Kendo's Brunettes

I had to reach out all the way to Germany to get a copy of Kendo's latest daring! Media release, "Brunettes", which shows the erstwhile fetish expert up to his usual tricks. It's very disappointing to chart a lack of any artistic progress or ambition after a couple of winners ("Merry Christmas" for example) from the prolific Brit Porn stylist.

The opening got me slightly paranoid for a minute, as it seemed Mr. K was responding as if doubling down after several of my recent criticisms of his framing techniques. The beginning of "Brunettes" features the usual tease of varied images and highlights drawn from the scenes to come, but for some cockamamie reason he has a minute or two in an absurdly extreme 3:1 aspect ratio (achieved via masking) in which his standard annoying cropping is pushed past all limits. Almost entire heads are removed from the top of the frame instead of just foreheads: so much for my oft-expressed wish that he would just show human beings as God intended, rather than reduced to less than the sum of their parts.

Once this nonsense blew over, he was back to more of a 1.85:1 ratio that modern TV sets love. Extreme color distortion was the next order of business in Kendo's need to put a personal stamp on his work, not unlike the watermark pornographers put on screen to combat piracy.

But what makes "Brunettes" unsatisfactory is the poor casting. Once the proviso that the actresses (male performers might as well be bald these days as far as viewers are concerned, and often are) be dark-haired has been thrown down, Kendo decided to choose Euro talent no one ever heard of, and which is likely to remain obscure based on this exposure. We get Daniela Rose and Katy Rose, smelling sweet one supposes, but indistinctive and unimpressive.

Each of five vignettes has a pretentious and ultimately meaningless title, ranging from "The Sex - The Lust - The Joy" (which heralds an utterly routine mechanical sex scene that expresses only the first third of what's promised) to "The Conclusion - A New Start" (again, merely the conclusion to the video). "Time for Something DIfferent", clearly borrowing from Monty Python, is merely an excuse to substitute classical music accompaniment for the boring library music and noise that preceded, as we watch a jail-bait ballerina prepare for deflowering. "The Girls on the Second Floor" announces standard lesbian action that has the Roses together, as if anyone cared.

Chatsworth has a vast number of hacks churning out generic porn, so perhaps Kendo, having spent a decade-plus building his own particular brand name, can get by with European-bred junk like this, too. I had higher hopes for the fellow, but as those right-wing nuts and followers of Ayn Rand like to say, the market has spoken.