Getting ready to truss that turkey?

Just in time for your Thanksgiving preparations, the Two Knotty Boys show you how to perform the task single-handedly!



(via Viviane's Sex Carnival, where there's also a fun link up to a turkey bondage - aka shiburkey - photo-shoot)

Have a splendid Thanksgiving, all!

Taking it to Washington...CineKink: DC!!

Make plans to join us and tell all of your friends... CineKink has packed up the car and is heading to the nation's capitol with two nights of double-headers!

Celebrating and exploring a wide diversity of sexuality, the films and videos in these sex-positive and kink-friendly showcases range from documentary to drama, camp comedy to hot porn, mildy spicy to quite explicit - and everything in between.

And, then...we party!

On Friday, November 21 at 8:00 pm, the program is "Give & Take," a kinky collection of short films and videos that probe, prod and play with the dynamics of sexual power and release, control and submission.

And on Saturday, November 22 at 8:00 PM, "Mix, Match & Mingle" is a round-up of two-somes, three-somes, four-somes and more-somes, featuring short works that look at the delights - and some dilemmas - of moving beyond monogamy.

Taking place at The Crucible (1816 Half Street SW, Washington, DC), tickets for each screening are $10/advance and $15/door; tickets for each screening plus after-party are $30/advance and $40/door.

Advance tickets are available at via The Crucible.

For more information and the full program line-up, visit here!

More grist for the mill.

With news that Basil Tsiokos, long-time artistic director of NewFest: The New York Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, & Transgender Film Festival, had recently stepped down from his post, we had more of that earth-shifting-beneath-us sense that the film festival world is truly changing.

But even as he underscores the pressing festival financial realities that are only worsening in today's economic climate, writing in an indieWIRE piece, FIRST PERSON | Basil Tsiokos: The Challenging State of Film Fests Today, he also offers some profound reminders of what draws many of us to this endeavor in the first place:

...the suggestion has grown that LGBT festivals have become increasingly irrelevant, especially in major metropolitan centers with large LGBT communities. What this ignores is that identity based niche fests serve a need beyond simply showcasing what used to be called "positive images." Certainly, there are more LGBT images readily available in 2008 than there were when NewFest was founded in 1988 - but even then, when audiences were starved for representation, NewFest served another, more critical function: providing a communal public social setting where LGBT individuals could celebrate or debate LGBT films together with other LGBT audience members.

Substitute "kink" or "sex-positive" for LGBT and you not only get to the core of CineKink but, moving beyond mission statements, you land upon the aspect that energizes and inspires us to keep it growing. It's an amazing thrill to bring CineKink's films and filmmakers together with our audiences, to feel the buzz of "like-mindedness" as they experience a work together--or to speak with a director right after she's had her work screened to a crowd that so apparently gets it.

We'll keep those moments in mind over the next several months of preparing for the next CineKink NYC, most especially while keeping an eye on the budget and taking on the anxious task of drumming up financial wherewithals.

And we'll wish Basil the very best of luck in his next adventures.

(via Film Festival Secrets)

A slight reprieve

As noted in last week's CineKink update, we'd been so transfixed in an election-related fog the past several weeks that we lost sight of the fact that our final deadline for submissions was rapidly approaching.

So, to accommodate everyone who might be in a similar frame of mind, anyone who might wish to buy a little extra time, the LAST call for entries to CineKink NYC has been extended, with a new "final-final" (really!) deadline set for Saturday, November 29th. (Really!)

For more information and to download an entry form, go right here.

And do it soon now!

Farewell, Pioneer...

Somehow escaping notice in our post-election haze was the closing of the Pioneer Theater, a venerable Lower East Side institution and home to our monthly CineKink screening series for a brief but happy duration.

Reportedly another victim of rising real estate costs in the neighborhood, the theater held its final screening on Halloween night and a send-off gathering last Friday. While we didn't make it to the last shindig, we're proud to have a prominent presence in the Pioneer's round-up of testimonials, an inscription left by one of our movie-goers, Maritess, posted here verbatim since we're not sure how long it will last anywhere else:

Saw "Annie Sprinkle's Amazing World of Orgasm" in the "Cine-kink" festival with other "cutting edge" films like..."My Pussy is Magic" (WTF?) and other questionably artistic films. Thank God for the Pioneer Theater, this was Sprinkle's NYC movie premiere, which is surprising because it was such a great film, made in 2004.

A few of the artists in the festival (except for Annie Sprinkle--boo!) held a Q and A afterwards, which was amusing because the audience was clearly stimulated, people shifting in seats, couples making out.While in this state, I thanked GOD for the surprising lack of super-creepy guys watching this flick alone, the audience was comprised of intellectual pervs like me, with a facade of decorum and sophistication, masking public porno watching with academic curiosity.

Although it is a tiny theater, the seats were in great shape, cushy, clean, so unlike what I would expect a clearly non profit independent theater to be like.

The staff is soooo nice, laid back and friendly. Even the concession stand looks friendly, ,mostly because it is not the cookie cutter concession stands of the corporate movie cineplexes. Hooray for independent film houses!

Hooray--and adieu!

Lady Heather alert!

Tonight's episode of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation will reprise one of our favorite prime-time characters, Lady Heather, the mysterious sometimes love interest of the tortured Gil Grishom.

Are they meant to be? You can weigh in on the program's message-board--but first, check out this CBS-compiled retrospective:



Oh, yeah--and tune in tonight. Soon, even! (Though you can probably also find the episode here...)

All of that...AND a unicorn?!?

Somehow in the frenzy leading up to Tuesday's presidential election, we missed this item on Huffington Post from our friend, Theresa Darklady Reed, in which she points us to a prediction from the extreme religious right that an Obama presidency will lead to a nation with unfettered access to pornography.

Quoting from a Focus on the Family screed obstensibly written in the future, the as-yet hypothetical Letter from 2012 in Obama's America, the many potential dangers awaiting us down the road include a new, liberal Supreme Court that has :

... applied more broadly the “Miller test” from the 1973 decision in Miller v. California, by which a work could not be found obscene unless “the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, and scientific value.” In the 2011 decision, the court essentially found that any pornographic work had some measure of “serious artistic value,” at least according to some observers, and thus any censorship of pornographic material was an unconstitutional restriction on the First Amendment.

But wait--there's more! As "...all city and county laws restricting pornography were struck down by this decision ...pornographic magazines are openly displayed in gas stations, grocery stores and on newsstands (as they have been in some European countries for several years)."

And, natch, the court also eliminated all FCC restrictions and, thusly, "...television programs at all hours of the day contain explicit portrayals of sexual acts."

We might observe that a mere "D" by a leader's name doesn't necessarily translate into a laissez faire approach to the exchange of ideas--President Clinton was the one who signed the Communications Decency Act into law back in 1996, afterall. But if we listen to those with a proclaimed relationship to the powers on high, free speech advocates need just kick back a bit and wait for the flood-gates to open.

A moment.

We took yesterday off as a time to absorb and reflect upon the momentous event of Tuesday's presidential election. (And, well, yeah, nurse a bit of a hangover.)

Among our favorite remembrances, this image from Viviane's Sex Carnival, who braved the hordes and smut of Times Square for a slice of history.



The rest of Viviane's photos are here.

Oh, yeah, happy belated birthday.

We've been so pins-and-needles over tomorrow's election thing, we're totally late to the party for the 40th birthday of the MPAA's rating system. Oh, well--it's not like they bothered to show up for our 40th shindig.



Founded in 1968, largely as a way for industry to stave off government intervention in the movie business, the ratings were/are intended as a way to help parents decide which titles are appropriate for the precious youngsters, but have tended to be a bit, er, capricious over the years.

In a fitting birthday gift to the MPAA, Defamer has come up with a very special list of questionable rulings made over the years, "40 Reasons to Wish the MPAA Ratings System an Unhappy 40th Birthday."

Be sure to check out the rest, but just a few of the hits:

Boys Don't Cry: Threatened with an NC-17 for a lingering shot of a topless Chloe Sevigny experiencing an orgasm, but allowed to keep the climactic rape scene and gunshot to Brondon Teena's head.

and, of course...

Waiting For Guffman: A classic example of the "Fuck Rule"; a Christopher Guest mockumentary with no sex or violence but featuring the F-word used one too many times in an actor's audition using the scene from Raging Bull. Its R-rating was upheld on appeal. (You can use "fuck" in a non-sexual way up to four times in and retain a PG-13 — maybe.)

And in an interesting coincidence (or is it?!), Zack and Miri Make a Porno, which barely squeaked away from it's own NC-17 rating, opened on the MPAA's birthday to not-so-spectacular results. At work might have been a skittering away from the the film's title and subject matter by mainstream newspapers and venues... though several reports underlined the odd hypocrisy of limiting the sex-themed feature while glorifying such torture-porn fare as Saw V.

Then again, going back to Defamer, it could just be bad marketing on the part of the distributing Weinstein brothers. Shocking, indeed!