The Last Seduction, DVD Review

I can't say enough about this film.
It is my favorite. It's such a favorite film of mine that when I came to New York and didn't have a "drink" when going to bars, I ordered a Manhattan like Bridgette and to this day I still drink it.

 What makes this film so good to me is one, she's smart and two she doesn't pull back. It would've been easy to have her chicken out and go good girl at the end. But Bridgette  has her eyes on the prize from beginning to end. Whether you consider her the Devil or a tarnished angel she doesn't stop.
Also she thinks.
It’s so wonderful to see someone sit down and have to figure out a problem, to have to plot a manipulation, to leap at opportunities that may mean nothing and MAKE them mean something.
I like the fact that she plays every card in the deck: sex, homophobia, lust, and race, anything it takes to in a sense stay alive.

Now this may seem like a thoroughly evil person but there points in this film where Bridgette  does "crack" or try to really be herself. There's the one where Mike asks who she is, what she's doing and she tries to explain to him about her husband and the money while playing pool. He doesn't take her seriously. For two reasons, he doesn't think she's that smart or capable and he can't fathom himself doing it either. One thing I've learned is that the smarter you see yourself. The more capable you feel about yourself the easier it is to understand others even if their goals and methods are opposed to your own. It takes smarts to see smarts.

There's also the point where Bridgette  has been forced to fake the accident with the private investigator. Before she leaves and is caught, she tries to have Mike comfort her, to really listen to her. But two things have happened. She's played the game so well that her sincerity comes across as false and two; he doesn't want someone without secrets. Who doesn't have the upper hand? Some people are drawn to being destroyed by others because it validates their existence. If someone would take the time to destroy you it means that you exist, that you have meaning. But Bridget does crack here, she's ready to fess up and be with Mike as an equal and he blows her off to play hockey. Her voice even cracks and in some ways we can see how Bridgette  is the way she is because no one is a race horse like she is. That she is tougher because the disappointment of others has made her tough to begin with. That honest emotion I can relate to and it's why I like Bridgette   If she was just uncaringly evil, she'd be no fun but you understand why Bridgette  is the way she is if you look at when she lets her defenses down.

Above all else she is the consummate chess player, understanding that the game is never to the pieces your playing with but to destroying the other side. Being cut off from running because of her husband's debts and her desire NOT to run has boxed her in into not so much fighting in the way that men or women perceive fighting but the way thinkers do. A thinker knows that everything and everybody is a weapon or a defense in a fight. That each word is a calculation, that each action should mean or be about something and seeing that ability on screen is what makes this film on my top 3 favorite films of my entire life.

And I've seen tooooooooooooo many movies to say that lightly. Another film on that short list is Fresh.


Thank you for reading,
Kyle Phoenix
Email: kylephoenixshow@aol.com
Website: http://kylephoenixsite.com/
Blog: http://kylephoenixshow.blogspot.com/2012
Thanks and enjoy! You can Like Us on Facebook or Follow Us on Twitter! Don't forget to watch The Kyle Phoenix Show on Channel 56 (Time Warner), 83 (RCN), 34 (Verizon) and the Thursday/Friday 12am/midnight simulcast onhttp://kylephoenixsite.com/

Are Strippers, Porn Stars, Lap Dancers, Escorts Exploited?: Black, White, Puerto Rican---Is Everyone Justa Freakin'?

Here in the big bad ( and badddd) city of NYC the trend has gone from bars, lounges and dance clubs to the push to be more...attractive. Attractive to a greater clientele and sometimes a younger and older clientele. The clothes have come off. Throughout the city, all five boroughs the clothes have come off----male and female. Now whether that's right or wrong I'm not going to morally go at but what I am going to look at is the question/statement that runs through my head when I'm in clubs watching people do this:

"If he/she knew Microsoft Office Word they wouldn't be doing this"

I teach at a university and a variety of other projects around the city, particularly focusing on adult education so a lot of my students/mentees are in their 20s and early 30s. This tends to be the most trying, difficult time of a younger persons life as they are (hopefully) advancing their education but still need to work and support themselves. Younger people may be more appearance driven so they tend to be a larger demographic of those who work out, their metabolisms are faster so they tend not to be as out of shape and most importantly they are still developing their moral, social and self esteem cores. All of these factors make them available to using what they have, shaking their moneymakers, swinging on the pole for all they're worth. Which I would defend they have a right to do with their bodies as they will, when legally over the age of 18.

However, does it work out? And frighteningly enough, are the more exploited Black and Latino?

Dancer: 80% or More Under Educated

The potential progression looks like this: you need to make some extra cash. You're reasonably cute: You're willing to be near to total nude and will allow varying degrees of touching to occur upon your body for money. You do a little dance, make a little noise and get down one night. You walk out with a fist full of dollars for a few hours work and that's intoxicating to anyone, particularly to someone who might be in a financial bind. You go back. A one time lark turns into a scheduled work assignment, the money is initially good. However the very nature of any capitalistic project/business is that the Demand will change the Supply to not only be present but also innovate and have some sort of variety. The Dancer (male or female, I want to be fair about this) has then to innovate their act/their appearance or farm themselves out to more clubs or take what they can get. The problem with all of these alternatives is that it requires a level of sophisticated innovative thinking. And politely speaking, the innovators are the smallest percentage of the Dancers, as the innovators would naturally graduate to bigger and better things. The business is therefore full of predominantly, 80% or higher, under educated Work Horses. Logically speaking the more educated you are the less forms of degradation/exploitation you will put up with as you have the capacity to discern exploitation and make a plan or a stand to remove yourself from it in a shorter span of time.  The ones left behind need to eat/survive.

Dancer Becomes an Escort

Now your Work Horses have less options. They tend to not have an advanced or complete basic education (GED/high school degree) so they have learned perhaps survival skills but not critical thinking and divergent thinking that allows for innovation. But the money is still good. Somewhere in here the two other options come in---Porn or Escorting. Which comes first depends on the individual. Someone tips you $20 or more consistently and they're nice to you, they're reasonably attractive, they offer money for a private lap dance, they offer more money for a "date" and boom you're an "Escort". (Note: I'm using the term Escort purposefully rather than prostitute as a prostitute may be picked up in random spots in public and an escort is making a "date" appointment. You might think the discernment is silly but those who do this work are very specific. Also escorts tend to be paid more.) As an Escort you're being paid $200 or more an hour, comparable or even more than stripping/dancing and perhaps you're young enough or needy enough or intoxicated enough to need the money, to enjoy the sex, to want the intimacy, to actually like your date.


Dancer Becomes Porn Star

Going from a Work Horse dancer to Pornography is similar to becoming an Escort except that maybe the date is to bring you into a company/camp where you'll be part of scene or two (average pay is $200 to 500 a scene). Again you're in the bind of perhaps liking it, needing the money, making an assured amount instead of the maybe amount as a dancer (maybe the patronage will like you and tip you the equivalent). The contracts that Porn stars must sign in order to get paid and the conditions which they live/work under will shock you! No, really, it will ruin how you might view your favorite porn.

Exploitation and Risk

Under-educated men and women have nothing but their bodies to offer in exchange for survival. They are controlled by several multi-billion dollar industries/vehicles that in no way give revenue back on their talent (Bars, Porn/Video companies, Dates/Johns). And what we must throw in to the mix is that all industries, particularly in Western civilization, are influenced by racism and misogyny and to some degree misandry---so the Black & Latino people, male and female in this are often paid less and asked/demanded to do more. For instance being in pornography scenes that are mandatory bare-backing (non-condom) sex scenes.

Facts and Figures

---Black/African American and Hispanic/Latino communities have been disproportionately affected by HIV and AIDS in America.

---In 2009 the highest percentage of new HIV diagnoses were among those aged 40-44 years.

---The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) publish HIV statistics for 40 states and 5 dependent areas with confidential name-based HIV infection reporting. AIDS statistics include all 50 states and the District of Columbia, as well as the 5 dependent areas.

---Blacks/African Americans accounted for half of all new HIV diagnoses and just under half of new AIDS diagnoses in 2009. Of the total number of people living with an HIV diagnosis in 2008 in the 40 U.S. states and 5 dependent areas, 46% were black/African American; 31.6% white; 20% Hispanic/Latino; 1.3% multiple races; 0.6% Asian; 0.4% American Indian/Alaska Native; and 0.04% Native Hawaiian/Other Pacific Islander.

---Among men diagnosed with AIDS in 2009, 56% of black/African American men, 65% of Hispanic/Latino men and 79% of white men became infected with HIV through male-to-male sexual contact. Among women diagnosed with AIDS in 2009, 78% of black/African American women, 75% of Hispanic/Latino women and 68% of white women became infected through heterosexual contact.


Back to Basics:

We can see from above statistics the impact, the devastating impact and so this leads me back to my question: "If he/she knew Microsoft Office Word they wouldn't be doing this"

We'll tackle that in Part 2 of this article.



Thank you, I look forward to your emails and comments. And as always check your local listings for The Kyle Phoenix Show broadcast times in NYC. You can always find more information about me, topics and tips on relationships, finance and life strategies on http://kylephoenixsite.com/

The Dead Zone DVD, review by Kyle Phoenix

This is one of my favorite movies and Christopher Walken struck me as both eerie and sad in this film long before I knew who he even was. What’s handled nicely here is the responsibility of precognitive dreams. It could've simply been about him seeing things and doing something but this makes them more complex than that as it works to deal with the ramifications of all of this ability. In someway this is about the web that permeates from our lives to that of others and how we're only a few people away from destruction, how we're linked to darkness in ways we don't even suspect. I think that this and the Shining take the best look into someone having an odd ability and the personal price that wrought. What’s nice about Stephen King's concept is that it pretty much came off here. Perhaps what works best in his films is the lack of special effects. To try and produce them with tends to disrupt the flow of the movie. Here Walken's acting and Brooke Adams make a tragic couple whose lives were interrupted for a number of years by his coma but ultimately their love is the sacrifice to save the world from Martin Sheen. Perhaps the message intended or not is to look at our lives as part of a bigger landscape than just what we want.

The Final Fantasy, DVD, Animated Movie

I was very impressed with this movie, it coming on the heels of having seen the Matrix: The Osiris with Dreamcatcher in theaters. There were of course technical/graphic image things that were similar to the advanced displays of the Matrix short, made years later.  But this actually went into having a plot and humanization (if such a word exists). The main deficit to this form of design seems to be the effort to make younger people appear perfect. Dr. Sid tends to look the best because he has wrinkles and frown lines. That’s mainly my visual critique. It’s apparent that this computer rendering is much cheaper than physically trying to create these images and can be done on a much grander scale.

The plot was pretty good too. Though I still don't get the Spirit Hunt----that part of the metaphysical science is left a little vague. And the fact that their hypothesis is doubted is honestly right. How the spirits of some animals and vegetation on Earth are special versus say those of other living people is not fully answered so that this group of people can risk their lives. The concept of the Phantoms being a cosmic accident and not an invasion was original but I thought it a little slow that no on else thought of them as ghosts beforehand. What I'm mainly saying is that a lot of these plot points took a back stage to the computer elements and most importantly there being a sense that more than a handful of people on the entire planet had the ability to think. That made the overall plot a little simplistic to me but I still enjoyed it.


Thank you!
Kyle Phoenix
kylephoenixshow@aol.com
http://kylephoenixsite.com/
Thanks and enjoy! You can Like Us/Share this post on FaceBook, LinkedIn, Google+ or Follow Us on Twitter! Don't forget to watch The Kyle Phoenix Show on Channel 56 (Time Warner), 83 (RCN), 34 (Verizon) and the Thursday/Friday 12am/midnight simulcast on http://kylephoenixsite.com/

Kyle Phoenix Review of New X-Men Vol. 1: E is for Extinction (v. 1)

Though this review is for New X-Men, I have to say that Uncanny and Extreme average overall into my rating of 4 stars. I know there's been a lot of hullabaloo about Morrison's work on New X-Men---new directions, excitement, blah blah. However I'm not so sure much has changed so radically. By measuring change I mean if Morrison didn't write anymore issues would there be a vast change in the X-Men. Ok, Emma Frost as a member is fun and a good twist, however I think that the creation of new characters and the wholesale tossing out of others (like the New Mutants, who're coming back in yet another series to run 50-100 issues and be cancelled along the lines of New Mutants, Generation X and X-Force) rather than integrating them eventually into the team. I think this is the main deficit of the X-Men. Characters created that are likeable, that are durable, eventually can't be changed in any significant way.

Prof. X having a twin sister who is wholesale evil was nice, though from the first panel Cassandra appeared in, I knew who and what she was. Maybe I've been reading comics too long to be surprised too deeply..........
There was a HUGE, I mean HUGE storyline buildup to Cassandra stealing the Prof.'s body and returning with the Shiar to wax the X-Men out. And the fight was.........ehhhhh....not that scary. I mean everyone pretty much stayed status quo. Morrison is twisting but not changing. At least in Xtreme, Psylocke is dead, dead, dead. Jean is having Phoenix trips again, Beats is upset because he's hideous, Wolverine is all violence talk and menace and Emma is a nice bit of relief as someone who's been there, done that. Cyclops, easily the most boring person at a party is purposefully written as stiff, which is interesting and his affair with Emma, another interesting point but will he and Jean divorce over this? ...
My measure of a great writer is that when you look back on the 20-50 issues they've done is it an entirely new playing field? Is anything of consequence changing?

Ok, the school is out and officially a mutant academy, which has possibilities but in many ways over the years it has been outted, just not as crowded. A lot of the X-Men's main stable of enemies are either gone, dead or well........X-Men. So it makes you wonder what a real threat is going to be. This book dialogue wise and visually is sometimes good, even great and the overall plotting of a maturing X-Men being more present in the world is interesting but I don't feel a sense of danger, a sense of foreboding. I mean my big question is when a threat arrives, honestly, does anyone reading this book feel like someone might not survive? That Cyclops and Phoenix will break up? That Beast really might be gay? There are playful twists, stunts, but not true change going on.

Cassandra, a serious threat was defeated too easily, and by easily, I mean there was very little collateral damage that we got to see.

Supposedly she rendered the Shiar empire to rubble, which should've been part of what the readers SEE not just were told. Good writing shows you not just tell you. Essentially compressing Cassandra into a mental file inside of a metamorph was unique but somehow too easy. Then again, I have to wonder why Emma, Phoenix and Prof. X together couldn't fight her. Morrison is a good writer, I agree and I'm sure a lot of the things he's done have been uphill battles, unfortunately the X-Men are stuck in their own quagmire of history and static characterizations. It would have been really interesting to see this new Cyclops who had been part of Apocalypse. That theme was explored for two minutes but not truly cracked open.

Also is it just me or has anyone ever considered that these young people are the Prof's puppets? Wouldn't someone so telepathically formidable leak his desires to those around him? That would be an excellent area to be explored.

Kyle Phoenix Review of Bowling for Columbine

What makes this film so remarkable is the truth that it ultimately tells. Simplistically he traces the rampant gun mania in this country back to the origins of this country being on genocide and slavery. I'd seen Moore talk about his film on Oprah at length before I saw this film, as well as the three minute cartoon that traces the US history and shows the paranoia that white people have been engendered with.

A film that focuses on gun control becomes about race and racism. The racial portrayal of people of color in the media, the media eagerly showing particular races ad nausea committing crimes, over and over and over, forcing white people to believe their engendered fears about other races. The audience laughed at all the appropriate parts until it became about race, then only the people of color laughed because of the bitter truth of the entire situation. White people are afraid to admit this truth, this fear, this internalized terror that seems to stalk so many to the point of getting as many guns as possible.

Charlton Heston, spokesman for the NRA, is interviewed in the film and even he admits that part of the problem, the crime is because of so many ethnicities in this country.

White people are so afraid. Afraid because America is a Me culture, unlike other countries that have socialized medicine, socialized care for the elderly, and at some level while it affords immediate gratification, we all understand that isn't right.

I don't know how to make White people less scared, to get a population of 280 million to relinquish having 250 million guns or 750 million televisions which honestly is becoming a manifestation of what we all project as "the Devil". We're slowly imploding into consumerism, a mentality of attack, attack, attack with a focus on war and destruction and killing each other. Frankly, after leaving the movie, I was ashamed that I lived in a country where our children can turn not only physically, whether purposefully as in Columbine or in Flint, accidentally, to killing. Children are killing. What else do we need as a wake up call?

I took a class man years ago taught by an Indian chief and his lesson was that every culture has Armageddon mythology but that American Indian mythology includes that the winds will be out of control, that our weather patterns will no longer make sense and the next that our children will kill. I do believe that the focus of television and video games and movies teaches children HOW to kill and destroy but it is America's lack of empathy and compassion that teaches them WHY to kill.

When so many people Moore interviewed were asked why they were arming themselves, they came back to the 2nd Amendment, to the necessity to protect themselves, their families, to the fear of the THEM coming for them whether it be government or SOMEONE, colored ultimately and I thought to myself what people of color are taught from a young age: White people are crazy, and now there's a film to support that theory.

Statistically it bears out that Black people have actually committed less crime in the past 10 years than White people, 30% lowering while there has been a 600% increase in the showing of black men as criminals on TV. Amazingly companies like Enron and World Com that financially rape millions of people of their entire lives are shown briefly before we get back to the projected terrorists and racial dangers here in America. White citizens born into fear and constantly propagandized by television about fearing are arming themselves and ironically as we learned in Columbine, killing themselves. White children go hog wild with guns, white men are more apt to commit suicide and take the family with them, white people wage war without the UN support and the rest of us sit and watch.

I've been to Canada and honestly the White people there are different, maybe it's more space, maybe it's because they are a country committed to caring about people, not just thru lip service but through social and financial commitment---free medical care for EVERYONE, care for the elderly, a higher unemployment rate but a gov't committed to employing its citizens. A mass of 30 million people who have 7 million guys and less than 200 gun shootings a year. America, 280 million has close to 12,000 gun murders a year. Even by the simplistic math of averaging 10 times more in population we should only have 2000 average gun related shootings a year and yet we have 6 times THAT amount.
America is hemorrhaging from lack of social care for EVERYONE, rich or poor, lack of parental classes, lack of marital classes, lack of integrity, lack of responsible election processes, lack of big business regulation and lack of respect for the world. Its funny how this film correlates the ideology into the political system, but like a disease this is rampant to the very concept of the 3 card Monte deal of hunting for Osama to blaming Saddam Hussein for the world's terroristic problems. Bush knows how many weapons of mass destruction are in Iraq, why?> because his daddy sold them to Iraq when Hussein was helped to established power by the US to oppose Iran. We didn't care about the actions of the regime then; it was only when oil prices went up that we became concerned about the second largest producer of oil on the planet.

Curiously enough I got an email about my initial review of this film that told me to "go back home" if I didn't like it here. In truth, I am Narragansett Indian, an undisturbed line from my great-grandfather; anyone not of American Indian descent is on MY land my legal possession rights of America. I am home. But hasn't that always been the racist yell from the battle for Integration, to vote, to exist? That if anyone here in America disagrees, as supposedly allowed in a democracy, they should: go back to where THEY came from". Again that "THEM". I expect that not every person of any color shares the masses attitudes, except perhaps in this country that through first genocide of millions of Indians and then slavery of several races to build up the financial base became the mess we have today.


Thank you for reading,
Kyle Phoenix
Email: kylephoenixshow@aol.com
Website: http://kylephoenixsite.com/
Blog: http://kylephoenixshow.blogspot.com/2012
Thanks and enjoy! You can Like Us on Facebook or Follow Us on Twitter! Don't forget to watch The Kyle Phoenix Show on Channel 56 (Time Warner), 83 (RCN), 34 (Verizon) and the Thursday/Friday 12am/midnight simulcast on http://kylephoenixsite.com/

Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison, book review

Tears, ebony tears, that turn to type and illuminate


I've read Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison going on four or five times now, floored, awestruck, enraptured each time, every twist and turn a new surprise arrives. Milkman is a wonderful archetype for a Black man searching for what he can claim as his own. His mind, his body, his sex, money? What is his and not tainted by the past, by racism, by internal family feuding? This is what I call a "Patience Book", you have to sit with it the way you would sit with a child on a Sunday afternoon. Patience. You have to breathe in rhythm with this book. Morrison is one of those few writers that it's silly to ask all of your questions of even after you finish the book.

Pick it right back up and breathe, savor each page, have patience. It is not an easy read for it is literature and you are reading, truly reading. Not surfing through pulp fiction knowing that the hero lives, the heroine is saved and everybody sleeps well on the last page. Uh uh. Patience. What else but patience could you use to understand Magdalene, Pilate, Corinthians? My all time, all time, all time favorite literary scene that chills me, tears me up, knocks me around hard and then uplifts me: Pilate at the funeral. "That was my baby, That's my baby, AND SHE WAS LOVED!"

Honey, welcome to real African American literature, impossible to translate to film for this is patience reading. Patience, free at last, free at last!

As we explore manhood as African American men, we're challenged as Milkman Dead is in this book to separate ourselves form our carnal desires and our parents.  Following along the trajectory of Joseph Campbell's identification of the hero on a quest, Milkman must confront the ghosts, demons and histories of the family he was born into.  We then spiral through the Seven Days who for every Black person killed, kill a White person and then into Milkman's sisters and their imprisonment in the times they live in, even as privileged women.  Morrison's attention to historical detail and social alertness to positioning this book between the early 1900's up through the 1970's forces the reader to understand that Civil Rights didn't exist for everyone in the same way, in fact many Blacks were at first frightened about desegregation.  Discover this book, read it, then read it again, maybe even buy the audio version sometimes on a Sunday I put on one of Ms. Morrison's audio books and let her amazing voice lull me through the day, the poetry of her words, a passage suddenly appearing from the ether, anew line caught that I don't remember reading......rocks me.
Rocks.
Me.

"That was my baby, That's my baby, AND SHE WAS LOVED!"

Thank you!
Kyle Phoenix
kylephoenixshow@aol.com
http://kylephoenixsite.com/
Thanks and enjoy! You can Like Us/Share this post on FaceBook, LinkedIn, Google+ or Follow Us on Twitter! Don't forget to watch The Kyle Phoenix Show on Channel 56 (Time Warner), 83 (RCN), 34 (Verizon) and the Thursday/Friday 12am/midnight simulcast on http://kylephoenixsite.com/