Joanna’s Angels

Studio: VCA Pictures/BurningAngel.com
Director: Joanna Angel
Cast: Joanna Angel, Sabrina Sparx, Kylee Kross, Pinky Lee, Katrina Kraven, Sleazy Pete, James Deen, Tommy Pistol

Duties at Ponante Towers for Skank du Jour rival anything gossiped about happening in the integrity-free cells of alleged porn star “agent” Regan Senter, and finding myself in the position currently (among oh, so many wanton, physically improbable and fulminatory others), it befalls me to humbly ask that you not be taken aback, dear reader, by this Guest Review from Yet Another Meow in the Gram Cattery.

Especially as regards a work as important as Joanna Angel’s. Understand that, had our mothers raised us a bit differently, or had we come up in the world 20 years later than we did, Joanna Angel is, in an ideal universe, what would have become of all of the gomis* .

Possesor of canny fashion, music and PR sense, the Arquettish (Rosanna, not Patricia; Desperately Seeking Susan, not Searching for Debra Winger) Angel is the It-Girl of N.Y. skin, and here parlays the formidable BurningAngel.com canon into decent, recent-style adult fare that VCA Pictures (under the auspices of LFP) seems to be holding the banner for.

Plot: serviceable, wherein Joanna’s Angels (Angel, Sabrina Sparx, Kylee Kross) take on nemesis Katrina Kraven in her bid to L.A.-ize the Big Apple, wielding cute & hammy “hipster” Tommy Pistol. (Angel’s talent really seems to lie in providing her viewers with game, kooky woodsmen equal to, say, Evan Stone in the funny department, but blessedly alt rock in appearance, as opposed to the typical manicured pornstud.) (They fuck good, too.)

Sex scenes are long, with multiple chapter stops, a brilliant method for giving a viewer more bang for the buck; sadly, this turns out to be necessary, as there’s a lot of unmoving footage, such as a D.P. sequence where James Deen and Angel maintain a Newark-worthy holding pattern while Pistol plugs away dutifully. Yawn. Girl/girl/girl at the top of the show likewise fails to hold heat. Too bad, because Joanna, Sparx, and Kross are just so great to look at. Additionally, outside-the-scene distractions are numerous, and the filmmakers regrettably commit the ultimate beginner’s faux pas (mainstream and porno): a surplus of blah, blah, blah.

Big ups to Darien Train for showy smart editing and Straius Music’s fabulous fucking soundtrack (with Music Supervisor Dave Freeman) – these elements raise the “watchable” bar. Fans of BurningAngel.com will like the look, sound & feel, but there’s only so much leverage to be bought by the lovably grungy close-ups of post-punkettes in sexual distress, viscera pooling at the corners of their mouths and eyes. Getting there’s supposed to be at least half the fun, and it’s, uh, not.

Best of show: brief bouts of intensity during the first Angel/Deen pairing; but head-n-shoulders above all else is the finale fuck w/professional Katrina Kraven, who shows Angel and Deen what makes a veteran. To their credit, they rise to her level.

Just like you, we can’t wait to see more, better.

xox
Eugenie Brown
*girls of my ilk