The world at my feet

I like Almodóvar, I’ve seen all his films. I suggest you to get his two first movies: “Pepi, Luci, Bom and Other Girls on the Heap” and “Labyrinth of Passion”. They are two mad, outrageous, entertaining cult movies that fully express the free spirit of La Movida Madrileňa (The Madrid Movement), the sociocultural movement that took place in Madrid after the death of Francisco Franco. In the last two decades, he has had a very enviable career. Currently, he is working on a new film, “Broken Embrace”, that has a typical Almodóvar plot: a plastic surgeon seeks revenge against his daughter’s rapist. The shooting will start in May and the protagonists will be his muse Penelope Cruz, Lluis Olmar, Blanca Portillo and Jose Luis Gomez. Meantime, the fans can already follow the first phases of it on his blog (in Spanish, English and French), that contains pictures, videos and snippets of Almodovar’s world. It’s not a new thing, blogs are popular with many directors by now, but good Pedro’s movies are always a guarantee. Then, it doesn’t seem the posts are written by a ghost writer. It is not a trifling matter.

Photo El Mambo Taxi 

John Holmes, the most famous male porn star of all time, died on 13 March 1988. The Spanish daily El Pais dedicated a commemorative article to the death of this pop icon. Why is John Holmes a pop icon? For a start, I take myself as an example: I have never seen a porn film, but I know John Holmes. He’s a pop icon because has inspired books, songs (like John Holmes by the Italian band Elio e le Storie Tese) and movies like Boogie Nights and Wonderland. At last, a pop icon usually doesn’t have a long and quiet life. He died of Aids at age 44 and had a fairly full life : drug, alcohol, prison and naturally much, much sex.

The El Pais article tells a few little known anecdotes. He was noticed by a photographer standing next to him at a restroom urinal (porn has its talent-scouts as well..) and in his career appeared in gay films too. He was a gigolo, a stripper, a stool pigeon. For his cocaine addiction, that forced him to snort a line every 15 minutes, he started to keep the underworld and was involved in the Wonderland murders. The rest is story, or rather,  is myth. Little wonder that our times have as a myth a man famous only for his penis. After all, the Greeks already venerated a certain Priapus.

A few months ago, the Chinese government launched a moralizing campaign against erotic shows. Now it prohibits the sale of videos containing “elements of mystery and horror” that can compromise “children’s and teens’ character formation”. The government also exhorts the producers to remove horror elements in the movies under production as well. Last May, Beijing banned horror comics, become a must among Chinese teens. The initiative was taken following the big success of Death Note, a comic book that told in detail any type of awful death, pledging that if the reader had written a person’s name in it, the poor thing would have died within a few days. I hope this comic never ends up in the hands of my ex.

Photo by taichi_UK

A lot of Dutch people will be glued to the TV on 23 February. The public television will beam Deep Throat, the most famous pornographic movie of all time. The manifesto of oral sex, realised in 1972, will be the pièce de résistance of the programme Sex and Drugs. In the liberal Netherlands Deep Throat is considered a landmark of the big screen and, in a way, this film is really a milestone for the big impact had on the society. I suggest you to see Inside Deep Throat, a very interesting documentary that reveals what went on behind the scenes and describes how the porn came in within the American intelligentsia and the star system. It also digs in the mafia business that gravitated around the film. So, Deep Throat is much more than a simple skin-flick but, sincerely, I don’t believe it’s right to broadcast it on a public channel, where a kid can also see it. Then, to tell you the truth: free drugs, free prostitution, free porn movies on TV..what zest is there to live in the Netherlands?

Photo by MissK Lorina