THE PROGRAM

Anyone who wishes the 1960s never ended will want to take a look at "Art in the Buff Presents: Venice Beach," a wacky record of a 2004 concert of performance pieces at a club in the boho Los Angeles precinct.

Latter-day flower children recite original poetry and sing and dance in degrees of undress, often with painted bodies and oddball accessories. While the emcee is male, most of the open-mike performers are young women with beautiful bodies and some degree of talent. The poetry is beat-ish, though there are recitations of scenes from Tennessee Williams' "Summer and Smoke" and Steve Martin's "Picasso at the Lapine Agile." Fire-dancing and a "fashion strip tease" are also on view.

It's not taken very seriously, by the performers or the audience, and the nudity seems to be the real reason everyone is there.

Interwoven throughout the brief program is a bit in which two...Read the entire review

Will Artie be able to keep his chin up and his cheeksclosed?

The Movie:  When I originally received this movie, I wasexpecting a completely different movie.  Yes - another FART: TheMovie.  It's hard to believe there's one, let alone two movies centeredaround flatulence.  The first Fart I saw was about 12 years agowhile vacationing in Lake Tahoe.  The previous resident had left it there,and my friends and I got quite a kick out of it.  Stupid as it was - andboy was it stupid - there's always something funny about farting. Juvenile?  Sure.  Funny?  Of Course.

Starring the Farley Brothers (related to the comedic genius, Chris Farley),this odd-ball comedy starts out innocently enough, with a mom in labor and herhippy husband by her side.  After being born, come to find out, the kid hasa gastro-intestinal disorder causing him to fart whenever ner...Read the entire review

Did he, or didn't he? Two pop-culture icons sit down for an unprecedented, no-holds-barred discussion of their professional and personal lives -- that form the center of the worldwide "Star Trek" phenom -- and all anyone REALLY wants to know is if William Shatner fired an audible photon torpedo at the Klingons around Uranus. Did Captain Kirk fart? Not at all exactly the sort of fanfare these class acts were expecting around the release of Mind Meld: Secrets Behind the Voyage of a Lifetime (2001, 74 minutes). In fact, the morning-zoo buzz is quickly rivaling the adolescent tittering spawned by Girls Gone Wild. More on that later.

We join Shatner and Leonard Nimoy at the home of the a...Read the entire review

SAMMYVILLE

The Story:

Determined social worker Miranda Clark while searching for a kidnapped child stumbles upon the mysterious town of Sammyville nestled in the back woods of Oregon. Desperate to find the child before too much time passes she begins questioning the local residents of the neighboring town. Her inquiries however fall on deaf ears as no one is willing to assist her if it means discussing or going to Sammyville. Enter Cam Sutherland. A drifter raised in Sammyville who is searching for his own answers regarding his troubled youth and the deaths of his parents while they all resided in Sammyville some 20 years ago. Together, they'll journey into this bizarre private community abiding by the laws established by the one they call..."Sammy".

Audio/Video:

The audio is presented in a DD2.0 platform that should have more than adequately conveyed the film's aural co...Read the entire review

Rachael Leigh Cook has enjoyed quite a bit of time in the spotlight, but despite becoming a household name over the past couple of years, her best-known lead roles were in She's All That and Josie and the Pussycats. Neither of those movies really showcased Cook's talent, as both Laney Boggs and Josie McCoy were little more than awkward pretty girls who found it difficult dealing with attention on any sort of scale. By and large, even the more obscure films in which she's appeared have been supporting roles of some sort, but with the DVD release of The Hi-Line, her legions of fans finally have a film to prove to others that Cook is more than just another cute face. The Hi-Line was written and directed by Ron Judkins, whose sound work for Spielberg was so impressive that he was nominated for two Academy Awards in the same category in 1994, bringing home an Oscar for Jura...Read the entire review