Titan Media's Bruce Cam and Robert Kirsch, already having earned critical and commercial kudos for the high quality cinematography, music and editing of their videos, have smartly turned unused and carefully-edited footage from past productions into a line of soft core videos. I happen to greatly enjoy soft core; more than ever, if you want really spectacular camera work, shot composition, continuity and genuine eroticism, you have to rent a soft core video. Arousal is a success, and I welcome Titan Media's entrance into the genre (by way of their new production entity, 45° Productions).
Fans of this company will recognize most of the footage in Arousal from last year's award-winning Island Guardian, as well as footage from what I presume is Desert Train (which I have somehow managed to miss; don't ask me how). There's another terrific little vignette that I don't recognize, featuring Talvin DeMachio soaping up and getting soaked beneath a small waterfall. The cool thing about Arousal is that if I find myself, ahem, aroused, I can pull Island Guardian off the shelf for hardcore action. These scenes are so erotic I can't imagine someone not wanting to see more.
Brad Michaels is the star of this video, and boy do I miss him. Brad, where are you? His appearance on the cover of Unzipped last spring unleashed a torrent of fan mail, and Internet porn forums regularly gush over him. Michaels is a man's man: Fit and healthy, masculine and genuinely decent; the perfect vessel for fantasy. He rolls around in the surf, kissing and nuzzling with such jaw-dropping specimens of manhood as Adriano Marquez and Trenton Comeaux; in fact, his scene with Comeaux in Island Guardian was nominated for a Gay Erotic Video Award last year.
Marcello Reeves and Rick Matthews appear briefly, while Will Clark appears only in a rousing game of naked football played in a torrential downpour. Clark fans will enjoy it anyway, because the scene was filmed several years ago at the start of his career when he was still working his "boy next door" look, before he seriously bulked up, grew a handlebar mustache and became a leather daddy. The painfully beautiful Xavier dePaula's footage is not long, but most welcome. dePaula left the business not long after filming Desert Train and he's another performer fans are fervently wishing would return. Wow, could Titan make a lot of guys happy by tracking down Michaels and dePaula and putting them together in a new video. DeMachio's gorgeous, hard-earned physique is given full display in an amazing vignette from which the video drew its striking box cover. Several hundred words really don't do justice to Arousal's beautiful videography and real eroticism. The music, too, is quite good, but no one receives on-screen credit for it. I popped in the video during a recent date and not only enjoyed great sex music but didn't have to concern myself with badly dubbed moans or horrendous dialogue. Can't ask for more than that.
- J.C. Adams
Call it "TITAN Lite" if you want, but this soft-core feature took home the GayVN award -- so don't be too quick to dismiss it. It's got some of TITAN's most beautiful, buffest bods; it's gorgeously shot, as is the TITAN standard, in Hawaii and the Great Mojave Desert. It's also got some of these guys playing touch football, naked, in the rain. Personally, I would have preferred tackle, but ... you get the drift. A great warm-up DVD for either of the others reviewed below (that is, if you excellent willpower).
Special DVD Features on DVD: Digitally remastered, slide-show gallery, stereo sound, chapter index and no regional coding.
A DVD Review by Martin Cox