A return to core values

Between last week's visit home with family and the past few days indulging a consuming fetish for national politics, we've been too distracted to think much about sex and/or movies.

Time to put a stop to that! This weekend we'll finally catch up with Vicky Cristina Barcelona, the latest from Woody Allen and, from some of the buzz of it, a likely candidate for the next CineKink Tribute. Or, at very worst, a little time spent in the dark watching pretty people making out in pretty places:



Also on deck for tonight, the next-to-last installment of Swingtown, the series that seems to get better and better with each episode, even as fears of its imminent demise continue to swirl.

Granted, that's a lot of laboring for one weekend, but hopefully we'll get through it!

Sugasm returns

The best of this (er) week’s blogs by the bloggers who blog them. Highlighting the top 3 posts as chosen by Sugasm participants. Want in Sugasm #145? Submit a link to your best post of the week using this form. Participants, repost the link list within a week and you’re all set.

This Week’s Picks
Bush Rides Again: Birth Control Defined as “Abortion”?
“The reason you tweak laws, redefining them or broadening their definitions, is to create the opportunity for a legal climate in which challenges may better succeed.”
First Time For Everything: A Polyamorous Relationship
“The only real trouble with being a triad came from the world around us.”
Sex Work And Compassion: Panty Tree
“I will never feel shame for being a sex worker.”

Mr. Sugasm Himself
Sugar Bank

Editor’s Choice
I Meet the Business End of Citibank’s Anti-Adult Business Policy

More Sugasm
Join the Sugasm

See also: Fleshbot’s Sex Blog Roundup each Tuesday and Friday.

Erotic Writing and Experiences
Dreams
Needs. I has them.
On Feeling June Cleaverish
Saturday Night
Strippers and race
The Sunday Squirt
Under the Covers
Whenever we’re apart…

Sex Humor
Impertinent Question: Do You Name Your Genitals?

BDSM & Fetish
Anatomy of a Mindfuck
Brutal caning punishments for school girls’ filthy behaviour
Caning; La marca del deseo.
Claire Adams Does Some Wonderful Shibari Rigging In This Scene From The Whipped-Pussy Archives
Mz Berlin (Me!) & Madison Young In Bondage Slave Training
Ring Around the Collar
Two school girls in uniform spanked and caned over the bench.
Witch Stories
Whoring Hubby Spanked - F/m Spanking Pix

Sex Advice
Ask Miss Bliss-My Girlfriend’s Using Coke And Lying About It
Controlling the Urge to Ejaculate
How To Pick A Dildo
Pull My Hair, Slap Me Around - A How-To Guide To Rough Sex, Part 1

Thoughts on Sex and Relationships
Catalina loves Masculinity
It’s been a while - lots of stuff going on!
Satine Phoenix Says, “Save thousands on therapy, go to your reunion!?”
Wax On; Wacks Off

Sex News, Reviews & Interviews
Fetish Model Toxxxy In Cotton Panties Smearing Jam All Over Herself
FunseXXXtoys Public Baptismal
The Jollie Review For Babeland
Sex on Spout
Sgt Major Makes Jade Marxxx Beg For Pain On Backdoor Bondage
Spanking interview with Thomas S. Roche

NSFW Pics, Videos & Audio
Bedroom Radio #21: Sinclair Sexsmith of Sugarbutch.net
Elaisted is to Corset Photography what Phelps is to Swimming!
Photo Essay

Sex & Politics
The Dilemma of Jefferson: My Dissenting Voice
Friends of Jefferson, Spanking for Justice!

Peter Greenaway's naughty bits

While we loooved The Draughtman's Contract back in our full-on film school days, we've been loathe for a current revisit, fearing it might not hold up to our one-time adulation.

Karina Longworth recently took the film on, however, providing commentary for Kevin Lee's video essay series on the alleged "1,000 Greatest Movies of All Time". Her findings? Before placing the film in context of other 1982 cultural phenomena, Duran Duran included, she laughingly pronounces the movie's message as nothing much more than "well, people who wore corsets liked to fuck."

We'll have to take another look!

Yes, again, please - we will take another!

Even though it was first released in 1997, Preaching to the Perverted was an obvious choice to open the first-ever CineKink NYC back in 2003, where it took home one of our first-ever Audience Choice Awards.

From British director Stuart Urban, the movie follows a fresh-faced infiltrator who is dispatched by moral crusaders in Parliament to gather evidence against fetish clubs in the United Kingdom, where many of the saucier activities are illegal. Thrust into a shiny latex world of clubs and parties, he instead - of course! - becomes infatuated with Tanya Cheex, leader of the fetish scene on both sides of the Atlantic. While he wants her to calm down, become "normal" and avoid going to jail, she wants to pervert him. Who will win? We can only say "hmmm..."

While it's one of the few wholeheartedly S/M-positive films created to date and a favorite recommendation, until now only a trimmed-up R-rated version has been available on DVD in the US.



But brilliant news! Featuring interview extras by film critic Alonso Duralde with the beyond-sexy star of the movie, Guinevere Turner, there's a new version out that is touted as unrated and looks to have a likely-key three minutes returned to its running time.

Starting today, freshly available on DVD... Preaching To The Perverted: Guinevere Turner Signature Edition!

It's 10 pm. Do you know where your children are?

Amazing but true, but give the Midwest Teen Sex Show a few key concepts, some colorful props and several feet of rope and they manage to convey in the space of several minutes what it takes many a fetish-friendly documentarian - self included - a good half hour to express.

Herewith MTSS Episode #18 (Fetishes)



(Though we know they're kidding, our internal safety nazi wishes they'd spent a wee bit of that time literally underscoring the unwisdom of leaving anyone in bondage unattended. Probably the kids just get it?)

Oh, well, as long as it's not titillating.

Kevin Smith's upcoming latest, Zack and Miri Make a Porno, in which two friends attempt to overcome debt(!) by entering the adult film world, just had its rating reduced from an NC-17 to an R, after an appeal made by the director to the MPAA.

Acknowledging in an AP report that the more restrictive rating would have been "commercial suicide,"

Smith said the MPAA ratings board objected to two sex scenes involving co-stars Jason Mewes and Katie Morgan. After the movie's initial NC-17 rating, Smith said he trimmed those scenes as far as he was willing to go but was unable to convince the board to lower the rating.

"They felt it was rather sexually graphic. My point is, it was comically graphic. All the sex in the movie with the exception of one scene is very cartoonish, very campy," Smith said. "It wasn't designed to titillate."

The MPAA appeals board apparently agreed with Smith's arguments, which he presented on Tuesday. No word yet when/if he'll get an official thumbs-up on an early teaser for the film - see below - which the MPAA ordered yanked from its internet-only release back in June.

Come tryst with us!

CineKink's Tawdry Summer Tryst!

Tuesday, August 5th - 8 pm
The Red Room @ KGB Complex
85 E. 4th Street (@ 2nd Ave)

It's our fifth anniversary and we'll be mixing it up at The Red Room to celebrate! Cozy up to a new best friend, sink back into air-conditioned comfort and heat up with CineKink's anniversary revisit with a few of our favorite, recent hook-ups ...

TEAT BEAT OF SEX (Signe Baumane)
Three animated lectures on sex.

SALT (Campbell Farquhar)
A shared passion for food - and other things.

HIGHWAY AMAZON (Ronnie Cramer)
A meet up with bodybuilder Christine Fetzer, who earns her living traveling the country and wrestling men on hotel room beds.

IN YER ROOM (Bobby McNasty)
Ol' Blue Eyes never sang it quite like this.

THE PARTY (Jessica Rotondi)
A guy drags his girlfriend to a craigslist "Make-out Party," but soon discovers it wasn't quite what he expected.

HIGH INFIDELITY (David Hansen)
The filmmaker examines his own ideas about sex and love by venturing into the world of swingers, where partners are interchangeable and have virtually nothing to hide.

and

THE GOOD GIRL (Erika Lust)
Alex is a high-powered exec who thinks about sex a lot, but rarely acts upon her desires and never takes the initiative. Until now, that is.

Cocktails to follow, downstairs at KGB Bar.

More info and advance tickets - highly recommended - are here!

Sex on Spout

It's summertime and - much to our delight! - they definitely seem to have sex on the brain over at SPOUTBlog!

Just today, there's a round-up of The 10 Best Masturbation Scenes that will first have you questioning if there's even that many. Then have you rushing to comment on your favorite glaringly obvious omission. (Um, hello. Secretary?!?)

Beyond that, we've been horribly remiss in mentioning the blog's weekly posts by our provocative friend, Lauren Wissot, who began writing regularly for Spout back in June: "We wanted to call her column 'Art Films To Jerk Off To,' but in the end that might be too limiting––after all, who’s to say what qualifies as art?"

Since then, Lauren's missives on the libidinous in indie and mainstream cinema have touched upon such natural candidates as David Lynch, the S/M classic Maitresse and the Five Unsexiest Movies About Sex: The Breillat Awards(!!). And they've incorporated some unlikely subjects as well, from the consideration of Charlie Chaplin as sexy rogue to the BDSM underpinnings of Hitchcock's Marnie:

She was “always pulling her skirt down over her knees as if there were a national treasure,” Marnie’s lecherous employer-turned-victim Mr. Strutt mutters at the beginning of Hitch’s classic, introducing us to Hedren’s character as a trobbing cock-tease – who, of course, needs to be punished like the naughty little girl she really is deep down inside. Enter Connery’s controlling Master Rutland, immaculately dressed in suit and tie (I love a man in a uniform!), a big bad wolf smile on his face as he eavesdrops on Strutt’s report to the police. Is there any doubt that this is the perfect square-jawed, hairy-chest daddy for the B&D job?

We imagine she does - but we can't wait to see if Lauren shares our take on The Sound of Music!