A sensational theatrical event has been thundering in Moscow and St. Petersburg for a year now. Despite the multimillion-dollar ticket price and only one seat in the hall, there is no end to those interested, because the unique format blurs the boundary between fiction and reality. Each performance is a piece of work, created for a specific viewer who arrives to a remote location by helicopter, and thought out to the smallest detail by a whole team of scriptwriters, psychologists and actors under the guidance of a talented director, who has already staged 11 successful performances. The twelfth performance begins — but this time, everything spins out of control.

I am not familiar with this actress and her last name is unusual. In Russian, this is usually the transliteration of the Chinese name that we write as “Zhang” in English, but she is a blue-eyed blonde, so … ????

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A Channel 4 British drama spanning six decades, charting the rise of Emma Harte from penniless Yorkshire maid in the early 1900s to powerful 1970s business mogul. Betrayed by her aristocratic lover and cast out when she becomes pregnant, young Emma vows lifelong revenge against the family she once worked for. In the 1970s, as she approaches her 80th birthday, betrayal from within Emma’s own family threatens everything she’s fought a lifetime to build.

This is the second time Barbara Taylor Bradford’s 1979 novel has been adapted into a TV series in the UK. The first time was shortly after the book was published, with Jenny Seagrove remaining clothed to play the part now essayed by Jessica Reynolds.

The nudity is minimal, but Jessica is quite beautiful, and her star seems ascendant.

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Vincent, a mortician, performs the final ministrations upon the lifeless body of the woman he had loved for so many years: Manon. This final tête-à-tête serves as an opportunity for him to reminisce about the precious moments they shared—beginning with the day they met, on a certain July 12, 1998, a date then synonymous with collective euphoria.

Defoe’s video is here

The entire film is online here

Obscure, apparently experimental French fantasy film. Although dated 2024, it has only eight votes at IMDb.

Traversing the abyss, the hellhound Rainer recounts the six lives of Conann, perpetually condemned to death by his own future, across eras, myths, and ages. From his childhood, enslaved by Sanja and her barbaric horde, to his rise to the heights of cruelty at the gates of our world. It’s easy to get lost in the twists and turns of a narrative with jumps in time, showing Conann portrayed by six actresses, characters who split in two to fight each other.

To borrow the phrases of the late, great Emmanuel Kant, “Let’s see pure reason explain this shit. It’s one weird-ass motherfucker.” (It sounded smarter in German.)

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Camille Rutherford has appeared here many times

Clare Duburcq has appeared here many times

This is a new French TV series, basically a romantic dramedy. Translated to English: “Someone ought to ban Sunday afternoons.”

Three young people share an apartment in Paris, navigating their secrets, love of cinema and sushi, and their intense romantic and friendship bonds.

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Clare Bretheau has appeared here twice before

Jeanne Balibar is a nudity legend. She is 57 years old and has appeared here in 17 previous projects, including explicit nudity in Bazajet. She is still doing about one nude scene per year.

Comedy from Brazil. The title is roughly equivalent to the American “Hall Pass”

A couple decides to have a “free pass” to be with someone else without cheating, causing them to question the terms of their relationship.

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This scene is the pre-credits intro to episode 36, and was the final nudity in the series, which runs 40 episodes.

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All the nudity from this series (a lot) can be found here.

Outstanding film.

This Norwegian drama about family relationships got a long standing ovation at Cannes, and was nominated for nine Oscars. It won the Grand Prize at Cannes, and the Oscar for the Best International Feature Film, as well as the corresponding BAFTA.

IMDb: 7.8
Tomato Meter: 95%
Popcorn Meter: 94%

After the death of their mother, sisters Nora and Agnes reunite with their estranged, once-famous director father. He tries to revive his career with a personal film project. When Nora, a professional actress, refuses a role, it leads to confrontations about art, legacy, and family trauma, in this humorous and heartbreaking film.

The writer/director, Joachim Trier, is obviously our kind of guy. In addition to creating a brilliant movie, he inserted a brief breast shot that is completely unnecessary. It’s more than “unnecessary.” I still haven’t figured out why it’s there at all. It’s an outdoor scene, about two seconds in duration, that’s kind of stuck into the middle of a dark indoor scene. My best guess is that it was to be part of a different sequence that was abandoned in the final cut, but the director decided to make use of it as a “flash of memory” in the narration. I assume that’s also why it is slightly blurry, like a memory. The film has many themes and one of them is our connection to our past through memories.

Although the topless scene is about two seconds long, I made a 20-second clip to demonstrate how awkwardly the outdoor scene fit into the surrounding action.

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They did quite an amazing job of de-aging Stellan Skarsgård in the flashbacks. A couple of scenes may have been created from old footage of him, but there are other scenes that were obviously performed by old Stellan and de-aged with AI. It looks exactly the way he used to look.

Trivia:

So there is a popular, long-running podcast, for those who don’t know of it, called “How Did This Get Made?” where Paul Scheer, June Diane Raphael, Jason Mantzoukas and sometimes guests comedically discuss “bad” or bad movies.

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One of their classic episodes is for “Deep Blue Sea,” the movie where scientists experiment on sharks by injecting some kind of heightened protein into their brains, searching for a cure for Alzheimer’s. It blows up in their faces. Stellan Skarsgard plays one of the scientists.

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In the podcast, they mention that auto-correct changes Stellan’s name to “Stellar Skateboard.” People have gone into Stellan’s Wikipedia page so often to change his name to “Stellar Skateboard” that Wikipedia has locked his page to updates.

Belgian dramedy

While pregnant with her second child, Kika faces the sudden death of her partner. Totally heartbroken, and broke, she sets her priorities straight: stay strong and make money fast.

Defoe’s Video. (You have to download this one.)

We previously saw Manon Clavel topless in Psylo (2020)

… but I don’t think you can see anything

You can eventually see the guy’s butt, but not hers

Here’s the video