"Watching the film I want the audience to embrace the journey of being a girl. Everyone in the room has to identify [with] a fifteen-year-old teenage girl. That’s why there are no adults in the movie, nor boys."
That’s screenwriter-director Céline Sciamma, talking about her widely praised first film, Naissance des pieuvres / Water Lilies. Initially [...]
Naissance des pieuvres / Water Lilies (2007)
Direction and Screenplay: Céline Sciamma. Cast: Pauline Acquart, Louise Blachère, Adele Haenel, Warren Jacquin, Christelle Baras
Writer-director Céline Sciamma’s Naissance des pieuvres / Water Lilies is a film about teens beginning to discover who they are. It is also a film that actually stars teens — as opposed to mid-twenty-year-olds [...]
Turin International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival Awards 2008
Turin International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival: April 17–25, 2008
Santiago Otheguy (above, right) directed and wrote (from a story he’d co-written with Juan Solanas) the Argentinian drama. La León, winner of the jury’s best film award at the 2008 Turin Gay and Lesbian Film Festival. Set in [...]
Screaming Mimi (1958)
Direction: Gerd Oswald. Screenplay: Robert Blees; from Fredric Brown’s novel. Cast: Anita Ekberg, Philip Carey, Gypsy Rose Lee, Harry Townes, Linda Cherney, Romney Brent, Red Norvo Trio
When a big, busty blonde is assaulted in an outdoor shower by an escaped lunatic, her life is spared just in time by her stepbrother. The [...]
Salò o le 120 giornate di Sodoma / Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom (1975)
Direction: Pier Paolo Pasolini. Screenplay: Pier Paolo Pasolini and Sergio Citti; inspired by the Marquis de Sade’s book. Cast: Paolo Bonacelli, Giorgio Cataldi, Umberto Paolo Quintavalle, Aldo Valletti, Caterina Boratto, Elsa De Giorgi, Hélène Surgère, Sergio Fascetti, Bruno Musso, Antonio [...]
Myra Breckinridge (1970)
Direction: Michael Sarne. Screenplay: David Giler and Michael Sarne; from Gore Vidal’s novel. Cast: Raquel Welch, Mae West, John Huston, Rex Reed, Farrah Fawcett, Roger C. Carmel, Calvin Lockhart, Jim Backus, John Carradine, Andy Devine, Kathleen Freeman, Roger Herren, Grady Sutton, Tom Selleck
Myra Breckinridge. Has anybody ever said anything good about this movie? [...]
Posted in Gay & Lesbian, News on April 12th, 2008 No Comments »
In the New York Times article "The Playboy Was a Spy," Stephen Koch discusses Noël Coward’s behind-the-scenes work during World War II. Here’s a brief excerpt:
"’Celebrity was wonderful cover,’ Noël Coward said near the end of his life. ‘My disguise would be my own reputation as a bit of an idiot … a merry playboy.’
"In [...]
In Christophe Honoré’s Chansons d’Amour / Love Songs "a young threesome pace the streets of Paris, collars upturned, singing of love in this Umbrellas of Cherbourg-inspired musical-comedy-drama." In the cast: Louis Garrel, Ludivine Sagnier, and Grégoire Leprince-Ringuet.
"When Scot’s mother dies her brother, one half of a straight-laced gay couple, takes him in but no-one is [...]
"Three flatmates become suspicious of their tenant in Rent, No Utilities [45 min.], a stylish thriller in the tradition of Shallow Grave, while single people everywhere come under treat in Speed Dating [above, 30 min.]." Those are two medium-length films by Gregor Buchkremer.
In Nelson George’s Life Support, "Ana Wallace risks her own health to raise [...]
Screendaily reports that four documentaries scheduled for the 21st Singapore International Film Festival (SIFF), which kicked off on April 4, have been banned by local censors.
According to the report, two of the documentaries — Arab-American director Bassam Haddad’s Arabs and Terrorism, about opposing views on political terror, and Mano Khalil’s David the Tolhildan, which [...]
In Alfred Schirokauer and Reinhold Schünzel’s 1927 silent comedy Der Himmel auf Erden / Heaven on Earth, Schünzel plays a moralistic city councilor who "is forced by his brother’s will to take a legacy of 500,000 marks on condition that he takes over the running of notorious nightclub Heaven on Earth. Initial disdain gives way [...]
Described as a gay version of a John Hughes flick, Russell P. Marleau’s The Curiosity of Chance revolves around a new — and openly gay — kid at school, appropriately named Chance Marquis, who does his best to survive the usual bullies and the overall conformity. In the cast: Tad Hilgenbrink, Brett Chuckerman, and Aldevina [...]
While London’s Lesbian & Gay Film Festival is going on in full force, here’s a brief q&a (via e-mail) with Lisa Daniel, the director of another gay film festival elsewhere in the world, the Melbourne Queer Film Festival.
First held in 1991, the Melbourne Queer Film Festival is reportedly one of the longest-running of its kind. [...]
Fred Barney Taylor’s documentary Polymath, or the Life and Opinions of Samuel R. Delany, Gentleman is described as a "biography of the award-winning, highly acclaimed science fiction writer Samuel Delany, entangling literary criticism with tales of the author’s considerable sexual exploits."
Delany claims to have had sex with 50,000 men, even while referring to himself as [...]
To celebrate Bette Davis‘ centenary, Dr. Martin Shingler will give "an illustrated lecture on Bette’s movies and why gay men and lesbians love her so." (Talk about a sweeping generalization…)
Many consider Irving Rapper’s Now, Voyager (1942) the best Bette Davis vehicle of her Warner Bros. years. I’m not one of those many. I find [...]
World Cinema Clips: The film clip below, posted by agogika on youtube, is from the excellent Canadian comedy-drama C.R.A.Z.Y. (2005), a major box-office hit in Quebec, and the winner of 11 Genies and 13 Jutra awards in 2005.
The tale of a young man (superbly played by Marc-André Grondin) who discovers both rock and roll and [...]
Derek is described as "Isaac Julien’s homage to the late Derek Jarman using unseen interviews and a dazzling range of archive material." The film also features Tilda Swinton. Julien and others involved in the project are expected to attend the screening.
In Shamim Sarif’s The World Unseen, "the paths of two contrasting Indian women cross in [...]
Mala Noche (1985) was Gus Van Sant’s first feature film. Its stream-of-consciousness narrative may be off-putting to some, but Tim Streeter’s performance as a Portland man madly in lust-cum-love with a Mexican immigrant (Doug Cooeyate) should impress just about everyone.
Todd Haynes‘ all-star homage to Bob Dylan, I’m Not There, was considered innovative by some, tedious [...]
The 22nd London Lesbian & Gay Film Festival kicked off last night with a screening of Alek Keshishian’s romantic comedy Love and Other Disasters (which will screen again on Sat., March 29), starring Brittany Murphy, Matthew Rhys, Catherine Tate, Stephanie Beacham, Dawn French, and Richard Wilson.
Among the highlights of London’s L&G film festival on [...]
More than 40 programs will showcase new work from filmmakers, performers, and artists from 20 countries at the 46th Ann Arbor Film Festival (AAFF), which runs from March 25-30.
On the avant-garde front, the AAFF will present the U.S. premiere of Pip Chodorov’s Faux Mouvements (Wrong Moves) in the Cracking the Space/Time Continuum program "of [...]
Edmund Goulding directs Joan Crawford in the MGM melodrama Sally, Irene and Mary (1925) at the beginning of their, respectively, directorial and acting careers. Photo: Matthew Kennedy Collection.
Even though the Academy Award-winning Grand Hotel (1932), the Bette Davis weepie Dark Victory (1939), and the Academy Award-nominated The Razor’s Edge (1946) are still well remembered, the [...]
And you thought that Australia is a democracy, where adults are allowed to make their own choices regarding the movies (or books?) they want to enjoy without government interference? Well, think again…
Via the 2008 Melbourne Queer Film Festival website:
"The films they didn’t want you to see!
"The Melbourne Queer Film Festival special presentation of The Erotic [...]
Cinematographer David Watkin, best known for his Oscar- and BAFTA-winning work on Sydney Pollack’s Out of Africa (above, Meryl Streep and Robert Redford) and on Hugh Hudson’s Chariots of Fire, died of cancer this past February 19 at his home in Brighton, England. He was 82.
Watkin’s career as a feature-film cinematographer spanned nearly four decades [...]
It’s Oscar time. What better way to celebrate the 80th Academy Awards than by having a q&a about the best actress Oscar winner …
… of 1931?
(Or rather, for the period 1930-31, as the Oscars in those days covered films released in the Los Angeles area from August 1 to July 31.)
And who was the best [...]
CineKink NYC 2008 will take place from February 26–March 2. The scheduled shorts and features sound kinky enough, but I can only vouch for two that I’ve seen: John Cameron Mitchell’s Shortbus and Anna Biller’s Viva.
The former, a sexual dramatic-comedy about various New York City couples of myriad sexual orientations and dysfunctions, was screened [...]
