Charlie's French Cinema Nudity site has been updated.

 

Slither is a horror comedy and it's one of those films where there is a great gap between the conservative, mainstream print reviewers and the genre aficionados. Ebert and Berardinelli weighed in at two stars and two and a half. The critics in the UK had about the same take on it, rating it just less than two and a half stars on the average. Yahoo voters rate it C+, a low score within Yahoo's softball system. The box office was tepid. It had a weak opening  - eighth place overall, third-best among new releases. Then it had a weaker follow-up - it dropped nearly 60% in its second week. It finished off with no staying power. The first two weeks were just about all she wrote. The multiplier (total gross divided by opening weekend gross) was only 2.0, which is about as low as a film can go without being named Gigli. Obviously it wasn't a film with wide appeal.

But lots of younger, hipper, more genre-oriented critics really took a liking to it. According to Rotten Tomatoes, it finished with 83% positive reviews, despite the negatives from the big guns, and the comment section at IMDb is filled with praises from genre lovers. People are not  comparing it to Shaun of the Dead or American Werewolf, but most genre fans feel that it belongs in the second tier of horror comedies with such films as The Re-Animator and Cemetery Man.

Slither is basically the ol' "spores from outer space enter human bodies" movie, kind of a comedy version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, via Night of the Creeps. It's fundamentally a higher-budget version of a Troma movie and the director, in fact, is a graduate of the Troma School of Advanced Film Studies, having apprenticed with Lloyd Kaufman for some years. I didn't much care for the film, but its appeal resides in comically exaggerated gore and lowbrow redneck-bashing humor, neither of which really pushes my hot buttons. The fact that it isn't my kind of movie doesn't mean you should blow it off. As a general rule, the younger you are the more likely you are to like it.

	IMDb score
Aged under 18	7.2
Aged 18-29	6.7
Aged 30-44	6.5
Aged 45 or more	6.3

Tania Saulnier provided the limited nudity. (Zipped .wmv)

Third party videos:

• Penelope Cruz in The Girl of Your Dreams. (Zipped .avis) This is a marvelous movie. The Spanish Casablanca. It incorporates all the best elements of Spanish filmmaking - colorful visuals, beautiful design, passion, heart, laughter, and even some serious ideas. Not to mention Penelope Cruz nekkid. (Movie House review.) It won the Best Picture Goya. If you speak Spanish, it is a must-see. Even if you don't, it's a must- see if you love films. Here is what I wrote:

"A highly developed aesthetic sensibility without descending either into maudlin sentimentality or pretentious, arty bullshit. The Girl of your Dreams is one of the most consciously stylized films I've ever seen, practically a 1930's stylistic wet dream, yet it uses the art only to support the characters, and never allows the aesthetics to overpower the humanity of the story. American filmmakers seem to have to choose between humanity and art, and their films seem to have one or the other, never both. The most artistic films of America seem to renounce life, not celebrate it. They could learn a lot from this film, and from director Fernando Trueba."

• Kate Winslet in Holy Smoke. (Zipped .avis) This was just before she realized that she had to do something about her weight. She was obese (nearly 200 pounds), but she was a very sexy fat woman, if that's really your bag, baby. Terrible movie.  (Movie House review.) As the Austin Chronicle wrote: "It seems disingenuous of me to tear into a filmmaker as obviously talented as she (Jane Campion), but my goodness, what an awful, muddled load of codswallop Holy Smoke! has turned out to be."

I'm really not sure about the Chronicle's nod to Jane Campion's talent. She has made three full-length films since The Piano (1993), and their IMDb scores look like something out of Fred Olen Ray's filmography:

1. (5.72) - The Portrait of a Lady (1996)
2. (5.61) - Holy Smoke (1999)
3. (5.21) - In the Cut (2003)

Her entire output in 13 years: three bad movies. If she ever had the right to be called a great filmmaker, she seems to have lost it.

 

• The late Katrin Cartlidge in Three Steps to Heaven. (Zipped .avis). I haven't seen this film, but Tuna blasted it:

"Katrin Cartlidge is a middle-aged Londoner having an affair with a young man, who turns up dead in the river. She decides to revenge his death, and starts investigating his last night starting with a nightclub. She determines the identity of the last three people to see him alive, and surmises that they killed him. Her three targets include a wealthy drug addict who's into the mob for a lot of money, an aging TV actress, and a bisexual MP in big trouble over a sex scandal. As a killer, Cartlidge is totally inept. That turns out to be a good thing, because she's equally inept as a detective.

3 Steps to Heaven (1995 UK TV movie) was either intended as a dark comedy, or a thriller. Whether it was intended as a comedy or not, the laughs seemed unintentional, and I found myself laughing at the filmmakers, rather than at the material. It also was not especially thrilling. Cartlidge shows full frontal and rear nudity, which I applaud, but, there was nothing else of interest here, and overall, it seemed amateurish. D+ "

• Katherine Barrese in Jezebel's Kiss. (Zipped .avi)

OTHER CRAP:

Movie Reviews:

Yellow asterisk: funny (maybe). White asterisk: expanded format. Blue asterisk: not mine. No asterisk: it probably sucks.

Spy Games (1999)

Spy Games is an espionage comedy set in Finland. It is an English/Finnish/American/French/German co-production, which may explain why they cast Irene Jacob in the female lead role as a Russian Spy. International co-production deals frequently have casting restrictions as part of the deal.

Jacob works for the SVR (former KGB), and her assignment is to keep an eye on CIA agent Bill Pullman, which is not difficult since they are constant bed partners. They are both ambitious but feel somewhat obsolete with the end of the cold war. Then, someone encodes satellite access codes into a porn tape, and tries to smuggle it into Finland to pass on to the SVR. CIA agent Glenn Plummer is sent into the field to recover the codes, and doesn't get along well with field operative Pullman. Getting his hands on the tape was easy, but finding out what the contents are is much more challenging. The real challenge, however, is to make another porno (with disinformation) to substitute for the real one.

This begins to set up the most hilarious moment in this film. As Plummer was constantly replaying the porno to try and decode it, a maid and a porter had their ears glued to the door. When the decision was made to shoot another porno, they were drafted as the performers. Shooting is done, the couple is relaxing on the bed, and something irritates Plummer, so he shouts "fuck."

The couple immediately does.

The IMDb rating of 4.3 is a little harsh. It could be a reaction to the fact that this could have been much better than it was. Think I Spy, but with Sex. It was moderately funny in places, Jacob and Pullman had chemistry, and there were clever aspects to the plot, but it just didn't work the way it could have. I suspect the problem lies with the fact that it takes native fluency of a language to create a successful comedy in that language. There is nothing at all wrong with the plot outline, but much of the dialogue could have been improved on, and the timing was mostly off.

 

Irene Jacob

Lynda Gyllenberg (now known by her married name, since her marriage to Tobias Zilliacus)

 

Notes and collages

Elisabeth Shue in Cousin Bette I suppose that one could see a lot of butts on a beach dressed in dental floss these days..... This is hers in "Cousin Bette." ...sweet...

University of Illinois researcher Sheldon Jacobson says that higher gasoline costs are partly the fault of consuming too much.  Not gas: food.  He calculates that Americans are using 1 billion more gallons of gas per year than in 1960, just because they're so much fatter and the cars have to carry more weight.  If a typical driver who drives 12,000 miles a year lost 100 pounds, he would increase his mileage enough to save 18 gallons of gas per year.

 *  But it won't happen because the typical American driver drives 12,000 miles a year to Dunkin Donuts and back.

 *  Fat people use more gas, but they also generate more gas...If we could build cars that run on methane, this problem would solve itself.

A 47-year-old security guard named Nai from Quanzhou, China, walked 27 steps and covered about a yard while wearing cast iron shoes that weighed 572 pounds.  The Southeast Morning Post reported that it took four young men to lift one of the shoes.  Nai said he now hopes to be allowed to perform kung fu while wearing the shoes at the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

 *  Or maybe kickboxing.

The British department store chain Tesco agreed to remove a pole-dancing kit from the toys and games section of its website after children's advocacy groups complained.  The ad copy read, "Unleash the sex kitten inside ... simply extend the Peekaboo pole inside the tube, slip on the sexy tunes and away you go!  Soon you'll be flaunting it to the world and earning a fortune in Peekaboo Dance Dollars."  One critic called it "extremely dangerous," saying it could destroy children's innocence.  But a Tesco spokesman denied that it was sexually oriented, saying it was clearly marked for "adult use," and "pole dancing is an increasing exercise craze.  This item is for people who want to improve their fitness and have fun at the same time."

 *  Sweaty, naked fun...

 *  But if they stop selling the toy pole-dancing kit, what will Charlie Sheen give his girlfriends for Christmas?

 The Liberty Mutual Research Institute for Safety surveyed US teenagers to see what most distracts them while they are driving.  19 percent said friends in the car were most distracting, 20 percent said their emotional state distracts them most, and the #1 distraction: 37 percent said they are most distracted by sending and receiving text messages while driving.

*  It's so hard, they almost drop their burritos and Cokes.

BIRTHDAYS - Sharing a birthday: Matt Drudge (39) and Sen. Hillary Clinton (59).

*  Two people who both owe their careers to Bill Clinton.