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Shortbus (Unrated Edition)
by Velocity / Thinkfilm
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$27.98 |
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$24.99 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25. |
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DVD
DAWSON,PAUL
Publisher: Velocity / Thinkfilm
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Anamorphic
Actors: Sook-Yin Lee, Paul Dawson, Lindsay Beamish, PJ DeBoy, Raphael Barker
Follows the lives of several individuals and couples as the struggle with various sexual issues.
Genre: Feature Film-Drama
Rating: UN
Release Date: 13-MAR-2007
Media Type: DVD
In his aim to make an honest film about sex, John Cameron Mitchell (Hedwig and the Angry Inch) has taken a somewhat documentary approach to Shortbus, a film describing various New Yorkers' sexual pathos. Framed by shots roving a homemade diorama of the city, Shortbus is comprised of vignettes featuring actors who helped craft this story of people's disconnect in sexual endeavors. Jamie (PJ DeBoy) and James (Paul Dawson), a gay couple experiencing a lull in their relationship, visit Sophia (Sook-Yin Lee), a sex therapist whose inability to orgasm results in her clients inviting her to a sex club after which the film is titled. Sophia's husband, Rob (Raphael Barker), is also willing to experiment, so the two independently embark on adventures in self-pleasure. Dominatrix Severin (Lindsay Beamish) plays a crucial role in Sophia and Rob's lives, as her search for real humanity overlaps with their desire for passion. As each character's plot complicates, the viewer sees a similar melancholy bulldozing its way into these seemingly disparate lives. The depression is repeatedly used in comedic scenes, such as when James is asked on a date while still hospitalized for his attempted suicide. Yo La Tengo's score, which includes Animal Collective among others, lends this film a graceful ambience. Unlike porn, Shortbus has a resonance that encourages the viewer to consider one's own sex life as an important aspect of happiness. --Trinie Dalton
| Customer Reviews: |
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| See it for Jay Brannan and the two leads. |
| Customer Rating: 3 out of 5 |
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I recently discovered the amazing Jay Brannan on YouTube. After devouring everything I could find online by and about him, and buying his great new CD "Goddamned" (at jaybrannanstore.com--I see it's available for download from Amazon too), I got Shortbus.
I really wanted to like it, and not just for Jay's sake. I was a huge fan of Hedwig when it was live in the funky venues downtown, where I saw it at least half a dozen times. I liked it a little less on film, but I still respected John Cameron Mitchell's quirky, unique, and courageous creativity.
And I liked the first 20 minutes or so of Shortbus. I was fine with the sex. It's really pretty tame compared to what's on the internet 24 hours a day. I'm a gay man, and I don't particularly enjoy watching women have sex, but Sook-Yin Lee made it interesting. And Mitchell does a great job of keeping any of the sex from being pornographic.
The story of disparate people's intersecting quests for fulfillment is engaging, and some of the performances are quite moving. Sook-Yin Lee and Paul Dawson are really excellent in the leads, as is Lindsay Beamish in a major supporting role (My favorite scene in the movie has Dawson and Beamish locked in a closet together). Jay Brannan is even more luminous in his smallish role than I could have hoped. Ironically, it's right after Brannan's first appearance that the movie started to go south for me.
It's when the mayor tells Ceth, "New York is where everyone comes to be forgiven." What? New York? Forgive? Everyone? He must know a different New York from the one I lived in for most of my life. I love it, it's the most alive, exciting place on earth, but a forgiving place it is not. It's hard, it's ruthless, and the competitiveness never, ever, lets up. Everything in New York is harder than it has to be, harder than it is anywhere else, for people who aren't rich anyway. But everybody's experience is different, and I wasn't ready to throw the baby out over one silly line in the script, however pompously it was set up. But it left me with an uneasy feeling that there might be more weirdness ahead.
The weirdness turned out to be a strange sort of transcendental spiritualization of sex. I felt like I was watching a recruitment film for some weird new religion in which sex was the answer to everything.
Sex can be a lot of fun. It can be a great way to connect with other human beings. It can be great exercise. It's still the best way to keep the species going. But redemption? Forgiveness? What planet are these people living on? Maybe in some isolated Radical Faerie commune people can believe in such silliness, but most of us live in the real world, where sex is just one part of the complicated mess called life.
So it's funny that a movie that could have been a wonderful, liberating, consciousness-expanding exploration of how sex affects every part of our lives turned out to be preachy instead. By the time the interminable, grating, hymn-like anthem "In the End" was over, I felt like I'd been through a hundred indoctrination rituals for all the weirdest cults in the world. I was exhausted.
So I heartily recommend watching Jay Brannan in this or anything else he ever appears in. And I love Lee, Dawson and Beamish, and I haven't given up on Mitchell, yet. But if you're anything like me (for your sakes I hope not), be prepared to feel like you've spent several lifetimes with Tom Cruise at his evangelical best.
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| This film is....um....penetrating! |
| Customer Rating: 5 out of 5 |
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This film was like being dosed and getting lost back stage at an Elton John concert. Whether you think it a bad trip or good depends on your own sexual set of pathos. However, any non-porno film that showcases self-fellatio replete with facial, shoooo.....got my vote. If only I could do that, I wouldn't be writing this right now....hells, YEAH!!PILATE: A Brutal Bible Tale
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| Provocative |
| Customer Rating: 3 out of 5 |
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I have to say this film was erotically stimulating but I am unclear as to the various story lines what the characters were trying to achieve. Provocative topic...sexuality and relationships...but I really thought it was more of an art film (visual) than a film to question our own lives with.
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| I LOVE this film! |
| Customer Rating: 5 out of 5 |
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Some have branded John Cameron Mitchell's "Shortbus" as pornographic. I'm not sure what they (or any of us, for that matter) mean by "pornography," but I suspect that people who apply the word to "Shortbus" intend it as a synonym for "sex." There's lots of sex in "Shortbus," but it's sex that's celebratory, fun, funny, poignant, self-revealing, and loving.
Humans are sexual creatures, and our sexuality is irreducibly connected to our personal identities, our ability to love (as well as our ability to hate), and our need for companionship as social animals. In "Shortbus," the complexity of sexuality is explored through several interrelated story lines: Sophia's (masterfully played by Sook-Yin Lee) search for satisfaction, Jamie's (P.J. DeBoy) and James' (Paul Dawson) almost tragic but ultimately fruitful love for one another, Severin's (Lindsay Beamish) fear of intimacy, and drag performance artist Justin Bond's wonderfully exuberant celebration of human love in all its manifestations. One particularly touching scene is an encounter between an "ex-mayor of NYC," a gay, thinly disguised Koch, who reflects on loneliness, aging, and AIDS.
The film's dialogue is witty at times, poignant at others. The actors are all, without exception, quite good. The cinematography is superb. The presentation is uninhibited, honest, funny, and thought-provoking. If this is pornography, hurrah for porn.
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| Brilliant |
| Customer Rating: 4 out of 5 |
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This movie is simply phenomenal. The movie is about human relations with oneself, each other and about sex. The movie attempts to de-mystify and de-eroticize sex in such a splendid and matter of fact way that it succeeds, and while doing so manages to make a great film.
"Shortbus" is about several characters. Sofia is a sex therapist who has never had an orgasm, James is a gay man in a great relationship but suffering from depression and Severin is a dominatrix who is unable to have a meaningful relationship with anyone. Along with other minor and major characters, these people interact with each other, changing for the better or the worse each other's lives and sex lives.
This movie is so amazingly touching and moving that I found myself completely absorbed by the characters and their stories. I was completely immersed in their compelling and interesting stories, being the joy and sadness along them. The movie, which has mostly first time or little known actors is frankly, simply brilliant.
Although the movie is about sex, depicts real un-simulated sex and sex is the main topic, it actually is about something else, something deeper: it is about human relationships. As another reviewer mentioned, this movie will not be enjoyed by those at issue with sex on movies or gay scenes; but, everyone else, this is a great great and, let me say it again, great movie.
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