Taking a look at the world of film through gay eyes - news, reviews, trailers, gay film, queer cinema and more
Taking a look at the world of film through gay eyes - news, reviews, trailers, gay film, queer cinema & more
On TLA’s Releasing’s schedule this year is Mixed Kebab, and now they’ve released a trailer for the upcoming LGBT themed movie.
The film follows young Turk Ibrahim, who’s gay and faced with a tough choice – make his family happy and marry his cousin, Elif, or go with his heart and live with the Belgian Kevin who steals his heart.
The film is due to hit DVD in the US on April 23rd and in the UK on April 29th, so keep an eye out for it. [Read more…]
The Berlin International Film Festival has drawn to a close, and so have the Teddy Awards, the LGBT film skein that runs alongside the main fest. The Teddy gongs have now been handed out, with the Polish movie, W imie… (In the Name of), winning Best Queer Feature, and Sébastien Lifshitz’s Bambi picking up Best Documentary.
They now join the ranks of previous winners including Ira Sachs’ excellent Keep The Lights On, Marco Berger’s Absent, Lisa Cholodenko’s The Kids Are All Right and John Cameron Mitchell’s Hedwig And The Angry Inch.
W Imie is about Adam, a Catholic priest who lives in a village in rural Poland where he works with teenagers with behavioural problems who fight and yell abuse. After turning down a woman’s advances, it turns out that celibacy is not the only reason for his rejection. Adam knows that he desires men and that his embrace of the priesthood has been a flight from his own sexuality. When he eventually meets Lukasz, the strange and taciturn son of a simple rural family, Adam’s self-imposed abstinence becomes a heavy burden.
Bambi meanwhile is looks at Marie-Pierre, who was born Jean-Pierre Pruvot in a tiny Algerian village in 1935. Even as a child she refused to meet the expectations of her extended family, choosing instead to find a way to become the woman she always knew herself to be. She movie to Paris in the 1950s, assumed the stage name of ‘Bambi’ and took to the music-hall stages. Now 77 years old, Bambi reveals Marie-Pierre’s story of deep-seated confusion, painful rejection and impassioned courage.
The final prize, for Best Short Film, went to Ta Av Mig (Undress Me), about a man and a woman who meet on the street. The woman is a male-to-female transsexual, who over the course of the film examines our perceptions of gender and how our identity can be formed by the perceptions of others.
You can take a look at trailers for W Imie and Ta Av Mig below (sadly we couldn’t find one for Bambi). [Read more…]
A few months ago we reported on a crowd-funding campaign for a movie about the legendary Continental Gay Bathhouse in New York, where the likes of Bette Midler used to sing and which is considered to have had a profound impact on gay culture in the 1960s and 1970s.
Now that documentary is on its way, and Out has unveiled the first poster, which you can see above.
Small Town Gay Bar director Malcolm Inger in behind the movie. Here’s the official synopsis: ‘Malcolm Ingram’s lively new documentary CONTINENTAL takes viewers back in time to the sexually charged New York of 1968, when the notorious Continental Baths opened its doors. This groundbreaking den of debauchery (advertised as a place “for sophisticated men only”) came to transcend sexual identity and became a cultural beacon to the hip, beautiful and infamous. Not only host to newly-empowered gay men of all shapes and sizes, eager to take full advantage of their sexual freedoms at a lavish venue, the Continental brought both high and low culture to the bathhouse’s stage week after week, becoming instrumental in the careers of ‘60s and ‘70s icons like Bette Midler, Barry Manilow, Patti LaBelle, Peter Allen, and countless others.’
The doc is due to debut at SXSW.
With his tattooed scalp and muscled physique, Francois Sagat is one of the most recognisable faces in gay porn. However he’s achieved the rare feat of managing to cross over to the mainstream, doing fashion modelling and scoring roles in movies such as LA Zombie and Saw VI.
Now he’s getting his own documentary, called Sagat, which hits DVD in the UK on March 11th, and the US on March 12th. To give us a bit of a preview, a new trailer has been released, which you can watch above.
Here’s the synopsis: ‘Francois Sagat – gay porn legend and sexual icon. Now, get ready to become more intimate then ever with this French sex-symbol as we follow him from his early beginnings to becoming one of the biggest adult stars in the world. Following the actor from the set to his home, the provocative documentary sees Sagat opening up about topics ranging from hyper-masculinity to his personal fetishes and the politics of the porn industry. Stuffed with extras and interviews with the likes of porn legends Bruce La Bruce and Chi Chi La Rue, Sagat is an essential part of any fan’s collection and offers a revealing insight you simply won’t get anywhere else.’
John Cusack is getting his thriller on with The Numbers Station, and now the first trailer for the movie has hit the web, and you can watch it below.
Cusack plays a disgraced black-ops CIA agent who gets sent to a dead-end assignment in the Nevada desert. He is told to protect a code breaker (Malin Akerman) working at an isolated CIA broadcast station. It’s supposed to be an easy job, but gets a lot more difficult when she’s targeted by unknown assailants.
The Candidate’s Kasper Barfoed directs. No UK release is currently set, but it hits US cinemas on April 26th. [Read more…]
A couple of months ago it was revealed that HBO was continuing its support for gay themed entertainment by ordering a pilot for an LGBT-themed series based around a group of gay friends in San Francisco. Now the cast has started coming together, with Jonathan Groff, who’s probably best known for his recurring role in Glee, joining the show.
Broadway star Groff has also appeared in Boss and The Conspirator, and will voice the male lead in Disney’s upcoming animated feature, Frozen. Incidentally, he’s dating Zachary Quinto too.
In the currently untitled TV pilot, he’s set to play Patrick, who’s professionally very successful as a video game developer, but his personal life is a bit of a disaster area. Frankie Alvarez has also signed up to play Patrick’s best friend, Augustin, whose ego and feisty politics make it difficult for him to settle down with a boyfriend.
The show comes from Brothers & Sister creator David Marshall Grant and Bored to Death’s Sarah Condon, based on a film script by Michael Lannan called Lorimer (which was adapted from his own short). As yet, HBO has only committed to a pilot, but hopefully it will become a full series.
Last year We Need To Talk About Kevin and Perks Of Being A Wallflower star Ezra Miller revealed publicly that he is queer. However talking to HuffPo, he’s revealed that his success hasn’t shielded him from being gay-bashed.
In an interview he claims he’s been beaten up twice due to his sexuality, with the first being quite severe. He says “One time I was at a show in New York City for a hardcore band. I was wearing a velvet green jacket, and I was doing sort of a swing step, kind of Lindy-hopping in the mosh pit. Then I walked out of the mosh pit, and I was standing in the back of the crowd, someone tapped me on the shoulder, and all I heard was the word, “Faggot.” I got punched in the eye.
“The face is designed to protect the eyeball but this dude managed to punch at a particular angle. I had a bunch of tears in my retina. It was very confusing. All of a sudden, my eye was bleeding, I couldn’t see where the guy had gone, and I never really knew who it was.”
As for the second occasion, he says, “I wore this faux fur leopard print jacket for a while. I really liked it. I was in Hoboken, N.J., where my parents live. There was a Giants game going on so bros were about, and on the prowl.
“A guy grabbed me by the jacket and was like, “What the fuck is with this jacket?” And I was like, “It’s a jacket that I’m wearing.” And he’s like, “Who are these fuckin’ people you’re with?” And I was like, “That’s my mother. And we’re just going to get some dinner. Would you please let go of me?” He went, “What?! My mother!? My mother?!” He sort of let go of me, and I was like, “Look man, you’re confused, and I’m sorry, I’m leaving.””
Miller seems to be quite sanguine about it though, adding, “The first guy was a more self-assured, confident gay-basher. That second guy needed to sober up, figure out his hate crime a little more.”
Ezra will next be seen in Madame Bovary, opposite Mia Wasikowska.
The full programme for this year’s London Lesbian & Gay Film Festival is due to be announced soon (on Feb 19th, to be precise), but to tease us with what will be showing from March 14th-24th, it’s been revealed that the festival will open with the European premiere of the new documentary I Am Divine.
Divine is, of course, the legendary drag queen known for appearing in many of John Waters’ early movies (and eating dog poo in Pink Flamingos). He was born Harris Glen Milstead, but found international fame with his larger than life alter-ego.
The film is from Jeffrey Schwarz, who directed Vito, which screened at last year’s LLGFF. He’s gathered many of Divine’s friends, colleagues, actors and, most notably, his mother to remember the queer icon.
The closing might film meanwhile will be the Canadian drama called Margarita about complicated love likes of attractive young Mexican nanny, as well as the host family who adore her but can’t afford to keep her. The film looks the complex human side if immigration, offering insight into the emotional life of a bright young lesbian.
We’ll know more about what’s screening next week.
There ought to be more gay-themed teen movies. One that’ll hopefully arrive soon is Geography Club, which has just released its first trailer – and you can watch that below.
Here’s the synopsis: ‘Based on Brent Hartinger’s best-selling critically acclaimed novel, Geography Club is a smart, fast, and funny account of contemporary teenagers as they discover their own sexual identities, dreams, and values. 16-year old Russell is still going on dates with girls while having a secret relationship with football quarterback Kevin, who will do anything to prevent his football teammates from finding out. Min and Terese tell everyone that they’re just really good friends. And then there’s Ike who can’t figure out who he is or who he wants to be. Finding the truth too hard to hide, they all decide to form the Geography Club, thinking nobody else in their right mind would ever want to join. However, their secrets may soon be discovered and they could have to face the choice of revealing who they really are.’
As you can see from the trailer, familiar faces such as Scott Bakula and Glee’s Alex Newell also make an appearance in the movie. It feels like it could be pretty fun, with a serious side as well as plenty of rom-com humour. [Read more…]
Not even gay people are as obsessed with being gay as James Franco is. And just in case we’d forgotten about his love for all thing homo in the three seconds since he last reminded up, he’s teamed up with Peres Projects to open up a temporary exhibition space in Berlin (to coincide with the Berlin Film Festival) for Franco’s ‘Gay Town’.
The exhibition, ‘explores a variety of themes that are central to Franco’s artistic practice, mainly issues related to adolescence, public and private persona, stereotypes and other societal concerns such as…celebrity [preoccupation].’ So it’s not exclusively about all things gay, but the name of the exhibition certainly suggests it’s not entirely straight either.
OMGBlog managed to get a few snaps from the exhibition. You can see a couple of those above and below, but head over to the site for more of Franco’s artistic musings.
