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Recently in Salon Arts & Entertainment

Movie Interview
Don't you know that it's different for girls?
"Coming Soon" director Colette Burson talks about a girl's inalienable right to better sex, the old Hollywood double standard and why the MPAA board has got to go.
By Rachel Lehmann-Haupt
[07/09/99]

Movie Review
"Arlington Road"
Hitchcock worship smothers the plot twists and suburban paranoia of a summer thriller.
By Andrew O'Hehir
[07/09/99]

Music Review
Sharps & flats
"Cold Hard Truth" is peppered with dark ballads about lost love and regretful decisions. George Jones, country's greatest living voice, knows his subject well.
By David Hill
[07/09/99]

Movie Review
"Genghis Blues"
Blues musician Paul Pena heads to Central Asia to unlock the secrets of the ancient art of throat-singing.
By Daniel Mangin
[07/09/99]

FilmAid
When some Hollywood producers tried to bring the cinema -- and a few celebrities -- to an Albanian refugee camp, they found their audience, though appreciative, had more pressing dramas to deal with.
By Peter Landesman
[07/08/99]

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In "American Pie," there's just no substitute for the real thing -- though that doesn't stop anyone from improvising. As the film opens, a closely knit group of high school seniors are so fearful of graduating with the stigma of virginity that they make a pact to get the deed done by any means necessary. In the meantime, however, the boys get a little antsy waiting for that one special, life-changing place to put their penises. So while the boys look for Ms. Right -- or Ms. Right Now -- their dicks find themselves in all sorts of unseemly venues: mouths, socks and, yes, even foodstuffs. As the story progresses, the pack's odyssey from sexual indignity to site-specific sweet release veers from genuinely funny to totally inane to downright offensive and back again.

American Pie Directed by Paul Weitz Starring Jason Biggs, Chris Klein and Natasha Lyonne

That the buzz surrounding "American Pie" has been so big probably says less about the strength of the story than it does about today's movie audiences' increased appetite for gross-out humor (the total number of movies this summer featuring inadvertent body fluid consumption is now two -- and it's only early July). Like a number of other comedies out there now, "American Pie" features what are fast becoming the hallmarks of the yuk/yucks feature -- ejaculation, diarrhea, vomit, masturbation, loss of bladder control, the spit or swallow conundrum and a whole lot of other stuff I'm probably forgetting. Some of it does manage to be quite funny; some of it just lies there, all by itself, without even trying to wrap itself around a joke. I'd appreciate toilet humor more if it weren't so often so unimaginative. (That's why I suspect the hair gel bit in "There's Something About Mary" was so memorable -- we'd never seen a spunk joke quite like that before.) When I see a guy peeing in his pants, I just think, guy peeing in his pants. But do something interesting with it and hey, I'd be right there with you.

Despite its heavy focus on bodily functions and its central theme of trying to get laaaaaiiiid, it's interesting to note that the version of "American Pie" now opening did manage to snag an R rating from the MPAA. Especially when you consider that another teen comedy, "Coming Soon," won't in fact be coming soon to theaters, due to an initial NC-17 rating. (The film is now rated R.) Like "American Pie," Colette Burson's "Coming Soon" focuses on a group of high school students desperate to get some sat-is-faction. The striking difference? "Coming Soon" is about a trio of girls -- all of whom are already sexually active, but none of whom has ever had an orgasm. Seems the folks who dole out the ratings had a little problem with a scene in which one of the characters is shown discovering alternate uses for the Jacuzzi jet stream -- a scene chastely shot from the girl's bathing suit-clad shoulders up.

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