Guilty Pleasures - 2/9/2005

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"Food and drinks I know I shouldn't be having at the time but have it anyway. A big, creamy pasta dinner with lots of sauvignon blanc to go with it, and top it with either cr�me br�l�e or chocolate souffl�."
--Josh Holloway, ABC's Lost

Mouthing Off
Looking for a romantic Valentine's Day gift? It's probably not The Other Hollywood: The Uncensored Oral History of the Porn Film Industry, a new ReganBooks tome by famed punk-music chronicler Legs McNeil and his coauthor Jennifer Osbourne. McNeil spent eight years researching the $10 billion a year industry and its crossover into the mainstream. From a filmed birth to the legendary John Holmes, McNeil waxes pornographic on the industry's seedier topics--including its Mob ties, Traci Lords and 1972's Deep Throat, the most successful (and infamous) porn movie of all time. That cult flick is also the subject of Inside Deep Throat (Universal), a Dennis Hopper-narrated documentary about the cultural and financial impact of a $25K film that grossed more than $600 million.

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Churls Gone Wild
Deadwood: The Complete First Season (HBO Home Video) brings you the foulmouthed, fabulous show that is arguably HBO's best since The Sopranos. Gun-totin' gangstas and law-abidin' types, too, try to make a go of it in post-Civil War Dakota Territory. There's a former lawman (Timothy Olyphant) starting over as a shopkeeper, legend Wild Bill Hickok (Keith Carradine) gambling every chance he gets, and a saloon owner (Golden Globe winner Ian McShane) giving us the most compelling TV bad guy since Tony Soprano. The box set includes commentary, featurettes on the reel and real denizens of Deadwood and an interview with series creator David Milch--but skip those and settle in for 12 of the best episodes of tube drama you're likely to see in a while, pardner.

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REMixed
We like the new music, but we're still psyched to get all the old-school cool R.E.M. reissues from Rhino, a remixed roundup of the Athens, Georgia, band's Warner Bros. catalog. That means Green, Out of Time, Automatic for the People, Monster, New Adventures in Hi-Fi, Up, Reveal, In Time: The Best of R.E.M. and Around the Sun are now available as two-disc sets, with the original CD release and a DVD disc featuring a remixed version, photos, documentaries and new liner notes. Among the new additions on the discs: live-performance clips on Green, the previously unreleased documentary Time Piece on Out of Time and an unreleased live performance of "What's the Frequency, Kenneth?" on Monster.

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Miami Nice
Bust out the pastels, because Crockett (Don Johnson) and Tubbs (Philip Michael Thomas) are back, baby! Those two fashion-forward undercover cops hit DVD on the Miami Vice: Season One box set (Universal Home Video), a collection featuring the two-hour pilot and all 22 episodes from the 1984 season of the seminal '80s series. Though many remember it as kitsch, Michael Mann's cool camerawork, a rocking soundtrack and now-famous guest stars--including Julia Roberts, Bruce Willis, Liam Neeson, Laurence Fishburne, Annette Bening, Viggo Mortensen, Benicio Del Toro, Ben Stiller and Chris Rock--take it up a notch or two. An MV marathon is just the thing to get you up to speed for 2006's big-screen movie, where the Vice squad features Colin Farrell as Crockett and Oscar nominee Jamie Foxx as Tubbs.

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Rock of Aged
So what if drummer Tommy Lee and recently made over and married lead singer Vince Neil are barely speaking to each other...that doesn't mean they can't do a M�tley Cr�e world tour together, does it? Apparently not, as those spandex-wearing, rowdy rockers are reassembling for a tour to support their Red, White & Cr�e greatest-hits CD. Kicking off in Puerto Rico on Feb. 14, the metalheads' musical adventure hits all the major stops before winding up in London in June, just in time for bad boy Lee's solo album and NBC reality series Tommy Lee Goes to School. Love the hair spray but not the testosterone? Well, lucky for you, beginning Feb. 11 in Florida, Duran Duran tours America.

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Classy Reunion
When last we left Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Celine (Julie Delpy), the star-crossed would-be lovers of Before Sunrise (Warner Home Video), they'd spent a romantic day walking and talking through Vienna, bonding, falling in love and making plans to meet up again. The reunion never happened until the sublime Before Sunset, when Jesse, in Europe to promote the book he wrote about his day with Celine, runs into her again. This time, they have just an hour, instead of a day, to connect, and their chatty saunter through Paris proves that the spark between them remains. Bonus: Sunset stands on its own, but a back-to-back viewing of the Before Sunrise and Before Sunset DVDs makes for one enchanting evening.

Boxing Marty