Uncle Scoopy's world-weary musings about naked celebrities, sports, humor and other important, manly things.
New HBO MAX series from Brazil based on true events. It’s a drama depicting the AIDS epidemic in Brazil in the 1980s.
In addition to the difficulties in treating the disease, there was enormous prejudice surrounding the disease. The series portrays airline workers who began smuggling AZT, a medication illegal in the country at the time, but which was then the only known treatment for those diagnosed.
Drama about the early years of the Beatles, focusing on the friendship between John Lennon and Stu Sutcliffe. It’s more or less a Sutcliffe biopic.
Backbeat is not a great movie, but I enjoyed it immensely. You may like it as well. If you’re a big Beatles fan, this film offers a pretty solid overview of what their lives were like in the pre-fame period in Liverpool and Hamburg. Although you won’t get to hear any of the great original hits that made the Beatles what they would become, you’ll get to hear plenty of vintage 1950’s American rock-n-roll, which is what the Fab Five (Harrison, Lennon, McCartney, Best, Sutcliffe) played in those days. They played that music well.
There are other positives:
* The guy who plays John Lennon delivers an intense and excellent performance.
* There is plenty of sexy nudity. I have never seen Sheryl Lee look better.
* The movie is consistently well filmed and well acted.
If you believe the legend, Stu Sutcliffe was facing a future of unimaginable promise. He had the choice of being the best-looking member of the most successful rock group in history, or becoming the greatest modern painter since Picasso. Instead of being able to live out either of those dreams, he became a mere footnote in Beatles history when his brain exploded in a massive cerebral hemorrhage, and he died in a tiny studio in Hamburg.
For many celebrities, death was an excellent career choice:
For Elvis, dying saved him from being a fat guy singing crappy lounge songs in spangled jumpsuits. That awful image was expunged by his demise, and he was able to go back to being the handsome, hard-drivin’ rockabilly star that he had once been, and to remain so forever.
For Jim Morrison, death served the same purpose as Caligula’s self-deification. By dying, Jim raised himself far above the Monkees and the Turtles and the Dave Clark Five and the rest of the Doors, and made himself part of the Holy Trinity of Rock with Jimi and Janis. Mention one of the Three Martyred J’s, and you mention all three: Jimi, Janis, and Jim.
Stu Sutcliffe was not among the celebs who benefited from death. His death represented the loss of an exceptional life at the tragically young age of 21.
Johnny Moronic’s collages and HD videos can be found here. (Scroll down from the Twin Peaks section.)
Sheryl Lee’s nudography is here.
… you can’t really see anything except the side of her butt.
Dramedy from the USA
Chris Parnell and Cara Buono star as Lyle and Holly, a happily married New York couple who decide to test the romantic boundaries of their monogamous relationship. Soon, a hypothetical love triangle with their rock star neighbor, played by Dennis Haysbert, becomes a reality they must now navigate. Willow Shields portrays their rebellious Gen-Z daughter, while Illeana Douglas adds laughs as their flirtatious confidante.
Some of these are absolute abominations.
My second wife worked with her bridesmaids to choose something that they would wear again. I endorse that approach.
French soap opera. “Tomorrow Is Ours”
She was definitely wearing patches on her nipples. I’m not sure what’s going on in the Southern Hemisphere.
French drama.
This sounds like it would be a French interpretation of the famous Mickey Spillane story, “I, the Jury,” the first novel about Mike Hammer. It is not. Not even close. It actually means “I swear.”
Marco, a directionless recycling worker in his 30s, finds solace in alcohol and a secret affair with older Madeleine. Selected as juror, he must judge a young arsonist’s manslaughter case despite his own poor judgment.
I don’t know much about Marie Masala. She was 69 years old during filming and had never acted before.
More good nudity and incoherent avant-garde gibberish from Alain Robbe-Grillet.
Walter is told by his boss, Sara, to deliver an urgent letter to Henri de Corinthe. On the way he finds a beautiful woman he had been eyeing in a nightclub, lying in the road, bound up. He takes her to a villa to get a doctor, and ends up being locked in a bedroom with her. While she is making love to him, he has visions of surrealistic images from René Magritte’s paintings. In the morning, the girl, Marie-Ange, has vanished, the villa looks derelict, and his neck is bleeding. Was it all just a nightmare?
There is a character named Sarah Zeitgeist, one named The Hysterical Woman, and another named The Cyclist. I didn’t see a mime, but there has to be one in there somewhere, as required by the Napoleonic Code. My ancient Babylonian is a little rusty, but I think it was first set into law as the long-forgotten Law 283 by the Code of Hammurabi. It’s hard to read. Most people think there were only 282 laws, but that’s because some of the text chipped off the stele over the millennia.
I do know Hammurabi was a huge mime fan. Many say he went to war with Ishme-Dagan of Assyria because of Ishy’s insistence on speech from all entertainers.
More of Defoe’s caps and clips: Christine Boisson’s full-frontal nudity from another Robbe-Grillet film, Le Jeu Avec Le Feu (1975)
La Disparue de Compostelle is a new Franco-Belgian television series.
Five years ago, Emma Vivian disappeared. Emma’s childhood friend, a detective, re-opens the investigation because a new element has just emerged, upsetting her understanding of “The Case of the missing woman from Compostela.”
French drama, known in English as Playing With Fire. It was written and directed by the noted intellectual and pervert, Alain Robbe-Grillet, author of the notorious bore-fest, Last Year at Marienbad (1961). His works are cerebral and often dull, but they are also intentionally transgressive and sometimes sexually explicit. He was really into bondage and sadism. For reasons mysterious to me, he was popular with the counterculture in the hippie era and was a Grove Press darling.
There are many filmmakers who make incomprehensible films, but his works are so non-linear that you can’t even create a comprehensible summary. Imagine if Godard was a masturbating madman, and you have Alain Robbe-Grillet.
Some stuff happens in this film, and then some vaguely related stuff happens, followed by some unrelated stuff. Then there’s a mental health clinic which is actually a sex dungeon, a hallway with too many doors. You know – usual avant-garde crap.
I guess I’m forever stuck in the derriere-garde.
Despite what I wrote above, this film is worth a look, since it contains an all-time championship full-frontal performance from Christine Boisson.
