Puckered Up: The Anal Game Show

Studio: Hustler
Director: Richard de Montfort
Cast: Sasha Grey, Amber Rayne, Trinity Post, Maxi, Michelle Avanti, Missy Stone, Daisy Strong

Review by: Gram Ponante

The setup is simple: five women compete for bragging rights in an anal match game that would even impress Charles Nelson Reilly. So if you like really clinical closeups of anuses that are as well maintained as they are capacitous (sometimes, as you may unfortunately know, the two don't always go hand in hand), this is the movie for you.

For the rest of us, well, any chance to watch Amber Rayne work is worth the effort of not being the biggest fan of graphic studies of the movie's hole of choice. But the scholar appreciates it the way one might not like opera but sure thinks those valkyries are hot.

Rayne performs her party tricks with verve and abandon, setting a standard almost impossible for Michelle Avanti, Trinity Post, and covergirl Sasha Grey to follow. Trinity Post is adorable in her scene, and Grey's greenroom tryst with Daisy Strong is, if not the best work either has done, at least postmodern.

Speaking of postmodern, "Puckered Up" is probably the final movie of the late Richard de Montfort's to be released, though it was shot at various times over the past few years, as we can tell by the presence of Michelle Avanti, who left the adult business last year to become an anti-porn crusader. Her scene with a man whose dick looks like a full bladder is almost painful to watch, as she is clearly on (or off) her meds and because he has the habit of repeating "That's nasty."

"Puckered Up," in terms of its game show theme, is a little scattershot, but for hardcore browneye fans this movie is a goldmine.

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And though we're probably pressing our luck here, we've go our fingers crossed that the film's full of big money, no whammies, and sweet, sweet Sasha Grey. (At least we know we got our wish on the last one.)

· It's Time For America's Newest and Sexiest Gameshow, Puckered Up! (hustlerworld.com)

The 8th Day

Studio: Adam & Eve
Director: Ren Savant
Cast: Kayden Kross, Amber Rayne, Bree Olson, Aaron Wilcoxxx, Kylie Ireland, Jandi Lin, Poppy Morgan, Tori Black, Violet Marcell, Krissy Leigh, Tommy Gunn, Evan Stone, Tyler Knight, Trinity Post, Darryl Hanah, Ameatabh Bachan, Derrick Pierce

Review by: Gram Ponante

Samantha (the exquisitely nude Kayden Kross) wakes up from future sleep in a future chamber, a recorded message from her late father (director Ren Savant) playing on the future video screen.

"Possibly I died of natural causes," he is saying, Jor El-like, waxing on about the zero-point generator he invented that he is confident will have saved the world by now. "I am very envious of my little girl."

Envious or not, Dad, at least wait until she's got some clothes on.

Thus begins "The 8th Day," Adam & Eve's massive 4-disc (two for the feature, two for extras) epic of sex in a post-apocalyptic world, part "2001," part "The Road Warrior," part "Contact," and, what the hell, still weirded out by a father being creepy with his daughter, even posthumously, part "Blame It on Rio."

Of course, the world Sam wakes up to isn't quite fixed. In fact, it looks a lot like many greater Los Angeles communities south of the 10 freeway; places where bodies are meat, technology has betrayed Man, and where "In a lawless new world, sex is the only salvation."

"My God," Sam says. "What happened?"

Life happened, Sam. We follow her through the ruined, overgrown landscape. We evaluate Sam's choices as if she were making her way through Quake, and we're waiting for her MMPORGasm.

In fact, "The 8th Day" is unlike many contemporary movies in that it takes its time, and this is an unexpected pleasure. Well, perhaps not to fans of porn's pay-per-minute model, but whatever.

By the time Sam meets Mel (Amber Rayne), lots of information has slowly unfolded, much like Krissy Leigh's impressive labia in a desert shanty scene with Tyler Knight.

It turns out, Mel tells Sam in porn's first recorded ten-minute dialogue scene, that long ago all the electricity went out, the animals died, women had trouble reproducing, and mutants with different attributes emerged. Sam, for example, has sex with some slimy Morlocks. Then we watch a three-way between some blue, caterwauling Gila girls. I'd add "Good Times" here, but I'm not a douchebag.

Mel takes Sam to the Elysium Fields, a desert enclave ruled by the charismatic Amir, who preaches against technology and presides over tent orgies. We learn that Amir led the angry mob that killed Sam's father when the latter's science didn't turn out as expected. We learn, also, that Mel can take a double-penetration like a goddamn champ.

My only complaints about the movie are logical ones, which I admit don't hold up against the copious flesh on display, but here goes: It is not altogether clear why Sam's dad put her into deep sleep, unless he just did so to see his adult daughter naked. And Amir doesn't seem all that charming, despite the fawning.

But the risks "The 8th Day" takes are admirable for porn. There are stretches without either music or nudity and where the plot advances by scenery alone. The special effects are parceled out with maturity, there are references to Shakespeare and the Beatles, and the movie trusts you to allow it to end without a cumshot.

There is also more creepy stuff with Dad, crucifixion, peeing on asbestos, a "West Wing" cameo, Bree Olson's Blue period, the unsinkable Darryl Hanah, the always-dependable Trinity Post, a delightful performance by Amber Rayne, and the jaw-dropping Kayden Kross, who meets a bad end (but so does everybody).

"The 8th Day" is a great movie; how bad can the end of the world be if it's got Kayden Kross in it?

· Adam & Eve (adamandeve.com)
· And on the 8th Day, God blew up Boston (gramponante.com)
· Buy "The 8th Day" (gamelink.com)

From the looks of this clip, we're thinking we really need to get our asses back to yoga. Who knew a little flexibility could attract girls of this caliber?

· Buy "Bitch & Moan Vol. 2" (gamelink.com)

Earlier today it was announced that Larry Flynt had issued a restraining order on his own nephew to prevent him from using the family name in another pornographic venture. Being embroiled up to one's eyeballs in legal proceedings, sticky or not, seems to be in your very DNA if you're a Flynt. Rest assured that it will not stop the pernicious and nutritionally fortified flow of sweet pornography that flows like an unstoppable river of goodness out of the Hustler building. Hells no!

One of this week's finer Hustler releases is the interracial thriller "Barely Legal Jungle Fever 2," a heart-pounding, suspense-filled, action-packed odyssey deep into the literal bowels of a handful of wanton and willing white starlets with a severe need to have their tight, pink, lubricious sex holes pried all the way wide open. Trinity Post, Jaylynn, Kinzie Jo, Krystal Jordan, Lorena Sanchez, Thea Marie, Marie Victoria, and a whole lot of dusky donkey dick show us how to get the job done the right way, dousing the flames of what would surely otherwise have been a terrible affliction with hours of loving and attentive nursing care.

So, the question is this: do you really want more cheesy puns describing the black on blonde action, or do you just want to dive right in and spank the day away? Yeah. That's what we thought. We'd do the same damn thing—that's why they call it a rhetorical question after all. Geez!

"Barely Legal Jungle Fever 2" releases this week from LFP and Hustler Video. Go get some sweet medicine!

· Hustler (hustlervideo.com)

Lest you thought you were watching yet another reason for the mothballing of Guantanamo Bay, the mass ass-presentation of (from left) Ava Rose, Bobbi Starr, Bree Olson, Trinity Post, and Mika Tan to the cruel whips of Nina Hartley and Claire Adams that led this story was in honor of the release of "O2: The Surrender of O."

Here Adams scandalizes the proper Hartley with some ribaldry.

At the Webmaster Access West convention, an annual get-together of Internet nerds who happen to own the porn industry, The Internet's Ashley Steele poses with two eskimo girls from the affiliate program Flashcash. Who cares if she can't see Russia from her house?

Then Bobbi Starr returned at Hollywood's Golden Apple Comics to launch Nerdcore's 2009 calendar (she's Miss November). As you can see, here she is attempting to fist the Silver Surfer.

Finally, we caught geektrix extraordinaire Justine Joli trying to leave the city of Los Angeles. "If you try to keep me," she did not say, "you never really had me."

O2: The Surrender of O

"We hate to be wet alone," says Marie (Nina Hartley) of her new, incorrigible slave O (Bree Olson). "(But) we don't punish because they're bad, we punish because it's fun."

In the rarefied world of O2, director Ernest Greene's "fan fiction" updating of characters from Anne Desclos' "The Story of O" (and the sequel to 2006' O: The Power of Submission), everything requires permission and everything has rules. But the consequences are supposed to be fun.

So what happens in a D/s relationship when things aren't fun anymore?

Before we get to that, let's talk about Bree Olson and Carmen Luvana.

In the original, former Adam & Eve flagship contract star Carmen Luvana played the title character as Carmen Luvana herself is; a steely, no-nonsense sweaterminx who was all machine-crafted porn-star curves. Olson inhabits the role in a far-more cushiony way. It is easy to believe the sub in her. In fact, as the stern (but fair) Hartley and the Amazonian Sheridan put O(lson) through her paces, hanging her upside down, smacking tantalizingly close to her most secret places, O looks like a delicious and yielding piece of dough beside the two more angular ladies.

"You don't have to see the first one to get the story," director Greene says. But I get the feeling Adam & Eve would like you to. The first movie made a lot of money and still brings in a fair amount of cash each month, which is unheard of for a porn movie from two years ago (which is a much better way of saying "a two-year-old porn movie").

The sequel finds our heroine still in love with the man she left behind, having even lasered off his tattoo from her tramp stamp area. But can she keep away? And will Marie be her enabler?

O is a sexual tourist, a servant of many masters, and the story of O is what constitutes fidelity in the master/slave relationship.

Marie and Mistress Nicole (Nicole Sheridan) are co-dominatrices in a clean industrial space to which O has hied herself to begin masturbating without permission. And this is not allowed.

So the movie opens with this zesty little scene in which Olson is nothing but a willing plaything to Marie and Mistress Nicole. And this is fine. BDSM purists will love it as will fans of Hartley, Sheridan, and Olson, each of whom represents a body type characteristic of the generations of Porn in which she started.

But after her workout, Olson and Hartley start talking (Sheridan has been dispatched to In-n-Out Burger, where she will return with a bagful of Double Doubles that the ladies will wrestle in for the O sequel in my mind). As in real life, Hartley as Marie plays an impish mentor, suggesting to O that her "maintenance doses" of whupping might not be enough to scratch O's itch.

"Why don't you come up to the house?" says Marie.

The house! If there had been a budget for it, we would have flashed back to 2006 and the strange events at The House, a full-immersion "lifestyle" chateau in which masters, mistresses and their servants live their roles unfettered by aspects of common living like phone bills, nosy relatives, and Jehovah's Witnesses. It was here that O's character was swapped between the imperious Steven and his tragic brother Ray, and where O broke Steven's heart.

The house!

O swallows her fear and makes the drive, and in a quick montage sequence that would have made Stephen J. Cannell rethink his career, she gets herself gussied up for the experience, removing underthings, self-shackling handcuffs, etc.

At the house, O meets Rita (Mika Tan) and Regina (Kayden Kross), who let her know that Marie is the prime mover in the operation, not the fellows whom she lets think are in charge.
"It's a quite profitable business," Regina says. "For us."

But wouldn't that make me a whore? we hear O thinking.

"Don't even say it," Rita says.

Now it's time for more sex. For someone who so clearly looks like the late-model porn star, Kayden Kross sure works hard for her money. Unlike Olson, who looks the part of a welcoming sub, the porn-glamorous Kross must convince us that she really likes what she's doing, and she does this in a post-shaving interlude with Erik Everhard. She and the Canadian Everhard engage in some cross-border trucing that is all about the north/south reconciliation and not about fisheries.

But things are going tough for O. Not only is Steven downstairs making Tan and Ava Rose do terrible, wonderful things, but his prodigal half-brother Ray (Tommy Gunn) also just checked in. O is distraught, and Rita dutifully runs to tell Marie, after Rita and O share a tearful girls' moment in the tastefully appointed swingers' lavatory. It's a goddamn henhouse with buttplugs in there.

"Oh, poor O," says Marie when Rita tells her the news, as if Marie couldn't have prevented all this potential heartache. (Like God, a dominatrix always wants to take the credit for the good times, but when things go south, it's all about your personal responsibility.)

Anyway, after watching O endure encounters with both cold Steven and hapless Ray (the brothers have a scene together - in which they talk - where I almost forgot I was watching a porn movie, save for Kayden Kross' ass), puppetmistress Marie orchestrates a reconciliation between O and Steven. She even gives the soon-to-be-couple a ring with the inscription "Freedom is deciding whose slave you want to be."

At this point I was wondering "what gives you the right, Marie?" when O said those very words on screen.

"I don't," says Marie. "But, like everything I have in life, I took it."

So not only does O2 illuminate and glorify good D/s relationships as healthy partnerships between thoughtful people, it also validates Marie's unsettling compulsion to meddle. This domme is topping from the side.

All in all, that's a lot to think about while lubricating your apparatus.

While now and then a performer seems to struggle with the lines he has been asked to deliver, my only real problem with this movie is that it looks like it deserved more money. Normally with porn movies it's the other way around; they are playing at "mainstream" production values but lacking the skill to pull it off. O2 had the skills but, with only five days to shoot what could have been a month-long indie project, it was like having to watch Lawrence of Arabia on a little black and white TV.

Regardless, as a sex film, as a lifestyle documentary, and as a flesh-packed, English-language telenovela, O2: The Surrender of O is, like its predecessor, another porn movie that transcends its genre. Remember: Come for the Nina, stay for the Bree.

Studio: Adam & Eve
Director: Ernest Greene
Cast: Bree Olson, Kayden Kross, Tommy Gunn, Evan Stone, Nina Hartley, Ava Rose, Trinity Post, Mika Tan, Bobbi Starr, Erik Everhard, Jerry, Claire Adams, Marco Banderas, Nicole Sheridan

Review by: Gram Ponante

· Adam & Eve (adameve.com)
· Buy "O2: The Surrender of O" (tlavideo.com)

Thankfully, Nina Hartley is here to offer her assistance, in the form of "Nina Hartley's Guide To Bondage Sex." With the help of bondage model and expert Claire Adams, Nina walks bondage beginners through all the basics of getting down and dirty while bound ... and throws in some super hot sex scenes by way of illustration.

Depending on your expectations, your enjoyment of the film may vary. For one thing, this is definitely some education with a side of porn and not the other way around: the film goes a full half hour without anyone getting naked, and the sex scenes themselves are heavily laced with instruction and tips.

Additionally, the film focuses on women tying up women and men tying up women, without a single bound man in sight. Yes, there are elements of bondage that are universal, and the film offers helpful insights for anyone looking to get bound and gagged. But if you're hoping for, say, some serious cock and ball torture action, this isn't the flick for you.

Nerds that we are, we still enjoyed learning the ins and outs of bondage sex—like what positions are best, how to tie a good knot, and all the fun little bondage gadgets. But we'd still recommend viewing this video when you're in a learning mood, not a fapping mood. You're bound to get something good out of watching the video, but it just might not be until after you've watched it, when you're putting Nina's lessons to good use.

• "Nina Hartley's Guide To Bondage Sex" (adameve.com)
• Order: "Nina Hartley's Guide To Bondage Sex" (Adult DVD Empire)

Scene One features a tuxedoed Ireland playing Master and Servant with Roxy DeVille. At one point Ireland must retrieve something the loss of which can't be explained by gravity.

Only Ireland's penciled-on John Waters moustache distracts from the scene. So I just closed my eyes and thought of Baltimore.

The beauty of this movie is that, even if you feel you would be turned away had you showed up with your testosterone and Manifest Destiny, you would still have the consolation that the women were doing to each other everything you would have. It is as if you wrote your suggestions on little notecards and they were duly considered.

Trinity Post and Amber Rayne leave Kissy Kapri in the dust in the bendy department, and the latter takes her revenge by slapping the hell out of Rayne, who doesn't seem to mind.

Eva Angelina is like Ireland's South of the Border younger sister. I have the impression Ireland didn't have to direct her much in her scene with Sammi Rhodes.

Cruel Aiden Starr opines in the final scene, as a box of toys arrives:

"You know sometimes if their cock is too small you gotta put a butt plug in your ass to feel it?" she asks Jandi Lin and Tricia Oaks.

... and that is the only thing that made me sad. Next time I see a butt plug I won't think, "Ooh: a butt plug." Instead, I'll think, "Someone's parts are small."

· Adam And Eve (adameve.com)
· Kylie Ireland (kylieireland.com)
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