June 13, 2019

"The summer begins with a new crop of sexually explicit, mostly European movies set off from Cannes to the festival circuit and eventually to brief art-house runs..."

"... while Hollywood churns out its chief export of gun-happy escapism and wholesome kid stuff. Between those two channels the classic sex scene — once a staple of high-gloss, adult-oriented, mainstream movies — has been largely forgotten and ignored, recommitted to very esoteric margins it sprang from generations ago.... Today, whether it’s in 'Long Shot' or 'Rocketman,' the sex scene has been reduced to a shorthand, an instantly recognizable grammar that begins with some jokey or flirtatious foreplay, cuts to some flesh (tasteful enough to honor the actors’ no-nudity clauses), then discreetly cuts away....  [A]udiences are now far more attuned to how life and art can’t be separated: Stories of Maria Schneider feeling manipulated and misused on the set of 'Last Tango,' or [Abdellatif] Kechiche’s actresses expressing similar misgivings about how they were treated in 'Blue Is the Warmest Color,' force the discomfiting realization that, all too often, our visual pleasure has been generated by means of an exploitative and dehumanizing production process.... To be sure, there’s precious little to mourn in the death of the kind of ogling soft-core wish-fulfillment fantasies that male directors foisted on viewers for nearly a century. But is abstinence really our only option?"

Asks Ann Hornaday in "Sex is disappearing from the big screen, and it’s making movies less pleasurable" (WaPo).

The top-rated comment: "Could not disagree more. What is implied is always more erotic than what is shown. It is the same with horror movies these days. Every gory act is shown in excruciating detail. With both sex and horror in film, audiences are too rarely given the chance to use the imagination."

I don't go to movies anymore, but I'd say the problem is a lack of adult material but I don't mean the extended, graphic sex scenes. I mean the stories and the emotions. I don't see enough of what's there to really know, but it seems to me there are a lot of flashy spectacles with quick cutting and loud noises and sudden surprises. It's boring unless you're a child or feeling childish.

106 comments:

rehajm said...

I mean the stories and the emotions

Do not translate for the Chinese market.

there are a lot of flashy spectacles with quick cutting and loud noises and sudden surprises

Does translate for the Chinese market.

RNB said...

"...the kind of ogling soft-core wish-fulfillment fantasies that male directors foisted on viewers..." Somehow, some way it's some damn man's fault.

Mike Sylwester said...

Democracy Dies in Darkness!

Yancey Ward said...

No one wants an R-rating.

Michael K said...

I still watch movies like "My Man Godfrey" at home on DVD. I wonder if big screen home TVs have altered the movie theater market forever. HBO seems to have taken over the nude porn market.

readering said...

Of box office mojo 100 top grossing movies of 2019 i've seen 2 in theater, Apollo 11 and Booksmart, and 2 on small screen, Arctic and The Kid Who Would Be King. I guess 1 qualifies for the article's treatment of sex on screen. Irrelevant to the other 3.

Mike Sylwester said...

Why did the Blue is the Warmest Color actresses complain about how they were treated? I'd like to know the relevant details.

rcocean said...

Hollywood makes most of its money overseas. Witty dialogue doesn't translate well. Car chases and super-villains do.

Anyway, all that stuff can be seen on HBO or Netflicks. No movie theater visit required. Hollywood has achieved what Jack Warner wanted in the 50s. People would go to Huge movie screens to see action/adventure technicolor spectaculars they couldn't see on their tiny TVs.

Lucid-Ideas said...

When you're seeing peoples' careers end for far less by just looking at a woman wrong I think it's no stretch to say two high-powered actors (and their publicist and legal teams) simulating a sex-act on camera is all too fraught with modern 'complications'.

That, and younger people are having less sex to begin with...or so I hear.

PM said...

No worries, Netflix et alia are handling it.

rcocean said...

Sex in R/PG movies always comes off as fake. A lot fast cutting and panting. Its more silly than erotic.

Virgil Hilts said...

Maybe I'm really different from 95% of folks, but in so many movies' depiction of sex between 2 people who have been attracted to each other and finally admit it, they have to immediately do it standing up, w/o taking off clothes and as fast as they f-ing can. WTF! Is this realistic - am I living in a sex bubble? I can't imagine a first sexual encounter with someone you like being like this! Just an example - sex scene in the Night Manager. Bad Sex Scene Maybe these scenes are now being filmed this way because actors hate sex scenes and won't take their clothes off.

readering said...

Bitwc: male director of color forces 2 white actresses including teen to do gazillion takes including long, "explicit" sex scenes. What could go wrong?

Lucid-Ideas said...

"Ann Hornaday"

Hornaday? I can understand how she might feel that way. But it's ok. They tell me sexbots aren't that far away. No worries Ann, they'll save the day!

tim maguire said...

Once upon a time, R was the most lucrative rating and movies had a gratuitous topless or sex scene thrown in just to get one. Then PG-13 came along and it became the most lucrative rating. So no more sex scenes in non-explicitly sexual movies.

Virgil Hilts said...

Another quickie stand-up first love scene - Yvonne Strahovski and Adrien Brody in Manhattan Night (2016). In this one, he doesn't even want to face her. He turns her around and shoves her face first against the hallway wall. Again, WTF? The bedroom's 6 feet away. Maybe most modern love scenes are now patterned off Harvey W.'s favorite form of sexual encounter.

Big Mike said...

@Lucid-Ideas, why wait for sexbots? CGI is already good enough to be indistinguishable from real people. And computer nerds have way better imaginations than Hollywood screen writers.

n.n said...

"...the kind of ogling soft-core wish-fulfillment fantasies that male directors foisted on viewers..." Somehow, some way it's some damn man's fault.

#MeToo #HerToo #SheProgressed

Dear corrupt left, go F yourselves said...

I don't go to movies anymore.

I don't go to movies anymore, either. I have no interest in the crap product, or supporting the people behind the crap product.

Virgil Hilts said...

Maybe the quickie stand-up love scenes are meant to be homages to the famous sex scene involving Sonny Corleone on p.29[?] of the first Godfather book. But that was not a love scene between characters who cared for each other; it was more akin to two dogs humping. Maybe that's what Hollywood projects/assumes sex is like for everyone else outside of Hollywood.

narciso said...

ah debicki she came off a little cold in man from uncle, as the heir to an Italian fascist entrepreneur,

traditionalguy said...

Turner Classic Movies astounds us with one good adult film after another. We were spoiled in the 1950s.

Mike (MJB Wolf) said...

Instead of creative writers producing compelling stories we have formulas, remakes with half the life of the original made over with another halving of the magic of the original. Spectacle has replaced plot. Premises are unclear and cluttered up with insider asides or “Easter Eggs” or humorless lecturing. Exposition is so explicitly political most of the time that one wonders what came first for the writer (or more commonly now, team of co-writers), the premise or the preaching? One big clue to the answer can be seen in the studios themselves, which used to let their work do the talking but now must weigh in, in woke fashion, on every hot button issue of the day infallibly parroting DNC talking points. Do the studios realize that less than a third of the country identifies as Democrat and of those only a minor faction are hair-on-fire Lefties demanding such fealty to their Progressivism God?

mikee said...

Kids these days, raised with Pornhub's explicit depiction of supposedly human coupling, need to understand, or at least learn about, the mystery and power in a movie of a woman's momentarily exposed side boob, a man's muscled pecs flexing as a shirt is put on, the cat leering from the coffee table as an unseen pair is heard tussling on the sofa. By such cromulent details are our imaginations, et al., embiggened.

I, for one, enjoyed Myrna Loy's exasperated expression as her hubby, lying on the couch in his pajamas Christmas morning, shoots ornaments off the tree with his present, a new BB gun, in one of the Thin Man movies. Now THAT was a sexy scene.

narciso said...

exactly or like Dorothy Malone's scene in the big sleep (that wasn't really in the novel) according to the annotated version by jonathan Lethem, out of the past, which served as the inspiration for against all odds, 35 years later,

CJinPA said...

All I say about films is "They aren't made for me."

The last time major studio movies were made for adults was 1970s-80s. I was young then, but almost all of the films I remember fondly, and watch when I come across them on TV, were films for grownups from that era.

As Ann says, they weren't "grown-up" because of sex. But in that they made you feel...something, beyond "That CGI is so good I don't notice it at all" and "That casting choice was bold and doesn't at all take me out of the film I am now watching."

Mike Sylwester said...

Dirty Dancing prospered by reducing its rating from R to PG-13.

The MPAA's PG-13 Rating of Dirty Dancing

Freeman Hunt said...

Writer is totally wrong. The long, explicit sex scenes of the late 20th century are boring and look stupid now. Good riddance.

Lucid-Ideas said...

@Big Mike

Bio-women pornstars hardest hit. Their moans were always loud, but the wailing coming from the San Fernando valley will be of a different variety in a few decades.

...and they thought truck drivers would be hardest hit.

A word of advice for my bot-beaten busty bimbettes from the b-rolls

#Learntocode

Nonapod said...

The sex scene is almost always fairly superfluous to the actual story. They were inserted for general titillation. These days the ubiquitous access to porn has rendered the "sex scene" in mainstream movies completely superfluous and irrelevant.

If I wanted to watch sex I certainly don't need or want to watch it in a mainstream movie.

Robert Cook said...

I say get rid of the gratuitous sex scenes and nudity, too. They distract from the story, as we are taken out of the cinematic dream and suddenly are confronted with the reality of famous actess naked!

I like seeing beautiful nude women as much as anyone, but not at the expense of jarring us out of the story.

The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...

"Sex in R/PG movies always comes off as fake. A lot fast cutting and panting. Its more silly than erotic."

More to the point, it's boring. Sex scenes may enhance a bad story, but they also degrade a good one.

cassandra lite said...

That last graf, Ann: infinity dittoes.

rcocean said...

The most ridiculous sex scene I saw recently was in "Hemingway and Gellhorn". They're in the Hotel Florida during the Spanish civil war. During an air raid, Hemingway is overcome by lust, kicked in her hotel door, and the two make passionate love while the bombs burst outside and rock the hotel.

Knowing the real Gellhorn and Hemingway from Bios made the scene even funnier.

Leland said...

Fron what I've seen recently, the problem includes a lack of chemistry between the characters/actors to make a sex scene believable.

rcocean said...

Later in "Gellhorn and Hemingway" in Hotel Florida, 75 y/o Robert Duvall shows up as a Russian General (i kid you not). Hemingway doesn't like the Russian General making advances to Gellhorn so he gets up to punch him out. Duvall then pulls out a gun and challenges Hemingway to a game of "Russian Roulette". The two men shout and posture and finally put pistols to their heads and are about to squeeze the triggers when cooler heads prevail and the two end up having a vodka.

LOL!

AMDG said...

The only movie that I have seen where the nudity was not gratuitous was “The Crying Game”.

rcocean said...

Game of Thrones had a lot of Gratuitous nudity. which was OK, except i could have done without seeing the Men's ding-dongs.

CJinPA said...

... while Hollywood churns out its chief export of gun-happy escapism...

Is that true? The violence in the ads I see feature little women inexplicably hurling large men across the room.

narciso said...

haven't seen that one, there is a similar triangle in the end of the affair, between fiennes who is the graham greene manqué, his friend played by Stephen rea, and his wife played by julianne moore, based on Catherine Walton,

Henry said...

Nonapod said...

The sex scene is almost always fairly superfluous to the actual story. They were inserted for general titillation.

What Japanese Anime forthrightly calls "fan service."

There's that word "titillation" again.

* * *

You do have to care about the characters to care about the sex and if you care about the characters, it's the dialog that matters, not the visuals.

"You do know how to whistle, don't you Steve?"

rhhardin said...

The defense of the gratuitous sex scene is that it stands for the characters caring for each other, in movie code. It's literally gratuitous but not symbolically gratuitous.

Today its absence stands for fear of #MeToo.

I'd go with the former, as healthier.

Bilwick said...

"Gun-happy escapism" vs. "sexually explicit"? Why must we choose? Why not both?

rhhardin said...

I'm always surprised how many Melanie Griffith flicks have bare breasts. It doesn't seem like it would be her brand.

It must have been the post I Am Curious Yellow market. Any breast will do, even if it means sitting through an hour of art.

Virgil Hilts said...

Another bad "first" sex scene. Anne Hathaway and Jake Gyllenhaal in Love & Other Drugs. Nice bedroom just a few feet away. He shoves her up against a table edge and takes her from the back. They eventually end up on the wooden floor. They're done (after what 75 seconds) and still have all of their clothes on (apparently Jake wasn't that interested in the other qualities of Anne prized by other superficial men). Is this realistic? Of course, married couple doing this kind stuff, but to make it your very first romantic encounter with someone?

Michael K said...

The only movie that I have seen where the nudity was not gratuitous was “The Crying Game”.

Agreed. That was the shock scene and the movie made no sense otherwise.

As for sex being suggested and not thrust in your face, "The Maltese Falcon" and you know that Mary Astor and Bogart have had sex when she says "You're going to turn me in after..."

Michael K said...

The sex scene is almost always fairly superfluous to the actual story. They were inserted for general titillation.

The sex scene in "Top Gun" was shot after the movie was finished and they decided they needed something for the 14 year old boys.

Earnest Prole said...

Why buy milk when you can get it from the cow for free?

rhhardin said...

The tumbling into the apartment and tearing each other's clothes off is movie code to indicate sexual relation but mostly lust, rather than caring.

Caring is indicated by waking up spooning. The Sure Thing (1985). I don't even think it had nudity, anyway I don't recall any.

Jaq said...

She could take ten minutes on PornHub before she heads off to the theater, in order to get her mind right so she can concentrate. But maybe her fetish involves being surrounded by strangers. IDK.

rhhardin said...

I didn't get as far as any sex scene in Top Gun. Some plot twist I don't remember put me off as being too stupid to be interested in.

French quasi-romcoms seem like the best thing going at the moment. French with English subtitles. Apparently the French are so used to nudity that it's not a particular attraction in films and is fairly rare, at least in the genres I'm seeing.

Jaq said...

he only movie that I have seen where the nudity was not gratuitous was “The Crying Game”

The scene in The Do Over where the chicks on the other boat flashed our intrepid heroes seemed pretty integral to the plot to me! And that’s just last night!

Jaq said...

I enjoy the French content on Netflix myself.

Francisco D said...

The sex scene in "Top Gun" was shot after the movie was finished and they decided they needed something for the 14 year old boys.

I strongly suspect that most movie sex scenes are for people who are unsatisfied with their romantic lives.

Not a lot of 14 year old boys are satisfied with their sex lives, at least not in my generation.

Jaq said...

I always hit fast forward on the sex scenes. They are almost never any good. I do the same for battle scenes, as it’s very rare that you can’t know in advance the side that is going to win, and the whole thing is just gore porn, which I don’t care for.

Jaq said...

Of course some combat footage is important, but when it drags on...

Earnest Prole said...

The sex scene in "Top Gun" was shot after the movie was finished and they decided they needed something for the 14 year old boys.

The sex scene in Top Gun was added because without it the film was as queer as a seven-dollar bill, as Quentin Tarantino persuasively and entertainingly explains.

rhhardin said...

French romcoms don't use the American formula, where the draw for women is the apology the guy makes to win her back. For men the draw is winning her the first time.

It's more the complications in the French genre; the odd characters.

rhhardin said...

9-Month Stretch (2013)
In Harmony (2015)
The Valet (2006)
The Closet (2001)

are fairly good French quasi-romcoms that are stacked in the recently-seen pile. All are based on (odd) characters and involve no nudity that I remember.

Many more that aren't at hand to list. A good place to look if you don't mind reading subtitles.

rehajm said...

As I was told by the honors student accompanying me to the original release of Top Gun the gay volleyball scene was also heteroerotic.

William said...

When I was growing up, married couples slept in separate twin beds. Then the dams burst. There were scenes shot in the girls' locker room. Bliss. The realization of a long cherished, long denied dream. Kids growing up on Pornhub can have no idea of how shocking and blissful it was to see that first locker room scene......Now the pendulum moves in the other direction. An actress who shows her boobs is no longer proclaiming her sexual liberation but is rather participating in the exploitation of women. I foresee the day when starlets running from serial murderers will no longer wear negligees or tight-shirts. Who wants to see Jennifer Lawrence in a loose fitting sweatshirt?

Lucid-Ideas said...

There was a documentary a while back on Ron Jeremy and the porn industry. It was interesting because the guy has - quite literally - worked with everyone in one way or another on both 'sides' of the film industry. In the doc there's a lot of discussion about the mechanics of a nude, soft-core, hard-core scene etc.

None of it is pretty. At all. Cutting. Splicing. Pre-editing. Post-editing. 'Bloopers'. Re-takes. Technical glitches. Rehearsals. And yes...long hours.

There is no way in hell that that industry doesn't affect these peoples' metal health much less their ability to be intimate and/or value sex in the same way ever again. Then again they're not normal so there's that.

If you can say as much for professionals, what can you say for actors who's jobs may only intermittently involve simulating sex?

Much like political sausage, there's a lot of meat-grinding going into manufacturing that 'hot' sex you see on screen. Even not asking how it gets made doesn't mean most of still doesn't suck.

Kelly said...

An Officer and a Gentleman is probably the first movie I ever saw that had a sex scene. Supposedly Gere and Winger hated each other, but they really brought the heat. That’s still a great movie.

Big Mike said...

What the male acting in a sex scene is supposed to say to the actress: “Please forgive me if I get an erection, and forgive me also if I don’t.”

Joe said...

Going to the second point about horror and gore; for the past few years, several TV shows which were originally light horror (i.e. Supernatural) have gone the sadistic gore route. Given how some of the scenes have dragged on, I suspect several people in the production staffs have rather strange fetishes, which will be reported in a few years.

Ingachuck'stoothlessARM said...

the comic strip has to come out first, then the movie, but--

Althouse as a superhero? This almost reads like a Batman fight seen--
Watch as we see our hero take down mediocrity:

"I don't go to movies anymore (POW!)... I'd say the problem is a lack of adult material (KRAAACK!)...but I don't mean the extended(OOF!) graphic sex scenes(BONK!!). ...I don't see enough of what's there to really know(KAPOW!!)... but it seems to me there are a lot of(BIFF!!) flashy(ZAM!!)spectacles with quick cutting(SLASH!!) and loud noises(BANG!!) and sudden surprises(ZOWIEEE!!).

retired law professor during the day, Culture Crusader by night?

"Super-Ann"? "the Iron Prof"?........"Bloggerella"?

JZ said...

I fondly remember the 60s and the beginning of nudity in movies. Blow Up comes to mind.

The Vault Dweller said...

I think Hollywood's current business model is to create the big name projects centered around large spectacular action/super-hero movies mainly because they have the broadest shared appeal in the domestic and global markets. They will also create big picture cartoon movies for kids, because those also do well globally. Followed up behind that is they will fund Rom-Coms. And they at the very bottom are serious or even not so serious, but still adult-themed movies. I Hesitate to call this a new model because I think it has been established for over a decade in Hollywood. I can't think of the last big-name adult movie to come out of Hollywood, and there are about 5-6 multiple hundred million dollar grossing action movies every year. My guess is that different social customs make it harder for a global audience to relate to many adult movies.

effinayright said...

Re "The Night Manager": UK movie sex scenes are always bad.

Has anyone ever seen one that looks like real people are doing it, and liking it?

Maybe the weak chins and poor teeth are a turn-off....

Michael K said...

The sex scene in Top Gun was added because without it the film was as queer as a seven-dollar bill, as Quentin Tarantino persuasively and entertainingly explains.

Probably with the volleyball scene but "12 0'clock High" was a movie made from a novel that had a romance between the general and an English girl whose father owned the estate on which the airbase was built. Zanuck decided to omit the romance and make the film all men. The guys that wrote it had served in the unit described.

"The Longest Day" had only a few brief scenes with women. Now, we have to have women action heroes. I don't go to those movies. If I recall, "Dunkirk" had no women.

Howard said...

Insert virtue signal here )|(

Ken B said...

AA has put her finger on what is actually the most serious problem: flash cutting. The cut serves a purpose in cinema in telling the story, in emphasizing, and controlling flow. Proper use of the cut is vital to storytelling. It should be reserved for that purpose. But long agoHollywood discovered that much of the audience just wants the visual stimulation and a busy visual field. Flash cuts provide that. So now almost all movies are filled with rapid cutting. This as much as any single thing is what has hollowed out contemporary movies.

Ann Althouse said...

"Why did the Blue is the Warmest Color actresses complain about how they were treated? I'd like to know the relevant details."

Here's the interview with the actresses who performed at 10 minute graphic sex scene where the characters were 15 year olds (not sure the age of the actresses).

"Lea: [The director] warned us that we had to trust him—blind trust—and give a lot of ourselves. He was making a movie about passion, so he wanted to have sex scenes, but without choreography—more like special sex scenes. He told us he didn’t want to hide the character’s sexuality because it’s an important part of every relationship. So he asked me if I was ready to make it, and I said, “Yeah, of course!” because I’m young and pretty new to cinema. But once we were on the shoot, I realized that he really wanted us to give him everything. Most people don’t even dare to ask the things that he did, and they’re more respectful—you get reassured during sex scenes, and they’re choreographed, which desexualizes the act. Right. They pause the action for new camera angles, etc.

"Adèle: Exactly. I didn’t know [Léa] in the beginning, and during the first sex scene, I was a little bit ashamed to touch her where I thought I wanted, because he didn’t tell us what to do. You’re free, but at the same time you’re embarrassed because I didn’t really know her that well.... And was it difficult to shoot that 10-minute sex scene? I don’t remember the last time I’ve seen a sex scene that long in a movie—gay or hetero....

"Léa: No, we had fake pussies that were molds of our real pussies. It was weird to have a fake mold of your pussy and then put it over your real one. We spent 10 days on just that one scene. It wasn’t like, “OK, today we’re going to shoot the sex scene!” It was 10 days.

"Adèle: One day you know that you’re going to be naked all day and doing different sexual positions, and it’s hard because I’m not that familiar with lesbian sex.'''...

"Léa: Five-and-a-half months. What was terrible on this film was that we couldn’t see the ending. It was supposed to only be two months, then three, then four, then it became five-and-a-half. By the end, we were just so tired."

Browndog said...

I agree with the top rated comment.

For my money, that one scene from The Graduate was more erotic than the entire Porky's movie.

n.n said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
gilbar said...

Dr K said...
"12 0'clock High" ...... Zanuck decided to omit the romance and make the film all men.


Not to pick nits (well, To pick nits); but 12 O'clock high wasn't ALL men, there was (at least) one nurse when the General went to visit his men (in particular, the commander of the leper colony with the broken back). So, 30 seconds of the film wasn't all men

n.n said...

The sex scene in Top Gun was added because without it the film was as queer as a seven-dollar bill, as Quentin Tarantino persuasively and entertainingly explains.

That may well be. There was an unmistakable, progressive loss of nuance in their harried pursuit of social progress, which has culminated in the dysfunctional convergence we live in today.

Bob Smith said...

What’s lacking isn’t sex. It’s sophistication.

Francisco D said...

Gettysburg by Ron Maxwell, funded by Ted Turner had no female roles and (obviously) no romantic scenes.

Gods and Generals by the same people remedied that situation by adding female characters and showing affectionate (not overtly sexual) scenes between Stonewall Jackson and his wife. There were also scenes of young officers behaving quite formally with proper young Southern women.

It was sort of refreshing. The explosion of sexuality in movies has become tedious and annoying.

Leland said...

we had fake pussies that were molds of our real pussies

They let someone make a mold of their pussies? Why? Why would they need molds of their pussies? Would the average viewer know that it wasn't their pussy if they used a mold of someone else's pussy? Something tells me that a producer wanted a copy of their pussy.

FullMoon said...

Not to pick nits (well, To pick nits); but 12 O'clock high wasn't ALL men, there was (at least) one nurse...

Many cheesy science fiction/monster movies from the fifties have three or four male scientists and one woman..

Browndog said...

Give me raw sexual tension that develops between two characters over gratuitous nudity any day.

Ingachuck'stoothlessARM said...

They let someone make a mold of their pussies?

when you're a star, you let them do it

Fernandinande said...

Audiences are now far more attuned to how life and art can’t be separated

Truer word oft spoken were.

Anonymous said...

Porn has rendered sex scenes ridiculous or revealed they already were. And the issue of having to simulate sex as a condition of your employment is a real one.

And also because of portn, the art movies that rely on being edgy have to go overboard, making the "condition of employment" issue worse, not better.

Porn actresses consent to what they're doing. Someone should check on how these art flick actresses feel about what's expected of them, just to work in their chosen field.

Michael K said...

12 O'clock high wasn't ALL men, there was (at least) one nurse...

That brings up a pet peeve (and you're right). The movie was cut for TV and seems never to have been restored. In that scene, Savage meets the doc outside Gately's hospital ward and the doc says "Better men than Gately could not have flown with that injury." Savage then says, "You're wrong. There are no better men than Ben Gately" Then the nurse comes in and Gately is still digesting that Savage, who he has been hating for the humiliation, now thinks highly of him.

It's a crucial scene in the movie and it was butchered for TV and never restored. I saw the movie as a kid when it came out. I have seen it 100 times.

whitney said...

This sounds like a real horror show with extra nihilism and degeneracy. I got to wonder what Disney does to these poor kids. They all follow the same trajectory

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/13/arts/television/zendaya-euphoria-hbo.html

Rory said...

"Flash cuts provide that. So now almost all movies are filled with rapid cutting."

Scorsese has said his upcoming "The Irishman" approaches 300 scenes, which is hard to imagine.

daskol said...

Scorcese quick cuts are one thing. The ones that have ruined my enjoyment of many if not most action movies are the Michael Bay style quick cuts during action scenes--chases, fights, etc. I can't figure out what the fuck is going on, and when I first encountered it (Armageddon) it made feel slightly nauseated. Now pretty much all action flicks use that style. Instead of just dumping on all Hollywood output, it's more interesting to try to find the good ones. Christopher Nolan makes fun movies that adults can enjoy without feeling childish, even his Batman ones, for example.

Wince said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Wince said...

Althouse said...
I don't go to movies anymore, but I'd say the problem is a lack of adult material but I don't mean the extended, graphic sex scenes.

Team America was as much a send-up of Hollywood as politics. That horrendously explicit puppet sex scene (unedited with coprophilia) was meant to parody the "explicit-sex-as-great-cinematic storytelling conceit.

"All I Ask is You're A Woman" (hilarious) theme song (explicit but edited scene)

n.n said...

Dirty Dancing was perhaps the earliest attempt by social progressives ("liberals") to normalize elective abortion.

rhhardin said...

Flash cuts started with Classical Gas on Laugh-In (a history of art with a Classical Gas soundtrack).

rhhardin said...

Here it is
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=viyufRQKlto

rhhardin said...

Smothers Brothers, it says, not laugh-in.

Molly said...

I watch a lot of TMC that shows old movies. And I issue this challenge: watch the black and white movies (especially "pre-code" or before about 1933) and find me an example of a movie that would have been better if it would have shown sex or nudity more explicitly.

readering said...

Duck Soup.

FIDO said...

Anyone who does not agree with Althouse's view of the quality of a film is a child. Good to know.

FIDO said...

I have noticed that the only actresses who seem willing to show the cooter et al are all foreign born women. At least the few I've seen in movies and TV shows who got naked.

American women seem to feel too good for those roles and are instead minor or niche players except in Rom-Coms. They have eschewed one topic of highly charged interest and emotion because of their politics.

Okay. Foreigners doing jobs American women won't do. I say import huge new crops of foreign actresses and give them Green Door Cards. It might improve Hollywood.

FIDO said...

I have long felt that HBO, Netflix and other streaming services have taken away the 'boobs' selling point of Hollywood movies. They can do it cheaper, in places with fewer legal and political issues, and with women who are willing to do it.

Hollywood can't even have a VILLAIN choke a FEMALE on film without being criticized. How do they do sex?

Besides, free porn satisfies the needs of the salacious already. There is not that much value added by nudity. The customers see more and more personalized things than The Last Tango in Paris. It is not our only outlet.


David Begley said...

Great sex scene in “Frankenstein, Part II” preceded by a very romantic marriage.

JPS said...

EDH:

"That horrendously explicit puppet sex scene"

Before seeing the movie, I wondered how the hell a puppet sex scene could get an NC-17 rating. Then I saw the uncut version and said, Oh. Right.

MacMacConnell said...

"Body Heat" was a decent movie in which the sex scenes were needed to understand how the Hurt character became addicted to the Turner character.

Ty said...

Michael K wrote...

The sex scene in "Top Gun" was shot after the movie was finished and they decided they needed something for the 14 year old boys.

I was 11 years old and had to watch that scene in the theater sitting next to my parents!

Watch that movie again and drink every time somebody is really sweaty. It gets funnier the longer you do it. (that's what she said)

Fen said...

"Lea: [The director] warned us that we had to trust him—blind trust—and give a lot of ourselves. He was making a movie about passion, so he wanted to have sex scenes, but without choreography—more like special sex scenes. He told us he didn’t want to hide the character’s sexuality because it’s an important part of every relationship. So he asked me if I was ready to make it, and I said, “Yeah, of course!” because I’m young and pretty new to cinema. But once we were on the shoot, I realized that he really wanted us to give him everything. Most people don’t even dare to ask the things that he did, and they’re more respectful—you get reassured during sex scenes, and they’re choreographed, which desexualizes the act. Right. They pause the action for new camera angles, etc.

And when the director invited her back to his place for tea she thought it was for tea.

Bill Peschel said...

The nude scenes in "Love, Actually" were pretty funny, especially when you see it's the future Watson. (For those who haven't seen it, one of the love stories is between an actor and actress working as body doubles on a movie.)

The "Team America" DVD was the only one I gave to the library book sale, because the corprophilia sex scene made me literally nauseous. The movie also wasn't as funny as the first SouthPark movie, although it had its moments.

What's funny about all this, from my POV, is that explicit sex scenes in romances novels make up a big section of the ebook market. Look at a series like "Ice Planet Barbarians" at Amazon, and then the sales rankings. This woman's banking serious coin from arousing women.

What's funnier? If Amazon thinks your book is too much sex and not erotic, it'll recategorize your book to what's nicknamed "erotica jail," where the men's stroke books can be found. This bans you from running ads promoting it, and the Zon makes it tougher for readers to find it on the site.