A Few Best Men - Australia's Version of The Hangover

you can tell they mean trouble because one of them is already drinking out of the bottle.

Tonight, I went to a screening of Stephan Elliot's new film A Few Best Men (2012). Lest you forget, he directed the comically brilliant Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994), and we haven't really heard from him since, unless you were one of the 5 people that saw Easy Virtue (2008). The director introduced the film by saying that it had all three 'B's'...bestiality, blow, and bum-fucking. So I was in for a treat. Usually that kind of college-humor gives me a good chuckle, as it did with this, but I couldn't help thinking how this film was pretty much Australia's version of The Hangover (2009). It involves a group of British boys that come to Australia to marry off one of their mates to an Aussie daughter of a senator. It's virtually identical to the instant classic from two years ago, except the jokes were re-written for an Australian/British sensibility and sense of humor, just didn't work.

Xavier Samuel plays the British version of Justin Bartha, a boyishly handsome unfortunate who desperately wants to get married to the girl of his dreams, even though ridiculous circumstances seem to constantly get in his way, hissy fits and comically overdone sunburn included. Character actor and British goof ball with a dangerous side Kris Marshall is Bradley Cooper's counterpart; he's too cool for school, taller and cuter than every one else and always seems to have his shit under control. Then there's the chubby trouble maker-awkward-creepy-in-an-endearing-way scene stealing character originated by the incomparable Zach Galifianakis, played in this version by Kevin Bishop, not nearly as precociously nor amusingly. But I guess fat people getting into improbable shenanigans is funny in all countries. Instead of having a certain amount of time to get a tiger back to Mike Tyson's mansion, the group of rag tag drunks, coke heads, and sexually frustrated misfits has only a certain amount of time to get a prized ram back to it's stable house and get the lipstick of it...long story...and really not too interesting.

There's a lot of bare asses, shit jokes, and excessive and unrealistic drug consumption...oh and Olivia Newton-John is there too, but sadly all of these elements fell flat on their face. I'm not one who cringes easily but my dinner was slowly and gradually making it's way up my wind pipe. I was more frustrated than anything, because I hate it when a film promises dirty jokes and doesn't deliver. There's only so much of a man sticking his full arm up a sheep's ass I can stomach. I think this film tried to be raunchier than The Hangover but it fell short ironically. Mishaps at weddings are a great sub-genre, but the mother of the bride getting loaded on cocaine and hitting on the groom is small beans next to the wedding band playing 'candy shop' in their most disgusting undertones with a jazz beat.

There is of course the element of the crazed up drug dealer from whom the protagonists have stolen who chases them down through the film, and in this case, no one one-ups Ken Jeong. So i'll just leave it at that. See it if you must, but I wasn't crazy about it, it was pretty predictable, and filth wise, it was a bore.

Top 10: Sexiest Marilyns

I said it before, and I'll just reiterate, I am not too excited about the two new bio-pics about Marilyn Monroe, one of which was just released at NYFF and Mill Valley Film Festival called My Weekend With Marilyn with Michelle Williams in the lead. You can read my post regarding what I think of all of it here. 

Accept No Substitutes

Without getting too serious or uppity about it, I know everyone is starting to Netflix the films of Marilyn Monroe so they have something to compare Michelle Williams' and later Naomi Watts' performances to. I'll be the first to say this, not all of Marilyn's films are gems of cinema. Some are quite dull, but she did work with some of the best directors in the business, among them: Billy Wilder, Otto Preminger, George Cukor, and John Huston, but no one was more of a loyal ally to her than the camera. Lame alert: Whether in black & white or technicolor, Marilyn cemented her status as the undisputed quintessential sex symbol. She's pretty much it folks, that's where the bar is, and no one since has yet raised it, and I don't expect many will. Please enjoy the following list of performances I believe to be her most seductive, sultry, pouty, finessed, plunging, fierce, and memorable. Everyone and their mother can take lessons on being a woman from them. Enjoy! 

10. Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953) dir. Howard Hawks
Marilyn plays the dimwitted but lovable Lorelei Lee, a showgirl and gold digger that sets off on a cruise ship adventure with her partner in crime and fellow showgirl played by Jane Russell. 

9. The Prince and the Showgirl (1957) dir. Laurence Olivier
The process of making the film is what My Week with Marilyn is based on. Marilyn plays again...a showgirl named Elsie who seduces Laurence Olivier's stuffy prince character. 

8. Let's Make Love (1960) George Cukor
Marilyn sings 'My Heart Belongs to Daddy' in a tight sweater and black panty hose. Done. 

7. The Asphalt Jungle (1950) dir. John Huston
This is a bit part for Marilyn, she was about 24, it was her first film, made right before All About Eve (1951). She plays much younger mistress to the main character who has a way of getting what she wants no matter what and not using too much effort to get it. 

6. Bus Stop (1956) Joshua Logan
This is a really beautiful film, the first Marilyn made after studying under Lee Strassberg at the Actor's Studio. She plays a down and out small time waitress/entertainer at a seedy nightclub named Cherie who get's coerced into marrying a young enthusiastic stud but wants nothing of him. There's a pretty provocative-for-the-times scene with her naked in bed. That's Netflix incentive right there. 

5. River of No Return (1954) dir. Otto Preminger
This is one of my favorite films not just of Marilyn's but completely. Preminger + Robert Mitchum = awesome. It's a scientific fact. Marilyn almost doesn't look like herself in this one, wearing a long flowing wig and donning bone corsets and pantalettes. She's almost magical in this film, completely out of her element but it works. 

4. Some Like it Hot (1959) dir. Billy Wilder
If you haven't seen this film, well I just feel sorry for you. It consistently tops best-of lists and critic's pics, and is considered widely to be the best comedy of all time. Marilyn is Sugar Cane, an unlucky-in-love ukelele player in an all-girl's jazz band during the prohibition era who befriends Tony Curtis and Jack Lemon in drag running from gangsters, it's a beautiful farce. Oh and she wears dresses that barely cover her nipples for most of it. 

3. The Seven Year Itch (1955) dir. Billy Wilder
Another Billy Wilder classic and the film that gave us Marilyn's infamous up-skirt scene, which ironically was cut out and reshot to where the skirt barely went over her knees while originally it went pretty much over her head. She plays a nameless upstair's neighbor of the every-man character that Tom Ewell portrays who tempts him into cheating on his wife while she's away for the Summer. Marilyn has never filled out a strapless dress quite like this. Makes me want champagne and potato chips every time. 

2. The Misfits (1961) John Huston
Written for her by her husband at the time Arthur Miller, this film proved to be a full on disaster. Marilyn's antics were by now legendary as well as her co-star Montgomery Clift's. She is said to have hated the role that so well imitated her real life. She played Rosalind, a woman who captures the hearts of three drifter cowboys and strives to keep her demons at bay as she starts a new life. 

1. Niagara (1953) dir. Henry Hathaway
Marilyn plays evil and scheming femme fatale Rose Loomis the much younger wife of George Loomis (Joseph Cotton) who convinces her new boyfriend to murder her husband. But all of that really doesn't matter. There is this pink dress that she wears in one scene where all the young cats at the hotel at Niagara Falls are having a drink and dancing. She walks out and asks one of them to play her record, then she sings along in a sultry voice to 'Kiss'. It's almost too much.  

New Article for Tootit.com

Picking Up Younger Women at Nightclubs

Jesse Pinkman: Everyone's Favorite Bad Boy

Remember that one guy you dated back in High School that your mom always warned you about, that you eventually broke up with because his room smelled like bong water, his parties were always on the seedy side, and he wore a beanie hat in July? Aaron Paul's character on Breaking Bad really makes me regret that I ever broke up with that one guy. When I first started watching the show, firstly I was absolutely amazed, it's actually the most brilliant show on TV right now, secondly I found myself wondering 'where did this guy Aaron Paul come from? He's fantastic!' His character personifies the perils of crystal meth but ultimately desperately makes me want to try it, just kidding. But he does ignite that urge to find a bad boy that I've been suppressing for forever and the day. 

Let's face it ladies, even if you were raised in a multi-million dollar mansion a la Lisa Vanderpump (if you don't get this reference you completely suck), play polo on the weekends, and have LaCrosse trophies lining your bedroom wall, you totally have bad boy fetish. 

When I was growing up and discovering boys, none of them had long hair, tribal tattoos, and goatees. No, they all looked like Jesse Pinkman, pale face, sunken in but intense eyes, scrawny and generally unkempt appearance, but could kiss you so passionately your eyes rolled back in your head. They always hung out at the end of the hall near the gym, smelled like cigarettes, and looked at you like they could care less. And you totally swooned. 

But Jesse Pinkman is so much more than that. His character arc on the show is perhaps even more fascinating than it's protagonist, Walter White (Bryan Cranston), the frustrated high school chemistry teacher who's existential crisis following a terminal cancer diagnosis steers him into crystal meth production and distribution. 

Aaron Paul as Jesse Pinkman in a touching moment with his season 2 girlfriend and co-conspirator Jane (Krysten Ritter)

In a show that is so violent, dark, and gritty, Pinkman is given a really touching and sincere romantic arc that shows off Paul's versatility as an actor. In the season 4 finale that premiered this passed Sunday, Paul cemented his status as one of the best in the business right now. He as Pinkman can be ruthless and loving at the same time, scheming and gentle, harsh and yet tender. It's a beautiful thing, and that's the kind of dimensionality that truly makes a bad boy we can all yearn for. 

This is not True Blood ladies, there's no gratuitous sex, nudity, or thrusting on this show, and yet Aaron Paul shines through as a unique and prowler sex symbol. He could be the most unconventional type for that label, and perhaps that's what makes him so appealing. 

He's a skinny, short, temperamental, sarcastic, smart ass who wears oversized Death Metal tees, baggy pants, and peddles meth for a living. He never finished high school nor read a Jane Austin book. He yells a lot and has a pretty serious addictive personality, and yet he's the only thing that haunts my fantasies in bed at night. 

He's proof that the status quo for sex symbols is in the midst of a pretty serious transformation. Take a back seat Alexander Skarsgård, with your 6'4 frame, silky wavy blonde locks, and perfectly tanned skin. I'm sure there are many covers of lady's romance novels you could grace, but make room for the new decades new bad boy. He's someone we've all met at one point or another and perhaps even dated, and now he's come back to taunt us in a taught and profound series that if you don't watch you really need to. 

Seductress Pick: Rob Lowe

No I don't have things mixed up, I feel I really have to talk about Rob Lowe and his quest to find his inner goddess. He is hands down one of the most beautiful things ever put on this earth to torture us regular folk, and retains a level of...i don't know how else to put this...softness. He has a relentless androgynous   appeal, which keeps him somewhat effeminate but in a good way. It doesn't make him any less of a man, in fact, i believe it makes him even more appealing, if that's even possible, and now breaching his late-mid-40's, he's getting even better.
In terms of filthy behavior, this guy has a gold medal. He's made a sex tape with himself and two drunk chicks, been accused of sexually harassing a nanny that works with his kids, and had simulated sex with Demi Moore in an old-timey bathtub. But in the midst of behaving like a world class cad, he's single handedly giving us more reasons to watch television more than the writers of Saturday Night Live. From The West Wing, to Brothers & Sisters, to now Parks and Recreation, Mr. Lowe is just as riveting as he was 20 years ago with feathered hair and lip gloss in St. Elmo's Fire.
From the tabloids, we can discern that he is a horny dirty man, but he's the prettiest piece of tail this side of John Hughes' movies. He's never grown a filth beard nor gained any chub weight that went straight to his tits, he's remained a consummate master of cinematic eye-candy, with loathsomely perfect features and a devastating bod. Any woman who comes into the misfortune of acting opposite Rob Lowe knows that he's going to be the lovelier of the two. That's what makes a seductress. Garbo, Dietrich, Monroe, and now...Lowe. His skin is soft, his eyes, sparkling with longing, his lips, pouty and doughy, those kind of lips you just want to gently nibble on because they look like they taste like candy, and his general demeanor connotes something that you just want to hug nakedly until the end of time. God gave us a gift everyone just enjoy it. 

Louis CK - Filth Poet

Louis CK is a Filth profet. He's the Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart of Filth. His jokes are so deliciously and profoundly filthy that it boggles the mind as to how I've not written about him sooner. My favorite stand-up comedian for going on 3 years now, with a show about his newly single life which premiered last year on FX (Louie), Louis CK is completely unhinged, cynical, and just fucking dirty! 

His attitudes towards the opposite sex, romance, fucking, and other depressing aspects of life give new meaning to the term 'dirty jokes'. The thing is, his jokes are so organic and sincere that the humor just flows inadvertently out of them because of the visceral imagery he paints with an unmistakable filthy candidacy. And even though on his show he's obviously censored for television and has to take it easy on his choice of words, and yet he still manages to cram plenty of filth into everyday situations and I can do nothing but commend him for it and bow at the alter that is Louis CK. 

Here is a clip from his stand-up that illustrates the brilliance of his filth. While you're at it, Netflix is streaming one of his stand up acts Chewed Up and the first season of Louie. Bravo sir. Bravo. 

Saddest Hand-Job In America

Once...Again

So the music-doc regarding the two lovers of the film Once (2007) musicians Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová is coming soon, the trailer was released a few days ago. As if the first film wasn't pretentious swill, this one will be in black and white y'all, so be sure to take it seriously. In terms of love stories, theirs, though at times was interesting but for the most part dull. How big of a turn on it is when two people sit around talking about their feelings right? hot. Their Oscar-winning song 'Falling Slowly' co-written by both of them for the soundtrack should have been called 'Falling Slowly...Asleep From Boredom'. 

'Lets stare longingly and profoundly into the distance, and let's put that in every scene.'

Not that marginally attractive people, whiney guitar solos, and extended longing stares aren't the end all be all in romance, but if this is what defines that genre in our time, then that's just sad. 
Not to be a sadist or anything but I always find people breaking up much more fascinating than the two of them falling in love. So hopefully The Swell Season will be Glen and Markéta's saving grace. 
In a culture riddled with excessive and obnoxious PDA, it was kind of a relief to see two people express their feelings through song, I just found it tiresome after a while and wished the two of them would put their microphones down and make out or something. Now that they're broken up, and Markéta is married to someone else her own age (instead of Glen who was excuse me, 17 years older than her) perhaps things will get a bit more interesting. Because when they were together, it wasn't at all. I'm not saying they need to rip each other's clothes off and knock down all of their furniture, throw a couple pillows, and then the dog rolls his eyes...but a little passion would be nice. Maybe it's just me but I did not get that from Once when I watched it. Watch any musical/romance from the 50's, seriously any one. All of them retain a level of sensuality, vitality, and intensity between the main characters that makes you believe they are immersed in an intense love story.
If Glen and Markéta relationship was an episode Behind the Music, this new film would be the top of Act 3...Just when they played in every trendy hipster coffee shop in the world and mastered the art of extended yearning stares, it all came crashing down....tonight on a very special episode. 


Trailer for The Swell Season below: 

Regarding Toddlers & Tiaras and Courtney Stodden

I'm going to talk about Filth in a different way for once, and address something I believe to be truly filthy, as in filthy wrong.

With current trends in television regarding the sexualization of minors that range from the teenagers (My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding) to the rugrats (Toddlers & Tiaras) being 'too young' has all of a sudden become trendy. 

Gross. 

Lost and The Green Mile actor Doug Hutchison (51) recently made headlines when he married 16-year-old Courtney Stodden (who’s tweets speak for themselves). Every time they are on TV to defend their union she’s dolled up in Jersey make-up, tousled hair, and a ridiculously low-cut leopard print skin-tight dress like she’s Streetwalker Barbie and he’s looking like Old Man Potter with his skeevy arm around her waist. It’s sickening. There are just so many things wrong with this picture. Stodden acts far too sexually mature for 16, making sexy convulsive faces as Hutchison talks about how he fell in love with her 'heart' and how her parents were 'totally cool with it' and then all of us excuse ourselves from the dinner table to go throw up. 

Last month, TLC aired a particularly controversial episode of their highest rated program, Toddlers in Tiaras where a particularly dumb bitch stage mom decided to dress up her three-year-old as Julia Roberts character from Pretty Woman (1991) and for those of you living in a cave, her character in the film was a prostitute. The three-year-old had everything from the black vinyl thigh high fetish boots to the skimpy white cut-off tank top and micro-mini. It was completely beyond me how anyone could have found this remotely OK.

Just a few years ago, the trend was being an older, wiser woman who was able to snag a younger man. Shows like Cougar Town, Lipstick Jungle, and Desperate Housewives were all exemplary of this. It was symbolic of feminine strength and dignity, and we as women seemed proud. Now that seems to have inverted on itself, and stepped backwards roughly about 2000 years. I just want to conclude with some thoughts for the TLC Channel that continues to air the nausea-inducing and cringe-worthy program Toddlers & Tiaras.

Dear TLC: First of all congrats on hosting the favorite show of pedophiles everywhere. You need to take Toddlers & Tiaras off the air and quick if you want to retain any kind of respectability or dignity for your network. When a 3 year old is paraded around in a prostitute costume it’s not funny, and it’s morally deplorable, and I'm not sure it's even legal. You should be ashamed of yourself. And not in the good way. 

Here's a link to Courtney Stodden's Twitter, and yes this is her ACTUAL twitter, and they are all ACTUAL posts she wrote. I know, I almost didn't believe it myself. 

Courtney Stodden on Twitter

Here are the highlights of the episode. I usually can't bring myself to watch a full hour of the program, so I would never want to inflict that on you.