For quite a while now, I’ve had a revolutionary idea to transform perfume advertising. The ad would go something like this – Someone picks up a bottle of perfume, sprays themselves and say something like, ‘Good, I smell a bit nicer than I did before’. The End.
After all, what else do you need?
However, whoever is in charge of perfume ads seems to live on Mars where they constantly drop acid tabs, as commercials for smelly things are almost all people talking nonsense and weird imagery. Now Chanel has recruited Brad Pitt to be the first male face of their classic No. 5. While they’ve got the virtually incomprehensible dialogue down pat, Pitt’s presumably enormous fee means their wasn’t enough cash for OTT imagery, so they just shoved him in a small room and moved the lights around a bit.
While it’s always nice to see Mr. Pitt, God knows what he was thinking with this nonsense (he can’t even be bothered to do a Matthew McConaughey or Chris Evans and get his shirt off for his perfume ad). But we’re sure he can console himself with the giant cheque we’re sure he received.
Broken hearts and burnt out staff: was this to be the finale? The five day long festival was coming to a grand close, having already achieved its promise of being bigger and better than ever before. The toll of late night partying was evident on the faces of the filmmakers: the social side of the Iris Prize Festival was worth the flight over for many of those coming from far afield. There was gossip and speculation aplenty as the champagne reception in Cardiff’s Park Inn Hotel got the festival spirit flowing again. The staff and organisers had somehow tapped into hidden reserves of energy, with the media buzz still electric and the day running silky smooth. 
The Iris Prize Festival, the world’s largest LGBT-themed short film prize, has kicked off in Cardiff, and we’re going to be reporting from the event which runs October 10th-14th. The festival shows a mix of shorts and feature films, ending with the Iris Prize, where one lucky filmmaker is given funding and support for their next short film.
Garrett Hedlund looked like he was going to hit it big with Tron: Legacy, but while it wasn’t quite the slingshot onto the A-list it could have been, he’s back in cinemas this Friday as the bisexual Dean Moriarty in Walter Salles’ adaptation of Jack Kerouac’s classic On The Road.
Last week, I gave thanks to one of the most prolific LGBT writers in the UK, Russell T. Davies, and this week I’m not only looking across the pond at our American counterparts, but I’m also looking at the lovely lady gays. First on this list to give thanks to is film and television director, screenwriter and producer Angela Robinson.
Gay people have entered the mainstream media significantly in recent times, whether as television or radio presenters or characters in television and film. But something that has to be looked at, is how this representation is mainly of gay men.