French drama.

Shana copes with the daily routine, thanks to the support of her tight-knit group of girlfriends. When her grandmother died, Shana inherited a ring that was supposed to ward off the evil eye.

Videos

Captures from episode 3:

Videos from episodes 3 & 4.

Episode 2 and more about this series.

New on Netflix today in seven parts, this American mini-series is the latest interpretation of the noted Steinbeck novel.

Steinbeck originally addressed the novel to his young sons, Thom and John (then 6 1⁄2 and 4 1⁄2 years old, respectively). Steinbeck wanted to describe the sights, sounds, smells, and colors of the Salinas Valley for them in detail.

Given that The Salinas Valley is such a powerful presence in the book, I doubt that Steinbeck would approve of filming the story anywhere else, but this series was filmed in New Zealand!

Video

There is additional nudity in later episodes as well. More from this series.

Japanese series now on Netflix.

When a surgeon shifts to aesthetics and clashes with a celebrity doctor, she discovers the complex pressures behind the pursuit of physical perfection. In the first episode, she saves a young influencer’s life by removing a dangerous silicone implant, thus sabotaging the young woman’s career. This sparks a firestorm.

Hina’s topless scenes mostly involve prosthetics.

In this case, we see one of her real breasts and one prosthetic overlay.

Videos

Jean-Jacques Annaud is one of the most interesting filmmakers in the world.

He is extremely proficient. He takes a back seat to nobody when it comes to photographic composition, and his films always seem to be scored beautifully. The factor that has kept him from being recognized as the one of the world’s greatest filmmakers is his choice of projects. He’s a guy who doesn’t like repeating himself, and likes to march to his own drummer. In 1986, he made a movie of The Name of the Rose, based on Umberto Eco’s talky, convoluted, multi-lingual masterpiece that plays out like Sherlock Holmes in the Dark Ages. That film was hailed by many critics as a masterpiece, and I’d agree, but it managed only a seven million dollar domestic gross to help offset its twenty million dollar budget.

So did he try for something more commercial next time? Not on your life. He filmed The Bear, a movie which has few humans and almost no dialogue. It is literally a story about a family of bears. This time, he managed a healthy $30 million gross. His other projects have included Seven Years in Tibet, and Enemy at the Gates.

Now, imagine what would happen if a filmmaker of that caliber decided to make a soft-core porn film. Well, ol’ Jean-Jacques did just that. How did the process work?

Obviously, he didn’t need any help in cinematography or scoring or costumes or set design. His films have been nominated for about a gazillion Cesars, and several Oscars. What he did need was an erotic project which also had substantial literary and cinematic merit, something on the level of D.H. Lawrence. Lawrence himself had already been overdone, but the book which came to Annaud’s attention was a semi-autobiographical account by Marguerite Duras about how she lost her lost her virginity. This met all his criteria:

* It was lurid. Duras pictured her relationship with a handsome, dashing, refined Chinese man old enough to be her father. Although her account is probably a fanciful gussied-up version of the reality, it was exactly the kind of sensationalistic story Annaud needed. The Duras character was 15 at the time of her deflowering, and the make-up people managed to make the actress (Jane March) look even younger.

* It had a valid literary pedigree. Duras was a female, a respected writer, and an intellectual. She wrote 34 novels, and was considered among the inner circle of Parisian intellectuals. She directed 16 films of her own. Her literary credentials were further buttressed by the fact that she was a war hero who once saved Mitterand’s life! Her credentials and character simply cannot be impugned. These facts tend to dodge artfully around potential objections. Using a woman’s actual words obviates the potential objections from hard-core feminists, and using the words of an accepted literary figure skirts around the age issue. (Do you hear many objections to staging Romeo and Juliet? Well, that’s a play about a guy who sleeps with a 13 year old girl!)

* It had a perfect cinematic setting. Annaud may have passed on this project if the story had taken place in Shaker Heights, Ohio in 1972, but it actually takes place in French Colonial Vietnam in 1929, so Annaud was able to create an exotic world for his imagery.

So how did it turn out?

The film’s cinematographer, Robert Fraisse, was nominated for an Oscar, so the answer is “very well.” See for yourself:

Not bad for a little sex flick, eh? It is certainly the best-photographed skin flick ever made. It is photographed pretty much as well as any flick, skin or not. You could stack it up next to Barry Lyndon or Crouching Tiger or Days of Heaven any other movie you could name, and it would not be embarrassed at all.

The film is backed by a solid score and features Duras’s own words, so it maintains a consistent tone and atmosphere which is sensuous and beautiful. Many women like this film, despite the explicit content. I wish I could tell you that the whole is as good as its best parts, but it isn’t. It is painfully (if artfully) slow. There’s really nothing Annaud could do about the pacing. You can either have good, realistic sex or a fast-paced narrative, but it isn’t possible to do both. Obviously, if you’re going to interrupt the film’s momentum for five minutes of semi-explicit sex, the storyline is not going to advance. Given the need to balance the story and the sex, the slow pacing is understandable.

Is the sex truly that realistic? It seems very real, whether it was or not. Annaud acted like the sex scenes were real in order to drum up publicity and controversy. Jane March was both deeply offended and disgusted. March and Annaud didn’t speak for about ten years due to the rumors. The director finally apologized to her in 2003.

There is one scene where there appears to be real genital contact (at about the 1:50 mark in video #8 below). It was allegedly performed by a body double.

This is one of the best, most accurate films ever made about forbidden, purely sexual relationships, and one of the most explicit films that you can watch “as a couple,” and find that she enjoys it more than you do.

Aesthete’s videos are here

Australian body-swap comedy. Available free on TUBI

Two friends inexplicably swap bodies after a night of intimacy, and must contend with living as each other while partaking in sexually-charged misadventures over a long, hot weekend.

Videos

She is also pictured at the Globes and in a studio set.

I wasn’t really aware of her, but she has definitely gotten my attention now.

Rosie Huntington-Whiteley was at the Saint Laurent Spring/Summer show in Paris.

Full gallery

I used to think she was a world-class beauty. She looked like this:

What happened to her face? Did she just get older? Did she starve herself? Did she undergo procedures? All of the above?

Bianca Censori wore a see-through top when going with husband Ye to a private viewing of the new Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in Los Angeles!

Full gallery