I've strayed a bit from my original plan to review all the 2009 Adult Video News Award winners. But with the Oscars last month, it seems apropos to return to The Other Hollywood's hot list. One of this year's biggest winners, second only to triple-X epic Pirates II, was Brad Armstrong's Fallen (Director of Year; Best Actress, Jessica Drake; Best DP Sex Scene). Armstrong has problems with aesthetics—with fuzzy-vanilla niceties. It's like only having a Playboy when you need a Club Confidential. It's too pretty. All the girls have that weird, bouncy, shampoo-commercial hair. It's hard to pay attention to anything else. I've tried to watch Fallen three times, but it's JUST HAIR. It makes me feel like I'm at Forever 21 in Southcenter Mall. Have you seen the wannabe porn girls, the Forever 35s, who shop there? Do they know they look like Jessica Drake? A woman with an award-winning double-penetration scene? Fallen is unwatchable. In fact, the first person who e-mails me can HAVE it.

A better bet is Cheerleaders (Top Renting and Selling Release). Cheerleaders doesn't need hair extensions or a grandiose story line. Nope. It's got Stoya—ohhh, Stoya!—and superhumanly gorgeous Manuel "Budweiser Can" Ferrara running around in a high-school football jersey and no pants. But Cheerleaders is, of course, ALL about the girls. The cheerleader, as a porn-movie archetype, is predictable, but the I-double-dog-dare-you locker-room bravado, between girls instead of boys, is pitch-perfect. What a bunch of supersluts (can you say "nine-girl locker-room orgy"?). And when Jesse Jane, a baby-talking former actual cheerleader is bouncing around on Ferrara's big beer can, chanting, "Fuck me, I'm your whore... Fuck me, I'm your WHORE!" with pigtails a-flying, well, it's kind of hard NOT to pay attention.