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Jesse Jane: Image
 Studio: Digital Playground
Director: Robby D.
Cast: Jesse Jane, Alektra Blue, Daisy Marie, Isabella Dior
Portions of this review originally appeared on Fleshbot
If life has taught us anything, it is that Jesse Jane, like a shaved, 3-in-1 ZZ Top, can appear to right wrongs and fight crimes. Such is her role in "Image", a must-have for fans of the Oklahoma Sex Wraith.
Such is Jane's celebrity that director Robby D. has crafted most of the movie around how others see her. The first scene takes place in either the personal screening room of a Porn Valley mogul or one of the dozen or so postage stamp cinemas in Copley Square, Boston.
Rick Patrick (Jane's husband in real life) is watching a film of Jane giving the business to a fey Eurostud in the empty theatre. He has popcorn and a soft drink. He is absently fiddling around in his jeans when Lo! Jane appears and spills popcorn on him. In her zeal to clean up the mess, she fucks the living shit out of him.
It is actually a very nice scene. Patrick is about nine feet tall but has an aw shucks expression throughout the interlude, as if he can't believe he is having sex with Jesse Jane. I feel he wasn't acting.
The next scene finds Marco Banderas and Daisy Marie coupling in what appears to be Willy Wonka's glass elevator retrofitted as a wine cellar. Perched on the glass ceiling is Jane, who, though the pair don't really need it, helps the couple along from above.
While it is always a pleasure to see Daisy, I found myself wondering what kind of person tells his or her architect, "I want a glass-ceilinged wine cellar that I can see from my kitchen". The effect of the scene was like watching "Good Morning America" but with people having sex behind the window rather than holding up signs reminding the nation that the Society for the Preservation and Encouragement of Barbershop Quartet Singing in America is headquartered in Kenosha, WI.
Jane suffers from gym rage in her next encounter, a girl-on-girl affair with Alektra Blue. The two are working out and Jane quickly becomes jealous of Blue's brute strength, so decides to do something about it. Blue has had some work done since the first time I saw her, but though just a little more curvy, she appears downright voluptuous compared to Jane. The bottom line is that it seemed unrealistic that Jane could take Blue in a fight, but it was a tasty scene nonetheless. Kudos to wardrobe mistress Celeste (also a Digital Playground director), who got Blue up in a green gym ensemble, complete with green-striped kneesox and a cameltoe.
Jane appears in Isabella Dior's mirror in the penultimate scene, giving the doe-like pornstress the motivation to bust a move on Scott Nails, who reappears to fuck Jesse out of her perch in the closet in the movie's final match-up.
"You're not going to work before you fuck me," says Jane in a perfect Valentine's Day message.
I like this "image" of Jane, silly and confident simultaneously, and the hyper-real settings are just loopy enough without being too much of a distraction. What is a slight distraction is Jane's weight. Since Jane mentioned it herself when we talked at this year's AVN Expo, I don't feel bad observing there will be more to love if she puts on a few pounds. What makes Jane the celebrity she is is her accessibility; if she goes Hollywood and strives for wafer-thinness she will cease to be real.
 Labels: "digital playground", "robby d", directors, dvds, reviews, wgl
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Dreaming of Snow
 Studio: Ethnicity Films/Metro
Director: David Aaron Clark
Cast: Annie Cruz, Brian Surewood, Cris Taliana, Heidi Ho, Kylie Rey, Mila Yung, Mr. Hentai, Mr. Marcus, Kammy, Sabrine Maui, Sledge Hammer, Sylvio Mata, Tami Lynn, Tyler Knight, Veronica Lynn
Portions of this review originally appeared on Fleshbot
David Aaron Clark, who worked in New York for earlier incarnations of Screw and Genesis magazines and wrote for various smut publications on the west coast before trying his hand at directing adult fare, is a pervert. He is also one of the smartest, most thoughtful men in the porn business, which tortures him.
This combination allows Clark to effectively articulate his fetishes, one of which is Asian women, and present them in a way that makes you say "I get it". His low budget, made-on-a-Mac movies are little works of unaffected, earnest, painstaking art in which beauty, humor, regret, boobies, and creepiness vie for the viewer's attention.
"You just have that tragic look that just translates so well," Clark says to Tami Lynn at the beginning of this compilation. As offstage gonzo director dialogue, that works a hell of a lot better than "Fuck. You've got great tits." While emotion has overwhelmed me to often utter the latter, good porn deserves more of the former.
"I pretty much almost never make a mistake," says Lynn, about to be taken aback by Clark standby Mr. Marcus. Longtime partner in crime Brian Surewood also makes a few appearances.
"Then what are you doing here?" Clark asks. The movie (full title: Dreaming of Snow: The Best of David Aaron Clark's Existential AZN Girl Gonzo) is chock full of unsanitized moments between an older man and the much younger women he photographs, sometimes in his apartment in L.A.'s Koreatown but also in swankier, less-realistic places, like Beverly Hills. Clark is unabashed in his affection for these women, talking to them like he can't believe his luck but also that he will go to Hell for it.
This puts the women at ease, humanizes them. Sometimes it freaks them out.
Conversations with his subjects paint an accurate picture of the parasitic side of the adult industry.
"You have no idea how ambitious I am," Clark is told by Kylie Rey. "I will do just about anything for money."
"I support entrepreneurship 100 percent," Clark responds. He later persuades her to scoop ice cream out of her vagina. She really is ambitious. He asks her if she's a Republican.
In alternating scenes, we see performers having fun or cashing a check.
"Are you looking forward to getting fucked?" Clark asks Heidi Ho, owner of the Best Asian Porn Name Ever (other than Hoochie Maguchi).
"I guess," she says.
"I guess?"
Later Mr. Marcus advises Kammy to throw her arms up in the air and shout "I wanna be a star" as he fucks her. She does. That scene should definitely adorn the promotional material for the Porn Valley Chamber of Commerce.
Through it all - as it is through most of Clark's gonzo movies - his plummy basso profundo resonates offscreen like he's a member of the World's Seamiest Barbershop Quartet.
You might see some contradictions in this site's coverage of what we call the Gonzo Gaze. Some directors batter the talent and assault their audience with their boorish commentary. The impression I'm left with is that, for those directors, the movie is about them. For Clark it's about the performers, even if he's the one getting the blowjob.
Labels: "david aaron clark", asian, directors, dvds
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All About Anna
 Studio: Innocent Pictures/Zentropa Productions
Director: Jessica Nilsson
Cast: Gry Bay, Mark Stevens, Eileen Daly, Thomas Raft, Morten Shelbech, Thomas Lundy, Ovidie
Portions of this review originally appeared on Fleshbot
The mainstream porn movie is an elusive thing, and usually happens by accident. Wild Things seems to have had the right sensibility, whereas both the heavy Eyes Wide Shut and David Cronenberg's Crash fell short, as did Baise Moi.
Denmark's Zentropa Productions, most closely associated here with Lars von Trier, has released a movie that combines some of the tenets of Dogma 95 with a script that seems like it was assembled out of the high school diaries of our favorite porn stars.
Anna is a theatrical costume designer unlucky in love but not wanting for sex. Director Nilsson makes the best of a problematic script that is often simplistic and precious. Marketed as a romantic movie for women, All About Anna certainly pays attention to all the tempestuous relationships a blindingly attractive woman can have in today's theatre community.
As in Lars von Trier's Breaking the Waves, AAA features the heroine's love going off to sea and coming back compromised. The rest of the movie deals with Anna's comings and goings with Johann (Mark Stevens) and their mutual screwups.
Wicked Pictures is taking the unprecedented step for a porn company in distributing this movie in the United States. As a porn film, no one would argue that there is not enough sex in it. The sex depicted is also too tame for the established market. But the sets, direction, acting, and script are, in the absence of lots of humping, above par for standard porn fare.
So this might be the perfect porn gateway drug. The one blowjob carried to completion results in shame and awkwardness - just like in real life! - rather than sperm-gargling, sperm-drinking from champagne flutes, and/or sperm-swapping with Cytherea. So that's got to count for something.
Where Anna borrows best from Dogme '95 practitioners is the natural lighting and digital filming. Often the movie is heartbreakingly sweet and present, with no little help from its centerpiece, Gry Bay. Her episodes with men, women, and herself are refreshingly devoid of the porn posturing that often compensates here for a lack of time, budget, enthusiasm, beauty, and talent.
But without all the sex, the viewer turns his/her attention to things like the script, which doesn't do justice even to a thoughtful audience willing to forgive almost anything for the love of Gry Bay.
"I had to conquer my fear!" the script has Anna saying in voiceover. "I had to go back to that flat!"
Ultimately, Anna is a sweet movie with a happy ending. Men will like it for Bay, loopy roommate Eileen Daly, and LTG tryst partner Ovidie, and women will like it for Anna's choice in partners, especially Johann.
Do you know who won't like it? The French. But you'll have to watch the movie to learn why.Labels: dvds, reviews, wicked
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Her First Lesbian Sex 9
 Studio: Pink Visual
Director: Jonas, Rico
Cast: Brooke, Brea, Ariel, Denise, Naomi, Hailey, Amy Ried, Ashley, Naomi
Portions of this review originally appeared on Fleshbot
This movie opens cold. There is no jingle, credits sequence, or scrolling exposition about Emperor Palpatine. Instead we are suddenly following Hailey (we don't even bother with a last name until Amy Ried) as she searches for someone to indoctrinate. She finds Brea, sullenly eating a quesadilla. Like each scene, the intended will ask who the guy with the camera is, and the director will reply that he's casting a TV show. Exit to the Sex Couch.
Each scene presents a vaguely plausible setup, and what is always compelling about these movies is that the initial meeting is in a public place. I ate at that taco stand! I've been to that furniture store! Pasta Roma has good slices!
We know that everyone involved had a blood test and showed two forms of ID before cameras even rolled, but the variables - the disapproving look of the furniture store owner, for example, sets these faux documentaries apart.
My favorite scenes are between Naomi and Brooke and Ried and Denise. The last scene, between Ashley and Ariel, stretches believability just a little bit as Ariel feels compelled to say, "I've never seen a naked women before."
Porn would crumble and disappear into the ground if there wasn't at least the possibility that the woman with the shaved pussy, piercings, and coccygeal tattoo wasn't lying.
Labels: dvds, gonzo, reality, reviews
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