‘Don Jon’s Addiction’NYPost
“Don Jon’s Addiction” is in part an R-rated spoof of the kind of gauzy PG-13 romcom that appeal to a stunner Jon picks up in a club. She’s Barbara (Scarlett Johansson), the kind of guy Jon (who has so much game his friend’s call him “Don Jon”) refers to as “a dime” -- a perfect ten. She resolves to reform Jon by withholding sex from him.
Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s debut as writer-director opens with him pleasuring himself while sitting naked at a computer. Jon, a buffed New Jersey bartender and pickup artist who can score with any girl he likes, nevertheless prefers to get his thrills from porn rather than from real sex.
The movie struck me mostly as a so-so sex comedy that mistakes raunch for wit -- Gordon-Levitt repeatedly uses rapid-fire montages of the porn images that fill Jon’s sad little mind, to rapidly diminishing effect.
Hollywood Reporter
Jon’s voice-over is extremely explicit in detailing his sexual likes and dislikes, while the accompanying footage of actual porn stops just short of showing what is being described. All the same, it’s hard to say whether the cut shown at Sundance would get away with an R rating; it’s very borderline and, frankly, there’s too much redundant footage.
Variety
When Barbara (Scarlett Johansson) finally does give in and sleep with Jon, he still can't resist sneaking out of bed for a digital digestif, jeopardizing what's shaping up to be his first serious relationship when she catches him making love to his laptop.
Before meeting Barbara, all Jon cared about were his physique, his neat-freak apartment, his classic muscle car, "his boys" (Rob Brown and Jeremy Luke play his wingmen) and "his girls" (an ever-revolving cast of red-hot one-night stands).
Screen Daily
The early reels overdo Jon’s pig-headed attitude toward women, as Gordon-Levitt plays more of a hyperbolic cliché than a believable cad, no matter how exaggerated the character is supposed to be. Likewise, his treatment of Jon’s porn addiction tends to be heavy-handed, inundating us with quick shots of sex scenes and female nudity from porn films that’s assaultive rather than titillating or seductive. For a movie that ultimately is about the dangers of addiction, Don Jon’s Addiction never really shows us why Jon loves porn so much, attacking the viewer’s senses rather than offering insight.
Moviefone
Soon, Don Jon falls in love with whom he calls the “perfect girl.” Her name is Barbara Sugartown and she’s played by Scarlett Johansson. Like Gordon-Levitt, ScarJo is also going against type -- dolled up in tight shirts and short skirts, with large hoop earrings dangling from her ears and a thick thick Jersey accent to boot. As Don Jon begins to fall for Barbara, he attempts to balance his new relationship with a beautiful woman (the two stars share a few steamy sex scenes), and his on-going relationship with porn.
Alex Suskind @ClassicSource
Don Jon's Addiction was a brilliant examination of sexual relationships and pornography. Still don't know how it's going to avoid NC 17
Amy Kaufman @AmyKinLA
Some veeeery hot scenes btwn JGL/ScarJo and JGL/Julianne Moore in "Don's Jon's Addiction." But I can't buy him as a Jersey guido. #Sundance
Chase Whale @ChaseWhale
DON JON'S ADDICTION is gutsy, sexy, and hilarious. Great job, @hitRECordJoe.
Josh Horowitz @joshuahorowitz
Pretty sure @hitRECordJoe made the porn friendly version of 500 Days of Summer. Crowdpleaser. @brielarson for the win w/almost no dialogue
* could be wrong here but the nudity could be from porn images and raunchy dialogues. Still no clear news on Scarlett's nude scene despite some folks has been gushing about the 'steamy sex scene'.
Confirmed : SCARLETT DODGES NUDITY AGAIN!
A Teacher
Variety
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'The Spectacular Now'Peter Sciretta @slashfilm
Spectacular Now is everything I want in a #sundance movie. A multilayered well written drama from 500 days guys. Laughs, heart, meaning.
Peter Sciretta @slashfilm
Searchlight or TWC! RT @ChaseWhale: Overheard Harvey Weinstein made a large offer on THE SPECTACULAR NOW. I hope to God someone else gets it
Peter Sciretta @slashfilm
Spectacular Now: Great supporting performances from @M_E_Winstead, Kyle Chandler, and Jennifer Jason Leigh, even for a scene or two.
Josh Dickey @Variety_JLD
THE SPECTACULAR NOW really popped. Throwback teen drama with a #Sundance glow but modern, naturalistic sensibility. This is a winning cast.
kateyrich @kateyrich
If The Spectacular Now doesn't make Miles Teller a star, nothing will. He's the standout of an already terrific movie. #Sundance
Meatyard @Meatyard
The Spectacular Now is so fucking good. #Sundance
Matt Goldberg @MattGoldberg
THE SPECTACULAR NOW was terrific. Teller and Woodley are phenomenal. #Sundance
michaelmohan @michaelmohan
Contributing to the buzz. SPECTACULAR NOW: gorgeously cinematic, understated + lyrical, brutally honest. Reminds me of The Last Picture Show
Movie Banter
James Ponsoldt, the film’s director, explores many R-rated issues that plague modern day teens while delivering them on a plate of Pg-13. Raging hormones, mommy/daddy issues, bad skin, school gossip, sex and keg parties are effortlessly represented to give the film its sense of teen drama and innocence.
Variety
A startlingly intimate sex scene, set in Aimee's tiny bedroom and hauntingly captured in long take, marks the point at which the possibility of heartbreak begins to loom large.
* Here is the good news. It will be rated R according to a movie critic who was at the screening. Lots of F-bombs and underage drinking. The movie reminded him of The Last Picture Show.
He didn't mentioned anything about nudity and I didn't dare ask him because he's a respectable reviewer. But the director did mentioned he filmed sex scenes so that is something to hope for. Variety confirmed the love scene in their review and now very hopeful of Shailene nude debutorial.
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Two Mothers Vanity Fair
After one of these oedipal-urge-tempting nights, Watts retreats to her house, only for her son, apropos of nothing, to nail Wright in the hallway of her home. Wright’s son, meanwhile, sees Wright shame-walking back to her bedroom with her pants in hand and decides to retaliate in the only way he deems fit: by seducing Watts next door. It was at this point, with Watts and Wright giving in to each other's sons with amazingly little hesitance, that the audience began really letting loose with their laughter.
Making the energy even creepier is the fact that the boys spend a fair amount of mother-son-bonding screen time shirtless while Watts and Wright, when not wearing bikinis, wear clingy, tissue-paper-thin dresses that leave little to the imagination.
Meanwhile, cinematographer Christophe Beaucarne elevates the final product with stunning visuals of Australian beaches and its naturally beautiful stars, even when they are entangled in some kind of sexual position more befitting of a soft-core-porn title.
Vulture
It's only the second day of this year's Sundance Film Festival, and a friend texted me tonight to ask, "What's the best and worst of the fest so far?" Normally I wouldn't have an answer because so few movies have actually screened by this point, but as it happened, I had just come from watching the best movie and the worst movie. In fact, they were the same movie. It's called Two Mothers and it's imperative that you close all your other browser windows and memorize everything I tell you about it, because it is a doozy.
Out of the blue, Watts's son decides to bang Wright, who's known him since he was born. Before you can say "revenge fuck," Wright's son seduces Watts in turn. It appears, then, that Australia is quite literally MILF Island.
Cinematographer Christophe Beaucarne does a tremendous job lighting everyone's bare butts.
Well, she did! In fact, virtually every kind of sexual permutation is teased amongst this foursome -- including a literal foursome -- even if there's rarely any follow-through. Lil and Roz are constantly mistaken for a lesbian couple, though the only kiss they've shared was an offscreen bout of teenage experimentation. Their sons are equally close and when one is injured, the other silently, gently massages balm into his friend's tanned leg … you know, like heterosexual young men are wont to do. And then there's a scene halfway through the movie where Lil's son is comforting her at night, and mother and son lean their heads together, and it's romantically lit, and they're both wearing hardly anything, and … well. Let's just say it's more suspenseful than anything in Zero Dark Thirty.
Literally 95% of the movie is comprised of the following: swimming, staring, and sex-having. (Often, some of those actions are combined or follow each other in rapid succession.)
After the film, a viewer asked Fontaine if anything surprised her about watching Two Mothers with an audience. "The laughs!" she said, still a little shocked by the response. "I thought it was [received as] a comedy, more or less. I don't know what it means exactly." It means -- and we're surely not alone in thinking this -- that this classy/trashy mama drama has got to be the most fun you can have at Sundance. Bring the whole family!
Crave Online
Every time Xavier Samuel or James Frecheville take off their shirts, Two Mothers luxuriates on their frame beyond merely justifying their sexual appeal, and sinks deep into a quagmire of ridiculous David DeCoteau fetishization. Robin Wright and Naomi Watts do amazing things with what they’ve got here, and Wright in particular seems masterful at balancing the strange eroticism and emotional conflict on display, although it probably helps that, unlike Watts, she has a richer subplot to explain her characters’ actions.
The Wrap
So when the Sundance Film Festival books a film whose plotline is described as, “This gripping tale of love, lust, and the power of friendship charts the unconventional and passionate affairs of two lifelong friends who fall in love with each other’s sons,” you figure that the results would have to be smarter and more complicated than the porn-y premise on the surface, right?
Wrong! It’s an exceedingly silly, sun-baked sex movie, the kind of import that adds just enough brains to its genitals to get into U.S. arthouses. (In the ’70s, the mothers would have been played by Laura Antonelli and Sylvia Kristel.) Watts and Wright, naturally, act the hell out of this piffle, and at the Sundance premiere, Fontaine seemed genuinely taken aback that the audience laughed at it throughout, so clearly the intention was to make a serious drama and not just a beautifully-shot (by Christophe Beaucarne) mix of the worst of Lifetime and Cinemax.
Variety
Perhaps it takes a Gallic sensibility to suggest that this unconventional design for living could be a viable one, and there are moments when Fontaine ("Coco Before Chanel"), a French director making her English-language debut, seems prepared to tap into the material's vulgar comic potential. Yet the laughs that are generated seem mostly unintentional, as this softcore cougar fantasy proceeds with the hushed solemnity of a Bergman chamber drama.
Hollywood [dot] com
This is perfect mommy porn. Here are middle-aged women with impossibly good skin, tight tummys, and a collection of floppy hats that would make a Chico's outlet jealous (all the better to cover up Wright's hideous '90s lesbian cut). They get reamed by hard-bodied boys standing up in their perfect houses.
While the romantic entanglements are fun to watch (neither Samuel nor James Frecheville wear a shirt very often and we see both of their bums), we never really get quite to the bottom of them.
We just get to watch people going through the motions, their most intimate moments laid out for our vicarious enjoyment and titillation. Yes, it serves the exact same purpose as porn.
The Star (Canada)
Based on the book by Doris Lessing—who wrote the novel when she was 85, inspired on a true story, the movie is set in a stunning coastal area of Australia, allowing for Lil and Roz to spend a lot of time in bikinis and diaphanous dresses sipping white wine while the boys don board shorts to tackle the surf.
The performances are compelling even when the story strays into melodrama and we’re never quite sure if anything other than sex—and there’s a lot of it and the scenes are erotic and passionate—holds these relationships together, even as the fires burn.
Erik Childress @EriktheMovieman
Most unintentional laughter I have heard at a public screening in a long time. #Twomothers #sundance2013
Jada Yuan @jadabird
Two Mothers is sooo racy and great. Not deep, but deeply hot. Plus Naomi Watts is amazing as usual #Sundance
Erik Childress @EriktheMovieman
TWO MOTHERS is actually an adaptation of the SNL Digital Short "Motherlover" and is THE PAPERBOY of #sundance2013
Alonso Duralde @ADuralde
Two Mothers: the kind of sun-baked arthouse sex flick that used to star Laura Antonelli. Lots of inappropriate snickers at #Sundance preem.
Big Gulp @theemilyrigby
Two Mothers. More like two cougars having a midlife crisis in one of the worst movies I have ever seen in my entire life. #Sundance
Brian Moylan @BrianJMoylan
I saw a lot of man ass in "Two Mothers."
* Judging from all the reviews and the consistency about the sex scenes, I think there is topless nudity by Naomi and Robin. Not sensing full-frontal despite some reviewers alluding to the trashy Laura Antonelli and Sylvia Kristel skin-flicks.
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2013 Sundance Film Festival Shorts
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Hot Sundance Clip: ‘The Look of Love’
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The Borgias Season 3 Teaser: Only a Borgia Can Love a Borgia
The final two episodes of the second season of The Borgias were especially rough on Cesare. While there was undoubtedly a sense of relief that came with putting Juan out of his misery, he still lost a brother and even more important than their long-standing bad blood was the image portrayed of Italy's first family weakening before the public's eyes. There would no longer be one on the battlefield and one in the cloth and it could potentially signal the beginning of the end of the Borgia rule. Then, while having dinner with Rodrigo, the wounds they had recently suffered looked like they were slowly beginning to heal and that the family might be able to take a breath - until Rodrigo was poisoned, his fate currently pending. How would Cesare handle two tragedies in short succession?The first teaser for the third season of The Borgias indicates that he'll be finding solace with Lucrezia, the member of the family he's always felt the closest with. He didn't have a good relationship with Juan, out of competitiveness for Rodrigo's attention, and his relationship with Rodrigo was at best strained due to perceived favoritism toward Juan, so it makes sense for him to retreat to a source of comfort, both out of need for soothing and an obligation to protect her from any upcoming ills. But what about their attraction toward one another? Tragedy can often lead people to do things that they had only previously thought about, as they have to face their own mortality upon experiencing a death close to him, but will that be enough to get the two to consummate their feelings for one another?
The third season of The Borgias debuts Sunday, April 14th at 10:00 on Showtime, following the fifth season premiere of Nurse Jackie at 9:00.
What are you expecting from the third season of The Borgias? Will Cesare and Lucrezia consummate their long-standing attraction to one another? If they do, how will that impact the Borgia family dynamic?
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Pageant releases topless Miss Universe photos
This is one nude-photo shoot that got a helping hand from pageant officials
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| This cropped photo of Miss Universe Dayana Mendoza shows part of an image that appears in the September edition of Maxim magazine. The provider of that image? The Miss Universe Organization. |
By Laura T. Coffey
The typical story involving beauty queens and nude photos goes something like this:
Steamy pictures of fill-in-the-blank (Carrie Prejean, Katie Rees, Danielle Lloyd, Vanessa Williams) are leaked to the public. Caught on the defensive, pageant officials react to the scandal at press conferences and in written statements, announcing their plans to stand by their woman or strip her of her crown.Now hold on to your hats, because here is a story that deviates from the usual script. In a first for any U.S.-based pageant organization, the Miss Universe Organization has taken the unusual step of releasing topless photos of its outgoing Miss Universe, Dayana Mendoza of Venezuela, to Maxim for the magazine’s September issue.
Technically, the photos will be available to be devoured by the public before Mendoza, 23, relinquishes her crown at the next Miss Universe pageant in the Bahamas on Aug. 23. The images can be seen on Maxim’s Web site now and will appear in print on newsstands starting Aug. 18.
Pageant officials note that Mendoza is simply appearing in Maxim, after all — not Playboy or Penthouse — and you can’t really see anything in the photos. In both of them, her arm strategically covers her breasts.
Paula Shugart, president of the Miss Universe Organization, said the images contain “nothing salacious.”
“They’re just beautiful,” Shugart said.
Getting Trump’s blessing But how did the Miss Universe Organization come to be in the business of releasing topless photos to the media instead of reacting to them? Here’s how it happened:
All winners of the Miss Universe competition are given the opportunity to be photographed by some of the top fashion photographers in New York. Any racy photos that may get shot during that time typically end up in a beauty queen’s personal modeling portfolio to help her with her future modeling career; they don’t get published anywhere.
In this case, though, photographer Fadil Berisha captured “one of those magical photo shoots” with Mendoza in the Bahamas, Shugart said. When Mendoza saw the images, she was ecstatic.
“She just loved the way they turned out and she really wanted to be able to share them,” Shugart said. “If she had taken these photos and sent them to a magazine, that would be a different issue. But she handled this so appropriately. She came to us and said, ‘I understand I’m Miss Universe and I have this title, but as Dayana Mendoza, I’d like to share these photos.’ ”
Pageant officials — including Donald Trump, who owns the Miss Universe Organization along with NBC Universal — discussed the matter and decided it would be fine for Mendoza to share the photos near the end of her reign. And because the Miss Universe Organization owns the images, the Miss Universe Organization released them.
An alternate reality The whole experience of releasing the photos is far different from what happened last August, when Miss Universe officials had to scramble to defend Mendoza over the issue of — surprise! — racy photos. Shortly after she donned her tiara, a nearly nude photo of Mendoza — shot for a jewelry ad when she was 15 — surfaced and threatened to rob her of her crown.At that time, officials took a similar stance about the jewelry-ad photo that they’re taking with the photos given to Maxim. “We embrace and respect her success as a model and the artistic beauty captured in these photographs,” Shugart said in a statement last August. “They are artistic in nature and don’t have an ounce of pornographic content to them.”
Prejean eventually lost her crown in June. Pageant officials said they based their decision on Prejean’s unwillingness to make appearances and other contract violations — violations that did not include the leak of the steamy photos.
A new era for beauty queens?
Do the statements of support for risqué images of pageant winners mean that today’s beauty queens are being held to a new and different standard?
Yes, Shugart said — in a sense, and within reason.
“We’ve been in existence for 58 years, so we always change with the times,” she said. “The envelope does get pushed a little bit.”
She explained that she and other pageant officials don’t want to be surprised by scandalous photos and behavior on the part of their beauty queens. But they don’t think it’s fair or reasonable to expect absolute perfection, either.
Take the case of Miss USA 2006 Tara Conner, who made headlines when she received treatment for alcohol and drug use during her reign. Trump decided to let her keep her crown after she got help in rehab.
“He gave her a second chance,” Shugart said. “In some circles he was reviled for it, but it was the right decision.”
‘Hard high heels to fill’ Dayana Mendoza’s role as Miss Universe has kept her jet-setting all over the world, raising awareness of the HIV/AIDS crisis, meeting with schoolchildren and giving countless speeches. She is fluent in Spanish, English and Italian.
Throughout the past year, Mendoza has detailed her travels and experiences in her blog on the Miss Universe Web site. One blog entry in particular about her trip to one of the most controversial spots on the planet — Guantanamo Bay, Cuba — caused a media uproar because of its blithe tone. In it, Mendoza described Guantanamo Bay as a “relaxing, calm, beautiful place” with an “unbelievable” beach. “It was a loooot of fun!” she wrote.
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| Dayana Mendoza's interview and photos appear in the September issue of Maxim magazine. |
Pageant officials defended the entry, explaining that Mendoza was simply describing her part in a United Service Organizations [USO] tour to support the morale of U.S. troops. “I think it’s very unfortunate because I knew what she meant,” Shugart said.
“I am so sad to see her leaving,” she said, adding that the new Miss Universe will have “hard high heels to fill.”
In her interview with Maxim, Mendoza said many people may not realize that holding the title of Miss Universe constitutes a real job — a job that can be exhausting.
“You don’t just go to countries and wave and smile at people,” she said. “It’s a very serious job. And you’re very young and giving speeches while the whole world is looking at you on television.”
Mendoza also told Maxim that she’s especially looking forward to getting some much-needed rest after her whirlwind year.
“I really, really, really want to sleep,” she said. “Sleep and turn off my phone.”
The preliminary Miss Universe competition will stream live on the Web on Aug. 16 on NBC.com and the Miss Universe Web site; the Miss Universe pageant will air on NBC on Aug. 23.
To read Dayana Mendoza’s interview with Maxim magazine and see her photos, visit Maxim.com.
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* old article but still relevant...
Full-frontal nudity: Taboo for men
‘The Dreamers’ isn't afraid to show male nudity
NEW YORK — A smitten young man in Bernardo Bertolucci’s “The Dreamers” steals a photo of his inamorata and puts it next to his private parts, then is understandably embarrassed when she forcibly peels off his tighty-whiteys and discovers it.
Rather than being appalled, she appears quite complimented by this different kind of Kodak moment — a close-up that leaves nothing to the imagination as the picture gently catapults toward her.
Such scenes got an NC-17 rating slapped on the new film by the director whose oeuvre includes the 1972 X-rated “Last Tango in Paris.”
But in the three decades since then, scenes with full-frontal male nudity usually can be timed with a stopwatch while those with nude women can be measured with a sundial.
Even in “The Full Monty,” filmgoers didn’t get the full monty — not even for a split second.
Pop-culture observers maintain that’s because a de facto sexism still exists in Hollywood, where women can parade around in the altogether but men can’t.
The instances of actors in mainstream American movies swinging in the breeze are so rare that movie buffs can catalog them off the top of their heads. Harvey Keitel has let it all hang out at least twice (“The Piano” and “Bad Lieutenant”) and Ewan McGregor at least four times, including the upcoming “Young Adam.” Bruce Willis in 1994’s “Color of Night,” Kevin Bacon in 1998’s “Wild Things” and Geoffrey Rush in 2000’s “Quills” are among the few others.
Why the double standard?
Sarah Riddick, an English professor who heads the film program at William Woods University in Fulton, Mo., attributes it simply to the industry’s gender makeup: “It is still a male-dominated business, and men are more likely to show female nudity.”
Only actresses with great clout such as Julia Roberts can insist on a no-nudity clause.
Elayne Rapping, a professor of women’s studies and media studies at the State University of New York, Buffalo, said it’s such as it ever was: You can look back to classic paintings of the 17th and 18th centuries and see fully clothed men with nude women.
“That’s been a constant of Western culture for centuries in representational art — that women have been presented as objects for what in film theory is called ‘the male gaze.’ The assumed viewer is male, and the woman is to be looked at for male pleasure,” she said.
She said another reason there are few full-frontal male nude scenes is that it raises an issue of vulnerability for men.
“For a man to reveal his private parts is to be reduced to the position that women have always been reduced to — which is to be examined, to be judged. And I think that’s a scary thing,” she said, adding: “When a man is flaccid, it’s not a very virile thing.”
One theory holds that while women have several areas to satisfy scopophilia — the term sometimes used in feminist film criticism that literally means the “love of looking” — men really have just one, where size matters. So a woman might have a beautiful face or legs that offset, say, her breast size, but if a man has a certain shortcoming, a handsome mug or six-pack abs fail to make up for it.
Yoko Ono once joked: “I wonder why men get serious at all. They have this delicate, long thing hanging outside their bodies which goes up and down by its own will. If I were a man I would always be laughing at myself.”
The male gaze
For a male view, there’s Jim McBride, aka Mr. Skin, who runs a Web site that’s a compendium of movie nudity. He was quoted recently as saying he prefers his silver-screen sex “without a guy in the scene.”
Rapping suggested that men also may be afraid of the “male gaze” for homophobic reasons.
“The fear of male homosexuality is the fear of the loss of male dominance in our society — if everybody gets equally sexualized and equally open to having sex with everybody else then the whole system of male dominance gets called into question.”
Fox Searchlight’s release of “The Dreamers” — uncut and with an NC-17 rating — has refocused attention on the issue of sexuality in movies.
When the distributor decided to go ahead with the unbowdlerized version, Bertolucci alluded to the expression “Make love, not war” from the late ’60s (when his film is set) by saying: “After all, an orgasm is better than a bomb.”
“Americans are much more comfortable with extreme violence in their movies than any sexuality,” observed Stephen Gilula, Fox Searchlight’s president of distribution.
The rating no one seems to want
Gilula, who attributes Bertolucci’s comfort depicting sex to his European upbringing, said his company decided to release the film with an adult rating because while NC-17 has become “sort of a scarlet letter ... We felt it wouldn’t be the liability everybody perceived it was.”
Unrated films with comparable — and even more explicit — content are playing in U.S. theaters anyway, he said, and Fox Searchlight research has dispelled the long-held notion that newspapers won’t carry ads for NC-17 movies and movie chains won’t show them.
In the past 15 years or so, many porn theaters across the nation have closed because home video — not to mention the Internet — took their market away, he noted.
“There is no longer any real issue about pornographic material in movie theaters,” Gilula said. “It’s really an issue (of): Can filmmakers make adult subject matter and utilize the NC-17 rating without having to go unrated?”
Bertolucci’s movie may help destigmatize the rating, he averred. “I think it opens the door for the possibility for distributors to consider using the rating without assuming it’s a liability.”
Time was, even an X rating wasn’t a drawback: John Schlesinger’s “Midnight Cowboy” won the 1969 best-picture Oscar despite it.
“How is it in 2004 we are more puritanical than 30 years ago?” Bertolucci said.
Living in the post-Janet world
And even before the exposure of Janet Jackson’s right breast at the Super Bowl halftime show, Bertolucci talked about how kids at home in their rooms see what he deems an incredible amount of sex and violence. So he wonders why movies are so persecuted?
“The power of television is much, much greater than the power of cinema,” he said.
After Philip Kaufman directed “Quills,” his wife made a joke while they waited for the Motion Picture Association of America rating (which turned out to be R). “She said they should just put on, ‘Not for children of all ages.’ ... The movie was made for adults,” Kaufman recalled.
Still, the director of the first film to get an NC-17 rating — 1990’s “Henry and June” — questions whether, if you take away topless shots, women are exposed more often than men.
Even at that, he pointed out that his upcoming movie, “Twisted,” shows more male nudity in the sex scenes involving Ashley Judd (none of it full-frontal).
He also raised the question that many ask: Do women really want to see more male nudity?
“Maybe, in fact, just because of the nature of our society and so forth, more male nudity is about to come,” Kaufman said.
When NC-17 supplanted X — mostly because it had been proudly commandeered by the porn industry — it retained a smutty stigma.
But maybe that will change, Kaufman said; NC-17 will yet be matter-of-factly applied to films of “higher motive.”
Gilula of Fox Searchlight certainly hopes so. And he thinks “The Dreamers” might be the watershed.
“It’s a film of very serious intent. It has sex in it. But it’s also about music, it’s about politics, it’s about relationships. It’s about a lot of things. And it’s about movies,” he said. “Anyone who’s going for any salacious intent I think will probably be disappointed.”
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An Early Look at Netflix’s “House of Cards”
Kevin Spacey stars in the David Fincher-directed show about a Machiavellian congressman on a quest to bring down the President.
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| Kevin Spacey stars as Francis Underwood in the Netflix series House of Cards. |
House of Cards, produced by and starring Kevin Spacey and directed by David Fincher, does all of the above, but it adds a darkness and a sense of moral implosion that makes it extraordinarily compelling, if sometimes uncomfortable viewing. Adapted from the 1980s British drama of the same name, the show is Netflix’s first foray into making a television series, and the provider breaks with tradition by releasing all 13 episodes of season one on the same day, February 1. It’s a bold move that also seems appropriate given our propensity in these post-cable times to devour entire seasons of a TV drama in one weekend . . . usually via Netflix.
Spacey plays Francis Underwood, both protagonist and antagonist, the majority whip in a House of Representatives of unspecified party affiliation (he’s called Frank by most everyone except his wife, the brilliantly chilly Robin Wright). Having canvassed hard for the incoming president, Garrett Walker (Michel Gill), Frank is under the impression that he’ll be given the position of Secretary of State as a reward, particularly given that he’s also helped Linda Vasquez (Sakina Jaffrey) into the plum role of chief of staff. “I’ve done my time. I’ve backed the right man,” he purrs malevolently at a victory party for the new President.
Except Walker reneges, and Frank is told he’s needed in the House instead, which kicks off his personal mission to bring down the new administration, goaded by his ice-cold wife and a night smoking Marlboros out the window of his DC rowhouse (if he does have a constituency somewhere, we don’t find out where, at least in the first two episodes). On his hit list: Walker, Vasquez, new Secretary of State Adam Galloway (Ben Daniels), and anyone else unlucky enough to cross his path or get on his nerves. The only person Frank seems to be moderately troubled by is a creepy lobbyist named Remy (Mahershala Ali) whose pocket he appears to be in. Also featured prominently is a handsome, priapic, hard-living congressman from Pennsylvania (Corey Stoll) whom Frank blackmails into acting as his pawn.
Frank frequently talks directly to camera, as Francis Urquhart did in the British original, and while this allows plenty of insight into his Machiavellian scheming, it’s a device that feels rather dated. It doesn’t help that writer Beau Willimon (Farragut North, The Ides of March) gives the character an endless stream of dramatic metaphors to growl while gazing cruelly at the camera. “This is how you devour a whale: one bite at a time,” he says, followed by, “I love that woman. I love her more than a shark loves blood.” And then there’s my personal favorite, which makes him sound like a Twilight baddie: “I never make such decisions so far after sunset and so long before dawn.” We get it, okay? He’s evil.
Nevertheless, after the first episode draws to a close the Dr. Evil-style utterances cool off a bit, and the show relaxes into what it should be: a taut, compelling, brilliantly crafted drama about power and its inevitable toxicity. Frank lucks out when he meets Zoe (Kate Mara), an ambitious and seemingly ruthless cub reporter at the Washington Herald desperate to break out of the Fairfax County council beat and have her own blog. Only her young-fogey editor (Sebastian Arcelus) tells her snottily, “This is the Washington Herald, Zoe. This isn’t TMZ.” [Side note: Is this why the Post killed Celebritology?]
A weird chain of circumstances, in which Frank ogles Zoe’s ass while she’s heading to the symphony at a fake Kennedy Center, leads to Zoe going to Frank’s house and offering to be his mouthpiece at the Herald, resulting in the kind of manufactured scoops cub journalists can only dream of. Zoe’s first big break is a story about education reform being “left of center,” which apparently goes ten kinds of viral the day after inauguration. “This Web traffic’s absolutely crazy,” says Zoe’s editor, who has presumably never heard of BuzzFeed. At least Fincher’s journalists dress in a realistically slobby fashion, if nothing else.
Silliness aside, House of Cards is gripping viewing. The show subverts concepts of good and bad, so the ruthless and vicious inevitably succeed while those unfortunately burdened with a conscience tend to suffer. Frank, our antihero, is a terrible person but also great fun, despite a Southern drawl that takes the edge off his more menacing behavior until you get used to it. (There’s a reason the only Southern TV baddie in recent memory is Will and Grace’s Beverly Leslie.)
And the show is also a surprisingly decent portrait of a city ruled by the quest for power, even if Frank is far more dastardly in deed (we hope) than our current Cantors and Pelosis. The credits, while showing the kind of lush scenes of monuments we’re so used to in Washington shows, also reveal a grittier side: trash in the streets, the ugly underpasses that envelop L’Enfant Plaza. George Stephanopoulos pops up to interview Galloway in one scene, and John King and Donna Brazile appear in another; Frank even has an issue of Washingtonian sitting on the coffee table in his office. House of Cards leaves us with an interesting conundrum: If our elected representatives were as evil as Frank, might they actually get something done every once in a while?
thegingerwanderer.blogspot
No spoilers were dished out about the remainder of the series (apart from the obvious revelation that the relationship with Underwood and Zoe Barnes was unlikely to remain strictly platonic for long). But in less than 2 weeks, Netflix will have all the answers. Can't wait!
House of Cards is released on February 1 via Netflix. For more information, visit Netflix’s website.
* I been informed by a (unreliable) source Kate Mara sex scene with Spacey was directed by James Foley. He is in charge of episode 3,4 and 9 according to IMDB. The author of the book it was based on saw the whole season or the rough cut of it and claimed it has way more sex than the original British series which had practically nothing in way of titillation. It's going to be interesting. While I'm optimistic of catching an eyeful of Irish tits, there is also the fear of body double not only for Kate but for Kevin Spacey himself. The actor is patently uncomfortable handling up-and-close heterosexual situations (you guys know what I'm implying about Spacey). Similar to what Mark Wahlberg did in Broken City, it's possible Spacey requested for slight change to the love scene to make it very brief and comfortable for Kate but in reality the rewrite is for him to get it over fast and quick. But like I said and continue to assert this series is Kate Mara crack at the big time. The chance to shine in a key role. After more than a decade in the acting world and constantly stuck in supporting roles or playing damsel in distress, House Of Cards is probably her last opportunity at age of 29 to show folks there is another talented Mara in the performing arts. Imagine Kate's heartache; going all green-eyed over younger sister Rooney success after only few years in the biz. And I bet Kate realized she played it too safe that she was pushed to a corner while her skinny sibling tear up the nudity clause to land the role of Lisbeth Salander. Zoe Barnes was cast late and that usually means it had something on the casting notice that kept away many available American actresses. 'Nudity' is much feared word on a casting flyer for our actors. Kate may be envious of her sister but it was latter who advised Kate to audition for the role and also put in the good word with mentor David Fincher. Zoe Barnes is killed off in the original but I don't see that happening in American remake...at least in the first season. So there will be ample time for us to catch Kate topless couple of times as she juggles two lovers at same time.
I didn't receive the tip I hoped for with HOC. One anonymous comment (last month) who asked not to be published claimed and was adamant the sex part is borderline R-rated and there won't be any nudity. Clothed sex, furious dry humps. But I like turning the blind eye to reality and rather rub one out to my fantasy.
I'm confident both Kate Mara and Kristen Connolly will be naked for the first time on-cam. It's strange Kristen yet to be credited as part of the cast at IMDB. Her character is involved in a torrid affair with her boss and I been told (and I have posted couple of times as well on the blog) she will go topless. Kevin's Underwood gets a sniff of the illicit liaison and blackmails the congressman/senator/Kristen's lover.
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Josh Ryan’s beautiful shots of Laura Christie from Agency Rouge in an incredibly sexy Agent Provocateur piece have us longing to hit the snooze button and go back to bed.
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Sundance Review: Jim Mickle's Slow-Burn 'We Are What We Are' Remake Is Quiet, Gross and Better Than the Original
Writer-director Jim Mickle has steadily established himself as a horror filmmaker that treats the art of shock value with rare maturity. In his feature-length debut "Mulberry Street," he funneled a cheesy monster movie into a metaphor for gentrification and urban decay; in his follow-up, "Stake Land," he imagined a B-movie universe of vampires versus humans with soft-spoken exchanges and lyrical imagery that instantly called to mind Terrence Malick. "We Are What We Are," Mickle's loose remake of Jorge Michel Grau's 2009 Mexican cannibal tale, brings the filmmaker's distinct blend of the elegant and the macabre to its ultimate realization. Outdoing the original by a long shot, Mickle's slow-burn take on the story is poetic, creepy and, finally, satisfyingly gross.
Transplanting the drama to the Catskills, Mickle quickly establishes a disquieting tone always on the brink of a violent eruption. In the middle of a storm-covered landscape, a middle-aged woman carries her groceries to the car, starts to vomit blood and collapses in the mud, where she's buried in a puddle and drowns. The matriarch of the reclusive Parker family, her death creates a sudden, unspoken tension in the household now headed by the grizzly Frank Parker (Bill Sage), a scowling beast of a man who spouts quasi-religious vagaries about his dedication to "our way." His daughters, the grown Iris (Amber Childers) and teenage Rose (Julia Garner), watch and listen to their father's ramblings with a fearful gaze, while the child of the house, Rory (Jack Gore), views his elders with wide-eyed confusion. Applying spiritual fervor to their unspoken cause, Frank tasks Iris with taking over the family's main traditions.
Anyone familiar with the earlier movie knows that the Parkers' secret is that they eat people. But both versions keep that revelation out of the picture for a good two-thirds of the running time, establishing palpable dread about the family's relentless commitment to their values by questioning the extent to which the children accept the tenets they've been raised to embrace. Garner and Childers exude an eerie innocence for much of the story, simultaneously terrified by their father's domineering approach and strangely in awe of his convictions. That mixture of fear and reverence takes on near-absurd dimensions in light of Frank's evident insanity, brought to life by Sage with pious monstrosity on par with Michael Parks' turn in "Red State."
Perhaps Parks provided some on-set notes. Even more than their mother's untimely death, the Parkers' stability is threatened by the curious advances of local mortician Doc Barrows, played by a restrained Parks as a solemn, thoughtful man haunted by his daughter's disappearance. As he grows increasingly suspicious of the Parkers' antics and launches a private investigation into the discovery of human bones near their home, "We Are What We Are" settles into a rhythm of cross-cutting between the family's shadowy preparations for an upcoming ritual and Barrows' increasingly accurate hunt for the truth.
For this extended middle section, the director's penchant for soft, picturesque visuals deepens the audience's morbid expectations. Ryan Samul's dark blue and black palettes take the movie out of its contemporary setting and suggest an ancient dance between the last vestiges of barbarity and the onset of civilized behavior. The Parkers face a mounting deadline to save themselves, but it's never entirely clear who should save them. A gentle score pushes the enigmatic mood to these philosophical heights, but Mickle eagerly punctures the contemplative pace with a series of well-calculated frights methodically positioned throughout the story until the shocking finale.
Despite the neat calibration of grotesque and thoughtful ingredients, "We Are What We Are" eventually commits the same pratfall of the earlier movie: Once the Parkers' tradition is clear, the buildup to the chaotic finish is frustratingly drawn out. A large portion of the meandering middle half creates a distancing effect from the palpable emotions established early on. Never truly a mystery, the doctor's attempt to uncover the fate of his daughter contains a few too many scenes in which he puts together the pieces; meanwhile, Frank's blatant insanity occasionally borders on parody.
But "We Are What We Are" is still a powerfully effective achievement for its genre because it wraps the usual bloody scares in a rare package of serious-mindedness. Make no mistake: Mickle wants to make you jump and scream, but death only arrives in this movie once its world comes to life, which makes each sudden turn all the more intense. When it eventually gets around to a final gruesome surprise, Mickle doesn't disappoint. "We Are What We Are" devours expectations even as it satisfies the best of them.
Criticwire grade: B+
HOW WILL IT PLAY? Well-received in the Midnight section at Sundance, the movie lacks star power but should attract offers from genre labels willing to capitalize on strong word of mouth and an irresistible premise (as well as the lasting appeal of the original). An ambitious company might even try to make a sequel.
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