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

Zac Efron Says He’s ‘Always Felt Embraced By The Gay Community’

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Zac Efron has given his first interview to a gay publication, with The Advocate getting that scoop ahead of the release of the High School Musical’s dancing-in-his-underpants appearance in Lee Daniel’s The Paperboy.

The actor reveals himself to be a pretty laid back character, saying about his gay fans, “I’ve always felt embraced by the gay community, and I feel incredibly grateful and honored. This is actually a very special interview for me. I’m extremely aware of the support I’ve gotten from you guys over the years, and it’s amazing that it’s taken this long to sit down and actually discuss it, but please know that it hasn’t gone unappreciated. I’m so excited to be talking to you.”

Asked when he realised he had a lot of gays fans, he says, “I really felt that support after High School Musical. I think the gay audience related to my character Troy, because it really was a story of embracing who you are, no matter how different you might be, and not being afraid to show it. That’s a universal theme for everyone, but it specifically resonated with the gay community, and I felt very proud of that.”

As for whether he’d ever play gay, he adds, “I’d never take a role just for the sake of playing gay, but I’m always looking for a role that’s challenging, different, and entails some risk, so there’s no doubt in my mind that one of those characters will be gay at some point in the future. It’s always interesting to delve into unexplored territory, and that would be a new avenue for me. I definitely wouldn’t be afraid.”

He’s also all for marriage equality, saying, “It’s an issue that affects so many people in my life — a lot of my close friends and some of the most influential people around me. I just want them all to be happy. It would make me so happy to see them able to live their lives and do what they want to do.”

Zac was also happy to be ‘eroticised’ by director Lee Daniels, who’s spoken about how he brings his gay sensibility to his film. “I’ve always just embraced Lee as a brilliant artist,” Efron says, “So I followed him blindly, trustingly, and wholeheartedly. He’s searching for beauty and truth in every scene, so I believed in him and always felt safe.

As for the scene involving him dancing in his underwear which caused a lot of swooning in the trailer for The Paperboy, he teases, “Initially, I wondered if my character would even wear underwear at all. But that would’ve been a very different movie.”

No UK release date is currently set for The Paperboy but you can watch the trailer, including Efron’s undies dance by clicking here.

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Why Gay Characters Need To Be On TV

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Eastenders’ Syed & Christian

Over the last decade the gay community have come onto our television screens with a bang. Since the 90s we have seen a selection of television shows achieve ratings and critical success such as Queer as Folk, Sugar Rush and Lip Service, along with gay characters playing principal roles in other television dramas and comedies like Shameless, Skins and Gimme Gimme Gimme.

Aside from this we now have gay characters on our television screens on a daily basis with soaps like Coronation Street, Hollyoaks and Eastenders featuring several gay characters and storylines, allowing everyone to see that we are just the same as everyone else.

However where these programmes, characters and storylines have been met with praise and positive responses, they have been equally met with dislike and several complaints to Ofcom.

Over the last few years there have been several issues in the news surrounding gay people on television, such as the complaints surrounding a lesbian kiss on Coronation Street, along with some feeling there were too many gay characters on the show. There were complaints surrounding a gay sex scene involving openly gay actor John Barrowman in Doctor Who spin off Torchwood, despite the programme being aired after the watershed, and there were complaints regarding a gay couple being seen in bed with each other in Eastenders.

The stereotyped days of Mr. Humphries are generally over

The fact of the matter is when straight people on these shows are shown kissing or in bed, we never hear of complaints being made to Ofcom because of it. And even more importantly gay people are part of society and therefore should feature in television shows especially soap operas. I mean we wouldn’t complain if there were too many black or Asian people on Coronation Street, would we?

Aside from gay people needing to be seen on television to show people that we are part of society, it also needs to show that we are just like everyone else, dealing with the mundane 9-5 working hours or having troubled relationship problems. Yes there have been stereotypes in the past such as Tom from Gimme Gimme Gimme or Mr Humpries in Are You Being Served. But in the last 10 years television has helped show that the gay community is just as diverse as every other community and that we aren’t all running around shouting, “I’m free.”

The most important reason for us being visible on screen is to show today’s youth that it’s oksy to be gay so they aren’t scared to come out, and to show others that gay people aren’t to be viewed as something different or to be scared of. Eventually with enough positive portrayals on television we may be able to almost stamp out homophobic issues, but until then we’re just going to have to keep showing everyone that we are just normal people.

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New Twilight: Breaking Dawn Part 2 Trailer Hits

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It’s not too long now until The Twilight franchise comes to a look, which will please some and sadden others. But whichever side of the fence you sit on, the new trailer for Breaking Dawn Part 2 suggests an action-packed conclusion, with the Volturi on the warpath due to the birth of Edward and Bella’s child, Renesmee, and the Cullens round up as many vampires as they can to prepare for a fight. The film’s due out November 16th.

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Leave It On The Floor (DVD)

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I’ve always thought it was odd there weren’t more explicitly gay musicals, but that’s probably because they’re surprisingly tough to put together and shoot. As a result it’s difficult to get one to the screen on with type of budget that most gay-themed entertainment has to play with. But Leave It On The Floor isn’t just a rare gay musical, it also deals with queer people of colour (or QPOC as it’s sometimes termed), and a whole spectrum of gender and self-expression that’s often avoided or side-lined in gay movies.

Brad (Ephraim Sykes) is a young man who gets thrown out by his mother after she discovers he’s gay. He finds a new home in the world of ball culture, an underground scene in which different ‘houses’, largely made up of gay and transgendered black people, compete on a catwalk/dancefloor to see who is the most vibrant, stylish, fierce and fabulous. Brad is befriended by Princess (Phillip Evelyn), who takes him to a house run by Queef Latina (Miss Barbie-Q), who isn’t initially impressed by this interloper into her domain. However as Brad begins to find acceptance and perhaps a love interest in the tricky Carter (Andre Myers), tragedy is around the corner. [Read more…]

First Image Of Chris Pine As Jack Ryan Arrives

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It’s not often the first image for a film arrives before an official title has been announced, but that’s what’s happened with Paramount’s reboot of the Jack Ryan franchise, which has started shooting with Kenneth Branagh directing and Chris Pine playing the lead role.

The image shows Pine zooming along the Mahattan streets on a motorbike, although the main plot sees the young Jack Ryan heading to Moscow, looking at his life before he became a CIA operative. Keira Knightley, Kevin Costner and Branagh also star, with a Christmas 2013 release date set. (Image via Coming Soon)

UPDATE: Over the weekend another image was released, giving us out first look at Kevin Costner in the movie. Costner portrays William Harper, Ryan’s mentor, with the plan being that if this film is a success, Costner will get his own spin-off, Without Remorse.

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The Hunger Games – The Unseen Version (Blu-ray)

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In the early days of DVD, studios went to great trouble putting together really good packages, with feature-length documentaries, plenty of featurettes and various other bits and pieces to please film fans. These releases are becoming increasingly rare, with even major mega-budget blockbusters often getting paltry extras that are only there because they’re expected and give the marketers something to write on the back of the box. It’s nice then that The Hunger Games gets a two-disc Blu-ray release with around three hours of features, including an extremely good 122 minute ‘making of’ documentary. [Read more…]

Would Queer As Folk Have Been Made Today?

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In 1999 a Channel 4 series not only changed the landscape for homosexuality on television but television in general. Queer as Folk introduced viewing audiences to the lives of a group of gay men living in Manchester that regularly frequented the infamous Canal Street.

But after making such an impact on audiences the world over, and after all the series was re-made for an American audience (which ran for five seasons), it makes you wonder whether this type of programme would get commissioned now.

It’s been more than 10 years since we last saw Stuart, Vince, and Nathan and all the other characters popping up on our screens, but the impact they left is phenomenal. Before the show gay men had representation on television – after all Dale Winton and Julian Clary were extremely popular – but this was the first time a group of gay characters were central to an entire series, and not just a few extra characters added on at the end.

The US version of Queer As Folk ran five seasons

Since the show left the airwaves it paved the way for multiple gay characters and storylines in a whole variety of different shows. It isn’t unusual these days to turn on any soap opera and see several gay characters, something that wasn’t really seen before the turn of the new millennium, which was just after Queer as Folk. Gay men and women now had a significant part in soaps, dramas and comedy shows, allowing the public to see that gay people are everywhere and that we’re just normal people.

However, whereas we do get multiple gay characters frequenting the Rovers Return or the Queen Vic, gay specific shows seem to be very few and far between. There was Sugar Rush on Channel 4 that came around in 2004, and now we have Lip Service, which was first introduced in 2010, but that means that in the 11 years between Queer as Folk and Lip Service there was only one other UK television show that focused primarily on gay characters.

Maybe it’s because there just aren’t people out there writing these kinds of programmes now or maybe they feel that after Queer as Folk there wasn’t much more to be done – I mean who would want to take on the amazing Russell T Davies? But it could also have something to do with attitudes. In the last few years there have been multiple complaints made to Ofcom regarding gay people on screen in shows such as Coronation Street, Eastenders and Torchwood, but why is this? Surely attitudes have become more diverse in the last 10 years since Queer as Folk came out, or maybe due to the lack of gay central shows people are forgetting about the impact that was made a decade ago, or maybe it’s as simple as people were a little bit more open and curious back in the 90s.

Queer As Folk was a surprise ratings hit

It does appear that given the length of time between these gay central shows and the complaints received about soap operas, that if Queer as Folk were to be pitched today and not 10 years ago, then it wouldn’t have been made. Then again if it had never been made in the first place I doubt there would be many gay people in soaps today.

It’s not all doom and gloom though, just recently it was announced that comedian Sue Perkins will be staring in a comedy series for BBC2 called Heading Out, which will see Perkins play a vet who is afraid to come out to her parents.

So maybe we are about to turn a corner and see more LGBT focused programmes again where gay people play the leads, but whether something like Queer As Folk will come along again is a different matter all together.

Watch the first episode of Queer As Folk below (probably only available in the UK).

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The Lucky One (Blu-ray)

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While Zac Efron could do with a few bona fide hits, there’s no doubt that’s he’s got all the prerequisites for stardom – looks, talent and a rather endearing way about him. He certainly brings all that to The Lucky One, but rather like Charlie St. Cloud, he’s let down by a script and tone that takes things a bit too literally and often undermines itself even if it does have its heart in the right place.

Cut straight from the Nicholas Sparks (The Notebook, Dear John) novel template, Efron is Logan, an Iraq soldier who sees a picture of a beautiful woman on the battlefield. Bending down to pick it up saves him from a violent death, which makes him start to think of the woman as a kind of guardian angel. [Read more…]

Passion Trailer – Rachel McAdams and Noomi Rapace want to lock lips

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They’re really playing up the lesbian undertones of Passion, although I have a horrible feeling it’s more to appeal to the baser instincts of straight men than because this will actually be a good depiction of women’s desire. Brian De Palma teams up with Noomi Rapace and Rachel McAdams for a thriller about a young businesswoman plots murderous revenge after her boss and mentor steals her idea. The movie is a remake of the French movie, Love Crime. No release date is currently set.

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Circumstance (Cinema)

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Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had better now watch Circumstance, as he’s apparently convinced there are no gay people in Iran (although the fact his regime has arrested and even executed quite a few would rather undermine that position). Although if he does watch the film, he can probably unfairly claim it’s all down to Western influence and young people wanting that pesky thing called freedom.

Atafeh and Shireen are two teenage Iranian girls whose friendship extends into a romance and sexual relationship. They secretly frequent underground parties, flirt, drink and dream about being able to go somewhere they can do all these things openly and without censure. The first half of the film delves into this side of Iranian culture and young people straining against the confines of a system that wants to supress them, particularly if you’re a woman and/or gay. [Read more…]