The Kids Are All Right: A Review Monday, Aug 30 2010 

movies and queer culture thisgaudygildedstage 2:26 pm

Over the weekend, PJ and I watched Lisa Cholodenko‘s The Kids Are All Right. We were particularly excited to see this movie, since it’s getting a lot of Oscar buzz, but also because it’s been rather controversial. I read one review, for example, in which the reviewer walked out halfway through the movie because she was so angered by its depiction of lesbian sexuality.

Here’s the trailer:

The movie stars Annette Bening as Nic and Julianne Moore as Jules, two lesbians who have raised two children together. Nic is a doctor and is somewhat stressed out and consumed by her job. Trained as an architect, Jules seems to float from one thing to the next professionally. At the start of the film she’s decided to begin a landscaping business.

More stress is added to their relationship when their oldest kid, Joni, played by Mia Wasikowska, decides to contact her sperm donor shortly after her eighteenth birthday. She doesn’t really care to meet him, but her younger brother, Laser, played by Josh Hutcherson, pushes her into it.

Mark Ruffalo plays Paul, the sperm donor. He’s thrilled to receive word that Joni wants to meet him. He’s a restaurateur, owns an organic local farm patch, and has a lot in common with Jules, as he’s also a bit feckless.

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Celebrating National Man Day Monday, Jun 14 2010 

holidays and male models and queer culture thisgaudygildedstage 10:32 pm

Today was declared National Man Day by two of my fellow Hoosiers. According to a story I saw on The Huffington Post,

Ninteen-year-old Joel Longanecker of Celestine and his 26-year-old brother Aaron, of Indianapolis, have for months been rallying thousands to their masculine cause on Facebook. More than 260,000 people have pledged to “stand up and do manly things” on Man Day.

I’ve decided that the “manly thing” I want to do to celebrate National Man Day is probably a bit more queer than the originators had intended: I’d like to celebrate some of my favorite hot, manly men!

Hot Manly Tennis

Throughout this year’s clay court tennis season, I’ve been enjoying watching Fernando Verdasco, one of the hottest players on the ATP tour:

Among tennis fans, Verdasco has been recognized for his hotness for a couple of years now, but this year his fame has grown. On the one hand, his tennis has improved over the past year. He was one of the top clay court players this year — so much so that he over-played and ended up costing himself some of his competitive edge when it came to the big tournament, the French Open.

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Sex and the City 2: A Review Saturday, May 29 2010 

movies and queer culture thisgaudygildedstage 7:18 pm

Yesterday, PJ and I saw Sex and the City 2. We both loved the series and the first movie, so we were looking forward to the new one. Each of our heroines is facing a problem: Carrie is worried that she and Big have lost their sparkle; Miranda is being silenced by her boss; Samantha is going through menopause and is worried about what it’s doing to her libido; and Charlotte is scared that her husband will have an affair with their bra-less bosomy nanny. Along the way, Anthony and Stanford get married, and the “girls” get an all-expenses paid trip to Abu Dhabi.

Here’s the trailer:

I enjoyed the movie, but everything we’ve heard about it has been negative. Reviewers have routinely been calling it one of the worst movies of the year. In writing about it, I recognize that I want to say two somewhat contradictory things about it.

First, Sex and the City 2 is not exactly the caricature that reviews are making it out to be. Lisa Swarzbaum of Entertainment Weekly, for example, complains that, with the exception of Miranda, “not one of the fashion friends lifts her head out of her luggage to get a clue” (June 4/11, 2010, p. 95). Accordingly, Swarzbaum presents a satirically simplistic summary of each woman’s storyline. As she writes, “Charlotte is upset that motherhood is hard; Miranda is upset that she is unappreciated at work; Samantha is upset that she can’t outrun menopause.” But her darts are really aimed at Carrie, who’s problems she sarcastically reduces to being “upset that she’s got everything.”

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Be Mine: A Review Saturday, May 22 2010 

movies and queer culture thisgaudygildedstage 7:29 pm

Last night, PJ and I watched the 2009 movie  Be Mine on DVD. (In fact, I think it was a straight-to-video movie — is that what the “V” means on http://www.imdb.com?) It stars Dan Selon as Mason, a college senior who has never kissed a boy. The movie is told in flashbacks: we see how he met the guy he’s just married and how he went from never-been-kissed to totally in love. Here’s the trailer:

We tried to watch this movie once before, but the DVD was defective. The few minutes we saw the first time made us wonder if it was worth trying again. Overall, I’d say that Be Mine is a likable romantic comedy, but it feels more like the pilot for a sitcom than a movie — it’s all set up with very little dramatic/comedic action.

Basically, Be Mine follows Mason as he sees a guy he thinks is cute, admits that he’s never been kissed (much less had sex), and meets up with the guy again at a party that night. All of this is told in flashbacks; we learn right off the bat that Mason has married this guy, Reiley, played by Jared Welch.

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Eyes Wide Open: A Review Monday, Apr 26 2010 

movies and queer culture and religion thisgaudygildedstage 12:46 pm

Yesterday PJ and I saw Eyes Wide Open (Einaym Pkuhot), an Israeli film by director Haim Tabakman. It stars Zohar Shtrauss as an Orthodox butcher with a wife and kids who suddenly finds himself attracted to his apprentice, Ezri, played by Ran Danker. The movie explores what this means for Aaron, his community, and his family (in roughly that order). Here’s the trailer:

Shtrauss is great as Aaron, a man obviously torn between everything he’s ever known and lived and his desire for Ezri. He plays Aaron as a very quiet, insular man who suddenly blossoms when he meets Ezri. At first his responses to the younger man are tentative and shy, and Shtrauss is excellent in this segment of the film.

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The Art of Being Straight: A Review Sunday, Apr 25 2010 

movies and queer culture thisgaudygildedstage 11:52 am

Last night PJ and I watched The Art of Being Straight a 2008 comedy/drama about a young twenty-something who moves to Los Angeles after breaking up with his girlfriend. He takes an entry-level job at an advertising agency, where he starts getting hit on by one of his bosses, a guy named Paul. His response to these come-ons opens up the possibility that he might not be as straight as he and his friends had always thought. I really liked this complex look at sexuality.

Here’s the trailer:

The Art of Being Straight was written and directed by Jesse Rosen, who also stars as the lead character, Jon. Jon has a reputation among his friends for being a ladies man, the kind of guy who, somewhat inexplicably, is able to hook up with any girl he wants. When Paul, played by Johnny Ray, starts hitting on him, Jon’s surprised to find himself attracted to this older man. Although he admits to Paul that he experimented with a friend in high school, he had never gone all the way with a guy before. Equally surprising is that, while he’s not ready to date a guy, he is interested in hooking up more than once.

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Watching the 2010 Olympics Monday, Feb 22 2010 

queer culture and What I'm Watching thisgaudygildedstage 5:47 pm

This year I’m watching the winter Olympics much more than I usually do. Working a 9 to 5 job means that I look forward to coming home and watching t.v. in the evening. Consequently, I’m watching it in a much more routinized way than I have in the past.

In addition to relaxing, watching the Olympics has been particularly fun this year for a few reasons. First, I’m watching different sports than I usually do. In the past, I pretty much only watched figure skating. The women’s and men’s competitions have always been fun to watch, since I would be fairly familiar with the major competitors, since figure skating is on television throughout the winter. I’ve especially enjoyed watching the men skate, since many of them seem so gay (whether they really are or not).

But this year I didn’t watch the men’s competition, except for a few minutes of one or two skaters who had no chance to medal. In many ways, this year’s competition seems like a repeat of years past with the same skaters vying for medals. More significantly, I think, I’ve simply lost interest in the sport. So many articles have come along lately about trying to butch the men up and about the way in which Johnny Weir has been penalized for his flamboyance. For a sport that revels in gay clichés, it seems a shame that it’s so homophobic. I’ve also been reading about how the sport is dominated by anti-gay evangelicals, which, whether true or not, just seems to reinforce the image of a self-loathing sport. Are these guys actually ashamed to be figure skaters? Ashamed of artistry and performance? It just seems sad.

So, I’ve been watching other sports instead. Of course, as a gay man what gets me immediately interested in watching a new sport is seeing a hot athlete performing at his peak. So, I’ve noticed that the sports I’m watching all feature hot men. Consequently, I decided to organize the rest of this post around my five favorite men of the 2010 Olympics. Bode Miller gets all of the network attention, but these guys are the real reasons to watch the Winter games!

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Little Ashes: A Review Sunday, Feb 21 2010 

movies and queer culture thisgaudygildedstage 11:57 am

Last night PJ and I watched Little Ashes, which stars Robert Pattinson and Javier Beltrán as Salvador Dalí and Federico García Lorca, respectively. The movie follows these men’s relationship from the time they meet at university in Madrid to Lorca’s assassination by the Fascists during the Spanish Civil War. Here’s the trailer:

My response to this movie was rather mixed. On the one hand, I’ll admit up front that I didn’t know much about either Dalí or Lorca before seeing this movie. While my ignorance made the film difficult to follow at times, it also meant that I learned something about these men, which I liked. On the other hand, the movie did little to help someone ignorant like me, which made the film unnecessarily difficult to admire or enjoy. I liked it, but I thought that it could have been a much better film.

Let’s start with the positive. Beltran is especially good in the role of Lorca, and in many ways the film is really about him. He reminds me of a young Antonio Banderas or Javier Bardem. What he brings to the role of Lorca is a great combination of sensitivity and masculinity. I really liked his ability to avoid depicting Lorca’s homosexuality as effeminacy. Too often, gays are simply depicted as mincing would-be women. Beltran’s Lorca is just a poet who happens to like men in general and Dali in particular. He’s very good in this role, and I hope someone like Pedro Almodovar casts him in a big movie soon.

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Happy Valentine’s Day! Sunday, Feb 14 2010 

holidays and music and queer culture thisgaudygildedstage 1:01 pm

While, like many people I know, I’m hesitant to indulge the commercial interests of Valentine’s Day, I do think it’s nice to have at least one day a year on which to reflect on the love in my life. I’m eternally grateful for the love I share with PJ and for how much he loves me every day we’re together. We’ve been incredibly lucky. We were able to get academic jobs at the same institution without having to spend too many years apart. We have two great cats who bring us joy. And we share so many interests and experiences that enrich our lives together.

So, in celebration of Valentine’s Day I thought that I would take a few minutes and share five of my favorite love songs, all of which I dedicate to my dear and loving husband.

My absolute favorite love song is John Denver’s “Annie’s Song,” which I would love to have sung at our wedding if we were to ever get married:

It totally sums up how I feel about PJ. I love everything about my life, but what I want most is to give that life to him, to share it with him for as long as possible, since he’s what makes it complete and joyous.

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Max Steele and How Naked Are We Going to Get? Friday, Jan 22 2010 

music and queer culture and song of the week thisgaudygildedstage 3:22 pm

It’s going to take a little explaining before I get to the point of this post, my song of the week, which is “How Naked Are We Going to Get?” by The Blow.

The other day I was watching episode 6 of Jeffery and Cole Casserole, which I missed when it was on T.V. I love their show (and their YouTube videos). While watching the episode, I started to wonder about one of the other actors in the show. His name turns out to be Max Steele, and, since he’s cute, I started surfing the web to see what I could find out about him: he’s a 24-year-old actor/musician/writer/go-go dancer/performance artist who lives in New York City.

My great envy in life is that I’m not a twenty-something gay performance artist type guy living in NYC. I’m sure part of it is the hipsterness of such a fantasized life. And part of it is the feeling that I wasted my early twenties being good in southeast Texas. Whatever its roots, I wish I were a twenty-something gay guy living in NYC surrounded by people making videos and making out with each other while drinking cheap red wine and listening to really cool music. Only slightly lower on my list of fantasy lives would be to be a mumblecore director, which would still involve living in NYC, making out with cute guys, and drinking cheap wine while listening to cool music! I’m starting to think that I need to do more with contemporary young queer culture in my next Lesbian and Gay Lit class–maybe turn it into a queer culture class or something.

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