Archive for October, 2011
Gallery: Katie Cruise
by Suzan Ryan on Oct.27, 2011, under Girl Galleries
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BLACK MAGIC |
We don’t care if it was voodoo or Mother Nature that gave Katie Cruise her voluptuous curves, we’d battle Beelzebub for just one chance with her…
Photography: MARK GOLDBERG
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Reviews – Film: Midnight in Paris
by Suzan Ryan on Oct.27, 2011, under Reviews
Midnight in Paris
Director: Woody Allen
Cast: Owen Wilson, Rachel McAdams, Marion Cotillard, Michael Sheen
Hopscotch
NOSTALGIA and the persistent feeling that things used to be better in the “good old days” is something most people can relate to.
Whether you hanker for a time when lopping limbs off recalcitrant peasants from atop a mighty steed was considered socially acceptable, or pine for a few weeks ago—before an unfortunate conquest in a nightclub toilet left you with a dose of something itchy and sticky—it’s a universal theme.
Everything looks better in retrospect and Midnight in Paris, Woody Allen’s latest film, takes this idea and runs with it.
The plot revolves around Gil (Owen Wilson) the typical neurotic, navel-gazing, Woody Allen analogue. Gil is a successful, albeit creatively discontented, screenwriter who is engaged to Inez (Rachel McAdams). Inez and her parents take Gil with them on a business trip to Paris.
The city of lights reinvigorates something within Gil, a spark of artistic inspiration and he starts pontificating about his novel and unfulfilled ambition to create something with meaning. Gil’s specific obsession with Paris in the 1920′s soon alienates Inez and her achingly bourgeois parents, leading the frustrated word nerd to drink too much wine and go for a boozy wander.
Before you can say “magical realism” a vintage car pulls up in front of the bewildered Gil, the occupants encouraging him to join them for more revelling. Gil goes along for the ride and before too long realises he has ended up in some kind of space/time delay—a portal to the very era he so earnestly yearns for: Paris in the 1920s.
This is where Midnight in Paris really comes to life. The 20 or so minutes it takes to get there are, frankly, a little painful. Certainly they’re meant to give Gil the requisite motivation to want to escape but it’s hard to imagine what he ever saw in Inez—other than the fact she’s kind of hot.
Your enjoyment of the rest of the film really depends on how charming you find the idea of going back in time to meet one’s literary and artistic idols. Gil is soon chatting with the likes of Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Salvador Dali and T.S. Eliot, not to mention making time with Adriana (played by the toe-curlingly lovely Marion Cotillard).
What follows is an amiable enough little story that, while very predictable, is undeniably sweet and romantic. It’s certainly Woody Allen’s most accessible film in years, recalling The Purple Rose of Cairo in its sense of wit and whimsy.
Owen Wilson is never quite as convincing as he needs to be, coming off a bit too California surfer boy and not enough angsty artist but the rest of the cast are uniformly stellar. Corey Stoll, Tom Hiddleston and Alison Pill (as Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Zelda Fitzgerald respectively) are particularly solid and give the film a sense of authenticity even when things take a turn for the silly.
Midnight in Paris is a slight but enjoyable movie and though one could be nostalgic for a time when Woody Allen used to make great films (Annie Hall, Manhattan) as opposed to pretty good ones—it does seem a rather petulant position to take. Taken as a sweet little adventure with solid acting, memorable moments and bulk travelogue footage—Midnight in Paris is a success.
MIDNIGHT IN PARIS is in cinemas now.
Review: Anthony O’Connor
Busy busy!
by Ashlee Adams on Oct.27, 2011, under Ashlee Adams
Hi everyone!
It’s been a busy month for me, even though I’ve spent much more time at home than I had over the past six months. A few weeks ago I travelled up to the Gold Coast to shoot my Pet of the Year cover and I’m really looking forward to seeing it hit the shelves next month. I really hope you all love it as much as I do (from the few shots I’ve seen, anyway!). It was a VERY exhausting day as I had to leave Adelaide at 6am to fly to the GC via Sydney and we didn’t wrap up shooting til nearly 9pm, but the results were worth it.
I’ve spent the last few weeks being really focused on working out and getting my body looking fit and healthy again before I launch my big tour. I’m back into kickboxing and hiking regularly, and I go back to pole-dancing class tonight.
Life is gonna get pretty crazy once November starts. I’ll be kicking it off with a Melbourne Cup Luncheon with a group of my favourite girls at our local pub and I can’t wait to get all prettied up, drink too much champagne and make some ridiculous uneducated bets, haha. Then I’ve got a few photo shoots scheduled in to get some new promo for my tour, and the week after that it’s looking like I’ll be visiting Darwin, Sydney AND Canberra all in that week! I’ll post a blog with more details when I get confirmation of what exactly is happening. I’m also gonna be doing a few special guest appearances around Adelaide, including a regular guest DJ spot at one of my favourite club nights… stay tuned for more details coming very soon! And if you’re in Brisbane, don’t forget that on December 8 you can catch me performing at Velvet Cigar for the QLD Pet of the Year party 
I hope you’ve all picked up this month’s issue of Australian Penthouse featuring the 2009 Pet of the Year Emma Gibbs on the cover, not just because Emma is a total babe, but also because you can check me out reviewing some new release Xbox games – Shadows of the Damned and F.3.A.R.
Anyway, I’ll leave you with a pic of me getting ready to head out for a guest spot I did last week at Flashdance @ HQ Complex… the theme was “Geeks n Freaks” and I think I captured geek chic pretty nicely 
Ashlee Adams xox
John Birmingham: What Does it Mean to Be a Man?
by swerve on Oct.26, 2011, under Columns
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| Somewhere between the two Captain Kirks, something went horribly wrong—for men, not for the Kirks. JJ Abram’s 2009 reboot of the Star Trek franchise was filmed entirely in awesomevision and packed with epic wins from the opening credits to the final curtain. But something was missing: the Shat’s pot belly.
William Shatner’s James T. Kirk was, at heart, an ordinary guy who did extraordinary things—such as pleasuring multiple green-skinned Orion slave girls while karate-chopping knobby-headed Klingon warriors with his other hand. Sure, he was the only Starfleet cadet to ever successfully conquer the impossible training scenario known as the Kobayashi Maru exercise, but he cheated, because that’s what smart-arsed everyday blokes with pot bellies and cheeky grins do. Christopher Pine’s younger James T. Kirk was less an ordinary guy than a Gen Y gym rat and part-time model, who had just enough bad-boy street cred to make him attractive to the space ladies without barring him from Starfleet Academy on a character test. Anywhere Shatner’s Kirk went, he arrived a few moments after the bright yellow curve of his tummy. Pine’s starship captain, on the other hand, was able to wear a skin-tight skivvy without irony or embarrassment. His physique recalls the type of sculpted douchebags you find at www.hotchickswithdouchebags.com—where guys who spend too long with fake tan are so inordinately proud of their massively ripped abs that they give them absurd names such as ‘The Situation’. I’m sure that, like all Hollywood stars, Christopher Pine is a lovely bloke. It’s just that, like most modern male actors, once he gets that shirt off, he looks like a bunch of coconuts and half bricks jammed into a tight rubber bag. When the hell did this happen? It used to be that when big-name Hollywood actors took off their shirts…well, mostly they didn’t. And if they did, they looked like normal guys—guys who’d taken some care to look after themselves, but still normal guys. |
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The only muscle definition with which they were familiar came out of a dictionary, and some of them were so close in their physical build to you and I that they looked less like a bag of shit than they did a bag of shit that had spent months on the couch inhaling pizzas and playing video games. Gentlemen, I do not see this as a positive development. I don’t imagine for a second that many of us are going to develop immediate eating disorders or exercise addictions just because we’ve seen Brad Pitt get his gear off in Troy; that’s not how the male mind works. I fear, however, it’s exactly how the female mind works. It cannot be a good thing for the ladies to be constantly disappointed by the gap between what our culture imagines to be a perfect, or even an average, male form and the saggy, hairy, kinda blotchy and lumpy reality. Not good for them, and most assuredly not good for us. It’s not a two-way street, of course. Men have long divided the world into the hotties of their imagination, and actual women. Probably because of all the training we get in as teens with magazines such as this. A psychology has evolved within the male gender to help us cope with this disconnect. The idea of the unattainable: Megan Fox, for example; smokin’ hot, but unobtainable. Sports Illustrated swimsuit models? Smokin’ hot, but unobtainable. Penthouse Pets…you get the idea. But when have the females of the species ever considered anything as unobtainable? They see, they want, they get. Whether it be shoes, bags, naughty treats from the dessert tray, more damn shoes, extra closet space for the extra shoes, another bag, and a few more shoes. A woman who can own more pairs of shoes than there are days to wear them between now and the combustion of the universe is not going to be put off by any man who tells her to forget about finding a set of rock-hard, washboard abs anywhere other than up on the big screen. She will see. She will want. And she will kick our fat arses until she gets. God help us all. |
Gallery: Kokko
by Suzan Ryan on Oct.26, 2011, under Girl Galleries
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KOKKO POPS OUT |
Not only is she gorgeous—with a name that includes two KOs! — but Kokko has the martial arts skills to leave you begging for mercy.
Photography: ANDREW K
Continue reading “Gallery: Kokko” »
Gallery: Janina
by swerve on Oct.25, 2011, under Girl Galleries
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THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO |
At 22, Melbourne dancer and model Janina has the body of a saint and the mind of a sinner
Photography: ANDREW K
Continue reading “Gallery: Janina” »
Reviews – Film: We Need to Talk About Kevin
by Suzan Ryan on Oct.24, 2011, under Reviews, Web Exclusives
We Need to Talk About Kevin
Director: Lynne Ramsay
Stars: Tilda Swinton, John C. Reilly, Ezra Miller, Usula Parker
Roadshow
I recommend that moviegoers keen to see this screen adaptation of Lionel Shriver’s book attend the movie without reading other reviews, IMDB production notes or other back-story text in order to maintain the impact of the film, because the film’s focus rests upon the emotional aftermath of a brutal event and the impact of that event on Eva (Tilda Swinton), the mother of the titular Kevin (Ezra Miller), the kid in question. Reading too much will reveal the event, thus reducing the impact of the film.
The problem for viewers, such as myself, who have read the single-sentence plot description is that it ruins one of the film’s larger reveals— even though this is hinted at early on. The chronology of the film jumps from how Eva handles the shockwaves following Kevin’s actions to flashbacks of her troubled years as a homemaker with the infant Kevin.
Tilda Swinton is as electrifying as ever in her performance as Eva, breathing such subtlety into her character. John C. Reilly continues to show his diversity with his depiction of Franklin, Eva’s husband, but the real star of the film is Kevin, the fiercely intelligent boy who’s not quite all there. For the most part, he’s played by Ezra Miller, an up-and-coming actor who provides a disturbing portrayal of the titular character.
But Kevin is also played by two other actors, Rock Duer (during Kevin’s toddler years) and Jasper Newell (childhood Kevin). The way these three young actors combine performances to portray the misunderstood Kevin is worth the price of admission alone. From the judgmental stare of the very perceptive Duer and intelligent lying of Newell to the controlled anger of Miller, when Kevin is in a scene, all eyes are on him.
While the film’s chronology jumps around frequently between present day and Kevin’s upbringing, it’s easy to follow. As an independent film, We Need to Talk About Kevin does lean towards art house—certain scenes and shots carry longer than some mainstream films and there is an emphasis on symbolism (which is not a bad thing, depending on how far your tastes stretch into independent cinema).
There is an unique story at the heart of this movie, and the patient viewer will be rewarded with powerful performances across the board plus some harrowing plot revelations.
WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN is released November 17, 2011
Review: Nathan Lawrence
Gallery: Eva
by Suzan Ryan on Oct.24, 2011, under Girl Galleries
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LUST FOR LIFE |
Perth-born, goal-minded, yoga-loving Eva, 23, craves new and exciting experiences and, lucky for us, posing nude is at the top of her list!
Photography: Theron Kirkman
Continue reading “Gallery: Eva” »
Gallery: Sunny Leone
by Suzan Ryan on Oct.20, 2011, under Girl Galleries
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Star of India |
American Penthouse magazine’s Pet of the Year 2003, Sunny Leone, set hearts ablaze in 2008 when she declared that she would add men to her adult film resume…
Photography: Misha
Continue reading “Gallery: Sunny Leone” »
Pet of the Month November 2011, Emma Gibbs
by nick on Oct.19, 2011, under More Pets, Pet of the Month, POTM Feature, Splash, The Magazine
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STILL CRUSIN’
After a much publicised shooting ordeal, 2009 Pet of the Year Emma Gibbs is back where she belongs – nude on a boat!
Photography: Richard Arthur
Continue reading “Pet of the Month November 2011, Emma Gibbs” »
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