#Intimate Stranger

[fuzzyghost]

[girl4music]

Just watched ‘Return Of Callisto’, ‘Warrior…Princess…Tramp’ and ‘Intimate Stranger’ in one sitting…

Jesus what a whiplash. I always praise this show for the way it handles it episodic structure. But I have to admit that TV shows with more of the serialized storytelling handle the continuity with a character’s thoughts and emotions much better than TV shows that are more non-serialized. It’s like Gabrielle goes from full out guilt and anger and thrashing out at the loss of her husband, to absolutely not bothered at all, and then back to the mindset of feeling guilty again based on whether the episode is a drama or a comedy.

It’s like you’re just supposed to completely forget about what happened the episode before in the comedy episode because it’s a comedy episode then 360 reverse because we’re back to a full-out drama.

This kind of back and forth comedy-to-drama structure in Season 3 is intentional and works well but here… not so much. And it’s like the ‘whoosh’ sounds off loudly in my brain every time we spend any significant time with Gabrielle and a narrative that should be on-going and I don’t even feel the impact.

I’m not sure I explained any of that well…

But at least I know what I mean by it. 🤣

But guys… Just be aware of that if you’re going to binge watch Xena in one sitting because it’s a lot to take in at once and they make you wait to process it.

It’s like “Is this character okay? I don’t think she’s okay… but we’re in a comedy so I guess we ignore it?”

But then you’re back to a drama and they just go full on with the emotions... Like I said. It’s a whiplash.

You just don’t know what you’re supposed to feel because obviously - in real life - that would continue.

The order of the episodes don’t really help very well.

But then not a lot of TV shows do both drama and comedy. Especially not if they’re the fantasy genre.

But be aware of that. It just hits you out of nowhere when you’re just trying to follow with the narrative.

Something significantly dramatic and traumatic just happened to Gabrielle but you’re supposed to forget that fact until the show is ready to address it again. And then you do,… so you’re not expecting to be hit with a barrage of that character’s emotional turmoil because you forgot all about it the episode before it.

Tell me that whoosh effect doesn’t go off in your brain because you will not be prepared for engaging with it.

That’s the bizarre experience in watching a TV show that’s primarily episodic and does comedy and drama. Where they place the episodes in air order makes a hell of difference to how you engage with the show.

Season 3 doesn’t do this because they keep all the drama episodes together and all the comedy episodes together and they don’t do a swap in swap out thing.

But Season 2 (especially this block of episodes) it doesn’t work like that and you just get whiplashed.

I’m an emotional human being. Please have mercy. 🙏

[eternal-learner]

Peter Outerbridge as Denis Teague Intimate Stranger (2006)

[rrrauschen]

Alan Berliner, {1991} Intimate Stranger

[watching-pictures-move]

Movie Review | Intimate Stranger (Holzman, 1991)

Debbie Harry as a secretly kinky radio personality in Videodrome did very interesting things to my brain chemistry when I saw that movie as a teenager, so naturally the idea of her in an erotic thriller, the kinkiest mainstream genre one can think of, sounded extremely intriguing. This one leans into her background in music, casting her as a nightclub singer as her “day” job, although from the performances her group delivers here you would probably not guess that she’s a music legend of this was your first experience with her work.

It also leans into her music background, at least in terms of the importance of her voice, with her character’s other job as phone sex operator. And I will be brave enough to admit that between her husky voice and the detail with which she articulates certain fantasies, I found some of this pretty hot. The movie does show an understanding of sex work being work, between her reading something called Tales From The Leather Nun for inspiration and frequently occupying herself in banal ways during calls (which pays off near the end when multitasking during a call becomes a matter of life and death), not to mention the bluntness with which another sex worker explains her use of broken English, and the uncaring attitudes of her employers and law enforcement.

But the opening images, closeups of Harry’s mouth as she smokes a cigarette while the rest of her is in shadows, set a certain erotically charged tone. The cigarettes almost represent a ritual, a way for her to get in the necessary headspace, to remove her from her physical reality and into the realm of the abstract, the erotically fantastical. The villain here is played by Tim Thomerson, who describes himself as a “sick fuck”, which seems redundant given his penchant for sexually depraved murder and whittling down his PB&J sandwiches into mere slivers in the name of cutting off the crusts. His favourite act is the “menage a trois”, which consists of keeping Harry on the line while he tortures and kills another victim, which doubly jars as it removes the distance Harry normally maintains from he other end of the line, plunging a knife of ugly reality into the fantasies she conjures.

As far as erotic thrillers go, you could do a lot worse. This has a number of good performances, from Harry and Thomerson but also James Russo as the one cop who takes Harry seriously and Grace Zabriskie who has an uncomfortable relationship with Thomerson. It’s shot in a high contrast lighting scheme with bold Argento colours, meaning that it still looks good if watch it in a VHS rip on YouTube and probably looked good if you watched it late at night on a CRT television back in the day like one of the lonely hearts who might have rented a copy. And there’s some pretty stylish editing, particularly in the climax when the movie piles on bold blue lighting, canted angles, icky flashbacks, flames and gunfire to striking effect.

[mtonino]

Intimate Stranger (1991) Allan Holzman

[lalallalas-posts]

Ladies and gentlemen, I present you Mike 'We're friends' Queerler

[psykopaths]

Love (2015)

[userarmand]

ALL OF US STRANGERS (2023) dir. Andrew Haigh

[apomaro-mellow]

💕 steddie!!

💕 kissing somewhere other than lips

Tonight was different.

Eddie didn't know when exactly he sensed it, maybe from the beginning. They had a routine whenever Steve came to visit from college. Steve would arrive at home, spend a day hanging out with whoever was available. And then the next day he'd show up at Eddie's apartment. They'd roll around in the sheets and Steve would be gone before Eddie woke up, already on his way back to Indianapolis.

But tonight, Eddie hadn't even know he was in town before Steve was knocking on his door. Instead of greeting Eddie with a six pack, he had a bag of takeout in his hands. Instead of drinking on the couch and catching up as a prelude to hands down pants, they sat across from each other and shared the spread of Chinese food that Steve had come with.

Instead of crowding each other against walls and taking it where they could get it, Eddie took his time in leading Steve to the bedroom. There, they took off their clothes piece by piece instead of just removing what was necessary.

At this time, instead of harsh, open mouthed kisses, Steve kissed him everywhere but his lips. He nipped at his ears, pecked a pattern down his neck, licked at his chest, even kissed the notches of his spine like... well like...

Like this time was different from before.

And Eddie was more than okay with that.

[intimate-stranger]

[girl4music]

XENA: “Gabrielle, I’m proud of you. Even when you thought Callisto was going to kill me, you couldn’t-“

GABRIELLE: “No, Xena. No. When I thought she was going to kill you, I just reacted. That’s something I have to think about if it happened again. I know what I would want to do but yet I can’t go back on who I am. You taught me that.”

XENA: “No, you learned that. That’s the difference.”

I know they couldn’t keep the original script with Lucy instead of Hudson but I just prefer this dialogue a lot more to what we actually got. Yeah, you could say it was longwinded but I felt that was appropriate for Gabrielle because she would overthink about that. See, Xena’s just so quick to assume that Gabrielle makes a conscious choice every time to not result to violence.

But she doesn’t. It’s her heart that rules her, not her head. And her heart said protect Xena. It always does.

Whatever the story was when it was Lucy’s script…

I think I would have much preferred it to what we got.

Not to take away anything from Hudson. I mean she was phenomenal as Xena for both episodes but… I just felt they needed a stronger story and I feel like that’s what they started with if this ending dialogue is any indication. Because this is something that continues. This becomes her main individual arc. I love that arc.

It is interesting to me that they wanted to do the body-swap episode anyway though and that it wasn’t just conceived because of Lucy’s pelvis injury on Jay Leno.

In theory they could have kept it as Lucy since they ended up shooting the whole episode with Lucy but then that would make you question why Hudson is suddenly Xena in the next episode when they had already resolved the body-swap. They had to replace those scenes with Hudson’s for continuity purposes. Making it out as if Xena never got her own body back.

Clever but damn… that dialogue scene before they started improvising and goofing around at the end.

Yeah, I really wish that had been left in or at least made a comeback in some other episode because that was important dialogue to help you understand Gabrielle and why being a warrior in love or a lover in war is hard.

I know it’s only early days addressing that but it still works because that’s exactly what ends up happening.

I mean she’s faced with that same dilemma over and over again all throughout her arc. Especially with Xena.

Fight or flight. Act or react.

Do nothing or disable/kill.

It’s very important dialogue.

And it’s one of the major factors as to what makes her my favourite character with the most compelling arc.

They have many dialogue scenes like this eventually. But… something about this one just hit it on the head.

Because it’s true. She never employs her mind when faced with rock and hard place situations like that.

She just reacts on instinct. As all warriors do…

“I chose the way of friendship.” she said in ‘Ides’.

No, girl. You didn’t. Your warrior instincts kicked in.

You didn’t “choose” anything. That was adrenaline.

You saw that your love was about to be killed and your body went into high-gear “Protect and Defend” mode and it did not stop until you realized where you were at. If that was a conscious choice from the start, you never would have hurled that javelin at that Roman soldier. You never would have saved Xena’s life and you know it.

[eternal-learner]

Peter Outerbridge as Denis Teague Intimate Stranger (2006)

[askchestermckee]

What typa cologne do ya use?

P.O. BOX 214, WASHINGTON HEIGHTS

C/O CHESTER MCKEE

Whatever your dad’s got on

[stevieharringtonwifeguy]

you know. watching videos of like 80s/90s inspired hair styles and stuff. i need to see stevie harrington in her rollers. like dustin or someone comes over earlier than expected and immediately loses it at the sight of stevie putting in the work for that beautiful voluminous mane of hers