Views & Reviews From Writer Steve Miller
Formerly Reviews and Stuff at Rotten Tomatoes, 2005 - 2009.

Currently Showing at Cinema Steve

Friday, November 25, 2005

Jackson will be at home in Persian Gulf

Well... it looks like Michael Jackson is going to feel right at home in the Persian Gulf. He won't even have to hide his Jew-hating theories and opinions. He might even be able to incorporate them into a concert tour.


From IMDB.com...

Tape of Michael Jackson's anti-semitic rant released

Pop superstar Michael Jackson must apologize for allegedly making a series of anti-Semitic comments on a voicemail message, the US Anti-Defamation League (ADL) demanded on Wednesday.

On Tuesday, a tape purportedly featuring Jackson leaving a message for his former advisor Dieter Wiesner two years ago was aired on TV show Good Morning America. On it, the man - alleged to be Jackson - says, "They (Jews) suck. They're like leeches... I'm so tired of it... they start out the most popular person in the world, make a lot of money, big house, cars and everything. End up penniless. It is conspiracy. The Jews do it on purpose."

In response, ADL director Abraham H. Foxman said in a statement: "Michael Jackson has an anti-Semitic streak and hasn't learned from his past mistakes. It seems every time he has a problem in his life, he blames it on Jews."

In his 1996 song "They Don't Care About Us," Jackson sang, "Jew me, sue me," and "kick me, kike me". At the time, the singer apologized, explaining the lyrics had been intended as anti-racist.

The controversial tape was released by Wiesner's lawyer Howard King. On Monday Wiesner filed a $64 million lawsuit against Jackson, claiming fraud and breach of contract. Jackson had no comment yesterday, according to his spokeswoman Raymone K. Bain, writes the New York Daily News.


One has to wonder. What stripe of stupid does a public figure have to be in order to leave this sort of stuff on an answering machine? Perhaps someone who believes the crap about the eeeevil international Jewish conspiracy is true?

Maybe Jackson isn't just a pervert... maybe he's a delusional pervert.

(Note: I think the ADL is being a bit hysterical and pointless in this matter. What good does demanding an apology from a crazy pervert hiding out in the Middle East do? If anything, it'll make him a bigger hero among the troglodytes down there.)

Tuesday, November 22, 2005

It's the hottest joint in town!

Second stripping-related fire article in a month. I'm sensing a trend...

Safety test burns club to ground 
A strip club owner burned his club to the ground while trying to prove it was fire-proof to health and safety inspectors. 
Benedict Frank, owner of the Cabaret Club in Kienberg, Switzerland, started the blaze to show how fire-proof it was when he was visited by safety inspectors. 
They had questioned whether his decorations were in accordance with fire safety rules, and he used his lighter to set fire to the paper ornaments in a bid to prove there was nothing to worry about. 
But the fire quickly took off and spread throughout the club and the neighbouring restaurant - burning both establishments to the ground.
According to local police no one was hurt in the fire, but the damage amounts to more than £300,000.

Friday, November 18, 2005

No such thing as a criminal mastermind?

You're a con man. You make your living bilking people and moving on. What aside from abject idiocy would make you go on a nationally televised game show?


From ananova.com...


Conman caught - on reality TV

A Russian fraudster has been jailed after one of his victims spotted him on a reality TV show.

Alexei Adeev, 26, was jailed for four and a half years after a woman he had cheated out of £1,100 in a property scam spotted him on the Russian reality show House-2: Build Your Love.

The woman, not named for privacy reasons, said Adeev, who in the past served a jail sentence for car theft and bribing an official, had fled with the money after she gave it to him as a deposit for a house in Smolensk.

Adeev's jail sentence comes just months after Russian MPs called for the reality show to be banned and its hosts put on trial for organised prostitution and pimping.

They said the show, which aims to pair off contestants by the end of the series, was doing serious damage to the morals of Russia's youth.

They said the show's rules encouraged participants to have sex live on air and pointed out that one of the show's participants, Yelena Berkova, had a past career as a porn star.

Friday, November 11, 2005

Hottest strip act ever!

I see the tragedy of the two burn victims in this story, but I'm still snickering.

Oh... and I feel for the poor stripper, too.

From www.ananova.com...


Fire eater set stripper's boobs alight

A fire eater has been given a suspended jail sentence for setting a stripper's boobs on fire.

Dancer Maria Leeb, 27, was tied to a pole wearing just her g-string while her fire-eating partner blew flames at her.

But the hot new act in a lap-dancing club in Augsburg, Germany, came to a painful end when her naked breasts went up in flames.

Flame thrower Marc Miszler, 22, was handed a 10 month suspended jail sentence for grievous bodily harm by the Augsburg County Court.

"I shouted at him that he was getting too close, but he didn't stop. The oil and glitter that I rubbed on my body must have caught on fire and all I could see were flames," said Ms Leeb.

She suffered burns across her breasts and was treated at a local hospital.

Mostapha Akkad and family murdered

Every so often, I come across some Hollywood jackass who is all upset about how the human rights of terrorists aren't being respected by the US and other governments.

Where was the concern for Rima Akkad's human rights when the sick fuck blew himself up at the center of the ballroom where the wedding party was taking place?

From the AP...


'Halloween' Producer Akkad Dies in Jordan
By SHAFIKA MATTAR (Associated Press Writer)


From Associated Press
November 11, 2005 10:36 AM EST

AMMAN, Jordan - Moustapha Akkad, the Syrian-born filmmaker and producer of the "Halloween" horror movie franchise, died Friday from wounds sustained in the triple hotel bombings in Jordan. He was 75. His daughter, Rima Akkad Monla, 34, also was killed.

Akkad, who lived in Los Angeles, was in Jordan with his daughter to attend a wedding. He died in the Jordanian hospital where he was being treated.

The two were at the wedding celebration at the Radisson SAS Wednesday night when suicide bombers struck it, the Grand Hyatt and the Days Inn in downtown Amman, killing at least 59 people including the three attackers. Rima Akkad Monla, who lives in Beirut, Lebanon, was killed immediately.

Born in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo in July 1930, the eldest of eight siblings, Akkad gained fame as a director and producer in the Arab world and West. After finishing his secondary studies in Syria, he left for America in 1950 to study film making, according to his sister.

He was best known for producing all eight "Halloween" films, starting with the 1979 "Halloween" directed by John Carpenter and starring then-unknown Jamie Lee Curtis. That movie - and the ones that followed - sparked the teen-slasher-horror genre that led to franchises including "Friday the 13th" and "Nightmare on Elm Street."

Akkad also produced and directed "The Message" (1976), a film about Islam's prophet, Mohammed, and "Lion of the Desert" (1981), which tells the story of a Muslim rebel who fought against the Italy's World War II conquest of Libya. Both starred Anthony Quinn.

"The Message" was declared sacrilegious by a group of black American Muslims, who took hostages in three Washington, D.C. locations when the movie opened in the United States in March 1977, demanding it not be shown in America.

Akkad said he was baffled by the reaction to the movie, which he said cost $17 million to make. It also was nominated for an Academy Award for best original score.

"I did the film because it is a personal thing for me. ... Being a Muslim myself who lived in the West, I felt that it was my obligation, my duty to tell the truth about Islam.

"It (Islam) is a religion that has a 700 million following, yet it's so little known about, which surprised me. I thought I should tell the story that will bring this (history) to the West," he added.

Akkad said he turned to the horror genre because it was hard to raise money for religious-themed movies, according to a 1998 New York Times report.

A woman who answered the telephone at Akkad's Los Angeles home early Friday said she was too upset to talk. A telephone message left at the Los Angeles-area home of Akkad's ex-wife, Patricia, was not immediately returned. She left for Lebanon late Thursday.

The couple's daughter, Rima, grew up in Los Angeles an avid polo player who graduated from the University of Southern California in 1995 with a degree in international relations.

She pursued a master's degree in Middle East studies at the American University in Beirut, where she met her husband Ziad Monla, 35. Her husband's family owns the Monla Hospital in Tripoli, Lebanon. The couple, married for six years, has two sons, ages 2 and 4.

"Rima is a totally American girl," Patricia Akkad, 64, said Thursday in a phone interview from Los Angeles. "Here's an American who was over there and innocently killed for no reason."

She said her daughter loved living in Beirut.

"We all know the problems in the Middle East, and you never think it's going to touch you," she said.

Akkad's sister called for an end to terrorist attacks on civilians.

"I feel sad and the world feels sorrow with us. This kind of incident rarely happens, but it has happened with Moustapha Akkad," Leila Akkad told AP in a telephone interview. "These attacks are chaotic and do not differentiate an enemy from a friend. A solution must be found to this problem."

With the death of his daughter, Rima, Akkad is survived by three sons, Tarek, Malek and Zeido.

Funeral services for Rima Akkad Monla were scheduled for Friday in Tripoli. Services for Akkad were scheduled Sunday in his hometown of Aleppo, his sister.

---

Associated Press writers Shafika Mattar in Amman, Jordan, and Ian Gregor in Los Angeles contributed to this report.

Wednesday, November 9, 2005

Inferior remake of an excellent animated series

All Purpose Cultural Cat Girl Nuku Nuku: Dash! - Vol. 1 (1998)
Rating: Two of Ten Stars

Fourteen-year-old Ryonoske has a problem: His raging hormones have him lusting for the orphaned amnesiac girl--nicknamed Nuku-Nuku--that his father has brought in as a house-keeper. Unfortunately, she is completely oblivious to his desire for her... and in fact any of the designs that men and others have on her. Because Nuku-Nuku is secretly a hi-tech battledroid that Ryonoske's father has stoken from the arms-manufacturer that his wife works for! To make matters more complicated, his wife is put in charge of finding and recovering the missing battledroid.

I loved the original six-episode "All-Purpose Cultural Cat Girl Nuku-Nuku" series--I thought it was hilarious, with characters that were sweet and likable... even the bad guys! It's a great series for both adults and kids. "Dash!" is a sad, distorted shadow of that original series.

"All Purpose Cultural Cat Girl Nuku Nuku: Dash!" is a remake of the original series that features the same characters, but their posiitons in the story have changed, some of their motivations have changed, and Nuku-Nuku has been completely reinvented. Yeah, she's still a robot with a partial cat-brain, but she's also a superhero, complete with transformation and the ability to fire ill-defined explosive beams from her hands.

Everything about "Dash" is either inferior or tacky when compared to the original series. All sweetness has been removed from the series, with the transformation of Ryunoske from a boy from a broken home who wants to see his parents reunite, to a horny 14-year-old who is lusting after Nuku-Nuku. Nuku-Nuku herself is little more than an empty-headed, "perfect woman" whose role barely extends beyond providing jiggling boobs and fight scenes. (Worse, much of the boob jiggling is provided through footage that is recycled at least once every episode.) To add insult to injury, the animation quality is inferior to the original series as well.

As much as I loved the original "Nuku-Nuku," I dislike this remake. Like the "Tenchi" series degraded from the original to be worse with each successive remake, so it seems is the "Nuku-Nuku" property. While the "Tenchi" remakes at least managed to keep their heart--remaining tales of family and friendship--"Nuku-Nuku" was stripped of everything that made it good right out of the remake's starting gate. The creators giving Nuku-Nuku a boob job and a dye-job were just surface reflections of the way the remake abandoned everything that made the initial series worth watching.

Tuesday, November 1, 2005

Lloyd Bochner dead at 81

Television actor Lloyd Bochner has died at the age of 81. The Canadian actor, who played Cecil Colby in the epic US soap saga "Dynasty", lost his battle with cancer and passed away at his home in Santa Monica on Saturday, October 30, 2005.

Bochner was also known for his roles in the "Mission: Impossible" television series, "Columbo" and the original "Battlestar Galactica."