Is it just us, or does watching this video give anyone else the feeling that it's time to move? Cause if this is Audrianna Angel's idea of being neighborly...we would love to move right next door. (Hell, we'd love to move right next door, regardless. It's Audrianna Angel!)

· Buy "Young Girls Next Door" (adameve.com)

There are a few rare humans who are born without the capacity for jealousy and clinging possessiveness. For the rest of us, it's something we are indoctrinated into at an early age and, through tremendous personal growth, attempt unshackle ourselves of as we shed layers of social programming and enjoy the ineffable fruits of our efforts. Though the path is difficult and arduous, what awaits just beyond the jealousy is the fulfillment of sexual desires so thoroughly and deeply buried in your right now that you aren't even conscious of them. Trust us. They're in there, just waiting for you to do the work to free your mind.

Back in the 70's, the idea of wife swapping reached public acceptance with the introduction of "key parties"—a cultural phenomenon that played to the strengths of free love and uninhibited group sex. The idea was simple: as couples filed into the party, the men would drop their car keys into a fish bowl. Wives would then blindly draw out a set and partner up with whomever they belonged to. Famed sex author and Fleshbot friend Tristan Taormino asserts in "Opening Up," her new book on polyamory, that this concept was allegedly spawned amongst married Navy personal in San Diego.

Since then, the climate of America has been radically transformed—ironically, by many of the same people. The former agents of free love have given in to a moral panic that's usurped sexual exploration, transforming it into a benignly flavorless stew harnessing the energy more for reproduction than recreation.

Which is why the latest release from Pink Visual, "Wife Swap Volume 6" is so refreshing. At no point during the action do we get the sense that there's anything out of the ordinary in the behavior of these loving, sexually liberated couples. In fact, Evie Delatosso, Kelly Kline, Mario Rossi, Richard Kline, Jack Lawrence, Puma Swede, Shy Love, Steven St.Croix, Emilianna, Joe Rock, Kayla Paige, Will Powers, Barry Scott, Dick Delaware, Lacey Love, Lindsay Love, Burke, Jack Vegas, Tina Tink, and Veronica Rayne couldn't be happier to be swinging back and forth with each other.

We could all learn a lot from these post Nietzschean darlings about living more human than human. But for now, just kick back as a casual observer and enjoy this fine set of promotional pictures provided by Pink Visual.

"Wife Swap, Volume 6" releases this week, heralding what could be a brave new world.

· Pink Visual (pinkvisual.com)

Faithless

Studio: Vivid
Director: Paul Thomas
Cast: Kelli McCarty, Daisy Marie, Voodoo, Kelly Leigh, Steven St. Croix, Jennifer Dark, James Deen, Herschel Savage

Review by: Gram Ponante

"Faithless" is not a feel-good movie, unless movies like "In the Bedroom" were fun for you. But it is full of uncomfortable situations and vigorous sex that you know meant something for the performers.

"Faithless" opens with Calli (McCarty) primping for a performance; the performance is makeup sex with poor, muddled Nico (Voodoo). Turning on the waterworks (as this is not a squirting movie, it must be pointed out that the waterworks are from her eyes), Calli gets Nico right where she wants him, which is to be discovered by her husband, Danny (Steven St. Croix), and Nico's girlfriend in her carnal embrace. Was it worth it, Voodoo?

It all started innocently enough. Calli is Danny's trophy wife, hated by his daughter, Sarah, played by Daisy Marie. Nico comes up to the cabin in the mountains to be with Sarah but her dad, proud of his hot new wife, shows her off to his daughter's beau. It proves to be Danny's undoing.

Already there are more elements to this porn movie, more setup and plot, more credible situations, than others. Naturally Sarah hates her stepmom, naturally Nico's buddy, James Deen, wants in on Sarah, naturally Sarah overhears all this exposition.

And then there are Danny's best friend Simon (Herschel Savage) and his own trophy wife Terry (Kelly Leigh). Simon is a sad sack whose wife and best friend waste no time availing each other of her fellatio skills.

But despite the family tension and Simon's dire warning to Nico that he hopes Danny doesn't own a shotgun, Nico and Sarah do manage to steal away to a bucolic spot and go fishing. Ass fishing.

But the idyll doesn't last. Calli has captured Nico's heart, you see, and back in L.A. she calls him, having stolen his number from her stepdaughter's phone. The cad, he comes right over. But she is playing mind games with him.

"I just wanted to see if you'd come," she says, leaving.

But lest you think Calli is the fly in the ointment, Sarah, too, seems particularly prone to unhingement. We end up feeling sorry for Danny, even though we know that he, too, is a filthy adulterer. Of particular resonance is a scene where Danny and Calli try to get their groove on but daughter Sarah keeps interrupting, asking for cash. The viewer is left wondering who he wants to hate or fuck more.

Until finally we are left with a portrait of Danny as a guy who finds crazy women comforting (at least that's what I got out of it). After a landmark rape-in-so-many-words scene that stands in for an argument between the married couple, Danny then goes to his old standby, Terry, for a top-off. By this point we're rooting for no one.

And when, loopy as she is, Calli ties all the loose ends together, we see her scorched-earth logic. You're looking at the generic boxcover and thinking, "Are we talking about the same movie?"

In Hollywood, February is traditionally the month in which all the also-ran movies are released. But, much as I am loathe to say it so soon after January's AVN awards, "Faithless" is my choice to clean up next year; its themes of Women Are Unstable, Men Are Assholes really looks like America these days. And I would give Kelli McCarty and Steven St. Croix acting trophies, because it's hard to focus during a rape.

· Vivid (Vivid.com)
· Buy "Faithless" (gamelink.com)

Read our review of "Pirates 2: Stagnetti's Revenge" after the gap.

Pirates 2: Stagnetti's Revenge

Here's how much money went into "Pirates 2." When I opened the 4-disc box, three crisp hundred-dollar bills slid out. There was a code on Disc 1 that allowed me half off a 2008 Saturn Vue at the Porn Valley Galpins. There were free helicopter rides to the Van Nuys airport, and either Stoya or Riley Steele is contractually obligated to deliver your "Pirates 2" personally, wearing nothing but your family coat of arms or company logo bodypainted across her eager frame.

But I only speak from personal experience. Your mileage may vary.

A movie of excesses, "Pirates 2" is also an earnest attempt to be a family comedy – much like the "Pirates of the Caribbean" movies were, except with rimjobs in it. There are portions of the script devoted to loyalty, believing in oneself, and sticking up for friends that would not be out of place on "Hannah Montana." That these elements appear discretely between scenes of guys coming on each other (just from a porn angle, "Pirates 2" is dirtier and riskier than your average mainstream adult movie) was an uncomfortable marriage of childish themes with very adult ones, as if Digital Playground were trying to let the Sarah Palin demographic know that fisting was "super."

The first joke told by anyone who writes about porn (and a joke he is under the mistaken impression of thinking he has invented) is the one about the sequels. It goes like this: "Whoriental Sex Academy 4 addresses the vital questions left unanswered by Whoriental Sex Academies 1 through 3."

"Pirates 2," on the other hand, really does pick up where its predecessor left off, cannily depending on familiarity with (and perhaps ownership of) 2005's "Pirates" to figure out who "Serena" was and why Captain Evan Stone and First Mate Jesse Jane are searching the Caribbean for her. (Just so you know, Serena is Janine Lindemulder's character from the original. She doesn't appear, Jo-rel or Ben Kenobi-like, in "Pirates 2," however).

An adventure that leads from Jamaica to the (Armenian owned and operated) slave markets to the high seas to the netherworld, where Katsuni's magical Blue Pearl reanimates Tommy Gunn's Stagnetti, "Pirates 2: Stagnetti's Revenge" really is all over the place, and anyone who expects the story to make sense is, I guess, expecting too much. Ditto for the CGI. The pirate hunters' animated ship moves through animated water, leaving no shadow and displacing none of it. The massive worm slain by Belladonna is about as realistic as Jesse Jane's boobs.

But if the big effects are not even to the standards of late-night Sci Fi Channel fare, the sex and the scope of "Pirates 2" are far beyond what you expect and deserve as average porn consumers. You expect an awful porn script? Here you get one that actually expected something of the actors. You expect scenery chewing from the men? Evan Stone and Steven St. Croix ably comply. You want Jesse Jane and Belladonna to fuck the living daylights out of each other? Check.

Not only that, but the strenuous sex scenes we saw in the theatrical (yes, "Pirates 2," like its predecessor, debuted in a theatre) release are extended in the DVD set. So the thrill you got to see added footage of Minas Tirith when the "Return of the King" Extended Edition came out you can now feel when you see even more of Belladonna's colon.

But in other areas the sheer quantifiables of the movie are distractions. The Stagnetti of the title is, despite Tommy Gunn's performance, useless. He appears toward the end and, as it turns out, anticlimactically. Katsuni's incoherent black widow character was both evil and had boobs. Stagnetti wasn't necessary. The same goes for Sasha Grey. Sure it makes sense for Sasha Grey to be in the biggest porn movie of the year, but her presence and character are as tacked on as when everybody in class has to be in the school play, so suddenly Snow White has 40 dwarves.

And why was Shay Jordan not listed on the box? Her performance was wonderful. And why was Stoya only in a group scene? Both are criminal acts. Further inexplicability is achieved in non-speaking, non-fucking roles for Ange Venus and Adrianna Nicole ("I fell asleep on set," Nicole said.)

Regardless, we persevere. We remember that "Pirates 2: Stagnetti's Revenge" is a porn movie – and an excellent porn movie - with all the usual limitations even if, as shouted from the boxcover, it is "The Biggest Adult Production in History." We still have four DVDs worth of delightful, turgid nudity.

Studio: Digital Playground
Director: Ali Joone
Cast: Jesse Jane, Shay Jordan, Evan Stone, Jenna Haze, Katsuni, Steven St.Croix, Tommy Gunn, Belladonna, Stoya, Riley Steele, Ben English, James Deen, Sasha Grey, Gabriella Fox, David Aaron Clark, your mom, Shyla Stylez, Shawna Lenee, Abbey Brooks, Brianna Love, Brea Lynn, Rhylee Richards, Charles Dera, Mick Blue, Manuel Ferrara, Marco Banderas

Review by: Gram Ponante

· Digital Playground (digitalplayground.com)
· Buy "Pirates 2" (gamelink.com)

. . .

· 'Pirates II' Trailer Premieres Online (avn.com)
· Pirates II: X-Rated Trailer (piratesxxx.com)
· Pirates II: R-Rated Trailer (youtube.com)
• Order: "Pirates Ii: Stagnett's Revenge" (Adult DVD Empire)

Carlos Batts' "Young Hollywood" is a little like the Grover's Corners of "Our Town": everyone knows each other, there is a kindly narrator and, as the spirit of Death is ever-present in Thornton Wilder's New Hampshire hamlet, so does Glenn Danzig hover above young Hollywood. The similarities end there, though, because you'd never expect Emily Webb to flash her tits to get into a music video the way Mandy Morbid does. Read our review after the gap.

. . .

Young Hollywood

Studio: Independent Adult Cinema
Director: Carlos Batts
Cast: Kimberly Kane, Mandy Morbid, Lystra, April Flores, Lindsey Meadows, Adrianna Nicole, Ashley Blue, Alex Gonz, Jerry, Steven St. Croix

Review by Gram Ponante

Actually, Mud's narration is more reminiscent of Samuel Jackson's omniscient DJ in "Do the Right Thing."

Like last year's "Boys' & Girls' Guide to Getting Down", "Young Hollywood" takes a snapshot of the short plain of city blocks south of the Hollywood sign, and makes no real distinction between porn performers and struggling actors (because there isn't one).

Morbid and Lystra fuck on the Mustang parked in Danzig's yard (it is actually Glenn Danzig's yard; the Satan-appreciating "Mother" vocalist lives in Hollywood) and later spend some topless time talking about cosplay and Comic-Con. This is a slightly more believable kind of unreality than what is found in traditional porn videos; it is only because the camera was on that their conversation seemed so awkward, because that's how the two of them actually talk.

It's not a rule, but porn shot in the San Fernando (Porn) Valley often looks different from porn shot over the hill in Hollywood and downtown L.A. We meet Kimberly Kane on the set of a movie. She fucks Steven St. Croix on an art installation chopper and makes plans on her phone for going out later. No Porn Valley McMansion and no chirpy starlet: just the angular, frank, and badass Kane in a room festooned with Atari art.

A lot of porn movies come with behind the scenes footage, and it is there where any consumer can become well-versed in what it is like to shoot a porn movie. Often this footage is ten times more entertaining than the movie it accompanies. "Young Hollywood" takes a different angle and seeks to dramatize the backstage logistics. In that way it is like an X-rated reality show.

Adrianna Nicole looks particularly sirenesque in a bathing cap on a Hollywood roof. Downstairs she gets fucked in the shadows of the venetian blinds in an empty apartment. Something about the light identifies Los Angeles - that and the fact that, if Adrianna Nicole lived on the east coast, who would ever leave?

Natural light plays more of a role in Ashley Blue's segment with Alex Gonz. It's twilight in Los Angeles and they're on the rooftop pool. This is a really good look for Blue, a very cool light.

The movie culminates at a party in Beverly Hills with fire dancers and carrying on; this scene is poorly lit and anticlimactic. But overall, "Young Hollywood" succeeds in its music, its sense of place, and its very loving photography. The statements it seeks to make about celebrity and hanging out would be more effective without the narrator telling us what we already picked up from the action, though.

Still, "Young Hollywood" paints a nice picture of Our Town; everybody gets along and looks good. It's a much better postcard for the area than the Christmas parade on Hollywood Boulevard.

· Carlos Batts (carlosbatts.com)
· Adam & Eve (adameve.com)

That this is how porn looked the year "Pulp Fiction" came out is an odd thing to think about.

· "Paging Betty" (DVD info @ hustlervideo.com)
· See also: Selina St. Clair (videography @ adultfilmdatabase.com)

Don't Stand So Close to Us after the gap.

. . .

Whitney Stevens taps out text messages on her iPhone in detention, covering up her sass with a book.

"Is that book funny?" her teacher asks.

"It's a laugh riot," she says.

When he tries to confiscate her phone, well, you can guess what happens. This is the first coupling of a movie that scene by scene redefines "geezers" from the bathrobe-clad, lawn-protecting curmudgeons of our youth until they become younger than us. (Almost. We're 23.)

"Nice fucking tits," our Mr. Chips says, and doesn't even bother locking the door before he begins manhandling them. That's what you get when you send your kid to L.A. Unified.

Then, party girls Kissy Kapri and Jaelyn Fox are disciplined by their jailer, who has kindly let them share a cell and keep their potentially-deadly boots. (That's what you get when you send your kid to L.A. Unified.) So far, we can believe these insolent tartlets would refer to these 50-ish men as "geezers." But then:

41-year-old Alex Sanders is a cat burglar who surprises Kylee Reese. See where we're going here? Who's next? James Deen?

Nope, it's Evan Stone, who'll be 44 in July. 44. In what goddamn world does that make him an old geezer? Maybe if he said to his partner, Dakoda Brooks, "What kind of name is 'Dakoda'"" But he didn't.

Finally comes Steven St. Croix, whose 40th birthday was Sunday, and Renae Cruz.

A blind survey around the offices of Fleshbot West determined that a geezer was a man in his 60s. Maybe we don't want to see that guy having sex, and maybe "Early Middle-Age, Young Teasers" doesn't sound right, but Hell, if it keeps the ACLU from boycotting your porn...

· Fusxion (fusxion.com)
· Buy "Old Geezers, Young Teasers 2" (gamelink.com)

See what we mean after the gap. (And that guy at Eve Laurence's parts? Not American. But whatever.)

. . .

A sort of "Love, American Style" high-end vignette film directed by Cash Markman and featuring earnest andd often successful attempts at dialogue, "All American Fuck Fest" featured the juicy charms of Eve Laurence, Nicki Hunter, and Brittney Skye, among others.

Here's Steven St. Croix and Katie Morgan, two of porn's most game actors in a standard competing co-workers story gone horribly awright!

I want a statue of this.

Very rarely do we see the "dismount", as it were, in which porn couples change positions. But I like it when it happens. Here's Nicki Hunter and Nick Manning from different hair days.

Tony Tedeschi squires Brittney Skye. The importance of Tony Tedeschi is similar to that of Ron Jeremy. Tedeschi isn't fat, but he does make 7-11 America know that they, too, might have a chance at Skye. (Insert "Well, it's even easier than that" joke here.)

We couldn't leave you hanging with Katie Morgan just sitting on a desk; surely that would have meant the terrorists would have won.

· Hustler (hustlerworld.com)
· Buy "All American Fuck Fest" (gamelink.com)

* * * * *

Previously: Reviews Archive

Read our review of "Barely Legal Christmas" after the gap.

. . .

Barely Legal Christmas
Studio: Hustler
Director: Jerome Tanner
Cast: Alexa Jordan, Aarielle Alexis, Nautica Thorn, Ashley Blue, Sasha Grey, Paulina James, Penny Flame

Review by Gram Ponante

The elfmaidens (Aarielle Alexis and Alex Jordan) feel that Santa is too traditional.

"Don't be gay," one says. "Girls don't want dolls, they want dongs. And boys don't want trains, they want to run trains - on girls like us."

This repackaging of five previously-released scenes with a Christmas wraparound dovetails nicely with the "Barely Legal" theme of letters to its eponymous magazine, but in this case the letters are repurposed for Santa.

Sasha Grey is deemed "naughty" for breaking and entering to what she thinks is her teacher's house in search of test answers. Instead she must deal with the homeowner and, in exchange for him not calling the police, must perform sexual acts upon his person. Personally, I think this is a nice gesture that cancels out the naughty one, but Hey, I'm a Buddhist and we don't believe in Santa.

Then we read a letter from Ashley Blue sent in the ancient days of "Barely Legal 27". She, as Santa says, is a "filthy lying whore" for duping realtors into believing she wants to rent houses when what she really wants is to use them for sex.

Penny Flame courts a security guard for backstage passes and he is the same guy who owned the house Sasha Grey broke into. That was a nice house, too; how much are security guards making?

Paulina James relates a tale of a three-way with Steven St. Croix and Marco Banderas. I found it utterly implausible. Something about mail theft.

Finally, the elves convince Santa not to cancel Christmas by the only means at their disposal.

No one will confuse this movie for an instant classic, but the individual scenes are good enough, though some voiceovers are by the performers and others are by sometime-"Barely Legal" directrix Erica Mclean. It would be better if the series chose one or the other, because it is jarring to hear 19-year-old Sasha Grey read her letter but 50-ish Mclean read another. Mclean, of course, gives the series a touch of wistful remembrance a la Jeanne Moreau in "The Lover".

Alexis and Jordan are at a disadvantage in their scene because, aside from it being tacked on, it seems to have been hastily shot "just in time for Christmas" back in September. Oh well. Jizz the season.

· Hustler (hustlerworld.com)
· Buy "Barely Legal Christmas" (gamelink.com)