Moondance (1995) is a joint Irish German production set in Ireland. It is the story of two brothers who are inseparable. Their father is dead, and their mother is in Africa writing a book, and they are happy together until a young woman, Julia Brendler arrives on the scene.The older brother immediately wants her, as does the younger, and she wants the older brother. She moves in with them, and the younger brother increasingly feels the odd one out.

The three move to Dublin to experience the big city and to race their dog and the older brother gets a job, leaving the younger brother alone with Brendler. I will leave the rest of the story for you to discover. Brendler shows breasts in three scenes, and bush in one of the three.

IMDb readers have it at 5.9 of 10. The few reviews available are lukewarm. This film had a lot of promise, with interesting characters, capable actors, and a love triangle for central conflict, but somehow did not quite fulfill its potential. I can't put my finger on exactly why it didn't work, other than the storytelling. The scenery was very nice, as was the photography, and I enjoyed much of the sound track. Somehow, I just failed to connect to the story. C-.

Dead End (2003):

COMPLETE SPOILERS:

I'm not sure if Dead End can properly called a movie. It's basically an hour-long supernatural TV thriller. If you take out the beginning and ending credits, it would run about 75 minutes, which will work beautiful at 90 minutes with commercials.

Want to be a filmmaker? If you pay your actors scale rates and shoot DV on a rented camera, you can probably duplicate this film in a weekend of shooting with a budget of less than $10,000.

And you might actually improve on it!

About the only things the film has going for it are:

• A good performance from veteran genre actor Ray Wise.

• Amber Smith's pretty bum.

Apart from Wise, the actors seem to be people recruited from among friendly passers-by. The plot couldn't be much more transparent. I'm about to spoil this, but it doesn't matter. If you can't figure out the secret in the first five minutes, you have probably never seen a movie or TV show before, in which case this might seem interesting.

Wise and his family are traveling in their car at night when he nods off, snapping to just in time to avoid another car. They pull off the road,  take stock, find that nobody is injured, and continue their trip, but find themselves on a mysterious unmarked road.

This is where Rod Serling should emerge from behind a bush, furiously chain-smoking in the machine-induced fog, and remarking that their journey has left the road to Fresno and taken the last exit for ... (cue mysterious music) The Twilight Zone.

The rest of the family's journey consists of spooky and gruesome encounters, first with a sexy but badly-injured woman and her baby, then with a mysterious hearse which drives by to cart off the family members one by one. Finally, as the sole surviving daughter sees the hearse coming for her, the woman with the baby says - "it isn't here for you". The beautiful woman climbs into the hearse,  and the survivor ...

... wakes up in the hospital and finds that she was in an accident in which her whole family died except her. They crashed head-on into another car driven by a woman with a small baby. Everything we saw before the accident was reality. Everything we saw after that point was in the daughter's dreams.

The camera should then pan off to the right to find Serling pontificating about life's mysteries and the differences between dreams and reality, as he fires up another Lucky Strike.

• Amber Smith

Other Crap:

• "Moments after resigning his post at the Justice Department, Attorney General John Ashcroft was tapped for another big job in the Bush administration, being named the United States's first-ever ambassador to Mars." "I can think of no one better suited to being ambassador to Mars than John Ashcroft," said President Bush in a brief statement. "He has been preparing for this job for his entire life."
• The Johnny Web review of Frankenfish
  • "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."
  • God intends to punish her for something she did 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 it was just one time, and she was just experimenting with sexuality in ways familiar to so many of us, especially those of us who live near the Japanese seacoast.
• Masuimi Max (50 pics) - apparently she was on this week's Fear Factor.
• 'Baywatch' the movie - 'nuff said.
• Timberwolf and Cammy go all Sean Penn on some paparazzi.
• A trailer and five clips from Casshern: "An action-packed sci-fi thriller, 'Casshern' blends Japanimation and manga-inspired live action resulting a new kind of hybrid filmmaking that is both visually stunning and thought-provoking. The human cast propels the action against a backdrop of CGI, special effects, and a wide range of animation techniques, from state of the art to simple stop-motion animation. It is late in the 21st century. After 50 years of devastating war between Europa and the Eastern Federation, the latter has emerged victorious, and the new federation of Eurasia is formed. There can be no glorious peace, however, as the planet has been ravaged by chemical, biological and even nuclear weapons and the entire human race is dispirited and exhausted by half a century of war. A geneticist named Azuma brings hope in the form of a 'neo-cell,' which can rejuvenate human parts with no risk of rejection. But nature interferes with science to create a new kind of menace that forces the entire human race to fight an ultimate war against its own extinction."
• Here's a trailer for The Work and the Glory: "Adapted from Gerald N. Lund's blockbuster series, 'The Work and the Glory' is a moving love story set against the backdrop of religious intolerance of 19th century America. Recently moved to upstate New York from the comfort of their Vermont homestead, the Benjamin Steed family makes their way into the established social structure of Palmyra. In their attempt to settle peacefully into the new community, they find that the help they have hired to clear their land is at the center of a religious controversy threatening to tear the family apart. As two of the Steed brothers contend for the favor of a wealthy merchant's daughter, their family battles over deeper issues of spiritual truth, religious tolerance and family loyalty."
• Here's the trailer for Boogeyman: "Set in Pennsylvania, the story tells the haunting tale of a young man traumatized by memories of terrible events he experienced in his childhood bedroom and who, years later, reluctantly returns home to face his fears of a monstrous entity that could be real or merely a figment of his imagination."
• Here's the trailer for Easy - an independent romantic dramedy. "Jamie Harris, portrayed with sparkling intelligence by actress Marguerite Moreau, is a neurotic, bright 25-year-old with a career naming peculiar consumer products. Though she gives them their identities, she's rather confused about her own. After dating a string of jerks, she's bewildered about whom to trust or how to find true intimacy. When two seemingly honorable men orbit around her, Jamie must confront what she is most afraid of."
• Here is the trailer for High Tension : "The film centers on two teen girls who settle in for a relaxing weekend at a country farmhouse, unaware that a violent intruder is speeding toward them to transform their dreams into a relentless, bloody nightmare." According to Coming Soon, this foreign film has been rated NC-17 in the USA for violence alone!!!
• WTF?? Yiddish with Dick and Jane.
• My personal hero, Triumph the Insult Dog, goes to the American Idol auditions.
• Peter van Stralen Nude Photography (Artistic nudes)
• The daily show looks at the weekend that just happened to follow the election, when the US sent troops into Fallujah.
• Jon Stewart interviews Richard Branson.
• With the Iraqi elections coming up, candidates are trying to win over the coveted refugee mob vote. The Daily Show is there.
• Cairo will host Arafat funeral on Friday. Spokesmen for all parties have now cleared away all the points of dispute except, of course, for the fact that Arafat is alive. Or is he? Click here to find out where he has really gone?
• Four free videos from Playboy Big Breast Babes!
• Playmate Gallery - Heather Kozar, queenpin of all 1999 - Courtesy of PlayboyPlus.com!
• What turns on the top female celebrities?
• World mourns as ABBA refuses to reunite.
• "So they still control the House, Senate, and Oval Office? Well, at least we still have the smug, condescending attitude that cost us the election in the first place.'"
• Ving Rheames and "Shaun" put on alert. Arafat now roaming the earth among the undead. Bruckheimer plans post-life biopic ... um ... mortopic ... whatever.
• Bobby Cox (Braves) and Buck Showalter (Rangers) voted baseball managers of the year
• ATTENTION CITIZENS LIVING IN GOD'S COUNTRY WITHOUT HIS PERMISSION: A SPECIAL INVITATION FROM THE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF FAITH TO BECOME A REAL AMERICAN
• Brosnan agrees to do a sequel to The Thomas Crown Affair. In a bid to become the least original movie ever made, this film will not only be a sequel to a remake, but at the same time it will also be a remake of another movie (Topkapi).
  • Strange. I thought After the Sunset was the sequel to The Thomas Crown Affair. I guess it doesn't count because they changed the names of the characters.
• Darth Vader and Heidi Klum, together at last. Vader thus entered the Guinnesss book in second place for the most hideous monster ever dated by a supermodel, right behind Billy Joel.
• Oops! Vitamin E May Pose Death Risk : "the risk of death from all causes increased as the dose of vitamin E rose. "
• Demi Moore beheaded on Lebanese TV. Apparently, this is wacky Lebanese satire.
• How big is 'Halo 2'? Pre-orders for the game topped 1.5 million copies. And hundreds of thousands of walk-up sales will push its day one sales total to at least $100 million.
• Female employees spanked for failing to put bananas in a smoothie. I think this guy watched The Secretary too many times.
• Beatles' 1968 song Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da has been voted the worst song ever. I don't know about EVER, but it's a solid candidate. I have to admit, though that I mentally discard any poll that doesn't show "Good Morning, Starshine" in the Top 10. Everyone sing alone with me "Nibby aba noopy ...."
• This week's movies: Bridget Jones: Edge of Reason - 17% positive. The critics did not think that this was a worthy successor to the popular original.
  • James Berardinelli wrote: "On those rare occasions when The Edge of Reason isn't regurgitating material from Bridget Jones' Diary, it is taking ill-advised excursions into unfunny slapstick and sappy melodrama. Bridget Jones in a Thai prison?"
• This week's movies: The Polar Express - 64% positive reviews. The reviews reflected a strange mixture of admiration and contempt.
• This week's movies: After the Sunset - 9% positive reviews.
• Colin Farrell May Star as Sonny Crockett in in 'Miami Vice'. If Michael Mann directs, while Colin and Jamie Foxx star, that might actually be worth seeing. Of course, it still hinges on finding the right script, doesn't it?
• Details of Ashcroft's resignation letter.
• Zooming in on Tom Brokaw's replacement, Brian Williams
• Weekly World News tell you "HOW TO TURN YOUR WIFE INTO A HOUSECLEANING MACHINE"
• Renee Zellweger Plans a Break from Acting.
• MADtv - the cast of Friends spots a black person.

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:

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.

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.

Words, pictures, and vids from ICMS
 

Die Braut (1999)

What a coincidence this is, you mentioning Richard Gere speaking German as fluently as Goethe and me preparing to send in two clips of Veronica Ferres in "Die Braut" (1999) in which she played Goethe's love interest. Here's what I wrote back in the December 15, 1999 Fun House about her and the movie.

"This week seems to be Veronica Ferres week. She is a big star in Germany and in this film "Die Braut" she gives us quite an insight into her shapely body. In this film she plays the part of Christiane Vulpius, the love interest of the great German author/poet Johann Wolfgang Goethe. Christiane was a girl of humble descent and because Goethe feared he would be excluded from "the better circles" he only let her live in his garden house and when he received important guests she had to stay in the kitchen with the servants. Only after 18 years Goethe decided to do right thing and he finally married her! Apparently many celebrities and great minds have always behaved like assholes. Or was he just an opportunist? Anyway in the last collage Veronica lies sick and unconscious in bed and one member of the better circles takes advantage of the opportunity and checks out what the hell Goethe can possibly see in this woman. I think he knows now and so do we."

Pretty explicit for a major star, don't you think?

• Ferres 1  (.wmv zipped, .avi zipped)
• Ferres 2  (.wmv zipped, .avi zipped)

True Woman (1999)

Furthermore there's a clip of Shu Qi aka. Hsu Chi, the gorgeous actress from Taiwan who is mainly active in Hong Kong films, although some may recognize her from "The Transporter", in which she was the parcel.. Although she can really act and has won several film awards, she started her career by posing nude on various occasions. Search the encyclopedia and the back issues and you'll find many explicit poses by her. This clip and others to follow come from the 1999 DVD "True Woman", featuring Shu Qi in various states of undress for 52 minutes, accompanied by the sounds of mainly French songs. It's available for just 30 HKD (less than 4 USD) from www.dddhouse.com.

• Shu Qi (.wmv zipped, .avi zipped)

That's it for today, I'll be back soon with more material and more Shu Qi.

Yours faithfully,

ICMS

Today from the Ghost...a salute to "JAG" mega-babe, Catherine Bell! Here are video clips from a variety of movie and TV appearances, including some with nudity! Zipped .wmvs as usual.

• Catherine Bell baring her bum while doing body double work for Isabella Rossellini in a scene from "Death Becomes Her" (1992).

• Catherine Bell topless in a 1994 episode of the made for HBO series "Dream On". It seems there is a slight size difference between what we see here and her current boobs.

• Catherine Bell on Skinemax! Here she is a scene from an episode of the late night series "Hot Line". In #1 she is topless and being stripped of her clothes. In #2 we she breasts and bum while she straddles a dude. (1, 2)

• Catherine Bell on "JAG". Here are two scenes featuring her in bikinis. (1, 2)

• Catherine Bell playing with her boobs (and saying they are real) on Howard Stern.

Teri Hatcher
(1, 2)

Marcia Cross
(1, 2)

Longoria (aka the future Mrs. Scoopy Jr.) is seen wearing plenty of tight pants and semi-revealing tops. In link #2 she crawls into bed wearing sexy pink lingerie.

Cross strips down to skimpy red undies.

MADONNA DIDN'T GET THE MEMO ABOUT CELEBRITY POLITICS
Feelings, Not Thoughts - Madonna made a foray into politics during an interview with BBC radio. She said she believes the war in Iraq won't help in the fight against terrorism, adding, "I just don't want American troops to be in Iraq, period. My feelings are, 'can we just all get out?'"