Wednesday

Tuna
"Carretera Secundarias"

Carretera Secundarias (1997), or Backroads is a father/son buddy comedy set around the time of the demise of Franco. Antonio Resines is an itinerant peddler and scam artist, who travels with his teenaged son, Fernando Ramallo, who is not real thrilled with his father, wonders why his father, who belongs to a wealthy family, is so poor, and knows little of his deceased mother. He is not a happy teen, covers himself with tattoo transfers, and manages to cause trouble at every school he attends.

He also has trouble putting up with his father's girlfriend, a singer played by Miriam Díaz Aroca. He warms to Maribel Verdú, especially when she exposes a breast, encourages him to touch it, and gives him his first kiss. When his father is jailed, he goes to live with his rich uncle's family, and suddenly life with his own father doesn't seem bad at all.

IMDb readers have this at 6.1 of 10. Performances by Verdú, Ramallo and Resines are all good, but the script really didn't give them enough to work with, and the transfer is less than ideal. The optional subtitles were not badly done. This is a C-.

  • Thumbnails

  • Maribel Verdú (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11)

    • Johnny Web (Uncle Scoopy)

    Frankenfish (2004):

    Quick quiz. Very quick. Only one question.

    Frankenfish is:

    (a.) A really liberal underwater talk show host.

    (b.) A fish stitched together from parts of other fish.

    (c.) A member of Country Joe's bank

    (d.) None of the above

     

    The answer is (d) none of the above. Although this movie features giant creatures, and those creatures are fish, they are not stitched together from other fish to animate or re-animate a new species. They follow the general principles of giant movie creatures, which are:

    Method 1. If the writer is a liberal, the giant creatures are formed when irresponsible Republican politicians dump unlimited quantities of poisonous substances into the air and water, thus altering the ecosystem and precipitating the development of a giant new species which can survive under extreme conditions and presents a threat to man. The changes in the species do not take place over millions of years, like normal evolutionary processes, but happen overnight.

    Method 2. If the writer is a conservative, the giant creatures are formed when godless scientists place their curiosity above mankind's accepted moral principles. The scientists choose to ignore the rules of nature when they play God and create new, unnatural species to study, never stopping to think that if God had wanted the world to be filled with 80 foot gerbils, He, in his infinite wisdom, would have told Noah to build a larger ark. More important, we know that the Good Lord did not want gerbils to be 80 feet tall, because He would then have had to make Richard Gere much larger, for obvious reasons.

    Method 2a. If the writer hates liberals and conservatives equally, he puts a twist in Method 2. The godless, atheist scientists create a giant creature, but only because they were paid vast sums to do so by a filthy rich Republican businessman whose hobby is big game hunting. The rich hunter has already killed every species on the planet, even the most dangerous ones, so he needs the godless scientists to violate the rules of nature and make a new species which is more dangerous than any on earth, thus allowing him to pump his adrenalin flow back up to normal.

    This particular giant creature film follows Method 2a.

    All giant creature films should follow certain other conventions as well:

    1. There should be an old gypsy woman, or cajun witch, voodoo priestess, or the equivalent. This old woman believes that the creature is not simply a mutation which can be explained by science (well, to be more specific, by movie science), but is rather an evil spirit, possibly even the Lord of Darkness himself, and has been sent by God to punish mankind, or possibly just to punish her for something she did one time with another woman and some KY jelly and some "Japanese octopus porn" and some common table salt. Even though she was only 16 at the time, and was just experimenting with sexuality in ways familiar to so many of us, especially those of us who are Japanese and live near seacoasts, she knows that the Lord cannot forgive her, and that her soul is lost to The Dark One, who has now come to attack her in the form of the 80-foot gerbil.

    Invariably, she has an exotic talisman which can protect her against the Evil Spirit. Just as inevitably, it gets destroyed just when it might actually serve some purpose.

    2. The destruction of the giant creature should actually occur about halfway through the film, after a prolonged battle which costs many human lives. Then, just when everyone is relaxing, an even larger creature should appear from nowhere, kill an additional human, and disappear quickly, so that the stunned survivors are in shock, and are terrified because they now realize that the one they defeated may have been just one of many, and may even have been a baby. By killing it, they may have forced a confrontation with an angry mother gerbil.

    3. There should be a stuck-up guy who refuses to co-operate with the plans of the other people fighting the giant creature. There is no good reason for this. It is just required by genre convention. Sometimes the stuck-up guy is allowed to redeem himself by dying in a self-sacrificing way, but this is not essential. Sometimes his death just provides darkly comic relief.

    And there you have the plot of Frankenfish, except that it is a giant fish with rudimentary lungs, and not a giant gerbil.

    I'm glad Dann reviewed this film before me, because I'm almost ashamed to admit that I thought a no-budget, weakly-performed, totally predictable film named Frankenfish was actually pretty good. I felt some comfortable reinforcement when Dann kinda liked it as well. Of course, giant creature films are inherently delimited in quality, and their quality ceiling is quite low. Can you name one that is really any good, except for Jaws? If you were strapped to a polygraph, you'd have to admit that even the legendary giant creature films like King Kong and Godzilla are pretty damned awful. At least King Kong reached out to mainstream audiences with a lot of heart. Frankenfish is a pure genre film which doesn't care about mainstream audiences. It's filled with extreme gore, gratuitous nudity from unnecessary characters, and macabre humor. It also has some genuine tension and some pretty good scares. Honest to God, I didn't mind it at all!!! It kinda got my heart pumpin'.  It's far from a masterpiece, and it has some unnecessary plot detours, but it is ten times better than you'd expect from a film named Frankenfish.

     

     

    Other Crap:

    Other Crap archives. May also include newer material than the links above, since it's sorta in real time.

    Click here to submit a URL for 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 Junior or Brainscan, or somebody else besides me)
    • If there is no asterisk, I wrote it, but am too ashamed to admit it.

    Shiloh

    Words from Scoop.

    .avi's from Shiloh.

    .wmv files made by Scoop from Shiloh's .avi's.

    NOTE: because of a unique combination of circumstances with the Windows media player and some substantial bandwidth theft, we will have to do all of our movie files in zip format. Left click on the files as you normally would to view a picture. When you get a choice, click on "save", and put it on your hard drive in the directory of your choice. UnZIP and play from there.

    I know this is not especially convenient, but it allows the film clips to continue. I can protect .zip files from hot-linking in the same way I can protect still images. For some reason, if I protect .avis and .wmvs from hot-linking, they will not play in the Windows media player, and I can't get a satisfactory work-around. Perhaps I will find a better solution, but for now this new policy allows you to continue getting the movie clips you want to see, which is much preferable to my abandoning the clips altogether.

     

    Frida (2003) - day 1

    We both liked this Frida Kahlo biopic. I didn't like it as much as Tuna did, but I sure ain't gonna turn away from a pretty decent flick which also happens to have a lot of nudity, including Salma Hayek stark naked!!.

    Shiloh sent in captures of all the nudity, and there is much more to be seen in the upcoming days, but ever since I was a kid at Christmas time, I've never been able to wait long enough to open my best present last. Here's Salma and more Salma. And tomorrow: her lesbian scene!

     

    Perhaps these tips will help if you have trouble with the codecs for these movies:

    Shiloh says:

    FYI when I hypercam vids to make the file size smaller I use DivX MPEG-4 Fast-Motion for the video compressor, then I use virtualdub to compress the audio. The properties for the vids says the video codec:  DivX Decoder Filter & audio codec:  Morgan Stream Switcher which I'm not familiar with. When I compress the audio with virtualdub I use MPEG Layer-3.  A friend of mine told me about compressing the audio about (6) mos. ago. Like I said previously, only been capping for a year & a half & I'm no expert. Hopefully this info will help members with the proper codecs for my vids.
     
    When I cap big brother's I use hypercam mostly & sdp & asfrecorder if the set up allows me. I stopped using camtasia cause the file sizes were always too big, could never figure out the process, over my head lol, plus it cost too much to buy in my opinion.

    A reader says:

    You mentioned that some users were having trouble with the videos on your site. There is a tool designed to determine what codec is needed for a video. http://www.headbands.com/gspot/ Hope this is useful to you or your users.

    Scoop says:

    I made the .wmv versions of each video. The codecs for these: Windows Video V8, Windows Audio 9. The upside of these is that you know the codecs, and they'll play in the Windows Media Player. The downside is that they are slightly larger, and slightly lower quality.

    ICMS

    Words, pictures, and vids from ICMS
     

    King David (1985)

    Hello Scoopy !

    Today's clips feature all the nudity from the film "King David" (1985) starring Richard Gere. The women who can't keep their hands off of him are Alice Krige and Cherie Lunghi.

    That's all for today.

    Yours faithfully,

    ICMS

     

    Scoop's notes: rare material. And who knew that Richard Gere could speak German like frikin' Goethe? Full frontal from the Borg Queen, rarely capped, rarely seen. These are better quality than our previous encyclopedia entries, so I made some samples. Below are some .jpg collages to give you the feel of it. I noticed that the film is now available on Region 1 DVD, so I ordered a copy, even knowing it's going to be fuller of shit than the Paris sewers. That's how much we love you guys - we're even willing to see Richard Gere playing King David (probably the only time the great king has been known as "Dave")  just to capture the all-important Bathsheba nudity.

     

    Crimson Ghost
    NOTE: We currently have to do all of our movie files in zip format. Instead of viewing them online, save the zip files to your hard drive in the directory of your choice, un-zip and play from there.


    Today from the Ghost...a couple of vids of former model turned B-movie actress, Angie Everhart. Scenes from the direct-to-vid movie, "The Substitute: Failure Is Not an Option" aka "The Substitute 4".

    • Angie Everhart zipped .wmvs. Topless in #1, brief breast views while she rides a dude in #2. (1, 2)

    Mr. Nude Celeb
    Today Mr. Nude Celeb takes a look at three Madonna movies...

    First up, the not so bad one, "Body of Evidence" (1993).

    • Julianne Moore topless and baring her bum in her first nude role. (1, 2, 3)

    • Madonna baring all 3 B's. (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8)

    • Shawn Lusader, the professional body double is on all fours and shows us a rear view and her breasts. If memory serves, she was Anne Archer's double in this movie.


    Next up, from the movie that really stunk, "Swept Away" (2002).

    • Jeanne Tripplehorn, the "Basic Instinct" and "Waterworld" star showing some pokies.

    • Madonna. Pokies in link #1. Open leg view (with undies) in link #2. Nipple peeks in links 3-4. Fully nude but curled up into a ball in #5. (1, 2, 3, 4, 5)


    And finally, I'll put this one under 'other' since it's not exactly a movie. Here's Madonna in "Madonna: Truth or Dare" (1991), the 'documentary' following her Blond Ambition tour in 1990.

    • Madonna. Pokies in #1, toplessness in the rest. (1, 2, 3, 4, 5)

    Dann
    'Caps and comments by Dann:

    "Blueberry" (Renegade)
    Part of the problem with this 2004 western is it didn't know what it wanted to be, let alone what it wanted to be called. Titled Blueberry in the movies, and called Renegade in the DVD release, it's a western, drug story, and an Indian Shaman story all wrapped into one. Unfortunately, they don't blend well.

    When he is young, Blueberry's prostitute-girlfriend is killed during an argument with a gunman. During the ensuing fire, Blueberry barely escapes with his life.

    Years later, now a U. S. Marshal, Blueberry confronts the same gunslinger who is trying to get gold from the Indian's sacred mountain. Its during the later part of the movie that things get really weird as an Indian Shaman helps him confront the gunman with the use of peyote. Unfortunately, director Jan Kounen felt it was necessary to subject the audience to several minutes of snakes and other CGI crawlies to illustrate the effects of the peyote. Supposedly, he researched this with actual South American shamans before doing it, but it's just a giant time waster, and looks basically dumb.

    The movie was supposedly loosely based on a comic book, and I liked part of it. On top of that, the scenery and photography was spectacular. Sadly, it was impossible to ignore the other part, so the effort as a whole was disappointing.

    Variety
    Kate Beckinsale
    (1, 2, 3)

    		Kate showing cleavage (#3), wearing tight pants (#2) and all wet in link #1 (looks like there may be some see-thru nipple exposure). Scenes from the mega-budget, mega-effects, and micro-plot summer flick, "Van Helsing".

    Eva Amurri
    (1, 2, 3)

    Jena Malone

    Mandy Moore
    (1, 2, 3)


    		Johnny Moronic takes a look at "Saved", the comedy that pokes fun of over-zealous religous groups.

    Eva Amurri seems to have inherited great breasts from her mom (Susan Sarandon). She shows cleavage in all of these (the down shirt view in #2 is especially nice). She also shows off part of a thong and some very nice legs in these scenes.

    Jena Malone gets seriously groped, and also shows see-thru/pokies.

    Pop singer turned actress Mandy Moore also shows some pokies.


    Veronica Yip
    (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13)

    		Señor Skin 'caps of the Hong Kong movie babe baring her bum and showing several brief nipple views in scenes from "Three Days of a Blind Girl" (1992)

    Pat Reeder www.comedy-wire.com
    Pat's comments in yellow...

    COLLEGES ADOPTING "THE APPRENTICE"
    God Help Us - The New York Post reports that colleges nationwide are adding tips from "The Apprentice" to their MBA programs They say the show gets students more excited than lectures, and they can learn real-world business lessons by breaking into teams and competing at things like selling football tickets. Critics say schools should be stressing ethics after all the recent corporate scandals, not glorifying cutthroat competition and backstabbing, and feminists say the show encourages women to use sex to get ahead. But Donald Trump responded that "there is sex in the board room. We can say there isn't, but there is."

  • Especially in his board room...Tuesdays and Fridays, around 9 p.m.
  • "MBA" now stands for "Make Breasts Accessible."
  • Gee, I wonder why professors would want to teach students that the way to get ahead is to sleep with the guy in charge?...
  • This is bad enough, but just pray that hairdressing schools don't start taking lessons from Donald Trump.


    MAFIA 101
    Pass Or Get Whacked - Italy's Roma Tre University is offering the first college class on the Mafia. The 20-hour "Mafia 101" class will trace the history of the criminal organization and attempts to eradicate it. Professor and Mafia expert Enzo Ciconte said Mafiosi might not be happy about the course, but they've been pleasantly surprised at the student interest: 430 of them applied to take it.

  • All under assumed names.
  • I don't know which is worse: business students studying the Mafia or "The Apprentice."
  • It's an easy course to pass: every time you're tested on what you've learned, you just say, "I didn't see nuthin'!"
  • The professor wanted to retire, but they just keep pullin' him back in!


    NEW DEMOGRAPHIC GROUP: "BRIDGET JONES' MOTHERS"
    Too Late! - British statisticians report that the increasing divorce rate has given rise to a new social group referred to as "footloose fiftysomethings" or "Bridget Jones' Mother." They are single women in their 50s who were found to drink wine, beer or liquor as often as their daughters. One in five regularly goes to bars in hopes of meeting someone, and many search for men through the Internet, dating services or traveling. The researchers said these women never pursued hedonistic pleasures while young and they're not ready to turn old without experiencing it.

  • These days, not even grannies wear granny panties.
  • They keep finding men of their own age who are really interested in a romantic relationship...with their daughters.
  • They prefer to call themselves "Bridget Jones' Older, Hotter Sister."