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
Ricky Martin could go where Gwyneth Paltrow has gone before. The gay singer-actor (who will appear in Eviat on Broadway next year) is in talks to guest star on Fox’s musical dramedy Glee.
As first reported by TV Line, the former General Hospital star would play a musically inclined Spanish teacher in an episode slated to air in late January. The guest gig would also see Martin headline two big musical numbers.
Read more at: ‘Glee’ Courting Ricky Martin for Guest Spot – Hollywood Reporter.
Although it doesn’t look like anything’s completely firmed up yet, it appears Daniel Radcliffe is eyeing a role as famed (and famously gay) beatnik poet Allen Ginsberg in Kill Your Darlings, according to Twitch. The film is a thriller that speculated around events involving beat generation legends Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac and William S Burroughs.
They were all brought together by Columbia University student Lucien Carr, who was implicated in (and served time for) the murder of David Kammerer, who was found dead in Hudson River in 1944. Carr claimed the death was an accident after Kammerer made an unwanted sexual advance, although they had known each other for several years (and it has been claimed they were lovers). The events surrounding the death are said to have had a massive impact on the beat circle, and tempered the idealism they had felt beforehand.
When the film was first announced in 2009, Chris Evans, Jesse Eisenberg and Ben Whishaw were attached to play Kerouac, Ginsberg and Carr, respectively. It’s unknown if Evans or Whishaw are still involved at all, but it seems Radcliffe has taken over Eisenberg’s part. If Daniel does take on the gay poet, he’ll follow in the footsteps of James Franco, who played Ginsberg in Howl.
John Krokidas will direct with hopes that shooting will start next summer.
General movie news courtesy of Movie Muser
Shame has been picking up plaudits at every festival it’s played at, as well as a fair amount of controversy due to the amount of Michael Fassbender full frontal nudity it features (I know, it’s shocking, Michael Fassbender has a penis!). Now a new, rather intense red-band trailer has shown up, with cleverly plays on the movie’s theme of sexual addiction with a sequence that’s on the edge between flirtation and something worryingly predatory. In the movie Brandon (Michael Fassbender) is a New Yorker who shuns intimacy with women but feeds his desires with a compulsive addiction to sex. When his wayward younger sister (Carey Mulligan) moves into his apartment stirring memories of their shared painful past, Brandon’s insular life spirals out of control. It’ll be in UK cinemas January 12th, but take a look at the new trailer.
A week or so ago we reported that Hugo star Asa Butterfield was in talks to star in an adaptation of the popular young adult novel, Ender’s Game. Now Variety reports that Butterfield has locked his deal to star in the movie and attention has turned to the adult roles.
While no offers have gone out as yet, producers are currently concentrating on casting Colonel Hyrum Graff, the Commander of Training for the International Fleet, an elite boys’ military academy. Viggo Mortensen had been targeted for the role, but those talks didn’t work out and producers are now discussing another group of veteran thesps, including Harrison Ford. That doesn’t mean he’ll do it, but it’s a good hint at the direction things are going.
Ender’s Game is based on the award-winning sci-fi novel by Orson Scott Card, which revolves around a government program where gifted children are trained to prevent an imminent alien attack. They square off in a game described as a mix Quiddich and Star Wars’ light saber duels. Butterfield will play Ender, who emerges as a brilliant strategist and may be Earth’s best hope to defeat the alien scourge.
Gavin Hood (X-Men Origins: Wolverine) is set to direct Ender’s Game from his own adapted screenplay. It isn’t known when production may begin on Ender’s Game, although Summit Entertainment has already issued a March, 2013 release date.
General movie news courtesy of Movie Muser
The Men In Black are back next summer, on May 25th to be exact, and the hype machine has started to roll with Sony releasing the first two posters for the Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones movie (via Coming Soon). If you look closely towards the bottom, you’ll see there’s a link to a website, www.TheMenInBlackAreReal.com.
The takes you to a viral Facebook account, supposedly set up by somebody called ‘BugEyes126’, who left the following message: “I’ve uncovered that there’s these Men in Black suits who monitor and police alien activity on earth. Up until now no one believes me, so I’m on a mission to prove that they’re real and that’s why I started this Facebook page. More soon.”
General movie news courtesy of Movie Muser
Director Steven Soderbergh is not the sort of person to sit around moping. Renowned for the speed at which he works, he’s also well known for doing things that make studios nervous. That resulted in him stepping away from directing a film version of Man From UNCLE last week after disagreements with Warner Bros. Now he’s already found a replacement to shoot before he moves on to his planned Liberace biopic next summer.
THR reports that director Steven Soderbergh is now re-teaming with Contagion screenwriter Scott Z. Burns for a new project entitled The Bitter Pill. Little is known about the storyline of the movie, except that it will be set in the world of psychopharmacology, the scientific field which looks at how drugs affect the mind. The Playlist adds that it originated in research Burns did for the TV series Wonderland, and that Burns himself originally intended to direct.
The writer has said that it, “deals with people and their moods. It’s about how we as a society can’t tolerate sadness and what that makes us vulnerable to.” The Bitter Pill is supposedly a thriller somewhat in the vein of Fatal Attraction, and Burns says the film has a definite twist.
The project is currently being pitched to several studios, but it’s believed Soderbergh wants to set it up quickly so he can shoot in before the Liberace movie.
General movie news courtesy of Movie Muser
It’s not out until next Summer, but Universal wants us to get acquainted with The Lorax, probably because despite coming from the mind of Dr. Seuss, he’s not quite as well known over here in the UK as he is in the US. Now a new featurette has arrived to help us get to know the small furball. The animated adventure follows the journey of a boy as he searches for the one thing that will enable him to win the affection of the girl of his dreams. To find it he must discover the story of the Lorax, the grumpy yet charming creature who fights to protect his world. Danny DeVito lends his vocal talents to the title character of the Lorax, while Ed Helms will voice the enigmatic Once-ler. Also bringing their talents to the film are global superstars Zac Efron as Ted, the idealistic young boy who searches for the Lorax, and Taylor Swift as Ashley, the girl of Ted’s dreams. It’s due in UK cinemas July 27th, 2012.
Zac Efron’s still busy trying to transition from teen sensation to grown up movie star, and whether he eventually succeeds or not, he’s certainly going to be very pretty while he tries. So that’s good news for us!
Now the first poster for his new romantic movie The Lucky One has appeared, and it’s a great one for Efron fans, as you can just imagine yourself in the place of Taylor Schilling. In fact, we’ve helped you out with that below!
Underneath our pretending-to-snog-Efron efforts you can watch the first featurette about the Nicholas Sparks adaptation, which sees Zac as a soldier who, after surviving the war in Iraq, travels to North Carolina to find the woman he believes was his good luck charm. It’ll be in cinemas in the UK on May 4th, 2012 (the April 20th date on the poster is the US release).
It’s not often that a film can elicit two completely different reactions from me, but Uncle David managed it. If you asked for my knee-jerk feeling, I’d have to say I hated it. While watching it I found it slow, tedious, rather annoying and more than a little pretentious. Despite this, the movie has stuck in my head and kept me thinking about it for days afterwards.
The plot is relatively simple. David (David Hoyle) is a middle-aged man living with his young lover, Ashley (Ashley Greene), in a chalet in a remote, windy, British seaside town. While their life seems rather basic and deprived, David lives in a world of his own philosophical making, endlessly lecturing the receptive Ashley about his ideas on life, and how nearly everybody in the world is buying into what he believes is a corrupt and corrupting system. [Read more…]
It’s still difficult to believe Mickey Rourke will really play Welsh international Rugby star Gareth Thomas in a film, not only because it’s a surprise Rourke is a fan of rugby, but the Hollywood star is 22 years Thomas’ senior. However, as Rourke announced earlier this year, he wants to star in a movie about Thomas, who became the first professional rugby player to come out as gay.
Now the Daily Express reports that to truly get to grips with his role, Rourke has been training with a gay rugby team in LA. The actor says, “I’ve been training with them for six months. I can’t wait to do the best job in the world I can.”
Rourke’s inspiration for the film came after he ended up having an arm wrestling match with the Huddersfield Giants rugby team. They gave him a magazine about their club, which contained an article about Thomas coming out. Rourke then saw a TV programme that spoke about the player’s decision to announce his sexuality, which led the actor to setting up a meeting with Gareth and from there, Rourke managing to tie up the rugby player’s life rights for a movie.
Rourke says, “We’re gonna do this movie now. Thomas announced his retirement [October 25th]. I’ve been writing the script for the past year. Hopefully we’ll do it in March.”
Whether Rourke will make a believable rugby player struggling with his sexuality is yet to be seen – although perhaps more pertinent is whether he’ll make a believable professional rugby player at the age of 59. It’ll be worth a watch whatever the results.
We Were Here, the moving look back at the terrifying early years of the emergence of HIV and AIDS, has been shortlisted for the Best Documentary Oscar and will now be considered for an Academy Award nomination.
The film, which hits DVD in the UK on December 5th courtesy of Peccadillo Pictures, focusses on the residents of San Francisco and how the advent of AIDS had a cataclysmic effect on many people’s lives. Especially at a time when new HIV diagnoses have reached a record high (as we reported earlier today, 3,000 gay and bi men in the UK were diagnosed for the first time in 2010), it’s a timely reminder for a younger generation who probably have little firsthand experience of AIDS, of the terrible effects the disease had on a generation of gay men in the the 1980s.
Now the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Documentaries Screening Committee has chosen We Were Here as one of the 15 movies on the shortlist for the Best Documentary Oscar. We’ll find out if it gets nominated on January 24th.
It may already be out in the US, but Puss In Boots doesn’t reach UK cinemas until December 9th. Before than an extended, five-minute clip from the film has popped up over at MSN, and you can watch it embedded here. Here’s the synopsis: ‘Long before he even met Shrek, the notorious fighter, lover and outlaw Puss in Boots becomes a hero when he sets off on an adventure with the tough and street smart Kitty Softpaws and the mastermind Humpty Dumpty to save his town. This is the true story of The Cat, The Myth, The Legend…The Boots.’ The films had good reviews, so get a feel for it with this lengthy clip.