• Charlie's French Cinema Nudity Site is updated.

Mrs Henderson Presents (2005)

"Recently widowed well-to-do Laura Henderson is at a bit of a loose end in inter-war London. On a whim she buys the derelict Windmill theatre in the West End and persuades impresario Vivian Van Damm to run it, despite the fact the two don't seem to get on at all. Although their idea of a non-stop revue is at first a success, other theatres copy it and disaster looms. Laura suggests they put nudes in the show, but Van Damm points out that the Lord Chamberlain, who licenses live shows in Britain, is likely to have something to say about this. Luckily Mrs Henderson is friends with him."

I haven't seen this film, but the reviews are pretty good. James Berardinelli was a strong supporter, awarding three and a half stars.  Director Stephen Frears is the guy who directed the Glenn Close version of Dangerous Liaisons, and two of John Cusack's best films, The Grifters and High Fidelity. (The Grifters earned Frears an Oscar nomination.) 

There is lots of nudity, and Kelly Reilly is an especially beautiful girl.

Here is the zipped .avi. The guy who made it says it includes all the female nudity. He was able to keep the file size small by excluding the sound.

Here are the stills and collages from various artists. (None of these are mine.)

Kelly Reilly

Anna Brewster

Natalia Tena

Sarah Solemani

Various

Group

H

American Pie 4: Band Camp (2005)

Sigh.

It was only six years ago that the American Pie series debuted and it doesn't seem fully exhausted yet. The last film was still funny, and it is too soon to be using this franchise as a vehicle to add a brand name to otherwise generic stories. Here's the recipe: take a generic script for a gross-out teen comedy; make the lead character Stifler's brother; hire an actor to impersonate Stifler's mannerisms; write in some tenuous connections to the original trilogy. Spend as little money as possible. Voila! Instant video sequel with instant name recognition.

In addition to the Stifler family name, there is a threefold attempt to connect this film to the originals. (1) The story takes place this one time, at band camp. (2) Band Camp features a cameo from The Sherminator, the king of the geeks in the first two films, who is now a high school guidance counselor. (3) The story also worked in Eugene Levy as Jim's dad, whose presence in the plot really can't be justified by any reasonable explanation. Levy's familiar, avuncular countenance was needed for the ads and the DVD cover, so the scriptwriter devised a convoluted rationalization for his presence. It seems that the Alyson Hannigan character was selected to be the camp's conflict resolution officer because of her lofty status in the band camp pantheon. She could not take the job because of a pregnancy, so her father-in-law (Jim's dad), always eager to help out and now a lonely guy with an empty nest, volunteered to fill in.

Yes, I know it's lame.

The actual plot ain't so hot either.

Stifler's brother revels in the Stifler family reputation. He's a junior in high school now, and even a bigger asswipe than Steve. When he gets caught destroying the graduation ceremony for the seniors, he is offered an alternative: expulsion or behavior modification treatment. Once he chooses the latter, his guidance counselor (The Sherminator) ships him off for a summer with the band geeks.

Once her resigns himself to his penance, Stifler the Younger begins the summer by maintaining his condescension toward the band geeks, and even stocks up on hidden cameras so he can film their most embarrassing moments and share them with the cool crowd back in school. Of course, since this is an American Pie movie (of sorts), he is gradually won over by the sincerity of the nice girl from his school, and he finds that the band geeks are actually kind of fun to hang with. His heart seems to enlarge several sizes, ala the Grinch, until some in-crowd cheerleaders from his school show up at band camp to co-ordinate their dancing routines with the marching band, at which point Stifler reverts to his obnoxious mode, insisting to the cheerleaders that he's just spying on the poor unfortunate geeks so he can make his hidden camera video. Needless to say, the geeks overhear.

The big finale at band camp is a competition between the participating high schools. The nice girl from Stifler's school needs to win so she can get a coveted music scholarship, but her main competitor is the usual snooty rich kid who will stop at nothing to win. Will Stifler deliberately humiliate the geeks from his own school in order to impress his cool friends, or will he follow his heart and try to help his homies defeat Mr. Snooty? I'll just bet you can guess. Actually, you'd be wrong, but only slightly. He does try to follow his heart, but screws up and causes his school and the nice girl to be humiliated. Then he has to stage a really elaborate scheme to atone for his insensitive bungling, thus following the trail blazed by his brother in American Wedding.

The film generates some laughter, but there is nothing very creative or very compelling, and it all seems like stale material culled from earlier "coming of age" films. There is the usual collection of Pie antics involving bodily fluids and parts, but it all seems tired this time around. At various times, musical instruments are sprayed with various different fluids and used in various sexual situations. There are jokes involving feces, semen, and vomit. Somehow the writers forgot urine, pus, and menstrual blood. Perhaps those were held back for American Pie 5.

It's a shame that the people who own the rights to this material chose to follow the "Stifler's brother" detour instead of staying on the main route. Michelle and Jim are married, but they are not dead, and none of the other characters have closed storylines. Perhaps they have all moved to different cities and rarely come into contact, in which case the series could have had a tenth high school reunion. One of the most interesting parts of life is to meet people years after high school and see how much, or how little, they have changed. Or how about showing Finch's adult life with Stifler's mom? Anything like that would have been more fun and more appropriate than taking a generic script and cobbling it enough to fit under the American Pie banner.

---

NOTES on the "unrated" DVD:

I haven't seen the rated version, but I have read all of the available comments, and I've concluded that the extra eight minutes on the unrated version consist of the following:

1. The unrated version shows the counselors doing their jiggle act in the shower, whereas the rated version had pulled the camera away just as it was about to reveal anything. There is very little lower body exposure.

2. There is an extra scene on the unrated DVD which involves two naked girls in the camp bathroom. The they are discussing the other characters, but I simply don't know who these girls are supposed to be. I couldn't relate their characters to any other scenes, and I couldn't find those two actresses in the credits. Very nice nudity, but again there is minimal lower body action.

The extra features on the DVD don't include any nudity at all.

Rachel Veltri

Angela Little

Ginger Lynn Allen

Others

Transamerica (2005)

I'll try to get a full review of this, along with The Constant Gardener,  in tomorrow's edition. In the meantime, here's Felicity Huffman offering some full-frontal exposure.

 

Rampage: The Hillside Strangler Murders (2006)

This one comes to DVD in early January, and there has not been much leaking out except that  Brittany Daniel gives it up. Catch the trailer here.

While we wait, here's what we have seen so far.

 

Best nude scene nominees

Again, don't write me to tell me I missed a stray nipple somewhere, but DO write if my list does not include the one film you would vote for as the best nude scene of the year.

Other Crap:

Movie Reviews:

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

Rock & Roll Frankenstein (1999)

Infidelity (1997) is a Canadian film that appears to have been shot in and around Santa Monica, California, and is basically a crime thriller. As the film opens, Tamara Mello is being killed with a nasty knife.

Cut to three days before, where a rather confusing plot is explained. A man (John Shaffer) and his wife (Vanessa Sadler) live in a nice Beverly Hills home. She sells ritzy furniture and he is a record producer. They are prosperous, but their relationship is not going well.

There is more to Shaffer's character than we are at first led to believe. He is an ex-boxer who took a dive to earn enough money to buy his wife their house. Since his retirement from the sport, he has been doing odd jobs for the mob. The mob boss (Gary Stretch) brings a female vocalist (Tamara Bello) to meet him. With his wife out of town on business, he ends up in the sack with Bello -- not a move likely to enhance his life expectancy, given that she is the main squeeze of the local crime boss.

It took way too long to figure out the pecking order in the film, and the acting and direction could have been much better. The story would have probably been good enough if properly directed.  There are not enough votes at IMDb for a score. This is a very low C-, as an ok story that was not executed very well, but makes up for it with two sex scenes and the resulting nudity.

We see breasts and buns from Tamara Mello, and breasts from Vanessa Sadler.

 

Tamara Mello

Vanessa Sadler

 (19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27)

Pat's comments in yellow...
 

WOMEN ATTRACTED TO MEN WHO CAN DANCE

Rutgers University researchers proved that women are naturally attracted to men who can dance.  They filmed 180 teenagers dancing, converted them into androgynous figures, and had test subjects rate them.  People gave higher ratings to dancers with more symmetrical bodies; and surprisingly, men were rated as better dancers than the women.  Also, the effect was stronger with women judges than with men.  Scientists said it shows that people with symmetrical bodies may naturally be better dancers, and women instinctively sense that men who can dance would be more desirable mates genetically.

*  And, wouldn't you know it: they're all gay!

*  The most desirable man on the entire planet: John O' Hurley. (Mr. Peterman.)
 

SANTA CLAUS GOES SLAYING

Malky Watret of Paisley, England, was dressed as Santa and handing out gifts to children at a shopping center when a gang of seven teenage thugs started calling him a fake and knocked him over with a shopping cart.  But he came up, grabbed a five-foot artificial Christmas tree, and started swinging, holding them off until security arrived.  Watret said he might've used some choice language, but he couldn't do that as Santa with kids
around.  Mall managers hailed him for "saving the spirit of Christmas" and showing "our shoppers and their children that Santa is no pushover."

*  He sees you when you're sleeping, and he knows where you live, PUNK!

 

DEAR ABBY ENDORSES REGIFTING

An expert has weighed in on whether it's okay to "regift," or give someone an unwanted gift you got from someone else.  Advice columnist Dear Abby has declared regifting to be a "time-honored tradition" and "the earliest form of recycling."  The rules of regifting include making sure you never give a gift back to its original giver, remove all original wrapping and cards, and make sure it's appropriate. For instance, Dear Abby said, "Don't give knitting needles to an athlete."

*  I think this same column ran last year, and she just blew the dust off it and gave it to us again.