Film

At 17 I was intelligent enough to know that public nudity, and especially sex in public were illegal. But my horny teenager self allowed me to ignore those tidbits of information one summer afternoon. I was out on a date with a 19 year-old attending a local college, and after we had lunch he suggested we hang out in a nearby park. Like a scene from a gay Harlequin novel, a freak rainstorm forced us to scamper from the tree that shaded our make out session into a shelter with a handful of picnic tables. Perched on one of the tables, as the water rushed by below, we continued to kiss and grope each other until we eventually brought each other much needed manual relief.

In 2003 Lawrence vs. Texas overturned any remaining sodomy laws nationwide, guaranteeing that gays had the right to express their passion in private. This may have been significant to me at the time I was experiencing splendor in the grass that summer, and perhaps would have made me feel somewhat more confident about what we were doing, except Lawrence vs. Texas was decided a year later, and we obviously weren’t in private. I also happened to be a resident of South Carolina, a state that had yet to repeal its sodomy laws until Lawrence. So, my actions went beyond normal lines of teenage stupidity and hedonism, but also traversed legality a few times over. I was lucky that the rain, or just luck kept the authorities away that day; otherwise the story could have had a much different ending. More… »

Images from the new film about the interconnected lives of three of the most influential Spaniards of the 20th Century — painter Salvador Dalí, filmmaker Luis Buñuel, and poet Federico García Lorca. Named after Dalí’s famous painting, “Little Ashes” explores the all-consuming relationship between Dalí (openly omni-sexual) and Lorca (famously gay). The film stars Spanish actor Javier Beltrán as Federico Lorca, Robert Pattinson (Twilight, Harry Potter) as Salvador Dalí, and Matthew McNulty as Luis Buñuel (pictured above).

Filmmaker and photographer Bruce LaBruce is rolling into New York City this Halloween season for a screening of his new zombie porn film, Otto: Or, Up With Dead People, that has been making it’s rounds at film festivals across the globe.  The Toronto-based artist is known for his controversial melding of indie filmmaking with gay pornography that has produced cult films like Raspberry Reich, Skin Flick, Hustler White, and Super 8 1/2.  Check out the trailer… it should put you in the mood for some ghoulish fun of your own.  

Italy’s oldest organized criminal organization isn’t the Sicilian Mafia — often glamorized in pop-films like The Godfather or Scarface — it’s the Neapolitan Camorra: an underground network rumored to be rooted in the Spanish prison gangs of the Middle Ages. The stories of these families -– their hostile takeovers and volatile alliances — are the subject of director Matteo Garrone’s bleak docu-style film, Gomorrah.

Don’t expect Al Pacino-esque bravado. Based on journalist Roberto Saviano fictionalized muckraking bestseller of the same name, Gomorrah exposes a deadly web of tangled stories — teenage assassins, toxic waste, corrupt businessmen, and handmade Italian suits. And though the plot may confuse, who can resist two virile Nepalese boys in soiled briefs pumping their machine guns into the water?

Winner of the Cannes film festival Grand Prix, and the official selection for best foreign film for next year’s Academy Awards, Gomorrah screens at the New York Film Festival on Friday, 10/3 and Sunday, 10/5.

NY Film Festival | IMDB | NSFW Trailer | Variety

THE TRAILER for Gus Van Sant’s highly anticipated new film MILK was leaked less than a week ago, and already we’re hearing the “O” word mentioned. It makes sense. If MILK is anything like the trailer, then Sean Penn is an almost guaranteed Oscar contender. Ted Casablanca has a theory. The idea that if an actor wants to be taken seriously (i.e. to be nominated for an Academy Award), he’s gotta play gay.

Think Philip Seymour Hoffman as a delicate Truman Capote in Capote (winner). Or Heath Ledger as Ennis Del Mar and Jake Gyllenhaal as Jack Twist in Brokeback Mountain (both nominated). Or go back as far as, Javier Bardem as Reinaldo Arenas in Before Night Falls (nominated). And even farther to front runner Tom Hanks as an HIV positive lawyer in Philadelphia (winner). Not to mention the speculation of a posthumous Oscar nom for Ledger as drag queen, super-diva The Joker in The Dark Night – not an explicitly gay role, but read between the lines folks. In that light, yes, a nomination for Penn doesn’t seem far fetched.

But is playing gay the only seemingly bona fide ticket to Oscarville? No and probably not. Playing gay may get the attention of directors, and certainly the media — see this gushing article in The Times that almost proclaims the second coming of a new queer cinema (back in 2005!). When it comes down to actually winning, playing gay is as certain as…. (insert your own punster simile here). 

E-Online’s Ted Casablanca disagrees.

It’s worth noting Casablanca’s effortless jump from “hookers” and “sluts” to “homos” and “handicaps” — as though the two were synonymous. And he’s a gay man. Surely, by now, someone at Lambda Legal or GLAD has put in a call into E-Online! for that small, if not innocent, quip.

At best we must take Casablanca’s snark with a grain of salt (or a shot of tequila, or both!), at worst we accuse him of inaccuracy. This is tough. Mr. Casablanca has written about entertainment gossip for longer than than the lifespan of this blog. (In fact, this reviewer was 7-years-old when Casablanca began his distinguished career at Premiere.) So, we can — and for sanity’s sake must — rationalize that his off-the-cuff remarks are merely ironic and teasing instead of presumptuous and lazy. Pretenses aside, if playing gay, as Mr. C suggests, is a surefire stroll to nomination city, why are there so few gay roles — especially staring roles — ever nominated, or ever produced for that matter? More… »

OSCAR NOMINEE GUS VAN SANT (Good Will Hunting) directs Oscar winner Sean Penn (Mystic River) as gay-rights icon Harvey Milk. The real life Harvey Milk (1930-1978) was an activist and politician, and the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in America. The following year, both he and the city’s mayor George Moscone were shot to death by another city supervisor, Dan White, played here by Josh Brolin. The cast includes a pre-hipster era Emile Hirsch, a bearded Diego Luna, and a Boogie-Nights-prosthetic-dong donning James Franco. Opens nationwide Nov 26.

Until then, do your homework and bone up on the life of Harvey Milk by watching the 1984 Academy Award-winning documentary The Times of Harvey Milk.

POWDER YOUR NOSE - Hollywood fawns when pretty women turn themselves ugly on screen: Nicole Kidman in The Hours, Charlize Theron in Monster, and Marion Cotillard in La Vie En Rose. Nothing placates the Academy more than prosthetic noses, hour-long make-up sessions with aging silicone and latex, and bald caps, mustn’t forget bald caps.

Lately the same is true for men, at least if you believe the speculation surrounding Heath Ledger’s performance in The Dark Night. But every actor knows that if you want Oscar gold, you’ve got to don a mustache, or heavy glasses, or a wig, and more importantly tons of make-up. Your chances increase if you happen to star in a literary adaptation – hopefully one written by some highly respectable former New York Times bestselling author (Mystic River, The Last King of Scotland, There Will Be Blood was roughly based on Upton Sinclair’s Oil).

On December 25, Brad Pitt (the bran half of brangelina) will juggle both make-up AND literature in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button – an adaptation of an F. Scott Fitzgerald short story of the same name. In the film, as in the story, Benjamin Button ages in reverse. He goes from feeble old fart to handsome, virile, motorcycle-riding ladies man (If only!). This marks Pitt’s 3rd project with director David Fincher. Reviewers have started peppering the O word, and with Pitt playing alongside two Academy Award winners (Cate Blanchett and Tilda Swinton) there’s a good chance the Oscar luck may rub off on him – as long as it doesn’t smear his foundation, of course.

With an upcoming role alongside Sean Penn in Gus Van Sant’s Milk, and with the recent buzz about the homoerotic bromance in Pinapple Express, James Franco is well on his way to becoming the new Jake Gyllenhaal – the straight guy who gay guys love to fantasize about. Here he talks about wearing a prosthetic phallus (because I guess Harvey Milk liked ‘em big?) during love scenes with Penn who plays America’s first openly gay mayor Harvey Milk.

This scene went on for a long time, like half the day, and it’s getting old… and I go over to Sean and I guess he didn’t know that I was wearing a prosthetic. I go, “Sean, you’re such a great actor but you wouldn’t do a scene like this if they asked you; you wouldn’t dive into a pool naked.”

And he said… “Well James, if I was built like you, I would.”

A couple of weeks later we did this scene, where we’re both dancing and we’re naked, and we both have prosthetic penises. He finally put it together that I’m wearing, like, the Boogie Nights prosthetic. [ContactMusic.com]

Hot right? Still, I don’t understand the need for a horse-hung prothesis. On screen we get two choices anymore: Howard Stern’s stump or Mark Wahlberg’s tripod. Whatever happened to average?  

The trailer for The Informers (based on a novel by Bret Easton Ellis, of the same name) was leaked and then later removed, but we found it. Oh yeah, and it’s NSFW.

Set in 1983 Los Angeles, the film is based on Bret Easton Ellis’s (American Pyscho, Rules of Attraction, Less Than Zero) 1995 short story collection by the same name. Many of Ellis’ works have been adapted for the screen (see above), except this time Ellis co-wrote the screenplay. The all-star cast includes Winona Ryder, Mickey Rourke, Amber Heard, Kim Basinger, Brad Renfro, and Billy Bob Thornton. There’s no opening date yet, but the synopsis promises “sex, drugs and violence.” Yay!

HIGH VS. LOW — I recommend bypassing X-Files and Step Brothers this weekend opting instead for a little foreign homo onscreen action. Director Leesong Hee-il’s sexy, new film No Regret opens today in Greenwich Village, Manhattan. Hee-il explores the dividing incompatibility of “sexual identity and economic need.” Bring your glasses, you’ll read the subtitles faster. 

The best thing in “No Regret” is the brothel. Down a dingy alleyway in Seoul, South Korea, the “host bar,” as it is euphemistically known, is announced by a sign that suggestively promises “X Large.” Inside, young men fresh from the provinces cavort with their jaded city colleagues for the delight of an all-male clientele. There is karaoke, binge drinking, lap dancing and intimate entanglements in private rooms, along with fistfights, trash talking, broken hearts and bonhomie. [New York Times] (Photo courtesy of Regent Releasing)