Billy Zane's Sinking Ship Tetralogy: Part Two (1997)

Sometimes referred to as Titanic

This is a new special edition DVD. I was going to pass on it, but I just couldn't refuse the price: $19.99 for a 3-disk set that must set the record for the most material ever. Two full length commentary tracks, 45 minutes of deleted scenes (you mean it was supposed to be even LONGER?), some 2000 still images (set photos and artwork). Seven featurettes. More. I don't know how long it would take you to go through all this. A mighty long time!

I like Titanic, even though it is just about universally acclaimed as the most overrated movie ever made. If I were James Cameron, I would be proud of this achievement (not to mention my bank account). Oh, sure it's a chick movie. I think I wrote one time that it is the Monet of movies - girls under 18 rate it 8.6 at IMDb, while the hard-core movie audience (men 18-29) rates it only 6.6. Well, so fuckin' what? Guys 18-29 don't possess all possible wisdom and good taste. I like French Impressionism, and I like Titanic. I don't like every single thing about it, but I liked it enough to watch it again

Kate Winslet from the new DVD:
More Kate Winslet. *
* For reference, this is the full screen version from VHS, noteworthy because it shows Ms Winslet's entire bottom. The guy who did this collage, Kruger, has since disappeared from the imaging world, to my knowledge, but he was a wizard with VHS tapes.

Sex and the Teenage Mind (2002)

This is a "coming of age" story which is lodged in the same general vein as the American Pie stories (it even uses the fantasy cop/stripper - a year earlier than American Wedding!), but far from the motherlode.

Career Girls (1997) is a quirky UK film about two ex college roommates and best friends who reunite after having been apart for six years, and having chosen different career paths. The film alternates between their present day reunion, during which they keep running into people they knew in college; and flashbacks to their college years, when they shared a flat and more than one boyfriend.

I must admit I had to resort to subtitles to understand the accents some of the time, but otherwise the film had remarkable pace for being so light on plot, and many moments had me chuckling. This character-driven comedy works largely due to an award-winning performance from Katrin Cartlidge, as the outgoing one of the pair. (Linda Steadman is the quieter one.) If someone had asked me about the wisdom of making a film about two former classmates who have gotten pretty much nowhere in their lives, and spend the entire film talking and remembering, I would have been dubious. However, I found myself enjoying this Mike Leigh effort, and spending time with two likeable people.

Katrin Cartlidge

"The L Word" Season 2

Finale, episode 13 (pictures in yesterday's edition):

Bette and Tina get back together, and Tina has her baby in a difficult delivery. Bette's father dies, and she is fired at her fathers memorial service. Jenny goes off the deep end, and cuts herself on the legs with a razor. Shane and Carmen start dating. Mia Kirshner does full frontal during the title sequence, a continuation of the strip scene in the previous episode. Laurel Holliman shows nipples during her labor.

So what did a season of the L Word accomplish?

• Kit owns the Planet, and has it running well.
• Jenny got rid of her husband, and is floundering on her journey of self discovery.
• Tina has the baby, and she and Bette reunite.
• Bette seems to be unemployed.
• Shane is backing off from her "no relationships" position.
• Bette and Kit's father dies.
• Marina was written out of the script.

There was a lot of new music this season, and I am guessing that the core audience for this show enjoys it. The nudity seemed to be much lighter than the first season. There are several extra features that might be of some interest to fans of the show or the stars, but contain no new information nudity. Two of the episodes have commentary tracks.

1 Night in Paris (2004):

1 Night in Paris (2004) is the much-ballyhooed Paris Hilton sex video put together from private footage shot by Rick Salomon. Honestly, had this not been someone of the celebrity of Paris Hiton, nobody would care about it. Mr. Salomon really needs to learn how to focus a camera if he is going to continue his home movie making career.

The action only develops any heat at all in the final sequence where she is giving him head, and even then it feels like she is performing for the camera. It starts with the infrared clip that was all over the Internet, converted to very grainy B & W, then switches to color for a bathroom conversation with Paris in bra and panties, followed by a lengthy scene where he goes down on her, but all the interesting bits are hidden by a chair arm and her leg, and ends with the above mentioned knob job.

Paris really needs some moaning lessons. Several times while she was being licked, I wondered if she had fallen asleep. The video quality, even in the color footage, is not especially good, and the releasing company added a logo to every frame. Now that I have seen it, it is gift wrapped and on its way to someone who might appreciate it. I have no interest in watching it again. I suppose, if you call the genre amateur celebrity hard core sex tapes, this is at the top of the genre, hence a C+, but as a sex film, it is in the D range.

Paris

Post Coitum Animal Triste (1997)

This is a French film written and directed by, and staring Brigitte Roüan. It is purportedly the end of an affair from a woman's point of view. The title translates After Sex, animal Sadness, shortened to After Sex for the American market. It tells the story of a 40 something mother of two, a publishers agent who manages authors. Although married to a lawyer, she begins an affair with a young hydraulic engineer half her age, the roommate of one of her authors.

Predictably, the young man tires of her, and she goes to pieces. This is not a pretty site, but was way too melodramatic to be effective. Either the subtitles were far from good, or this film has very strange dialogue. The most glaring for me was a comment made for no apparent reason when the author stepped out of a phone booth, "I know someone who feeds maggots to a baby swallow."

Roüan shows breasts in several scenes.

IMDb readers have this at 6.2, indicating that some found this worth watching. Ebert was one of them at 3 stars, whereas Berardinelli was unimpressed at 2 stars. Although I never understood why the young engineer got into the affair with the much older woman in the first place, the sex scenes in the first part of the film had some heat. After that, I completely lost interest. Roüan was a capable enough actress, but turned into a very pathetic character. This is a C, the sort of very French love story that some people seem to enjoy.

 

Brigitte Roüan

Today we'll take a closer look at Michelle Phillips, also a well-known singer from The Mamas and The Papas. The good news is that you can see her in all her glory in these four clips (1, 2, 3, 4), the bad news for us guys is that the same is true for ballet dancer Rudolph Nureyev.

If someone is thinking of acquiring this film on DVD, it is available in the UK in a full screen version with prices starting at a moderate £ 5.99.

Tomorrow I'll be back with naked actress #2 from this movie.

BASEBALL UPSET ABOUT CHEESY MILK AD
Got Steroids? - Major League Baseball is upset about a "Got Milk?" TV ad that began running during the playoffs.  It pokes fun at the steroid scandal by showing a player being yanked from a game "after testing positive for a performance-enhancing substance," and then we see the coach pulling a carton of milk from his locker. An MLB spokesman said, "There is nothing humorous about steroid abuse" which "threatens America's youth."

*  Or about replacing steroids with milk, which threatens to make baseball even more boring.
*  He's right!  If only there was some way we could convince kids to, say, drink milk instead!


$20 PENTAGON ICE CUBE TRAY
The Vendor: Starbucks - A Knight-Ridder investigation of Pentagon purchasing found that they no longer take competitive bids, but are using middlemen in what is called the "prime vendor" system.  They claim it saves money, but the report found that it's costing taxpayers 20 percent more than the old system.  For instance, the Pentagon now pays $81 for $29 coffee makers, and $20 apiece for plastic ice cube trays the public can buy for 85 cents.

*  The Pentagon used to pay 20 percent less, or $16.
*  You don't even want to know how much they pay for the freezers.
*  The new system is like competitive bidding, only they take the highest bidder.


TRUMP PAID $25,000 A MINUTE TO TALK
Plus Expenses - Sunday at New York's Learning Annex, Donald Trump gave a one-hour lecture for which he was paid $1.5 million, or $25,000 a minute. The crowd paid $100 to $500 each to hear his advice.  He said to surround yourself with the best crew, but don't trust them; work with them, but make them respect you; and "when somebody challenges you, fight back.  Be brutal, be tough, just go get them."

*  I could get the same advice for $15 by buying an Eminem CD.
*  You could get this free by watching "The Apprentice," but then  you'd have to watch "The Apprentice."
*  That took about 15 seconds to read, but it was worth $600.
*  He then offered to lecture barber students for free, but they said no thanks.


 
WOMAN SUES FOR LACK OF ORGASMS
Sex And The Pity - Terra Noticias Populares reports that a woman in Jundiai, Brazil, is suing her partner for not giving her orgasms.  She filed a complaint with the police that as soon as he was done, he just stopped having sex.  A police spokesman said they're treating it as an ordinary complaint, and they'll look into it and let the judge decide.

*  The judge and the entire police force offered to do whatever it takes to give her satisfaction.
*  It's ironic: he has to give her orgasms to make her STOP screaming.
*  He's such a bad lover, it's criminal.
*  Let's hope the judge decides against her, or millions of women will file a class action suit.



BIG BRAINS CALENDAR
Bored Out Of Their Skulls - The University of Illinois is celebrating intellectual beauty with a 2006 calendar called "Big Brains."  It features MRI scans of the brains of faculty members and top students.  Some show appropriate areas; for instance, the scan of the school president's brain will show areas related to multi-tasking.  The head of the Biomedical Imaging Center said the models were very enthusiastic because "everyone loves a picture of their brain."

*  It is, after all, everyone's second-favorite organ.
*  You should see the frontal lobes on Miss February!
*  They were going to do a calendar featuring brain scans of supermodels, but the MRI machine couldn't find their brains.



LOUSY BOSSES CAN KILL YOU
"The Office" Really IS A Documentary - A 10-year study of male British civil servants by the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health found that bad bosses really can kill you.  The workers were polled on whether they thought their bosses were fair, honest, considered their viewpoint and shared info on decision-making.  Those who said yes had a 30 percent lower level of coronary heart disease than those who said no, possibly just because of the stress of having a lousy boss.

*  So if you killed your lousy boss, you could plead self-defense.
*  Or possibly because it was worth having a heart attack just to take sick leave.
*  Know who outlives everyone at the office?  Lousy bosses.
*  The most amazing part of the study: there were civil servants who answered "yes!"


BOOK TRANSLATES BIZARRE NEW JARGON
Already Out Of Date - British linguist Susie Dent says the Internet is fueling baffling new jargon, so she's written a book, "Fanboys and Overdogs," to help people translate it.  For instance, fanboys are comic book nuts, and overdogs are the ultimate top dogs.  A "rate tart" is someone who keeps switching credit cards to get a lower rate.  Someone whose job was sent to India was "Bangalored."  And a "machosexual" is an oaf who doesn't care about his appearance.

*  Most machosexuals work in telemarketing and get Bangalored.
*  A machosexual isn't a top dog or an overdog, just a dog.
*  "Getting bangalored" sounds like a lot more fun than it is.


DUI ATTORNEY SHOWS UP TO COURT DRUNK
He Has A Fool For A Client - Attorney Jerry Stewart of Benton, Arkansas, is facing two drunk driving charges and Monday, he was set to appeal two earlier convictions, but he was jailed for contempt when he showed up drunk.  He has to stay in jail until Thursday, when he's due back in court on an unrelated case.

*  He's some poor murder defendant's court-appointed lawyer.
*  Unrelated, other than it has something to do with drinking.
*  He's found a way to stay constantly busy in court without ever having to find any clients...He's eliminated the middle man!



BONADUCE LOVES HAVING HIS FACE PUNCHED
If Only Tom Cruise Felt This Way - Former "Partridge Family" star Danny Bonaduce told FHM magazine that even though he's sobered up, he still likes to brawl.  He said, "It's embarrassing, but I'm at my happiest when I'm getting punched in the face."

*  Fortunately, it happens whenever he sings.
*  Coincidentally, I'm also at my happiest when Danny Bonaduce is getting punched in the face.
*  Say, has he ever considered hanging out with Russell Crowe?  They could solve each other's problems!