The Edge of the World & An Airman's Letter to His Mother

The Edge of the World is one of the first Michael Powell films that is worth watching, at least according to most people I know. Who know who Michael Powell is. It's fairly reminiscent of I Know Where I'm Going, in that it's about an island off the coast of Scotland, but this one is about the end of life on an island that is no longer worth living on. It was pretty short, but it didn't entirely feel like the classics that so many other Powell films would become, probably because I couldn't understand why they wouldn't have just left knowing how hard life was there. I guess other people just become far more attached to their way of life than I am. Well, ok, I mean far more attached to a more unsustainable way of life than mine. I don't live on an almost uninhabitable island of the coast of Scotland. I probably wouldn't either. Unless I had all the comforts of living in a big city, which isn't likely. They probably wouldn't have a good Ethiopian restaurant there. Also, the DVD's video and sound quality sucked supremely, and, except for the inclusion of extras (none of which I particularly felt like watching), was subpar all around.

I did actually watch one of the extras, An Airman's Letter to His Mother, a brief bit of propaganda based on a letter to the Times of London, narrated by John Gielgud. Nothing too spectacular either way, until the last frames, when it goes into a sky written angel wings, which was just too much. I am not that maudlin.

Shinjuku Triad Society, Rainy Dog, Ley Lines, Lila Says, & Balzac & the Little Chinese Seamstress

Shinjuku Triad Society, Rainy Dog, and Ley Lines are the three films in Takashi Miike's Black Society Trilogy. They're about the difficulty of Chinese immigrants in Japan. Well, that's mainly the first and last in the trilogy, the second one was mainly about a triad assassin who finds out he has a kid. And lots of violence and pissing and sex. The first one is pretty much junk, the second one is far better, and the last one is quite good. The last one is about a group of three suburban kids who end up selling drugs on the streets of Tokyo, get robbed by a prostitute, and rob a triad boss to get money to stow away on a boat to Brazil. It's quite a touching film of trying to fit in in a society that doesn't particularly want you. Along with a fey Ghanian named Barbie, scratchy censoring of the naughty bits (actually a constant in all three films), and a fairly depressing ending. The three films aren't particularly happy, but you really see that in the few years between the first and the third, Miike learned a hell of a lot.

Lila Says was a short good French film about a brief flirtation between a Polish girl and an Arab boy. I enjoyed it, although it did make me wish I had an attractive French girl who wanted to discuss her strange sexual fantasies. Who enjoyed riding around on her motorized bike with no underwear on and then inspired me to write a great book. I would hope that the ending weren't quite the same, but it was very well made, and who can hate on a girl mooning the guy to the strains of Air? Ziad Doueiri, the writer/director, worked on quite a few films with Quentin Tarantino, and clearly learned how to use a great pop song. And Run is a great pop song. And whoever the hell decided that the original theatrical release would be unedited, but the DVD would be an edited version with Manara's porno Eden-ish comic blurred out, should be punched once, in the thigh, very hard. And then punched there again and again until they apologize. Edited DVDs are crap, Sony.

Balzac & the Little Chinese Seamstress is just another reason why my prodigious movie watching is probably not good for my mental health. Not for anything about the film itself, just what it causes me to think about. So many bits of pop culture are just pathways into my past that it's amazing I'm still willing to watch things I know are just going to hurt. Although I don't listen to The Green Album nearly as much as I used to... It's a film about two teenagers who are sent to the Three Gorges area for reeducation during the Cultural Revolution and they fall in love with the titular Little Chinese Seamstress while reading Balzac. It's based on the director's autobiographical novel, and it's very depressing to think of how many people went through far worse times in the Down to the Countryside Movement. Well, far worse than transporting human waste in backpacks, working in a coal mine, having your cookbooks burnt because they would allow you to create bourgeois chicken, and then reading an attractive girl banned literature and falling in love with her. At least they were able to leave eventually. And become useful members of society, from a non-Communist standpoint.

Lord of War, Mission: Impossible: III, & Pretty Persuasion

Lord of War was not nearly as good as I was hoping it could be, but not nearly as bad as it could have been. Nic Cage doesn't overact and it's not just a simple black and white story. That helps, but the movie itself relies far too heavily on narration. And almost entirely upon the acting talents of Nic Cage. Which, thankfully, he doesn't ruin. It isn't a great film, by any means, but it was a fairly dark little film. As evidenced by the CGI'd opening sequence of a bullet going from a factory to Africa to end up in a kid's head to the sounds of For What It's Worth.

Mission: Impossible: III needs more colons. Preferably on screen with a little colonoscope action! Somehow, this one was actually just as ridiculous as the first two in the series, but not nearly as annoying for me. Yeah, maybe it was that J.J. Abrams was able to add some actual heart? Or maybe it was the MacGuffin not being explained but given a ridiculous name, The Rabbit Foot. But I'm not the only one who likes this one the most, as it has the highest rating of the trilogy on the IMDB (although M:I:II is better than M:I:I if only because it makes some damn sense (and the twin pistol action)). Normally I am not one to quote IMDB scores as a measure of quality (The Shawshank Redemption is a film for people who haven't seen enough good movies), but I think that it shows it's good to possibly get a director who's known for, you know, actual characters (J.J. Abrams) rather than hacky crap (DePalma) or doves fluttering around guys shooting with twin pistols (Woo). It just felt a lot more like an extremely high budget Alias episode, with a little less estrogen. Just a little, because as we all know, both Jennifer Garner and Tom Cruise both enjoy being penetrated. Also there was a brief quote of music from Lost, which I noticed and said it sounded just like a Michael Giacchino composition. And then it turned out there was a reason: he wrote the music. Sometimes I'm just an enormous film nerd. And other times I'm also a tv nerd.

Pretty Persuasion is all "Boo Nazis". A sentiment I completely agree with. It's also a film about manipulative little girls who threaten sexual harassment. It's a very dark satire with a huge amount of foul language. I am not sure I enjoyed the very ending, because it leavens what would otherwise be a relentlessly black film. It's not quite as bad as I was expecting from Marcos Siega, but it was also darker than I was expecting. Which is a good thing. I am not sure that I needed to see all the reaction shots of oral sex, and I really didn't need the slurping sounds. It's sick twisted, mocking everything and everyone, and I highly recommend it, if just for James Woods. His foul-mouthed, racist electronics magnate really steals every scene he's in.

The Bird People in China & The Twilight Samurai

The Bird People in China takes a lot of the bad taste from Izo out of my mouth, as it's a vastly different Takashi Miike film. And it's actually quite good. It's still sort of strange, but then again, so was Audition, the other "most normal" Miike film I've seen, but it's really still about the same themes that his other films seem to be about: trying to find a place to fit in, usually foreigners in a different land, this time a yakuza and a young office worker traveling to Yunnan, China (the subtitles kept splitting it into Yun Nan, confusing me for a bit, for some unknown reason (both the splitting and my confusion)) looking for a rich vein of jade, but instead finding... well, I don't want to ruin it, except that they do find the Bird People in China. And it's about the danger of bringing technology into an area that doesn't know it. That it's restrained is a nice touch, but that's what's amazing about Miike, because he is actually quite talented, if you can get past the enormous grafted penii, the severed feet, extreme torture, zombie musicals, an assassin who shoot darts from her vagina, and lots of sexual taboos... Wait, what was I talking about? Oh, yeah, Miike's talent. Well, he is quite capable of making a touching film.

The Twilight Samurai made me really sad. Another movie that year better than the shit that was The Barbarian Invasions, and yet somehow lost to it. I know I'm somewhat biased (both towards the Japanese and against the damn French Canadians), but this film was really quite good. The two fight scenes are both filmed extremely well, and the ending one is one of the most depressing fight scenes I can imagine. The Foreign Film Oscars are so much of a joke that it's painful to think of how many great foreign films don't even get nominated let alone win when so much crap wins. Life Is Beautiful still causes me to hate Italy. Well, that and their tendency to dive. So, anyway, pretty much it was a couple of sad but excellent Japanese films for me this weekend.

Christmas in August, Starman, Murderball, & Izo

Christmas in August is a sort of depressing Korean film about a camera shop manager (well, he's the only worker, it seems) who is dying and the parking cop who falls in love with him. It was a great film, though, and it was pretty heartbreaking. But ultimately, it was sort of uplifting with the ending. The stars reunited the next year in the quite good Se7en ripoff, Tell Me Something, which I saw on a big screen years ago, so they both looked fairly familiar. Although since they're Asian, I could have just been thinking of a different set of Asian actors.

Starman is John Carpenter doing the romance thing. Oh, sure it involves an alien and a military conspiracy plus the Rolling Stones. And Karen Allen and Jeff Bridges, along with Charles Martin Smith, one of those guys, were very strong centers. Jeff Bridges was sort of loopy as the alien who takes the body of Karen Allen's husband by taking some hair and then growing a new body. And then the scientist says that the technology is 10,000 years in the future. Heh.

Murderball was pretty short, and it made me feel somewhat uncomfortable thinking about these guys being so violent. It's just one of those films I felt like I should see, even if I knew that it wasn't really for me. The supermacho just make me feel like they're trying to overcome something they lack. In this case, it makes some sense for them to overcome their various ailments or accidents, but I still don't particularly feel comfortable with them. The supermacho, not the handicapped. Made me have Light & Day stuck in my head for a good portion of today.

Izo starts with an impregnation (sex-ed style), and then goes into about a minute of a guy being crucified and run through, repeatedly, with spears. Then it goes into a montage catching up on Japanese history from the end of the shogunate and samurai to the present day, with a heavy focus on violence, sex, and the Westernization of Japan. Where the long dead Samurai is now roaming the streets of Tokyo killing pretty much anyone he can. Oh, and of course it's a Takashi Miike film. There's crazy violence, incestuous sexuality, and a seemingly indestructible killer. Plus, the English subtitles don't match the English dialogue, one of my least favorite things to have. The dubbing is terrible though, which is necessary for a film like this. Not one of Miike's better films. The constant jumping back and forth in time doesn't really serve much of a purpose. It just seems to be bizarre for the sake of bizarrity. I think it's all about hell, but going through a bat guano insane film for two hours with a guy killing everything just is too much. That every scene seems to be a different Japanese pop culture cliche suggests a cultural satire. Or is it as simple as violence begets violence?

The Contender & Happy Endings

The Contender would have been a lot better if the pictures had been real. As it is, and I guess the spoiler alert should be on, if I cared, or you cared, or I recommended anyone see this film, that the pictures were fake just means that it was a waste to argue that the private lives of politicians are worth keeping private. Oh, and an excuse to argue about whether a senator performed in a DP when she was 19. Who really cares? If they didn't, that would be a scandal. Unless the politician was a Republican. And then I'd be surprised if they didn't enjoy having sex with small boys. ZING! Really, the film was all about how Hillary Clinton was a slut in college, but only one that touched a thing, not one who smoked a thing. And by thing I mean penis. It was facile and stupid, and just mindnumbingly naive. Beh to it.

Happy Endings is Don Roos's film about gay people, massages, migrant workers, and abortion. It has quite a good cast, with Lisa Kudrow, Steve Coogan, Jesse Bradford, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Tom Arnold, David Sutcliffe, and Laura Dern. Well, ok, I hate Tom Arnold. He sucks. I just thought it didn't go nearly as well as it could have, and the narration (well, intertitles) were just eh. I... whatever. I didn't hate it, and I didn't love it. There were funny bits, there were annoying bits, and it just was eh. But Maggie Gyllenhaal singing was quite good.

The Ladybug Transistor & The Clientele at the Black Cat 5/8

A Tuesday night concert really had to have a band I wanted to see, and this one had two. I knew that The Clientele were not going to be the best live band ever, but I had just seen one of the best last week with Arcade Fire (there apparently is no article there). So a nice quiet evening of good music would be good.

It would have been too, had it not been for you meddling kids, you Positions. They were "horn-driven" indie rock. Aka, music that was trying really hard not to be crappy ska, but never did. And the doors opened at 8, so they didn't go on until 8:45ish, and then play for far too long. Then again, I think any amount of time they played would have been too long. Luckily, there was no one at the show, so I could sit down on the tables at the back. And bitch about how bad they were.

I actually wasn't nearly as familiar with The Ladybug Transistor as with the Essex Green, but I do have the Albermarle Sound, and I do like it a lot. Can't say I know any names of their songs except for Always on the Telephone and Here Comes the Rain from the new album. Well, I couldn't put the name of the song together with the music. But anyway, I enjoyed the set, but it was a little less uptempo than I was expecting. I did get to see a couple of their more uptempo numbers when I saw The Essex Green in January. I liked the set, even if I was getting impatient for The Clientele.

When they did finally get on stage near 10:40, I was already getting sleepy. And they're not exactly the most uptempo band either. I did make it through almost an hour of music before I was just almost constantly yawning, so I had to bail before I heard my favorite song of theirs, (I Want You) More Than Ever, and they probably played it during the encore. I did get to hear Since K Got over Me, the highlight of Strange Geometry, their previous album. I enjoyed the time I got, but I wish they had been able to go on earlier, and that I hadn't been exhausted.

But the best thing about the show was that I got to pick up the new Ladybug Transistor album a full month before I would have preordered it from Merge and for a dollar cheaper too! Which makes me happy. And it means that my next obscenely large order from Merge gets to wait for a while. I got my hands on the new Clientele, which has a couple very nice tracks, but I prefer their earlier stuff a little more, Essex Green's The Long Goodbye, and Camera Obscura's Biggest Blue Hi-Fi and Underachievers Please Try Harder, all of which I had from an ex-girlfriend. But I didn't have legal copies until now! Just kidding, RIAA. You really suck.

Lady Snowblood: Lovesong of Vengeance, All about Lily Chou-Chou, & Saving Face

Lady Snowblood: Lovesong of Vengeance is the sequel to Lady Snowblood, the quite good revenge film that inspired a lot of Kill Bill, especially the fight between The Bride and O-Ren in the snow. Plus, it's just ridiculous. The sequel is more technically proficient, but it doesn't work nearly as well. The first film worked so well because of the desire for vengeance that drove the plot, and you cared whether the bad guys got it in the end. Of course they did, but in this one, without that important reason for its existence, this film just doesn't come together nearly as well. I don't care about the suppression of revolutionary politics in Japan. Well, not much. But I want some kick ass-blood spurting. I got some of that, but the politics got in the way. I'm just kidding, it's actually quite nice to have some anti-authoritarian film with blood spurts, death from the plague, lots of fires, sword slashing, eye gouging, a shotgun that never needs to be reloaded, gratuitous nudity, and severed limbs. I don't think I saw any decapitations, and there should have been some. I enjoyed it, but it's not a classic like the first film.

All about Lily Chou-Chou starts out with a fairly gorgeous shot of a school boy listening to music on a portable cd player while bits of internet forum posts are intertitled, first in a gibberish of crazy ascii text, and then in Japanese along with English subtitles. This kept going for a while, and then the plot, such as it was, started. It's pretty much about a group of middle school kids, some of whom are obsessed with the fictional pop singer Lily Chou-Chou, and others are anti-social misfits. The main characters are the "cool" kid and the nerd who sort of does whatever the cool kid wants. Including pimping one of his schoolmates and being complicit in another one's rape. It's a pretty messed up film, but the music, mostly Debussy and J-rock-y stuff, is quite good. And there's the long bit about a trip to Okinawa that just seems completely unnecessary. I guess it does give some info on the cool kid's character, but it's quite long. Most of the film is quite beautiful, with great colors, and it's ultimately quite heartbreaking, but it could have used some trimming.

Saving Face is an ethnic romantic comedy. And yet, it's actually funny, and somewhat romantic. Of course, it's about Chinese lesbians in New York, which would be more interesting to me if I was like a lot of other heterosexual men and enjoyed that. There was a topless scene, which I had to rewatch with the director's commentary to see what the hell she had to say about it, because it's a woman who had this personal story she wanted to tell for a while. Because it just seemed completely gratuitous. The director said that she didn't want to just cover them up because that would suggest that she was ashamed by the lesbian sex and would make it more about the phone call received rather than the sex. I think it's actually a good point, and the l-shaped sheet is one of the most ridiculous clichés in history. To make it clear that neither character was ashamed of what they were doing, and that they never would have had sex under the sheets, at least not until the phone call, the nudity wasn't exploitative. Listening to that, I actually appreciated both the commentary and the movie more. It's full of all the clichés you want in a lesbian themed romantic comedy, but it's not nearly as bad as a lot of them.

Arcade Fire 5/4 at DAR Constituion Hall

Black Mirror
No Cars Go
Neighborhood #2 (Laika)
Haiti
Black Wave/Bad Vibrations
Neon Bible
Windowsill
The Well & the Lighthouse
Ocean of Noise
Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)
Neighborhood #3 (Power Out) ->
Rebellion (Lies)
Keep the Car Running
------------------------------
Intervention
Wake Up

About 80 minutes of fun. I apparently needed to listen to the new album a couple more times, preferably with the ability to, you know, learn the names of the songs. Luckily I was able to get all but one based on the lyrics, and I have Last.fm to link me to some Virginia girl's blog who was also there, and with her pointing out that the song I missed (due to my inability to write legibly in the dark without a solid thing to write on) was Haiti, I was able to get the setlist right.

As for the show itself, I was not incredibly impressed with the National, although they were good. I think something had to do with seeing hundreds of people milling around, and then walking into the theatre and seeing that the band was already playing. What the hell people? It's not like The National aren't known, I couldn't name a song or album before seeing them, although I did apparently listen to one of their songs back in January of 2006, but how can you just not even acknowledge that there's music that you paid an obscene amount of money to Ticketmaster to see? The National didn't seem particularly talkative, and I couldn't see the stage for a while, as some idiot sat down next to me (not her ticketed seats), and sat as far forward as she possibly could. Since it was just the National, and I was spending most of the set looking for my friends (again, stupid Ticketmaster stuck four people in four different areas... boo!), so I didn't entirely mind. But it's not like she had to sit there as far forward, considering the people on the other side were sitting down talking to the other people not in their assigned seats behind them. So after the set I went off to find my friends and realized the ushers were doing a completely inconsistent job of making people move.

I was a section over for the first two songs, and then in my assigned seat (after having to kick a very nice, if confused, girl out of my seat who had a ticket for a seat three rows behind mine) for the rest of the set. I had a pretty good view, completely unobstructed, which was very nice.

The set started with a video on one of the mini screens that were hooked up to cameras that were on some lit pillars on the front of the stage and a few other places as well. The video appeared to be Regine doing some televangelistic preaching, and the few lines I could pick up seemed to be about butts: butt kissing, possibly an enema, and maybe some other crazy things. It was a semi-absurd way to start the show, but starting up with Black Mirror meant that I was quickly pretty taken and enjoying myself. I wish I had had a chance to see them before they ended up playing this huge of a venue, because it seemed like they couldn't quite connect until Win invited everyone up after Tunnels, which just meant the last three songs of the set and the encore were absolutely electric. I know I wasn't the only one singing along at the top of my lungs for the last five songs (well... ok, for pretty much every song). And the segue from Power Out to Rebellion was the best thing I've seen live in a very long time. Well, at least since I saw Superchunk, but that's a rare thing nowadays. They took a slightly longer break than I was expecting between Intervention and Wake Up, and it seemed like Win had to be talked into playing it. Maybe he hasn't fully recovered from the surgery? Either way, he asked everyone to sing along to Wake Up, and the entire audience dutifully did so. It was quite a good way to end the set, and my only regret about the show was the completely exorbitant fees added on to the ticket price. I don't regret going, I regret Ticketmaster existing.

Destricted Cashback: Or How I Learned To Stop Masturbating and Love Porn Shorts

Well, the title isn't entirely right, considering I didn't entirely love the porn shorts, but I thought of it, and liked it, so you get it.

Destricted is a collection of seven short films by a variety of directors famous, infamous, and just plain who the hell is he. Apparently, the film was allowed to be shown in public in England due to the BBFC saying "it was a work of art not intended to arouse". So that's just a warning to all of you before you go out to watch it. The first short is Hoist, by Matthew Barney and was pretty much just him covered in mud masturbating on some construction equipment. And there were some plants in it as well. I'm sure there were deep, important meanings to it, but I'd be damned if I could get anything other than the immature out of it. The next short was House Call, by Richard Prince, which was a scene of a porn film with a different soundtrack. Again, utterly worthless. Especially due to it being what appears to be a crappy camera recording the porn film off an old VHS recording. Sync, by Marco Brambilla, was two minutes of quickly edited film shots showing sex with clips from both mainstream and porn films. I recognized some of them, but man, that was a lot of clips, and it was sort of disturbing. Extremely well-edited, and it's interesting that there was little difference between some of the mainstream and porn shots, except for their ability to show genitalia. Which is, sort of, the point of both the short film and porn in general. Impaled, by Larry Clark, is by far the best short in this collection, looking at how porn has changed young men's expectation of both sex in general and penis size. Not the most original of thoughts (anyone who's only seen porn with John Holmes or Ron Jeremy would have a pretty skewed concept of penis size), but it was done well, and actually made me sort of like Larry Clark. He still annoys me for Kids, Bully, and Ken Park, although Another Day in Paradise wasn't too bad. But he is just extremely voyeuristic when it comes to young kids, which is pretty disturbing for a 64 year old. Now, he's a talented filmmaker, it's just his desire to have young kids naked on screen is what bothers me. In this short, he has a series of young men talking about how porn has affected them, and then one is chosen to have anal sex for the first time, but he gets to choose from a series of porn stars. And then they have sex on camera. The conversations are really interesting. Death Valley, by Sam Taylor-Wood, is eight minutes of some dude masturbating in Death Valley. What's this trying to say? Who knows and who cares. Balkan Erotic Epic, by Marina Abramovic, is a look at the erotic aspects of Balkan folklore. It's the funniest, but also quite ridiculous. We Fuck Alone, by Gaspar Noe takes the most painful part of Irreversible (the strobe effects), and uses them for the whole film, which is about a young woman who masturbates while watching porn and then a young man who has sex with a sex doll while watching porn. I think he was trying to say something about how either we can connect by watching porn or that porn causes us to be even more isolated than we already would be. Which would have been nice to see without the goddamn strobe effects. None of these will probably ever be nominated for an award, except possibly "Most Masturbatory Short", and as a whole, it's like every other short film collection, some work far better than others, and it ends up being less than the sum of the parts.

Cashback, on the other hand, was nominated for an Oscar last year. It's about a wannabe artist who has an appreciation for the female form due to a Swedish exchange student who lived with his family but had a unique approach to drying off. In that she walks around naked after a shower. It's also about how mind-numbing the job of working in a grocery store is, and then time pauses and he starts to strip the women and draw them. The special effects are quite well done, and apparently all done in camera, which is even more impressive. There are a couple of wobbles among the women, but generally they stay pretty still. Admittedly, I don't see that many shorts in a year, but this was pretty inventive of a film. Definitely one of the better ones I've seen. Sean Ellis, the writer-director, has extended the film into feature length, which bothers me, due to it working quite well at its current 18 minute length. But he's definitely a talent to watch out for. And Sean Biggerstaff, the lead, was in two Harry Potter films. Which I find funny.

Plus, 300th post. Yayz!

Sword of the Beast, The Day of the Locust, & Inserts

Sword of the Beast is another anti-Samurai film like Harakiri, although this doesn't work nearly as well. I was pretty confused during part of it, because I thought one guy was another. I think I probably should have just given up and tried rewatching it from the beginning, but I didn't enjoy it enough to do so. But it could just have been that the film itself doesn't tell you what the hell is going on until pretty far in, and it's only 85 minutes long, so it's just sort of confusing for more than half, and then it starts tossing a bunch of rapes in there. Oh, wait, there are rapes all over this film. I think every female character gets raped or sexually assaulted in some way. Maybe that had something to do with my disliking of the film. Sorry, Criterion, I didn't like your choice of this film.

The Day of the Locust would have worked better without Karen Black in it. I just got so annoyed by everything she did. And I didn't really care for any of the characters besides William Atherton, but that's mainly because he's the only relatively sensible person in the entire film. Plus, it was long and Donald Sutherland played a character named Homer Simpson who was a religious nut. And the use of songs also grated on my nerves. I had this feeling that the last scene would have some type of effect on my ability to sleep, but nope, creepy people in white masks just aren't scary. You hear me, Michael Myers? I'm not afraid of you.

Inserts allows me to add a new actress to the list of Good Actresses Whose Labia I've Seen: Veronica Cartwright. Well, at least I think I saw it, it was pretty hairy, you know, down there. So that makes it four: Veronica Cartwright, Holly Hunter, Jenny Agutter, and Toni Collette. And, this made these two films into a mini-Golden age of Hollywood as seen through the filter of the decadent 70s (with references to Clark Gable) minifest. I foresee quite a few more of these little links in weeks to come. Inserts felt just like a play, with an establishing shot of the only actual set (besides the screening of the stag film that opens the film), but infinitely dirtier than anything I saw on stage. Well, actually I did see Metamorphoses in Cincinnati, and that included full frontal male nudity (which shocked the audience, but really, it wasn't like it was enormous or anything), and an actress who, unfortunately, ended up wearing a very short skirt (but panties) and facing in my direction quite often. I felt fairly uncomfortable, because I was basically at her crotch height for most of it, and if it wasn't eye contact, it was panty contact. Which is a lot funnier if you misinterpret that. It was a good play, though, as I'm a total mythology nerd. Anyway, Dreyfuss, Cartwright, Hoskins, and Harper were all quite good, but Stephen Davies just was eh. And the story itself was also eh, as it was about a former great director who couldn't make the transition to sound films, and then starts to make porn in his house with a heroin addict and a completely naive guy with Hoskins as the money behind it all, and Harper as the wanna-be starlet who doesn't know what inserts are. But the nudity was extensive and pretty much constant. And how can you go wrong with that? I'm still not sure if it was artish porn or pornish art, but either way, I've seen Veronica Cartwright's hoo-ha.