Artist Roundup: Jozef Szekeres

Boy, haven't done an Artist Roundup in a while. Remember when this was the centerpiece of the entire blog? I suppose the reason it hasn't been around in a while is that great undiscovered muscle boy artists are a little like oil: there's a finite amount and eventually you start to dry up.

Every so often, though, someone new and impressive shows up, just like new oil wells are drilled or discovered.

This guy is Josef Szekeres, who is unapologetic about the beauty and almost androgynous sensuousness of his men. These aren't rugged pioneers with a five o'clock shadow, but etherially beautiful, sensual and youthful men. His favorite artistic subjects are fairy tales, elves, and Mer-Men.

Visit his deviantart gallery here. I highly recommend it. His art is the sort that can't be contained by tiny blogger windows.

Agnes Varda, my favorite French director ever, had a great line in LE PETITE AMOUR, one of her best movies: "Do all women love boys...or just those without sons?" The film was about a divorcee with two girls that makes herself sexually available to a nervous, awkward young man because she wants to revisit her youth. I am reminded of that quote now with his art.

The single piece of his that made me a fan was this one:

Now, I never had a bad thought about a ginger guy before, but the idea of a brawny sauna stud with freckles all over his beautiful torso, arms and legs? Now that's just great. I'd love to count the freckles on his body.

New Ulisses Williams Jr. Fashoin Shots

I'm sure everybody's tired of me blabbing on about him by now, but it's so rare to find him in new images.

Take for instance, the new Ulisses Jr. shots, an overwhelming ten pages of glamour pictures at Fashoin Stock Photos.

See the Ulisses Jr. Gallery Here

Man Candy: Jason Scott Lee

Jason Scott Lee, like Charleton Heston, spends the majority of his career without pants on. Good for us, because of his startling legs: they're quick and rhythmic, like a ballet dancer's, that you can just fantize rhythmically making love to you. Thighs like that should be outlawed.

I never entirely bought Jason Scott Lee as Bruce Lee in THE DRAGON STORY, because while Bruce Lee was unquestionably a great athlete and actor, his appeal was that he was a likeable everyman, a working-class sort (which is why he is so very identifiable). Jason Scott Lee, though, is a Greek God, clearly handsome, the hottest guy playing beach volleyball.

The very best movie of JSL's career was RAPA NUI. RAPA NUI (1994) is a fascinating movie about a fascinating time: the last days of the vanished people on Easter Island. The most overused word on IMDB is "underrated," but RAPA NUI really was underrated and unappreciated: it's easily one of my ten favorite dramas of all time. The story was based on class conflict. Two suitors want a woman, one of the high-caste long ears (Jason Scott Lee), the other of the low-caste laborers that build the Moai, the giant stone heads that adorn the island, who compete for the love of a woman in the Bird-Man, a supreme triathlon that challenges JSL's hard, agile muscles.

The story is about the insane drive to build the Moai at all costs, and is easily the strongest performance of Esai Morales's career, his anger and rage palpable at an unjust society. The images from it stick with you: one of my favorites was Jason Scott Lee weeping as he clenched the very last tree left on the entire island to prevent it from being cut down.

Easter Island is a lonely place: no land anywhere for 1,000 miles, the inhabitants see only infinite ocean in every direction, with themselves as the only people on earth. The ecological theme speaks for itself, all the more frightening because it was something that actually happened.

One of the best Jason Scott Lee movies was Steven Summers's JUNGLE BOOK, which is easily the best A-list Tarzan movie ever. Yeah, I know it's about Mowgli, but c'mon. There was no "boy" anywhere here. The story had animal sidekicks, a wild man struggling with whether he was human or an animal, and lots of Tarzan-esque plot threads like wooing a beautiful English woman of society with competition from a handsome but douchey civilized suitor (here, it was Princess Bride's Cary Elywes at his absolute hammy best), and that most Tarzan-esque of all plots, the discovery of a lost city.

Most Asian actors only get "Asian-guy" parts, however, it's interesting to note that Jason Scott Lee played a Mexican (BORN IN EAST L.A.), a Polynesian (RAPA NUI), an Eskimo (MAP OF THE HUMAN HEART), an Indian (JUNGLE BOOK), a Hawaiian (LILO AND STICH, voice only). The only thing he has yet to play is a Swede, but then again he's not dead yet...

Tarzan Lives

There are certain things that Hollywood can and will do over and over, no matter how many times it's been done before. Every five to ten years there's always another THREE MUSKETEERS, Sherlock Holmes, or Tarzan.

Recently, there are rumors going around of another Tarzan movie, to be directed by Steven Sommers (who did a "stealth" remake of Tarzan with his excellent live-action JUNGLE BOOK, starring the always brawny and charismatic Jason Scott Lee). Now there's something exciting to look forward to. The last halfway decent beefcake movie was the intriguing BEOWULF.

Me, my personal favorite Tarzan was always Gordon Scott, who had a great physique, and one of the most startling v-shaped torsos ever: it's like he was an upside-down cone.

For the handsomest Tarzan, it had to be the extremely dashing, debonair Mike Henry. Wow, what a cutie! Nothing better than those cute dumbo ears of his.

Cleveland Thomas: Everything is bigger in Texas

In general, natural bodybuilders tend to be better looking and have more symmetrical, healthier physiques than the hardcore non-natural kind, sexier and more aesthetically pleasing. Most of my favorites have been natural: Mike O'Hearn, Ulisses Williams Jr., and so forth. The same goes for big, sexy Texan Cleveland Thomas.

And now here comes the startling Cleveland Thomas, who has easily the best arms I've ever seen: tall and peaked, a massive orange collected in a single ball that rises to a point.

Here, watch it flex.

Here's another of Cleveland Thomas in a striptease. Everything is bigger in Texas.

Despite the name, it's impossible to confuse these two:

And....

BONUS: Here's another Cleveland Thomas video.

Attack of the Fifties-Man Bodies

In the Classical World, there is nothing more spectacular than the way they glorified the male body, magnificent, muscular, pleasingly well-proportioned and athletic. In fact, the reverse is usually true of the fifties, when blocky Pro-Golfer physiques were everywhere. A good example would be gut-hanging TV joke Adam West.

One of the best and most typical "Fifties Man" bodies would have to have been sported by wrestler Dara Singh in the surreal Bollywood "bakhti" or devotional/religious movie JAI BAJRANG BALI (1976).

Fifties-Man bodies started to go out of style around the time Steve Reeves became popular, and gradually vanished until there weren't any in pop culture come the early 1970s.

Bob Paris

If they're ever going to do a schmaltzy, triumphant sports movie about bodybuilding, there'd be no better story than that of the devastatingly handsome Bob Paris. He was a homeless teenager that emerged from absolutely nowhere to win the Mr. Olympia at age 23.

Alas, ladies, Bob Paris is one of the few openly gay bodybuilders...as in actually gay, instead of having a gay-for-pay biz on the side to keep them in soy powder and Brazilian horse steroids. Bob Paris fights for civil rights and dignity for homosexuals, which is admirable and makes him one of those "role model" types that "overcome adversity," like Colin Powell and so forth.

There are a few openly gay bodybuilders, natch. Most of them work for Cher.