What is worse about the now-infamous Watchmen sex scene (watch it here), the distracting soundtrack or the explosive metaphor at the climax? Even if intended to be funny, and regardless of its (more-subtle) appearance in the graphic novel, the fire blast as stand-in for ejaculation is so cliché that it has no place in a story that means to shatter conventions. Plus, sexual metaphor is a little unnecessary in a film that already has a lot of nudity and a distinct moment of impotence. Especially at the end of a scene that is quite gratuitous compared to the comic’s depiction, that blast is more a symbol of how incorrectly handled Watchmen is than of the orgasms it’s intended to represent.
Between that shot in Watchmen and our recent list of sexiest non-sex scenes, we have had bad sex-scene clichés on the brain. So, to relieve us from the tension of list-making blue balls, we’ve decided to release this short burst of a list for discussion. Think we should have included saxophone-heavy soundtracks or any other cliché you’ve come to notice, let us know in the comments. …Read more
The American Medical Association Alliance is unhappy with the appearance of a specific cigarette brand (American Spirit Lights) in He’s Just Not That Into You and is filing an official complaint to Warner Bros. and Time Warner over the issue. Brooks Barnes reports in today’s New York Timesthat the advocacy group doesn’t care that smoking is shown in a bad light in the romantic comedy (a character gets dumped for lying about quitting smoking, an offense seen as even worse than cheating); they think any acknowledgment of the act of smoking cigarettes — even if nobody is actually seen smoking onscreen, a la HJNTIY — could influence young people to start smoking.
The smoking in movies issue has brought about much debate regarding censorship in the last few years, but I say bring on the smoking ban. And then Hollywood can get creative with hints at smoking the way it used to use innuendo and other fun tricks to imply sex. The irony would be that in the past, cigarettes were used as such implicit hints (see Love is a Many-Splendored Thing; Chinatown and just about any Hays Code-era film). I also say that this AMA organization should be happy that Hollywood is at least promoting a healthier brand of cigs, such as the all-natural American Spirits. Last year’s underrated male fantasy rom-com Definitely, Maybewent so far as to devote an entire flirting scene to why people should smoke the longer-lasting American Spirits than other brands. Funny, I don’t recall any complaints from the AMA regarding that movie (though here’s an interesting complaint from the New Mexico Media Literacy Project, at least).
Although this complaint wasn’t the biggest film blog topic of the day (that might be whining about Leo DiCaprio’s Neverending Storyremake), here are the few other responses I found around the net:
I got five minutes to talk to Werner Herzog (it felt like an hour at the time). He’s here with his new documentary on Antarctica, Encounters at the End of the World. But when you get five minutes with a living legend, you don’t want to spend it on a movie synopsis you can read online. So, we talk about life, risk and how his mom quit smoking.
“I love images of people smoking, and I think [others] find it attractive, even if they don’t smoke — they find it sexy in old movie images. It’s so iconic, not only for film noir but for old movies. What’s better than a femme fatale with a cigarette dangling out of her mouth? What better image?” — Bruce Goldstein, curator of the NYC Noir festival which begins this Friday at Film Forum, quoted by The Reeler.
“We discourage depictions of cigarette smoking in Disney, Touchstone and Miramax films. In particular, we expect that depictions of cigarette smoking in future Disney branded films will be non-existent.” — Disney president and CEO Robert Iger, quoted in a press release announcing that Disney will no longer include images of smoking in films released under the Disney label.
Other than that, today’s clip should speak for itself.
We’ve had a bit of trouble getting this episode to go through the iTunes feed, so we hope this re-post will fix the problem. The original post, with episode description and embedded player, is here.
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The American Medical Association Alliance is unhappy with the appearance of a specific cigarette brand (American Spirit Lights) in He’s Just Not That Into You and is filing an official complaint to Warner Bros. and Time Warner over the issue. Brooks Barnes reports in today’s New York Times that the advocacy group doesn’t care that smoking is shown in a bad light in the romantic comedy (a character gets dumped for lying about quitting smoking, an offense seen as even worse than cheating); they think any acknowledgment of the act of smoking cigarettes — even if nobody is actually seen smoking onscreen, a la HJNTIY — could influence young people to start smoking.
