These days I've been focusing my money filling out my Titan collection. Just picked up Slammer, which I had been avoiding for a long time. Turns out to be a pretty damn good flick! Comparing the sex from something like Slammer to a KB flick, it's just a completely different vibe.

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I've been watching my first ever Titan movie over the past week, and it's been a completely different experience. I LOVE Pumped Up. I took a real risk in purchasing this for $35, because even though it's an older title (2000, I think) I couldn't find any reviews. Luckily, a friend recommended it, and it's perfect for me. Buff older guys frolicking in a gym environment, with plenty of playfulness and enthusiasm and a bit of humor (I adore that the exercise bike has a dildo attached). It's taking me a long time to get through this movie because... well, frankly because I've already had four or five orgasms during only the first hour of viewing, which is a highly unusual experience for me.

Pumped Up might even pull me out of my reviewing hiatus, though technically I'm on a self-elected break until mid-March.

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As for the sameness, that applies to other studios as well, except that most studios have more than one director, giving them some added variation. I find it fairly easy to spot work by different directors and it isn't just by the performers appearing in their videos. Bruce Cam, probably Titan's most talented director, puts his touch on anything he does, including the many videos on which he worked as cameraman before joining a few close friends to form Titan Media. The same can be said of George Duroy, Taylor Hudson (the first of Chi Chi LaRue's many directorial names), John Rutherford, Herve Handsome, John Travis, Csaba Borbely, Paul Barresi, Wash West, Derek Kent, Dirk Yates, Jean-Daniel Cadinot, Lucas Kazan, Michael Lucas, Matt Sterling, Kevin Clarke, Josh Eliot, Chip Daniels, Steven Scarborough, Joe Gage, Michael Zen, Phil St John, Thor Stephens, Wakefield Poole, and many, many more.

As for the argument about 1-on-1 versus groups, the complaint goes both ways: reviews seem to bemoan the lack of variation in videos featuring duos and the lack of duos in videos featuring groups. Bjorn usually gives us both: off-hand, I can't remember a single Bjorn video without a 1-on-1 scene -- many have two such scenes. There is usually at least one 3-way and at least one scene with a larger group. Given that Bjorn's videos usually have five (and sometimes six) scenes, that is a pretty good variety.

It is true that chemistry among some of his performers sometimes isn't what it should be but I wouldn't describe the sex as being purely mechanical. In too many videos from too many other production companies (every one of whom also use gay-for-pay performers, including Titan Media), the sex is too often even less than mechanical -- it's often simulated to the point of being nonexistent. I've seen many fucking scenes where the bodies don't even line up -- much less those where the humping is shot from an angle where the likelihood that body parts are only touching by accident will most likely be masked. And don't forget the tongue-wagging-in-space rimming found in too many videos from too many major studios. Thank god -- and in no small part, thank Bjorn -- such practices are beginning to be a thing of the past. Sex in Bjorn titles is, at the least, very real.

I've watch the hardcore versions of Titan Media's Fallen Angel series -- all of them. And, I admit that I'm enthralled. They are fantastic, exceptionally well-done videos -- quite possibly some of the best ever made. And, yes, they get me off. But that doesn't mean I like them: I don't. I find them as grotesque and as off-putting as I find them exciting.

By contrast, I find the final scene in Bjorn's Thick as Thieves to be my ideal. It is that final scene that raises this video to a level few others have attained: It features tender and romantic, yet still incendiary sex between two men where, if the chemistry between them isn't real, then they both deserve Oscars for their performances. It doesn't matter to me that the theme of the video is far-fetched or that some of the scenes are more comic than pornographic (the artist's studio 3-way) -- they are still good sex and the eye-candy factor is off the scale. BTW, Thick as Thieves contains two groups scenes, two 3-ways and the final 1-on-1 scene between Arpad Banfalvi and Zsolt Kopazs - both of whom admit to "having played around a little" but who identify themselves as being basically straight.

Yes, S&M is a very broad niche, I suspect the broader because it is only fairly recently being fleshed out. Many of the leather- and S&M-themed titles in the past danced so lightly through the subject that they were more laughable than exciting or foreboding. Before S&M titles from Titan Media, I could more easily expect the performers to be trading quiche recipes than having sex; with Titan's releases, there are no quiche leftovers in my mind. Plus, there is some really good product coming from more than just Titan Media. Regardless, it just isn't my taste in porn.

I've rambled enough....

~ GaySatyr

P.S. That's okay, YogaGrrl -- I asked for your opinion, not your reflection of my opinion. I respect other's points of view -- it's beside the point that mine is always right!

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Daddy Oohhh! makes movies that are often romantic, BTW, and they never (never!) use gay-for-pay performers. I've spoken directly with the producer about this, and it's strictly against their philosophy to put straight men in gay scenes. So studios like that do exist, but you might have to do some searching. Daddy Oohhh! movies don't have 50+ cumshots like Thick as Thieves, however, and the technical aspects aren't as good (yet) and the angles aren't always explicit. They do show sex in a way that's very human, very realistic, and that's what I like best.

Edited by - YogaGrrl on 1/10/2004 5:18:09 PM

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As to production philosophy, I don't really care whether people are gay for pay, straight for pay, pretending they're into it or putting on a good show. A production philosophy should be a method and approach for getting what you want on the screen; not an audience guide to excusing a production's short comings.

-T.C.

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I watched some of the first scene myself last week and then most of the first two scenes last night with my wife. She really liked the box cover. It's well shot with great production values and all that. The guys didn't seem overly plastic and I thought some of the setup was funny. She doesn't have a real boy/boy fetish and after several rounds of threesome acrobatics in the first scene it got boring enough to hit the fast forward. In the second scene she thought the guys looked great in police uniforms. So far though, a few stirrings but no real zing for us. It's third down in my review pile and I'm lucky to finish one a week. More later.

Edited by - RobHammer on 1/19/2004 2:03:52 PM

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~ GaySatyr

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