How has February been treating you, my dears? Filled with romance and adventure? Pain and drudgery?

Either way, here’s what I have for you this week…

Jason Coffman reviewed Shout Factory’s new box set of the greatest film franchise of all time, Poison Ivy on the 11th for the Daily Grindhouse:
“Is softcore on the verge of a popular rediscovery? In the last year, Kino Lorber has released COLOR OF NIGHT on Blu-ray, and they’re set to release the first three in the official EMMANUELLE series on Blu in April. Australia’s Umbrella Entertainment just released a Blu-ray of softcore Ozploitation oddity CENTRESPREAD in January (on a double feature with the much more well-known FELICITY), and Vinegar Syndrome is releasing PARTY LINE and IN THE COLD OF THE NIGHT this year. Softcore was a huge part of the home video boom in the 80s and 90s, and many of the films produced in those years have never made it past cable and VHS releases. The sheer number of films that have been out of circulation for so long makes ’80s and ’90s softcore a goldmine of nearly lost cinema history. Shout Factory released the notorious Madonna-starring erotic thriller BODY OF EVIDENCE last year, and now their horror imprint Scream Factory has just dropped another major release in the home video return of softcore. THE POISON IVY COLLECTION collects all four films in the series in one set for the first time, and gives all but the fourth POISON IVY films their debut on Blu-ray. This particular franchise is a great crash course in different styles of softcore in the ’90s heyday, and spans enough time to provide a contrast between ’90s-style softcore and 2000s thrillers.”

Anne T. Donahue analyzed why the plots of so many romcoms hinge on bets for Marie Claire on the 12th:
“Romantic comedies can’t exist without bets. The best ones would crumble without false identities, without duping primary and secondary characters, or without stoking the flames of misunderstanding. Because ultimately, without deception or omission (and the revelation that someone is a bet, a fucking bet), the foundations of our favorite rom-coms would crumble.”

On the 13th, Brianna Zigler discussed the romance of Peter Jackson’s Braindead over at Film School Rejects:
“It’s a love story for the ages: boy meets girl; girl’s grandmother prophesizes they’ll endure unimaginable torment; boy’s mom gets mauled by a Sumatran rat-monkey; re-animated corpses ensue.
Truthfully, after watching Peter Jackson’s 1992 New Zealand splatstick horror film Braindead (alternatively titled Dead Alive in North America), other romance flicks and romcoms don’t quite match up. You see, it just isn’t much of an impassioned love affair if the hero in question wouldn’t use a lawnmower to annihilate an endless hoard of bloodthirsty, juice-dribbling zombies in order to save the girl of his dreams; and not only from these oozing unmentionables, but from the murderous devotion of his own mother. Christian Grey wishes he was Lionel fucking Cosgrove.”

Finally, on the 14th Laura Bradley talked about how the Best Documentary category at the Oscars is a haven for women filmmakers over at Vanity Fair:
“It took 82 Oscar ceremonies for a woman to win the prize for best director—and so far, only one has managed that feat: The Hurt Locker’s Kathryn Bigelow. In a different Oscars category, however, female directors are thriving. Since 2009, women have directed or co-directed more than half of the nominees for best documentary feature—and four of the winning docs over those nine years have been woman-helmed.”