Stardancer

The default thinking in the Philippines is that men who work as male strippers do so out of poverty; they wouldn’t be in that profession otherwise. Stardancer, the straight-to-video documentary directed by Ihman Esturco, wants us to think it’s different: It’s pushing the idea that the men love what they do, out of unbridled choice.

The video seems to be in direct reaction to another recent release, Confessions of a Macho Dancer, which was a frustrating repetition of cliches about poor guys forced to do things against their morals. Stardancer is a lot more liberal. In truth, though, the two documentaries couldn’t be any more alike. They both forego the actual evidence to support their unoriginal claims, instead bludgeoning us with tabloid throwaway voice-overs and texts. In Stardancer, the voice of God is saying things that the real-life macho dancers aren’t really saying. It also skims through topics like romance and the history of the profession, but it’s so pedestrian, it’s barely cohesive.

The one big difference, and Stardancer’s achievement, is that the men unabashedly show their faces during interviews. And what a bunch of good-looking men they are. It’s easy to believe they’re the titular monicker in whatever bar they work for. They overflow with charisma, confidence, and PR skills, which are valuable in their job, and for the camera, they seem to say they’re not ashamed. Some of them are personalities you may recognize from modeling shows or male pageants, or from past erotica, such as Kiko Montenegro and Brent Lorenzo in Esturco’s own Pantasya. You have to wonder if they were bar dancers discovered to model or act, or models/actors who are role-playing as macho dancers especially for this video.

In fact, the real reason to buy this DVD is the bonus feature of the guys individually performing one-minute erotic dance numbers packed with skin close-ups, peekaboos, and in some cases, erect penises flashed menacingly. The episodes are often photographed in low-key lighting that makes what is otherwise total flesh exposure a little harder to see (and also a little more pretentious in its artfulness). What the video fails in documentary respectability, it makes up for in trashy titilation.

GRADE: A-

Related Link:
Official Site

Erotika M2M 2 – DVD

“More Features Inside!” says the DVD box cover. That would be a photo gallery of the models and short behind-the-scenes footage during dance rehearsals, shooting, and photo shoot. Unlike the bonuses in the first M2M (Masahe), made essential by resplendent nudity, the extras here reveal nothing. A couple of the guys goof off for the camera rather gamely, but that, too, is unsubstantial.

The main feature is still a thing to behold, so if you don’t already have the bonus-free VCD release, you might want to snatch the DVD for its better image quality. Otherwise, this belated disappointment is an unnecessary waste of money.

GRADE: B-

Related Link:
Review of the VCD

Hubad! Striptease Sessions for the Daring Men

Johnron Tanada

The important distinction is that “Hubad” in the title is a verb, not an adjective; it means “to strip” and NOT “naked”. There’s a lot of bumping and grinding here, but it doesn’t get to the point of full exposure. Such a premise is doomed to be disappointing. Thus, the video hardly satisfies, even though it shows us quite a lot: skin upon skin of about eight lean dancing men spreading themselves all over the floor in all manner of turns and tumbles, with some great, unprecedented dick-to-dick touching — under the briefs, of course. In the final segment, there’s a quick peek-a-boo of a hefty shaft followed by some charcoal-dark pumping, but it’s too little, too late for a climax.

Essentially, Hubad is a conceptual dance performance. Divided into three “lessons” on the how-to’s of stripteasing, a group of men will first demonstrate the dance onstage, followed by story-type suggested “applications” for real life — one application is man-to-man (such as a man seducing a stranger on the alleyway via striptease), another is man-to-woman (such as an office guy seducing an office girl during a slide presentation), but both portions are quite gay anyway. What keeps the show less-than-explosive is how mechanical the performances can seem.
Because everyone onstage is doing the same thing at the same time, the action doesn’t gather primal steam. Robots aren’t as sexy as, say, an unpredictable, spontaneous animal moving about as if possessed by his raw instincts. A truly moving sexual dance number seems to require a different kind of energy. If the spectacle is lacking, at least there’s wall-to-wall eye candy. Johnron Tanada is a star. A couple of the dancers could be stars too, but this is not the video to do it for them. A star is created by packaging a solid personality, as in the strategy of Provoq, last year’s video that launched instant sex idols.

The behind-the-scenes DVD bonus is dirtier and more delighftul. Models rubbing their crotches to get them hard. The camera tracking too close to a model’s bulge that it actually hits it. The make-up artist going “Sarap!” It’s the turn-on I was looking for.

GRADE: B+

Related Links:

Teaser from MiongXXX

Striptease: The Art of Erotic Dancing

As an instructional on erotic dancing, it’s only vaguely informative. As an erotica of three stripping women, I don’t care. But there are three hot men here — called “special guests” — who play audience and participants to the women. Happily, they strip and tease too. And that’s what I care about a lot.

The hottest segment features Francis Torres as the object of a lapdance. As he sits on a chair, the woman taunts him, strips him down to his whities, then bounces up and down on his groin, which bulges and responds quite nicely. His facial reactions are sometimes weird, but he’s still hot. What’s this guy up to next? Give us more of him!

Francis Torres, Harren Cuevas

Harren Cuevas is the best performer though. He emerges from a cake in nothing but a black tanga t-back brief, exposing smooth pube-less sides, then later attacked by three women on the bed, pouring wine on his body and licking him up. His undies are slipped off at the end just to give us a glimpse of his nice ass. His acting is apt — bemused, like a gigolo whose surprise turns around to surprise him back. He’s more like an overwhelmed little boy. Awww.

The third hot man is Jerwin Mercado, in military-type overalls and moody lighting, with two femme fatales.

All three guys join three girls for a wet outdoor romp in the closing act. Most of the video is fast-forwardable, but the good parts are really good, with a crisp clarity, albeit lacking in money shots. Sometimes I wish these “teases” would show a little more of the coveted body parts and stop being such teases. There aren’t any extra sights on the DVD extras, but the interviews have some pretty titillating questions and answers. I thought Jerwin Mercado was hotter as a talking human being than as a silent toy. Not only do I want to see more of him, I want to hear more of his natural retorts, or maybe some moaning and groaning. I even want to date him.

Almost satisfying. Someone should do an all-male version of this. Go ahead, I won’t charge for the idea.

GRADE: B

Bedtime Stories

Asia Agcaoili is by now the rice meal of straight-to-video erotica. She’s staple, they keep serving her, and looks like she’ll be around forever. She’s Viva Video’s most trusted star. In the new release Bedtime Stories, she opens as a radio jockey who tells tales of sex, supposedly lifted from the experiences of Asia Agcaoili the real life person. At under an hour, the video is essentially a string of re-enactments of those experiences, starring Asia herself.

Sounds like it’s for straight men? I thought so too. I almost didn’t pick it up from the video shelf. Just look at it. The back cover is worse, with thumbnails of women, and nary a man in sight. But it’s gayer on the inside.

Those re-enactments? Asia does it with one man after another, starring hot guys, mostly men from Provoq, last year’s gay video sensation also from Viva. Four out of the six stories are properly labeled as a specific masculine type, such as “the jock” or “the neighbor”. It’s a gay fantasy, if not a female one. I doubt many straight men would be interested in such a premise — or, quite frankly, in Asia Agcaoili, whose body parts they’ve probably seen too often to be of much excitement.

The men here do more of the same. Chester Nolledo sticks his hand inside his undies again. Justin De Leon bares his rear. The only frame I found pause-worthy was the adorable facial reaction of Josh Ivan Morales during premature ejaculation. I fast-forwarded through the lesbian scene. The sex party was a waste of set-up. Johnron Tanada and John Miller seemed game enough as lust participants, but the camera hardly focuses on them. The “boyfriend” story with Paolo Paraiso, featuring sex on the swing, is the cutest one perhaps because it’s not as common a scenario as the others, and it has a cute ending.

The stories are almost non-stories. I imagine Asia walking into a story meeting to say she’s done this and that sexual experience, but not really recounting the luscious detail or even the actual thrill. It’s as if she bragged then got lazy to support her claims. Veteran director Neil Daza and veteran writer Benedict Migue drive these “confessions” down a pit of lameness. If their storytelling were any more by-the-numbers, it would be a math quiz. Erotica is not easy. There’s a hidden narrative in the build-up of tease and tension, and perhaps even in the careful construction of character, and of course a fetishistic attention to detail and mood. Bedtime Stories — even with a run-of-the-mill tabloid premise — really should have tingled better. But I guess that goes to say for many of the erotica to come out these days.

On the back of the DVD is a tiny white sticker that covers the blurb that says there are special features. I wonder if the videogram regulatory board had anything to do with the exclusion of a “safer sex featurette” and “behind the scenes footage”. Should’ve been interesting. The end credits lists other names such as Raymond Lim and Gabs Del Rosario, but they’re hardly visible in the video, if at all. Were they cast merely as background talents? Or were they too pulled out at the last minute? All this made for a viewing that left me shortchanged.

GRADE: C-