Theater, Movies, Art and Literature

It's been almost 33 years since the actor River Phoenix died from an overdose of several drugs. He was just 23 but one of the leading young actors of his generation. His coming of age drama movie Stand By Me directed by the late Rob Reiner is being re-released to mark its 40th anniversary. Most may recall My Private idaho where he plays a gay street hustler for which he received several accolades. For one so relatively young, I had no idea he was in 16 mostly major movies. These are discussed in an article in Thursday's Guardian newspaper. Three decades ago, queer parts for straight-identifying actors were still thought of largely as awards bids (see William Hur…

I have enjoyed so many musicals since my first aged 17 and would hate to think that the genre is dying. Although I have to admit that when I saw one of the most popular - Wicked in New York - I disliked it so much I walked out at the intermission. A composer who has warned that the Broadway musical is in "dire danger" is none other than one who has made tens if not hundreds of millions of $$ from his shows worldwide - Andrew Lloyd Webber. His reasoning? “The painful truth is that, with things as they are, bringing almost any new show to Broadway makes little financial sense,” said Lloyd Webber. “The costs are immense. Creators, writers and directors are of…

One of the most inconic artists of the 20th century has passed away at the age of 88. Brought up in the grime of northern England still recovering from the deprivations of the Second World War, in 1961 aged 24 he discovered California, the year after he realised he himself was gay. He was entranced and mystified, amazed that there was a gay scene and a freedom he could never find in England of that time. He enjoyed everything, even just looking around at the houses and the swimming pools, especially the pools. Arguably his most famous painting is a A Bigger Splash, a very 'sparse' painting with as its subject the eruption of water made by someone who has just dived …

I have called it a BL movie but I am not sure if that is the right description, if only because the boys in the movie - both amateurs who act superbly - are 13 and just about to reach puberty. In 2022 CLOSE was nominated for a Golden Globe, an Oscar for Best Foreign Movie and won the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival. Following the showing, the Cannes audience gave the actors a 10-minute standing ovation. Since then it has won a slew of awards all over the world. It is a movie which had quite an effect on me to the point where I was almost in tears at its beauty, an effect which it has had on many who have watched it, including hard-bitten reviewers. Having deci…

I just watched a great movie in my Airbnb called BOYHOOD It took 12 years to make , what a fantastic movie Thanks to the director Dick Linklater

He was called the greatest male ballet dancer, although this is hotly disputed in the ballet world as many believe his countryman Nijinsky tops that list. The fact is, though, that while no one now alive saw the great Nijinsky dance, many of us had the joy of seeing Rudof Nureyev dance, often with his long-time dance partner Margot Fonteyn who was 19 years his elder. When on stage he commanded it with his extraordinary almost animalistic presence, his amazing leaps and stunning virtuosity. Yet he was at heart always the peasant lad he had been born into in Siberia. Uneducated, uncouth, boastful of his talent and according to many not much fun to be with. Yet he could…

Is it a sign of age that Awards shows just seem to get more and more boring each year? But then why watch them? This year it was in the hope that Timothee Chalamet would not win the Best Actor Oscar - and he didn't! Like so many, I really enjoyed his performance in Call Me By Your Name. Increasingly since then, I find him - frankly - boring. I also have little respect for anyone who says he wants to be the GOAT. You can have achieved the acclamation of GOAT but to state that as your goal in your professional life for me is a definite no-no! This is what he said after he won for the movie A Complete Unknown at last years SAG Awards - “I can’t downplay the s…

Someone decided that it might be an idea to make a movie about Melania Trump. The Donald perhaps? I have no idea how it will play in the USA after it opens on Thursday - pretty well in MAGA territory I expect - but in London sales are nowhere near box office jubilation. Melania opens on Friday later this week. Tim Richards, the Chief Executive of Vue one of the UK's leading cinema operators, has described the public reaction so far as "soft". Well, Mr. Richards, if the public reaction to Melania is "soft", what in your view is disastrous, I wonder? At Vue's flagship cinema in London's Islington, precisely one ticket has been sold so far for the first showing and two …

One of the Oscar short-listed Documentaries has the title Cashing Out. As the HIV and AIDS crisis developed it became a cottage industry which an article in today's Guardian terms "ghoulish and and liberating at the same time." Faced with a lover who is dying of AIDS, Scott Page recalled that his partner had a good term life insurance policy which would pay out on his death, at which time it would do him no good whatever. Short on cash, Scott placed an advertisement in the local paper to see if someone would buy his partner's policy in return for an advance. One did, and a reduced amount was agreed, thereby enabling his partner to live out what remained of his life i…

OK, not a sex XXX but damn good. Good show and good acting. Well, good acting for this kind of movie. It was based on Rachel Reid's Game Changers novel series which I read a few several years back. I really enjoyed it.

Name those ultra-distinctive male voices from stage and screen and the numbers are few. Richard Burton is arguably the first name that will come to mind. Sir John Gielgud. James Earl Jones and perhaps Sean Connery for his Scottish burr! In our more recent times, unquestionably at the top of my list would have been Alan Rickman who died ten years ago of pancreatic cancer. A stalwart of the British stage before his breakout movie role as the villain in the first Die Hard movie, from the Judge in the Stephen Sondheim musical Sweeney Todd, Ang Lee's Sense and Sensibility, Love Actually, the bewitching Perfume; the Story of a Murderer, with the young gay actor Ben Whisha…

Today's Guardian newspaper ranks this actor's top 20 movies in order - although who does the ranking is not stated. I had not realised his career and that of his pal Ben Affleck were basically on the skids until they turned to screenwriting and won the Oscar for Best Screenplay with Good Will Hunting in 1997. It achieves #11 on the list. The last two are 1990s movies which I have not seen. #18 is Syriana which I did enjoy. #13, #14 and #15 are three of probably his best-known movies - The Martian, Saving Private Ryan and Oppenheimer in that order. Perhaps inevitably the first three in his Bourne series come in at #10, #5 and #3. Thankfully his last one titled si…

In Japan during December and to celebrate the upcoming year, virtually every orchestra gives performances of Beethoven’s famous Ninth Symphony with its “Ode to Joy.” So on this first day of 2026 it is appropriate to play just a small part of it. But this is a special performance that was created by one of Europe’s most influential choreographers Maurice Bejart who happened to have been born exactly 99 years ago today. Bejart decided the Symphony is so universal with its themes of brotherhood and unity it should include dance as an essential visual element to add to the symphony orchestra, four soloists and large chorus. So he created a version to be performed in the …

I can't see any posts on here about Bridget Bardots death at 91 ⚰️ I was a little shocked when the newsreader announcing her death said she was once in trouble making homophobic sluts 😲🏳️‍🌈

Browsing at random, just turned up this delightful survey of the many parodies across the years of Longfellow's 'Song of Hiawatha.' http://udspace.udel.edu/bitstream/handle/19716/4663/article5.pdf?sequence=1

It's not due out in the USA till December 25 (presumably in time to be included in the Oscars) and the UK till December 26 but the critics embargo has just been lifted. So there are reviews everywhere. Based on the trailer, I totally fail to understand what it is really about. Yet most of the critics are raving about it, especially Chalamet's performance. It seems to be about a ping pong player in the 1950s, a Jewish shoe salesman who decides he is going to be the greatest ping pong player in the world. And he almost makes it. The critics call Chalamet's performance one of the best he has ever given on screen, definitely in Oscar contention. If you want to read more there…

Frank Gehry created iconic buildings and is acknowledged as one of the greatest architects of our tim. He was in his 60s when he was given the commission to design the new Guggenheim Museum in the Spanish city of Bilbao. Using titanium for much of the exterior, that one building transformed what was then basically an industrial backwater into a tourism and industrial hub. In a city few had visited, the Frank Gehry designed museum drew 1.3 million visitors last year, mostly from outside Spain. In the USA, Walt Disney's widow had given the Los Angeles Philharmonic US$50 million as the lead donation for the construction of a new concert hall in downtown LA. After much …

I was talking to friends last night about the James Bond movies and who might be taking over from Daniel Craig. It reminded me of "Dr. No" which had an 'in' joke in which Sean Connery is about to go up a staircase when he spots a famous painting. The Duke of Wellington by Goya had been stolen a year earlier and disappeared. It eventually was recovered 3 years later. Photo: United Artists It started us discussing not merely art theft but stolen art (of which the Nazi hierarchy were probably the best) and art which is kept from public view in the homes of the mega-rich. Many major stolen artworks have never been recovered. These include works by Picasso, Rem…

Remember Shakespeare in Love, a movie full of wonderfully dazzling wit and charm? Its writer, Sir Tom Stoppard sadly died yesterday aged 88. I can recall seeing his very first play Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, an amazingly brilliant concept of what goes on offstage during a performance of Hamlet. It has one near iconic line, "Look on every exit as being an entrance somewhere else." He had first tried his hand at journalism and then theatre criticism before turning to writing. His body of work for film, TV and radio was hugely impressive. He won an Oscar for Shakespeare in Love, as well as five Tony Awards in the USA and three Olivier Award in the UK. Other …

Yet another anniversary. This time the 40th since what was to become the winner of the Best Oscar was first shown, director Milos Forman's adaptation of the Peter Shaffer play Amadeus. On the face of it, the movie is about the rivalry that existed between the conventional and somewhat boring Viennese Court Composer Antonio Salieri and a young composer brought from the Court at Salzburg, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. In the movie, that rivalry leads to near hatred with Salieri responsible for Mozart's early death at the age of 36. Salieri then goes mad. Like several other issues in the play and the film, that is dramatic licence for there is no evidence that Mozart's death…

For most reading Gay Guides, Richard Burton must have featured more than a little in our lives. He was after all not only a star of the cinema screen, he was regularly featured in the gossip columns of newspapers for a whole variety of reasons. Perhaps ironically, as in the previous thread, he came from the same Welsh stock as Sir Anthony Hopkins, although raised following the very early death of his mother in a poor Welsh village by one of his devoted much older sisters, Cecilia. His inexplicable acting talent was discovered by the English teacher at his school, Philip Burton, whose name he assumed for his acting career. Like Hopkins, he was also known for his drinking, …

He is unquestionably a great actor. Like other British actors who have reached stardom - Richard Burton, Michael Caine, Sean Connery, Albert Finney etc. - he came from a very poor background with little prospect of more than menial jobs. It was at school they discovered acting, or others discovered that talent in them. In an age when the government subsidised admittance to acting schools like the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA), they started to blossom. That is how the young Anthony Hopkins started his long career in the business of acting. Now at the age of nearly 88 and with a hugely successful film career behind him that includes two Best Actor Oscars (The Si…

50 years have just passed since the very gay Pier Paolo Pasolini's last film Salo, or as it is often referred to as The 100 Days of Sodom, was premiered. Based on the writing of the Marquis de Sade it is as usual with Pasolini highly erotic, yet also as described by The Guardian as a "terrifying masque about fascism and compliance, an accounting of both sides of the totalitarian coin. Like De Sade’s own writing, it’s about power, not pleasure: who possesses it and whom it destroys. It’s an apocalyptic masterpiece that remains unbearable to watch." It was so shocking it was banned in the UK for 25 years. The Marquis de Sade had written the book while imprisoned in the…

It seems slightly strange that one of the screen's major icons died 70 years ago just before his third and last movie appeared. I had never seen Rebel Without A Cause until this afternoon when it was shown on a True Visions channel. I had looked forward to it but was perhaps a bit disappointed, both with the movie and with James Dean. Natalie Wood's character also seemed to me two-dimensional and more than a little unbelievable. Inevitably it is dated and the post-war rebel image of the younger characters seemed tame - at least when you compare it with, for example, the gang warfare in the 1960s West Side Story. The concept of teenagers as a class of their own was still r…