It’s Discount Puppet Explosion 411! Two teams battle to review B-movies.
In this episode, Team Jawesome deals with the family film Gooby, which features a guy running around in a bear suit replacing a busy father. And a bunch of random stuff happens as the film slogs along at a leisurely pace before deciding to end. Also Eugene Levy!
Yes, I read a book about magical cats that help solve mysteries. In fact, as far as mystery series go, the premise isn’t that far out there. There are all sorts of animal-themed mystery series, and most of the animal characters have personalities that make them more human and smart than any Homo sapiens character. Making these cats magical makes them more believable, because of course magical cats will be smart and solve mysteries. It’s weird how that happens.
Curiosity Thrilled the Cat centers around librarian Kathleen Paulson (you will find a surprising amount of librarians as mystery-solvers in the various series, though my relatives who are actual librarians haven’t bothered to solve any murder mysteries. Lazy bums!), who has made a big change to her life by moving to Mayville Heights, Minnesota, to get away from her Boston life, largely due to her boyfriend returning from a vacation married. Kathleen overseas a big library restoration project, and also adopts two stray kittens she found. The cats Owen and Hercules each have their own personalities, Owen being a catnip fiend while Hercules is more serious.
Of course, it isn’t a murder mystery without a murder, and thus the special guest for the big Mayville Heights music festival winds up dead, and Kathleen finds the body and becomes a suspect. Which is sort of odd, because everyone else in town seems to have reason to not like the guy, AND someone is trying to off Kathleen.
A good first entry into a series, with several supporting characters including the ever-important possible romantic interest. The cats have distinct personalities, and the town has a few mysteries of its own that will probably factor into later books. The book loses bonus points as I correctly guessed the murderer several chapters before the reveal. The series is geared more towards a female audience, what with the yoga classes and girl talk, but it’s not so overwhelming that guys will be tossing the book aside.
And I’m not kidding about there being a variety of mystery series. In a quick browse of the aisle at the local Barnes & Noble, I found mystery series including cats in libraries, coffee houses, sewing, antiquing, victorian magic, home renovation, dogs in trouble, cats in trouble, cookie baking, donut shops, pie making, cats who aren’t magical or pets of librarians but also solve mysteries, vampires, White House gardeners, chefs, and community theater. Those are just the ones I noticed. All things considered, a mystery series about magical cats is downright normal. And as I’m starting to get into mystery books to make up for science fiction producing less series that interest me, I have an embarrassment of riches to choose from.
I look forward to future installments of the series, which is good because book 2 came out September 6th!
Books I Done Been Reading! name shamelessly stolen from Vault of Buncheness
2002
Directed by Edward Holzman
The Model Solution is about the tough as nails business of running a modeling agency and having sex and doing girls and making love. But mostly having sex and doing girls and making love. It’s from the Indigo Entertainment family of films, which were noted for bigger budgets, higher quality, better scripts than the average softcore productions coming out as the millennium changed. The Model Solution is no different, an entertaining film even if you ignore the sex scenes, largely due to the likeability of Sebastien Guy, who makes everything watchable. One of the amazing things is how many of the actors are going by different names than they are usually credited by. It’s like everyone drew an alias out of a hat and used that. Besides the main cast aliases, Kimber Lynn is Kimberlee Castaic, Katie Lohmann is Katie Lohman, April Flowers is Diana Espen, Sasha Peralto is Sasha Rochelle, GiGi Erneta is Gigi Erneta, and Kimberly Fisher is Kimberly Kay. I’d make a flow chart, but I’m lazy.
As this stars Sebastien Guy like The Sex Substitute and The Sex Substitute Two, I consider this the unofficial third Sex Substitute film, where instead of accidentally substituting for sex therapists, the character has branched out into the world of modeling. And as Sebastien Guy left the world of softcore films to become an actual model, real life validates my theory. That is why TarsTarkas.NET is the number one website about theories of The Model Solution. And if I see any more Sebastien Guy films, I’ll just add them to the Sex Substitute canon somehow. That’s how we roll here. Girl for Girl, I will fit you in somehow!
Director Edward Holzman helmed the classic late night Cinemax flick Friend of the Family, and produced a lot of the Indigo Entertainment archive. He’s also listed as producer on Corporate Fantasy and some other Mystique Films.
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I can’t read all the names on the posters, but Asami and Demo Tanaka are back, and it also stars Asana Mamori (Gravure Idol) and many more names that are too blurry to read and too close to nakedness to Google at work.
The synopsis from the Fantastic Fest website:
We are going to flush you! The most crap-tastic zombie movie ever to emerge from the sewers of low-budget filmmaking is finally upon us, and it’s from the perverted mind of cinematic madman and legendary ass-fetishist Noboru Iguchi, creator of THE MACHINE GIRL, ROBO-GEISHA and KARATE-ROBO ZABORGAR! Given free reign by a generous, independent producer to plumb the depths of his toilet-obsessed imagination, Iguchi has created a splatter comedy guaranteed to warm the bowels of those with the stomach for it. Wracked with guilt over the suicide of her sister Ai, who was tormented by high school bullies, pretty young karate student Megu accompanies a group of older friends on a camping trip into the woods: smart girl Aya, her druggie boyfriend Také, big-boobed model Maki, and nerdy Naoi. Things start to go badly when Maki finds a parasitical worm inside a fish they catch – and wolfs it down alive, in the hope that it’ll help keep her skinny! Soon after, and not so unexpectedly in situations like this, zombies show up and begin to complicate things further. After they’re attached by a crowd of poop-covered undead who emerge from an outhouse toilet, the group seeks refuge at the home of strange Dr. Tanaka and his daughter Sachi. But unbeknownst to them, Tanaka has been conducting experiments on the parasites—and the zombies!—and has another fate in mind for the five strangers from the city. What’s the connection between the parasites and the zombies? And can Megu’s karate alone help them escape, or will she have to rely on the liberating power of farts to save the day? Featuring special effects by FF 2009-2010 guest Yoshihiro Nishimura, and some truly jaw-dropping contributions from Iguchi’s genius subconscious (parasite anus-zombies?!?), ZOMBIE ASS is a heaping plate of bad taste that may go down rough but is guaranteed to come out smooth and regular.
2006
Directed by Jeff Bay
Community Swingers is a softcore flick from Torchlight Entertainment, and it is from the large large group of pictures Torchlight dumped onto the world the last half of the aughts. If you have seen any of these films, you will note that they are light in plot and heavy in long long sex sequences. Oddly enough, Community Swingers differs from a lot of them, as it is not directed by Francis Locke (instead, Jeff Bay is credited, and let’s pretend he’s Michael Bay’s brother because, why not?) and there are not many scenes shot either in the desert or at the local hotel near the desert. But it retains many of the hallmark signatures that have come to define Torchlight films, including the ever-present music of Blade Simpson. He’s better than Sword Family Guy, but not as good as Katana SouthPark.
Community Swingers is not a good film. It is barely a film. The sex scenes are long. And I mean LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG! They go on forever! Stringing the sex scenes together are a few bits of actual plot, most of which is in scenes that last only a few minutes (or less than one minute in one example.) The plot itself is very simple and is resolved by someone just answering a question. So very simple. As the script was probably one page single-spaced in Word, all the sex scene padding was needed to hit the running time. The actresses in the film aren’t bad looking, the extra characters also don’t look terrible. The sets must have had a budget of less than $1000, and there are technical problems like the ever-present boom mike. The boom mike has more scenes than most of the actors. There is little information about the film online, no real cast list, and no real release date. The 2006 date is a guess based on the DVD release, but there is a 2003 copyright claim in the credits. Looks like we’ll have to call in the Scooby Gang to solve this mystery!
I’m sure some of you are used to softcore films that have plots, actual actors, and charming qualities, but forget all you know or think you know. This is the world of Community Swingers! Not everything is bad, Nina Dolci’s acting is amusing and completely inconsistent (a good director could probably get a great performance out of her) and some of the sex sequences pull of their jobs of being erotic or hot, even if they get bogged down by the length. Though I can’t in good conscience give this high marks, I wouldn’t hold back people from watching it, I would just inform them as the what they would encounter when watching, which might even let them enjoy the film more if they don’t expect it to be something that it isn’t. As for the film, let’s get started swinging around the community!
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