Taming the Tittering Tourists: 50 SHADES OF GREY, 9 1/2 WEEKS, EXIT TO EDEN, SECRETARY + SHE DEMONS, Franco, Bunuel, Josef von Sternberg, Alain Robbe-Grillet

Most fans of 50 Shades of Grey--the kinky BDSM bestseller by E.L. James--were wincing (and not in a good way) at last week's debut of the forthcoming film adaptation's conventional, fashion mag-slick trailer - "I didn't like it the the sixth time, when it was called 9 1/2 Weeks!" But no one asked the big question: What's wrong with cinema that it can't seem to capture the sickly turn-ons of a good bondage book? When I saw and heard the conventional...

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OBVIOUS CHILD, GINGER SNAPS and Your Reproductive Lunar Cycle

Even in our modern age of 'chick-flicks' and 'rom-coms' that allegedly delves deep into women's sexual trials and truths, there are some issues which never get treated 'openly,' i.e. brazenly and even-keeled, like: female orgasms, menstruation, and unplanned pregnancies that end not in hasty marriage or adoption but abortion, done without guilt or shaming yet not making light of it either. The censorship codes of our grandparents post-code film die...

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Medusae of Asia: THE SHANGHAI GESTURE (1941), RAIN (1932)

Pre-code neo-Jacobean Tragedy's final venomous wheeze, THE SHANGHAI GESTURE (1941) sinks its cobra fangs deep into the mongoose of censorship, self-abasement, and social taboo, to levels only Josef Von Sternberg dared go, Josef, wrangler of Marlene! Bunuel and Chaney but coarse brutes by comparison. Exploring an array of sins that the Breen Office demanded over 30 script revisions to obscure, it stars Dietrich's old 'sewing circle' pal, Ona Munsen...

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Two hearts stab as one: Brian De Palma + Dario Argento (a Reptile Dysfunction)

The critics say they're indebted to Hitchcock for their tropes, obsessions and subjects, but what I really see in Italian horror director Dario Argento and Italian-American suspense director Brian De Palma is a bizarre psychic twin connection, a shared reptile dysfunction that springs from Catholicism, ancient Rome, and the kind of scopophilia-driven sexual obsession (a good genre director must be obsessive, otherwise why bother?), all mingled into...

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