scene title: last one standing, scene 1
performers: jewelz blu, kayley gunner
site: digital playground (mindgeek)
production credits: tony ribas (dir.)
release date: may 23, 2022 | trailer
digital playground has flailed around looking for an identity ever since mindgeek purchased it ten years ago. in the 2000s it was the upstart flagship of expensive high-production value features competing with wicked, adam & eve and vivid, the first major studio to produce high-definition (which at that time meant 720p) video. but since the glory days of jesse jane and kayden kross (as a performer), it's struggled to distinguish itself not just from the rest of porn but from other mindgeek brands, as the industry contraction that mindgeek was itself partly responsible for squeezed budgets so much that every professional production looked pretty much like every other one.
performers: jewelz blu, kayley gunner
site: digital playground (mindgeek)
production credits: tony ribas (dir.)
release date: may 23, 2022 | trailer
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| l: kayley gunner, r: jewelz blu |
digital playground has flailed around looking for an identity ever since mindgeek purchased it ten years ago. in the 2000s it was the upstart flagship of expensive high-production value features competing with wicked, adam & eve and vivid, the first major studio to produce high-definition (which at that time meant 720p) video. but since the glory days of jesse jane and kayden kross (as a performer), it's struggled to distinguish itself not just from the rest of porn but from other mindgeek brands, as the industry contraction that mindgeek was itself partly responsible for squeezed budgets so much that every professional production looked pretty much like every other one.
in late 2021 and early 2022, digital playground even stopped putting out new content, instead re-releasing some older brazzers features with the dp branding; when that was done, they launched an ambitious-looking slate of shared cinematic-universe projects called dp world, with differnt theming for different genres: the postapocalyptic doom valley, the sci-fi digital galaxy, the neon noir paradise city, the suburban soap opera playground hills, and the folkloric fantasy darkwoods. of the twenty-nine scenes released on a every-other-week schedule in 2022, precisely one was girl/girl: this initial scene in a campy sci-fi saga with the generic name of last one standing. five minutes at the top are devoted to interstellar bounty hunters jewelz and kayley hunting down their target (rascally cyberhacker xander corvus, who plays a great loser), bantering unconvincingly, and going off to enjoy each other after trapping him in an energy pyramid for their employer to deal with. the sets are nice and futuristic, if generic, the digital effects are nothing special but do their job, the camera work and color correction is polished: everything looks the part.
unfortunately, the story is mind-numbing and the performances are lousy. corvus is the only one on screen who can convincingly deliver dialogue, and the promise of his story being continued at the end is presumably what the rest of the series is sold on. but jewelz and kayley, who i've seen be competent at glamour posing and gonzo intimacy, are simply wooden both as badass space marines and as lovers: the sex was no more credible than the sci-fi bullshit. it was high energy and noisy, which is exactly the kind of girl/girl sex that big-budget porn features tend to encourage, and they certainly earned their paycheck in terms of putting in the reps. but it was entirely pro forma, lazily shot, and dragged on forever.
i wanted to note and even encourage digital playground's return to ambitious work, which is why i'm recording it here. but this is the worst passing score i've given on this blog. if any future girl/girl on digital playground will be like this, they might as well not bother.
performances: 15
cinematography: 21
editing: 16
script: 9
sjw points: 0
total score:
performances: 15
cinematography: 21
editing: 16
script: 9
sjw points: 0
total score: