Erotic Sex

Director Chin Man Kei (Sex and Zen 2) continues his adaptation of the classic Chinese novel Jin Pin Mei a.k.a. The Plum in the Golden Vase with The Forbidden Legend: Sex and Chopsticks II. Picking up where the first film left off, Simon Qing (Lam Wai Kin) has started his own personal harem, but his addiction to carnal pleasures proves corrupting, as he turns to murder to satisfy his lust. In contrast to the first film's softcore shenanigans, Sex and Chopsticks II is a bit darker, but still possesses heaps of nudity, sex, silliness, and twisted thrills to satiate fans of the Category III sexploitation genre. The success of the Sex and Chopsticks films have even led to a mini-revival of the genre, with production starting on a new 3-D erotic film set in Ancient China…

The movie follows the wealthy Squire (Xu Jin Jiang) who has one obsession which is to be best in the art of sex. However, he is extremely strict with his own daughter Yau (Loretta Lee). When she is sent away to study he has disguised her as a boy and putted on her a chastity device with sharp rotating blades to protect her from men like himself. However she falls in love with a young swordsman who is pursuing the deadly demon called the Mirage Lady (Shu Qi). The demon is using her sexual power to drain peoples energy so they die. And a deadly confrontation is bound to happen when the Mirage Lady is married to Yaus father.

Lucía is a waitress who lives and works in Madrid. After what she believes to be the loss of her boyfriend, tortured writer Lorenzo, she flees to a secluded island that he had often told her about. There she meets Carlos and Elena, who have also run away to the island to escape personal tragedy. Unbeknownst to them, all have connections to Lorenzo. Elena met him many years ago on the island and enjoyed beautiful, anonymous love-making with him in the sea by the light of a full-moon. 9 months later, Elena gave birth to Luna, but never managed to find Lorenzo. Carlos was the step-father of Belén, who disappeared after she unwittingly caused the death of Luna. As she hears more about the past of her two new housemates, Lucía is reminded of the book Lorenzo was writing, a tale about a journey into a dark, deep past that brought on his depression. Soon, the lines between fact and fiction begin to fall apart.

Like its predecessor, this no-holds-barred sequel from Hong Kong - a piece of ultra-exploitation adapted from the famed 17th century Chinese novel The Plum in the Golden Vase - attained instant notoriety for layering on graphic violence and sex in copious quantities.

Presented by a friend of Picasso in his later years, John Richardson, Picasso: The Full Story is an accessible and comprehensive look at the life of the most important artist of the 20th Century, examining the influences and the secrets behind many of the masterpieces he created. Televised previously on Channel 4 as Picasso: Magic, Sex and Death, the programme is divided into three parts.

Part 2: Sex
Sex (49 mins) focuses on the numerous women in Picasso’s life (although they weren’t exactly scarce in the first part). Again, this episode is very well constructed and thematically strong, full of intriguing links between Picasso’s life and loves and the powerful influence the various women had on his work. This part looks at Picasso’s work with Jean Cocteau on a cubist ballet, his marriage to ballet dancer Olga Koklova, their visit to Pompeii and its influence on his fascinating Neo-Classical Period, leading to the brief refinement of his Duchess Period. It’s not easy to keep up with the numerous affairs he conducted while married to Olga, but Marie-Therese Walther and Dora Maar are singled out for particular attention, the programme examining the various depictions of women and sex in Picasso’s work, finding them not erotic or salacious, but deeply powerful, matching the tone of the content to the intensity and the secrecy of those relationships. It briefly tackles more recent charges of misogyny, but quickly dismisses them as being culturally endemic in Picasso’s Andalusian make-up, seeing women in the dual aspect of Madonna and whore. This part ends with a fascinating new look at the masterpiece “Guernica”, interpreting it as the war in Picasso’s own life between his various mistresses, which is something I hadn’t heard before and it makes the case very well