wonder what he could do with a good Stephen King story?


    No nudity, but a see-through bra. See below for additional comments.

  • Shue (1, 2, 3)

    Box Office: $4 million

    IMDB summary: 5.8 out of 10.

    DVD info from Amazon. There was a big disappointment in the DVD. There is a scene where Elisabeth Shue takes her nipple out of her bra, and the nipple could be seen in the 4:3 video tape. The anamorphic 1.85 widescreen DVD is absolutely stunning, but the nipple got cut off the bottom of the screen!

    There are no major extras, just the usual bios, brief production notes and a trailer.

    Joe Gould's Secret (2000)

    Another new release this week, again with no nudity, but well worth a few words.

    I've decided to spoil this "secret" for you because only 1% of you will ever watch it, and that 1% will love it just as much as you would if you didn't know the secret, because the real pleasure for you will be in the telling.

    99% of you will find this movie too literary and actionless to watch, and you shouldn't regret missing the movie, because it isn't your kind of material. But by missing the movie you'll miss out on a good and completely true story. So I'm gonna tell it.

    Joe Mitchell was a real person, a writer for the New Yorker in the 1940's, who enjoyed telling stories about the curiosities and everyday wonders to be found in the streets of New York. He loved the rhythms of the city and the voices of the people who wandered its streets. One of the greatest treasures he unearthed was Joe Gould, who was not a literary composite or something like that, but a homeless man of real bone and marrow who wandered through Greenwich Village. Gould claimed to be writing a million word oral history of our time, in which he recorded the voices of the people he talked to, some twenty thousand conversations, with some of his own narrative providing a bridge between chapters.

    Gould was a remarkable man, an eccentric Harvard graduate with an obviously superior mind who could convince people of the merit of his unpublished book because when asked to, he could recall chapters verbatim, and the stories he would spin for hours showed astounding gifts. He had Damon Runyon's knack for colorful street-savvy characters and dialogue, as well as the precise and elegant prose of a literary master like Faulkner or Thomas Wolfe.

    Gould had even managed to get short excerpts published in literary journals, and had earned the praise of such masters as e.e. cummings.

    Well, the magazine writer befriended Gould, and in 1942 he wrote a New Yorker story about the old eccentric and his "oral history", and that story made Gould a cause celebre among the literary and social set for a short time, at least until the Fifth Avenue set got tired of the eccentric smelly old man behind the legend. Eventually even Mitchell became tired of Gould, who was a lonely garrulous guy whose nature demanded a high-maintenance friendship.

    Well, the famous history never did materialize. Every time someone got interested in it, Gould would seem to find some bizarre reason why he couldn't produce the manuscript. Twenty years later, Mitchell confessed in a second article that although Gould could talk about it masterfully, he never set the oral history down on paper.

    Well, I suppose if he did, it wouldn't have been oral any more, would it?

    There is more to the story. Mitchell didn't betray Gould's secret until years and years after Gould's death in 1952. Even from his deathbed, the enigmatic Gould left behind all kinds of tantalizing clues about the whereabouts of the History, and Mitchell participated in some of the literary scavenger hunts for it in the next twelve years, all the while knowing that it was apocryphal, but never sharing his knowledge. He didn't reveal the secret until 1964, in "Joe Gould's Secret", the last column he would ever write for the New Yorker, in which he also apologized for having glossed over Gould's flaws in creating his legend. After all those years, Mitchell was compelled to present a more rounded picture of the often disagreeable old eccentric he had lionized. He wanted to clear up all the misconceptions he had promulgated about Gould, to apologize for his deception, and to question his own journalistic integrity in deliberately failing to distinguish between fact and legend.

    More interesting, it seems to me, is the fact that Mitchell seems to have confirmed that the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle applies to journalism even more than to science. The principle says that there is no study without interference, that the very fact of studying anything changes it. In this case, Mitchell didn't just write Gould's story. He significantly changed Gould's life by writing about it.

    Ian Holm played Joe Gould. And he did so brilliantly, flaws and all. I think he has become my favorite actor. This and his performances in Dreamchild and The Sweet Hereafter must be some of the most affecting ever put on film.

    Stanley Tucci directed and played Joe Williams.

    The movie has a languorous literary pace, filled with many actual recitations from Gould's prose, as well as various other works of literature and attempted literature (the pretensions of the literary wannabees form a minor sub-plot). Tucci is not a director in love with the medium of film and its possibilities. He is instead a literary kind of guy enamored of the source material, and he uses film not as an end, but as a means to share his wonderful story with more people. He also has a fine respect for old New York and the accuracy of period details. The photography tries to take the same studied pleasure from the sights of New York as Gould's words take from the people. This kind of pacing means that this will not be everyone's kind of movie, but I feel that those who like it will like it a lot.

    An afterthought. Williams wrote his last piece, the second Gould piece, the great confession, in 1964. He continued to come to work at his desk at the New Yorker for the next 32 years until his death.

    He never published another word.


    No female nudity. Ian Holm and a rag-tag bunch of guys were shown naked in a mission for the homeless.


    Box Office: It never made it to more than 30 screens, and took in only $650,000.

    IMDB summary: 6.4 out of 10. That's pretty low for a project with lofty ambitions. Contrast that to 81 from Apollo, and 82 from Apollo's members. I think people's perception of this movie depends on whether they are more swayed by the elegance of the source material or the drabness of the direction. Ebert gave it three and a half stars and near canonization, declaring that the slow unadorned pacing was necessary to convey the anguish inherent in the material. Berardinelli gave it two and a half, and focused on Tucci's uninspired direction of a great yarn that should have made a better film.

    DVD info from Amazon.

  • Graphic Response
  • Mimi Craven (the former Mrs. Wes Craven) playing a junkie stripper in 1996's "Dog Watch"
  • Brainscan
    Comments also by Brainscan:

    Adriana DeMarco
    (1, 2)

    Aldine Muller
    (1, 2, 3)

    Kristen Pazik
    (1, 2, 3)

    So you managed to keep the world afloat while I was in the desert Southwest. Yet I saw on Thursday you were lamenting the slow pace of submissions to the Funhouse. Allow me to do something 'bout that.

    Adriana DeMarco and Aldine Muller are the latest Brazilian babes I've scanned from the pages of Sexy. And I don't care how much competition there is for their attention and favors, the women in Brazil make that country number 1 on the Brainscan future travel charts.

    Kristen Pazik showed up in the pages of Italian GQ; an attempt at a babelfish translation suggests she is American, despite the sound of her name, and that she is something of a fashion model. But then babelfish makes the Gettysburg address to sound as though it were a recipe for turnip salad.

    ICMS
    Comments by ICMS:

    I've changed my logo a bit ; I've added the Belgian flag to it to indicate that Flanders is part of Belgium and I also included the American flag as a tribute to the country and the man that host my contributions. I think you and the Fun House did more for Flemish nudity on the web than any other website. Let's go on to the bare facts now.

    First I have a scan of a stark naked Alessandra Mussolini from Novella 2000. I found the picture while going through my archives. It shows the Duce's granddaughter stark naked in a 1990 American-Israelian movie called "Back to freedom / Ha-derech L'Ein Harod". She's naked under a waterfall with Tony Peck. She tried to have this scene cut at 1998 film festival but the producer left the scene in saying that he used a body-double. She claimed that it made her feel hurt as a wife, a mother and a member of parliament (for the extreme right-wing party Alleanza nazionale ). So we now have a producer stating that this is a body double on one side and on the other side we have a former actress saying it was her. Who should we believe and more important, does this look like a double to you? I don't think it's a double unless she has a twin sister no-one ever heard of. Does some-one have vidcaps of this film or has somebody seen it?

    Now it's time to go to Flanders. Since last year we have a government without the christian-democrat party (also called the Catholics over here) for the first time in 41 years and guess what happens. Our celebrities start taking off their clothes! Coincidence?

    Here we have Miss Belgium 1990 Katia Alens undressing for a new calendar on the Spanish island of Lanzarote.

    Last year Flemish porn king Dennis Black Magic started doing respectable nudity too, beginning with that Tanja Dexters millennium calendar, well he's continuing in that direction with a new calendar. This time he managed to undress Ann Vervoort, the ex-lead singer of the group Milk Inc. On TV they only showed a couple of negatives but I used the "invert colors" possibility of PhotoPaint and voilŕ, the colors are all normal again. Both Katia and Ann come from the "docusoap" Bloot en meedogenloos (naked and mercyless), an allusion to the Flemish title of The bold and the beautiful, Mooi and meedogenloos (beautiful and mercyless).

    From Spoed, the Flemish ER, we have Truus Druyts. You can see Truus' back side in the back issues and the encyclopedia.

    Also from Spoed is Vicky Florus. Its cocky doctor is always on the lurk for some fun with women. And you see he knows very well why roosters don't have hands, because hens don't have breasts.

    And now we've come to our version of Big Brother. I never would have thought they would find people willing to do this in Flanders. We've already had pictures of Nathalie on the Fun House before. Katrijn, who made love under the sheets to a cop before the camera, was voted out last Sunday. And then there's Betty (1, 2) the one Flanders and the media can't get enough of. Betty (24) comes from a very Catholic region (West Flanders) and she is the wife of a butcher and mother of a 6 year old daughter. She's certainly no saint, she had a vibrator in her suit-case, talks openly about masturbating, wants to pose for the rabbit mag and behaves quite intimately with one of the other male members. Her husband Marc now even has a daily column in a newspaper and in it he's crying foul most of the time. He probably has a lot of explaining to do in his butchery. I hope their marriage is strong enough to survive all this.

    That's it for now although I could easily fill an other contribution with Flemish celebs only. Since this new government directors now have to beg Flemish actresses to put some clothes on :-) They've become real exhibitionists.

    Trainer
    Bettina Kramer Topless scenes from the German TV series "Hinter Gittern".
    Doreen Jacobi Shower scene vidcaps from "Der Runner".
    Eva Mannschott In "Sonderdezernat K3"
    Gudrun Landgrebe Topless, bubble bath scene from "Eine Sünde zuviel"
    Marion Mitterhammer More topless and aquatic theme scenes from "Eine Sünde zuviel".
    Yvonne de Bark I guess baths and showers are the overall theme for these German 'caps. Here is more fun in the tub from "Der Träumer und das wilde Mädchen".
    and ...
    Katherine Heigl
    (1, 2, 3)
    From ZonononZor, 3 fantastic collages of the voluptuous young actress featuring images from her recent Maxim and FHM appearances.
    Kiera Chaplin Comments by Zon:
    Who? Charlie Chaplin's granddaughter of course! Nothing comic about this lady... she's a model with the "Next" agency and has plans to try & make her own name in acting.
    Kathleen Turner Another excellent collage. This time paying tribute to Kathleen's performance in 1981's "Body Heat".
    Penélope Cruz A huge collage by CL from 1992's "Jamón, jamón". In these frames we see one very lucky guy getting up close and personal with Penélope's breasts.
    Lynx Girls Scan by Jenz.
    Terri Garber From the 1984 movie "Toy Soldiers". We're not positive, but this may be her only nude scene.
    The Funnies
    Political Humor from Number 6:

    "My Incredible Journey"
    The Life and Times of Albert Arnold Gore Jr.

    I'm Al Gore, and I'd like to tell you about myself. I know a lot about hardship, because I came into this world as a poor black child in a tiny town in the backwoods of Tennessee. I was born in a log cabin that I built with my own hands.

    I taught myself to read by candlelight and helped support my 16 brothers and sisters by working summers as a deck hand on a Mississippi River steamboat. My mother taught me the value of education, so every day, I would walk 5 miles to a one-room schoolhouse. I was a mischievous, fun loving scamp, though I never dreamed that one day, my youthful escapades would serve as the inspiration for "Huckleberry Finn."

    After getting my high school diploma, I took a job in a hot, dirty textile mill. I was so appalled at the treatment of the workers there that I organized a union. Later, that experience inspired a movie - which is why, to this day, my close friends at the AFL-CIO call me "Norma Rae." When word got out what an 18-year old factory worker had done, Harvard called and offered me a scholarship. I captained Harvard's football team to four consecutive national championships, and won the Heisman Trophy. But there was a war going on, and I felt I had to serve my country. So I enlisted in the U. S. Army and went to Vietnam. I was deeply opposed to the war, but I did my duty as a soldier and came back home with the Navy Cross and the Croix de Guerre.

    When I got back, I took a long journey across this great land of ours. I've crossed the deserts bare, man, I've breathed the mountain air, man, I've traveled, I've done my share, man, I've been everywhere. And the people I met at truckstops and campgrounds and homeless shelters on that journey all said the same thing: "Al, we need you in Washington." I knew they were right, but first I had to take care of some other business -- building the World Trade Center, founding the United Nations, doing the clinical research that found the cure for cancer, and writing Shakespeare's plays. I was so busy I just didn't have the time to finish either my law degree or divinity degree at Vanderbilt.

    Finally, I deferred to the demands of the people of Tennessee and allowed them to elect me to the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate. And then one winter day nearly nine years ago, for no personal reason at all, I answered the call of the people once again and took the oath of office as Vice President of the United States.

    Since then, I've been part of the most successful administration in American history. Many times Bill Clinton has been pondering some grave decision and has asked me what to do. And when I would give him my thoughts, he would invariable say, "Of course. That's brilliant. Why didn't I think of that?"

    During the darkest days of the impeachment battle, the president told me he only wished he had listened when I told him to stay away from that dark-haired intern.

    So after I decided to run for president, I sat down with him and asked if he had suggestions about how to conduct my campaign. And Bill Clinton gave me a few simple words of advice -- words I'll never forget. He looked me in the eye and he said, "Al, just tell the truth, it's always worked for me."




    Other goodies, Submitted by S.D:

    This one fits into the Darwin Awards theme - I'm sure this could have made it.

    This is an accident report, which was printed in the newsletter of the British equivalent of the Workers' Compensation Board. This is the bricklayer's report, a true story.

    Dear Sir:
    I am writing in response to your request for additional information in Block #3 of the accident report form. I put "Poor Planning" as the cause of my accident. You asked for a fuller explanation and I trust the following details will be sufficient.

    I am a bricklayer by trade. On the day of the accident, I was working alone on the roof of a new six-story building. When I completed my work, I found I had some bricks left over which, when weighed later were found to be slightly in excess of 500lbs. Rather than carry the bricks down by hand, I decided to lower them in a barrel by using a pulley, which was attached to the side of the building at the sixth floor. Securing the rope at ground level, I went up to the roof, swung the barrel out and loaded the bricks into it. Then I went down and untied the rope, holding it tightly to ensure a slow descent of the bricks. You will note in block #11 of the accident report form that my weight is 135 lbs.

    Due to my surprise at being jerked off the ground so suddenly, I lost my presence of mind and forgot to let go of the rope. Needless to say, I proceeded at a rapid rate up the side of the building. In the vicinity of the third floor, I met the barrel which was now proceeding downward at an equally impressive speed. This explains the fractured skull, minor abrasions and the broken collarbone, as listed in Section 3 of the accident report form.

    Slowed only slightly, I continued my rapid ascent, not stopping until the fingers of my right hand were two knuckles deep into the pulley. Fortunately by this time I had regained my presence of mind and was able to hold tightly to the rope, in spite of the excruciating pain I was now beginning to experience.

    At approximately the same time, however, the barrel of bricks hit the ground and the bottom fell out of the barrel. Now devoid of the weight of the bricks, that barrel weighed approximately 50 lbs. I refer you again to my weight. As you might imagine, I began a rapid descent down the side of the building. In the vicinity of the third floor, I met the barrel coming up. This accounts for the two fractured ankles, broken tooth and severe lacerations of my legs and lower body.

    Here my luck began to change slightly. The encounter with the barrel seemed to slow me enough to lessen my injuries when I fell into the pile of bricks and fortunately only three vertebrae were cracked. I am sorry to report, however, as I lay there on the pile of bricks, in pain, unable to move, I again lost my composure and presence of mind and let go of the rope and I lay there watching the empty barrel begin its journey back onto me. This explains the two broken legs.


    Click Here!