Harry Reems , the legendary porn pioneer who starred in both Deep Throat (1972) and The Devil in Miss Jones (1973) has passed away at age 65. Harry appeared in approximately 140 feature-length sexploitation and hardcore films in the ‘70s and ‘80s, after a chance promotion from lighting crew to star on the set of Deep Throat . His appearance in Deep Throat was not all fun and blowjobs though, since it led to his arrest by FBI agents in 1974 on charges of conspiracy to distribute obscenity across state lines. Although personal problems eventually brought her career to a standstill, Reems began his recovery in 1989 with marriage and a conversion to Christianity. He was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer last summer, and passed away yesterday at the Salt Lake City VA Hospital. Mr. Skin was lucky enough to speak to Harry Reems in 2005 when he was promoting the DVD release of Inside Deep Throat . Read his thoughts on a fascinating career here .
Harry Reems , the legendary porn pioneer who starred in both Deep Throat (1972) and The Devil in Miss Jones (1973) has passed away at age 65. Harry appeared in approximately 140 feature-length sexploitation and hardcore films in the ‘70s and ‘80s, after a chance promotion from lighting crew to star on the set of Deep Throat . His appearance in Deep Throat was not all fun and blowjobs though, since it led to his arrest by FBI agents in 1974 on charges of conspiracy to distribute obscenity across state lines. Although personal problems eventually brought her career to a standstill, Reems began his recovery in 1989 with marriage and a conversion to Christianity. He was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer last summer, and passed away yesterday at the Salt Lake City VA Hospital. Mr. Skin was lucky enough to speak to Harry Reems in 2005 when he was promoting the DVD release of Inside Deep Throat . Read his thoughts on a fascinating career here .
Harmony Korine’s Spring Breakers is essentially a movie without a purpose. It’s a sensationalized film about sensationalism, and while it gets away with very little in the way of plot or character growth for much of the film, the ending seems to cast away any sense of obligation to make a grander point one way or the other about youth culture and depravity. Spring Breakers is shot like a music video. It’s cut like a music video. Its characters think they’re in a music video. Taking their cues from MTV, James Franco, Selena Gomez, Rachel Korine, Ashley Benson, and Vanessa Hudgens ’ characters spend no mental energy at all on anything but image. In one scene Franco, who wonderfully transforms into his subtly terrifying character “Alien,” actually gives the girls an MTV Cribs -style tour of all of his “sh*t,” bragging about his money, his guns, his Scarface DVD that plays on repeat, and even his collection of “shorts in every color” (pretty sweet right?). The film tells the story of four college girls – Selena Gomez ’s character being the least open to debauchery, based on a somewhat superficial adherence to Christianity – who want desperately to go on Spring Break and “see the world.” They do whatever it takes to get there, including stealing a car and robbing a restaurant’s patrons, all in the hopes of reaching some fetishized party-girl ideal. They long for the “image” of Spring Break. When it doesn’t pan out, they shove their messy experiences into that image, and wax delusional about how magical the world seems when you don’t have to deal with any of its problems. And when those problems do arise, the girls begin to drop out, heading home by bus, dejected and depressed, and out of the film forever. While Korine seems to have interesting ideas about what greed and childish egoism can lead a person to do, Spring Breakers is more of a collection of party-culture imagery than an exploration of that culture. The opening montage of beer being showered over bare breasts lets the audience know right away what they’re getting into (and for those who are interested: the bare breasts do keep coming). What Korine does best in Spring Breakers is make the audience anxious. From the off-putting “gun-cocking” sounds that accompany many of the cuts between scenes, to the frenetic camerawork, oddly-colored scenes, and reliance on repetition (Korine uses several takes of the same dialogue, looped one after the other, often set in different locations), Korine set out to make viewing Spring Breakers an uncomfortable experience. And when we as the audience finally have somebody speaking for us, when Gomez’s character gets as uncomfortable as we do with Alien and his cohorts, she disappears from the film almost instantly, leaving us feeling trapped in the discomfort. RATING: 2.5/5
If you’ve got a hankering for some apocaTITS, head over to Post-Apocalypse Collection: 4 Film Favorites which includes Rosalind Cash ’s moneymakers in The Omega Man (1971), a streak of skin from Jenny Agutter in Logan’s Run (1976), and the well-lit funbags of Melissa George in Dark City (1998). No nudity in I Am Legend (2007), but hey, three out of four ain’t bad! Also out on DVD and Blu-ray, Selma Blair gets very bare for I n Their Skin (2012). When a movie has skin in the title, how could Mr. Skin not love it? See pics after the jump!
The big news on DVD and Blu-ray this week is Laura Prepon letting out her lava lamps in Lay the Favorite (2012), but we’ve still got a smattering of other nude releases for your viewing pleasure. There’s a delightful combo of B-movie boobage in the Zombiethon 2 Pack, Nazis at the Center of the Earth (2012) and Abraham Lincoln vs. Zombie s (2012). Plus, Chlo
If you haven’t seen Laura Prepon ’s nude debut, now’s the time, because Lay the Favorite (2012) is out today on DVD and Blu-ray! Hot Donna! One lucky Skin Fan can win it delivered right into their hairy palms; because we are giving away a copy of Lay the Favorite on DVD courtesy of our friends at Anchor Bay ! All you have to do is provide your own caption to the photo above* in the comments and you’re entered to win! We’ve got four more copies up for grabs on our Facebook and Twitter pages, so follow and share for more chances to win!
Nude on DVD and Blu-ray, The Master (2012) features a fantasy party scene where not one, not two, but TEN ladies are frolicking nude amongst the suit clad gents. Also releasing is the skinternational drama Madrid, 1987 (2011) which shows every inch of Spanish stunner Mar
Nude on DVD and Blu-ray this week, there’s all the breasteros of Westeros in Game of Thrones : The Complete Second Season. With notable nudity from Natalie Dormer , Esme Bianco , Natalia Tena , Carice van Houten and Sahara Knite , winter isn’t the only thing coming! If you’ve always had a thing for Agent Scully, check out Gillian Anderson ’s terrific topless scenes in Closure (2007), and finish up with Russian rackage from Oksana Akinshina in Hipsters (2008). See pics after the jump!
With less than two weeks before the Academy Awards , the Oscar conversation is veering from “What now?” to “What if?” Amid all the talk of frontrunners and inevitabilities, some pundits are pondering the inscrutable. What if Oscar voters suddenly ignore all that Argo mojo (which got a further boost last weekend with Best Picture and Best Director wins at the BAFTAs)? What if the Best Supporting Actress race isn’t fait accompli , but instead, as Roger Ebert observed, asserts, as in years past, its independence as the category “where the voters like to throw a curve ball?” What if a BAFTA win earned Emmanuelle Riva a little Oscar Amour ? Let’s check out the Gold Linings Playbook to see how the pundits are calling the races this week: Academy Award For Best Picture A producer, an actor and a director — that sounds like the beginning of a joke, but this anonymous trio shared their Oscar ballots with The Los Angeles Times ’ Glenn Whipp. The results are another indication that several of the major Oscar races are at this late date, too close to call. They also hint that Oscar voters might want to, in the words of the Director, “reward the wealth of great work.” For Best Picture, the producer chose Zero Dark Thirty , the Director Argo , and the Actor Silver Linings Playbook . The latter should please Hollywood Elsewhere’s Jeffrey Wells, who this week issued a provocative call to arms against Argo to Oscar voters: “At this stage of the game, a vote for Lincoln or Pi is effing wasted…. Why stick to your guns at this stage? To what end? So you can say to yourself “I refused to budge!…I stuck by my principles!”? That and $1.75 will get you a bus ticket (Editor’s note: I checked with Metro and $1.75 won’t get you on the Silver Line—insert your own Playbook pun here). If you want to make a difference you need to stand up, man up, give it up and cast your vote for the one movie that has a real chance of stealing the Best Picture Oscar away from Argo. …” Wells’ ideal choice would be Zero Dark Thirty , but he puts it in the same “can’t possibly win” boat as Lincoln or Pi, and so he suggested Silver Linings Playbook for the block. This did not sit well with a good portion of commenters to his post. which Wells acknowledged the next day (“My suggestion was mocked, spat upon. But at least it was honest and constructive….”). Which brings up the role of the Oscar pundit: Is it to objectively track the ebb and flow of the Oscar race, or to act as advocate? I asked Awards Daily’s Sasha Stone, one of the first of the Oscar bloggers 14 years ago. She graciously emailed back: “Job one for an Oscar blogger is to read the race as accurately as possible…Every time an Oscar blogger pretends to know what all of the Academy are thinking God kills a kitten. Usually that information is coming from a publicist — an old trick that rarely works anymore. But sometimes it comes from someone like Anne Thompson who really works the beat, goes to the parties and screenings and talks to members. I don’t think it’s a foolproof way of producing reliable results but I usually take Anne’s word over just about anyone else’s because I know she’s in the thick of it.To survive in today’s (competitive) climate, you have to be a little of both: someone who can read the race and someone who advocates when necessary.” Discuss. 1. Argo 2. Lincoln 3. Silver Linings Playbook 4. Life of Pi 5. Zero Dark Thirty 6. Beasts of the Southern Wild 7. Les Miserables 8. Amour 9. Django Unchained 2013 Academy Awards: The Best Director Nominees With Ben Affleck , Kathryn Bigelow and Tom Hooper not even nominated, this category seems the most elusive. “It’s an exciting twist that leaves the Oscar race almost unprecedentedly free of bellwethers, as the five men in the running have won scarcely any major precursor awards between them,” writes In Contention’s Guy Lodge. In the aftermath of the BAFTAs, Vanity Fair ’s Julie Miller offered some tips for adjusting your Oscar pool ballot. She, too, seems stymied by this category. “The safe bet is on [Steven] Spielberg ,” she suggested, “for rallying Daniel Day-Lewis and screenwriter Tony Kushner and commandeering a decades-long production to make Lincoln .” Once again, the anonymous Academy voters who shared their ballots with Whipp were all over the map when it came to the Best Director race. The Director chose Benh Zeitlin for Beasts of the Southern Wild (“just floored me in the originality of his vision”), the Actor David O. Russell for Silver Linings Playbook , and the Producer Spielberg, but only because he couldn’t vote for the snubbed Kathryn Bigelow (It has come to this for Lincoln : On Abe’s birthday this week, the Associated Pr ess interviewed several filmgoers who reported falling asleep during the film). 1.Steven Spielberg ( Lincoln ) 2 David O. Russell ( Silver Linings Playbook ) 3. Ang Lee ( Life of Pi ) 4. Michael Haneke ( Amour ) 5. Benh Zeitlin ( Beasts of the Southern Wild ) 2013 Oscar Nominations For Best Actor Another award and another awesome acceptance speech. Daniel Day-Lewis was in self-deprecating mode at the BAFTA awards poking fun at his painstaking and meticulous method and character preparation. In accepting his Best Actor award, he remarked that he had “stayed in character as myself for the last 55 years” in anticipation of winning a BAFTA.” Cannot wait to hear what he will say at the Oscars. 1. Daniel Day-Lewis ( Lincoln ) 2. Hugh Jackman ( Les Miserables ) 3. Bradley Cooper ( Silver Linings Playbook ) 4. Denzel Washington ( Flight ) 5. Joaquin Phoenix ( The Master ) 2013 Academy Award Nominations For Best Actress Is a BAFTA upset win for 85-year-old Emmanuelle Riva really a game changer? Deadline Hollywood’s Pete Hammond and The Wrap’s Steve Pond think so. And there is some precedent. BAFTA-winner Marion Cotillard went on to win the Oscar without the benefit of a Golden Globe or SAG Award. The last two Best Actress Oscar-winners, Meryl Streep and Natalie Portman , were also BAFTA recipients. Oscar voters might also be swayed, not just by her devastating performance, but also by the fact that the actress whose screen breakthrough was in 1961’s Last Year at Marienbad would become the oldest Academy Award winner (she turns 86 Oscar night). When she attends the ceremony, it will be her first time in Los Angeles. Will Oscar voters be able to resist that backstory? Meanwhile, Jennifer Lawrence and Jessica Chastain did themselves no favors by agreeing to appear on Zach Galifianakis ’ Funny or Die diss-com series, Between Two Ferns . The “Oscar Buzz Edition” premiered online this week, and it was a hit and mostly miss bag. Anne Hathaway , playing drunk, Christoph Waltz , Sally Field and Amy Adams acquitted themselves nicely, though. Adams, especially, should be given at least an honorary Oscar for the gravitas she brought to the line, “Don’t you ever fart on my tits again.” Me; I prefer Jiminy Glick. 1. Jennifer Lawrence ( Silver Linings Playbook ) 2. Emmanuelle Riva ( Amour ) 3. Jessica Chastain ( Zero Dark Thirty ) 4. Naomi Watts ( The Impossible ) 5. Quvenzhane Wallis ( Beasts of the Southern Wild ) 2013 Oscars: Best Supporting Actor Nominees Here, too, something may be in the air: a groundswell for Christoph Waltz, who earned a BAFTA award last weekend and also won a Golden Globe. He hosts Saturday Night Live this weekend and the mostly male, presumably Quentin Tarantino -loving writing staff will most likely be more inspired than they were for Jennifer Lawrence. While SAG-winner Tommy Lee Jones remains the frontrunner without doing any campaigning (he’s Ebert’s pick in his Outguess Ebert contest), Vanity Fair ’s Julie Miller reminds that ”the only time that Jones has triumphed in the category at a major awards show this season was at the SAG Awards, where Waltz was not nominated.” Meanwhile, the Weinstein Company is going full Scorsese for Robert De Niro (whom the Producer and the Actor picked on their Oscar ballots). In addition to the ad reminding voters that DeNiro hasn’t won an Oscar since Raging Bull , Glenn Whipp reports receiving a targeted ad which replays DeNiro’s recent emotional appearance on Katie Couric’s talk show. Over the top? That’s what they said about Melissa Leo’s self-produced glamor ads on behalf of The Fighter. And she still won. 1. Tommy Lee Jones ( Lincoln ) 2. Christoph Waltz ( Django Unchained ) 3. Robert De Niro ( Silver Linings Playbook ) 4. Alan Arkin ( Argo ) 5. Philip Seymour Hoffman ( The Master ) 2013 Academy Award Nominees For Best Supporting Actress The aforementioned director and producer both picked Anne Hathaway (the Actor went with “underappreciated” Jacki Weaver ). She is the near-unanimous choice among 24 out of 25 of the Gold Derby pundits and the unanimous pick of the Gurus o’ Gold, who include Thompson, Hammond and Pond. New York magazine’s trendspotting Vulture column asked it best this week: “If Not Anne Hathaway, Then Who?” The question is moot (but this being an historically “gotcha” category, one hastens to add the qualifier, “or is it?)” 1. Anne Hathaway ( Les Miserables ) 2. Sally Field ( Lincoln ) 3. Helen Hunt ( The Sessions ) 4. Amy Adams ( The Master ) 5. Jacki Weaver ( Silver Linings Playbook ) Last Week on Oscar Index: Killing ‘Lincoln’ Is All The Rage As Academy Voting Begins Follow Movieline on Twitter .
Sofia Coppola has joined the list of filmmakers who will be attending the inaugural First Time Fest fllm festival in New York. The writer-director daughter of Francis Ford Coppola , whose latest film, The Bling Ring , is expected to be released this year, will screen and discuss her dreamy 1999 directorial debut, The Virgin Suicides . Coppola will be joining Nancy Savoca ( True Love ), Christine Vachon ( Poison , which she produced), Philip Seymour Hoffman (Jack Goes Boating) and Darren Aronofsky ( Pi ). The Noah director will receive the John Huston Award for Achievement in Cinema at the festival, which will be hosted by the Players Club in the Gramercy Park section of New York from March 1 through 4. FTF founders Johanna Bennett, the actor and philanthropist daughter of singer Tony Bennett, and producer Mandy Ward ( Palestine Blues ), conceived of the festival to celebrate first-time filmmakers, and the Grand Prize winner will see his or her film released theatrically by Cinema Libre Studio in at least one major city (New York or Los Angeles) with the option for the expansion. The spoils also include DVD and digital release and international sales representation. (Cinema Libre distributed Oliver Stone’s South of the Border and is developing John Perkins’ bestseller, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man .) Follow Frank DiGiacomo on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
