movies

Balls Out: Great Naked Manfights of Cinematic History

posted by stokes on Wednesday, June 4th, 2008 at 7:16am
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Male nudity is one of the last great taboos in movieland. Oh sure, female nudity still raises eyebrows, but people think of The Piano as A) a surreal anti-patriarchal love story, and B) “that film where you see Harvey Keitel naked - like, NAKED naked,” never mind about Holly Hunter. Yes, there’s something about the on-screen penis (the onscreenis, if you will), that our culture can’t process. It’s not an event that happens in a movie, it’s an event in its own right.

And that’s even more true when the nudity is combined with violence. Read on for a survey of cinema’s greatest Naked Manfights.

Warning: Spoilers ahead, natch.

Warning 2: While I haven’t included any images that you couldn’t broadcast on NYPD Blue, it miiiight be best to read this one on your home computer.

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magazine, movies

A Farewell to Horror: Lair of the White Worm

posted by stokes on Sunday, May 25th, 2008 at 7:18am
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Devout followers of this blog will have noticed that I have had horror on the brain over the past few months. (To those of you who scare easily, I apologize.) I’ve been taking a class on horror movies, so I was watching a bunch of them, and hey: you’ve got to write about something. Well, the class is over now. I’m not saying you’ll never see another horror post from me, but they’ll probably be few and far between. Before I bid farewell to the genre, though, I want to share one more movie with you all. Ken Russell’s Lair of the White Worm.

As with everything I write about movies, there are spoilers ahead. And if you have even the slightest intention of ever watching this movie - which you TOTALLY SHOULD - please stop reading right now. Lair of the White Worm is so weird, so gleefully bonkers, that a full %70 of my enjoyment of the film came from the surprise factor; from the “Oh my god did that just really HAPPEN?! Am I WATCHING this?” aspect of the experience. And I wouldn’t want to ruin that for you. But if you are never going to watch it anyway - and I’ve got to imagine that applies to most of you - then by all means read on. Note: some images below the jump could be classified as NSFW. Not in the way we usually think about these things, but still… it’s a hard R, you know?

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