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!