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Overview:
There was no overwhelming runaway
winner this year. Essentially, it was a three-way
horse race between Eva Amurri, Anna Paquin and Jessica
Biel, with Amurri barely hanging on for victory in a
photo finish.
The death of star-powered nudity:
Once again the list was dominated by
cable TV shows, straight-to-vid films, arthouse films
and specialty products. There were very few nude
scenes from films which reached wide general
distribution, and the best of those included no
established stars. The winner among the "stars in wide
theatrical releases" group could have been Anne Heche
in Spread, but that film finally ended up in only 103
theaters, so we'd have to call it "arthouse." After
that scene, one must look far down the list to find
Sandra Bullock in The Proposal, which offers only a
fleeting look at the Sandra Buttocks. Vera Farmiga
might have offered us the best mainstream nudity from
a star in 2009. She did her part, but the director of
Up in the Air chose to use a body double for Farmiga's
nude scene, even though he had also filmed Farmiga
doing the same scene with her own bare bum! Alas! The
only consolation for theater-goers is that three of
the scenes with relative unknowns are really
excellent: in My Bloody Valentine, Betsy Rue does a
prolonged 3D scene in which she is completely naked
from all angles; in Friday the 13th, curvy Joanna
Guill does a wild and highly entertaining sex scene;
in Notorious, Naturi Naughton gets natural and naughty
during her impersonation of rapper Li'l Kim.
Category
winners:
Top TV nude scene: (1) Eva Amurri
on several episodes of season three of
Californication, especially episode three; (2) Anna
Paquin in various episodes of season two of True
Blood, particularly episode one; (3) Lucy Lawless in
episode two of Spartacus - Blood and Sand.
Top nude scene in a feature-length
film which went straight to video (or had a token
theatrical release): (1) Jessica Biel in Powder
Blue; (2) Alice Eve in Crossing Over; (3) Miriam
McDonald in Poison Ivy 4.
Top nude scene in a feature-length
film in arthouse or limited distro: (1) Amber Heard
in The Informers; (2) Michelle Williams in
Incendiary; (3) Paz de la Huerta in The Limits of
Control. Incendiary could have been listed in this
category or in the straight-to-vid column because it
expressed to vid in North America, but had
theatrical runs elsewhere. I arbitrarily stuck it
here.
Top nude scene in a feature-length
film in wide distribution: (1 - tie) Julianna Guill
in Friday the 13th; (1 - tie) Betsy Rue in My Bloody
Valentine 3D; (3) Naturi Naughton in Notorious.
Top nude scene in a specialty
video: (1) Victoria Abril in Pour Elle; (2) Lindsay
Lohan in the short film made for Muse magazine.
Honorable
mention:
Here are some items of special
interest, even though the performances in question
missed the top 20. (The links go to Rapidshare
clips.)
Malin Akerman did a pretty good and somewhat odd
nude scene in Watchmen, a popular theatrical
release.
Here is the aforementioned
Ms Bullock doing her PG-13 nudity in The Proposal.
Maria Bello got kinda kinky in the obscure
Downloading Nancy.
Some screen veterans proved that
they still have it:
Kristin Scott-Thomas in Partir;
Monica Bellucci in Don't Look Back;
Penelope Cruz in Broken Embraces;
Juliette Binoche in Disengagement; and
Julia Ormond in The Escorial Conspiracy.
I also enjoyed seeing more of the
beautiful
Shannyn Sossamon in Life is Hot in Cracktown
and the American Beauty cheerleader
Mena Suvari in The Mysteries of Pittsburgh.
Continuing
education:
For comparison or further study, you
may want to consider the following list.
The winners:
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| 18t |
Anne Heche in Spread
(6.1 at IMDb)
Spread was not a great film by any
means, but it did provide us with a true established
star who got naked in a film which was released
theatrically in North America. That fact alone made it
unique among this year's winners.
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| 18t |
Lindsay Lohan
in the Muse video
This arty, short film was shot to
accompany a photo spread Lindsay Lohan did for a
magazine called Muse. The film resembles nothing more
than a particularly baffling European jeans
commercial, or perhaps an NYU student film from the
1970s, but it did serve the purpose of getting Lohan's
very impressive breasts into a motion picture.
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| 18t
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Naturi Naughton in Notorious
(6.3 on IMDb)
Naturi is playing the part of rapper
Li'l Kim in this biopic of the Notorious B.I.G. It
does not seem to be commonplace for women with darker
skin tones to place high on our list. There are
probably many reasons for that, not the least of which
is that there are not that many great nude scenes
involving African-American women not named Halle. This
scene, however, was an exception to the rule. In my
opinion it certainly deserved to make the top ten,
perhaps even the top five.
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| 18t
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Saffron Burrows in The Guitar
(6.3 on IMDb)
Saffron, six feet tall and about 90%
of it legs, has two great ideas in this
film: (1) when she decides to buy new clothes,
she gets naked, throws her old clothing out the
window, and stays naked until her spiffy new duds
arrive; (2) she decides to whip up some hot
girl-on-girl action with Paz de la Huerta.
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Charlotte Gainsbourg in Antichrist
(6.8 at IMDb)
Sooner or later somebody had to try
to convert torture porn from an exploitation genre to
an art form, and it is no surprise that the somebody
in question was the legendary film renegade Lars Van
Trier, who went whole-hog on it with guilt, dead
babies, B&W, opera music, genital mutilation,
dream sequences ... you name it. Torture porn mixed
with profound and artistic European despair? That's
gotta mean fun for the whole family.
Well, it will be fun for anyone who
cares to fast-forward to the scene where Charlotte
Gainsbourg masturbates vigorously. But you may went to
quit before she moves on to the serious mutilation.
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Gretchen Mol in An American Affair
(5.9 at IMDb)
An American Affair is probably the
Citizen Kane of those movies which are both tender
coming-of-age stories and Kennedy assassination
conspiracy films.
All right, I admit that's an odd
combination of genres, and the film isn't really very
good. Neither are the nude scenes, in any objective
sense.
But, dude - it's Gretchen Mol
topless!
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Morena Baccarin in Death in Love
(6.4 at IMDb)
Another cheery film. Holocaust Grand
Guignol!
There are some breasts, but the scene
has everything possible to make your erection
disappear. Pretentious narration, holocaust cruelty,
graphic surgery, old people. OK, maybe not EVERYTHING.
There's no Rosie O'Donnell.
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| 14
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Miriam McDonald in
Poison Ivy: The Secret Society
(4.9 at IMDb)
The cute blonde Canadian Miriam
McDonald, who looks like Anna Kournikova, was a star
of "DeGrassi: the Next Generation" for many years,
starting when she was 14. She's all grown up now, 21,
although she looks younger and is playing a college
freshman. If you've lusted after Miriam for
years, you're going to be very happy with some of the
action here!
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Alanna Ubach on Hung
(Season 1,
episodes 7 and 10)
The premise of Hung is that a man
with ... er ... very impressive credentials ... is not
necessarily guaranteed any success in life, or even
success with the ladies. One notable exception to the
rule is the effect the main character has on his
neighbor, Alanna Ubach, who is very enthusiastic about
his credentials, and expresses her delight
unabashedly.
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12T
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Claire
Forlani in False Witness
This is a British-Aussie mini-series
which takes place in London and Sydney and involves
... oh, who cares?
The only important thing about it is
this: thank you, oh beautiful Miss Forlani, for making
up for all the times we have wished you would remove
your clothing and did not.
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| 8t
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Paz de la Huerta in The Limits of
Control
(6.3 at IMDb)
I was pleased to see this scene
finish in the top ten, because it was the one I voted
for. It has it all: a good-looking young woman totally
naked from every angle, creative ideas, and absolutely
brilliant cinematography and lighting.
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Julianna Guill in Friday the 13th
(5.7 at IMDb)
Here's another impressive newcomer
who got naked for a long and very entertaining sex
scene. If the annual poll were restricted to
theatrically released films, Julianna would have
contended strongly against Amber Heard, Betsy Rue and
Paz de la Huerta for the #1 spot.
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8t
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Betsy Rue in My Bloody Valentine
3D
(5.8 at IMDb)
I cast my vote for Paz de la Huerta
in The Limits of Control, but I gave this scene some
serious consideration. Not only is Betsy completely
naked for several minutes, but the entire project was
presented in 3D! As 3D attractions go, breasts sure
beat the heck out of The Creature from the Black
Lagoon.
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8t
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Victoria
Abril in Pour Elle
season 2,
episode 2 of X-Femmes
This could easily have finished #1,
and I would have uttered not a word of protest. How
often does a 50-year-old international mainstream
superstar do a hard-core porn film? Even granting that
the most explicit angles were actually inserts
performed by a body double, the scenes which
Victoria did herself were good enough to win.
To put it into an American
perspective, imagine Kim Basinger or Madonna doing a
hard-core porn film with a body double coming in only
for a few seconds to add close-ups of oral or genital
penetration. God Bless Victoria Abril. She is one of a
kind.
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7
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Michelle Williams in Incendiary
(5.9 at IMDb)
Here's your recipe for instant
cinematic genius: a melodrama about the tragic
personal consequences of international terrorism -
written and directed by the director of Bridget Jones'
Diary.
OK, maybe it wasn't a great idea, but
Michelle continues to dazzle us with her acting
abilities. There wasn't anything on Dawson's Creek
that prepared us for the range and depth of her film
and stage performances. More important, she's one of
the few major stars who are still getting naked when
the movie cameras start rolling.
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6
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Lucy
Lawless on Spartacus - Blood and Sand
Season 1,
Episode 2
Lucy dragged some of her old Xena
costumes out of the closet to play Lucretia in this
series about the corruption and decadence of Rome,
which was apparently the Bangkok of its day. Or at
least the Des Moines.
All kidding aside, this is an
impressive sex scene. It's unusual, original, and a
bit freaky, but also smokin' hot!
This is the first appearance for
Lawless on our annual lists. If she looks this good at
41, imagine what those Xena nude scenes could have
looked like!
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4t
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Alice Eve in Crossing Over
(6.9 at IMDb)
If you are really into Reese
Witherspoon, then you want to see Alice Eve in this
film. She has Reese's face, about another foot
of height, a plethora of womanly curves, a cute Aussie
accent, and - best of all - she's nekkid!
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4t
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Amber Heard in The Informers
(5.4 at IMDb)
Oh, no! Another slice of life drama
about the ennui and anomie of young Angelenos. Worse -
another message movie which creates a rich and hokey
tapestry of multi-ethnic life in L.A. by interweaving
several stories which all take place during a short
time period. Been there; done that; didn't much care
for it.
Hmm ... on the other hand, I like to
see Amber Heard naked. Maybe I'll re-watch this a few
more times. Five at most.
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3
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Jessica Biel in Powder Blue
(6.4 at IMDb)
If the experts are right in saying
that Western society measures female beauty by the
hip-to-waist ratio, Jessica Biel must be the most
beautiful woman on the planet, a walking advertisement
for the value of exercise. I don't know about that,
but I know she's gorgeous, and we were all quite
pleased to see her do some nudity while she is still
in such spectacular shape.
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2
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Anna Paquin on True Blood
Season 2,
Episode 1 and others
Just two short years ago ... oh, wait
- they were the usual 365-day years ... Anna was
considered a virgin to screen nudity. Now she is the
nude queen. This year's second place for season two of
True Blood follows up last year's first place for
season one. Indeed, she almost took the blue ribbon
again this year, losing to Ms. Amurri by only six
votes.
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1
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Eva
Amurri on Californication
Season 3,
Episode 3 and others
(8.7 at IMDb)
The formula for victory in the poll
rarely fails: take a young actress who has grown up in
the public eye and get her to remove her clothing for
the first time. You have a winner. This formula works
even when the actress has an unspectacular body, but
when she has a full-sized chest like the one on the
right, it's a sure-fire powerhouse in the poll. Eva
can give half of the credit to her mother, Susan
Sarandon, who donated both the necessary fame and the
necessary DNA.
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