Sunday

 
 
 

From the mailbox:
 

"Hank's note that actress Samantha Scott had gone to prison caught my interest and I did some research.  It is a fascinating story with the ending yet to come.  She is up for parole in a month or so. Here are some links including a recent picture and some artwork:"

 

Scoop's note: Many thanks to the author of this e-mail for the fascinating follow-up!

 

 

New looks:

Unusually enough, today's page has four new-to-me looks at very familiar faces: Tara Fitzgerald, Sophie Marceau, Deborah Unger and Mathilda May.

 

 

An Awfully Big Adventure (1995):

Warning: TOTAL SPOILERS

Director Mike Newell and star Hugh Grant has quite a solid international hit in 1994 with Four Weddings and Funeral, so they immediately attempted to recapture their chemistry with another film in 1995. This one. Unfortunately, their collaboration was missing an integral element, the talented author of Four Weddings, Richard Curtis, who is one of the most successful screenwriters in modern British history, having written or co-written the Bridget Jones films, Notting Hill, Love Actually, and most of the Blackadder series. Instead of one of Curtis's light romances, Grant and Newell selected a dark, cynical and profoundly gloomy drama. Probably the wrong choice.

When it comes to coming-of-age films, the difference between comedy and tragedy is only a matter of shading. Both are about the loss of innocence, and that is inherently sad in some inevitable ways, but the distinction between them lies in the way the innocence is lost and the degree to which one may some day view its loss with fondness. An Awfully Big Adventure is not about the mere loss of innocence, but its utter destruction. Two students, one of each gender, take internships at a theater company in Liverpool after the war. They will both learn of the world's cruelties before the theater season is over. The 16-year-old girl will lose her virginity to the fading leading man. The boy will lose his to the company's cruel, arrogant director.

You think that sounds depressing? It gets worse. The leading man has only returned to the tiny provincial theater to allow himself a chance to look for the true love of his life, whom he romanced and lost there many years ago, and the son he believes they had together. Are you sitting down? He doesn't find the woman, but he does discover the identity of his child. It is not a son, but a daughter. Do I need to explain further?  When he discovers that his careless sexual escapades have made him not only a pedophile, but an incestuous one as well, he ... well, let's just say it keeps getting more and more dismal.

The boy's half of the story is not as thoroughly developed, but it isn't any cheerier. All of the atmospheric and characteristic details are profoundly depressing as well. The theater is run-down, the city outside its walls is bleak, all and the players are broken-down. After all, the entire story takes place in an impoverished theater group in Liverpool, so the players and crew are basically cast-offs: underpaid wannabes, alcoholic has-beens, and never-weres who take the abuse of the heartless director because they have no place else to go.

Cheery stuff.

It isn't bad stuff, but it sure is melancholy. The occasional attempts at humor often seem sadly inappropriate, making the film even more cheerless than if it had no humor at all.

I can't give you many good reasons to watch it. Hugh Grant is suitably despicable as the director, but his character seems utterly one-dimensional and full of tics. Alan Rickman is excellent, as he always is, and his forlorn actor would be a sympathetic character with only slight changes in the plot, but as it stands he's playing an incestuous pedophile, so it's difficult to feel that he got any worse than he deserved. The innocent girl is obviously damaged goods to begin with, and the theater world damages her still further, while shattering her dreams along with her innocence, so we should feel her pain, but even that is difficult given that (1) she is a very strange girl (2) the melodramatic situations are such blatant cries for sympathy that we expect her at any moment to get tied to a log and conveyed into the sawmill.

 


 

More interesting than the film is the story of how Georgina Cates got the role of the 16-year-old Liverpudlian. Her real name is Claire Woodgate, and at the time this film was cast, she was 20, and had long been a semi-famous juvenile BBC actress hailing from Essex. As herself, she auditioned for this role and was rejected. Refusing to take no for an answer, she went home, changed her appearance significantly, and created a new identity - the unknown Georgina Cates, an untrained and inexperienced 16 year old from Liverpool, complete with scouse accent. In essence, she created an actress who would have been perfect for the role without acting! She got the part. She did not admit the ruse until about halfway through the filming, at which point the tabloid press fell in love with her, but her fellow acting professionals were dismayed by behavior that they thought to be unprofessional.

Cates continued to march to her own drummer. Having alienated some key contacts in the British film world, she packed her bags and headed off to Hollywood, where she got some fairly good notices in Illuminata, and some great praise for Clay Pigeons. There's no doubt the girl can act. Hell, even her famous scam proved she could act. After all, she convinced the casting director of this movie that she was an innocent 16 year old from Liverpool, and that's exactly what she had to do in the movie! The very fact that she got the job proved that she could do it well. So what has she done with her talent, and why have you not heard anything from her recently? She just turned her back on the whole thing. She has no acting credits at IMDb between 1999 and now. She married Skeet Ulrich, she had twins, and concentrated on her private life. She is now divorced from the Skeetmeister and her kids are grown and ready for kindergarten (they're 5 1/2 as I write this), so she plans to return to acting in 2007.

Film clips:

  • Georgina Cates (Zipped .wmv)

  • Carol Drinkwater (Zipped .wmv). WARNING: look at the collage before you download this. It is not a pretty sight.

 

Georgina Cates

 

 

Carol Drinkwater

 

 

Carol Drinkwater has only one other nude appearance. I doubt if you would recognize her. It was 23 years earlier in Kubrick's classic A Clockwork Orange. See below.

 

 

 

OTHER CRAP:

 

Twilight Zone - A Most Unusual Camera ... that takes photos of things five minutes before they happen. Two thieves, Chester and Paula, rob a curio store and discover the strange camera. They decide to use it to take pictures at the racetrack. They win every time and leave with a considerable sum, but back at their hotel, the French waiter notices their unusual camera and mentions the curious inscription "ten to an owner." They now have only two pictures left. (Cue up spooky music.)

 
 


 

"In the crowded sprawl of Manila, the living must compete for space with the dead."

  • The author makes this seem like some kind of rarity. In Cairo, I have seen with my own eyes cemeteries which are virtually separate cities within the city, teeming with the poor, totally ignored by mainstream society, virtually ignored by the police and other social services. They usually have no trash removal. There is no sewage control other than tanks which are rarely if ever emptied. There is no electricity except what they can steal. They function much like the favelas in urban Brazil. It is estimated that five million Egyptians live in cemeteries. Details here

 

The Northern Lights pictured in time-lapse photography.

 

Because we don't already have enough fried foods.. "A new fast food is making its debut at U.S. fairs this fall -- fried Coke."

 

A nice piece of intellectual humor which reminds me of the early days of the National Lampoon: Johnny Knoxville's Letters to His Brother, Theo.

  • "After the shoot, Giselle and I spent a blissful afternoon riding in the centrifuge of a local sugar refinery, and discovered that we share passions for Alsatian cuisine, Puccini opera, and stapling our lower lip to roof shingles. Although we have known each other for only a few days, I can already imagine Giselle bearing our children, perhaps while hanging from a bungee cord over a nest of Mexican pit vipers. "

 

Song parody: ‘OOOO, I NEED A DIRTY AD SPOT’
  • "The GOP is getting more panicky than a guy who runs out of Viagra at the Bunny Ranch."

 

Daily Box Office for Friday, October 27, 2006

  • Saw 3 opened REAL big - it took in almost as much as the next eight films added together. (It was expected to be strong, but not that strong. The experts thought it would cover films 2-5, not 2-9.)
  • Running with Scissors had a solid average per screen to finish tenth, despite a limited run (585 theaters)
  • Catch a Fire bombed. It missed the top ten (the pros thought it would be 7th or 8th) and, barring a major upsurge, is headed for a $2 million opening weekend, about half of expectations.

 

LiberalGreetings.com - E-Mail Greeting Cards For Progressives

 

Humor Online.com: Funny Audio Clips

 

23 year old BitTorrent Site Admin Sent to Prison

 

Snoop Dogg arrested for marijuana possession

  • Who says the people running the war on drugs are incompetent? They've caught both Snoop and Willie Nelson with marijuana this year. What are the odds?

 

YouTube Takes Down Comedy Central Clips Based on DMCA Claims

 

Star Wars Screen Test #2

  • Classic sketch from SNL spoofing behind the scenes footage of "Star Wars, the 20th Anniversary Home Video". Norm MacDonald plays Burt Reynolds as Darth Vader. Ana Gasteyer plays Barbra Streisand as Princess Leia. Kevin Spacey plays Jack Lemmon as Chewbacca.

 

Celebrate Halloween with the 13 Greatest Horror Movies. Ever!

 

Cardinals become worst World Series winner in history, with an 83-78 regular season record.

 

Play Halloween Hangman

 

 

Movie Reviews:

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ed and His Dead Mother (1993)

Ed and His Dead Mother (1993) is a comedy horror offering, and if you haven't done so, read Scoop's thoughts, which are far more interesting than the actual film.

Steve Buscemi has not adjusted to his mother's death, although her brother, who lives with him, has not had the same problem. A salesman shows up at Buscemi's hardware store with a solution. His company has an exclusive  process for reanimating the dead. Of course, that is the tip of the iceberg. They know about his recent $50,000 inheritance, and plan on taking all of it. They neglect to mention at first that there are a few issues with the living dead, such as the need to eat living things. Buscemi's life is further complicated by a new girlfriend across the street (Sam Jenkins), an ex-employee out of prison and after revenge, and the understandable difficulty of dealing with a mother who sleeps in the fridge and has cockroaches for a late night snack.

I found it only occasionally amusing with a rather predictable outcome. Your mileage may vary.

It is probably a C.

IMDb readers have this at 5.5.

 

 

Sam Jenkins shows her buns in one scene and her right breast in another.

 

 

Nancy Reed shows buns as the promiscuous wife of the preacher.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


Today we have a little "Hankster Light" with caps of a naked Nicollette Sheridan providing some wonderful T & A in 1999's Raw Nerve. She never looked like this on "Desperate Housewives."

 

 

 


 

Part two of today's Time Machine trip is a "Babe in Bondage" - Jayne Allyson from the 1971 box office smash "The Godson." Jayne is all tied up topless in a short skirt and boots outdoors. Here's sexy Jayne in the zipped .wmv movie clip.

Here's a sample cap (the rest are back in the archives on Oct.15,2005).

 

 

 

 

 

 

Learning to Drive

 

One of the lovely Heather Graham's first movies is the teen flick Learning to Drive (1988). No nudity but a brief upskirt and some cleavage.

 


 

Fastlane

 

A short-lived series was Fastlane (2002). Jennifer Sky was down to her underwear in the pilot.

(The sex bomb with Jennifer in the second collage is Kitana Baker.)

 


 

JAG

 

Another sex bomb is Catherine Bell. In this episode of JAG called Persian Gulf (2004) we see a lot of cleavage (and what would have been a terrific upskirt if the lighting was better!).

 


 

In My Father's Den

 

Down to New Zealand for the thriller In My Father's Den (2004). There is a topless Emily Barclay taking a bath

(Zipped .avi)

 

and pokies by Jodie Rimmer.

 


 

Good Life Delivery

 

Moro Anghileri is topless in the Argentinian film Good Life Delivery aka Buena vida delivery (2004).

 


 

Stander

 

Still in the Southern Hemisphere we have the entertaining South African movie Stander (2003). The nudity comes from Deborah Kara Unger.

(Zipped .avi)

 

 

Cleavage from Melanie Merle

 

 

and Tessa Jubber

 


 

Almost Brothers

 

Some brief nipple exposure by Maria Flor in the Brazilian movie Almost Brothers aka Quase Dois Irmãos (2004).

 


 

Manslaughter

 

Some nice breast exposure by Beate Bille in the Danish movie Manslaughter aka Drabet (2005).

 


 

In Your Dreams

 

In Your Dreams aka Dans tes rêves (2005) is a French film. There is a very brief nipple exposure by Blandine Bury

and some side exposure by an unknown naked woman.

 


 

Who Knows

 

In the mainly French movie Who Knows aka Va savoir (2001) we have a topless Jeanne Balibar taking a shower - not bad for a movie rated PG.

(Zipped .avi)

 


 

Anthony Zimmer

 

Continuing the French theme, we have Anthony Zimmer (2005). The beautiful Sophie Marceau is topless but the best we see is a side view, which actually shows signs of an implant.

 


 

Midnight Hot

 

Kenita Larrain  (Zipped .avi)

 

 


 

The Forced March

 

Finishing off with The Forced March aka Marsh-brosok (2003), a Russian movie using the Chechnya conflict as a background. No nudity but there are mild pokies by a delightful Olga Chursina.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Notes and collages

Jacqueline Bisset in "The Deep"

This fun "guy film" about searching for sunken treasure is adapted from a novel by Peter Benchley, the same fellow who wrote "Jaws." I love this film, possibly more so because I am a scuba diver. It's a nice, simple action flick which features a really hot woman at the peak of her hotness.

The first five minutes of the film are worth the rental cost as Jacqueline Bisset scuba dives in a t-shirt.

 


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mathilda May -  she of the perfect chest, regrettably not showing it clearly, in La Conquete de la Peur

Frequently-naked Tara Fitzgerald in Anglo-Saxon Attitudes, whatever the hell that is.