An Air Force staff sergeant who posed nude for Playboy magazine has been relieved of her duties while the military investigates, officials said Thursday.
In February’s issue, hitting newsstands this week, Michelle Manhart is photographed in uniform yelling and holding weapons under the headline “Tough Love.” The following pages show her partially clothed, wearing her dog tags while working out, as well as completely nude.
I’d let her make me drill her all night long. See, that’s funny because, from what I gather, she’s a drill sergeant, and it wouldn’t be funny if I said “I’d let her drill me all night long.” Or, actually, maybe it would be …
CORRECTION: Between mistakenly identifying the film as “Lady in the Lake” (it is actually “Lady in the Water”), and thinking Jessica Biel was Jennifer Biel, I think I need a better editor than myself … :)
ORIGINAL: With my movie selections in mind, and a preconcieved notions on one firmly held, I sat down and wrote this next paragraph, expecting it to be true. Believe me, no one was more surprised than I when it turned out not to be true:
Thursday, I watched two movies which had in common that they both starred Paul Giamatti. That was pretty much the only thing they had in common — one was great, the other was okay, if odd. Be warned: this post contains spoilers for both.
And, yes, for clarification purposes: this post contains movie spoilers, be warned.
The first film was “The The Illusionist“, starring Edward Norton. The film takes place in the late nineteenth century, Ed Norton plays a magician named Eisenheim who travels to Vienna and reconnects with a Hungarian duchess (Jennifer Biel) he knew as a child. Unfortunatly for Eisenheim, she’s engaged to the Crown Prince of Austria, and he’s not thrilled with her relationship with Eisenheim, sicking Vienna’s Chief Inspector Uhl (Giamatti, again) against him.
The film is incredible. First, the way in which it is shot is meant to resemble, at least partially, older films. The edges of the screen fade into blackness, the picture on occasions crackles and tints yellow. It’s very surreal. Second, the plot is tightly scripted — there’s something to be said for lengthy epic movies, but there’s something amazing about films that can pack everything in within a relatively short time frame (an hour and a half) and leave you craving more, not because something was left out, but because it was so great and fun. Finally, the film ends with what I like to call the “Usual Suspects” ending: y’know, the montage of cut scenes explaining some plot that secretly unfolded in front of both the film’s characters and the audience. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, this is just a cheat to explain plot devices that can’t be resolved otherwise in the script.
Interestingly, I don’t think Brian Singer is the best at the “Usual Suspects“-ending type: in my opinion, M. Night Shyamalan is. The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable are text-book examples of how to do this kind of film. It isn’t just enough to throw the curve at the end, you have to lay the clues and groundwork for the curve to have the full effectiveness of the punch. Also a good example is the film Wild Things, which on the surface seems to be glossy and vapid, but is actually an amazingly constructed movie.
It’s interesting I mention M. Night Shyamalan as the perfect executor of the “Usual Suspect” ending, because he uses this plot twist as his signature. This ruins the twist, because people go to watch his films knowing that there will be a twist, and looking for it. I wasn’t far into The Village before I figured out the plot twist. For me, that ruined the film. What makes the “Usual Suspect” ending so effective is that the audience doesn’t see it coming. The Catch-22 of M. Night Shymalan: he’s really excellent at these endings, but everyone sees them coming.
So, when I sat down to watch the second movie, M. Night’s The Lady In The Lake, I was expecting to be mediocred to death, knowing the twist within half an hour in. I don’t want to spoil the film, but I would like to say that it was incredibly far better than I’d expected, with the surprise twist taken out (there are some surprises within the film, but nothing to the degree of his other films), and instead leaving the audience with a fairly straight-forward and sometimes very scary film about a group of apartment complex residents banding together to return a mythical girl to her sea-living people via a giant eagle.
“, starring Edward Norton. The film takes place in the late nineteenth century, Ed Norton plays a magician named Eisenheim who travels to Vienna and reconnects with a Hungarian duchess (Jennifer Biel) he knew as a child. Unfortunatly for Eisenheim, she’s engaged to the Crown Prince of Austria, and he’s not thrilled with her relationship with Eisenheim, sicking Vienna’s Chief Inspector Uhl (Giamatti, again) against him.