Coming in 2013: Robert Rodriquez's "Machete Kills"
Starring...fucking hot Latinas
Michelle Rodriquez reprising her role
Alexa Vega, all grown up from her Spy Kids role
Sofia Vegara as a Leather-Clad Dominatrix
Lady Gaga
Jessica Alba reprising her role
Vanessa Hudgins (no pic from movie yet)
Amber Heard
Avellan sisters
Zoe Saldana (no pic from movie yet) rumored to be in a love scene with Danny TrejoSupposedly more "over the top" than the first movie, looks like a very interesting cast.
We are seeking a fit blonde female to work as a body double for an A-List actress on the feature film "Machete Kills" in Austin, Texas. Pay is $300 for the shoot day (there is additional pay for the camera test day). This role requires partial nudity and actresses are preferred and highly encouraged to submit. You must fit the stats below and have Friday, June 8th and Monday, June...11th completely available.
Blonde female
Age 20-30
Fit/Slim Physique
5'7 - 5'9
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Party Non Stop : Pirupa (directors cut)
The Girls of Bond Timeline
Celebrate 50 years of iconic and sexy Bond Girls with the release of Skyfall on November 9th, 2012.
Licensed to thrill: 50 years of Bond
Sean Connery introduces 007 to the world in "Dr. No.""Bond. James Bond."
Half-a-century that he and other 007s have filled with megalomaniac villains, ejector seats, femme fatales and sometimes painful double entendres.
And he still hasn't worn out his welcome.
In fact, his latest, "Skyfall," looks likely to be his biggest hit yet - goosed along not only by IMAX receipts, but by strong reviews and a slightly more serious tone harking back to the franchise's glory days.
But why is Bond still big? What's his appeal?
Only what it always has been - as a vicarious stand-in for everything his fans ever wanted to do or be.
But what that is, exactly, has changed with the times, and the medium, as Bond moved from best-selling novels to blockbuster films to a multinational, multiplatform franchise.
He has gone from a Cold Warrior to a superhero in a tuxedo, from a minimalist assassin to a gadget guru and back again. His relationships with women have gotten shallower, then deeper, then complicated. His attitude has bounced from insouciant to sarcastic to surly.
He's still Bond. But he's not the Bond he used to be.
The spy who loved things
James Bond was born in 1953, with Ian Fleming's first novel, "Casino Royale." And the 007 of the early books is very much a product, and a reaction to, those times - their stereotypes, their conformity and their very real doomsday fears.
Their frugality, too. To modern readers, Bond can seem like a fussy old bachelor, always giving very precise instructions about how to prepare everything from his black-coffee-and-eggs to that famous shaken-not-stirred martini.
Bond isn't just a connoisseur of food and drink, either. He loves truly classic cars (his one extravagance, he likes to think, is a supercharged 1933 Bentley). He wears clothes well, and insists the women in his life do, too. (For an indefatigably heterosexual male he knows an awful lot about handbags, manicures and soie sauvage.)
Fleming's blather about the best champagne and cigarettes can seem like padding today. But when the Bond books were born, rationing in Britain was still alive and unwell. Good English men and women waited in queues, patiently, their little coupon books clutched in their hands.
But not Bond.
Shaken, not stirred: Pierce Brosnan, with the spy's signature drink.But unlike many of his countrymen, Bond traveled, and with a lush expense account, too. So he could fly down to Jamaica and feast on seafood or sip champagne on the Orient Express. And the books described all of it for frustrated readers in rapturous, adjective-studded prose.
Forget all those pages devoted to Bond bedding Vesper Lynd, or Tatiana Romanova. For sensation-starved Britons, putting on a new suit, getting into a big gas-guzzling car and going out to eat a great meal was the true pornographic fantasy - and Bond let them all indulge in it, vicariously, again and again.
That part changed when the movies arrived. Although they kept Bond's fondness for vodka martinis, they played down the other passions - mostly because, by the booming `60s, they seemed painfully out of date.
Obsessing over steak or scrambled eggs?
What, had the guy just gotten out of prison? All that stuff was as close as your Frigidaire.
In fact, in the movies, Bond rarely sits down to a meal at all. He's too busy saving the world.
From Russia, with rage
Bond movies played to that wide world, too, finding not only an enormous American audience but fans throughout Europe, Latin America and Asia. And that prompted another change from the books.
Begun at the start of the Cold War, the original novels -- a hit chiefly in Britain and America, at first -- reflected Fleming's view of a very dangerous era. The Soviet Union was a real and powerful enemy, and its spies circulated throughout Europe, infiltrating unions, blackmailing politicians and assassinating enemies.
Bond's first mission, in "Casino Royale," was to bankrupt one of their paymasters, Le Chiffre; afterward, the Soviet's counter-intelligence operation, SMERSH (a combination of the Russian words for "Death to Spies") would pursue him steadily, through the books "Live and Let Die," "From Russia, With Love" and "Goldfinger."
And the stories indulged Fleming's distrust, not only of Russians, but of most of the world. The ever-busy Bond faced down Chinese scientists, German/Irish assassins, Caribbean criminals and various unbelievable American gangsters. Only Englishmen were, of course, trustworthy (apart from the occasional sniveling henchman).
When the movies arrived in `62, however, the producers realized that going on about the evils of communism (and general dodginess of foreigners) might play poorly in some sales territories. So SMERSH became SPECTRE, an independent, apolitical criminal organization that worked for whoever was willing to pay.
Dropping the Cold War politics made the films more palatable to a number of foreign countries, and Fleming (who had first included SPECTRE in 1961's "Thunderball," a story which began as a film treatment) added to its lore in his own new books.
Yet by getting rid of SMERSH, the Bond series was also severing a link, however tenuous, with reality. Readers knew that Fleming himself had been a spy; they could still find stories of duplicitous double-agents in their newspapers. There's nothing in the book "From Russia, With Love" that could not happen.
Yet there's little in "Diamonds Are Forever," Connery's last "official" Bond movie, that feels remotely plausible. And as Roger Moore's reign began and built, the movies got even farther-fetched, with metal-fanged henchmen and escapades in space.
In films like "Skyfall," Daniel Craig has helped take the spy back to basics.The man with the golden gadgets
That back-to-basics approach applies to Bond's "toys" in the new movie, too. When he returns to duty in "Skyfall" he's given a gun and a tracking device, a meager arsenal that leaves the agent disappointed. "Were you expecting an exploding pen?" snipes the computer-geek Q, the agency's official armorer.
Of course Fleming's original novels, and the first film, were just as minimalist; the movie Bond of "Dr. No" was reduced to leaving hairs pasted over doors to see if they'd been opened in his absence. But then "From Russia, With Love" gave him that trick briefcase, and "Goldfinger" brought in the beloved, tricked-out Aston Martin DB5.
Both delighted movie fans and - more the point - became popular toys and advertising tools. And so first Fleming and then the movies began to load on the gadgets until, by 1977's film "The Spy Who Loved Me," 007 had a Lotus Esprit that not only fired surface-to-air missiles but could convert to a submarine.
All of this was in keeping with the movies' general Playboy magazine approach - only the best girls, gadgets, gags! - but it also stripped something away from Bond, and eventually played to Moore's laziest acting instincts. To win, 007 didn't even have to get his blow-dried hair mussed. All he had to do was push a button.
What the movies also smoothed over were 007's relationships with women. And in some ways that's been a step forward, too; in others, a small step back.
In the books, it's clear that nothing attracts this cold man more than warm vulnerability; he's drawn to "a bird with one wing down." They may have a broken nose and a past of abuse, like Honey Ryder in "Dr. No"; they may be subject to bleak depressions, like Tracy di Vincenzo in "On Her Majesty's Secret Service;" they may have only survived a bad love affair, like Vivienne Michel in "The Spy Who Loved Me."
But they need help, and Bond needs to help them - if only to prove to himself he's still human.
That chivalry survives in a couple of the movies, but the films generally make far less room for sentiment. Instead Bond is, as a foreign movie poster once advertised him, "Mr. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang" - treating his conquests in the bedroom like his victories in the field. Either way, it's just another hard-won badge.
Diana Rigg and George Lazenby in "On Her Majesty's Secret Service," one of the few films to show Bond's softer side.First the formidable Judi Dench took over as Bond's boss; then costars like Michelle Yeoh in "Tomorrow Never Dies" and Halle Berry in "Die Another Day" came in swinging.
The younger women are still "Bond girls" - paraded for pinup publicity - but they're strong, too, hired for more than just their looks. (Actually, since Daniel Craig took over as 007, he's more likely to be the star with the obligatory swimsuit scene.)
The rough-hewn Craig's brought more than his pecs to these new pictures, though. His Bond wears clothes well, but carelessly. He likes drink, but he's no connoisseur. (Asked in "Casino Royale" if he wants his martini shaken or stirred, he snaps "Do I look like I give a damn?") He scowls a lot, and isn't much for repartee.
He's like a fist in a tuxedo.
Which is precisely right. No, he's not the Bond who Fleming created. He may not be the Bond you grew up with - hip `60s Connery or pretty `70s Moore, gritty `80s Dalton or debonair `90s Brosnan. But he's the Bond for his age. He's the Bond for right now.
And that's always the best Bond of all.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
10 Weird Movie Sex Scenes That You Totally Didn’t See Coming
Stuart W. BedfordNothing allows for a quicker display of character compassion than a strategically placed sex scene. But then, that’s not always strictly the case, is it? Sex scenes in movies are used for all sorts of reasons outside of the romantic. Often, they can actually be pretty weird, totally unexpected and otherwise totally uncomfortable.
Sex in film is a cinematic device and just like any other it can be used to many different effects. More often than not it is used to show a physical connection between to romantically linked characters but sometimes it’s used to conjure much darker, much more dramatic feelings in the viewer. Hell, sometimes sex is used purely for comedic effect (more on that later).
There’ve been many sex scenes throughout cinema history; too many, I’d wager to be able to feasibly count. This list aims to discuss those sex scenes that came, for all intents and purposes, completely out of the blue (meaning you couldn’t sneak away in embarrassment beforehand if you were originally watching with your parents) and what’s more, were completely, eyebrow raisingly weird.
It goes without saying that this list contains pretty much exclusively sexually themed content and as a result might not (edit: definitely won’t) be suitable for children or probably anyone with a squeamish attitude toward pretty awkward and often times pretty weird sexual practices.
Still here? Alright! Let’s get wrist deep in filth!
10. Jackie Brown (1997) – That Was Fun!
I’m going to kick this list off with my tamest pick of the bunch. But don’t worry. It gets worse. Much worse. So sudden is Robert DeNiro and Bridget Fonda’s impromptu diddle in Jackie Brown that it’s nigh on impossible to predict. And man, is it awkward.As the two grind and gyrate together on the spot – her seemingly uninterested and him panting and grunting like a dying gorilla – it’s hard not to feel, I don’t know, slightly traumatised, as though you’ve just walked in on your parents and saw something you really didn’t want to. Not the most erotic of on screen encounters but hey it certainly has an effect; most likely the exact effect that Tarantino had intended.
9. Orgazmo (1997) – Come Awn, Fudge Me Nah!
The ‘Tina Rex’ scene is easily one of the funniest moments in Orgazmo, Trey Parker’s outrageous parody of the American porn industry (and one of the preludes to Trey and Matt’s award winning Broadway musical Book of Mormon, would you believe).
Ok, so it’s a movie about porn, so the sex scene itself isn’t exactly a surprise. What is a surprise however is what this particular sex scene entails, which is the technical sexual assault of an unwilling Mormon by a domineering, clinically obese middle-aged woman with the voice of a forty-year-old Eric Cartman. It’s almost enough to turn one off pornography forever. Almost.
8. MacGruber (2010) – …Is It Over Yet?
Despite MacGruber being a huge critical and commercial flop, I was one of the few who, being an Saturday Night Live fan during the original MacGruber sketches, didn’t actually think it that terrible. Ridiculous? Yes. Puerile? Most definitely. But terrible? Let’s just say that I thought it could have been much worse.
Probably the funniest moment in the entire movie, MacGruber’s sex scene, like much of the humor in the movie, directly parodyies what you might expect from the sex in an eighties action movie but gives it that twist of MacGruber ineptitude that fans of SNL will be familiar with. With teeth-grindingly, hair pullingly awkward results.
7. Clerks – Dead Meat
Ok, so maybe this isn’t a sex scene owing to the fact that it occurs entirely off screen but there’s a sex act involved. A totally weird one. How weird? How does accidental necrophilia grab you?
For those who haven’t seen Clerks or those that have forgotten the specifics of the plot allow me to recap. Earlier on in the film, protagonist Dante gives an elderly man a pornographic magazine to read while he’s in the bathroom, after which he disappears for the rest of the movie. Until the final scene of course…
I don’t know what’d be worse, accidentally having sex with a dead guy or inadvertantly enjoying it. A surprising and unexpectedly macabre twist from an otherwise relatively light-hearted workplace comedy.
6. Brain Dead (1990) – It’s Not Necrophilia When They’re Both Dead
Back before Peter Jackson was one of the classiest directors in the world he was undoubtedly one of the most low brow, occupying his time with extremely low budget cult classics like Bad Taste and of course the now legendary Brain Dead, which is possibly.
Filled with absolute and unadulterated filth, it’s practically impossible to actually watch Brain Dead without coming away feeling desensitized and weirdly listless. And especially so after the uncomfortable zombie on zombie sex action that punctuates the film at around the half way mark. It’s beyond weird; it’s just plain nasty. And upon first viewing, probably about the last thing that you ever expected to happen.
5. The Idiots (1998) – Gangbang!
The Idiots is one of the most famous films in the Danish borne Dogme 95 cinematic movement. It follows a group of young people whose hobby is… well, it’s pretending to be mentally challenged, despite the fact that none of them actually are. Which is a weird enough concept as it is, I’m sure you’ll agree.
What’s even weirder though is the infamous gang bang scene in which, in full “character” no less, this group decide it’d be fun to strip naked and have a good old fashioned orgy with each other. Like, out of nowhere. This scene is one of the few non-pornographic movies to feature full on-screen penetration (hence no clip, I’m afraid) although if you watch it hoping for some cheeky eroticism, you really are looking in the wrong place. Believe me, it’s pretty difficult to watch without squirming uncomfortably.
4. Once Upon A Time In America (1984) – Almost Rape, But Not Quite
Essentially goaded by his semi-willing “victim” into raping her during the diamond heist scene in Leone’s brutal gangster masterpiece, DeNiro’s character Noodles forces his victim onto a desk, dispenses of her underwear and proceeds to have his wicked way with her, all the while the robbery continues to happen around them. There’s resistance at first but soon she starts to enjoy it, even orgasms herself as a result of the sudden and completely unexpected violation.
In this instance, it appears the sex was ultimately consensual (…I think), although that doesn’t make it any less a horrific and depressing sight to behold. However, not only is it a masterful, visual exposition of character (whether she wanted it to or not, it was happening) it also foreshadows the actual rape scene later on in the film, practically makes its occurrence a grinding inevitability. A truly upsetting, yet dramatically succulent scene made arguably more so for just how completely unexpected it was upon first viewing.
3. Sleeping Dogs Lie (2006) – Hair Of The Dog
From eccentric filmmaker Bobcat Goldthwaite (of Police Academy fame) comes possibly one of the weirdest, most sexually deviant films I might have ever seen and there isn’t even technically a sex scene in it. There’s a sex act, sure, but it occurs entirely off screen. And thank god. Basically, Sleeping Dogs Lie details a young woman whose life spirals out of control after her family finds out that in college, she had… erm, oral… relations, with her dog.
That’s right. It’s a film about the ramifications of bestiality. As I mentioned, luckily, we don’t actually see the inter-species sex scene occur, which unexpectedly just happens right out of the gate in the opening scene (although we do see her spitting the aftermath into her bathroom sink, which in all honesty is probably the worst part of the whole thing). But even though it’s off camera, in the world of this movie, it happened, which is enough in itself to turn even the strongest cinematic stomach.
Again, no video clip, I don’t want to push my luck, but suffice to say this scene was the epitome of weird and although I knew what the movie was about going in, I couldn’t have possibly prepared myself for what I saw that day.
2. In The Realm of the Senses (1976) – How Do You Like Your Eggs In The Morning? I Like Mine In The Snizz…
It’s been called experimental pornography, amongst other things, and although In The Realm of the Senses is deeply Japanese it’s never actually been shown in full and uncensored in Japan. It’s a film about the limits of human sexuality and as such it contains several graphic, often pretty horrific sex scenes involving all sorts of weird fetishes and foreign objects.
Another movie that’s pretty gratuitous in terms of showing full penetration, In The Realm of the Senses is most certainly worse than the other on this list, The Idiots. There’s one scene in particular though, involving the fully shown insertion of a hard boiled egg into a willing feminine orifice, that probably sticks out to me as one of the strangest, most WTF inducing moments in the entirety of cinema history. I mean, honestly, what’s less sexually appetizing than a hard boiled egg? I’d say a you’ve only got Brussels Sprouts to go before you’re at the very bottom of the ‘least sexy foods ever’ list.
It’s not unexpected as a sex scene in itself – In The Realm of the Senses is chock full of them – it’s just… well, how could anyone have possibly seen that coming?
1. Team America: World Police, Uncut Version (2004) – Two Marionettes, No Cup
Ok so maybe you saw this scene coming but I’d stake my entire reputation on the fact that, should you have watched the uncut version, you definitely couldn’t have predicted where it was going. As in the cinematic release, in the sex scene, each shot attempts to top the last in terms of gratuitous sexual content. But man, does it get out of hand in the uncut version.
In the uncut version, Trey and Matt let their famous scatological humour completely off the leash in a scene which goes from funny, to hilarious, to ominous, to downright disgusting (as Lisa actually defecates on Gary) before suddenly – depending on which way you look at it – becoming f***ing hilarious once again, once the realisation of just how far they dared to take it dawns on the viewer.
When you look at it, it’s a pure (and actually quite clever) parody of that classic eighties/nineties sex scene, most of which also tend to get more graphic as they wear on and the characters get more passionate about each other, although all of which stop just short of depravity. Of course, it wouldn’t be a parody if it wasn’t taken to its uppermost extremes. Still, I’d have to say Team America’s uncut sex scene was probably one of the weirdest and most unexpected screen bang I might have ever reluctantly laid eyes on.
So, sufficiently freaked out? I hope so; if not, you might want to book in with a psychiatrist.
Da Vinci's Demons Laura Haddock SEXY Advert
Movie starlet Saoirse Ronan gives her most grown-up interview yet
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| Ambitious ... Saoirsie is adament she wants to go to college |
SHE’S just turned 18 — but Saoirse Ronan has insisted she WON’T go off the rails like so many other child stars.
The Carlow lass has been a serious Hollywood player since she was nine — drawing comparisons with troubled talent like Lindsay Lohan.But in a revealing interview, Saoirse said she looks to a different type of starlet for inspiration.
The level-headed actress rejected the temptation of Hollywood throughout her teens — choosing instead to look to the likes of Natalie Portman and Jodie Foster, both former child stars who went on to win Oscars.
She revealed: “Natalie Portman is very good and Jodie Foster — they were child actresses as well and I think they took a great route.
“They were able to go into adulthood as successful actresses, so they’re certainly people I look up to.”
And now that’s she all grown up, she’s planning her next moves — both on-screen and off.
She said: “I really want to go to college. I also want to travel more and see the world and have some experiences that don’t have to do with movie sets.
“I’d be interested in studying cinema and maybe history. I’d love to learn some languages too. I was born in New York, so I’d love to study at New York University.”
Whatever she does, you can be sure she’ll check in with her parents before she makes any decision.
The Ronans are close — dad Paul and mum Monica are always on set with their only daughter.
When she’s not working, the three of them go back to Carlow, where Saoirse still lives with her parents.
She said: “I suppose you could say I’m a bit of an old soul, but I’m also just a normal 18-year-old who’s been hanging around adults all my life. I’m just like other 18 year olds.
Like most teenagers, Saoirse spends a lot of time on the phone and online when she’s not working. She’s also about to do her driving test for the first time.
She said: “I love living in the country and my life when I’m at home is no different to any of my friends. Thank God for Skype though when I’m away working! I do Facebook as well and email and that helps keep us in touch. I play basketball, I surf and swim and go to the cinema and listen to music and read. I like shopping.”
Magic City Strippers Put On A Show!
Author Q-and-A : After the Great Disappearance
Tom Perrotta's new novel imagines those not taken in the Rapture.
By TOM ATWELL
click image to enlarge
Tom Perrotta
His latest, "The Leftovers," continues in that serious vein.
The book takes place after the Great Disappearance, which is similar to the Rapture mentioned in the Bible – except that the people taken were of all different religions and races, and were good as well as bad.The book is about the people who were not taken and how they continue on with their lives.
It's currently being developed into a possible HBO series.
Perrotta will be giving a talk and reading on Wednesday as part of a program for The Telling Room at Space Gallery, 538 Congress St. The Telling Room is a Portland-based program to help writers from ages 6 to 18.
Perrotta recently spoke to us about his Telling Room talk, his new book, the planned HBO series and more.
Q: Do you do a lot of these kinds of programs (like The Telling Room talk)?
A: I wouldn't say a lot. I do some occasionally.
Q: Why did you agree to do this one?
A: It seems like a great program, so why not?
Q: Tell me about the HBO series on "The Leftovers." When will that come out?
A: We are developing it, so there is no guarantee that it will come out. You make a pilot, if you are lucky. They have a bunch of projects in development, and we are one of them.
Q: You have written for the movies before. How is that different, and how do you feel about redoing something you have written for a different medium?
A: I think you have to take an open mind into it. If you think your job is to protect your work and make sure nothing changes, it is not going to work. You are creating something new based on what you have done. There are a lot of authors who don't want to do that, and I understand that, but if you are going to enter that process, you have to be open to having a dialogue.
Q: A lot of stories about you make a big deal about you being a suburban writer. Is it just a case -- as every writing teacher advises – in which you write about what you know?
A: I have never thought of myself as suburban writer. I'm just telling stories that happen to be set in the suburbs. It isn't even really writing about what I know. I am writing what I want to write, and they are set in the world I know.
Q: I found similarities of tone in your work to the works of Kurt Vonnegut and Joseph Heller, especially the Heller of "Something Happened." Are you a fan of their work?
A: They were definitely writers that I read when I was young, but I don't think of them as special influences. But I think what you read when you are young kind of enters what you are as a writer. I read "Catch 22" when I was young, and tried to read "Something Happened" recently and didn't really like it that much.
Q: Having the Rapture or Great Disappearance take place sort of moves you into science fiction as an author, but I thought the theme was dealing with a cataclysmic event – and it could have been the Kennedy assassination, 9/11 or even Hurricane Sandy.
A: I think that is a good comment. When it first came out, everyone wanted to see it as a 9/11 allegory. It is about the kind of event that seems to sort history. People who live through this will divide their lives into before this event and after this event.
It is how some people start their lives over again and some people diverge. Some people resume the lives they have been living, and some go into an entirely different direction.
The event of the sudden departure is not the subject of this book. The subject of the book is how people start their lives after this trauma.
Q: I haven't read your earlier books, but I have read that they have been comic novels. So "The Leftovers" was quite a shift.
A: I think moving away from the comic has been going on for a while. When people talk about comic novels they are the early novels, like "Election" in 1998, and "Wishbones" in 1997 and "Joe College" in 2000. But once I got to "Little Children" in 2004, it was still funny but a serious and dark subject matter.
"The Leftovers" is a shift because it turned out to be so much about grief and loss.
Q: Are you working on your next book yet, or are you too busy on the HBO project?
A: I'm working on a collection of short stories. Some of them had been written over the years, but now when I have time to write fiction, I work on a short story.
Q: Is that unusual? I thought most writers start with short stories and then do novels.
A: I wrote my first book, "Bad Haircut," as a collection of linked short stories. I have written short stories over the years in between novels, so it is not something that I had abandoned. But my short stories tend to be long. I lack the ability of compression that short story writers have.
Tom Atwell is a freelance writer living in Cape Elizabeth.
Jessica Marais's magic move
With its 1950s period detail, showgirls and mobsters, Magic City is like a strange fusion of Mad Men and The Sopranos. Add the sultry Miami climate and bit-players such as Sinatra and the Kennedys and you have something truly evocative.The series opens on New Year's Eve, 1959, in the court of Ike Evans, owner of the luxurious Miramar Playa Hotel. It's a perfect world with one imperfection: to ensure his survival, Ike has done a deal with the devil - mobster Ben Diamond (Danny Huston). Enter Lily Diamond, Ben's third wife, played by former Packed to the Rafters star Jessica Marais.
Marais, who relocated to Miami for the role, describes Lily as a ''bag of contradictions. She's inevitably flawed. She's probably a very damaged human being but one who is incredibly strong in the face of adversity and a real survivor.''
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| Married to the mob … Jessica Marais plays a gangster's wife in Magic City. |
Lily's siren-like demeanour is an illusion, Marais says. ''There are so many layers to peel back with her, and as the first season unfolds [a second season is now filming] you realise there's so much more going on,'' she says. ''Lily is one of the only female characters that is capable of playing in this dangerous, masculine world.''
The series was created for the US cable network Starz by Mitch Glazer, who grew up in Miami. His father designed lighting for three of the city's iconic '50s hotels. The luxurious detail of that world, Marais says, entirely informs the series. ''They don't use anything that isn't authentically from the 1950s,'' she says. ''Even the things you don't see, the right undergarments, the size of a heel on a shoe. The result is a world which 100 per cent informs your performance and informs the detail in your work.''
Finding a simple hook for the series is challenging. It is a period drama, in the style of Mad Men. And a Mob drama, in the style of The Sopranos. But its rich tapestry of characters and personal relationships is more reminiscent of soap opera. Marais thinks it is a mixture of the lot. ''It's a bit of a melting pot of styles, narratives and storylines,'' she says. ''It's power, it's sex, it's revenge, it's all the huge themes that all the great tragedies, the best works of Shakespeare, have in them. And it's a 1950s version of it, with cars and costumes and fabulous characters.''
The series aired in the US last year to mixed reviews but still secured a second series of 10 episodes.
And Marais promises a bumpy ride. ''By the end of the first series you begin to see that Lily is one step ahead of her husband Ben and the relationship between the two of them is fraught with much more than just an abusive husband and a mobster's wife,'' she says.
''There's a lot more going on; it's much deeper than that.
''But I don't want to give anything away. I can't tell all her secrets but, believe me, she has so many secrets it's ridiculous.''
Saturday Nights in Kabuki-cho, Sexy Propositions and Home Delivery Girls
Nov 12, 2012 by Philip Kendall
Sex is big business in Japan.
We’ve all heard stories about Japan’s bath houses, booby bars, massage parlours, peep shows and roleplay clubs. We all know they exist, and very few of us are even shocked any more; but for some reason it’s taken me more than six years of living the country to realise just how much a part of everyday life Japan’s sex industry really is…
Perhaps it’s because I spent so long living in the Japanese countryside before moving to Tokyo, perhaps it’s because I just haven’t been paying enough attention, but it struck me just this weekend: there’s a ton of sex for sale in Japan. Or, rather, “sexual relations” since selling intercourse is, technically, illegal here…
Sure, on my evenings out with friends in Tokyo we’ve strolled through the red light district, ducked into sex shops and laughed at some of the bizarre fetish videos, even been taken to clubs where drop-dead gorgeous girls offer to straddle you while you pretend to be focused on just your cocktail…
But, for some reason, I never realised just how widespread- not to mention socially accepted- the sex industry in Japan really is.
Just this weekend, though, when arriving home from a shopping trip with my wife, I found something unusual waiting for me.
Stepping into the apartment and removing my shoes in our stupidly narrow genkan entrance-way, I picked up the small pile of mail that was lying on the floor.
Gas bill; water bill; postcard from honeymooning friends; some random junk mail.
I was about to slip the junk mail into our little paper recycling box– which we keep right next to the door due to the sheer volume we receive– but then I noticed that one leaflet was something I’d never seen before. This wasn’t just a random pizza menu or an ad for a newly built apartment complex; this one was tiny, printed on lilac-coloured paper and featured not just prices, but the line “8,000 yen (US$100) per 40 minutes.”
After a quick scan of the flyer, I surmised that it was for a home massage service.
It advertised that I could have a “specialist” come to my home any time from 9 a.m.until “late”, that there was no fee to join the service (should there be?), and that, for a little extra money, I could select which “specialist” I wanted. The price seemed a little steep, though…
“8,000 yen for 40 minutes!? That had better be a seriously good massage,” I said to my wife who was busy trying to pull her own shoes off. She peered over at the flyer in my hand before giving me a look somewhere between “aww, aren’t you cute” and “are you stupid?”
“Well, it’s not just a massage, is it?” she said, realising that I hadn’t quite caught on. “It’s for sex.”
▼This is no pizza menu…
I looked back at the flyer, probably wearing an expression similar to a kid who’s just heard for the first time that babies come out of women. Sure enough, there were a number of subtle hints:
“Girls wanted- experience not necessary. Details given upon inquiry!”
“Drivers needed.”
“Options available.”
Less subtle was the title hito zuma (“married women”) across the top of the page, which for some reason I’d failed to notice…
I thought about the old lady who lives across the hall. Were this my native UK, any self-respecting 70-year-old picking up a flyer delivered through her door discreetly offering sexual services would either pass out in a blur of blue hair dye and floral print or immediately pen an angry letter to their local member of parliament…
I sat down on the couch chuckling at the flyer in my hand while my wife went about making a cup of tea, completely unphased.
And why should she be?
For all the talk of manners, politeness and social etiquette we hear in Japan, sex is almost everywhere, tucked in between the everyday, but rarely paid much attention to.
After all, making a fuss and pointing it out would be just as bad, if not worse, than the material itself.
Porn mags, although usually sealed shut with tape, sit beside comics and hobby magazines in 7-Eleven, Love Hotels are sandwiched between respectable businesses in busy city areas or adorned with electric pink roadside signs with names like “Raccoon” and “Pink Paradise” in the countryside; skinny men with ridiculously well styled hair stand outside major stations pestering young women to work in their hostess clubs. Just last month, a friend and I were walking through a crowded Shinjuku street one evening when, among the throng of pedestrians, a small voice offered us oral sex…
I’m no prude. I’ve been around during my 30 years on this planet, witnessed sights that have, for better or worse, seared themselves into my retinas forever and I dread the thought of ever going senile in my old age and telling my kids what I’ve seen… And yet I still found myself shocked that someone’s walking around my town casually posting flyers that subtly offer sex in exchange for money…
Japan, you never fail to surprise me.
camel toe straight from Denmark : 20-years old Nina Agdal. A new breed of mainstream models with all-womanly curves gradually replacing skinny shapeless anorexic catwalkers. Kate Upton and Nina should do a artistic photoshoot together someday.
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