Best director, best actress, best feature — these are the awards the porn feature Portrait of a Call Girl scored at the AVNs last week. We got curious, so we decided to take a look at how the legal aspect of the sex industry understood its marginalized twin. … Continue Reading
Ali Carter in a whipped cream bikini in Varsity Blues. We can’t remember what the movie was about, but we will never forget the whipped cream bikini. It looks awkward now, laughable. We’ve graduated from cherry-nipples and a huge triangle-shaped covering down there.
Lucky for us, whipped cream has graduated, too. … Continue Reading
When confronted with reminders of their mortality, people have been shown to play up their cultural views, belittle opposing views, and reinforce their self-esteem. In studying these effects, the question of how thoughts of death affected the libido came up.
An initial study in Israel involving 40 men and 36 women found that thinking about death led the men to say that they’d be more likely to hookup with a stranger at a bar than the control group, which had thought about a visit to the dentist. This, curiously, was not the case for the women in the experiment. … Continue Reading
The Sexy Beast is right to put Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis at the top of their list of hottest lesbian scenes in film — the scene between them in Black Swan really is something to talk about.
Not as hot as, say, Gia, but you’d have to be crazy to watch Gia for the sex given the subject matter. We won’t ruin it for you. Go Netflix it. Anyway, guess who wasn’t crazy about this scene? … Continue Reading
Our friend George Griffith has been slaving on From The Head, what could possibly be the indie flick of the year, about a bathroom attendant in a New York City stripclub based on Griffith’s own experiences in the mid-90s.
The film, an afternoon in the life of bathroom attendant Shoes, played by Griffith himself, features some 60 other characters, among whom, the Variety is reporting, are Scream‘s Matthew Lillard and The Big Lebowski‘s Jon Polito. … Continue Reading
We’re all about men and women having the freedom to do what they desire with their lives and praised when they make great achievements. The field is more even today than it was fifty years ago, but there are still several issues that make our feminism come out all claws and teeth.
And then there are things that just bug us, like this piece on Ms. about gender politics on Iron Man 2. The post summarizes the gender lessons imparted by the film, which we paraphrase here:
Men don’t cry, they scream. They like power tools, technology, and weapons, not talking. Men are big wheels and lone gunmen. Men need to leave a legacy and build a better future and the best way to do this is via weapons, wealth and womanizing. Men’s sexism is funny and endearing. Men are so fabulous at business, they can successfully privatize world peace. Real men think the liberal agenda is boring. Men will always need to be in the theater of war and might as well turn their bodies into weapons.
Women are for dancing, either around poles or on stage as props. They should always be scantily clad, wear make-up well, balance on very high-heels and generally perform femininity to the delight of the male audience. Women are objects whose most important asset is their bodies, which are weak. Women are petty and jealous but also ready to be walked on.
OK, look. The movie wasn’t a shining example of girl power, but look at anything long enough and you will find something wrong with it. We here at Sex and the 405 believe that a lot more could be accomplished if people took the time to create better options instead of tearing apart those that exist. At least make mention of films that, to the author, better illustrate the message of gender equality?
It’s so easy to rip something apart. Building is a whole other thing altogether.
Image from Critical Film Condition. Commentary in response to Ms. magazine.
You guys must think we’re a bunch of geeks obsessed with alien sex. Congrats! You’re totally right.
Anyway, check out what we found during a cursory stroll of teh intarwebs:
The scene was created by Harry Partridge. His comments regarding the project as they appeared on NewGrounds:
I wanted to make this due to the fact it bugged me in the movie that Jake managed to nail Neytiri with little to no knowledge of Na’vi mating practices. I mean, I’m assuming it’s pretty similar, but considering they have magic hair veins that connect with nature, there’s obviously some pretty big anatomical differences… Wow, there’s people starving in Ireland and it’s stuff like THAT which keeps me up at night.
Us, too, dude. Us, too.
Video by Harry Partridge, via RandomPictures.
Late last month we reported on the sex scene in Avatar that was removed (but will appear in the special edition DVD). Gawker is reporting that Movieline has found the scene in the script posted online by Fox.
Presenting the ultimate exercise in dick-softening purple prose:
I really wish I had waited for the DVD. Ugh.
Information from Gawker, which officially ruins everything. And yet I can’t stop reading.
Sex doesn’t sell–we’re too jaded.
That’s what a recent study titled “Sex Doesn’t Sell — nor Impress! Content, Box Office, Critics, and Awards in Mainstream Cinema” is saying, after analyzing the box office success of movies containing explicit sex scenes between 2001 and 2005.
“Sex did not sell, whether in the domestic or international box office, and even after controlling for MPAA rating,” said co-author Dean Keith Simonton, who is also a professor of psychology at the University of California, Davis. “In other words, even among R movies, less graphic sex is better.”
The study was prompted by an experience almost a decade ago of its co-author, Anemone Cerridwen, who, when taking acting classes, increasingly became uncomfortable with the sexual content in films.
“I assumed sex sold, and wanted to know by how much,” Cerridwen said. “I braced myself for the worst, and got quite the surprise.”
Why?
“Nothing is as shocking anymore,” says Craig Detweiler, director of the Center for Entertainment, Media and Culture at Pepperdine University. “You can see it in Britney Spears’ kiss with Madonna and Janet Jackson’s Super Bowl performance. Things that were a big controversy among some, the next generation kind of yawned at it.”
Detweiler told CNN he bears witness to a revolution by the new generation against those of time past, whose goals are “not doing drugs, not sleeping around and not getting divorced.” He thinks this is why Jane Austen films and the Twilight series are so popular today.
“Those stories are really about sexual separation,” he said. “They are all about wooing, not winning.”
The authors of the study hope that Hollywood keeps the research in mind.
“I do believe that there are a fair number of people in the film industry who want to make better films, and this study may give them some ammunition,” Cerridwen said. “I know that Hollywood has been trying to make more family-friendly films for a while (since the ’90s) and it seems to be helping ticket sales, so my guess is that this research would complement that.”
When did the presence of sex in a film make that film “bad”? Sex is human. It merits representation in our art, and that includes film.
Information from CNN, via Rita Arens.
Avatar is a PG-13 flick, so I wasn’t expecting to see anyone hooking up. Nevertheless, there were the two main characters, getting down under a magical wish tree in what has to be the ultimate eye-candy flick of the decade.
There being a such a strong theme of connection, uploading and downloading self and history, the scene between the protagonist’s avatar and his native Na’vi counterpart, Neytiri, is intense and surreal. We’re shown nothing, but our imaginations need no further detail–we’re right there.
Although, just in case you’re one of those inquisitive types, director James Cameron isn’t about to leave you hanging.
“That will be something for the special edition DVD, if you want to see how they have sex,” Cameron told a group of journalists doing their due diligence (i.e., asking how the characters have sex).
Here’s the short version: they use their tails.
“It made such perfect sense,” said actress Zoe Saldaña, who portrayed Neytiri. “If you sync to your banshee and you’re syncing to a tree, why not sync into a person? I almost feel like you’ll have the most amazing orgasm.”
Talk about knowing how to sell DVDs.
“It was a very funny scene to shoot,” Saldaña said. “There were so many technical things that sometimes you have to keep in mind that paying attention to all those might disrupt the fluidity of how a scene is supposed to take place. And because Jim was shooting for a PG-13 rating, we couldn’t move in certain directions. The motion would look a little too past the PG-13 rating standards. So it was really funny for Sam [Worthington, who played Jake Sully] and me. We had a lot of giggles there.”
It’s hot, but you have to wonder if it leaves any room for creativity in bed.
Image from Avatar’s official site. Information from the Philadelphia Daily Inquirer.
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