Damn you, London 2012! Since you’ve started the amount of visitors has severely decreased, I noticed the other day – right after posting my Hunger Games review. Another ‘discovery’ was that in the previous week, the movies with the less innocent titles were looked at most (along with anything to do with Marina and the Diamonds). So by way of comeuppance, here’s my review of The Year of the Sex Olympics.
“This is the year of the Sex Olympics. Sex Olympics year.” In a nondescript but nevertheless bleak future, TV is the new King – or rather God. Thus spoke Nigel Kneale, for it is he who has written this feature. Movie might’ve been the wrong word as Sex Olympics was written for “Theatre 625”, a series of feature-length one-offs and movielike plays made for BBC2. I can’t help but wonder how the announcer in 1968 must have sounded when introducing this particular programme. Anyway, don’t get too excited: there’s no nudity and the sex is hinted at, but never much “on screen”. Some sounds and images may look erotic, but that’s mainly your dirty mind at work. We do get a look at the shows “Artsex” and “Sportsex” being made. The former looks very much like the tamer movies of Betty Page, the latter is a competition wherein couples take part. They are the Sex Olympics.
According to Kneale, Sex Olympics was a comment on both recent developments in television and a change in sexual morals. “At the time, the population explosion was a very hot topic and it was also the time when hair was on and people were saying ‘let’s put porn on stage’. So I put these ideas together and took them to their logical conclusion, 
using porn as a socially beneficial element that turns people into the ultimate passive audience by hooking them on a substitute for sex rather than the real thing and so keeping the population down.” (Video Watchdog n°47)
Eerily enough, what Kneale described looks surprisingly a lot like Big Brother – and don’t forget that in almost each country this “reality” show had at least one edition where one or two contestants stepped over sexual lines. In a way, the ‘sick’ thing is that I wanted to get past the sex olympics scenes to get to the couple that decides to get away from the real world to survive on a remote island – so very much like Survivor then – because that part of the feature seemed (and proved to be) ‘meatier’. That the couple does so is because an incident proves the test audience (which is always keenly monitored by the tv producers) reacts more to the incident than the actual show. They believed 
that this was because there was something hard-wired in their brains that triggered the impulses, something “emotional”. Emotions and impulses and all the words relating to them have been abandoned in this society and therefore almost forgotten in favour of some “new speak” (a yuppie-like language). But if emotions spark the viewers’ interest, then let’s bring them back. In a way, the title of “Sex Olympics” isn’t too odd: this past fortnight, there’s a good chance you’ve been glued to your television (or computer), watching a sport you’d never heard of and that won’t get any more broadcasts until Rio 2016.
The biggest drawback of the DVD is that the original footage of the show has been lost and all that remains is a B&W master. At the time, it wouldn’t have mattered much as most viewers didn’t have a colour set, but especially the outfits of Misch (Vickery Turner) seem to lack some colourfulness in their fifty shades of grey. (I believe this pun grants me an internship on Bargain Hunt.) Now this feature looks a bit like the episodes of 
The Avengers, not the Emma Peel era but the Cathy Gale episodes – a very peculiar B&W combination that instantly makes you pinpoint it as “1960s television”. I even spotted the occasional reflection of a camera during the show.
Never mind all that, this was all written by the same pen as Quatermass (the movies as well as the tv series) and a couple of cult movies. At the time, The Year of the Sex Olympics was well received and it’s not hard to guess why. This is a take on an Orwellian tv society set in another “Brave New World”. (That book was also sparked by questions on sexuality, but the main difference is that Huxley wrote his work at the end of the pre-code movies whereas Kneale wrote his script at a time the flower power generation was very much alive.)
Speaking of the script, that is included as an extra on the BFI release. It also features a feature commentary by Brian Cox (who played one of the producers) and an introduction by Kim Newman. If you wonder why a horror lover introduces The Year of the Sex Olympics, then stop wondering: once Ugo (Leonard Rossiter) and Deanie (Suzanne Neve) are on the island, it soon dawns upon them that the producers 
didn’t keep their promises (no suprises for us, 21st century connaisseurs of reality tv) and that living on their own (accompanied by a little girl) brings back a lot of emotions, which are quite frightening if you’re not used to them. (“I think that’s called despair,” a tv producer notes while observing the footage.) It wouldn’t be a dystopian tale if it was gearing towards a happy end, so expect none. Sex Olympics may start with some playful cuddling, but ends with something on the other side of the scale.
The bad news is that the DVD seems to be out of print, but that may be one of the reasons you can watch this on YouTube. Look up the title and watch it. I’ve already seen it, so I can go back to London 2012. Women’s handball and men’s 10m platform diving are up next!
If ever this blog tended to persuade you I was too busy to write a decent review, it was nothing more than a lie. Compared to these weeks, I mean. Do not forsake me, oh my darlings, the Avenue will be updated with brand new review, albeit it not regularly. However, in an attempt to not make this blog look cobwebbed, the Avenue will find a creative way to continue regular postings: there will be 7 posts in June and the first one will be in just five days (1 June). Find out more then… for now, a brand new mini-review.
ord is an unmissable movie. Even if you don’t like old movies but you’re addicted to contemporary shows like Castle, this movie is great viewing as well as a historical lesson as to where this sort of series got its inspirations. No, The Ex-Mrs. Bradford can’t be compared to the best of the Thin Man series (which is still so watchable they’re about to remake the film), but do not forget that not all the films in the Thin Man series were masterpieces: it may not be as good as the original film, but it is better than a lot of its sequels. Too bad then The Ex-Mrs. Bradford never got the same status. This is not a movie by MGM, Powell’s usual studio: it’s produced by RKO Pictures. Powell briefly abandoned his regular studio because he liked the script and wanted to work with Jean Arthur again. The result shows this was not a bad decision.
If there’s one word that manages to link this review to the previous one (In Time) and the next (Crazy, Stupid, Love.), then it’s this one: climax. Having a climax (or anticlimax) is essential to a film, but finding one that doesn’t damage the film but actually lifts it up to a higher dimension is quite a quest. Let’s start with the bad news: Confessions has a climax that ruined the film for me. “Ruined” may be a big word, but it did manage to turn this film from the best film of 2011 to a possible contender for that title.
Society) but because she confesses her little daughter didn’t drown in a pool as was suggested. She has clear proof that the girl was murdered and not just murdered: the culprits are two pupils from that classroom. She only hints at who the pupils are, constantly referring to them as A and B, but soon everyone knows who they are. And even if they didn’t, at that point the teacher reveals that the milk she distributed to everyone at the start of the lesson was lovely healthy milk for everyone, apart from the cartons of the culprits: their milk was spiked with HIV-infected blood. You don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to work out that the two pupils who are suddenly vomiting milk are very likely the murderers.
What makes this film outstanding is the level of depth that’s been given to those characters. The second confession comes from a girl from the class, who may or may not have feelings for Shuya (a.k.a. A) and we learn more about Shuya, herself and the other pupils through her story. Next up are the mother of “B” and Shuya himself. Each story doesn’t just keep the film going, it reveals more about the people. Confessions is based on the novel Kokuhaku by Kanae Minato. Director Tetsuya Nakashima (who also made the movie Kamikaze Girls) is also responsible for translating the book into a movie. (And one with quite a British tone: the soundtrack has prominent tracks by Boris and Radiohead.)
Not only were they not the most convincing effects, they also didn’t fit in with the rest of the movie. More than once, the director chooses to hold back the pace of the film by using a slow motion technique that’s reminiscent of Blue Velvet‘s opening scene. In the rest of the film, it helps the film become more beautiful, but in the climax the slow motion – in combination with the effects – actually damage the scene. Had the director been content with only half of the effect used in the film (in order to keep this review spoiler-free, I won’t reveal which part), the result would’ve been a lot better.
In 2008 the Avenue hosted a week of horror movies called Halloween Highway. As of this year, Halloween Highway will be back around 31 October. This year it’s a double offering, the recent Dutch horror film Sint and today it’s cult classic The Stuff.
is something I also noticed the first time I watched the film: the product doesn’t always move in the same manner.
My busy work schedule of the past months has one advantage: by the time a movies is finally reviewed, I’m able to incorporate the DVD review. Today Easy A, branded as just another modern version of classic literature – a genre which really took off with Amy Heckerling‘s Clueless and is now so old it’s allowed to have sex in lots of countries.
being invisible to being the school slut and Olive chooses to wallow in her new reputation: she pins up a giant red “A” on her chest and “sluttifies” her wardrobe. The new Olive has been born.
To say Repo Chick was critically loved would be somewhat of an exaggeration. In fact, between the actual first screening (somewhere in 2009) and its proper release (on DVD in 2011), not many films were given such a bad press as this film. Surely all those critics couldn’t be wrong… Or could they…?
DV members who roam around in our shoutbox will have noticed my message that British director Roy Ward Baker has died. If you’d play the association game with me, two things would pop up: the television series The Avengers (for which Baker directed eight – good to stand-out – episodes) and Hammer. Here at DV I already reviewed Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde as well as The Anniversary, but Baker also helmed Quatermass and the Pit, Scars of Dracula,The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires and The Vampire Lovers.
The famous writer looks at a chart which shows the bloodlines of various monsters. It’s quite informative if you want to know the correct name for the child that’s the result of a werewolf and ghoul breeding. Erasmus tells the story of a Shadmock, a monster quite low on the chart and only capable of whistling… Doesn’t sound too awful? Well, tell that to Angela (Barbara Kellerman), who – together with her boyfriend – had the lacklustre idea of robbing the shadmock of his most expensive possessions…
and mentions the several wars and torture methods the humans have thought of. The monsters agree: no monster even comes close to the awfulness of the humans and thus the writer is accepted into the club.
Avenue Kurtodrome 
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