What's Hot, What's Not.

So the dog days of summer are here, and it’s hot.

That’s a word that can be taken all sorts of ways. This time last year I’d just finished teaching summer school, and my room hadn’t been air conditioned. With the tarmac outside, quite the opposite; M19 hovers around ten degrees above the outside temperature. If you’d asked me what hot brought to mind then, I’d have probably said something like this…

Of course, that’s not what most people think of when they say ‘Hot!’ While every person in the world has their own foibles and fantasies, around half of them are thinking of something like this…

And the other half are thinking of something like this…

Now, a lot of folks will talk about how ‘hot’ is more than just bodies, and I’ll agree, a knowing smile can be hotter than any amount of skin; either of the following for example… 

Of course, I have one of my students to thank for a completely different, yet surprisingly accurate illustration of what I think ‘hot’ is. As the Anime and Science Fiction club staff sponsor, I tend to take the last day or days of the year and show an episode or two of something. This year, however, one of my students asked that we not watch anything animated. He’s at that age where no matter the subject matter or treatment, if it’s not adequately ‘real’, he feels like it’s childish.

So I went digging in my video library and came up with something which kept him enthralled, yet wasn’t anything he would have picked up on his own: The Warrior’s Way. If you haven’t seen it… go do so. I’ll wait.

No. Seriously. I'll wait. It's that good.

At any rate, as I watched it I realized it shows all different kinds of hot, as well as clearly showing what’s not hot. It shows the pragmatic definition of hot, since it’s set in a desert. It shows things that are typically ‘hot’, like a woman in a fancy, maybe even a little slutty dress or a ripped, shy guy with his shirt off, but in the situation they’re not; the woman is only wearing the dress to get revenge, and the guy hides his chest to hide his scars. All that aside, there’s a scene, and a moment in that scene, that has got to be one of the hottest kisses I’ve seen in a movie. Ever.

For those of you who followed instructions and watched it, it’s the desert knife fight between Lynn and Skinny, with the panoramic three sixty starscape shot in the background. For those of you who didn’t watch it…

WHY NOT? It’s right over here on Netflix. Keep your eyes open around thirty six minutes in, from thirty six to around thirty eight. You can even fast forward to there, but you’ll be missing out. It’s a heck of a movie.

At any rate, as I watched it I realized it’s one of the most beautifully shot scenes and one of the hottest on-screen kisses I’d ever seen. A strong, independent woman, an equally strong, stoic man, both attracted to the other, but neither able to show it openly up until that moment under the desert sky.