My song and video of the year is Sia’s Chandelier. A fascination with the video came first. Part dance, part gymnastics, 11-year-old Maddie Zieger’s remarkable performance is more about cathartic emotional expression than classical ballet.
His own video about how he put these moves together is full of unconventional instructions like ‘wounded dog’ and ‘robot bird’. Zieger got the call after Sia saw her on Dance Moms‘ reality show – a fame academy-style TV show featuring aspiring starlets. stroppy coaches and pushy parents.
The song itself initially sounds like the type of formulaic pop song Rihanna or Beyoncé might perform, not so surprising since Sia Furler has written tunes for both these artists (Diamonds and Pretty Hurts respectively). Continue reading →
IN THE REALM OF THE SENSES directed by Nagisa Oshima (Japan, 1976)
I know it’s a bit of a contrived exercise to write a post about these controversial sex movies together but since I’ve just watched them back to back I thought a carnal compare and contrast exercise might prove revealing.
In 9½ Weeks, we don’t get to see what Monty Python always used to call “the naughty bits” save for a brief glimpse of Elisabeth’s (i.e. Kim Basinger’s) “heart-shaped ass”. Anyone viewing this movie for technical tips on the art of ‘lurve’ might be led to believe that the removal of designer clothing is not necessary to have penetrative sex.
Mickey Rourke as John Grey looks impossibly slim and charming here, as charismatic as he was as the ‘motorcycle boy’ in Francis Ford Coppola’s Rumblefish. He may be a control freak but it’s not hard to see how Elisabeth would fall for his winning smile.
The kinky sex is what the reputation of this movie hangs on but it all looks pretty tame by modern standards. You could easily envisage the food porn scene being done as a parody in an Austin Powers film.
John gets Elisabeth to close her eyes and proceeds to spoonfeed her a range of food and drink items. A green chilli is included to spice things up, while guzzling milk (she swallows), getting sprayed by fizzy water and being smeared in sticky honey are non too subtle semen substitutes.
In terms of erotic, S & M content, you’ll find more danger and decadence in a Rihanna video than you get here, and much better dancing.
We see John in a shop, testing the swish on a riding crop and, since horses don’t figure much in his field of interests, we can assume he means to put this item to some other use. But crawling across the floor picking up cash is the limit of the degradation he submits Elisabeth to.
She is blindfolded twice but the first time she is reduced to a squirming mass of desire by blocks of ice and the second time she is felt up by a Latino hooker. On a scale of sadistic abuse it ranks fairly low and mostly requires that you read all the suggestive signals as we don’t see anything too risqué.
In The Realm Of The Senses was made a decade before but is ten times more daring and raunchy than anything the English filmmaker attempts.
Nothing here is left to the imagination. Not only do we see plenty of naked flesh and heaving buttocks but we get numerous graphic shots of non-simulated intercourse and fellatio.
You don’t want to know what happens next!
If there were gold medals for sexual endurance ( a ‘bonkothon’ perhaps) then Kichi (Tatsuya Fuji) would sweep the board. His stamina is something to behold; after each session he’s up and ready to go at it again with any female who crosses his path.
His principal partner is ex-prostitute turned house maid Sada Abe (Eiko Matsuda). Kichi pauses only to take on food and have a piss but Sada is so insatiable that even these activities are incorporated into the erotic repertoire. She dips finger snacks in her vagina and begs him to urinate into her.
Needless to say, both movies end badly for the copulators. Rourke gets ditched after his control urges get just too freakish. He tries to win Basinger back with a sob story of how he had to make his way in the world from humble beginnings but this fails to save his bacon(“It’s too late, John”).
Still, by the side of Kichi he gets off lightly. For one, he’s still alive to search for other chicks to dominate.
Kichi dies as he lives, in seeking one multiple orgasm too many he is accidentally strangled during some frenzied lovemaking. Sada needs a keepsake and in the film’s ‘look away now’ moment cuts off his penis with a meat cleaver.
Both movies explore and exploit the notion that , for sex connoisseurs, fornication has to have an edge of danger and decadence to keep it exciting. To maintain the desired level of intensity the sex games need to become more and more daring. As a consequence there is the ever-present possibility of exploitation and abuse.
Perhaps there’s something to be said for the humble missionary position after all.
Every so often a song comes out that becomes the bane of my life.
Try as I might to avoid it, the incessant radio plays mean I keep hearing it at the swimming pool, dentist and supermarket – places where I am a captive audience.
It’s the musical equivalent of a turd that you can’t flush away.
The offending tune, this time, is Up In The Sky by a Swiss band called 77 Bombay Street named after a home in Adelaide where the Buchli family lived for two years.
Three of the four members are part of a family of nine which raises the spectre of one or all of the other six deciding to follow in their brothers’ footsteps.
They dress like extras in Sergeant Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band and the relentless jollity of this tune together with lyrics of mind-numbing banality made me hate it on first hearing. Continue reading →
David Bowie is 65 today. He shares his birthday with Elvis Presley (who would have been 78) and Stephen Hawking (who is 70).
Cue corny + tenuous links: Elvis and Bowie helped define rock while Hawking and Bowie are both fascinated by time and space. (Sorry – I couldn’t resist!)
For what it’s worth, this is my list of what I rate as his ten best albums and the ones that will guarantee his immortality:
1. Hunky Dory (1971)
2. The Rise And Fall of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars (1972)
3. Low (1977)
4. Heroes (1977)
5. Aladdin Sane (1973)
6. Station To Station (1976)
7. Scary Monsters And Super Creeps (1980)
8. The Man Who Sold The World (1970)
9. Space Oddity (1969)
10.Let’s Dance (1983) Continue reading →
As Guardian critic Mark Lawson has argued, even if such a watershed were to be strictly imposed, the principle is ultimately meaningless now that viewers young and old are able to watch shows on their computers whenever they want.
In the UK, since the days of Lord Reith, the BBC has always taken the moral high ground and stood for their notion of decency and good taste. If they slipped up crusaders like Mary Whitehouse were on their backs.
Nowadays, what Lawson calls the on-screen “slaying, swearing or shagging” may still occur after 10pm but anyone from the age of 9 to 90 with an internet connection and an ounce of curiosity can be ‘corrupted’ the following morning. Continue reading →
My song and video of the year is Sia’s Chandelier. A fascination with the video came first. Part dance, part gymnastics, 11-year-old Maddie Zieger’s remarkable performance is more about cathartic emotional expression than classical ballet.
David Bowie is 65 today. He shares his birthday with Elvis Presley (who would have been 78) and Stephen Hawking (who is 70).
The current 
