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Nerve Retro: Visions of Lolita
by Various Photographers
A visual tribute to the original nymphet.
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Best of Dating Confessions
by You
This week, the award for "Most Likely To Have Been Assaulted By A Giant Spider."
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True Stories: The Worst Photo Shoot of All Time
by Jennifer Albany
In retrospect, I should've stayed away from Craigslist's "Creative" section.
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Miss Information
by Erin Bradley
Help! Suddenly my boyfriend's the most annoying man in the world. /advice/
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Red Hot Chili Peppers: Me and My Friends
by Tony Woolliscroft
Twenty years of intimate photos, onstage and off.
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20 Ways to Get Your Arrested Development Movie Fix*
by Phil Nugent
*Until they actually make the movie.
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Sex Advice From . . . Mike White
by James Brady Ryan
Q: What has screenwriting taught you about dating? A: I write about awkwardness. Dating is the perfect inspiration. /advice/
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The Men Who Stare at Goats
by Scott Von Doviak
George Clooney & co. get political, psychic, and really weird. /entertainment/
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Painted Love
by Samantha West
Shooting as if with brushes and oil.
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Culture Wars: Debating Mad Men's Marriage
by James Brady Ryan and Isabella Notti
Spoiler Alert: Should Betty [redacted] Don [redacted] or [redacted]?
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Ten Revelations on the Road to Love
by Jack Harrison
Seduction is easier than you think.
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My Parents Were Awesome
by Eliot Glazer
Before fanny packs and Yanni concerts, your parents were free-wheeling, fashion-forward, and super-awesome.
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Awesome Advice, Way to Go!
by Erin Bradley
The Washington Post forgets that vampires aren't real. /advice/
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New Releases: DVD
by Scott Von Doviak
The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 plus three. /entertainment/
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The Nerve Debate: Marriage
by Elizabeth Wurtzel and Jack Harrison
A tie that binds — or chokes?
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Savage Love
by Dan Savage
Should I marry the only guy I've ever slept with? /advice/
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My First Time
by You
"I was surprisingly adventurous, and he was surprisingly shy..."
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Cinema Sutra: Showgirls
by Jack Harrison
Elizabeth Berkley teaches us how (not) to have sex underwater. /advice/
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Ten Inappropriate Relationships We Love
by James Brady Ryan
Would Harold and Maude be cute in real life? /entertainment/
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Nerve Retro: Modern Olympias
by Peter J. Gorman
The photographer borrows from Manet to capture the tiny movements that emerge from bored stillness.
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Best of Dating Confessions
by You
This week: The "Your Reasons For Joining PETA Are Suspect" Award.
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Everything I Know About Love I Learned From... Weezer
by Jakob Dorof
Insights on romance from the original geek-rockers. /entertainment/
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Miss Information
by Erin Bradley
How can I tell if he's toying with me, or actually interested? /advice/
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Talking to Strangers
by Briana E. Heard and Meghan Pleticha
Nerve asks deeply personal questions to people we just met.
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Review: Ong-bak: The Thai Warrior |
"You'll believe a man can fly," promised the ads for 1978's
Superman. Well, no. But I do now believe a man can leap
clear over a mid-sized four-door sedan at a dead run,
because I've seen Thailand's impossibly athletic Tony Jaa
perform this astonishing feat twice in five seconds, as
captured from two separate camera angles. Even then, I might
suspect some kind of cinematic legerdemain if not for the
fact that the makers of Ong-bak: The Thai Warrior have
practically filed affidavits swearing that no wires,
miniatures or computer graphics enhance the film's
collection of eye-popping stunts. When Jaa, cornered in an
alley by a dozen thugs wielding sticks and baseball bats,
manages to escape by scampering over their shoulders, their
collective astonishment looks as genuine as yours. They
can't believe he did it, either.
Fair warning, though: While Ong-bak inspires more gasps per
minute than any other movie currently in theaters — indeed,
than any other movie since the '80s heyday of Jackie Chan —
you should be prepared to stifle a fair number of yawns
along the way. So leisurely is the setup, involving the
theft of a Buddha statue's head from a rural village, that I
actually walked out of the movie at the 2003 Toronto Film
Festival, convinced that it was a dud. (A second viewing
confirmed that it's more than half an hour before the real
thrills commence.) And while Jaa brings an awe-inspiring
kineticism to both fight and flight, he sorely lacks Chan's
winning personality; standing still, he's no more expressive than the stone Buddha head he so relentlessly
pursues.
Still, nobody goes to a martial-arts movie for the acting,
the plot, or the inevitable moments of bathos in which an
ostensibly adorable moppet wails over the corpse of a loved
one. (Ong-bak's annoying urchin gets two such scenes.)
Ultimately, all that really matters is this: Does ass get
kicked, preferably in copious quantities? You'd better
believe it, if only because the folks who made Ong-bak have
gone to considerable trouble to make sure that you do. — Mike D'Angelo |
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Date DVD #19: P.S. |
 When you go a-courtin', there's a thin line between picking a film that's slightly disturbing but kind of titillating and a film that screams, "You are so not getting laid tonight." To avoid disaster, sometimes you must parse the subtlest of differences. For instance, last year, there was a strange sub-genre of Middle-Aged Women Being Freaked Out By the Death of a Lover/Son and Becoming Strangely Attracted to Someone Who Looks Like Said Lover/Son. And for the most part, these films are very, very bad date movies.
In Birth, Nicole Kidman desperately craved the love of a little blank-faced cherub who reminded her of her dead husband — so much that she climbed into the bathtub with him, naked. This is a bad date movie, even if you're not dating a toddler.
In The Door in the Floor, Kim Bassinger fucked a teenage boy toy that her husband generously brought home to her. And she fucked him while she cried and stared morosely at a framed picture of her dead son that hung above the bed. This is an extremely bad date movie.
P.S. is the third and best of this bizarre trifecta of films directed by men about needy, delusional women. Dylan Kidd's spastic drama stars Laura Linney as a Columbia University admissions officer who begins to believe that a young, cocky applicant (Topher Grace) is the reincarnation of her dead husband. I'm still not sure that this plotline isn't some malignant cultural wart, but I am sure Kidd's still got the goods he debuted in Rodger Dodger. He can write men like few others, shifting from cocky bravado to skittish deflection in a single line. At first, the romance between the two plays dorkily romantic: "That was awesome!" Grace enthuses after a sweaty bout of sex, and Linney's face says it all: What the fuck am I doing with this kid?
The film's gimmicky as hell, brutal in parts, and inclined to slapstick and tart punchlines — and that's why it works, because, unlike Birth or The Door in the Floor, this film never settles for even one character that's merely a stand-in varietal of Grief or Mid-Life Crisis or Childlike Spookiness — and, unlike the other two, it's damn funny (a big help when you try to pull off such overwrought conceits). The halting seduction sequences are alternately bumbling-hilarious and nearly abusive, but there's a kind of gritty, tempered optimism that runs through the film: hard-ass, smart-ass romanticism that is Kidd's signature. And that leaves you feeling hopeful, not merely creeped out. — Logan Hill |
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©2005 Nerve.com.
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