Author: David Medsker (Page 4 of 65)

The Price of Pleasure: Pornography, Sexuality, and Relationships

December 2, 2010 / David Medsker

It was only a matter of time before someone made this doc; pity it wasn’t done better. Once confined to the fringes of pop culture, pornography has exploded in the internet age, and this hour-long documentary aims to dissect the use (and misuse) of pornography and its effect on relationships. The interviewees range from porn producers and stars to academics, along with some candid interviews with porn consumers both on camera and off about how viewing porn flicks affected their sexual desires. (One man, anonymously of course, confesses to preferring rough sex after he saw it in a movie.) The best bit comes when a present-day porn star lists her price for various acts, which will have you thinking, “Really, that’s all you get for that?”

It’s pretty clear that the filmmakers do not approve of porn, and that’s fine; the problem is that they’re too passive-aggressive in their approach. They give the founder of the Burning Angel web site enough rope to hang an army (she says on camera that she has no idea what it means to objectify women), yet they never throw a single follow-up question at any of their so-called villains, just to see how deep a hole they might dig. The filmmakers clearly hold these people in contempt; why didn’t they go for the kill?

That is the least of the film’s troubles, though. The narration is flat, the production is spotty, and one bit towards the end, where they try to compare a series of “Saw”-inspired porn flicks to torture (yes, that sound you hear is the ‘torture porn’ jokes writing themselves), could have used a little more follow-through. They’re not wrong in decrying the unpleasant (read: violent) shift in tone that the industry has undergone (slapping, choking, “Say you’re a dirty whore,” etc.), but they also didn’t go out of their way to find anyone who might challenge their preconceived notions on the subject, either, nor did they discuss the possibility that the industry is a reflection of society, not the other way around.

There is a great movie to be made on this subject, because there are questions here that deserve answers. “The Price of Pleasure,” though, isn’t it. Ironic that, had they been as aggressive as the material they’re trying to eviscerate, they would have been much more successful.

Click to buy “The Price of Pleasure”

Documentaries, External Movie DVDs, Movie DVD Quicktakes, Movie DVDs

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Back from Hell: A Tribute to Sam Kinison

November 18, 2010 / David Medsker

Originally broadcast on Comedy Central in February of this year, this one-hour show features over a dozen comics paying heartfelt tribute to one of the true comedy greats, with footage of Kinison routines both well-known and previously unreleased serving as the anchors to the topics that the comics discuss. There isn’t much here about Kinison’s life that hasn’t been covered before, but it’s still fun to watch guys like Denis Leary, Chris Rock and Ron White talk about Kinison’s influence while opening up about the differences between his on-stage persona and the off-stage teddy bear. The discuss his love of rock music (and even include the promo video and a live performance of “Wild Thing”), and how he brought the rock and comedy communities together, and even include a snippet of a religious sermon Kinison gave when he was still a preacher. The one thing they glossed over – and to be honest, we’re not at all surprised that they did this – was how much the quality of Kinison’s material dropped when the ’80s were over, when he stopped writing jokes and started screaming “Fuck You!” at the top of his lungs. It’s all right to acknowledge an artist’s decline and still love them; John Lennon was a shell of his former songwriting self when he died, but people still love him, and rightly so. It would have been nice to see these comics, and this special, do the same.

Click to buy “A Tribute to Sam Kinison”
Click to read Bullz-Eye’s induction of Kinison into their Comedy Hall of Fame
Click to read Bullz-Eye’s 2009 interview with Sam Kinison’s brother Bill Kinison

Humor, Stand-Up Comics, TV, TV DVD Quicktakes, TV DVDs

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Beauty and the Beast: Diamond Edition

October 5, 2010 / David Medsker

They have made many phenomenally successful movies since its release, but “Beauty and the Beast” remains Disney’s last true masterpiece. The combination of story, design, songbook, performance and technical achievement is unparalleled by any animated film of its time or since. The computer animation, a very dodgy art form in the early ’90s, still looks spectacular today. We’d challenge anyone to take modern-day equipment and a better-looking ballroom scene than the one here.

Disney’s Diamond Edition of the film is absolutely worth the upgrade, both for the hi-def transfer and the bushels of new extras. The audio commentary is held over from the original DVD release, but all-new interviews were shot for the featurettes, even roping in Jeffrey Katzenberg to go on the record. Alan Menken sits down at the piano with producer Don Hahn and discusses the origins of several of the movie’s songs, even admitting that the final music for “Be Our Guest” was a throwaway track for lyricist Howard Ashman to use as a base until he came up with a “real” track. Menken also includes his original score that he wrote just before Beast’s transformation, and the studio adds the original opening to the movie, a 20-minute (!) piece where Belle has a younger sister and a cat, and Gaston is a wig-wearing fop. It’s fascinating to watch in retrospect, because the studio was right to scrap this opening and start from scratch. There is also a pencil sketch version of “Be Our Guest,” as sung to Belle’s father. A fitting tribute to a truly game-changing film.

Click to buy “Beauty and the Beast: Diamond Edition”

Animation, External Movie DVDs, External Movies, Movie DVD Quicktakes, Movie DVDs, Video

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Bill Hicks: The Essential Collection

September 15, 2010 / David Medsker

Bill Hicks has become the trendy name to drop of late when talking about influential comics, and while it’s irritating to see Hicks become a hipster icon, the simple fact is that it’s better late than never for Hicks to find a larger audience, hipster cred or otherwise. Truthfully, it’s not surprising that Hicks didn’t find a larger audience during his lifetime; his material, while rooted in truth, was sardonic and mean. He spoke at length about pornography and fantasized about being an angel of death. He also brewed up material that a million comics wish they had thought of. Using terminally ill people as stuntmen in movies? Genius. Unconscionable, but genius.

This four-disc set (two CDs, two DVDs, one download card) tries valiantly to create some order from the chaos that was Hicks’ brain, saving the political material for Disc 2 and using Disc 1 to talk about everything else. A chronological sequencing probably would have worked better, for two reasons: it would give the unfamiliar a better sense of how Hicks’ material evolved, and it would get the listener more excited as they go through it simply because Hicks is playing to bigger and bigger crowds. Several of these tracks are marked ‘Previously unreleased,’ but many of those are just different versions of bits that appeared on the albums Ryko issued in the late ’90s and early ’00s. There really isn’t a duff bit here, and they even had the balls to include “Worst Audience Ever,” where Hicks ran into a particularly stoic crowd in Pennsylvania, and made sure they knew it.

Fans will want this collection for the DVD material. Disc 1 contains some early (as in 1981, when Hicks was 19 years old) routines, mostly recorded at the Comix Annex in Houston. Hicks was still finding his voice during this period, and for a show in Indianapolis in 1985, it looks as though Hicks’ new idol was Steven Wright, as he delivers his material in a monotone voice. (He’s also wearing a news boy cap, just like his friend Sam Kinison.) The material he had written then wasn’t great, but it’s still interesting to see what stuff he went through before he settled on talking about Jimi Hendrix cutting Debbie Gibson in half with his cock. And speaking of Kinison, one of the two Houston gigs from 1986 literally screams Kinison, from the constant yelling to the trench coat. The money piece from Disc 1 is the poolside interview with Hicks from 1988, where he speaks of Kinison’s permanent banning from a local comedy club, inspiring the birth of the Outlaws.

Disc 2 features the rare “Ninja Bachelor Party,” a delightfully silly 30-minute martial arts spoof film Hicks shot over a period of eight years, along with a series of bootleg clips of Hicks in Austin in the early ’90s. The bootlegs are just that, shot from the back of the room and frequently out of focus, but it also features the best material on either DVD, and it’s fun to see the Relentless and Arizona Bay material acted out. It doesn’t quite serve as the definitive collection of Hicks’ work, but it’s not called The Definitive Collection. It’s The Essential Collection, meaning it’s all must-own stuff. Just be prepared to seek out the rest of Hicks’ essential material.

Click to buy “Bill Hicks: The Essential Collection”

Humor, Stand-Up Comics

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Seen Your Video: Music video directors who made the jump to the big screen

September 14, 2010 / David Medsker

It was not along ago that there were only a couple paths to the director’s chair on a studio lot. Many went to film school and did time toiling for Roger Corman, while others jumped over from another profession within the industry. (Joel Schumacher, for example, began as a costume designer.) In the ’80s, there suddenly was a new way to get into the game – use a music video as your calling card.

Now, of course, we’re at the point where people receive job offers after posting a clip to YouTube (Lasse Gjertsen, who made the live stop-motion clips “Hyperactive” and “Amateur,” has received several offers of employment, but has turned them all down), and the music video path is now a well-worn road. Indeed, there are two movies coming out in the next few weeks (“Never Let Me Go” and “The Social Network”) that were helmed by men who got their start telling rock stars to act like rock stars, which inspired us to take a look at the more prominent directors of the music video world and track their success. The lesson we learned: even when someone has so many small successes, it only takes one big disappointment to kill them. (Big, big shoutout to the good people at the Music Video Database for helping to clear the cob webs, as well as opening our eyes on just how prolific some of these directors were.)

Julien Temple

You know it’s a Julien Temple video when: The entire piece looks like it was filmed in one giant tracking shot. (Look closer – the edits are there.)
Breakout video: ABC’s “Poison Arrow,” and the short film “Mantrap” the band made in conjunction with their (spectacular) album The Lexicon of Love.
Big screen debut: Temple is the only one on this list whose feature film debut came before his music video debut, though some would argue – and we wouldn’t disagree – that the movie in question, the Sex Pistols “documentary” “The Great Rock ‘n Roll Swindle,” is actually just a long-form music video.
Best Temple video you never saw: Paul McCartney, “Beautiful Night,” from Macca’s Flaming Pie album. Gorgeous, and the tune is a good one, too.

Russell Mulcahy

You know it’s a Russell Mulcahy video when: Dozens of extras are wearing body paint, or when a prop nearly kills Simon Le Bon. In slow motion.
Breakout video: Mulcahy was arguably the first “name” director of the music video world, helping clips for Ultravox, Kim Carnes and the Tubes – and, let us not forget, the Buggles’ “Video Killed the Radio Star,” the first video MTV ever played – but it was the clip for Duran Duran’s“Hungry Like the Wolf,” along with the other videos he shot for the songs from Rio, that made him a household name…with music geeks like us, anyway.
Big screen debut: “Razorback,” a monster movie about, yep, a bloodthirsty Australian pig. Mulcahy’s luck on the big screen changed two years later when he made the cult classic “Highlander”…then lost some luster when he made “Highlander II: The Quickening.”
Best Mulcahy video you never saw: “The Flame,” the overlooked third single from Duran Duran spinoff group Arcadia. Le Bon is in full Barry Bostwick mode as he attends a fancy dinner party and the hosts try to kill him Agatha Christie-style.

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Movie Comedies, Movie Dramas, Movies, Video

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