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Tuna
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"Paris, Texas"
Paris, Texas (1984) is a joint German French film directed by Wim Winders and written by Winders and Sam Shepard. It came about because the two wanted to collaborate on a film. They started with an idea about a near catatonic who wanders into a small Texas border town, mute, and not remembering who he is or how he got there. His brother is found based on a card he had in his wallet, and comes down to bring him home to LA after being missing for years. This was as far as they got before casting, as they felt they needed to know what the characters really were all about before finishing the story.
We slowly learn that the man has a son who has been raised by his brother and his brothers wife (Aurore Clément), and that his wife is also missing. Turns out the missing wife has been sending a monthly deposit into an account for their son from a Texas bank. After being rehabilitated by his brother, and making friends with his son, he takes his son to go find his wife. He finds her working in a rather unsavory job in a peep booth. Finally, we are treated to a lengthy expository scene, where he tells the wife exactly what happened and why.
The film has a European pace, in other words, it creeps along. The photography is spectacular. The acting is superb, and Nastassja Kinski as the missing wife is absolutely gorgeous, but keeps her clothes on. The only exposure is a brief side view of Clément's right breast. The man, played by Harry Dean Stanton, does not speak for the entire first act. The score is eerie bottle neck guitar played by Ry Cooder. It is a highly acclaimed film, sitting at 7.6 at IMDb. Although it has a thin plot and little pace, it is riveting as a character driven drama. I was disappointed by the use of a long monologue at the end, but, overall, remained involved the entire running time of 147 minutes. Even if you don't normally like character driven drama and slow pace, you might also enjoy this one. B-.
Thumbnails
Aurore Clement
(1,
2)
"The L Word" (2004) Episodes 9 and 10
Nine is the worst so far for nudity, with the exposure limited to two unnamed nude dancers at a lesbo party. Jenny (Mia Kirshner) is still struggling with her sexual identity, but finds herself with no lovers, male or female. Dana the tennis player (Erin Daniels) comes out to her conservative parents.
Episode 10 includes a sex scene between Kirshner and her estranged husband. We see her breasts afterward, as he is telling her that it was a mistake, and he wants no part of her. Shane (Katherine Moennig) has become hairdresser to the stars, and one woman is offering to set her up in her own shop in exchange for their sexual relationship. Moennig shows breasts in a sex scene. The main focus switches to Jennifer Beals, who is being attacked on all sides. She and Laurel Holliman are attending group therapy for expectant parents, and one lashes out at her for not acting black enough to suit her. Holliman loses the baby, and she is under attack at work from a Christian right organization for booking a controversial exhibit. There is also nudity from an unknown as part of the art exhibit.
There is no longer any doubt that this is a soap, but peopled with lesbian characters having lesbian problems. Some are common to people regardless of gender or sexual orientation, but most are uniquely lesbian. I am afraid that my lukewarm reaction to the series is changing to dislike.
Thumbnails
Thumbnails
Katherine Moennig
(1,
2,
3,
4,
5,
6,
7,
8,
9,
10)
Mia Kirshner
(1,
2)
Unknown episode 10
(1,
2)
Unknown episode 9
(1,
2)
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Johnny Web (Uncle Scoopy)
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Good-Bye, Lenin (2003)
Cameron Crowe was so impressed with the Spanish film Abre Los Ojos
that he remade it into Vanilla Sky. It turned out OK, I guess, but
I've never been much enamored of the idea of taking European films
out of their own context. I mean, can you imagine a re-make of The
Seventh Seal with Tom Cruise as The Knight and Christopher Walken as
death? Well, now that I think about it, it would be kind of cool to
re-make The Seventh Seal, just because Max Van Sydow could play
death this time around! There is a certain poetic closure in that.
The change of context wasn't the big problem with Crowe's Vanilla
Sky, however. The real problem was that people went to it expecting
to see a Cameron Crowe movie and ended up sitting through an M.
Night Shyamalan movie. If Vanilla Sky had ever been seen by the
Shyamalan audience, they might have liked it. It just wasn't a
Cameron Crowe movie.
If only Crowe had waited to do an English-language re-make, because
Good-Bye, Lenin would have been the perfect project for him.
1. It is a great movie, with broad audience appeal, that will never
be appreciated widely in America because it is in German with
English subtitles. In fact, it is trapped in a foreign film version
of Catch-22. It is too mainstream for the people who normally like
subtitled European films, but the same language barrier will keep
mainstream audiences from seeing it. I believe it would be a monster
hit in America if it were in English.
2. It is a Cameron Crowe movie waiting to happen. Crowe's best work
is all about maintaining one's humanity and decency in a
dehumanizing environment: high school cliques, big-time rock,
big-time sports, etc. This movie is about maintaining one's humanity
under dehumanizing East German communism, and then again in the
crazy, dehumanizing shock-therapy that the East went through in the
reunification of Germany.
The premise is very simple. A dedicated, idealistic woman really
believes in The Glorious Worker's Paradise. She makes the crazy
system work on a small scale, with her volunteer projects, letter
writing, and citizen activism on behalf of worthwhile socialist and
humanitarian causes. Then she has an accident; goes into a coma.
While she lies unconscious, the whole world changes. The wall comes
down, Germany reunifies, and Western values obviously triumph
completely. When she comes out of her coma, virtually nothing is
left of the culture of East Germany. Her doctor sends her home from
the hospital, but with a warning to her children that any major
shock could be fatal to her. Her loving son determines that the fall
of her beloved East Germany would be such a shock, so he resolves to
keep East Germany alive for her inside her apartment, and he enlists
all of mama's old friends and colleagues to help him preserve the
illusion.
His project gets more and more complicated when he begins to realize
how much things have changed. His mom wants an old brand of pickles
that was produced under socialism. Long gone. The dreary old
socialist stores are being replaced by shiny new markets with brands
from West Germany, France, the U.K., and the U.S.A. He finds an old
discarded jar from the socialist days, and fills it with a new kind
of pickles, then resumes his scavenger hunt for those old pickles
and the other forgotten treasures of the East. Although only a few
months have passed since his mother's accident, it might well have
been decades, so rapidly and completely has East Germany been
consigned to the scrap heap of history.
The final complication occurs when his mother looks outside and sees
the old buildings festooned with Western-style advertising,
especially for that ultimate symbol of capitalism, Coca-Cola. How
can the son explain this? Serendipitously, he has a friend who wants
to be a filmmaker, and the two friends see this as a perfect
opportunity to practice filmmaking and deceive mama at the same
time, by making nightly news shows which explain all the sights mama
has seen of the reunified Germany - except that explanation always
involves some triumph for the East over the corrupt forces of
capitalism. (Which arouses no suspicion, since it is pretty much how
East Germany spun everything anyway!)
That main plot alone would be enough for a great movie. (The false
news broadcasts and their inherent lies are hilarious.)
But there is so much layering, such a rich tapestry of lives woven
together by the fall of Communism. The film's writers obviously know
the subject matter first-hand, and they bring in all the elements
which reflect that time and place perfectly, while the director
realizes all of the images necessary and appropriate to the task.
-
Mama's husband is still alive. He was a doctor. He fled to the West
and prospered under capitalism. He abandoned his family in the East
when the kids were very young. We are led at first to think that he
was a monster for doing so, but the explanation is anything but
that. He loved his wife, and would have loved to bring her out of
East Germany, but she really believed in socialism. He waited and
waited for an opportunity, prayed for reunification, then finally
gave up started a new family. Mama never really told the whole story
to the children.
-
Most of the people who fled to the West, in fact virtually all of
them, were able to escape with only what they could stuff in their
pockets as they made a surreptitious border crossing. They left
their entire lives behind: photo albums, love letters, books, all of
the things we humans consider our most precious personal belongings,
not to mention vast stocks of food hoarded when the opportunities
arose. As pictured here, the East Berlin of this time period is
filled with apartments that still include people's entire lives.
-
The son's boyhood hero, the first East German astronaut, is still
alive, now working as a cab driver. The son eventually manages to
find a way to bring his faded idol back to glory, if only in a false
news report.
As in many great movies, some of the best background material is
never discussed at all. It is just there, behind the actors,
revealing the character of the transition period, the likes of which
we will never see again.
I lived in Eastern Europe in that Gorbachev era just after the wall
came down, and was amazed by how rapidly the East assimilated the
new ways. I was stunned by how easily people could jump from 1917 to
1990 in a matter of months, and I felt their great sense of sadness
in knowing that some of the precious elements of their former lives
would be lost instantly and could never again be captured,
especially for those who genuinely believed that socialism might
have produced a compassionate society if only it could somehow have
by-passed the Stalins and Honeckers of the world, who turned their
countries into Kafkaesque and/or Orwellian nightmares. I lived for
many years with a woman whose retired parents had their lives
unraveled by Glasnost. (The transition was especially difficult for
pensioners in many parts of the old Soviet bloc, although the
Germans dealt fairly well with this problem.)
I could never articulate all the feelings that I had in those days,
nor would I know how to communicate those feelings to other people,
Fortunately, the people who made this film knew everything I knew,
felt everything I felt, and more, and they had the artistic vision
and talent to make it come alive in an interesting, touching, and
funny movie. It's a movie which captures an era perfectly, in a way
that allows the rest of us who were not there to understand all the
complexities of the time, yet it is also just a simple movie about a
guy's love for his very deserving mother.
I laughed out loud several times during the fake news reports in
this film, and I'm not ashamed to say that there were times when my
eyes were blurred from emotion, especially when the kid brought the
old astronaut out of retirement to give East Germany a proper
send-off. Then I watched it all a second time! This is a great
movie, so rich, so compassionate, so human. And the kid's voice-over
narration is absolutely eloquent, pure poetry, but delivered
perfectly in character, matter-of-factly, not rhetorically. The film
won just about every award that a German film can win in Europe. (Of
course, the people in Germany and elsewhere in Europe felt the
emotions of this film in a way that most of you cannot, but you'll
still like it.) If you have any tolerance at all for subtitled
films, this should be #2 on your list, after Amelie.
-
Random women (1,
2). These two scenes are actually in the film. (There is
also full-frontal male nudity, but nothing from the female stars.)
-
But there is good news! Although Chulpan Khamatova does no nudity in
the theatrical release, there are lots of deleted scenes, and this
is one of them. Because her nurse uniforms disguise her chest, and
because she looks so much like the small-breasted Canadian actress
Molly Parker, I never dreamed that Chulpan had this kind of chest.
My jaw dropped about to floor level when she flashed (too, too
briefly) one of those Mimi Rogers lookin' mofos.
Other Crap:
-
Depressing films about euthanasia, abortion and the hardships of
immigrant life bagged the top prizes at the 17th European Film
Awards, just as they have at the first sixteen, and
every other European film award show in history. The Europeans
matched the L.A. film critics in one key category: Briton Imelda
Staunton took the best actress statuette for her turn as a
working-class mother who performs illegal abortions in the
harrowing drama "Vera Drake."
-
L.A. Film Critics Pick 'Sideways' as Year's Top Movie,
Clint Eastwood's Million Dollar Baby finishes second. Britain's
Imelda Staunton was named best actress for her portrayal as an
abortionist in "Vera Drake," and Irish actor Liam Neeson was
handed the best actor honor for playing U.S. sex researcher Dr.
Alfred Kinsey in "Kinsey."
-
Here, at last, is an uncensored version of Chloe Sevigny obviously
kneeling uinder the ol' mistletoe in The Brown Bunny
-
Maim That Tune - Detune your head: "Are you plagued by
Stuck Tune Syndrome? Do you have a tune stuck in your head you
just can't get out? Take heart friend, for your suffering is over.
The Maimograph Machine, through complex analysis and calculation,
will find an even catchier tune to counter-act the one you already
have."
-
Rich New Yorkers give birds the bird, inspiring
bird-lovers to give the bird to bird-evicters.
-
Danny Ocean kicks vampire ass. The new Soderbergh film
opened with a $14 million Friday, and took in not only more than
Blade:Trinity, but more than the next five films added together!!
-
The red-state warriors and blue-state battlers are at it again.
This time, the goal isn't the White House. It's the Oscar.
In one color-coded corner: Conservative Bible-thumpers
pushing for nominations for The Jesus Chainsaw Massacre. In the
other color-coded corner: Proud liberal Michael Moore pushing for
nominations for his own religious act of faith focused on an
earlier part of the bible - the Burning Bush. (Is Fahrenheit 911
the temperature at which a Bush burns?)
-
The trailer for Ong Bak, the new Thai chopsocky film
with the hopeful new prince of the martial arts, Tony Jaa. It's
made with no wire work or CGI.
-
Casting a porno film? Need to choose your cast by looking through
some nekkid pictures of models?
- Future leading man roles for Tom Arnold?
New operation can boost the size of a micro-penis.
-
The trailer for Nobody Knows : "Hirokazu Kore-eda, the
director of 'Maborosi' and 'After-life,' presents this exceptional
story of a makeshift family of children left to survive in an
urban Tokyo jungle. "
-
The trailer for Beautiful Boxer. I know it sounds like
I made this up, but this is the real summary: "Based on the true
story of Thailand's famed transgender kickboxer, 'Beautiful Boxer'
is a poignant action drama that punches straight into the heart
and mind of a boy who fights like a man so he can become a woman."
-
RUMSFELD DEMANDS FULL BODY ARMOR FOR NEXT MEETING WITH TROOPS.
Felt Unprotected, Defense Secretary Says
-
Jean Claude van Damme has described himself as a 'superhero in
bed'. "I would always go for a muscular woman rather
than for a skinny one but on one condition - her brains have to be
as developed as her muscles."
-
Sexy Video of Jessica Simpson as Daisy Duke
-
Eiffel Tower Opens Elevated Skating Rink It is 18
stories above the ground.
- Geek of the day award.
Man builds full-scale grandfather clock from LEGOs.
-
Hustler Magazine warms to the U.K. with a 2005 Calendar.
-
Dioxin poisoning caused the mysterious illness that scarred the
face of one of those two Ukranianian Weird Vic Yankovic guys.
I think it's the one that the West likes.
-
Fishermen catch 1000 pound Mako shark. You are not
gonna believe the size of this sucker.
-
Here's one we missed in Japanese corner - an obscene MTV-style
video. Pretty good, but not one friggin' octopus. I
guess these are non-coastal Japanese people.
- The ultimate Christmas gift for that really strange kid on
your list:
The Christopher Walken - King of New York- 12 inch action figure
-
Kate Beckinsale checks into hotels under the name 'Sigourney
Beaver'.
-
Nicole Kidman has dropped out of Mel Brooks' new film version of
THE PRODUCERS
-
A stone carving that was used as a cat's headstone has sold for
200,000 pounds at auction. Hey, it was a really cute
cat. Actually, the stone turned out to be a Saxon-era stone
cutting.
-
Jon Stewart talks about the military terms of duty being extended
unexpectedly.
-
Jon Stewart talks, or maybe I should say "rants" about Donald
Rumsfeld.
-
The trailer and a new featurette from White Noise:
"Michael Keaton plays a successful architect, Jonathan Rivers,
whose peaceful existence is shattered by the unexplained
disappearance and death of his wife, Anna (Chandra West). Jonathan
is eventually contacted by a man, who claims to be receiving
messages from Anna through EVP, the process through which the dead
communicate with the living through household recording devices.
These extraordinary recordings, captured by people all over the
world, seem to confirm what many of us have dared to believe: it
is possible for the dead to communicate with us. At first
skeptical, Jonathan then becomes convinced of the messages'
validity, and is soon obsessed with trying to contact her on his
own. His further explorations into EVP and the accompanying
supernatural messages unwittingly open a door to another world,
allowing something uninvited into his life. "
-
The fleshy filmmaker Michael Moore is back on the campaign trail
trolling for votes - this time, for the People's Choice Awards.
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.
My Tutor (1983) (day 3)
Male fantasy premise - horny and sensitive teenager,
gorgeous young tutor. The co-stars, Matt Latanzi and Caren Kaye, had
short-lived careers. Caren attracted a lot of horny stares for many
years, but couldn't translate her "favorite nude scene" status into
lasting fame. It seems that she was always on Battle of the Network
Stars or Love Boat, but not much else.
The caps of Caren Kaye can be found in the Funhouse
Thursday and Friday. Here are the others.
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
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Words, pictures, and vids from
ICMS
Whose Life is it Anyway? (1981)
First there's two clips from the 1981 movie "Whose life is it
anyway?" starring Richard Dreyfuss. The film deals with the
still controversial issue of euthanasia. Richard Dreyfuss plays
the part of a paraplegic man who doesn't want to spend the rest
of his life in that state and therefore would like to end his
life in a way he considers dignified. 23 years later there are
still only a couple of places in the world which allow people to
end their own lives under those conditions (given certain
criteria). That's the reason why I think the topic is still
controversial and the movie still isn't outdated. In this film
that rates 7.2 in the IMDb and is still only available on VHS,
Richard Dreyfuss's character has a vision of Janet Eilber
dancing naked in a triple B performance. Surprisingly enough I
couldn't find anything of her in the back issues nor the
Encyclopedia.
Internal Affairs (1990)
Secondly I've got one clip of Faye Grant in 1990's "Internal
Affairs". Faye is probably best remembered from the series "V"
and back then she seemed to be facing a bright career. For some
reason, however, this didn't happen and that is how we find her
handling Richard Gere's stick shift while he's checking out her
"gear" box. Sorry, but I couldn't resist the pun here,
how obvious it may be. Faye bears a breast during this process.
|
Brainscan
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'Caps and comments by Brainscan:
Just a quickie today.
I found some raw frames of Italian babe Pamela Prati in "Io Gilda" on usenet. She's a personal favorite, so I edited these together for the Fun House.
- Pamela Prati. Topless in all, rear views in #3 and #6 plus full frontal nudity in #7.
(1,
2,
3,
4,
5,
6,
7)
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Crimson Ghost
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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.
Trying to keep up with the Ghost's output....
First up today, 'caps and vids from small budget comdey and semi-cult favorite, "Sol Goode".
Next up, scenes from the direct-to-vid movie "Shelter Island", starring Stephen Baldwin, Chris Penn, Patsy Kensit and Ally Sheedy.
Next the Ghost takes a look at the 1996 movie "House of the Damned", starring "Baywatch" regular Alexandra Paul and one of the "My Two Dads" dudes, Greg Evigan.
- Mary Kate Ryan is topless in two love scenes.
(1,
2,
3,
4,
5,
6)
- Mary Kate Ryan zipped .wmvs
(1,
2)
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Hankster
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'Caps and comments by Hankster:
Scoops,
Today we venture off and take a look at a tittie movie called "Behind Bedroom Doors".
What do we get to see? Just three attractive women showing off their boobs at every opportunity.
So here's a look at Brook LaVelle, Monique Alexander and Nicole Sheridan. Folks may recognize Alexander and Sheridan from some of their hardcore movies.
- Brook LaVelle and Monique Alexander. Both ladies are topless, Alexander bares a little bum and there is some mild lesbo stuff too.
(1,
2,
3)
- Brook LaVelle aka Amber Karney, toplessness.
(1,
2,
3,
4,
5,
6)
- Nicole Sheridan, also topless.
|
DeadLamb
|
Bree Turner |
The über-cute babe from "Deuce Bigalow" showing a little cleavage in scenes from the movie "Whacked!" (2002).
|
Catherine Zeta-Jones |
The "Ocean's Twelve" star showing a little cleavage on Leno.
|
Debra Wilson
(1,
2)
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The former "Mad TV" cast member nekkid in scenes from "Skin Deep" (2003). In #1 she's wearing see-thru lingerie that reveals her pubes. In #2 she shows off her big'uns while riding a dude.
|
Drea de Matteo |
The former Sopranos babe showing tons of cleavage on a recent episode of "Joey".
| Tara Reid |
Tara showing off plenty of robo-cleavage at the Billboard Music Awards.
|
Heather Stephens
(1,
2)
|
Excellent thong views in scenes from the indie film "Clubland" (1999).
|
Variety
|
Chloë Sevigny
(1,
2,
3,
4,
5,
6,
7)
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More 'caps of Sevigny topless in scenes from the Vincent Gallo movie "The Brown Bunny". Links 3, 6 and 7 feature Chloë taking on two dudes at once in a sex scene.
|
Catherine Zeta-Jones
(1,
2,
3,
4,
5,
6,
7)
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The Oscar winner topless (and wearing a sea-shell bikini) in scenes from her first movie "1001 Nights" aka "Sheherazade".
|
Milla Jovovich |
Coming to DVD December 28! Here's Milla topless in scenes from "Resident Evil: Apocalypse". Thanks to LC.
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