9 Songs (DVD)

- 9 SONGS - Released in 2004 and Directed and written by Michael Winterbottom, (24 hour Party People), '9 Songs' was a highly controversial film of its year. Dubbed as pornographic, 9 Songs Stars Kieran O'Brien (24 hour Party People) and Margo Stilley (Reverb). "Possible the first pornographic 'date movie' that lacks the hardcore edge guys expect but does take mainstream ADULT movies to the next level" - USA The film opens with Matt (Kieran O'Brien), 31, a young glaciologist, recalling a year in his life. As he flies across the immense icy expanse of the South Pole, he remembers Lisa. - . He had met ...  Read the complete review

(Also appears at ShaunMunro.co.uk) Director: Michael Winterbottom Cast: Kieran O'Brien, Margo Stilley Release Date: March 11th, 2005 (UK), July 22nd, 2005 (US) Certificate: 18 (UK), Not Rated (US) Michael Winterbottom's 9 Songs is a sexual experience from near enough its first frame. The film's premise is incredibly straightforward - Matt (Kieran O'Brien) and Lisa (Margo Stilley) meet at a concert, and 9 Songs is essentially an expression of their love story, which just so happens to rather loosely revolve around music. From the outset, we must consider where the line between glamourised pornography and artistic sexual ...  Read the complete review

Always one on the hunt for the controversial a work colleague introduced me to 9 Songs. What's it about I asked? A lot of sex and 9 songs was the reply. Being as the person I had asked was a "STUDENT" I thought that maybe he was being a little bitchy, because he after all is the worst sort of student, a film student. What did throw me back a lot is that 9 songs is literally as the movie was described. A couple meet at a concert where we are subjected to a moment of live music, this is where the movie switches from being a movie to a concert. Next the same couple have sex, and a very, very brief glimpse of story. Onto another concert, more sex, more ...  Read the complete review

As we all know British porn is crap. Fake boobs and you last lover tattooed on your butt doesn’t quite look the same on some old slapper from a sink estate in Crawley as it does on those bronzed American bikini babes from California. So on that premise alone a British ‘art house’ film from Brighton, controversial because it had real sex in it, won’t be much sexier, ‘9 Songs’ categorically reinforcing that theory. The film ‘Intimacy’ was the last groundbreaking attempt by a British film to avoid the ‘money shot’ circumcision by the BBFC censors (just failing) and now director Michael Winterbottom (of Cock and Bull Story fame) has perfected the art and ...  Read the complete review

Sex sells and it always has done. That’s what keeps Ann Summers in business and why Hugh Hefner, who owns Playboy, lives in such a large mansion. But sex can also cause controversy, over whether pornography is morally right and how far you can go before you cross that line. It is this last which is why “9 Songs” was as controversial as it was. After so many years of watching simulated sex in films, unless you were at a special kind of cinema, “9 Songs” was the first film to show actual sex on screen that wasn’t deemed pornography by the UK censors and was given a mainstream certificate, rather than one that restricted its sale to specially licensed sex ...  Read the complete review