Queer Beacon

Iron Man (2008) - Shipwreck 3

Even though RDJ's portrayal of a superhero was a little over the top for me, I still liked Iron Man -- the gay content, not so much.

In Iron Man, RDJ plays a rich arms dealer (he owns a company that manufactures high tech missiles) who, after being kidnapped in a rogue country, is forced to rethink some of his values and actions. Cute.

While being driven in a military convoy to this site where he was going to make a demonstration of the latest weapon developed by his company, RDJ acts all surprised when he realizes the driver is actually a girl -- not so nice to the butch looking ladies.  Later into the movie, RDJ makes a joke with real life homophone Terrence Howard -- something about Terrence going out with a tranny or something like that.  Very derogatory. Not nice.

Fur (2006) - LightShed 8

This one is pretty creepy, but in a nice way. 

Fur's main character is called Diane Arbus (played by Nicole Kidman) -- the movie goes out of its way to make sure we know the story is not about real-life photographer artist Diane Arbus. 

In the movie, Kidman is fascinated with people who are usually thought of as freaks.  She is not fascinated as one would be in a circus, she really feels alive around different people. She befriends a few trannies and gays.  That was super nice.

The movie gets creepy as she falls for a uberhairy Robert Downey Jr. and cheats on her perfectly hot husband (played by Ty Burrell).

The movie is well put together, the acting is decent, but if you actually see this one, you should see it because of its kitsch value (in any case, don't expect much).  The flick is out on DVD.

Superbad (2007) - Shipwreck 4

Superbad lives up to its hype.  I think Jonah Hill, Michael Cera, and Christopher Mintz-Plasse (the three main characters) do a terrific job -- that is especially the case for Mintz-Plasse, who plays the instant classic McLovin. 

In Superbad, Jonah Hill is on a quest to lose his virginity in his last days of high school, he drags his best friend Michael Cera and not so best friend Mintz-Plasse along for the ride.  The three are social outcasts.

Jonah's plan involves getting lots of alcohol for all people in this party he was (almost miraculously) invited to.  He thinks that if he is able to get this girl drunk he'll have a good shot at lovemaking.  The entire movie revolves around this one day in his life.

Unfortunately, Superbad is not so good for the gays.  There are a couple of "faggot" slurs used by bullies teasing Jonah Hill.  That is not so bad fo us, though: they are bullies who learn a lesson at some point.  But later in the movie, Jonah Hill calls Mintz-Plasse "faggol" (sounding like a mix of "fag" and Fogel, the name of Minz-Plasse's character).  Nothing really major, but we would be better off without that..."Gay" is also used a couple of times to refer to something bad or tacky. 

A potentially redeeming factor would come from the exchange of "I love you's" between Jonah and Michael (we see that scene in one of the trailers).  I thought they were going to make out or something, but we get nothing.  After the I love you's they sleep next to each other and Jonah Hill wakes up with an awkward attitude, as if he is embarassed by something that might have happened at night.

Also, Bill Hader's character briefly mentions an arrest of a man-she; the reference is kinda neutral to bad (it seems to me, trannies are always being arrested in comedies).

I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry (2007) - LightShed 10

I cannot believe how much buzz this movie got.  The actors (Kevin James, Adam Sandler, and Jessica Biel) were everywhere.  You turned on your TV and there they were, promoting Chuck & Larry. 

If you watched pretty much any TV show during the past month or so, you know that Chuck & Larry is about two firefighters (Kevin and Adam) getting into a domestic partnership in order for Larry (Kevin James) to maintain pension related benefits for his kids, a little girl and a little gay boy.

The movie is mediocre.  Maybe reading a few bad reviews will help you lower your expectations and allow you to enjoy the movie -- that kinda worked for me.

As for gay content, there is a lot of it, of course.  A lot of it, especially in the first half of the movie, is really bad on the gay side.  Really bad.  I will talk about that first, and then about what in the movie makes me think it deserves the highest positive gay rating on the Beacon: LightShed 10.  I will talk about the positive stuff after the jump because it will ruin the plot.

I see four really big problems with Chuck & Larry: (i) it suggests gays should not get rights lest people abuse the system with all sorts of fake marriages/domestic partnerships; (ii) Adam Sandler (whom we are made to like and stay on his side) uses "faggot" to refer to gays; (iii) Adam Sandler hits Kevin James hard on the face when Kevin approaches him with kissing intentions; and (iv) Kevin and Adam give Kevin's gay son a hard time for being gay-bound (the kid likes musical theater, etc.).

I think the movie overcomes the problems above, except for the first one, and that is very sad.  Gays are in need of rights and acceptance so that they can be happy and stop being bashed and killed on a daily basis.  I think that, despite the effort made in the movie to the contrary (I talk about that effort after the jump), there's still a message that fraud can occur, and that is a message that assholes like Bill O'Reilly, who might be looking for a cheap, idiotic, argument against gay rights, will find in Chuck & Larry.  So, that's really bad.

Beforing moving on to the positive aspects of the movie, let me address an important criticism the movie has received.  I read somewhere that one reason the movie was homophobic was the fact that the gays in the movie were mostly stereotypical characters, basically queeny, effeminate guys, particularly the gay son and this firefighter who is all macho and then, when it turns out that he is actually gay, he turns into a flaming 'mo the minute he comes out. 

I can see how stereotypes hurt people and how stereotypes shouldn't be encouraged.  But I think the argument against stereotypes of gays as super happy queens is actually based on a not so noble argument; the argument may actually be: If there were no effeminate / queeny gay men, it is possible that we would already have equal rights because we would have an easier case for how normal gay people are; it would be easier to show that we really are equal and "normal".  But that is not what life and happiness should be about.  Life should be about people being happy no matter how they look, talk, walk, etc.  What the hell is the problem with a guy being effeminate?  Again, I know society sees that as a problem, but why do we have to comply with assigned roles?  Here's what needs to be changed: people who see a problem in an effeminate man (or a butch woman, at that).  That's where the problem lies.  The mind of those people, that's what needs changing.  And, mind you, that sadly includes a lot -- I mean a lot -- of gays too.  People need to accept that a man can be effeminate and that a woman can be butch and everything else in-between.  Femmies and butchies are people just like you and me, and deserve the dignity all human beings deserve.  So, you need to seriously reconsider your views on effeminate men and butch women if you have a problem with them.  They must be embraced and that needs to start with us gays.

Just one last think before jumping into the reasons why I think the movie deserves a LightShed 10. The movie is surprisingly racist towards the Chinese.  Adam Sandler tries to get a few nasty laughs out of this Chinese guy in the movie.  Not nice.

Read on for the remaining of my gay discussion, or go see this mediocre, but very gay-important, movie.

Mr. Brooks (2007) - LightShed 6

The rundown: Dane Cook sucked the hardest, but there was a lot of sucking (I mean, a lot) left for Kevin Costner, Demi Moore and William hurt.  God, it was awful.

If you saw the trailer, you know that in Mr. Brooks, Kevin Costner plays a successful business man who kills for pleasure.  He wants to stop but he just can't: William Hurt (who plays Kevin's alter ego -- they talk to each other like there's no tomorrow) keeps convincing him to continue killing. 

Dane Cook watches one of Kevin's jobs and starts to blackmail.  Demi Moore is a millionaire cop (yes, a millionaire cop) who wants to put an end to it all.

There was a tiny bit of gay content: in one scene, Dane Cook is reading this note that must be read by putting together words that had been circled on a newspaper, and one of the circled words is "same" on a headline that says "Same-sex Marriage" -- that was nice (although we can't really read what the article under the headline says).

Curiosity: did you see the video where Dane Cook talks about a gay roommate?  I don't know what to think of it (watch that here).

Small Town Gay Bar (2006) - LightShed 10

By Guest Reviewer Pam's House Blend

At the last NC Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, I saw small town gay bar, a documentary by Malcolm Ingram (it was exec produced by Kevin Smith, yes, the director of Clerks). It was a wonderful look at what social life is like for gays in the rural South. I mean really rural -- the two Mississippi bars profiled were in Shannon (pop. 1,657) and Meridian (39,968). Durham, for comparison's sake has an estimated pop. of 204,845.

Watching this film is like going back in time if you live in a progressive area or large city; the closet is a necessity here, as you might imagine. Being out can be a death sentence for these people. The bar is their only refuge, their only time to let their hair down, be themselves and feel safe to be who they are, as gays, lesbians, trans, black, white -- all that matters is that you know you aren't alone. Drag queens had a home to perform out and proud at Rumors and Crossroads (now called Different Seasons).

The audience howled as Ingram interviewed the unhinged Rotting Cryptkeeper^TM Fred Phelps. Fred was his animated self, talking about "fanning the flames of fag lust" and it was clear he's energized and surprised by "all the fags that come out to protest him."

The Phelps Klan picketed the funeral of Scotty Joe Weaver, who was killed right next door in Alabama. The 18-year-old out gay teen, known to many at the Mississippi bars, was murdered by a trio of backwoods homobigots; he was tied to a chair in his trailer, beaten, stabbed, and partially decapitated. His body was dumped in the woods and then set on fire. No wonder these people remain closeted.

And since this is Mississippi, Ingram had to stop by the HQ and nexus of homohate, Don and Tim Wildmon's American Family Association, which is in Tupelo. Interviewees said that Tim Wildmon and the AFA had people scoping out a local bridge in a small town in Mississippi taking down the tag numbers of people who were going over the bridge to go to the gay bar.

The next day on his radio show, Don would read the tag numbers on the air. This, he said, "would keep people accountable." Evil does exist.

One of the queens in the film (who does drag at the bars by night and is a veterinary tech by day), and the sister of one of the bar owners, said that the Wildmons are a bunch of hypocrites because they have a homo sitting right there in the family circle.

And that's no surprise, is it?

You may ask, why on earth do these gay folks stay in these tiny towns? They are subjected to the possible loss of a job if someone outs you, shunning by family, or worse, you end up like Scotty Weaver. Kate and I talked about this for a while [QB note: Kate is Pam's wife], but it's pretty clear that for many gays in rural areas, their fear of living in a hostile world like this is actually less stressful than the thought of living in a large, urban environment. The "big city" for them may be a 2-3 hour drive away, and it seems an inhospitable, cold place in comparison to the world they know and make for themselves. back home, hidden in the shadows of bars tucked away, deep in the woods.

It's both easy and difficult to understand. But the overwhelming theme running through this film is that we are everywhere. No matter how tight the bible belt is pulled, your tiny town has LGBT citizens, and they are making their space. The battle for survival and to be out in small towns is the last frontier. It's coming, and people like Wildmon are desperate to lean on that closet door to keep it firmly shut with their hate tactics. In the end, these fundies are going to lose.

Little Children (2006) - LightShed 5

Don't you just love fall?  The crisp cool air (I know, corny) and all the great movies coming out.  There are so many good movies out there to be seen...and Little Children should really be on the top of your list.

In the movie, Kate Winslet plays a mom who is sort of sick of her day-to-day routine and of the suburban moms surrounding her.  She goes to this park with her little daughter and there she befriends Patrick Wilson's character.  He plays a stay at home dad and former jock who is sick of his wife (played by Jennifer Connelly) expecting him to be a big-shot attorney. 

Great acting.  Kate rocked.

Oh, and there's also a sex offender on the loose, which creates an awkward tension throughout the movie.  I was glad the sex offender did not prey on young boys (remember the distinction between gays and perverts has been recently blurred with the Foley scandal).

Anyway, we had gay content.  A narrator in the movie is telling us that Kate's husband is considering an affair, and the narrator goes on to say that that would be as unbelievable as someone telling Kate's husband that his neighbor is a transvestite and his co-worker likes to have rough gay sex in bathrooms.  We see those two hypothetical scenes.  Sort of neutral stance.

We see a lot of Patrick Wilson's butt and torso.  A lot.

Little Children is on theaters now in limited release. 

I have a bit of gossip, NSFW pics, and an additional gay content after the jump.  I will spoil the plot a bit though. 

The trailer is here:

Shortbus (2006) - LightShed 10

I was expecting way more from Shortbus.  The movie was okay, it wasn't bad, but I was expecting something of the caliber of Hedwig, and Shortbus is amateurish in comparison with John Cameron Mitchell's debut.

In Shortbus, we follow a bunch of people who are experimenting with their sexuality in an attempt to find happiness and let people penetrate them, emotionally.  In New York.  Cute, right?

The main characters in Shortbus include Sook-Yin Lee, playing a sex therapist who never had an orgasm, and Paul Dawson and PJ DeBoy, playing a gay couple entertaining an open relationship. 

I knew about all the genitalia in the movie, erections everywhere, orgies and all, and I went into the movie thinking it was really just going to be an excellent mainstream porn movie.  But it is not at all like that, you should really believe when you read the movie is about sexuality, not porn.  Although the countless sex scenes are very candid, you don't really see porn anywhere.  Most of those scenes carry a quite heavy emotional content. 

I guess for that reason alone the movie deserves to be seen.

You see all sorts of sexual orientations in Shortbus, and although some of the scenes may be a tad shocking (nothing too bad though I don't think), the positive message of acceptance was everywhere.

The soundtrack was superb.  I can't wait for it to come out on November 7.  I saw the movie in the Vancouver International Film Festival, but you can check if it's playing in a theater near you, here.

Unfortunately, most of the reviews I read were harsh.  The trailer is here.

Crank (2006) - Shipwreck 2

Hello folks!  I'm back.  My Ph.D. program started and it's been crazy already.  Sorry for the lack of posts this week ;-)

To make matters worse, my first post in a few days is about an awful movie.  Barely watchable, even with all the skin and wood Jason Statham gave us.

In Crank, Jason Statham is a hit man who kills a big shot kingpin.  The revenge he gets is pretty nasty, he gets injected with some drug that will kill him if his heartbeat falls below a certain rate, so he tries to keep the adrenaline up, running around, beating people up, drinking Red Bull, wreaking havoc...I hated it all.

I had noted in a previous post that Pedro played a tranny.

The portrayal of the tranny was not so bad.  Jason's character had her as a trusted friend (she was a criminal, but so was everybody else in the movie).  However, Jason uses homophobic slurs all the time, he teases a few gangsters by calling them faggots, that sort of stuff.  Nasty.  Having a tranny friend does not give him the right to slur, right?

At least we got lots of wood from Jason.  At one point he gets a shot that is supposed to help him out with his hearbeat rate, and that shot ends up giving him wood.  Like this one:

I had posted that picture before, and wondered whether that was an actual bulge...it turns out, it was a bulge.  We also got a little of his butt, but not nearly enough to keep you really interested in this piece of crap. 

Shadowboxer (2006) - LightShed 5

Good movie. 

In Shadowboxer, Cuba Gooding Jr. and Helen Mirren are a couple and contract killers, oh, and stepmother and stepson.  They are hired to kill a pregnant Vanessa Ferlito, who plays the wife of a nasty mob kingpin (Stephen Dorff).  As Helen is about to shoot Vanessa, she starts to have her baby and Helen decides to protect mother and baby.

The movie is somber but somehow not as gross as you'd think (considering the edgy stepmother/stepson sex scenes -- they almost make you not pay attention to all the screen time Cuba's butt gets, almost).

Helen and Cuba were dressed by Vivienne Westwood:

The Westwood wardrobe was not the only gay content in Shadowboxer.  We had a bit more for our gay movie review.  In the first scene with gay content, Macy Gray (who plays Vanessa's best friend) is in a bar, and we see a transvestite/tranny sitting there, just chilling.  Macy Gray buys her a drink.  Cute, right?

But then, later, one of Cuba's hits turns out to be a dad who likes to get it from behind from transvestites.  Cuba shows up in drag and as the dad bends over, Cuba shoots him but sees a card written by the guy's son.  That was a bit of negative light (I think it is fair to assume the guy was cheating on his wife, but that is not certain though).

There were quite a few homo-erotic moments.  In the first homo moment, in the beginning of the movie, before Stephen Dorff is about to kill a guy, he kind of caresses the guy's hair a few times.  Gently and sexually almost.  Later, in an after work-out scene, Cuba is in the locker room and a guy passes behind him, very close.  Cuba acknowledges that but is not bothered.

Everybody was hot in the movie.  Stephen Dorff and Cuba were hot beyond belief.  And Stephen goes full frontal.  You can really see the whole thing, right in the middle of a sex scene. 

Stephen is giving it to a lady, and there's quite a bit of agitation outside his room, so he gets out and you see all.  His sizable tool was protected only by a condom.  And it was soft, flaccid, not semi-erect.   

The movie was so sexual that I almost put it in the I Can't Believe It's Not Porn category, but the lack of a hard penis kept the movie out of that club.  An erect penis is where I draw the line.

So, we had two diverse, uncommon couples, Cuba and Helen, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Mo'nique.  I almost wanted a gay couple included, but was glad there was none. 

The couples, as nicely diverse as they were, turned out to be disturbingly dysfunctional.  Helen and Cuba were stepmother/stepson, and Joseph and Mo'nique were pretty screwed up, she a crack whore and Joseph a mob physician.  So, I was glad us gays were not equated.

Watch the trailer after the jump.