Nuts vs Zoo (2007) watch online HD

In 2004 two new weekly magazines came out aiming for the same audience – young men. With the media saying the man of the noughties was metrosexual and far removed from the beer-drinking, footie loving, women ogling "lad" of the nineties, publishing companies IPC and EMAP begged to differ, deciding instead that just because men happened to remove hair from their body and put a bit more pride in their appearance, didn't mean suddenly they had dropped all other interests and attitudes they had before the year 2000. They were both right, but both were launching their magazines at the same time into the same market. This is the story of the battle between Nuts and Zoo magazines for the weekly attentions of their target audience.

This film was screened as part of the "Sex in the Noughties" season on Channel 4 in the UK and everything about it told me that it would be rubbish. It was put on in the 10pm slot, which is known for populist "docutainment", light entertainment dressed up as documentaries. It makes heavy use of clips and pictures from the magazines (loads of flesh) and the content is clear that the target audience for the film are the readers of the magazines, and that they will be drawn in by essentially making the magazines move on the screen. I taped this thinking it might be interesting in a trashy way but it sat for ages waiting for me to watch it.

The thing is, other than when something in particular makes me buy one of them (pretty much Rosario Dawson on the cover for example!), I don't buy any weekly or monthly men's magazines. Really I only buy film magazine Empire out of habit, so the subject didn't appear to appeal to me. Personally I do think that the likes of Nuts, FHM and such are pretty much little more than soft core titillation aimed at men who desperately want to be "working class" despite them being comfortably middle-class. Anyway, enough rambling on because despite all of this, the film is actually very interesting.

What it does very well is focus on the main people at EMAP and IPC to tell the story of the sales war between the two publications in regards their strategies, thought processes and delivery. It is a fascinating watch to be inside the minds of those trying to adapt to a market as quickly as possible to beat the rival. It doesn't even really matter if you do think "high street honies" is a cheap way of getting women to be naked without paying them much because regardless it is interesting to see how it came about. In this regard the film also works as charting the sexualisation of mainstream media – specifically in the way that the force of the market brought Nuts into a battle to be increasingly sexual – interesting in the way that the public are as much a part of it as the publishing companies.

Of course it is very populist and bright stuff so we do still get plenty of shots of breasts and gore just like in the magazine. I thought this would cheapen the film but mostly it just means the delivery is lively rather than dumbed down. This is not to say that the documentary is a sharp and insightful look at modern publishing (it is not) but it is much smarter and more interesting than the delivery suggests it will be.