May 2012
120 posts
3 tags
Anatomy lesson
ANATOMY OF HELL (ANATOMIE d’ENFER)
France, 2004 Director: Catherine Breillat Stars: Amira Casar, Rocco Siffredi
Available on DVD - order here
Gender studies students and their teachers love films by Catherine Breillat, so that should give the rest of us a pretty good idea what to expect from Anatomy of Hell (Anatomie de l’Enfer), her tenth film, which begins when a beautiful but nameless...
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One Sheet: Querelle (1980)
Kind of appropriately for a movie about a mysterious sailor, Querelle took on a new identity at each new port. The original French poster, above, lets the oblique oranges and pinks of a angsty post-murder dawn spill over a seductive image that is free of instructive or explicatory taglines. Fans will instantly recognise the beautiful Brad Davis and Querelle’s flick-knife - which doubles here as...
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Simply Streisand #3
Has your drinking becoming a problem? Barbra has the solution:
(from A Star Is Born (1976))
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Concentration camp
Martin Sherman’s acclaimed 1979 play, “Bent”, about two gay Dachau inmates who have a clandestine word-only, love affair with each other, always seemed a little contentious to me. Much of the text is undertoned with the late-1970s gay pride rhetoric that surrounded Sherman, and the concentration camp setting he chose was not only total overkill for such a message, but possibly exploitative of...
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Doing lines: The Crying Game (1992)
Jody (Forest Whitaker) teaches Fergus (Stephen Rea) a lesson he’s not going to forget in a hurry in Neil Jordan’s 1992 Oscar winner, The Crying Game.
“A scorpion wants to cross the river. But he can’t swim. He goes to a frog, who can, and asks for a ride. The frog says, if I give you a ride on my back, you’ll go and sting me.
The scorpion replies, it would not be in my interest to sting you,...
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Movie Of The Day: The Christine Jorgensen Story...
In honour of Christine Jorgensen’s birthday today (she would have been 86; she passed away in 1989), fill the air with laughter as you watch the trailer of Irving Rapper’s hysterical take on Christine’s story, The Christine Jorgensen Story (1970):
Then, reflect on the dignity and wit of the real Christine:
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Quentin Crisp reviews Ernesto (1979)
The incomparable Quentin Crisp (1908-1999) shared a birthday with Jesus and was played by John Hurt in 1975’s The Naked Civil Servant, adapted from Crisp’s memoir of the same name.
The Queen of interwar Old Compton Street, he starred with Helen Mirren, among others, on the London stage before moving to the United States where his dinner parties became legendary. He played Queen Elizabeth I...
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Happy Birthday Ted Levine (55)
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Hotty of the day: Lukas Ridgeston
Hiding his cock behind that lovely verdant frond is Juraj Vrzgula, who abandoned his unpronounceable real name at the suggestion of Bel Ami supremo George Duroy, and subsequently (as Lukas Ridgeston) enjoyed gay porn megastardom in the 1990s with corkers such as Lukas’ Story.
Now folding gradually back into Vrzgula-ville, the man who was Lukas Ridegston pursues his twin loves of architecture...
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Gay Scene: Deliverance (1972)
House-of-horrors gay porn studios like Treasure Island Media and Cazzo (et. al.) may think they’re onto something new and underground, but I can’t see that they’re producing anything, essentially, that my parents didn’t see at their local cinema before I was born:
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Bearable
Bear Cub is a lovely film that’s just a little heavy on the sugar, and apart from being Spanish and ‘queer’, is not at all similar to the films of Almodovar, films to which it has been erroneously compared.
Pedro (Jose Luis Garcia Perez) is a successful dentist. He’s financially secure, is surrounded by a wide bunch of close friends, a good supply of hash and plenty of casual sex....
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Everything is beautiful
The imperious legacy of the original production of A Chorus Line, the supreme Broadway musical that ran for 15 years and won nine Tony Awards & the Pulitzer Prize, curses every attempt to restage it (a 2004 revival sank like a stone just like Richard Attenborough’s 1985 film version) but this superlative documentary, based around the lengthy audition process for the 2004 revival, features...
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Spilled Milk
Review by Mark Simpson
‘If a bullet should enter my brain, let it destroy ever closet door.’ So says Sean Penn as Harvey Milk, the gay activist who became California’s first openly gay public official. Any concern that this may be a slightly melodramatic statement is quelled of course by the knowledge that Milk was famously killed by a bullet to the head in 1978 by a disgruntled, possibly...
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A moment with Elizabeth Taylor
The rest of us work at remaining politely undemonstrative in public, no matter what’s going on for us. Elizabeth Taylor took a different approach, and it worked wonderfully, but it only worked for Her.
(gif from stills of Suddenly Last Summer, where, as Catherine Holly, Taylor was merely taking off her bathing cap after emerging from a dip in the beach while on holiday.)
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Gay Scene: Are You Being Served? (1977)
The relentless double entendre of the TV series was ramped down a notch or two for the 1977 big screen movie of Are You Being Served, but never fear, the incessant references to Mrs Slocombe’s pussy, and Mr Humphries homosexuality were just a bit less coy, as exemplified in this zany scene where Mr Humphries (the immortal John Inman RIP) fends off the unwanted advances of a burly foreign...
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Hotty of the day: Michael Biehn
The handsome Michael Biehn won me over with his role of Corporal Hicks in Aliens, where he smoked out a tentative love interest subplot with way-too-busy Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) but more importantly performed innumerable manly acts including waking up sleepy and shirtless and groggily scratching his head, showing Ripley how to load and shoot his “favourite” machine gun and generally running...
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Slow rotation
SOMERSAULT Australia, 2004 Director: Cate Shortland Stars: Abbie Cornish, Sam Worthington, Lynette Curran, Erik Thomson
Available on DVD - order here
In Somersault, aimless teen-slut Heidi (Abbie Cornish) flees south to the brittle atmosphere of Jindabyne, a rare Australian snow town, after she gets busted having sex with her mother’s boyfriend. In Jindabyne, she meets pensive souls like Joe...
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Gay Scene: Hot Rods: Young & Hung 2 (1986)
Circular beds are just all wrong. As the handsome buddy in the xxx/NSFW/etc clip from William Higgins’ Hot Rods: Young & Hung 2 (1986, browse DVD/downloads copies here) unless you position yourself right in the centre of them and don’t move position during the night which is an impossible ask for someone in a deep sleep, bits of you end up hanging over the edges all night long and one...
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Quentin Crisp reviews Law Of Desire (1987)
The incomparable Quentin Crisp (1908-1999) shared a birthday with Jesus and was played by John Hurt in 1975’s The Naked Civil Servant, adapted from Crisp’s memoir of the same name.
Imperiously disparaging about everything from AIDS (”a fad”) to Princess Diana (”vulgar”), he wrote a classic series of film reviews for Christopher Street magazine, some of which are reprinted here. For more...
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Porn River
Sexy and sweaty and over-determined, Deliverance plunges a clutch of city men way out of their depth into a world where nature rules and where American masculinity wears a surprising mask. [[MORE]]Dialogue about asses, physical sensations, and genetic deformities cram the opening act, which brings a quartet of mates with a very set hierarchy of manliness into the backwoods for a rough-river...
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After Midnight
Midnight Express is a masterpiece, a mess, and a mystery. Brad Davis, who died of AIDS in 1991, had limited regular acting talents, but a metaphysical power which was off the scale. Very handsome and athletically built, his tendency to growl, mumble and scratch his chest during scenes leant him a magnetic, blue-collar sexiness, while his mix of boyishness and femininity created a compelling...
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Lola, Stop
Murat (Baki Davrak) is a seventeen year old gay Turkish immigrant, who lives with his mother and brother in Berlin. Murat lurks around public toilets and drag bars trying to find some entry point into his adulthood and eventually encounters Lola (Gandi Mukli), a drag performer who turns out to be Murat’s estranged brother. Lola is stuck in a relationship with Bili (Erdal Yilidiz) who’s so hung...
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Interview with Wayne Koestenbaum
Wayne Koestenbaum is an author/auteur extraordinaire, the creator of a string of unique, erudite classics such as “Jackie Under My Skin: Interpreting An Icon”, and the biography “Andy Warhol”. He also wrote “The Queen’s Throat: Opera, Homosexuality, and the Mystery of Desire”, an influential and enterprising look at, well, opera, homosexuality and the mystery of desire.
Now, “An Anatomy...
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Artistic Differences: Faux Vintage Pornography, by...
Leonardo Herrera says: “The concept of ‘era’ is crucial to my work, which is deeply rooted in the politics and sexuality of the 60s counterculture, 70s gay liberation and early 90s fashion industry. As a first generation Mexican immigrant and openly gay male, globalization, magical realism and camp are recurring themes in my pieces.
“I am deeply moved by our emotional investment in the...
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Two Wheel Drive
Vigorously promoted as a blue-ribbon porn epic (Falcon offered fans the chance to win a trip for two to New Zealand, where Cross Country had been filmed near where the most spectacular outdoor scenes of The Lord of the Rings trilogy had been filmed) the Cross Country series is full of superlative sex scenes but the potential of the spectacular locations is never fully realised. In surroundings...
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Gay scene: Bigger Than Life (1986)
These days Jeff Stryker tours in his one man cabaret, allowing audiences to see and to even touch his legendary cock at one point during the evening (before or after the meal service?) but before that, he recorded his catchy smash hitdebut single “Pop You In The Pooper” with his band, the Soggy-Bottomed Boyz (true - listen here).
In his heyday, however, Jeff Stryker was the gay porn star’s gay...
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Get Over It
Vincent (Julien Baumgartner), a hero of the school swimming team, dates Noémie (Julia Maraval) but secretly bangs an older man after school. Furtive and confused, Vincent misinterprets the sensual attentions of a new school mate, Benjamin (Jérémie Elkaïm) who doesn’t miss a beat telling the whole school that Vincent tried to kiss him. Instant turmoil results, with Vincent’s bored...
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Hotty of the day: Jason Statham
Louis Leterrier, director of Transporter 2, said that he deliberately crafted the eponymous action hero as a covert gay, and this was picked up on by a number of audiences and bloggers - it was even discussed on the pages of the LA Times.
“It’s just Lou-Lou trying to be funny,” Statham countered, using his endearing nickname for Leterrier. “Although he did say, ‘In Part 2, you will become the...
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Movie melanoma
The best thing that could have happened during the making of this pitiful film is if a freak King Wave had struck without warning during the filming of a location scene and washed the cast and crew and all of the equipment out to sea. This would have saved us all the horror of watching the movie, which, at its absolute pinnacle, is the dreary tale of an uninvolving pansy vaguely pursuing the...
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Happy Birthday Ian McKellen (73)
And speaking of Sir Ian McKellen, the Knight of the Realm turns 73 today. His entertaining wit once brought us this delightful response to a reporter who asked one question too many about life on the set of The Lord of the Rings:
“My friend it was simple as this: Sir Ian, Sir Ian, Sir Ian, action, wizard “You shall not pass!”, cut. Sir Ian, Sir Ian, Sir Ian.”
Medal of...
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Husband of Frankenstein
Vito Russo would have not known quite what to make of this film, about the last days of semi-openly gay director James Whale. In mental decline and heavily medicated, Whale (Ian McKellen) is mainly house bound, where he’s tormented by memories, mild strokes, and the gladitorial beauty of his oft-shirtless gardener Clayton Boone (Brendan Fraser). On the occasional day trip, such as a party at...
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Movie Death
Michael Caine and Christopher Reeve apparently drank litres of whiskey to get through their dreaded male-male kiss scene in Deathtrap, but you’ll need something stronger than alcohol to stay interested in the movie.
[[MORE]]Deathtrap was the longest running mystery/thriller on Broadway and Sidney Lumet’s adaptation shows that such success has nothing whatsoever to do with cinema....
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The Celluloid Moron
Time has not been kind to The Celluloid Closet but then, Vito Russo never had much time for Time, either. Writing in 1981, Vito complained that no gay writer had produced any meaningful criticism of homosexuality in the movies, but actually, Parker Tyler had done just that, and nine years previously, with his tellingly-titled twentieth book, Screening the Sexes: Homosexuality in the Movies.
...
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Interview with Michael Lucas
MARK ADNUM: One of the things I love about your films is how you feature actors who act like real gay guys, such as the fashion assistant played by Owen Hank in Dangerous Liaisons who talks campily about launching the “new Spring line” before getting manrammed (by you). Not everyone’s a flamer, but I love how you’ve found a way to integrate gay-acting men into really sexy porn...
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Acrimonious
If you’re bored after an hour of looking around for sex in washrooms, parks and websites then Todd Verow’s 84-minute home video of his own endlessly unsatisfying cruising encounters will be enough to make you want to stick hot needles in your eyes. Lingering interior scenes set in Verow’s paint-flaking Manhattan shoebox, his persistent nude scenes despite his lack of good looks and the...
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Book Of The Day: Hollywood Surf and Beach Movies:...
Tom Lisanti’s Hollywood Surf and Beach Movies: The First Wave, 1959-1969 is a fabulous read: 32 surf and beach movies are celebrated with detailed analysis, and there’s pics and interviews galore. Browse copies here.
In the meantime, here’s some words from Tom:
To get in a warm weather mood with summer not approaching fast enough, here is a look at Hollywood surf movies from...
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Hen's Night
Abandoned by his parents, Xabi (Israel Rodríguez) has been in and out of kids homes since before he was able to walk. He burns a warden alive during his latest escape attemt and is sent to a high-security correctional. Xabi and his Mexican buddy Joel (Hugo Catalán) reluctantly allow Driss (Mehroz Arif), a seventeen-year-old Moroccan they initially despise, to join them in their latest escape.
...
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Not Quite
THE NEXT BEST THING
USA, 2000 Director: John Schlesinger Stars: Madonna, Rupert Everett, Benjamin Bratt
Madonna is a great actress. Her music video performances are amazing - iconic and unforgettable. The frenetic nature of pop clips – where scenes are edited down to split second flashes and storytelling is broad, conceptual, picture-book - suits her scattered energies and aptitude for...
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Guillotine, please
CUT SLEEVE BOYS UK, 2007 Director: Ray Yeung Stars: Chowee Leow, Steven Lim
Mel (Steven Lim) and Ash (Chowee Leow) are mismatched friends with a mutual concern: they’re getting older and wondering where they’ll end up as two thirtysomething Chinese on the London gay scene. Mel is the handsome, muscular fashion fag who worries that he’s no longer at the top of the...
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Book Of The Day: The Reluctant Pornographer /...
Bruce LaBruce’s self-described “premature memoir” was published in 1997, and according to one (of countless) critics, his “witty revulsion and response to gay culture—the film industry, drag queens, drugs, and sex—give The Reluctant Pornographer a certain pop-philosophical conversational appeal.” Decide for yourself - browse copies here.
And, this seems...
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Trailer Park: The Great Gatsby (2012)
I think Baz Luhrmann is a bit of a one-trick dickhead, and it’s mystifying why he’s became a name director anyway when the real power behind all his films is his wife Catherine Martin, the creator of all those gorgeous sets and costumes - remember the neon-lit church in Romeo + Juliet! - who’s won two Oscars (both for Moulin Rouge).
The just-released trailer for his upcoming...
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Happy Birthday Joan Collins (79)
Today Joan Collins turns 79, so up until midnight you have the perfect excuse to speak to all and sundry exactly this:
I personally have been addressed like this by Joan Collins. Here’s the story:
[[MORE]]In around 1994 she came to Grace Bros, Sydney (as it was then called) to launch “My Secrets”, her book on staying beautiful on the inside and the out, after menopause. I...
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Two Sirs, with love
Nighthawks is worth watching for its opening scene alone, a fabulous eight-minute pan through a late-seventies London gay bar that’ll have you reaching for your poppers bottle and furtively looking around for bobbies in no time at all.
ButNighthawks has aged marvellously, maturing into a fabulous gay film classic, a veritable museum piece, just the thing for colour-starved, politicised...
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One Sheet: Deliverance (1972)
If you’re in Istanbul and looking for trouble, tell a few well built guys that you’re after a weekend trip along the lines of Kurtulus, and watch the feathers fly:
[[MORE]]More groovy Deliverance posters from around the world (including the new Blu-Ray art, a crazy former-Yugoslavian poster that has a canoe coming out of an eyeball and a grainy blow up of the Japanese hand-drawn version that...
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From HOT to NOT: an unrecognizable Matthew Fox...
Matthew Fox’s grotesque transformation for his new film Alex Cross is sure to wipe out all spank-bank memories of the formerly swarthy hotty (pictured in his prime, at bottom), who now looks like something out of the anatomy section of the Natural History Museum:
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In Alex Cross Fox plays Picasso, a cage-fighting murderer but who gives a fuck? He looks dreadful, don’t you...
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Chris Rockway has jazz hands!
Randy Blue’s king stud Chris Rockway is gorgeous. However, he has jazz hands - he does! Just look at these countless examples, stills from Randy Blue movies he’s appeared in:
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He even likes having the jazz hands of others placed upon him:
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Book Of The Day: The Mayor of Castro Street
Before he wrote the essential And The Band Played On the incomparable Randy Shilts wrote The Mayor of Castro Street a 388-page look at the life of Harvey Milk, who was born 82 years ago today.
Highly recommended: browse copies here.
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Gay scene: The Tragic love of Steven Carrington...
Happy Birthday Al Corley, 56 today.
My detailed look at Al’s time as Steven Carrington is right here.
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Simply Streisand #1
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The main drag
Review by Gary Morris
This sweet, sad sketch of a film is a rarity indeed; not only the first major commercial movie made in Singapore, but an exceedingly gay one from a culture not known to tolerate chewing gum, much less the parade of drag queens, prostitutes, and naked hunks who populate the insular world of Bugis Street. Surprisingly, the film was passed by the country’s board of censors in...
