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Purple Gene Reviews
Purple Genes' review of "Jaws 4 - The Revenge" (1987):
I've finally found the greatest collapse in sequal ratings in the history of cinema. I like to go to rottentomatoes.com to check out movie ratings......so when I saw the trailer on the AMC (American Movie Channel) for "Jaws 4 - The Revenge" I thought I'd look up its rating on the Tomato-Meter............for the first time ever I found a movie with a 0% !!!!!!
Everybody hated it - panned it...."Worse than Awful".......So, just for fun I looked up the original "Jaws" (1975) on the Tomato-Meter.......Oh my god 100% !!!!!!!
Because of the astounding disparity from original hit to 4th generation flop.....I just had to subject myself to the damn final fish (mammal) story !
Ellen Brody (Lorraine Gary [AKA: Mrs.Sid Sheinberg]) has deteriorated considerably since losing her husband police chief Martin Brody (Roy Scheider) in the original Spielberg directed - Benchley written blockbuster......I don't mean just from doing three sequels....but more like Lorraine Gary really aged and got bad hair and terrible make-up and really shitty lines...The director of this movie (Joseph Sargent) couldn't have done a worse job in making her look haggard if he had tried - but now this ugly widow loses her younger son to the "Great White"....Dum dum Dum dum Dum dum......right there in Amity......So her other son, who is training to become a MARINE BIOLOGIST.....comes to visit and decides to take his family and his mom Ellen away to the Bahamas.....
Everything goes South with the Brodys....including the goddam shark...now how did it do that????? On their way, Ellen meets Hoagie (Michael Caine - who missed picking up an Oscar for "Hannah and Her Sisters" to finish this TURD) and they kind of get the hots for each other....And I can't forget Jake (Mario Van Peebles) who is a friend of Ellens' son and possesses the phoniest jamaican accent EVER!!!!!
So Ellen decides to go after the Shark that followed her all the way to the Bahamas on her little lonesome.........she takes a sailboat out and waits in the middle of the deep blue for the "JAWED ONE"......She actually stands at the back of the boat and screams...."Come and get me you son of a bitch" woweeeee.....Dum dum Dum dum !!
Well her son, Hoagie and Rasta boy fly out to save her..........they try to crash their plane into "Whitey" but miss....they end up on the boat with Ellen as the Shark (cheesiest live action model imaginable) terrorizes them....Jake become shark Jerky but manages to get the shark to swallow an annoying electronic devise.......and then the final scene where they turn the bow of the sailboat into the vengeful creature and skewer him for good........awful special effect.....bad bad bad movie.....all gone....
Purple Gene gives "Jaws 4 - The Revenge" a big fat O !
Purple Gene
Paul Berenson
Another Side of the News
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Reader Recommended Reading
Roger Ebert
Roger Ebert's Review of "Dr. Strangelove" (Newly Restored)
``Dr. Strangelove'' and ``2001: A Space Odyssey'' (1968) are Kubrick's masterpieces. The two films share a common theme: Man designs machinery that functions with perfect logic to bring about a disastrous outcome. The U.S. nuclear deterrent and the Russian ``doomsday machine'' function exactly as they are intended, and destroy life on earth. The computer HAL 9000 serves the space mission by attacking the astronauts.
Purple Gene Reviews
'The Eighteenth Angel'
Purple Genes' review of the movie "The Eighteenth Angel" seen on Cable Mystery West:
I have to admit it........I was really bored and there was absolutely nothing else on!!!!!!!1
I usually steer clear of the Mystery and Action Channels........so here's how it came to passe.......I was watching the IFCs' "Dinner for Five" round table actor/director discussion marathon hosted by John Favreau (He needs to have his head shrunk !) .....and then I drifted over to HBOs' "Pornocopia" - a kind of docu-drama exploring the "inside" of the San Fernando Valley based Adult Film Industry (pretty revealing - Porn pays the state of California $ 25 million per year in taxes!!!!).......But I started to "Peter" out with an episode of HBOs' "Curb Your Enthusiasm" starring "Seinfelds'" Larry David..........I still needed a "ZONER" ....and I found it......"The Eighteenth Angel" (1998) Directed by William Bindley and Starring Christopher McDonald, Rachael Leigh Cook, Stanley Tucci (total waste of his talent)and Maximillian Schell ( bearded head abbot)......It was the TITLE of the movie that got me hooked......But it was the over the top, completely cliched chanting black robed hooded monks that put me out eventually........and I thought that another actress with LEIGH in her name might be worth "watching"!!!!!!!
Like a cross between "Rosemarys Baby" and "Omen IV - the Awakening" with a little "Exorcist" and "Obsession" and "The Prophecy" thrown in - we have all the elements for a Satanic, semi-gothic, italianesque, evil monastery, monk chanting morbid mystery....with a stupid Pentagram clock to strike the bewitching hour.....I guess 666 adds up to Eighteen in the deep and meaningful Etruscan Math........Well here's what I went through.......
After the Mysterious death of her mother, lovely and innocent looking Lucy Stanton (Cook) goes with her increasingly sceptical and protective father (McDonald) to Italy......little does daddy know that there is a morbid group of monks that want his daughter to fulfill their ancient satanic prophecy! They have to kill her in order to re-incarnate her.....so we have fiendish friars, devil dogs and harbinger horses all after the nubile waif..........there is a rythmic, chanting chase to the inevitable end....and it's the horses....clop clopping on either side of Lucy....that end up strangling her with their reins.......but the evil monks and the evil doctors and the evil long-haired wanna be boy friend all conspire against pops and as she is lying dead in bed - flat-lined....the pentagram clock strikes 18 and Lucy rises up like Jesus swaddled in sheets and by golly she gets her pulse back and dad rushes back to her gurney thinking there has been a miracle........."SHE"S BACK!!!!!!! Her demonic impulse is to plunge the floating satanic scalpel into daddys' back but she, instead, stares into the camera with those "SEQUEL" eyes and says..."I love you daddy".....evil...pure and simple....but no sequel...thank gawd!!!!!
Purple Gene gives "The Eighteenth Angel" 5 clandestine, cloistered coven candles out of 10 for helping me to yawn into sweet slumber.
Purple Gene
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Mostly sunny & pleasant.
Nearly plotzed at the grocery store - lettuce was $1.99 a head and tomatoes were $4/lb. Damn - that's Alaska-in-winter-prices, not southern-Cali-in-the-fall.
And holy crap, has the price of vanilla spiked!
Calls for African AIDS Action
Alicia Keys
Grammy-winning singer-songwriter Alicia Keys is calling on her peers in the music industry to raise their voices to help millions suffering from AIDS in Africa.
"Just for a moment imagine the media hysteria and global outrage if 25 million Americans, many of them children, died from a treatable disease because the medicine was too costly," Keys writes in a commentary published in Friday's issue of Billboard magazine. "Imagine if another 42 million people were infected and had no hope of paying for life-saving treatment. ... This is exactly what is happening throughout sub-Saharan Africa."
Keys, who recently traveled to Africa, noted that UNAIDS estimates 100 million people will be infected with the AIDS virus by the end of this decade, and that fewer than 1 percent of Africans with AIDS have access to antiretroviral treatment that has greatly improved the lives of AIDS patients in Western countries.
Alicia Keys
Seeking Asylum Abroad
Mordechai Vanunu
Mordechai Vanunu, who was barred from leaving Israel after being freed in April following 18 years in prison for revealing the country's nuclear ambitions, said he has been seeking asylum abroad.
"I have asked for asylum in many countries, any state which would help me get out of Israel would be welcome," he said in an interview Friday with Portuguese daily newspaper Publico in his most recent defiance of a government gagging order.
Vanunu, 50, said he had so far requested asylum in Britain, Canada, Denmark, France, Ireland, Norway, Sweden and the United States but had been turned down.
Asked by the newspaper if he feared for his life, Vanunu said he had overcome these concerns while in prison.
"I don't feel any fear now but I am conscious that they could do anything to me that they want, they have that power," he said.
Mordechai Vanunu
Back in PBS Ring
Ken Burns
During the 15 years since "The Civil War" ignited his career, filmmaker Ken Burns has tended to focus on well-known, unassailable American figures in his much-praised television documentaries.
Burns' next project for PBS focuses on a lesser-known figure, a man who was once world famous but has largely faded from the pop-culture consciousness nearly a century after he made his mark by becoming the first black heavyweight champion of the world.
"Unforgivably Black: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson" is set to premiere Jan. 17, Martin Luther King Day, and conclude the following night. The film details the extraordinary story of the son of former slaves from Galveston, Texas.
Ken Burns
Update On 'Jeopardy!' Streak
Ken Jennings
Ken Jennings, a software engineer from Salt Lake City, has shattered records on the TV game show "Jeopardy!" His run began June 2, interrupted by several special theme weeks. A look at Jennings' streak:
Consecutive shows as winner: 73.
Money won on show aired Friday: $31,600.
Money won so far: $2,491,700.
Ken Jennings
Bet Ken loses some time next week - Monday, maybe?
Polished for Re-Release
Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass
It's easy to remember the '60s filtered through the music of the Beatles, Elvis Presley, the Beach Boys or Frank Sinatra, but there was another act that ruled the chart.
Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass spent an amazing 32 weeks at No. 1 between 1962 and 1968 and scored a slew of hits including "This Guy's in Love With You" and "A Taste of Honey."
Through a licensing deal with Shout Factory, at least 14 titles will hit stores again come February via the "Herb Alpert Signature Series," Billboard has learned. The albums all originally came out on A&M, the label Alpert and Jerry Moss founded in the early '60s. Although reissued on CD in the late '80s, many have been out of print for years.
In addition to the Tijuana Brass catalog, Sony-distributed Shout Factory also plans to reissue Alpert's solo albums.
Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass
Briefly Hospitalized
Shelley Long
"Cheers" alum Shelley Long was back home after being briefly hospitalized because she took a dose of medication to treat back pain and the drug made her ill, her manager said Friday.
"Shelley took an extra pain pill for her back, which she hurt when she fell on the set of `Cheers' many years ago," Martin Mickelson told The Associated Press. "She had a reaction to it ... but she is now home and she is fine."
Mickelson denied published reports Friday that suggested Long, 55, had apparently taken an overdose of painkillers brought on by the breakup of her 22-year marriage to stockbroker Bruce Tyson.
Shelley Long
We All Need Some Compensation
Hey, Teacher!
A group of former London schoolchildren who sang on Pink Floyd's 1979 classic "Another Brick In The Wall" have lodged a claim for unpaid royalties.
Twenty three teenage pupils from Islington Green School secretly recorded vocals for the track, which became an anthem for children with the chorus "We don't need no education."
On hearing the song, the headmistress banned the pupils from appearing on television or video -- leaving them no evidence and making it harder for them to claim royalties -- and the local school authority described the lyrics as "scandalous."
Music teacher Alun Renshaw took the schoolchildren to a nearby recording studio without the permission of the headmistress after being approached by the band's management.
The lyrics "We don't need no education, we don't need no thought control, no dark sarcasm in the classroom -- teachers leave them kids alone" were described by the Inner London Education Authority as scandalous.
The school was paid 1,000 pounds ($1,860) and later given a platinum record of the song but the pupils were paid nothing.
Hey, Teacher!
Stolen Guitar Resurfaces
Bret Michaels
A custom-made guitar owned by former Poison lead singer Bret Michaels resurfaced a week after it was stolen during an Indiana concert.
The guitar, worth about $3,000, was returned to staff at WLUP 97.9 FM in Chicago late last week, the Post-Tribune of Merrillville reported Tuesday.
The red-and-white Holden six-string electric guitar with a picture of a skull wearing a top hat was taken Nov. 12 after a concert at a bar in South Haven.
Bret Michaels
Not Named For Wal-Mart Heiress
Mizzou Arena
The University of Missouri renamed its new sports arena with the school nickname Friday, just days after the original namesake, a 22-year-old Wal-Mart heiress, was accused of academic cheating at another college.
The university's governing Board of Curators voted without dissent to rename Paige Sports Arena during a three-minute conference call. The Mizzou Arena name will be used immediately.
The original name was chosen by Bill and Nancy Laurie, who donated $25 million toward construction of the arena and in return received naming rights. They named the arena for their daughter, Elizabeth Paige Laurie, who did not attend the school in Columbia.
Mizzou Arena
17th Century British Porn to Be Auctioned
'Sodom'
The world's first known piece of printed pornography, described as the "quintessence of debauchery," is expected to reach up to 35,000 pounds ($65,040) when it is auctioned next month.
"Sodom," penned in the mid-1670s, has been attributed to John Wilmot, the second Earl of Rochester and is described by auction house Sotheby's as a "closet drama rather than for the stage" with pornography "in almost every line."
"We believe this is the first printed pornography in English literature, a unique copy of the quintessence of debauchery," Peter Beal, Sotheby's book specialist said.
'Sodom'
In Memory
Philippe de Broca
French filmmaker Philippe de Broca a master of costume drama and light comedy, including works such as "King of Hearts" and "That Man from Rio", died on Friday aged 71, according to a close aide.
The exact cause of death was unknown but de Broca had been in poor health for some time and was unable to promote his final film, "Vipere Au Poing" (Viper in the Fist) which made its debut on cinema screens here last month.
De Broca worked as an assistant director for Claude Chabrol and Fran‡ois Truffaut before he started making films himself, often appearing in walk on parts, including in Truffaut's seminal "A Bout de Souffle".
He worked with a galaxy of French stars including Jean-Paul Belmondo, who appeared in six of his films, Yves Montand and Catherine Deneuve.
A young Cartherine Zeta Jones got her first film break in the lead role of De Broca's 1990 Scheherazade (1001 Nights), remembered mainly these days for a couple of nude scenes.
Perhaps his most well-loved film in France is "Cartouche" (1961) a swashbuckling spoof starring Belmondo and Claudia Cardinale.
Born in Paris on March 15, 1933 to a well-to-do family, Philippe de Broca de Ferrussac went to film school and did his national service in Algeria in the army's film section.
He later worked as an assistant to some of the most prominent French nouvelle vague directors including Henri Decoin, Francois Truffaut and Claude Chabrol, who would finance his first films.
He began his film-making career with the sparkling comedy "Les Jeux de l'amour" in 1959.
After Cartouche, the 1963 hit "L'Homme de Rio" ("That Man From Rio") also starring Belmondo, cemented his career at home and helped him forge his reputation internationally.
A member of France's prestigious Legion of Honour, de Broca was father of two children.
Philippe de Broca
