Dieux du Stade Calendrier 2008 [Broché]

Comme chaque année à la même époque, sont attendus le beaujolais et le calendrier des Dieux du Stade.

C'est de plus en plus chaud et oui, on est loin des rugbymans canal historique avec leurs piliers ventripotents gavés de cassoulet. Aujourd'hui c'est musculation, brushing et médiatisation. Dans les compétitions de rugby, on se met des pains dans la figure d'accord, mais avec les ongles manucurés.

Les dieux du stade est un cadeau sympa pour ces dames, messieurs. C'est en tous les cas la première étape pour leur faire aimer ce sport, vous verrez. Après lui avoir offert, vous pourrez alors regarder avec elle, les matchs de rugby et l'entendre s'écrier, "c'est Février qui a marqué!!!"

je me réjois chaque année à l'idée de me procurer le nouvel exemplaire du désormai célèbre calendrier, mais celui de cette année ne restera pas dans ma mémoire....
froid , sans idées originales de la part d'un spécialiste des people et autres vedettes venues d'outre-atlantique!

on est très loin de la qualité des éditions 2005/2007 mes préférées...

The 2008 addition to the series of sumptuous calendars of naked male athletes (rugby players) is a marked departure from earlier Dieux du Stade calendars. Most obviously, gone is the setting of locker room, showers, practice fields, and other venues of sports machismo. The settings are in either elegant palatial rooms that Voltaire would have frequented in the 18th century or, in a few cases, outdoors, all photographed in richly textured colour, sometimes phantasmagorical (e.g. in the Pierre-et-Gilles-like tints for player Mercedo Bosch for 16-31 January or the squatting cover-lad for the secondary cover of the calendar). Perhaps such settings of aristocratic splendour are meant to suggest the godlike nobility and strength, with a touch of Promethean bondage, of these astonishingly beautiful men.

There is no 100% full frontal nudity, genitals mostly concealed completely in the poses, with the tantalising exceptions (apart from pubic hair that appears more frequently in many other shots) of the bonus post-April photo of him that includes the bottom of both of Nicolas Jeanjean's testicles (as well as of the outer half of his right-sided one viewed from uppermost, swerving downwards to the lowermost, of its extent) and the top of Sept. 1-15 Juan Martín Berberian's penis and scrotum. The poses are very stylised, often highly mannered, with the kind of Neo-Classical aura of male nude photography so common in early 20th century nude homoerotically-destined "physique" camera art, but, of course, much more sophisticated and tasteful. Despite the genitals-shy restraint, one is glad that Steve Klein, 2008's master-photographer, has "made a go" of it with a "making-of" DVD to pair with the 2008 calendar, as one could tell from the hand-held motion cameras visible in many of the photos.

As for favourites among the calendar's photos, I would start with both "cover boys" (front and inside-back covers), standing, their wistfully sensuous physical power enchained (as so many of these lads in similar elegant bondage), in the one case, and squatting, boyishly quizzical edginess on the other; Jan. 1-15 Mirco Bergamasco's Apollonian, blond, lushly corporeal beauty; March 1-15 David Skrela's mildly aggressive leaning pose, muscular even in the crotch area; March 16-31 Vincent Clerc's sweaty, strong-yet-sweet punk pose nude astride the front of a motorcycle; April 16-30 Loic Jacquet's youthfully defiant-yet-slightly-simpering Celtic sleekness, hair delectably black on head as well as on muscular chest cleavage, lower abdomen, and legs; that stunningly latin look of smoothly powerful and smolderingly intense eroticism of the Nicolas Jeanjean poses for post-April bonus and post-Dec. bonus photos; the sumptuously lush yet muscularly scupted beauty of May 16-31 Thomas Comezou; Sept. 1-15 Juan Martin Berberian; all of Mauro Bergamasco's poses (as ever in preceding years' calendars!), that perennial favourite's Oct. 16-31 poses also redolent of Pierre-et-Gille's sultry, tinted phantasy; the sweetly boyish, more juvenile post-Oct. Thomas Bartolini and Oct. 1-15 Julien Fumat poses, such laddishness notably rarer than usually is the case in this series of yearly calendars which does tend to place the emphasis on adult muscularity more than on such post-adolescent grace; June 16-30 Clément Poitrenaud's plungingly strait torso lines and graceful posing of his lifted leg on toe-points; post-June bonus Ignacio Corleto's youthfully vigourous, magnificently latin muscularity (spoilt only by wearing visually intrusive form-fitting briefs banally hiding part of his thighs and crotch), with his confidently manly and smiling gaze; Aug. 16-31 Matthieu Nicolas's sweaty, coital, hip-thrusting bliss in a latin abandon of sexual ardour; post-August quiveringly hispanic beauty and thirstily carnal gaze of the ever-gorgeous Julien Arras (so memorable in photos of previous years' calendars); Sept. 16-30 Geoffrey Messina's sulky, defiant yet tenderly expressive face and pose; Dec. 1-15 Matteo Pratichetti's ravishingly beautiful, Caravaggio-like hairless perfection of form and linearity, with an hauntingly, luminously and invitingly erotic gaze; and in the back outside cover photo the hieratically grouped display of dark male beauty and force posed from the rear of compactly muscular buttocks, faced by the serenely blond beauty of the youth standingly in a frontal pose.

All in all, depite its break with the kind of photography and settings of past calendars, this 2008 Dieux du Stade calendar is quite remarkable in its own, very different way. I would prefer a return to the jock locker rooms and shower settings of prior calendars for 2009 and years following, but 2008's calendar succeeds splendidly on its own terms.