Celebrating PJ’s Birthday Saturday, Jun 21 2008 

food and movies and queer culture and travel thisgaudygildedstage 6:47 pm

Yesterday was PJ’s birthday. To celebrate, we spent the night in Columbus. We sometimes talk about getting a hotel room in Columbus, having a nice dinner, and going out to some clubs, so we decided that this was a good time to finally do it.

We left Athens around 1 or 1:30. When we got to Columbus we went to The Book Loft, which we hadn’t been to in a long time. I was especially looking for some Margery Allingham, Agatha Christie, or Dorothy L. Sayers novels, but they didn’t have any I wanted. Instead, I bought P.D. James’s An Unsuitable Job for a Woman and 500 Greatest-Ever Vegetarian Recipes. One of the things I especially liked about this cookbook is that all the recipes come with a picture of the final product — I think that goes a long way in convincing me to try a new recipe. I like to know what I’m shooting for!

Afterwards, we went to a coffee shop next to the Book Loft, had a drink, and browsed the local papers to look for things to do that evening. After our coffee break, we drove over to our hotel, which was just on the southern end of the Short North. We stayed at the Hampton Inn on High Street. It’s a nice hotel, but the main draw for us was its location. We wanted a hotel close enough so that we could walk to (and more importantly back from) the gay bars.

But before that, we went to dinner. We had a reservation at Basi Italia, which is just off of the Short North in the Victorian Village. We’d been there once before with friends. We both liked our dinners ok, but we ultimately decided that it wasn’t quite as wonderful as we had remembered it. Last time, we had each ordered the Basi Caesar Salad, the eggplant parmesan, and cannoli. This time, PJ had trout and I had crab ravioli for our main courses. I started with roasted mussels, and Pj had the salad again. we shared a cannoli for dessert. Everything was fine, but the real standouts of the meal were the dessert, which was so yummy, and my glass of wine, a 2006 Montellori Chianti. I’ll have to keep an eye out for that brand again. I really liked its smooth, fruity flavor. We forgot to bring our camera with us, so I don’t have any pictures to accompany this description of our dinner — yet again, all apologies to Kathee!

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Out of the South: A Review Saturday, Jun 14 2008 

movies thisgaudygildedstage 11:11 pm

Last night, PJ and I watched Out of the South, a documentary about a group of gay men who were born and raised in the South and who have started new lives in Los Angeles as adults. Here’s the trailer:

I should start by admitting up front that we’re friends with the writer, producer, and director of this film, Jason Ball. Furthermore, PJ and I talked at some length with Jason about this project when he was just starting to work on it. It’s obviously a little difficult and weird to review a friend’s work, but I’ll give it a go nevertheless. I’ll try to be as objective as possible in my review, though I understand that objectivity is especially difficult in this case.

Even though Jason is a friend, I think I would have loved this documentary even if I didn’t know him. It’s fun, interesting, and insightful. The film’s goal is to explore these men’s visions of the South, which often seem romanticized, and their reasons for leaving it (whether they’ve romanticize it or not). The set up is that Jason and his partner Troy host a Sunday dinner in which they and their guests make dinner and then talk around the table. Jason then also interviews each of the guests to probe a little further into their stories. These conversations end up covering such issues as religion, rural prejudices, relationships with parents and grandparents, and the joys and difficulties of growing up in the South. They also talk a little bit about what it’s like living in LA.

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Shelter: A Review Wednesday, Jun 11 2008 

movies thisgaudygildedstage 9:37 pm

Tonight PJ and I watched Jonah Markowitz’s 2007 film Shelter, a movie about Zach, a young guy who has given up his dream of going to art school to help his sister raise her son, Cody. While hanging out with his best friend’s older brother, Shaun, Zach discovers that he’s attracted to Shaun and the two begin “seeing” one another. Ultimately, Zach has to decide whether to come out and how to deal with his sister’s inability to raise Cody. Here’s the trailer:

I love this movie. Apparently, I love movies about gay skateboarders/graffiti artists! First there was The Graffiti Artist. Then there was “Cabalerno” from Boys Briefs 3. And now there’s Shelter. What I like about this movie is its pacing. It doesn’t try to squeeze too much into one film. Instead, it focuses on just a few central themes and then slowly, carefully unfolds its story.

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Boys Briefs 3: A Review Sunday, May 4 2008 

movies thisgaudygildedstage 9:44 pm

Before PJ got home this weekend, I watched Boys Briefs 3, an anthology of gay short films about guys getting together. Some of the shorts are fairly brief; others are a little longer. Some show a lot of skin; others don’t. Overall, I thought it was a rather weak collection of eight movies, but I did really enjoy two of them.

The first of the two that I really liked is called “Cabalerno,” which also happens to be the first film on the dvd. I found a clip of it on Youtube.

I like that this short has no dialog and yet we totally get what’s going on between the two boys. I also like that these guys aren’t totally buff or obviously hot. Instead, they’re attractively normal. Overall, I think this is a really sweet look at a young guy’s crush that turns out not to be totally unwelcome. It’s a great short film.

The other film that I really liked is called “Portmortem.” It stars Murray Bartlett (the guy on the right) and Daniel Dugan (the guy on the left) as two gay men who reunite to talk about their relationship, which ended a few years before.

I liked several things about this movie.

First off, the two guys are not only hot, but they’re also really cute. Both actors are perfect in their roles. Dugan plays the guy who was dumped years before by Thomas. He’s still smarting from the pain, but he’s also moved on with his life, living with his partner, Raul. Bartlett is the butch guy who dumped his boyfriend as he moved to a new city. Now he’s back and he wants to see how Thomas is doing without him.

Second, I love the music in this film. It’s by Harel Shachal, and I think it should be described as Middle Eastern jazz. It suits the short perfectly. In fact, the director, Eldar Rapaport, started writing the film after hearing some of Shachal’s music. The music and the plot seamlessly tell the story.

And finally, I like that the end of the film leaves what happens next up to the viewer’s imagination. The film’s final scene is somewhat ambiguous, so we have to decide how to interpret it. We can imagine the two former lovers reconcile, or we can imagine that Thomas goes back to his current lover.

The other films in the collection are all fine, but I didn’t really like them as much as I did these two. Some of them were rather disappointing. But I certainly recommend these two films. They’re both excellent.

 

The Jane Austen Book Club: A Review Wednesday, Apr 23 2008 

books and movies thisgaudygildedstage 9:16 pm

Recently, Pj and I watched The Jane Austen Book Club, a film about a group of readers — five women and one guy — who meet once a month to discuss one of Jane Austen’s books. One month it’s Sense and Sensibility; the next it’s Persuasion and so on. The movie was directed by Robin Swicord, who also wrote the screenplay, and stars Maria Bello, Emily Blunt, Amy Brenneman, and Hugh Dancy. Here’s the trailer:

I don’t think the movie was a huge success or critically acclaimed, but I really liked it. I thought all of the actors were good and that the plot was endearing.

So, I asked a friend of mine to lend me her copy of the novel by Karen Joy Fowler so I could read it. I had started it a week or so ago, and I took it with me to visit PJ and finished it on my first night in Worcester. To state it bluntly, I loved the novel. It’s now one of my favorite novels, I think.

What I liked most about it is that the narrative is actually much more complicated than one might think a novel about people reading Jane Austen novels would be. It’s actually rather postmodern in its narrative form. The novel has a narrator, who appears to be one of the book club members, but we never know which one. One portion of the novel is told through a series of emails exchanged by a group of peripheral characters. And finally, the questions for book clubs at the end of the book are “written” by the characters themselves — they’re hilarious!

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A Room with a View: A Review Sunday, Apr 13 2008 

books and movies thisgaudygildedstage 10:12 pm

I just finished watching ITV’s new adaptation of E. M. Forster’s A Room with a View in PBS’s Masterpiece Classics. Here’s the trailer:

In the interest of full disclosure, let me start with a couple of confessions. First, E. M. Forster is one of my favorite writers. I haven’t reread his novels as recently as I have Jane Austen’s, but I’ve loved them for almost 20 years now. Second, the Merchant Ivory film adaptations of A Room with a View, Maurice, and Howards End are all among my favorite movies. I’ve loved each one ever since I saw them. In sum, I love E. M. Forster.

Given that love, I suppose I could predictably have had one of two reactions to this new adaptation — either I would dislike it for not living up to the novel or the earlier adaptation or I would love it despite any reservations about it not living up to the novel or the earlier adaptation. So, I’m a little surprised to report that I loved this version on its own terms.

ITV adaptations are (in)famous for always coming in under 90 minutes, which means that they cut the heck out of a novel in order to make this time limit. In this case, the cutting didn’t bother me as much as some of the excisions in the recent Jane Austen adaptations. Likewise, these productions tend to rewrite portions of the plot. I think these changes seem to be part of an effort to make them more appealing to modern audiences. Again, the changes in A Room with a View worked for me.

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It’s Been a Weird Week Saturday, Apr 12 2008 

books and movies and television thisgaudygildedstage 3:52 pm

It’s been a week since PJ left for his month-long fellowship in Worcester, Massachusetts. At least in part due to his absence, it’s been a weird week.

PJ left last Saturday morning. I’m a little surprised that I didn’t immediately go into some kind of mild depression. Before he left, I imagined that it would only take a couple of hours before I would be curled up on the floor in the fetal position or something like that. While I definitely miss him, this first week hasn’t been too bad. At times, I’ve even kind of enjoyed having the house to myself.

It probably helped that the first thing I did when he left was indulge my culinary whims. On Sunday, for example, I made gazpacho, which I ate over the next three dinners. I also bought the stuff to make fish or grilled cheese sandwiches to go with the soup. I think eating well for much of this week has helped my metal state.

Another thing I’ve done is watch a couple of dvds from Netflix. Early in the week, I watched was The Blossoming of Maximo Oliveros, an independent Filipino movie about a 12-year-old gay boy who is torn between loyalty to his family of petty criminals and his desire for a new police officer. Here’s the trailer:

I have to admit, however, that I really didn’t care for this movie. It was well reviewed by other members of Netflix, but I thought it had A LOT of problems, not the least of which was the young actor’s inability to act convincingly. But I’m glad I watched it — usually when PJ’s out of town I just end up watching my favorite movies, which I’ve seen over and over again. (In that vein, I did finish watching The Best Years of Our Lives, one of my all time favorite movies on dvd and saw part of Star Wars: Episode III on Spike.)

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The Bubble: A Review Sunday, Apr 6 2008 

movies thisgaudygildedstage 9:19 pm

One of the students in my Lesbian & Gay Literature class last quarter recommended that I see The Bubble, a film by Eytan Fox. Fox in an Israeli director. I’d previously seen his films Yossi & Jagger and Walk on Water. Here’s the U.S. trailer for The Bubble:

I wrote about Walk on Water when I saw it last September. As I wrote then, I really disliked Fox’s Yossi & Jagger, but I enjoyed Walk on Water. With such mixed opinions about his previous work, I wasn’t sure I would like The Bubble, especially since it stars one of the lead actors from Yossi & Jagger and uses a song from Ivri Lider, who provided a key song for that movie too. Despite my misgivings, I really liked this movie. It’s a very good, thought-provoking film.

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The Orphanage: A Review Monday, Mar 24 2008 

movies thisgaudygildedstage 9:48 am

On Friday, PJ and I went out with friends to see The Orphanage, a Spanish film directed by Juan Antonio Bayona and written by Sergio G. Sánchez. Here’s the trailer:

The film stars Belén Rueda as Laura, a woman who buys her childhood home, an orphanage, and brings her husband and son to live there. She begins the process of restoring the old house with the hopes of taking in a small number of special needs children. We soon learn that her adopted son, who is HIV positive, plays with imaginary friends, but these fantasy games quickly become disturbing as unexplainable events begin to happen. A terrifying threat to her family leads Laura on a quest to understand the home’s mysteries, which involve a past of horrifying secrets that erupt into the present. (I’m trying not to give anything away while still indicating how scary the movie is!)

Let me start off by saying that I HATE scary movies. I don’t like to be terrorized, which is how suspenseful films affect me. Since The Orphanage is obviously a suspenseful thriller, I went into it ready to dislike it. That impulse was totally wrong — I loved this movie!

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Favorite Movies of 2007 Monday, Feb 4 2008 

movies thisgaudygildedstage 10:00 am

I think I’m ready to list my favorite movies of the past year. There may be one or two movies that I still need to see — movies often come to Athens later than they come to cities. But these are my ten favorite movies so far.

1. No Country for Old Men. The Coen Brothers’ western was nothing less than a masterpiece. I especially liked its meditations on the nature of evil and whether good can ever really triumph over it. I reviewed it just after we saw it in November. I’m not totally sure Javier Bardem deserves all of the accolades that he’s received, but I certainly don’t begrudge him the recognition — he’s definitely been overlooked when he deserved them in the past. Tommy Lee Jones and Josh Brolin are both excellent.

2. There Will Be Blood. I just reviewed this film earlier this week. It’s a great movie, and Daniel Day-Lewis’s performance is stellar. He and Paul Dano are both great.

3. Paris, Je T’aime. I know that my fondness for this movie is strongly influenced by the fact that we went to Paris for the first time just before seeing it. But that doesn’t change the fact that I really liked this movie. It’s a wonderful homage to Paris, and, while I didn’t like all of the short films that make up this work, I loved it on the whole. Anyone who loves Paris will enjoy seeing this love letter to the City of Lights. Here’s my earlier review.

4. Death Proof. This has become one of my favorite Quentin Tarrantino movies — right up there with Kill Bill and Pulp Fiction. It’s a great feminist take on 1970s exploitation films. While it was originally packaged with Robert Rodriguez‘s Planet Terror, Death Proof is the better movie, I think. Here’s my quick review of the “double feature.”

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