Director Michael Bay with star Rosie Huntington-Whiteley in Moscow.Rocking out in Red Square.
By Jason Apuzzo. This really looks like fun. (Check out the gawking Russian dude on the right above, getting his first good look at a supermodel from the decadent West.) Apparently Linkin Park played in Red Square for the premiere. I would’ve preferred Daft Punk, but that’s just me.
It seems so much cooler to premiere a film in Moscow instead of West LA, doesn’t it? Especially since the politics are roughly the same.
Anyway, for more images of the Transformers: Dark of the Moon Moscow premiere, head over to Michael Bay’s site. Can’t wait to see this film …
UPDATE: More good photos and a recap video from the Moscow premiere are now available here.
By Joe Bendel. Istanbul might be a beautiful city, but the women living in the Aksaray neighborhood would not know. That is because it is a red light district and most of the prostitutes there are slaves, confined to seedy sex clubs and prison-like quarters. Crusading photojournalist Mimi Chakarova tells the stories of the voiceless women trafficked into sexual slavery in The Price of Sex, which screens during the 2011 Human Rights Watch Film Festival.
There is no question, sex trafficking is a problem in Western Europe and the Americas. However, when Chakarova wanted to investigate ground zero for sex slavery, she took her hidden cameras to Istanbul’s Aksaray and Dubai – two cities which obviously have absolutely nothing in common, right?
Chakarova briefly acknowledges the hypocrisy of Muslim communities rather openly indulging in the fruits of sex slavery. Evidently in Turkey, pre-marital sex is illegal but prostitution is not. There would seem to be an inherent contradiction there, but the crooked cops doggedly look the other way. While conditions might be slightly better in go-go Dubai, the fundamental realities remain the same. Demand for Eastern European women is also quite high in both “markets,” reflecting a “Natasha” fetish amongst the clientele. Indeed, the frequency with which Eastern European women are targeted by trafficking rings hit close to home for the naturalized Bulgarian-American Chakarova.
Amy Manson and Aidan Turner from "Desperate Romantics" (2009).
By David Ross. In my comments from last year on the Keats biopic Bright Star I opined that “film has no idea how to approach lives that are largely interior, with driving purposes that are inconveniently invisible and inscrutable. In consequence, film tends to emphasize the gossipy and scandalous, dwelling on the externals of sexual deviancy, alcoholism, and nervous breakdown.” This certainly describes the BBC’s Desperate Romantics (2009), but such a zesty and funny travesty is hard to resist, especially if, like me, you tend to think the twentieth century was rather a mistake.
The six-hour miniseries tells the story of John Everett Millais, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and William Holman Hunt – the “Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood” – as they scheme and bumble in pursuit of eternal art and sub-eternal flesh. Rounding out the dramatis personae are John Ruskin, the sexually neurotic titan of Victorian art criticism and incidentally one of the greatest prose stylists in the history of English; Effie Ruskin, the great man’s warm-blooded young wife, disconsolately intacta after five years in the marriage bed; the flame-haired milliner-cum-muse Lizzie Siddal, the “original supermodel”; and the milksoppy hanger-on Fred Walters, a fictional contrivance who narrates the whole business from a perspective of exasperation and vicarious titillation. Rossetti and Fred competitively love Siddal (what’s not to love!), while Ruskin is disgusted by his wife’s post-pubescent nether parts and schemes to fob her off on the virginal Millais. Meanwhile, the prostitute-model Annie Miller – a buxom, lusty lass – places the inconsistently evangelical Hunt in a series of difficult, shall we say, positions.
Rafe Spall and Jennie Jacques.
Edward Burne-Jones and William Morris make a late appearance as nerdy idolaters of Rossetti, the former vaguely epicene, the latter fat, manic, and socially incompetent. This ignores Morris’ polymath command, the hard will of the inveterate and consummate creator, but it serves a dramatic purpose, I suppose, providing Rossetti with a foil and the show with a cuckold-ready goof.
Unlike the BBC’s reverent and impeccable interpretation of Pride and Prejudice (see my comments here), Desperate Romantics is a cheese fondue of pros and cons. It takes liberties with the biographical record (Wikipedia totals up the damage); it has no interest whatsoever in the substance of the Pre-Raphaelites’ art or ideas; it depicts Rossetti – an artistic and poetic giant – as a charming but shiftless skirt chaser, which is at best a partial truth; it takes a particularly sunless view of Ruskin, depicting him as coldly repressed rather than as gloriously nuts; and its theme song, a thumping folk-rock jig, is the most annoying piece of TV music since the Seinfeld bass segue. On the other hand, the series is full of impish humor and salacious shenanigans, and the brotherhood’s banter abounds in dry British wit. Especially delicious are the episodes in which the Ruskins and Millais bumble toward what we’ll delicately call a physical outcome. We might ask: “How many Victorian geniuses does it take to screw in a -.” Apparently it takes quite a few. Continue reading The BBC’s Desperate Romantics
