_{^{· The Finical Filmgoer ·}}

On Thursday last, I invited my close friends, the penetrating Monsieur Objectif, the somewhat tenuous Mademoiselle Hysterique and an artistic young married couple, the charming if a bit vert Monsieur et Madame Frisson, to my tiny flat for a viewing of Basic Instinct, the Sharon Stone sex shocker from 1992. Wanting to serve something... cold, I meticulously prepared a deep red icy gazpacho with bread, and a selection of olives on ice pick skewers.

Basic Instinct is an homage to Hitchcock from the naughty European duo M. Paul Verhoeven and M. Joe Eszterhas, featuring a chimerical score by M. Jerry Goldsmith, which unfolds an musical homage to Hitchcock's masterful composer M. Bernard Herrmann. Mlle Stone, gleaming, Sapphic and deadly, presents her own homage to the iconic Hitchcock Blonde. In fact, the guests discovered homage layered upon homage, an orgy of homage if you will indulge me for one strained paragraph. The only person strictly refusing to homage anyone or anything was M. Michael Douglas, an actor I have never tired of and who razored through this luxuriantly layered pastry of homages like a hot knife.

My guests sat spellbound by the electrifying spectacle unfolding on the HDTV. M. Objectif, a former resident of the torrid city, became entranced by the glamorous San Francisco settings. Mlle Hysterique squealed with perhaps a tad too much delight when Mlle Stone spat out her coldly castrating witticisms. And M. et Mme. Frisson, mere children, were unsettled to discover that my olive skewers were a bold and uncompromising reference to the film's murder weapon. A testosterone-fueled, erotic murder mystery, bristling with animal sex, featuring spectacular real estate porn (and perhaps a dash of actual porn), in the style of Hitchcock, but with an Eszterhas-y emphasis on the second syllable. As for myself, I was up until 3am grimly scrubbing the gazpacho out of the carpet.

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