Theater, Movies, Art and Literature

FRom BBC Hollywood actor Kevin Spacey wept in court as he was cleared of all charges in his sexual assault trial in London. Jurors at Southwark Crown Court returned not guilty verdicts for nine sexual offence charges relating to four men between 2001 and 2013. Speaking afterwards, Mr Spacey said he was "grateful" to the jury as he thanked them for their deliberations - which took more than 12 hours. Outside the court the Oscar winner added he was "humbled". The US actor was acquitted of seven counts of sexual assault, one count of causing a person to engage in sexual activity without consent a…

So, just like the trailer portends, the VFX in the movie are fucking gorgeous. (Except maybe that the size/altitude/position of NOMAD seems random.) But so much else about the movie is just fucking dumb. The worst is that it really has nothing to say about AI or anything in general. It's just a big popcorn war movie and the AI may as well be Vietnamese or anybody else. Alison Janney (CJ Craig in West Wing) is horribly miscast as a tough-as-nails colonel. I mean, she wasn't believable as chief of staff in WW certainly not as a KILL THEM ALL badass soldier! TWICE in the movie random animals do exactly what the protagonist needs, once against the AI …

He was not as instantly recognisable as, say, Laurence Olivier, John Gielgud or others in the panoply of great British actors. He kept himself very much out of the public limelight. But the moment he stepped on stage. you knew you were in the presence of a magnificent force in theatre. Most will remember him for his work in films, as the actor who took over the role of Albus Dumbledore in the Harry Potter movies after the death of Peter O'Toole, or as King George V in The King's Speech. But his career was firmly rooted in the stage with many magnificent performances both in the classics and contemporary theatre. Sir Nicholas Hyntner, former director of London's …

Kenneth Branagh has something that draws him to Agatha Christie. I only saw Murder on the Orient Express and loathed all the fake cg effects. I deliberately did not see Death on the Nile. Now he is back with another movie "based" on a Christie story titled A Haunting in Venice. From the review in today's Guardian, it sounds pretty awful. "With each new Branagh/Poirot movie I have sat down for some guilty-pleasure fun, and he always brings to the part a basic level of sprightly energy. But each time I have been disappointed by the trudging inertia that sets in – and here by the false-ending, fake-reveal moments which the movie just breezes through, and also by the cr…

In Japan, the name Johnny Kitagawa was until recently revered. In the 1960s he had started up the all-male agency which went on to manage most of the country's mushrooming boy band entertainment groups. He was arguably the most influential and powerful figure in Japan's entertainment industry. His agency was the gateway for many thousands of young men hoping to become stars. When he died in 2019 aged 87, his death was a national event. Even the Prime Minister sent his condolences. For those not clued in on Asian pop prior to K-Pop, J-Pop was its predecessor and a huge favourite both in Japan and around Asia for decades. When I worked in Japan in the 1990s, it was almost i…

I suppose this could have been a continuation of the Bernstein Maestro movie thread, but it seems to merit a thread of its own. We've had the black face controversy in movies and on the stage. Now its Jewish men and women complaining about non-Jews playing Jews on film. Bradley Cooper's movie about the love between Leonard Bernstein and his wife premieres at the Venice Film Fesitval on September 2. Given Bernstein's fame there is a great deal of interest in it, the more so considering he was very much a homosexual - something his wife acknowledged in a letter to him soon after their marriage - and little was publicised about his marriage during his lifetime. Cooper …

There is little doubt that larger-than-life Leonard Bernstein was one of the great figures in music - classical and popular - of the 20th century. During and after his 12-year tenure as Music Director at the New York Philharmonic Orchestra from 1957, he conducted all the world's major orchestras and was one of the favourite conductors of the notoriously picky Vienna Philharmonic. His music for West Side Story remains popular around the world as do some numbers from other musicals like On The Town and Wonderful Town. His operetta Candide is still regularly performed. Less well known is that he was gay throughout his life. As he emerged as a musician in his late teens…

Bros is said to be the first romantic comedy about 2 gay men from a major Hollywood studio. It stars Billy Eichner & Luke Macfarlane & Eichner also co-wrote the film. Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQIeBB9XMe8

Matt Baume on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@MattBaume/videos All of his videos I've watched have been in-depth and fascinating.

Not having new movies around doesn't worry me much. There are so many good ones I have not seen it gives me time to catch up. I worry much more about television, though. The last time the screenwriters were on strike there was one result we are living with today with increasing regularity - the rise of reality TV. Not that it did not exist beforehand. It just took off once the strike was underway and most of the new programmes were a poor imitation production-wise compared to their predecessors. TV suppliers need programmes, and if there are none with scripts, what better than to pack schedules with those based around programmes which make up their own dialogue. So w…

Last week the very popular Hong Kong singer Coco Lee committed suicide. She was just 48 and had been suffering from depression. This follows what seems to be a sad trend among Asian pop singers and pop idols. Just a couple of months ago K-Pop singer Moonbin of the ASTRO group was found dead in his apartment aged 25. Also this year Haeso died after leaving a suicide note in her apartment. One of the first Korean artists to die was in 2004. 22-year old Seo Jae-ho was killed when his car crashed into a truck in an action that was assumed to be deliberate. Since then there have been more than ten suspicious deaths of pop stars when driving cars or motor cycles. In …

Excellent news and about time as he is 97 years old. He is one of only 18 people to have already achieved EGOT status - winning at least one Emmy, one Grammy, One Oscar and One Tony Award - athough he has won quite a few. Of all the stories he has told, this is one of those I think his best. He is talking to his Jewish mother about his decision to marry the Roman Catholic Anne Bancroft. Wonderful actor. His mother looked at him, said nothing except rather dismissively- "Oh! Why don't you invite her over for Sunday lunch. I'll be in the kitchen - wth my head in the oven!"

She was one of a generation of great British actors like Vanessa Redgrave, Dame Judi Dench, Dame Maggie Smith and Dame Joan Plowright. Like many of those who are now better known, she started her career doing odd jobs and taking small parts in theatres around Britain. It was when she joined the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1964 that she had some of her greatest stage successes, starting with Peter Brook's production of Marat/Sade, in what several critics claimed "changed British theatre forever." She came to attention of much larger audiences with her performance in the Ken Russell movie of D. H. Lawrence's Women in Love, a role for which she won the first of her tw…

There's an interesting article in today's UK Observer newspaper with today's writers informing readers of lesser-known books about gay life that deserve to be classics. So it's not discussing the James Baldwins or Alan Holingshursts. I won't list them here as it's easy to see them headlined in the article. I will just quote a few lines from near the start. "Arriving in London in the last few months of the 1980s, I discovered that there were more than a few hundred of us and that books still had a potent force. Shared among gay friends, we could celebrate our growing confidence and visibility with new work from Alan Hollinghurst and Jeanette Winterson, develop a camp …

I loved reading this article and found it quite fascinating. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/11/nyregion/emile-griffith-boxer-champion.html?

It's the most sought-after ticket for years. The largest Exhibition of works by the 17th century Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer ever assembled are on display at Amterdam's Rijksmuseum. It opened in early February and runs until June 4th. But forget about trying to get tickets. They all sold out in just three days. After his relatively short life of 43 years, only 34 works by Vermeer have survived, of which 28 form the Exhibition. These include arguably his most famous The Girl with a Pearl Earring. Vermeer worked slowly, hence his small output, but this meant he left his wife and child in poverty and in debt. For 200 years he was all but forgotten. Then in the 19th centur…

… not to be missed. Brit actor Aaron Pierre, stage and screen, what a heartthrob! Watch for a plot surprise, unrelated to the biological brothers’ connection, in this moving film. The second superb recent film set in Scarborough, Canada. https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/brother_2022

Has anyone read this book? There are two chapters dedicated Bangkok. It's was published more than 10 years ago, before the advent of apps, so the descriptions might sound outdated, but I wonder if it's worth reading it: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1766042.Out_in_the_World

I enjoyed Season 1 and thought it was excellent. But, Season 2 is off to a great start. IMHO, Bryan Cranston has one of the most incredible roles and his acting ability is just unbelievable. He is so talented. I like the story lines and look forward to the rest of the season.

Now, admittedly, I love zombies and vampire shows. But, this one is off to a great start. I LOVE seeing Bella Ramsey (Game of Thrones) as one of the leads. She has not changed a bit IMHO. Pedro Pascal is great in everything. From Wiki: The Last of Us is an American post-apocalyptic drama television series created by Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann for HBO. Based on the 2013 video game developed by Naughty Dog, the series is set twenty years after a mass fungal infection caused by a mutation in the genus Cordyceps, which sparked a global pandemic. The infection causes its victims to transform into hostile, cannibalistic creatures resembling zombies. The series fo…

From the BBC Priscilla, Queen of the Desert is one of the most famous drag-centred films – but there should be more (Credit: Alamy) By Matt Cain From RuPaul's Drag Race to live cabaret and theatre shows, drag has never been more popular. In case you've been hiding under a wig block for the last 10 years, drag is the art of gendered impersonation, with performers exaggerating and heightening aspects of femininity or masculinity for the sake of entertainment. As it takes the world by storm, drag is changing our language, our ideas about gender, and even the way we see ourselves. I'm a huge fan of drag, so much so that it has inspired my latest…

I did not know about this series until recently. But, I watched the first season in full and now in season 2. The story is enjoyable and the acting is great. I didn't know this was another Taylor Sheridan show. It is on MTV and worth a look.

It's on Netflix and defaults to a decent enough dub that lets you pay attention to the visuals.

It surely has to be the most frivolous case for a law suit! in 1967 the great director Franco Zeffirelli auditioned 300 young actors to play Romeo and Juliet in the new movie version he was making to be released the following year. He wanted more realism than possible for a stage version and actors for the lead roles who were roughly the ages Shakespeare's play intended. He selected two who already had not only aspirations to become actors but considerable experience. Leonard Whiting had been spotted by a theatrical agent at the age of 12. For 15 months he was a regular member of the cast of Lional Bart's musical "Oliver" in London's West End. He then spent 15 months with…

Anyone other than me fed up with trying to strain and read characters’ phone texts to one another in films and TV series? Why are they without the courtesy of captions? It is, after all, dialogue and at times key to the plot, though not cinematic. Now there seems to be no end to backspacing and re-writing text passages. Why would I want to watch a fictional screen within my real screen for a depiction of a character vacillating over what to communicate? What a pain in the ass. (No I don’t have a VCR.)