Big Gay Picture Show

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

BFI Flare London LGBT Film Festival Announces Its 30th Anniversary Programme

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Still from Holding The Man

A few days ago the BFI Flare London LGBT Film Festival announced that its opening night movie would be The Pass, starring Russell Tovey. Now the rest of the programme has been announced, including the info that it will closewith Catherine Corsini’s Summertime at BFI Southbank, while the Accenture Gala will be the European Premiere of Neil Armfield’s Aussie movie, Holding the Man, with more than 50 features and 100 shorts screening, plus a range of special events, guest appearances, discussions, workshops, club nights and more.

BFI Flare 2016 will be divided into 3 sections – Hearts, Minds and Bodies – with key themes emerging including British film and new British talent, transgender representation and Queer Science and new technology:

LGBT content in British film and new British talent: BFI Flare presents three distinct and impressive new UK feature film productions with the World Premiere of Opening Night Gala, Ben A. Williams’ The Pass, Barak and Tomer Heymann’s Who’s Gonna Love Me Now? and The Departure (dir. Andrew Stegall), with the latter two BFI Film Fund supported. The Festival also screens British co-director Fenton Bailey’s Mapplethorpe: Look at the Pictures (co-directed with Randy Barbato) and launches the second year of BFI Flare LGBT Filmmakers’ Mentorship (in partnership with BAFTA and Creative Skillset) to support new UK film talent.

Transgender representation on screen: following a year in which transgender visibility broke through to the mainstream, BFI Flare explores representation in the media with Meet Silas an onstage event with Silas Howard, the first transgender director on Amazon’s Emmy and Golden Globe winning Transparent. Through a new series of events Transform, BFI Flare will also bring together actors, filmmakers and casting directors to probe current practice in fiction and non-fiction film and TV and hosts a trans acting workshop at BFI Southbank.

Queer Science and new technology: while BFI Flare looks back at 30 years at the forefront of LGBT cinema in the UK, it also provides a vision into the future with an exhibition at BFI Southbank Year Dot: Queer Film + Technology since 1986; an event that explores the intersections of sexual identity, science and technology with Queer’d Science: BFI Flare Sci-Tech Lab and launches a new partnership with Crossover Labs on XO LGBTQ, an intensive training programme designed to counter the lack of visibility for LGBTQ issues in the interactive media and games industries. [Read more…]

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Jennifer Aniston & Jason Bateman Reuniting For Office Christmas Party

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Horrible Bosses co-stars Jennifer Aniston & Jason Bateman have decided it’s time to work together again, as THR reports theyre getting back together to star in Office Christmas Party (although lets hope that’s just a working title, as it’s a dreadful name). Dreamworks is back the movie with Blades of Glory directors Will Speck and Josh Gordon helming from a script by Lee Eisenberg, Gene Stupnitsky and Laura Solon.

TJ Miller and Kate McKinnon are also set to star in the movie, which follows ‘a cast of characters who have to contend with an office party gone awry’. There’s not much more info than that about the movie, but presumably we can expect drunken hook-up, people telling the boss things they shouldn’t and plenty of behaviour they’ll be embarassed about on Monday morning.

The movie will shoot this Spring, with a December 2016 release date already set.

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Jessica Chastain Wanted For Aaron Sorkin’s Molly’s Game

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From Jobs and The Social Network to The West Wing and The Newsroom, Aaron Sorkin has had a huge amount of success as a writer and TV producer. Now though he’s heading for the director’s chair, with the recently announced Molly’s Game.

TheWrap reports he may have found his lead, as Jessica Chastain has been offered the role and is currently considering taking it.

Based on a true story, the film is set in the world of high-stakes poker, with the story following Molly Bloom who was a top-tier skier who headed to Los Angeles after not qualifying for the Olympics and became an an organizer of underground poker games for Hollywood players including Ben Affleck, Leonardo DiCaprio and Tobey Maguire before being arrested by the FBI.

Her downfall was getting involved (or according to her, pressured) by the wrong people, including the Mafia who wanted a slice of the action after she moved from LA to New York, as well as turning what was a lucrative but legal operation into something that was classed as illegal gambling, after she started taking a cut of the pot rather than just relying on tips.

It’s not known when the film will shoot, and it appears Chastain’s involvement is dependent on her rather hectic schedule.

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Christian Bale Will Be One Of The Hostiles For Director Scott Cooper

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Back in 2013 Christian Bale and director Scott Cooper worked together on Out Of The Furnace. It wasn’t a great success but they obviously liked working with one another, as Variety reports they’re set to reteam for the movie Hostiles, which Cooper is also writing.

Set at the end of the 19th Century, the film ‘tells the story of a legendary Army captain, who agrees to escort a dying Cheyenne war chief and his family back to tribal lands. Making the harrowing and perilous journey from an isolated Army outpost in New Mexico to the grasslands of Montana, the former rivals encounter a young widow whose family was murdered on the plains. Together, they must join forces to overcome the punishing landscape and hostile Comanche tribes that they encounter along the way.’

It certainly sounds like an ambitious one, and hopefully the script will be careful to avoid accusations of having ‘white savior’ issues. Filming is set to begin in July.

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Emily Blunt May Be Practically Perfect As The New Mary Poppins

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A few months ago Disney revealed that they were working on a new Mary Poppins movie, with Rob Marshall directing. Since then many having been waiting for the news that Emily Blunt had been offered the central role – as she’s just about the only person around who seems a good fit – and now it’s happened, as Variety reports she’s in talks for the movie.

While the 1960s movie was mainly based in the first of Travers’ books, the new movie will explore Mary’s further adventures with the Banks family and beyond as illustrated by Travers’ seven additional novels. Disney has been keen to stress that this shouldn’t be seen as a sequel, instead being a completely new take on the characters set 20 years after the original. Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman (Hairspray, Smash) will write the songs, and the film apparently has the support of original Mary Poppins co-composer, Richard Sherman.

There is a possible issues with Blunt taking the role though, which is that Disney is apparently keen to get it into production as soon as it can, but the actress is currently pregnant, so they’ll have to see whether they can shuffle their schedules around that.

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The Benefits of Gusbandry Episode 4 – Gay-straight BFFs Jackie and River look back on high school

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benefits-of-gusbandry-ep4The gay-straight BFF relationship between Jackie and River continues to bloom in the fourth episode of The Benefits of Gusbandry. But how did they get to be the people they are?

Well, River’s sweaty pits and some pot brownies result in them reminiscing about high school, where River (who had a very good beard for a teenager according to this episode) had his first female friend who knew he was gay, while Jackie had her own ‘gateway gay’.

The notes for the show add, ‘Inspired by real-life relationships with creator Alicia J. Rose’s own “Gusbands” (a.k.a: gay best friends), The Benefits of Gusbandry centers around best friends Jackie, played by Brooke Totman (MADtv, The Groundlings) and River, played by Kurt Conroyd (Birds of Neptune, Fox Searchlight’s Wild) – two one-of-a-kind characters approaching 40 and follows them as they find something special in one another, navigating the modern world with a no-punches-pulled and occasionally filthy comedic purview, finding true love in a most unexpectedly platonic way.’

Take a look below. And if you need to catch up with the first three episodes, click here.

[Read more…]

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The Program (Blu-ray Review)

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Over the years, numerous movies about Lance Armstrong have been in the works but never got made. Indeed, one was about to move forward just as he admitted he had doped for his entire career. It’s almost a shame we don’t have a movie from when he was almost universally admired as a hero, so we could compare it to the darker world of The Program.

At the start of the movie Lance (Ben Foster) is an okay but unexceptional cyclist, who few think will ever do anything special. After overcoming testicular cancer, he returns with a passion to win, and knowing the world of cycling is riddled with cheats taking performance-enhancing drugs, he decides he will do the same, enlisting the help of Michele Ferrari (Guillaume Canet) to allow him to set up a ‘Program’ that will help him win, as well as arranging to have a team built around him that will ensure a Tour de France victory. [Read more…]

Bill (DVD Review)

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I doubt that when the team that created the TV version of Horrible Histories were putting the show together they thought that what they were making would not only became one of the most popular children’s series in the UK, but would also have massive crossover appeal, with adults tuning in for the educational silliness. The same team then went on to create the puppety fantasy of Yonderland, and have now gone cinematic with Bill.

While Horrible Histories was careful to stick close enough to the truth of the past to ensure it could teach youngsters a few things, Bill features plenty of real historical figures but takes far more liberties with the truth. [Read more…]

Hotel Transylvania 2 (DVD Review)

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Hotel Transylvania was a far bigger success than many people expected. Indeed, even Sony Pictures appeared to be taken by surprise, but it didn’t take them long to decide a sequel was needed. That follow-up quickly takes us through the next few years of the story, which sees monsters and humans starting to get along better across the world.

Dracula’s daughter Mavis marries slacker boyfriend Jonathan and they have a child, Dennis. As Dennis is only half-vampire, it’s not clear whether he will end up being a monster or not, but Dracula is determined that before he’s five, his grandson will spout fangs, as he knows that otherwise he will remain human forever. Mavis meanwhile feels that if Dennis is indeed more human than monster, perhaps it would be better if they went to live in the ‘normal’ world. [Read more…]

Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie Teaser Trailer – Get your first look at big screen Edina and Patsy

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absolute-fabuous-movie-slideFor year Jennifer Saunders has been talking about making an Absolutely Fabulous movie, but many has assumed that despite continued talk, it would never actually happen. However, now she’s made good on her promise, and to prove it, the first teaser trailer for the movie has now arrived.

Here’s the synopsis: ‘Appropriate for their big screen debut, Edina and Patsy are still oozing glitz and glamour, living the high life they are accustomed to; shopping, drinking and clubbing their way around London’s trendiest hotspots.  Blamed for a major incident at an uber fashionable launch party, they become entangled in a media storm and are relentlessly pursued by the paparazzi. Fleeing penniless to the glamorous playground of the super-rich, the French Riviera, they hatch a plan to make their escape permanent and live the high life forevermore!

‘In true Ab Fab style, the cast will be joined by a host of A-list stars from the acting, music and fashion worlds.

‘Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie reunites Jennifer Saunders and Joanna Lumley as the iconic Edina and Patsy along with the rest of the original cast that includes Julia Sawalha as Saffy, Jane Horrocks as Bubble and June Whitfield as Mother. The award-winning team behind the camera includes Mandie Fletcher (“Blackadder,” “Absolutely Fabulous”) directing from a script by Jennifer Saunders, producers Jon Plowman (“Absolutely Fabulous,” “The Vicar of Dibley”) and Damian Jones (THE IRON LADY, BELLE, DAD’S ARMY) with Steve Milne, Christian Eisenbeiss, Christine Langan, Nichola Martin, Jennifer Saunders, Dawn French, and Maureen Vincent serving as executive producers.’

The movie will be in cinemas in July.

[Read more…]

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