Funny, fascinating article about a literary writer who moonlights writing porn. Great quote:

Books in which children are abused, women murdered and men brutalised crowd the shelves of WH Smith [and the plots of Law & Order]. Books in which consenting adults enjoy each other for the healthy entertainment of literate wankers do not.

Interestingly, what is true about yaoi in Japan--"a field dominated by women, who approach any and every kink with gusto"--appears also to be true of the same market in Great Britain.

Speaking of consenting adults enjoying each other for the entertainment of literate wankers, the small, independent film Man, Woman and the Wall is one of the more enjoyable erotic thrillers I've seen in a while. Though it ends up being more clever and comic--on purpose--than "thrilling."

Start with The Conversation, Francis Ford Coppola's post-Watergate cult classic about a bunch of spies (led by Gene Hackman) planting bugs on each other. And then imagine the script getting mixed up with Revenge of the Nerds. And this is pretty much what you'd end up with.

Though the underlying theme of imagination and perception colliding with reality may be asking too much of this particular vehicle. Give it points for trying, though.

"AV" idol Aoi Sora is the object of the spying, so we can expect to literally see a lot of her. But then there are the eavesdroppers eavesdropping on the eavesdroppers. The creepiest of them gets his comeuppance--because who's doing the spying matters. Some voyeurs are way more equal than others.

As Tracy Lamb puts it, "When I reread [Twilight] more analytically, I realized that a guy sneaking into a girl's room without her knowledge could seem a little stalker-like. But the first two times I read it, it just seemed flattering."

Aoi Sora also shows up in Siren. It's more conventional erotic thriller fare, about a bunch of thieves who pull off the score of their lives, and then knock each other off one by one after a mysterious woman injects herself into the gang and reveals the disloyal darkness in each of their larcenous hearts.

Sora has that creepy "black widow" smile down ("We'll have sex and then I'll bite your head off"), but in this case she doesn't bring much to the role besides nudity. Siren struck me as an interesting idea that never made it beyond the outline stage. It needed either more substance or more sex.

The artsy-fartsy shakey cam also makes it well-nigh unwatchable. Hey, all you too-cool, art-house movie directors, please memorize this one word: "TRIPOD." Or this one: "STEADICAM." Or these two: "IMAGE STABILIZATION."

But as I observe here, the revenge drama--in which a vigilante or supernatural grim reaper deals out justice and balances the cosmic scales--is quite popular in Japan. The anime series Hell Girl is representative. Alas, the genre gets awfully repetitive. After a couple of episodes, seen one, seen them all.

Many commenters on Netflix recommending skipping the first volume of Hell Girl for exactly this reason. Maybe I'll take that advice and give it another shot.

Labels: books, japanese movie reviews, movie reviews, sex, social studies, yaoi