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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Inglourious Basterds:A Review Tuesday, Jan 19 2010 

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Over the weekend, I finally saw Quentin Tarantino’s latest movie, Inglourious Basterds, a World War II fantasy in which a group of Jewish American soldiers infiltrate Europe and go on a Nazi killing spree as a means of instilling fear in the minds of German soldiers. While on this mission, the team gets the chance to take out the German high command, including Hitler, who are all attending the premiere of a German film valorizing the exploits of a German soldier.

Here’s the trailer:

Some of Quentin Tarantino’s films, such as Kill Bill, Death Proof, and Pulp Fiction, are among my favorite movies. But my response to this movie is rather complicated, and I ultimately have to say that I didn’t enjoy it like I had hoped (and thought) I would.

I’m ok with the fantasy of killing Nazis, but I had a problem with the films combination of humor with the typical gruesomeness of Tarantino’s violence. Brad Pitt’s scenes are all great — and mostly hilarious. But some of the other humor just doesn’t work for me. I can’t get past the fact that this is WWII and the Holocaust. It’s not particularly funny and doesn’t seem appropriate to try to make it so.

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The Hurt Locker: A Review Monday, Jan 18 2010 

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PJ and I recently saw The Hurt Locker, a movie about a bomb squad in Iraq. Kathryn Bigelow directed this script by Mark Boal, who was a war correspondent in Iraq during the war. The movie is informed by his observations while there. Here’s the trailer:

I’m surprised by my reaction to this movie: I really liked it. I wanted to see it since it’s an Oscar contender, but I wasn’t terribly excited about it. Until I watched it. Now I think it’s one of the best films of 2009. Thrilling, suspenseful, and insightful, it’s well-directed, well written, and well acted.

The movie begins with a scene in which the bomb squad is trying to detonate an improvised explosive device. This scene is completely riveting and suspenseful. One of the things we learn from this scene is that things can go wrong quickly on the streets of Iraq, and the surviving characters have to come to terms with the death of a comrade.

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SotW: This Land is Your Land by Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings Thursday, Jan 14 2010 

music thisgaudygildedstage 3:18 pm

George Clooney’s new movie, Up in the Air, begins with a montage of airplanes taking off and landing behind the initial credits. I instantly fell in love with the song that playing during the montage, which is “This Land is Your Land” by Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings:

I love their neo-funk sound, so I’ve made this song my song of the week.

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Up in the Air: A Review Wednesday, Jan 13 2010 

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This weekend, PJ and I saw George Clooney‘s new movie, Up in the Air, which is about a guy named Ryan Bingham, whose job is to travel around the country firing people. Here’s the trailer:

As the trailer suggests, Ryan loves the mostly impersonal world of air travel, in which services are rendered in a friendly but non-invasive way. In fact, he’s developed a self-help lecture based on the principle that one’s entire life should fit into a backpack.

The main conflict in the movie revolves around a threat to Ryan’s way of life: he is closing in on 10 million frequent flier miles when he finds out that his boss, played by Jason Bateman, has decided to follow a new business model proposed by the new kid on the block, Natalie, played by Anna Kendrick. She’s proposed that the company fire people via the internet instead of in person, saving lots of money and upping the number of firings each representative can handle in a day. Ryan therefore has to figure out a way to convince his boss that her proposal is wrong before he’s grounded permanently. To make this point, Ryan takes Natalie out with him on a trip, which changes both of their perspectives on life in various ways.

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Precious: A Review Monday, Jan 11 2010 

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Last weekend, PJ and I saw Precious: Based on the Novel “Push” by Sapphire. I was more than a little hesitant to see this movie, because the trailer makes it clear that it’s about a teenager who is physically, verbally, and sexually abused. But it’s a major Oscar contender, so I had to see it. I’m glad I did; it’s definitely one of the best movies of the year.

Here’s the trailer:

The first thing I have to say is that this is one of the stupidest official titles ever. Did Sapphire require the producers to include the subtitle? Why not just require them to call it Push? As is, it just seem clunky and arrogant, whether the latter is true or not. Do they really expect people to say the whole title if it wins Academy Awards? If I were an Academy member I would be tempted not to vote for it just for the title alone, which would be unfortunate, since it deserves several nominations and at least some wins.

Precious is about the eponymous character, who is sixteen and pregnant with her second child. We quickly learn that she has been raped by her father, her mother’s boyfriend. She lives with her mother, who lives off Precious’s welfare checks, and generally makes Precious’s life miserable. Precious waits on her mother hand and foot, mostly out of fear that her mother will turn abusive without any notice.

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God of Carnage: A Review Friday, Jan 8 2010 

theater thisgaudygildedstage 6:01 pm

While PJ and I were in NYC last month, we saw four plays/musicals, including God of Carnage, which won the Tony for Best Play last year. We try to keep abreast of the best play winners, so PJ especially wanted to see this one. The original cast, which included James Gandolfini and Marcia Gay Harden, has already departed from the show. It now stars Christine Lahti, Jimmy Smits, and Annie Potts, all of whom we were looking forward to seeing.

The play centers around a meeting between two sets of parents. One of their sons has hit the other couple’s son with a stick, knocking out some of his teeth, during a playground brawl. Both couples begin the meeting by wanting to keep things polite and friendly, but as they realize that the playground incident is more complex than just one kid bullying another they also begin to fight among themselves over other issues. A few drinks later, everyone is screaming at everyone else.

All four members of the cast were good in their roles. Smits plays a big time lawyer who is constantly interrupted by one of his major clients calling him on his cellphone. He is married to Potts’ character, a wealth manager, and the two of them are the parents of the kid who hit the other one. Potts is great as a mother torn between wanting to keep everything friendly and her pride that her son has beaten up the other kid rather than be a “pussy” or a “fag.” Lahti plays the other mother. She wants to protect her son, who isn’t quite as innocent as she would like to believe, and wants the other kid punished. Her husband is played by Ken Stott, who acted in the London production of this play.

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SotW: This Moment by Nic Chagall Thursday, Jan 7 2010 

music thisgaudygildedstage 12:10 pm

My song of the week is Nic Chagall’s “The Moment” featuring Jonathan Mendlesohn:

Chagall mostly does trance music; I’m not really familiar with his music. What drew me to this song was Mendlesohn. I love his track on the anthology Music with a Twist, a collection of tracks by GLBT artists. Every now and then I check to see if he has an album out. While checking on iTunes, I came across this single. There are also several great remixes on YouTube.

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My Favorite Gay Movies of the Decade Tuesday, Jan 5 2010 

movies and queer culture thisgaudygildedstage 7:49 pm

I’ve already listed my favorite films of the past decade. Many of those films were gay themed, which started me thinking about the gay movies PJ and I have watched over the past ten years. Once I started thinking about it, it turned out to be a lot — without much effort I identified some 75 gay movies and documentaries from the past decade that I’ve seen. Since I regularly teach GLBT lit, it seems worthwhile to record my favorite gay films of the past decade.

To make it a little easier, I thought that I would identify my favorite gay film of the decade and then  a) list the other   films I most like alphabetically rather than try to rank them and b) separate them into two categories: features and documentaries. This blog will just be about the features. Not all of these are “great” movies. They are just the 25 (plus several tied for #26) gay films that I most enjoy, starting with my favorite:

Shortbus (2006)

My favorite gay film of the past decade is John Cameron Mitchell’s Shortbus. This movie is gay-affirming, sexy, sexually graphic, and just plain fun. What more could you want in a movie?! I originally blooged about Shortbus here.

Here’s the trailer:

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My Favorite Movies of the Decade Monday, Dec 28 2009 

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Everywhere I turn, it seems that I’m reading someone’s list of the best movies or songs or albums (etc) of the decade. So, I thought that I would join in on the fun starting with my favorite movies of the past decade.

Overall, I’d say the 2000s have been a good decade for films. While there are lots of great movies to choose from, my list is of my twenty twenty-five favorite movies. I’m not necessarily saying that they’re the best; they’re the ones I’ve enjoyed most in the past ten years. Usually they’re the ones I want to see again (and again). I’ll start with number one and work my way down the list. The top ten are more or less in order; after that, it’s less specifically in order.

1. Kill Bill Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 (2003, 2004)

My favorite movie of the past decade is Quentin Tarantino’s epic revenge thriller, which I’m treating as one movie even though it’s divided into two as a release. I love everything about this movie: the direction, Uma Thurman, the fights, the unbelievable soundtrack. Everything. This is the movie that, if I see it on TV, I can’t help but sit down and watch it.

Elle Driver is, of course, my favorite of the “bad guys:”

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