Rock stars are rock stars. They're gorgeous, they're worshiped, they're iconic, they're golden gods. I don't care who you are, you were in love with a rock star once upon a time in your life, and you seriously considered quitting grad school to be a groupie, or you know, try to build a time-machine so you could go back to 1971 and throw yourself at Roger Taylor. Which never happened...yes it did. Now, I'm not talking about rock stars in the sense that they have to play rock. A rock star is someone who through their music, whatever it may be, their look, and their fuck-all attitude created a certain level of iconography not only musically but aesthetically. There are of course sins of omission on this list. For example, I'm a huge fan of Johnny Cash and Bryan Ferry but they are not on the list because I've never pictured fucking them. I'm basing this list on a few criteria - style, persona, iconography, and sex-appeal. If the shoe fits, have sex with it. Also, this is in order leading up to the sexiest, most magnificent rock star of all time...in my opinion of course, but I have a feeling it's a lot of other people's opinions as well. Here we go.
#50 - Shannon Hoon of Blind Melon
#49 - Brian May of Queen and being extremely British
#48 - Shirley Manson of Garbage
#47 - Josh Todd of Buckcherry
#46 - Liz Phair
#45 - Sebastian Bach of Skid Row, all he's missing is some earrings and lipstick
#44 - Grace Slick of Jefferson Airplane and drinking binges
#43 - Susanna Hoffs of The Bangles
#42 - Joe Perry of Aerosmith, where else?
#41 - Layne Staley of Alice in Chains
#40 - Roger Taylor of Queen
#39 - Dave Davies of The Kinks
#38 - Amy Lee of Evanescence
#37 - Shaun Cassidy, take that Justin Beiber
#36 - Jimi Hendrix of his giant penis
#35 - David Coverdale of White Snake
#34 - Johnny Rotten of The Sex Pistols
#33 - Dave Navarro of Jane's Addiction
#32 - Eagle-Eye Cherry
#31 - Art Garfunkel of Simon and Garfunkel and then solo projects
#30 - Regina Spektor
#29 - Scott Weiland of first Stone Temple Pilots then Velvet Revolver then being generally fucked up
#28 - Iggy Pop of the Stooges and fucking Iggy Pop
#27 - Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam and sensitive-guy rock
#26 - John Taylor of Duran Duran
#25 - Lenny Kravitz of being shirtless almost all the time
#24 - Janelle Monae
#23 - Kurt Cobain of The Spice Girls
#22 - Bob Marley of dreadlocks
#21 - Henry Rollins of Black Flag and general badassism
#20 - Ian Gillan of Deep Purple
#19 - Slash of Guns N Roses, Velvet Revolver, VH1 commentary shows, and top hats
#18 - Stevie Nicks of Fleetwood Mac and later Stevie Nicks
#17 - Tina Turner of Ike and Tina Turner and then of telling Ike to go fuck himself and just being Tina Turner
#16 - Joan Baez
#15 - Ben Harper of being Mr. Laura Dern and then getting a good look at her face
#14 - George Harrison of being the least obnoxious and most musically talented Beatle
#13 - Prince
#12 - Marc Bolan of T. Rex
#11 - David Gilmour of Pink to the Floyd
#10 - Michelle Phillips of The Mamas and the Papas
#9 - Debbie Harry of Blondie awesomeness
#8 - Marvin Gaye of getting it on
#7 - Nico of The Velvet Underground & Nico
#6 - David Bowie of David Fucking Bowie
#5 - Freddie Mercury of Queen and being the best rock & roll frontman that ever lived
#4 - Elvis Presley of um...duh
#3 Roger Daltrey of The Who and wash port abs
#2 - Mick...Jagger
#1 - Had to see this one coming. Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin and being the original and only Golden God. Phew!
Going off script here, It's my 200th post. So yay! I'm going to write whatever the hell I want. Fellas, listen the fuck up. Enough with the frosted tips, tribal tattoos, plastic sunglasses and skinny jeans. You look like an idiot, and I can smell the douche on you from a mile away. If your goal is to make yourself appealing to females and eventually their vaginas, you're doing it all wrong. Here are trends that I think we should bring back that make you look like more of a man and like less of a bitch.
Man-tanning. Take it from me, if you do it evenly and don't overdo it, you'll remind girls of Cary Grant, and that's always a good thing. Even in the dead of winter.
Cravats. If you want to look sharp and like you make a lot of money, which is always, always appealing to women, buy a cravat or two, it's not as obnoxious as a dickie-bow, and not as boring as a tie. It will always sharpen up your oufit.
The serious beard. Enough with the crazy facial hair experiments. Last year it was the handle-bar mustache, now it's the amish beard, it's like stop smoking so much pot and grow a dang serious beard if you're going to have any facial hair. All or nothing boys.
The sweater vest is not fundamentally dorky. You don't have to be Chandler Bing to properly rock this, and you will always look like you just stepped right off a yacht.
This might be a bit controversial, but I swear, a man in high rise bell bottoms always looked awesome to me. It makes me think their a rock star from the 70's. Also it attracts attention to your ass, so yay!
The short tie. The Mad Men revolution has been of utmost importance in fashion particularly. Enough of the skinny bitch tie. It just makes you look fat. The short tie will make you look like Don Draper. I'm talking like instantly. Try it, put one on.
The curtained hair. I always always always was attracted to longer hair, I have no idea why. I know it's like way ridiculous, but when a guy grows out his hair, he just looks hotter. I swear, it just happens. And curtained hair makes you look sensitive.
The frilly shirt. If you're ballsy enough to wear this non-ironically, I salute you sir. The frilly shirt is very Baroque, and shows that you're not afraid of taking risks. Yeah, because that fedora you think you're rocking is not a risk and it's retarded.
the cigarette holder. It looks so much cooler than just pulling out a cigarette and smoking it. You just feel fancy, and that's always fun.
apparently the shooter, 24-year-old James Holmes was dressed as Bane, played in The Dark Knight Rises by Tom Hardy
I'm sorry but I am so shocked and saddened by this news, that I might come off is a self-righteous prick but I don't care. I'm sure you have all by now heard of the senseless violence that killed 12 people in a Colorado movie theater, some as young as 3 months when a 24-year-old superfan of The Dark Knight barged into a crowded movie theater dressed as Bane and started popping caps in people's asses. This right on the heels of 'superfans' sending death threats to New York critics who gave The Dark Knight Rises (2012) poor reviews, because that's their job, to give their objective opinion, god forbid they have the wrong one.
Christopher Nolan thinks himself to be a batman poet and aficionado that has completely re imagined the genre, by which I mean made it way more violent than it needs to be and basically made it up to par with disaster films, most of the spectacle coming from over the top explosions and destructions of public buildings and landmarks. Which is actually nothing like it was when DC Comics first envisioned it.
What's most infuriating is that The Dark Knight Rises, despite its gratuitous and endless violence, the film was able to fenagle a PG-13 rating. Thanks for nothing MPAA. When we actually need you to do your job, it's nice to see you can be paid off by a basket of mini-muffins from Warner Bros. I can't believe I'm actually going to say this, but it's about time we adapted the system in Europe, where it works quite like the opposite. If the film is heavy in violence, it gets the equivalent of an R because they are afraid of this violence becoming something young and impressionable idiots latch on to and subsequently use on others. Oh! Just like what just happened in Colorado, it's all coming together! While if the film is heavy on sex and sexual content, they usually let it slide, because what is the worst that could happen? Someone who sees a film overloaded with sex will go on to have too much sex with people?
I'm not blaming it all on the MPAA, nor Christopher Nolan, nor Warner Bors. I'm just saying that with making a series of such blatantly violent films that are marketed basically on that very angle; the sensationalized, the hyper-real, the loud and explosive, a certain level of responsibility and accountability comes with it. I think we as the public have proved we can't handle it, and it's time to take a big step back from the precipice and really think harder before we make such creative and marketing decisions.
In Russian film, there is a term for this. It's called 'Zhyelezo' which translates into 'metal'. A film with too much 'metal' is not a good film. 'Metal' in this case meaning anything that doesn't pertain to humanity, and in the last analysis every film, even something like 2001: A Space Odyssey (1969) is about humanity or the lack thereof. Metal just has to do with how much action you can cram into one film without it becoming gratuitous and total sensory overload. It's a film that is trying too hard and doesn't have enough actual content so it attracts viewers through violent spectacle.
I'm not even going to get political about this and talk about gun control or violence in the media, but I am just going to say that Nolan went too far, and he should have foreseen that accentuating and celebrating gratuitous violence was going to lead to nowhere good. This is just such a shame, and a horrible tragedy, and perhaps Nolan will take a big step backwards and focus on his narrative more than how big his explosions are going to be. Just saying....Tim Burton would have never had something like this happen.
Here's the bottom line. And I want to be absolutely clear about this. I am not putting blame on Christopher Nolan or Warner Bros. No one has blood on his hands today except for James Holmes. And no one yet knows what his motives were that night, but authorities recently have found out that his hair was dyed green and he told the police that he was The Joker. But what I am saying that in an age of such aggressive and aggregated violence, I think we all need to be more responsible with the content that we present to the public. With a franchise like Batman where you are going to have many fanatical people, it is good to play it safe and not go balls to the wall with marketing it as the most violent film to come out for the year, there is some responsibility that goes with it.
Newcomer to the OC cast, Heather Dubrow teaches us that Real Housewives come in all shapes and hair colors. Also, that you don't fuck with a bitch's cake.
Ok, so of all the Housewives shows, the only one I've never really watched was the original of the franchise starting way back in 2006 when we knew nothing of the dark sinister world of housewives and other such nonsense; The Real Housewives of Orange County (2006 - ). And they are known as the originals for a reason. All that glitzed-up shit and fake boobs, and hair bleach that people mimic to death on SNL or Halloween all came from the OC. This season, Season 7, introduced *gasp* a brunette into the chemical-peeled, blinged-out, nonsense-talking melting pot; 'actress' Heather Dubrow who happens to be married to the leading plastic surgeon in all of Orange County. Over there, that's like being Pope.
In the last episode, which was one of the few that I had watched, Heather decides to have her name legally changed from Heather Something to 'Heather Dubrow'. So basically it was just an excuse to host a party at her insanely large and overly kitschy mansion that could house the population of a small Midwestern village. She looked fantastic for a woman that's had the minimal amount of surgery that is required to be an official resident of the OC, and her husband Terry Dubrow, MD looked pretty fabulous too, except for the pink leisure shirt and neon pocket square.
The antithesis to Heather, and to humanity in general, Vicki Gunvalson is someone who's had 8 too many facelifts, and has clearly had her rationale decimated in the process. Though, I have to say, I love it when she gets mad, because her plastic-masque face contorts in the most horrifying ways. If there was a mash-up of just Vicki's facial expressions, it would make for a great cult film.
Below, Vicki gets mad. There's one of those moments every episode. In case you're wondering, the outfits are because of an 80's party. The most original thing I've ever heard of in my life.
First shot of The Naked Kiss (1964), pretty memorable, no?
I've decided to spend this weekend chilling out on my couch slowly dying along with macaroni and cheese. I was bored and channel surfing when TCM (my usual saving grace) started broadcasting a bona fide Sam Fuller marathon. I've seen most of his work more than once, but I could not pass this up. Usually when one watches Sam Fuller, there should be a whiskey on the rocks in one hand and an American Spirit in the other, wearing nothing but a bra and a cheap string of pearls. Well even though this paints a pretty picture, I brewed some chamomile and put it over ice, and threw on my favorite comfy fleece shorts and pulled out my pedicure set.
Original poster for the film
By the time I was on my favorite film of his; The Naked Kiss (1964), I knew I had to spotlight him, and I was remice to realize I'd actually not blogged about him up until this point. Wikipedia describes Fuller as known for 'low-budget genre films and controversial themes'. I couldn't have said it better myself, and though all of his films are jewels in a rather dull world of studio cinema of the late-50's/early 60's, the best by far is The Naked Kiss (1964). Let me just tell you the premise really quick. A prostitute moves to a small town where no one knows her and becomes a pediatric nurse for special needs children. She meets a millionaire/small-town hero and falls in love with him, everything seems idyllic as she plans her upcoming wedding until she learns he's a notorious pedophile who preys on the very children she takes care of, so she kills him with the heel of her shoe.
Now if you've been asking yourself how the effing hell this film was ever made back during the Haze code and strict social and moral hypocrisies that Hollywood adhered to in the 60's, the answer is Fuller funded it completely on his own. At that point he was seasoned enough not to take any shit from the studio hierarchy, and successful enough so that he could live in a tiny one-bedroom shack if it meant he could make the films he wanted to make without the executives' choke hold firmly around his neck.
Of course, this also meant that no big name hotshots would work with him, so he had to resort to casting B-movie actors as his principals but it worked towards his advantage because everyone was appropriately melodramatic and campy to give Fuller his proper place in cult-film immortality.
Back to The Naked Kiss, it was a sequel off of Fuller's previously successful film on the foreign and cult film circuit; Shock Corridor (1963) which is featured in literally every single documentary about the French New Wave, considering how much they all adored Fuller and his repertoire. Warhol himself was said to take a considerable of inspiration as a filmmaker from Fuller. If Warhol was king of underground cult-cinema, Fuller was his above-ground mainstream counterpart.
The man, Sam Fuller.
After that we didn't hear much of the social recluse who smoked like a chimney drank like a famished water buffalo and abused everyone around him until he died and Criterion bought all of his material for their collection and he became en vogue again. For someone who didn't live through those times to see just the level of shit he was able to get away with, is fascinating, and definitely gives credence to the term 'independent film'.
There are things in The Naked Kiss people would be too chicken shit to include in a film today, that's how contraversial Fuller was, and also how prophetic. He basically realized that pop-culture was never going to get there on it's own, so he decided to give it a little push. And that little push turned out to be one of the most profound American film legacies that ever existed. Why I didn't write any academic papers about him is beyond me.
Below, some of the most memorable scenes from The Naked Kiss to give you a better idea of the depravity and decadence of his work.
Although crass and immature, and someone who definitely has their douchy moments, I wouldn't label Tosh as completely and utterly disgusting and depraved. I would label him disgusting and depraved at times.
Unless you're living in a cave or you know...the valley, you've heard about the recent controversy regarding Daniel Tosh making insensitive and offensive rape jokes at a heckler at The Laugh Factory on July 10th which has the country up in arms and raising all kinds of eye-brows. Has history taught us nothing? Nothing good happens at The Laugh Factory. Didn't we learn our lesson with Michael Richards back in 2006? If you heckle a comedian there, he will in fact make racial epithets or say something equally degrading right back at you. I live like 5 minutes away from there and I still haven't set foot in it.
I have always been a huge fan of Daniel Tosh and have all of his specials on my iphone, but when one of them came up on my shuffle picks as I was going hard on the elliptical (have I humblebragged enough in that last sentence?) I was apprehensive as to whether or not I should listen to it or press the shuffle button again.
If you have listened to his previous work, you'll know this is nothing new to his repertoire. Tosh has never passed himself off as a 'clean' comedian. He's about as filthy as they come, and always, always pushes the envelope. Would I say too far? Yes. But no one has ever complained before. In fact, he made a very similar joke in his Happy Thoughts (2011) special. It goes something like; 'My sister and I love to play practical jokes on each other. So I replaced my sister's pepper spray with silly string...anyway that night she got raped, and the next day she was like- You son of a bitch! You got me so good.' he followed this by saying another tasteless and crude joke after which he sarcastically quipped; 'is this the joke that's too far? just making sure. Everyone was ok with my sister being raped right?'.
Now, let's make this perfectly clear. I am not at all condoning what he said, nor am I ok with dirty comedians hiding behind the 'everything is comedy' perspective much like hate mongers hide behind the first amendment, but I would say it's rather hypocritical of us to condemn Tosh for a tasteless joke he made in a long line of tasteless jokes that we before accepted with open arms because he implied it to a specific person rather than an abstract and unlikely scenario.
But quite honestly I'm at a loss, Jezebel and the like have been pointing the finger at Tosh basically being upset with the tonality and lack of substance to his joke rather than the content itself citing inexplicably other jokes regarding rape that are 'perfectly appropriate' such as Louis CK's quip which goes; 'obviously you should never rape anybody, unless you have a good reason like you want to have sex with someone and they won't let you'. And while Tosh is nowhere near being as nuanced and detrimentally snide as CK, his particular style has never been anything but offensive. That's specifically what he has cultivated over his career, and to condemn him now for something that was indeed a senseless and impulsive verbal diarrhea jag, it would be pretty late in the game considering how long we've tolerated and actually embraced those kind of jokes from the same source.
We as a culture, have always fed like crazed vultures on the sensationalized, vulgar, and obscene. That's why we still watch The Real Housewives of... franchise, and Robert Blake is being interviewed on Piers Morgan Tonight this week to record ratings. But of course, there is a thin red line you tow when you choose to capitalize on that like Tosh has. What he said was indeed callous, and completely offensive to not only that girl at The Laugh Factory, but to women on the whole. Especially when our rights are constantly being threatened by the likes of Mitt Romney practically every day in his presidential campaign. One could say that this is the last thing we need, and they would be right. Given all of that, I think I'll eventually forgive Tosh's poor judgement, though it might be a bit hard to do so.
Below is that joke that I referenced earlier.
Louis CK, no stranger to the rape joke, went on twitter to defend Daniel Tosh. And while his particular brand of, I'm so sorry to say this, but apparently there's a term for it now and it's called 'rape-joke' is arguably more finessed, and less (for lack of a better word) douchy, they are still pretty dang sexist.
Recently published composite of the ideal Christian Grey. Looks like a meat-head to me.
That's right people, my second post on 'Fifty Shades of Grey' and it's not even a film and/or Lifetime special yet. As I said before, and I wasn't wrong. 'Fifty Shades of Grey' is a literary phenomenon on par with sensations like 'Gone with the Wind', and 'Harry Potter'. In fact, a new survey shows that dolar for dollar, Fifty Shades recently surpassed Harry Potter in sales, and that's all of the Harry Potter books put together.
Hollywood is currently shitting itself in anticipation of buying the rights to retell this, even though anything slapped with any less than an NC-17 would be outright atrocious.
The number one frontrunner currently in the coveted race to play sadist, chauvinist woman-abuser that women are obsessed with for some reason is ridiculously hot nice-guy Canadian and saver of British women's lives Ryan Gosling. But I think that's a tad obvi.
The story is based on the characters from the Twilight series so Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson our out because that's of course tired and who gives a shit about those two anymore?
Here's what I'm thinking, and this might be obvi too but it just seems so perfect. Michael Fassbender as Christian Grey. It's perfect in-it? He's already a serious contender, and fingers crossed And he's no stranger to full-frontal and hardcore almost-porn, and the man is fiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiine. That's an industry term. He seems like he'd tie you up, smack you around, and leave you asking 'Thank you sir, may I have another?'
Two words. 'um...yes.'
Now, casting the naive college student who galls head over heels in love with Christian and with being tied up, Anastasia Steele, is going to be more difficult, it has to be someone who's a fresh-face, but is totally not against doing demeaning nudity and being ball-gagged for the majority of the film. I think Ellen Page is just a bit too annoyingly dignified for that. Once you get an Oscar nomination you all of a sudden see yourself as far too good for kitschy mommy porn. So I'm going to go ahead and nominate Lilly Collins or perhaps Fassbender's former co-star Sarah Gadon, or even Lady Sybil herself, Jessica Brown Findlay. Of course Sarah Gadon would have to put on a stone or two and dye her hair, but she's my favorite in this race, especially considering she's ballsy enough to work with Cronenberg twice already and she's not even 24 yet.
Now, what's really important is who's going to direct it.
Sarah Gadon just has one of those great faces that screams 'please corrupt me, I'm impressionable and also a virgin' so she's perfect in my opinion.
Off the top of my head, three names that instantly come to mind are Sally Potter, David Cronenberg, and Paul Verhoeven. How amazing would any of those be, but Hollywood being Hollywood they'll probably hire some guy who does second unit on Jersey Shore or turn it over to Tom Hooper who'll make it some cheesy, weepy, clap-trap melodrama about sexual depravity and take all of the filth out of it. Please grow some balls Hollywood and listen to me. I'm praying for a wildly farcical, seriously graphic, campy shit-show, just like it was originally written.
Below, an article on the casting of Christian Grey that has housewives everywhere queefing in their granny-panties.
Is this the scene where she has an orgasm while fully clothed? Ahhh yes, I remember how Tolstoy wrote about it fondly.
You might guess that I'm pretty biased when it comes to adapting Russian literature for the screen which is almost always impossible to do, and especially when it takes place in the city I was born in, St. Petersburg. But nothing has yet been quite such a slap in the face until the new Anna Karenina (2012)trailer hit and I thought, 'wow, it's like Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette (2005) had sex with Across the Universe (2007) and had an abortion all over my face.
Let's start at the beginning because my list of grievances goes on forever so I'm going to try to make this as brief as I can. It's difficult for me to see anyone in the west adapt Russian literature, particularly one of the greatest books in Russian history because Russians like to write really really long books. 'Anna Karenina' is 8 volumes; each volume about 300 pages. So um...a 2-hour movie is just not going to cut it. Check that box, now moving on to the anorexic elephant in the room.
Baroness Varvara Ivanovna Ikskul von Hildenbandt , whom it is said Anna Karenina is based on. Clearly there's a resemblance...not.
If there is an actress I despise more than Kristen Stewart, it's Keira Knightly. To me, everything she does is wrong and somehow cringe-worthy, to the point where it seems beyond ridiculous to even conceive of men killing each other to be with her. She always has that confused blow-fish look and I'm tired of counting the ribs in her mid-section. The director is Joe Wright, who is more or less obsessed with Keira, much like John Hughes was unhealthily enamored with Molly Ringwald. At some point you have to read the book and seriously consider who would be right for the part and who would stick out like sore ditz. No way does Keira have the psychological depth to play a tragic heroine on par with Anna Karenina, I wouldn't even cast her as Sophie. She needs to get her bony ass back to RADA and work on that Russian accent for a few more decades.
I think this dress is from the Vera Wang bridal collection from last year. Also, not very excited about Aaron Taylor-Johnson as Vronsky. Please.
Speaking of, why is it she'll put on a Russian accent (and not a very good one) for the Cronenberg film, but for this one (where it really matters) eh...she'll just use her natural speaking voice. Bitch please. Every time she speaks in the trailer I'm sitting there thinking...yeah not buying it, and aren't you late for cheerleading practice? Just because you throw the prom queen into a period costume, doesn't mean she's going to pull it off, and even if she does, on behalf of my people I can say right now before the film is even released, we're not on board.
Side note, please stop trying to squeeze Keira Knightly into corsets. Has she been in a film that doesn't require them since Bend it Like Beckham (2002)? (and aside from Atonement (2006)?) She's comically too thin for them. I think it's an aesthetic choice so that the audience gets the illusion that she's stacked. It's probably in her contract somewhere.
'Is that soft core porn?' 'no, it's just Oliver Stone trying too hard.' 'oh well i'm sure it has the same low-quality shamelessness and sub-par performances'
What has Oliver Stone been doing to this country and the film industry for all these years if not pissing all over it? Like we needed any of his films to exists, honestly. Alexander (2004) was on BBC America the other day, and I was already not feeling too well and kind of down, after this was in the background for about an hour or so, I was ready to commit murder suicide. But don't think he's hanging up his alpha crazy hat just yet, even though he should have retired 20 years ago, because he's hired the youngest hottest actors in the biz to star in his new movie about pot-growers, cartels, and hot bitches in slutty bikinis. Nope, never seen that before. Thanks for the new outlook, Stone.
Aaron Taylor-Johnson is in there, you might remember him as the guy who played Kick Ass and young John Lennon before his cradle-robbing director, Sam Taylor-Wood hypnotized him and made him her sex slave...I mean they fell in love and got married, same dif. Then there's Taylor Kitsch from John Carter (2011) fame. Yawn. And of course, Serena Van Der Woodsen herself, Blake Lively as 'O' the ho-bag who's dating both of the men simultaneously, probably because of the free pot, and gets kidnapped by evil south-of-the-border cartels Benicio Del Toro and Salma Hayek. Can you predict what happens next? I'm going to say a few sensory-overload shootout sequences, lots of making out in the pool, and a graphic stab scene later, the heroes get the girl back, kill the cartel, and take over in Mexico. And one of them dies. Hopefully Taylor Kitsch.
Why I'm just a sweet little girl who's fucking two men at the same time. I never imagined I would be kidnapped because my two boyfriends pissed off a very hostile to begin with drug cartel. Tee hee.
The film is being marketed as a kind of millenial version of Natural Born Killers (1994) with the same degree of speed, violence, and blatant disregard for one's audience. So I'm expecting it to be just as obnoxious and un-sexy, but now with even more incessant noise. If there is a director out there, that is so obsessed with his films being 'sexy' and in the same breath is anything but, it would be Oliver Stone. There is not a film of his that exists that has ever turned me on no matter how gratuitous and graphic the fucking might be. It always comes off gross, and something I'd rather not have seen, and is always treated as a detrimental consequence for the characters involved. If there is one film I am not looking forward to seeing this year, and probably won't, because I want to spare myself the awkward shame of having to look the ticketing office in the face when I'm picking up a matinee for it, is Savages (2012). It looks like a cheap B-movie not even Verhoeven would touch, and now that I think about it, even though the plot is typically bland and predictable, if you gave this material to Verhoeven at least he might be able to do something interesting and campy with it. Alas, we are all stuck with yet another awful Oliver Stone film that we have to stomach, or at least sit through the TV spot every time we want to watch cute puppy videos on the youtubes. There it is, ruining our mood. Whomever is still putting up money for Oliver Stone to work in this town, please stop it. That well has been dry, not to mention insane for decades now.
Here's the trailer they've shoved down our throat for months.
I'm not going to lie. I just ate my weight in McDonalds, because I'm secretly white trash and have zero self respect, so I am bed-ridden at the moment with nothing to do but watch TV Guide Channel's Best Cinema Kisses, because all of the animal fat is coursing through my veins like poison and I'm too lethargic to even pick up the remote and change the channel. I actually happen to agree somewhat with this list (OMFG I actually agreed with something) but of course not completely. They are missing some serious heavy hitters in the tonsil hockey celluloid world and I'm going to go ahead and make my own list before the fast food makes it's way to my skull and renders me brain dead.
Ok let's just get this one out of the way. The most famous kiss in cinema ever, of all time, bar-none, no arguments. Deborah Kerr and Burt Lancaster in From Here to Eternity (1954).
Liza Minelli, Michael York, and Helmut Greim in Cabaret (1972). This prelude to the actual kiss goes on for a good 4 minutes, it's one of the most erotic things I've ever seen.
Yeah, ok. Atonement (2006). But I give the credit to James McAvoy. Keira seems completely devoid of any kind of passion, probably because she's not human.
Notorious (1946). This is definitely my personal favorite on the list. The story goes that back during the Haze code, kissing couldn't last longer than about 4 seconds, so Hitchcock had the kissing last about 2 minutes with intervals where Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman pull away for air every 4 seconds. Thereby in full compliance with the censors, but actually totally not.
Ewan McGregor and Jonathan Rhys Meyers in Velvet Goldmine (1998). Probably the hottest thing I had seen on film at that point, both men seriously know how to kiss. And the embellished glam rock outfits only make it better.
Match Point (2004). Second time Jonathan Rhys Meyers is on the list, but what can I say, the dude is passionate as fuck. No pun intended. Ok, maybe a little intended. This kiss scene way trumps The Notebook in the kissing-in-the-rain department.
Probably the second most famous kiss in cinema history, Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh in the iconic burning of Atlanta scene in Gone with the Wind (1939) The story goes that Vivien Leigh actually hated all of those repetitive takes of having to kiss Gable over and over again because he had bad breath, but then again on set, she was a chronic chain-smoker, so I can't imagine it was too pleasant for him either.
The closest thing to S&M I had experienced when I first saw it, Marlon Brando tries to get Eva Marie Saint to admit that she's in love with him in On the Waterfront (1954), when she refuses he grabs her, throws her up against the wall and passionately has at it, she at first tries to fight him off and then succumbs, what girl wouldn't?
And let's end on a low note. As you know, I'm a fervent fan of the first Twilight (2008), and in this scene Kristen Stewart wakes up to Robert Pattinson watching her sleep at the foot of the bed, and apparently he does that all the time, now if that was me, that guy would be on the floor in a headlock with the police on the way, but she tells him she wants him to try 'controlling himself' and kiss her without basically eating her, it's really hot for about two seconds before he loses control and flies to the other side of the room.
And here are some clips, in case you haven't seen any of these and need proof. Now go make out with someone.
