Screening Log

This new site feature is a collective effort to summarize our viewing habits. Occasionally, you will find titles here that are coming to a theater near you, in addition to films viewed on television, and even films viewed in piecemeal. The screening log is archived each month; to view past entries select a month in the menu below.

January 2007 activity

Total Log Entries: 84

Total Comments: 32

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A Dirty Shame / The Neuter Edition / USA / 2004

Five minutes shorter than Waters’ original NC-17 cut and mutilated by an unbearable amount of pixilation and dubbed dialogue, it nonetheless remains faithful to the director’s reputation as a craftsman of the crude and bizarre. Tracy Ullman as Sylvia Stickles, a petulant suburbanite transformed into an over-sexed “apostle” by an accidental knock on the head, radiates with the explicit sickness known only to Waters’ most willing and devoted fans. Other new additions to the director’s usual cast—Patricia Hearst and Mink Stole are both present and deliciously perverse—are singer Chris Isaak as Sylvia’s oblivious husband, Selma Blair as Sylvia’s monstrously-busted daughter Caprice, and Suzanne Shepherd as Sylvia’s mother Big Ethel. And while A Dirty Shame lacks any of the shit-eating self-molestation that made Waters famous (and infamous), it’s mischievousness for the twenty-first century: Sylvia gyrating erotically to the “Hokey Pokey,” Johnny Knoxville’s Ray-Ray extolling the virtues of the sexually liberated, a grown man defecating into a purse. And, in true Waters form, there’s an overly blatant message about the importance of diversity and acceptance. But, then again, no one really watches John Waters’ films for their collective social implicitness, do they.

by Adam Balz | Source: New Line DVD
15 Jan 2007 2:02 PM | Submit Comment

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