AVN | Mr. Pink's Blog

AVN 2014: The Winners – The Men

While it’s usually the women standing at the podium holding a glistening phallus that get the most attention at every annual AVN Awards, the men of porn are equally congratulated on their work in and out of the hottest pussy on the planet (if you can call that work). And it wasn’t just performers who got hailed as the year’s best at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas this Saturday past, those behind the camera got their fair share of attention, too.

Continuing a string of unprecedented success stories, Axel Braun nabbed his fourth consecutive Director of the Year award while his films Man of Steel XXX: An Axel Braun Parody and Iron Man XXX: An Axel Braun took home another two trophies and proved that all of the accolades might have finally gone to Herr Direktor’s head. The closest any other director or producer came to equaling Braun’s 2013 successes wasn’t very close at all, but you’ve still got to hand it to Manuel Ferrara: he not only shot an insanely wild reverse gangbang in late fall, he polished off the season as the man behind the winners of AVN’s Best All-Sex Release (Slutty & Sluttier 18), Best Anal Series (Evil Anal), and Best Continuing Series (Slutty & Sluttier). That, of course, is in addition to his fifth Male Performer of the Year trophy.

The other stud who no doubt left Vegas more professionally gratified than ever before was Best Actor Tommy Pistol. Having taken roles in everything from Thor XXX: An Axel Braun Parody to Combat Zone’s Vagina Worship to 3rd Degree’s Young Thighs in Knee Highs, Pistol spent much of his eighth year in porn assisting in the productions of others. With Band Sluts, though, he was handed a role tailor-made for his comedic and physical talents by his director and leading lady, Joanna Angel. The Burning Angel feature sees the two gag-happiest people in porn embark on a road trip in search of “fame, fortune, and fucking,” capturing every dismal artistic failure and boner-fied sexual conquest in a hilarious rock ‘n’ roll epic. Fuck Fellini and 81/2 and The Rutles and Zelig and all that shit! Band Sluts is the only mockumentary worth watching sans pants!

AVN 2014: The Winners – The Movies

The biggest winners at the 2014 AVN Awards might appear to have been the men and women winning individual prizes, but porn is still a features-based industry heavily reliant on home video sales. This means any feature winning a top prize at the “Oscars of Porn” is bound to skyrocket in popularity and see its studio, director, and stars riding a wave of post-awards momentum. This year there was one movie that outshone all others, Brad Armstrong’s dark cyborg-laden fantasy, Underworld.

Starring Armstrong’s wife and Wicked contract star, Jessica Drake, Underworld didn’t just take home the big prizes (Best Drama and Movie of the Year) but saw many of its contributors honored in their respective fields. Best Supporting Actor Xander Corvus and Best Feature Director Armstrong also saw awards for Art Direction, Cinematography, Editing, Packaging, and Screenplay granted to Underworld’s crew.

Winning slightly less major awards were feature films The Submission of Emma Marx (Best BDSM Movie), Grease XXX: A Parody and Man of Steel XXX: An Axel Braun Parody (Best Parody – Comedy and Drama respectively), the Mason-directed Anikka (Best Star Showcase), The Temptation of Eve (Best Romance Release), Burning Angel’s Band Sluts (Best Comedy), Manuel Ferrara’s Evil Angel series Sluttier and Sluttier (Best Continuing Series), Marc Dorcel’s The Ingenuous (Best Foreign Release), and Evil Angel’s first Steele-directed feature, Lex Turns Evil (Best Interracial Release).

Oh, and last (and certainly least), the award for Clever Title of the Year went to Seymore Butts for Cirque du Hole-A. Oy vey.

2014 AVN Nominees Announced – Now with More tips!

The adult entertainment industry already has a strong presence in the city of Las Vegas, but come January 18 of 2014, “Sin City” will be positively overrun with cocksuckers, assfuckers, cum guzzlers, pussy-drillers, camera-wielders, lighting technicians, (legal) pimps and publicists and promotions teams, all focused on one thing and one thing only: recognition. (Well, and sex, too. And money.) And, with nominees now announced in all 135 categories, the AVN Awards season is in full swing. But who’s careers are on the verge of exploding thanks to a statuette, which superstars are about to become legends, and which behind-the-scenes talent is hot-tipped to become the next Axel Braun or John Stagliano?

Having ogled and assessed porn in every 50 weeks of the year thus far, I, Mr. Pink, am in a particularly good position to offer my tips to all those engaging in a little NSFW betting pool, for all the major categories at least. While there are simply too many nominees to list them all here – my apologies to all those hard-working men and women left unmentioned – we’ll be assessing the odds of our favorites scoring the top prizes in their respective categories over a few blogs in the lead-up to the 2014 AVN Awards. And why don’t we start with the most coveted prizes of all…?

Having signed an exclusive performance contract with Wicked Pictures and lending her directorial talents to Elegant Angel, 2013 AVN Female Performer of the Year Asa Akira hasn’t slowed or cooled down one bit since her win earlier this year and looks set to become the second back-to-back winner (after Tori Black in 2010 and 2011).

Winner of the 2013 Male Performer of the Year trophy, James Deen has had a pretty incredible year, but don’t be surprised if his dramatic turn in Paul Schrader and Bret Easton Ellis’s ‘The Canyons’ puts him in top spot as Mainstream Star of the Year, making room for another win by perennial favorite Manuel Ferrara (for what would be his fifth).

In my personal favorite category of the AVNs, Best New Starlet, the competition is fierce and sees everyone from A.J. Applegate and Casey Calvert coming up against Raven Rockette, Rikki Six, and Jodi Taylor, but my pick goes to the tiny yet utterly insatiable Cindy Starfall. In her first full year of US porn production, Ms. Starfall shot her first creampie, blow-bang, squirting, double-vaginal, and gangbang scenes. Sure, other girls have done much the same this year, but nobody has come close to Cindy’s aggressive enthusiasm, camera-lens eye contact, compact but thrilling figure, and, most of all, the way her Vietnamese-accented voice begs for ‘your’ attention and affection.

As the weeks fall away and the 2014 AVN Awards approach, keep tabs on the brightest award hopes with Mr. Pink’s and, please, share your favorites with us on Twitter.

Asa Akira Gets Wicked!

Last week’s Sex Awards left dozens of performers, directors, and producers very, very happy. The inaugural event celebrated adult entertainment in perhaps a more meaningful way than other award ceremonies, crowning men and women in the usual categories as dictated by the voting fans. No one, however, was as thrilled-to-bits as Porn Star of the Year and subject of Adult Movie of the Year, Asa Akira.

Having achieved monumental success in 2013, a year that started with her hosting the AVN Awards and winning its most coveted prize of Female Performer of the Year, the diminutive Japanese-American superstar hoped to accomplish the few things left on her long ago written list of goals. Taking the stage to accept her third Sex Award of the night, Akira unveiled her latest accomplishment, an exclusive performance deal that will see her shoot for Wicked Pictures and only Wicked Pictures. (Thankfully, this won’t disrupt her directing gigs for Elegant Angel.)

Sharing her thoughts with AVN, Akira recalled how the deal initially entered her mind years ago. “I found this list that I had made in 2011. And I had totally forgotten about it, but I found it recently and it had a lot of stupid things on it like get rich, be successful… But it had win AVN Performer of the Year, and the last thing on the list was get a Wicked contract. So a lot of the things came true. In general, I’ve wanted to be a Wicked Girl since I got into the industry. It was the first thing I told my first agent at Gold Star Modeling, so this is really, really exciting for me.”

And for us too, Ms. Akira. For us too.