Theater, Movies, Art and Literature

The Crying Game A scorpion needs to cross a river but can't swim. So he asks a frog to give him a ride. The frog says, 'If I do you'll sting me to death.' The scorpion says, 'If I did that we'd both drown.' The frog agrees to give him the ride. Halfway across, the scorpion stings him to death. The frog asks, Why did you do that?' 'It's my nature,' the scorpion says; 'I'm a scorpion.' This is what a captured British soldier says to an IRA terrorist who has kidnapped him and will probably have to kill him soon. It seems like a way to pass the time, but is actually the main point of The Crying Game. What we see here is a movie about people having to follow their true n…

Violence ensued if you believe this article from today's NY Post! What is it with people and their phones? cannot they let go for two hours while the rest of us enjoy a show? Last week I had to shush a very well-dressed couple who would not stop talking. It worked, until the guy started getting texts. He would light his phone up in the dark theater, read the message, contemplate it for awhile...then pass it on to his wife for the very same ritual. All the time the phone stayed lit. This must have happened three times before intermission. That's when they moved a seat away from me...thank them! I was still left with the old lady behind me who was sure she was in her livi…

Oh my my it's a very cute movie... You can see the whole movie on YouTube.. Tori Spelling is very good as the bride... It's a bit like a gay version of My Best Friend's Wedding... http://m.youtube.com/user/lizzie89ish

A friend of mine who is lucky enough to make it Broadway occasionally, forwarded me this review: Boy Toys Yearning to Be Free ‘Mariquitas’ at Theater for the New City By CLAUDIA LA ROCCO Mariquitas Liam Torres in a scene from Eduardo Machado’s new play about young hustlers in Havana at Theater for the New City. “Gloria Estefan, I will never meet you,” the young hustler Cristobal calls out to the ocean during a particularly plaintive moment in “Mariquitas,” Eduardo Machado’s new play at Theater for the New City. “I am too scared to get on a raft and leave here, and I will never win the lottery that gets you out of this place.” This place is Cuba, where Cristobal (R…

Edge Of Seventeen Overall, gay films usually fall into one of two basic types super-sad tragedies or ultra-camp comedies. While straight people get a wide varieties of genres, Hollywood seems to want films about the gay community to either deal with AIDS, homophobia, or silly drag queens. This is what makes Edge of Seventeen stand out. It's neither of the usual tropes it's just a movie about teenagers where the central character happens to be gay. It's structured like St. Elmo's Fire in the sense that there is no logical starting or ending point. It's just a bit of time in the lives of these people in the midwest dealing with shit that teenagers deal with. That it…

Trick Here we have another genre-busting gay movie that proves not all queer cinema has to be about gay bashing, AIDS or ridiculous camp drag stuff. Really, any genre of film can be turned into a gay movie if writers and directors realize that gay people are just people. That the plot of the film is a gay guy figuring out that gays are not as weird as he thinks just drives this point home. Trick is, despite the title, simply a standard Hollywood romantic comedy where the plot is boy meets boy, boy loses boy, boy gets boy back. And instead of having the gay best friend of one of the characters providing quirky comedic lines, we get Tori Spelling providing quirky comedi…

A Single Man People are afraid to merge on the freeways of Los Angeles, Brett Easton Ellis famously wrote in his first novel about detachment, nihilism and the absence of hope. This sentiment is brought to life in vivid color in A Single Man, a film that could have been ghostwritten by Ellis after a night drinking Scotch with Eugene O'Neil and Patricia Highsmith. Here we have one of the very rare types of Hollywood films a movie about true nihilism with no hope of transcendence or a happy ending. It's amazingly engaging to watch, because the characters care so little about themselves, other people, and the outside world in general that anything can happen. That i…

Not all gay-themed; only here and there. Thanks to Michael Musto for pointing to this on his blog: http://blogs.villagevoice.com/dailymusto/2013/05/10_movies_that.php#more Some highlights below. Whole thing at http://www.cracked.com/article_19287_10-movies-that-famous-people-dont-want-you-to-see.html #9.Leonardo DiCaprio and Tobey Maguire -- Don's Plum (1995) Don's Plum is a movie starring two of the highest-grossing American actors of all time -- and because of a lawsuit by the stars themselves, it can never be released in the U.S. DiCaprio and Maguire claim they made the film as a favor to friend, but never actually intended it to be seen: they agreed to let it…

The 2013 Tony Award nominees were announced in NYC this morning at a press conference hosted by Jesse Tyler Ferguson and Sutton Foster. Topping the list with 13 nominations is the Cyndi Lauper-scored Kinky Boots. Notably shut out was Bette Midler and we've got dueling gays in the Best Leading Actor In A Play category. Via Broadway.com: Best Musical A Christmas Story Bring It On Kinky Boots Matilda Best Play Lucky Guy The Assembled Parties The Testament of Mary Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike Best Revival of a Play Golden Boy Orphans The Trip to Bountiful Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Best Revival of a Musical Annie Cinderella Pippin The Mystery of Edwin Drood …

Going to NYC in about a week for a tour. In addition to the musiems and tourist stuff, I've got tickets for: Book of Mormon Hands on a Hardbody The Nance (Nathan Lane) I'll Eat Your Last (Bette Midler) Kinky Boots Lucky Guy (Tom Hanks) Miltilda Think it willl be a good tour.

How great would this be? http://www.complex.com/pop-culture/2013/04/johnny-depp-and-meryl-streep-are-getting-musical

Boys Don't Cry Boys may not cry, but grown men may want to once they finish this movie particularly when they discover it's based on a true story. This is real tragedy, the type that comes from ignorance and repression and the all-too-human hatred of people who are different. But, this isn't your standard Hollywood tragedy, where a perfect example of a minority group is struck down by evil members of the majority. There is nothing saintly about the main character, Tena Brandon. She's as flawed as anyone else in the film and that's what makes it work. Because s/he comes off as human and not a cliché, we feel much more for Brandon when the world comes crashing down …

Uproarious. Accurate. Bitter, but good satirists are self-hating misanthropes anyway... The top 10 gay movie cliches After spending last week at the BFI's festival of short gay films, Jack Cullen feels qualified to list the top 10 cliches of the genre – from the ironing mother to the very long shower scene … Jack Cullen The Guardian, Monday 25 March 2013 15.40 EDT Is it time for some gratuitous rage? A scene from Beyond the Walls Photograph: Matthieu Poirot-Delpech Artistic shots of treesNothing conveys the gay psyche like a bleak sky glimpsed through a dizzying rush of distant poplars – the type gay boys stare at longingly from the homophobic inferno of the sc…

Brokeback Mountain Some movies stand the test of time. Some movies get better with the passage of time. And some movies, if given enough time, end up looking much worse than when they first came out in theaters. I recently re-watched Brokeback Mountain and, sad to say, this film falls into the third category. It's understandable how this film seemed awesome when it came out. Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal were two rising young Hollywood heartthrobs. For them to take these roles was truly daring career-wise. Ang Lee was an up-and-coming director, and for him to use this subject matter as one of his first English language films was exciting. Anne Hathaway was also o…

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Amour won for Best Foreign Film at the Oscars tonight. I wasn't watching the Oscars, I was watching Amour. it's the story of an elderly couple in France. The wife suffers a stroke, the husband cares for her. It goes okay until she has a second stroke, and then the caregiving is not so easy. The acting is very good for both leads, but only the wife is up for an Oscar. As of this writing, the award has not been announced. The film does a great job of showing the level of commitment in a relationship that leads one spouse to care for the other. Yet the husband is no spring chicken, and it gets much harder once the second stroke hits. The daughter of the couple is portrayed …

Tracie Bennett reprises her tole as Judy Garland in End of The Rainbow, playing March 12- April 21 at the Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angeles. I saw the show in New York and loved it. I might see it again. www.centertheatregroup.org/rainbow

It sounds like an amazing book... http://m.booksnreview.com/articles/1351/20121011/proof-of-heaven-eben-alexander-a-neurosurgeon-journey-beyond-convinces-him-heaven-is-real.htm

Victor/Victoria Here we have a film that was unique for its time it was both very honest and open about gay lifestyles, and able to appeal to a straight audience. It is also one of the few films to manage to use gay stereotypes in a way that doesn't come off as homophobic or offensive. Instead, it strikes a near perfect balance between funny and charming. The story behind Victor/Victoria is interesting as well. The director, Blake Edwards, had made a career out of the Pink Panther movie series. Then, his star Peter Sellers became too ill to continue to participate in the films. At the same time his wife, Julie Andrews, was shit tired of her image as America's Sweethe…

Cute film about a boy picking up a stripper and them trying to find a place to have some "alone" time.

Using the word "theater" together with Los Angeles can be cringe-inducing. But I was tempted to go in and see The Gift when I got an email offer from the Geffen Theater. The cast isn't bad: The email offer used some rave quotes from Variety, but I was smart enough to check the LA Times review too. The Times says that the play, a comedy, is "pretty much pointless," and "wraps itself in banalities." The story is "not even remotely credible," according to the Times, and that saves me a trip to LA and the cost of the ticket! http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/culture/la-et-cm-jekyll-and-hyde-review-20130214,0,2494742.story *** Also playing in LA is …

One of the better commentaries on Stanislaw Lem's "GOLEM XIV" that I have ever seen: http://www.bohemiandrive.com/excritement/1/

Angels In America Sometimes, a work is of such staggering genius that words fail you when you want to talk about them. Angels In America is an example of just such a film. While it actually aired over two nights on HBO and has been classified by some people as a mini-series, the quality of the direction, acting and writing pushes it to be more properly classified as one of the finest examples of cinema ever made. Set at the height of the AIDS crisis, the movie is broken into two parts one called Millennium Approaches, and the other called Perestroika. It has a unique structure that allows us to follow several stories that may or may not intersect, with each actor pla…

Broadway Bares will be presenting Winter Burlesque. My bucket list has a line item about getting to New York to see the full production of Broadway Bares before I die, and this just reinforces the need to make that happen.