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

First Look At Steven Spielberg’s Bridge Of Spies Starring Tom Hanks

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bridge-of-spies-pic1Hurrah, it’s finally got a name! Even since it was first announced, Steven Spielberg’s next move has been going by the less than catchy name, ‘Untitled Steven Spieberg Cold War Thriller’, but that’s changed as the first official image from the movie has been released along with the info that it will be called Bridge Of Spies.

Here’s the synopsis: ‘A dramatic thriller set against the backdrop of a series of historic events, “Bridge of Spies” tells the story of James Donovan (Hanks), a Brooklyn lawyer who finds himself thrust into the center of the Cold War when the CIA sends him on the near-impossible task to negotiate the release of a captured American U-2 pilot.

‘Screenwriters Matt Charman and Ethan Coen & Joel Coen have woven this remarkable experience in Donovan’s life into a story inspired by true events that captures the essence of a man who risked everything and vividly brings his personal journey to life.’

The film will be released in cinemas on 9th October, 2015, in UK and Ireland.

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I Am Michael (BFI Flare Opening Night Film Review)

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Chosen as the Opening Night Gala film for this year’s BFI Flare: London LGBT Film Festival, this is an angry-making film. It’s supposed to be as it’s probably the first Going In movie, in that it’s a reversed Coming Out tale: I am Michael tells the story of how Michael Glatze went from out gay activist and editor of San Fransisco-based gay magazine XY to a straight, married Pastor in Wyoming.

The film opens with James Franco as Michael and Zachary Quinto as his loving-yet-bland boyfriend Bennet. Apparently they’re happily in love in San Francisco, both running a gay magazine and helping gay youth in 2001. We watch as Bennett and Michael go from being happy together to being happy in a three-way relationship with Tyler (played by the ab-tastic Charlie Carver). At least, we assume they’re happy together – at no point does anyone say “I am happy being gay with you”, which is about the level of some of the exposition this script has in places. Michael is moody. Bennett is bland. Tyler is pretty. That’s about it. [Read more…]

BFI Flare London LGBT Film Festival Spin-off Will Become First Global Digital Gay Film Fest

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morning-is-broken-flare

Morning Is Broken Short Film

The BFI Flare London LGBT Film Festival kicks off tomorrow with the gala premiere of James Franco and Zachary Quinto in I Am Michael. However there are plans to ensure that things aren’t just limited to London, as the BFi ‘fiveFilms4freedom‘ will become the world’s first digital, global, LGBT film festival.

The British Council, the UK’s international organisation for cultural relations and educational opportunities has announced that five short films from BFI Flare will be available to audiences around the world for the first time through BFI player, the British Film Institute’s online video service.

On Wednesday 25 March, fiveFilms4freedom will become a 24-hour campaign asking people everywhere to watch a film together over the course of one single day, and will be promoted through the British Council’s network in more than 50 countries and regions including across the Americas, China, India, Israel, Kosovo, Poland, Turkey, Ukraine and the Middle East. The idea is that this will be a chance for audiences, wherever they are, to enjoy a taster of LGBT cinema; to find out a little bit more about emerging LGBT filmmakers from around the world; and to show support for freedom and equality everywhere. fiveFilms4freedom is produced in partnership with Stonewall, the lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans equality charity.

The five films represent a cross section of contemporary LGBT short film. The films are made by lesbians, gay men and transgender filmmakers, and range from sweet short stories about first love to documenting activism. They are polished, rough, funny, sad and inspiring and each has a different voice. The films are:

  • An Afternoon (En Eftermiddag) Director Søren Green’s new short film is a sensitive exploration of nascent sexuality. Mathias and Frederik are two friends who spend an afternoon together; Mathias has decided that this is the time to tell Frederik that he is in love with him.
  • Chance Jake Graf’s self-funded short film premieres at BFI Flare. It focuses on older gay love and overcoming loneliness as a chance encounter between Trevor and a mysterious stranger equally troubled by his own past, forces both men to start to live again
  • Code Academy Canadian writer and director Nisha Ganatra is best known as Producer/Director of Transparent, the Golden Globe-winning TV series. In Code Academy, Frankie masquerades as a boy in futuristic cyberspace to get the girl of her dreams.
  • Morning Is Broken Director and writer Simon Anderson’s 2014 film is a beautifully shot coming-of-age drama set in the lush English countryside, following a young man’s struggle to come to terms with his sexuality at the end of his older brother’s wedding.
  • True Wheel Director Nora Mandray’s 2015 documentary focuses on Fender Bender, an inspirational bicycle workshop for queer, transgender and women’s communities in Detroit.

Alan Gemmell, Director fiveFilms4freedom, British Council comments,  “fiveFilms4freedom is a ground-breaking LGBT film festival supporting freedom and equality all over the world and showcasing some of our finest short filmmakers.  By bringing together the British Council and films from BFI Flare we are promoting LGBT cinema in countries that make up fifty percent of the world’s population.  On 25 March we are asking the world to watch a movie together and show that love is a basic human right.”

BFI Flare London LGBT Film Festival runs from 19-29 March 2015, and will also attempt go beyond London’s borders not just with fiveFilms4freedom, but also by offering other gay-themed films to British audiences via BFI player, while some of the movies from Flare will screen at select cinemas around the country.

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LGBT Film Vámonos Seeks Funding By Asking What Clothes People Want To Be Buried In

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vamanos-film-slideA new LGBT-themed movie is in the works and seeking donations, Vámonos, which takes on the interesting and underexplored area of misgendering, not just of trans people but of gay people too, and it’s looking at it through the lens of what clothes people are buried in.

It’s an issue that has raised its heads numerous times in recent years, particularly after the death of trans people, when their family chooses to bury them dressed as the sex they were assigned at birth rather than the one they lived as.

Vámonos ‘is a funny, touching, personal story about Hope, a gay latina that is mourning the death of her butch girlfriend, Mac. When Hope learns that Mac’s mother plans on burying her in a dress, Hope and her friends realize they must take matters into their own hands.’

The movie is seeking donations through its website and has also released an interesting short film, which asks people what clothes they would like to be buried in. You can take a look at it below.

“We just created this video asking various people what outfit they want to be buried in after they die to bring to light an issue within the LGBT community,” Director Marvin Bryan Lemus told Huffpo. “Some butch-identified women and trans men and women often are buried in clothes that doesn’t represent their identity because of family who either are unaware of the distinctions or whose religious beliefs lead them to turn a blind eye to the importance of one’s identity.” [Read more…]

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Max Irons Lets The World Know He Wasn’t Impressed With His Dad Jeremy Irons’ Gay Marriage Comments

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max-irons-riot-clubA couple of years ago Oscar-winning actor Jeremy Irons rightly came in for a lot of criticism for comments he made to Huffpo live about gay marriage, where he suggested he thought it would allow fathers to marry their sons in order to avoid inheritance tax.

It’s taken a while, but now someone has asked what his actor son, Max Irons (Red Riding Hood, The Host, The Riot Club), what he thought about what his father said.

What Jeremy said back in 2013 was, “Could a father not marry his son?”

When it was pointed out that gay marriage wouldn’t legalise incest, he answered, “It’s not incest between men”, as “incest is there to protect us from inbreeding, but men don’t breed.” This led to him worrying fathers will marry sons just for the tax breaks, although it does seem that he genuinely believed incest between a father and son isn’t illegal (which is rather worrying).

He also added, “It seems to me that now they’re fighting for the name. I worry that it means somehow we debase, or we change, what marriage is. I just worry about that.”

Max though wasn’t impressed, telling OUT that after hearing about his dad’s comments, “I remember thinking, ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about, you’re thinking about a problem out loud.’ I know my father, I know his views are similar to mine. As long as you don’t harm anyone else, what you do and who you love are nobody’s business. He has since clarified as far as I understand, and truth be told, if you pushed him to explain what he was talking about, I don’t think he’d actually know.”

He also quips, “Well my father hasn’t proposed to me lately.”

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James Franco Really Wants To Know Whether He’s Gay Or Not

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james-francoJames Franco has a very important question for James Franco – and it’s one many other people have wondered over the years – is he gay?

Franco doesn’t like to do the usual thing, so for an interview in Four Two Nine magazine, he decided he was going to interview himself, or at least the straight James was going to interview the gay James. That led to him asking himself the inevitable question

Here’s what he had to say: “Well, I like to think that I’m gay in my art and straight in my life. Although, I’m also gay in my life up to the point of intercourse, and then you could say I’m straight. So I guess it depends on how you define gay. If it means whom you have sex with, I guess I’m straight. In the twenties and thirties, they used to define homosexuality by how you acted and not by whom you slept with. Sailors would fuck guys all the time, but as long as they behaved in masculine ways, they weren’t considered gay.”

As so often with Franco, it’s an answer that sounds well thought out and articulate, but is actually less smart than it first appears. For a start, you can’t define homosexuality as anything but being sexually attracted to other men, as that’s what it means in a very literal sense. Being ‘gay’ meanwhile has a far greater social component, but even there justifying it by how people thought of it in the past ignores the role of prejudice and also ignorant perceptions of gender roles in how those earlier conceptions of sexuality were formed.

It also leaves open what it means to be ‘gay in my life up to the point of intercourse’, as it starts to sound like he’s trying to co-opt what he sees as the upside of gay-ness without having to personally deal with the downside – not the sex, but the bigotry and oppression many gay people face.

Franco is dealing with an interesting issue – how much of being ‘gay’ is to do with sexual attraction and how much is socially constructed, but what he says is rather ill-thought out. It’s nice he’s trying to work it out, but he could do with digging a little deeper.

The actor/director definitely has a fascination with gay subjects in his work, whether it’s starring in Howl and I Am Michael, or directing Sal and Interior Leather Bar – although even he needs to admit that in all those things, men having sex with other men (or at least having genuine sexual attraction to men) is not something that can be conveniently extracted from being gay.

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Mommy (Cinema Review)

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Just when you think you’ve had enough of well-meaning films featuring disabilities and heroic struggles along comes one that completely restores your faith. Queer filmmaker Xavier Dolan’s film is a tour de force, an emotional power-punch that slowly makes its way into your head and then into your heart. It may deal with a lot of clichés but finds a winning way to tell its story.

Anne Dorval is Die, a handsome but tired-looking woman who has lost her husband three years ago and is now stuck with looking after her son Steve (Antoine-Olivier Pilon). He has severe ADHD, a problem when he is such a strapping lad on the brink of discovering sex, and he loves a drink, a smoke and a fight. Die rescues him from an institution where he has apparently started a fire, and she determines to make a new life for them both. But boy, is he a handful, constantly swearing, eyeing up girls and unable to sit still to study. [Read more…]

Pixels Trailer – Adam Sandler takes on classic video characters

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pixels-poster3When you watch the trailer for Pixels it undoubtedly looks very weird, but it also looks like it could be a lot of fun.

Here’s the synopsis: ‘When aliens misinterpret video-feeds of classic arcade games as a declaration of war against them, they attack the Earth, using the games as models for their various assaults. President Will Cooper has to call on his childhood best friend, ‘80s video game champion Sam Brenner, now a home theater installer, to lead a team of old-school arcaders to defeat the aliens and save the planet.

‘Starring: Adam Sandler, Kevin James, Michelle Monaghan, Peter Dinklage, Josh Gad, and Brian Cox’

The movie is due out in August. [Read more…]

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Daniel Craig Is Back As Bond In New Spectre Poster

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SPECTRE-Teaser-PosterWe’re all going to have to set aside plenty of time to go to the cinema at the end of the year, with numerous big movie due, including Star Wars and the new James Bond movie, Spectre.

Now a new poster for the 007 flick has been released, which you can take a look at above.

Here’s the synopsis: ‘A cryptic message from Bond’s past sends him on a trail to uncover a sinister organisation. While M battles political forces to keep the secret service alive, Bond peels back the layers of deceit to reveal the terrible truth behind SPECTRE.’

Spectre is set for global release on November 6, 2015.

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Gay Short Film Showcase: Owning Our Faith – Looking at the struggle for gay Catholics

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owning-our-faithIn the media it often comes across as if the gay rights struggle is essentially LGBTs vs. the Christians, but the reality is far more complex than that, with plenty of people of faith who are completely on board with gay equality, and a lot of LGBT people who whole-heartedly believe in God(s).

That includes many Catholics, who remain part of the Church even if the denomination often seems hostile to gay people (particularly in the US, which tends to be more hardline than the ‘soft’ homophobia of many European Catholic bishops). Now some gay Catholics have told their story in the documentary short Owning Our Faith, all about what it is to be LGBT and Christian.

On the film’s website the makers say: ‘In November 2014, several LGBT Catholics from the Church of St. Paul the Apostle in New York City launched a project concerning the relationship between the Catholic Church and people of sexual and gender minorities. The goals of this project are to foster dialogue about and encourage greater inclusion and acceptance of LGBT people in the Church. In October 2014, Pope Francis convened a synod of bishops to discuss issues of the family within the Catholic Church, including the topic of homosexuality.  The Pope has encouraged ongoing conversation on these topics in preparation for the Ordinary Synod on the Family, set to take place in October 2015.

‘We want our stories to be a part of the discussion because LGBT people have unique gifts to contribute to the life of the Church. We hope the Church recognizes that God is working through our life stories. We want to inspire change that will strengthen families, encourage acceptance of LGBT people, foster an inclusive community, and promote an open and accepting dialogue among Catholics across the world. Most of all, we want everyone to know they are loved and not alone.’

Take a look at the documentary short below.

If you know a short film we ought to be posting, tell us by getting in touch via our contact page. And check out more gay short films and web series here. [Read more…]

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Charlie Hunnam Let’s Us Know He’s Got ‘Nothing To Hide’ About Going Full Frontal

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charlie-hunnam-slideOk, so here’s the challenge – we need to write a film where it’s very, very important we get to see Charlie Hunnam’s penis. It appears he’d be up for it, or at least the Pacific Rim & Sons Of Anarchy suggests so in a new interview with Attitude.

Talking about whether he’d ever show off little Charlie, he says, “The level of nudity that I do now, which is taking my shirt off, doesn’t bother me at all. But I have done full frontal before. I did full frontal when I was 18 on the TV show Queer as Folk.”

However before you rush off to see whether there was more of Charlie in 1999 British TV show than you remember, he adds, “But because I was playing a 15-year-old character, the censorship people wouldn’t allow us to put it on TV,” he added. “I think when I was young, I was a little bit more fearless with that stuff. I don’t know. I’m sure I would; I have nothing to hide.”

We almost got to see a lot of Hunnam when he was cast to play Christian Grey in Fifty Shades Of Grey, before hectic scheduling forced him to pull out. Perhaps if he’s done the role he wouldn’t have insisted on the ‘no penis’ clause Jamie Dornan had in his contract (although considering the need for an ‘R’ rating there’s no guarantee).

So if anyone wants to write a script all about Charlie’s bits, send it to him and see what he thinks!

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Matt Bomer & Cheyenne Jackson Join American Horror Story: Hotel

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matt-bomerAs was suggested before American Horror Story: Freak Show started airing, Jessica Lange has now confirmed that she’s ‘done’ with the show. While it may be sad to lose her, that doesn’t mean the next season won’t be getting a great cast – and it’s also getting a good quotient of gayness – as Vulture reports that at the LA TV Festival it was revealed Cheyenne Jackson and Matt Bomer will both appear in the upcoming American Horror Story: Hotel.

They join the previously announced Lady Gaga, with Bomer hopefully getting more screentime this time around than his brief appearance in Asylum. Jackson meanwhile is an AHS virgin.

There’s no news on who they might play, or indeed which of the other ‘regular’ actors wil return. Sarah Paulson has suggested she’d be happy to return if the scheduling works out, while Denis O’Hare also appears to be close to agreeing to do it.

Of her decision to leave, Lange didn’t give a full reason as to why she doesn’t want to stick around (in fact, quite the opposite), but did say, “We’ve had a great run. I have absolutely loved doing these four characters, and in all the madness, I loved the writers, actors, Ryan, the whole insanity of it, the stories, shooting here, shooting in New Orleans, everything… To cut to the chase, yes, I’m done.”

American Horror Story: Hotel will start airing on TV towards the end of 2015.

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