tiggymalvern | HUMP! 2

Current Mood: satisfied
Current Music: Hump de Bump - Red Hot Chili Peppers (no, really, I am!)

Yes, it's porn-fest weekend in Seattle again with the screenings of the finalists in the second (and hopefully to remain annual!) amateur porn contest organised by The Stranger. Overall, a definite raise in quality this year, and the gay porn quota was a lot bigger, yay! Over twice as many showings this year as last year, and still the whole lot sold out within days.

There was still a mix of very obviously amateur stuff shot on camcorders and films by people who obviously had some kind of film background in the final, but there was nothing on quite the level of cheap and tacky that made it in last year - the screenings last time attracted a lot of attention to the event. Voting was even harder this year, since some of the entries were amazing, and you're only allowed to pick one film, and they're really not comparable - how do you judge something that's genuinely erotic against something that's side-splittingly funny? I wish they'd split it into Best Humorous and Best Serious, that would at least narrow it down for me....

Four of the fifteen finalists were still just bad porn, as dull and uninnovative as anything you could rent from an adult store with all the usual lengthy gynaecology close-ups and come-shots ::yawn::. And in some cases really bad porn - there's nothing erotic about watching a woman squeeze and scrape semen from her vagina after sex, not when it goes on for over thirty seconds, and at least twice in an eight minute film. The entire cinema was cringing. Nor is there anything hot about watching two men come into shot glasses and then two women drinking it. Retching noises audible all round at that one....

There were some that stood out just for shock value - 'Fucking Seattle' was a sequence of a couple performing sex acts in various public places around the city. I don't think I'll ever go within five feet of that statue of Jimi Hendrix again, and I certainly won't be able to look at it without flashbacks! And just how many times do you have to ride the monorail before you get a carriage to yourself?

But of the good stuff in there - oh, yay! 'Ignis Fatuus' was one of the most erotic pieces of film I have ever seen anywhere. Very very simple and not even terribly explicit, just a slow-mo piece of a couple in a shower. Beautifully shot and lit, with lots of stroking and water droplets so-slowly running across some rather nice body parts - absolutely gorgeous and clearly people with some real film-making talent. One of the hardest things seems to be to make stranger sex erotic for an observer, and this one did it in spades.

'Lawn Boy' was a gorgeous gay piece, with a man feeling neglected by his long-hours-working lover fantasising about the college kid who mows the lawn in just a pair of skimpy shorts. At first, he's shocked by his fantasies, rejecting them and the objects around the house that inspire them. Then he gives in, has the hot sex fantasy - and tells the lawn boy not to come by very often, and pounces on his lover when he gets home, dragging him into the bedroom by the tie :-) It managed to be by turn funny, sweet and erotic, a very tricky balance to hold, and it was beautifully shot. The guy doing the fantasising was very cute, with all these tousled blond curls. And when he stripped - HOLY COW! - this collective intake of breath went round the audience, and it was very obvious why he was the guy getting screwed and not giving it!

'Getting a Leg Up in Porn' was a mockumentary in the early 70s style - grainy film, washed out colours, stick-up-the-arse narrator - on how to become a safe and successful porn star. Screamingly funny stuff, with dire warnings about getting involved with disreputable types (girl tied down and blindfolded being threatened with a pitchfork!) and how to recognise STDs (with the aid of a peanut butter sandwich XD). Best of all was the section advising not to eat before filming, as the girl regurgitates while giving a blow job, and her partner promptly throws up all over her *g*. It sounds awful, but it was done with such cunning camera work, and it was such a brilliant pastiche of a government information film, the attention astounding in every detail in that one.

Those were the three I was horribly torn between, and in discussion afterwards, it turned out that two of the group each had voted for 'Lawn Boy' and 'Getting a Leg Up' and one for 'Ignis Fatuus', so I was very content with that eventual spread - it seemed fair. Couldn't have really got it better if we'd collaborated.

Others that deserve a special mention - 'Bois (Wood)', a voyeuristic gay piece where a man obsesses over a carpenter and is rejected because the carpenter only gets off on his work. It was shot all in sepia with lots of suggestion and nothing explicit, and some beautiful arty framing, but I felt it was rather spoiled by the pretentious (and badly spoken) French narration. 'Jacking Off' was done in stop-motion with two male action dolls, which is exactly what

darthhellokitty said she'd do as an entry after seeing HUMP last year :-) 'Bo Logan' was a very funny piece, with the Seventies-style medallion man type picking up a girl in the condom aisle at the supermarket and trying to make her come - it succeeded in being cute as well as witty, if not exactly erotic.

ETA: 'Lawn Boy' came third, 'Getting a Leg Up in Porn' was second, and the Bo Logan piece won. I would only have ranked it around fifth. And no prize at all for the incredibly erotic shower scene :-(

Surprisingly, there were no f/f entries this year, which was something of a shame, as there were some cute ones last year. Obviously the m/m that was missing last year took over - hopefully they can get a balance of good entries for Round 3.

Sign me up again for next year already!

Some interesting discussions in a coffee shop afterwards, as the five of us tried to figure out where the hell some of the porn staples come from. Two straight men and three bi-flexible women with a liking for Teh Gay, and not one of us with any interest in prolonged gynaecology shots of either gender, in close-ups of blow jobs and accompanying drool, or in come-shots, especially come-shots on faces. Come up the nose or in the hair? EEEWWWWW!

I have to assume that kind of thing is aimed at men, the main consumers of porn, but I've yet to find a man either gay or straight who says any of the above works for him as erotica. So who are all the men who like it, that it's so ubiquitous in professional porn? It sure as hell puts me off spending my money, much as I like the theory of watching good porn.

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king-chiron.livejournal.com

Of course the worst part of the show was that I screwed up the times, was pretty sure I had bought tickets for the noon show but had apparently gotten tickets for the midnight show the previous night, although I still remember seeing "noon" when I bought them (as did other people in the same boat). But that turned out to be a not-so-bad-thing because we ended up chatting with the infamous Dan Savage who took pity on us and let us in anyway.

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The return of the slasher fangirl

HUMP! 2

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