AVN Winners

A Closer Look at this Year’s AVN Winners

So, the AVN Awards were announced last weekend. I couldn’t make the show, but I was allowed to vote again this year. Let’s do a little re-cap. Keep in mind that while I will be honest about this assessment, I’m not here to rip anyone. For the most part I’m going to keep it positive.

Best Actor/Actress Awards: Randy Spears took the Best Actor-Film for Manhunters and Evan Stone won for his role in Sex Pix. Both of them were quite deserving and can simply add to their huge stack of acting awards. On the female side, the lead awards went to jessica Drake for Manhunters and Hillary Scott for Corruption. I think that jessica was a fairly easy pick and Hillary was amazing in Corruption. I also liked Violet Blue in Wonderland and Sunny Lane in Sex Pix. In the end though, the voters got it right (or damn near close) four out of four times.

Best All Sex Release: I know I said I was going to try to keep it positive, but come on. Where do we start? Well, the category ended in a tie between Pulse’s “Blacklight Beauties” and VCA’s Neu Wave Hookers. Forget for a moment that Hookers sets a new standard for bad , pretentious porn that is impossible to jerk off to. Let’s look at the fact that it really doesn’t belong in the “All-Sex” category. It’s a feature with dialog. Granted, it’s a fucked up feature where people are actually reading their dialog from the scripts on screen, but it’s not an all-sex movie. Any one of the Digital Playground titles nominated would have been a great choice. Island Fever 4 for example. Instead some voters found a way to get Eon McKai’s tremendous pile of dung a trophy. Like I sais, I’m keeping this mostly positive, but I would love to sit down and talk with any of the voters who not only don’t despise this movie, but actually chose it as the best of the bunch. Neu Wave Hookers? Are you kidding me? It wasn’t even accidentally good. I said it last week and I will say it again Neu Wave Hookers is the single WORST porn flick I have seen in years. It fails on every level and should be preserved as an example of what NOT to do when making a movie. In fact, the Bush Administration should ship a bunch of copies down to Gitmo and use it as torture on enemy combatants. This fucking war would be over faster than you can “pretentious, pile of obnoxious bullshit.”

Best Classic DVD: The award went to Neon Nights which wasn’t a bad choice at all. My pick was WPINK-TV, but I am a little biased since it was the very first adult movie I ever watched. It probably didn’t help Paradise Visuals much that Ginger Lynn: The Movie won the award last year.

Best New Performers: Tommy Pistol and Naomi were the best new guy and girl in the business. Pistol is a pretty good performer and a rather funny actor as well. If the latter matters at all, then he was a really solid choice. Noami was my choice as top rookie on my own site, so obviously I think that was a great choice as well. I’m not sure if she was there to get her award though. She was a no-show on the convention floor on Saturday. So I’m still holding her RRCC trophy.

Corruption: Though nothing swept the awards the way Pirates did last year, but it was still a huge day for Corruption. Hillary took home lead actress, Eli Cross won as director. It won for Best Screenplay, Best Editing and Alana Evans walked away with a trophy for Best Solo Scene. Cross also won for best Non-Sex Performance in one of the biggest no-brainers of the night. He was truly fantastic. On top of that Corruption took home the award as Video Feature of the year. Not bad for a movie that the director himself said didn’t have a chance at anything more than Best Screenplay.

No Brainer: It didn’t take a genius to figure out that Jules Jordan was going to walk away with an award or two for Jenna Haze Darkside. It was my pick for all-sex movie of the year and won the AVN for Best Vignette Release. I loved the movie and am happy to see it win. Anyone who hasn’t seen it and who enjoys Jenna on any level, really needs to pick it up.

Holy Shit, he actually WON?: This is (I believe) the first year that AVN has picked a Best Director based on a body of work. I’m a huge fan of this type of award. It evens the playing field a bit. They still have the Best Director for individual projects so this one is long overdue. The winner? Jim Powers. This is a long overdue award for the hardest working man in the business. Jim shoots all the time, does more with less than anyone in the business and deserved this award. (So why didn’t I pick him for the RRCC? Good point, but I have nominated him every year.) I got a really good interview with Jim on the floor this week and I just wish I could have interviewed him after her won the award. Congratulations to him. Even though there were some other deserving directors like Jules Jordan and Robby D, Jim has earned this with great work over the years.

Best of the Best: Keeping with tradition, the AVN voters once again looked past Erik Everhard’s talents and chose someone else. Hey, there’s nothing wrong with Tommy Gunn. He’s a good performer who does more feature work than some of the gonzo guys. I just don’t see how they can keep finding other guys to give it to. Wicked’s multi-talented Stormy Daniels walked away with the award as Best Contract Star. There were lots of girls on that list, but Stormy is sort of a one-woman show and is deserving of this one. Mika Tan came away with the Underrated Starlet award. I was totally shocked by that and completely elated at the same time. I’ve been singing the praises of this amazing woman for a few years. Congratulations Mika, I’m thrilled for you. And the big one, Performer of the Year goes to Hillary Scott. Hillary had a huge year. She is one of the best sexual performers in the business. The win as Best Actress just proves that she can do more than fuck. There were a few women who had great years, but Hillary is the queen of them all.

I hope you enjoyed this little look at the AVN Awards. As always, all comments and feedback is welcome. Drop me a line at rog@rogreviews.com