Updates:

• Charlie's French Cinema Nudity Site is updated

Henry VIII (2003- TV):

Ray Winstone as a king of England? I guess Vinnie Jones was busy.

In this two-parter from Masterpiece Theater, Winstone cockneys his way through three or four decades in the life of Hanko Ocho. The script rushes through all six wives, all the religious upheaval, and all the various scheming chancellors and nobles, and does it all in about three hours. It's a vast morass of political and sexual intrigues condensed and simplified for the masses, then jam-packed into the running time of a single long feature film.

In fact, exposition was crammed into the script so tight that the screenwriter had to relay repeatedly on the ol' "I am so-and-so" or "you are so-and-so" technique, as in "I could never betray Ann, for she is not only my niece, and the aunt of your majesty's son, but she is also a subject of Norfolk, of which I am Duke," or "I am your wife," or "You are a lawyer," or "I am a poor butcher's son," or "Have I not served you faithfully as chancellor for 13 years, since you plucked me from obscurity?" Best of all, there is the all-purpose, "I am your king." How are you supposed to respond to that? "Hey, no kidding? All this time I thought the king was that skinny bald guy over there, the one with the salt-and-pepper beard! I thought you were the harpsichord player! My bad."

I think it would be marvelous if people were really to communicate in expository dialogue. Suppose someone sends me an e-mail asking, "Can you tell me when my subscription expires?" I could answer, "I can, for I am your webmaster, as I have been for lo these three years since you subscribed, and was for seven years before then, since the dark days of the first Clinton regime." (Or, alternatively, "since thou subscribeth.")

Is Henry VIII good history? No. It omits and changes details to compress the story, and even when it sticks to the facts it still manages to give various elements the wrong weight in terms of significance.

Joking aside, is Winstone a credible Henry? Maybe. Winstone is very dynamic and a good actor, and he does look like very much like Henry VIII.  As for his working class accent ...  well I suppose we can allow some dramatic license there. Henry might have spoken very informally, despite his palace upbringing, because he was a regular guy who liked his ale and his cards and his sports, hung with the guys, and made hay with the ladies. Unfortunately, that spin is partially betrayed by the fact that the kid who plays Henry at age 17 doesn't have the same accent. 

Does the script develop its characters adequately? No. Apart from factual inaccuracy, the greatest flaw of the presentation is that it focuses in on events that revealed Henry VIII to be a petty and flawed man, and fails to give any real understanding of his strengths. As for the minor characters, there are so many of them that there is no chance to develop any sense of each one as a complex individual. Even if you are quite familiar with the outline of history in this era, you will have to keep asking yourself, "Now, who is this guy again?" I paused the DVD several times to go to the companion website and refresh my memory about which people were involved in which schemes, and why.

On the other hand, I think the program succeeds it a way. It does give a very good understanding of the general issues which caused England to become Protestant. It also allows us to imagine the various characters as real human beings with credible human motives, and in so doing it tries to show some of the psychological complexity that drove Henry into actions which seemed contradictory to his nature. Unfortunately, Henry's intellect is given short shrift so that the script can cover more lively cinematic matters like jousting and sex, but there is only so much that can be covered in three hours. This sort of soap-opera overview is not the kind of history that will be appreciated by persnickety scholars, but it is the kind that gives you a respectably fair overview of the issues and personalities if you don't really care about the minutiae, and it does so in a reasonably entertaining package.

By the way, Helena Bonham Carter was pregnant when she played this role, which necessitated some adaptation of the costumes, and some concealment in the camera angles - especially in her sex scene. I guess the good news is that her breasts seemed larger than usual.

 

Helena Bonham Carter

Emily Blunt. (The small inserts approximate what the scene looked like without the gimmicky lighting effects.)

Sin City special edition DVD (2005):

Can you long-timers recall any instance when I have given any product an unqualified rave review with no hesitation at all? Probably not. When I ask that question again, you will be able to say, "Yah, when you reviewed the Sin City Special Edition."

This DVD is absolutely a must-own. It was the coolest film of the year, and now it is the coolest DVD ever! If you only own ten DVDs, this should be one of them. In fact, if I had to strip my DVD collection down to one, I believe this would be it!!

It includes three versions of the film:

• The original theatrical version of the film, which is 124 minutes long and winds all four stories together. The theatrical release includes four audio tracks. (1) The film itself. (2) A feature commentary with Robert Rodriguez & Frank Miller (3) a feature commentary with Robert Rodriguez & Quentin Tarantino (4) an audio track featuring a recording of the audience reaction at the Austin premiere

• The re-cut extended version, which is 147 minutes long and consists of four completely discrete stories told from start to finish.

• A special green-screen edition. This is fantastic! It shows the entire movie from beginning to end, in color, without any effects, just as Rodriguez would have seen it as it was filmed. (It shows about half of the frames, sped up to about four times normal speed, so it runs about 16 minutes.) It is basically just actors delivering their lines in totally green rooms, and therefore allows you to see exactly how the film was created. Brilliant extra feature!

Plus these never-before-seen features:

• 15-minute film school with Robert Rodriguez
• The Long Take: 17 uninterrupted minutes of Tarantino's segment
• Sin City Night at Antones -- filmmakers, cast and crew party
• 10-minute cooking school with Robert Rodriguez
• Bloopers
• A Hard Top With a Decent Engine: The cars of Sin City
• Making the Monsters: Special effects make-up
• Trench Coats & Fishnets: The costumes of Sin City
• Booze, Broads & Guns: The props of Sin City
• How it Went Down: Convincing Frank Miller to make the film
• Giving the Characters Life: Casting the film
• Special guest director: Quentin Tarantino
• Sin-Chroni-City interactive game
• Complete Sin City Graphic Novel - The Hard Goodbye

Oh, yeah, did I mention that just about all of Jamie King's nudity and some of Carla Gugino's is now available in color? I'm tellin' ya - this motherfucker is perfect.

Oh, just for the record, here is my review of the film itself.

Jamie King

Carla Gugino

Rosario Dawson (no nudity, but hot)

Alba (just a face - but what a face!)

Other Crap:

Erotic Survivor 2 (2002 video):

The story pits the Obgyn tribe of Tiffany Sonders, Syndy Devil and Lora Renee against the Coochie tribe of Katie Jordan, Vanessa Del Sol and Allanah Rhodes - duking it out for the amazing grand prize of $20.00. Their grueling events include a "carry pennies on your boobs" race, a "blow-up doll between the knees" relay and a "stuff Jello into a condom blindfolded" contest. All of this supposedly takes place in Africa, but the sound track of African music is as close as it got to the dark continent.

To recover from the strain of the events, the girls have sex in groups of two to six. Also, all events are topless. Then, they scrap the score of the first three events, and play sexual trivial pursuit to narrow down the filed to three. The ultimate winner is decided by vote. All six women not only show everything, but have everything touched at least once by each of the other women.

IMDb readers have this at 3.2, and a whopping nine people have seen it. The story is a complete throwaway. If your idea of fun is watching any or all of these women naked, this is your great chance. For the most part, the photography and lighting was good, which is a necessary ingredient for a film that is 100% eye candy. This is a C-.

 

Allanah Rhodes

Katie Jordon

Lora Renee

Sundy Devil

Tiffany Sonders

Vanessa Del Sol

  
Fei Ksila looks a bit kinky

 
and so does Margarita Amarantidi

Olga Karlatos suffers for her art in "Gloria Mundi"

   
Olia Lazaridou shows off her tit

   
And finally these are some women from the "avant-garde" film "Kleftis i i pragmatikotita"  (translated: Thief or the reality).

Many thanks to Tuna for the caps I saw of Paola Senatore, and to you for Angelique Pettyjohn!  I hadn't seen such good quality caps from the nun film of Paola, and Angelique's were all new to me.  They are both among my top favorites!  They have that "something" which excites me and  they have both done hardcore,  which in my mind makes them even more interesting,  maybe in a morbid sort of way ...
 

Paola Senatore, according to info on the net, was addicted to drugs towards the end of her career, didn't land any proper acting jobs and supposedly turned to hardcore in order to support her addiction. In a review of "IMAGES IN A CONVENT," Casey Scott states that she even turned to prostitution:

"The ultimate tragedy was yet to come: if you frequent the red light district of Rome, you may see Senatore propositioning you from a street corner. She was a beautiful woman who definitely did not deserve her fate"

I find this rather far-fetched, and no other source has claimed something like this.
 
She has done a couple of Hard R - Soft X films {I'm using Tuna terms}, and one hard core film called "Non stop - sempre buio in sala." She claims that she was pregnant during this film, and her claims seem valid to me. It's a film that isn't hard to find in p2p networks or the 'net,  from which some extracts have been used in other films as well. She also did quite a few hard photo shootings for Italian magazines like "Le Ore" and "Men,"  which must be only in the hands of a few collectors,  'cause I have been able to track down virtually nothing from them.
 
Here is an Italian site dedicated to Paola which has a good biography {written in Italian} and some caps-scans of her.

Angelique looks like she had a troubled life too, worked as a stripper, did hardcore films and died of cancer at a young age.  Here's an "In Memoriam" written by a certain "John L. Flynn, Ph.D."
 
I had also found an interview with Angelique at this site

Finally, according to info found here, other "mainstream" actresses who turned to hardcore are Lilli Carati, Karin Schubert - nothing new to me there, looks like  they started a new career in hardcore and made many films- and Tina Aumont - that one is surprising and I find it hard to believe- do you know if it has any substance?)

Scoop's note: I don't know. Maybe one of our regulars will comment. Write me if you have the goods.

Speaking of hardcore,  do you know who Thora Birch's mother is? Carol Connors of "Deep throat"  and "Candy". At least that's what Wikipedia says

Scoop's note: totally correct. Her father was a porn star as well and, if I remember right, they have been recorded doing the deed together in porn! That's a treasured family heirloom for Thora.  (Maybe her own conception?)

Girls Aloud is a girl band I guess.  Makes sense I suppose.  One of the girls who is a-loud is Cheryl
Tweedy.  Damn fine looking woman.  Love the suit, Cheryl.
 

TOYS TOO HARD TO UNWRAP

Why Kids Just Play With The Box - Knight Ridder columnist Jeff Gammage
reports that toys are now so difficult to unwrap, 220,000 Americans are
injured annually opening them, more than in skateboard accidents.  For
instance, Mattel's "My Scene Goes Hollywood" Chelsea doll and her two dozen accessories are held down by 20 pieces of tape, five wires, two lengths of stitching, three drops of glue, two rubber clasps, a waist harness, several cardboard spacers and a plastic cord threaded through the back of Chelsea's skull. Makers say it's because toys have to be shipped all the way from the Orient, plus desperate parents will steal replacement accessories from boxes on toy store shelves.

*  Also, many Americans insist on trying to open them while riding
skateboards.

*  But it's a realistic Hollywood doll!  All those same things are used to
hold Joan River together!

NEWS NOTES!

*  Syracuse University researchers found that bats with large testicles
have smaller brains, while the bats with the largest brains have the
smallest testicles

...The researchers proved this also applies to humans by
describing their own sex lives.

*  A group of Inuit (Eskimo) people filed a human rights lawsuit against
the United States, blaming America for causing global warming that's
destroying their traditional Arctic lifestyle

...It's just not the same, hunting polar bears while wearing Speedos