June. It's a Wrap

June is always the toughest month for me to wrap my head 'round. It's my busy birthday month, the summer hits, the blog dips. And when it's over I'm all like "What? The year is half over?!?!?" In the last week of June we celebrated Gay Moments in Cinema and though it wasn't planned we gave equal time to movies before gay liberation (Suspicion, All About Eve, The Maltese Falcon) as after (My Beautiful Laundrette, and My Own Private Idaho) which is kinda how we always do here at TFE, spanning all eras of movies. We can't be penned in by the now! I didn't have time to revisit but I myself kept thinking about Weekend, that recent gay romantic drama that instantly seems to have seized hearts, gay and straight, around the internet. I couldn't be prouder of that movie if it was the last movie on earth. Where do you hope gay cinema goes in the future?  

 Anywhay herewith a handful of highlights from the month that was in case you, like many people during the summer, don't get to your favorite blog (oh you know you "like" us) as often as you'd like...

• Great Zombie Makeover Warm Bodies DVD extras
• Bull Durham a 25th anniversary appreciation
• Scandinavian Adventure a few notes from the longest vacation I've taken
• Teen Wolf returns, gets "tattoo" -TV Review
• i ♥ glowing eyes a supernatural gallery
• Leonardo DiCaprio and Oscar do you think they've treated him fairly?
• top ten 1960s Hitchcock, Bergman and double dose of Deneuve and Natalie Wood

Coming in July:

• QUEUE 'EM!: We'll be talking about Dead Ringers (1988), Mary Poppins (1964) so get familiar (or familiar again)
• SEE EM?: We'll be visiting the multiplex for The Lone Ranger and The Wolverine and the arthouse for Oscar hopefuls Fruitvale Station and Blue Jasmine among other new releases. 
• SUGGEST IT: Want somethin'? Say so. 

Reviews: I'm So Excited & The Heat

This review was originally published in my column at Towleroad

and i know i know i know i know i know i want you i want you ♫

Here's a film you'll never see on an airplane. Pedro Almodóvar's latest, I'm So Excited!, takes place (almost) entirely aboard an airplane like some lost "bottle episode" of an aborted Almodóvarian sitcom. But the stewards and pilots are less concerned with fastening your seat belt than unzipping your pants and more interested in spiking drinks than pouring them. It's arrived just in time for Gay Pride Weekend and what great timing; this is by far the gayest thing Pedro has done since Bad Education (2004) in which Gael García Bernal famously both tucked his junk for drag duties and showed it off in wet underwear poolside.

I think it was the internet critic David Poland (of Movie City News fame) who dubbed that earlier film "fag noir" and took some heat for that but I personally don't think Almodóvar would have minded. In fact, for a long time I miscredited the tag to Pedro himself. Pedro's characters are often outrageously hedonistic from nympho nuns to homicidal hotties to transgendered hookers and even the sanest among them act on melodramatic or comic impulse without shame or apology. In short, to appropriate a quote from Rich Juzwiak they're 'as faggy as they want to be'. And that's just the ladies! [more...]

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Great Moments in Gayness: "Suspicion"

Team Experience is celebrating Gay Pride with their favorite moments in gay cinema history... Here's Deborah Lipp (from the great TV site 'Basket of Kisses') with an unusual choice... 

Happy Gay Pride Weekend Everyone!

My favorite gay cinematic moment is not a gay movie, not a gay scene, not explicitly erotic, not much of anything. I love it for the electrifying presence of gayness in a movie from 1941. I am speaking about Alfred Hitchcock's Suspicion.

I've almost never seen this movie mentioned when discussing gayness in movies, not even when discussing gayness in Hitchcock movies. People talk about homoeroticism in Strangers on a Train or the mad lesbian love of Mrs. Danvers for Rebecca, but Suspicion is overlooked.

Johnnie (Cary Grant) and Lina (Joan Fontaine) visit Johnnie's friend Isobel, a writer of murder mysteries. Also attending dinner is Phyllis. Based on their familiarity and the way they serve dinner, it is obvious the two women live together. Moreover, while Isobel ("Izzy") dresses as a British lady should, Phyllis ("Phil" to her partner) is in a man's suit and tie, with a man's hairstyle 

And this is what's so glorious. Phil and Izzy aren't dangerous. They're not villains. They're not the subject of a joke, nor exaggerated, nor horrifying. They simply are. A butch/femme couple, in 1941, relaxing at home, entertaining a straight couple, chatting about books. Fifty years later, Basic Instinct inspired protest from the LGBT community, because it was still almost impossible to see gays and lesbians in a movie unless they were killers or crazy, suicidal or deranged or tragic or pornified, or—best case scenario—the wacky sexless neighbor.

Phil and Izzy are just an ordinary gay couple. They're not in the movie because they're gay, and their gayness is never mentioned. That they're butch/femme—probably the least-represented type of queer couple in the media—just adds to my pleasure.

I love Phil and Izzy so much.

Box Office: Cop Ladies vs. Cuddly Monsters vs. Zombie Swarms

This week's box office battle found swarms of zombies, feisty lady cops, cuddly collegiate monsters, paramilitary armies and indestructible men in Kryptonian bodysuits loudly fighting for the souls of the US moviegoer, while sacrificing their ear drums to the angry cinema gods. As incredible as it sounds, Brad Pitt's Zombie Apocalypse might be the quietest movie in the top five this week. They build the silence into the story and we thank them. Give them a Best Sound Mixing nomination as mark of gratitude, plz.

Yes, I made this title with The Heat's official 'cat font'. Don't judge.

01 MONSTERS UNIVERSITY $46.1 (cum. $171) Review
02 THE HEAT $40 *NEW* GIVEAWAY CONTEST
03 WORLD WAR Z  $29.8 (cum. $123.7) Review
04 WHITE HOUSE DOWN $25.7 *NEW*
05 MAN OF STEEL $20.8 (cum. $248.6) Superheroes and National Security
04 THIS IS THE END  $8.7 (cum. $74.6)
07 NOW YOU SEE ME  $5.5 (cum. $104.6)
08 FAST AND FURIOUS 6 $2.4 (cum. $233.3)
09 STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS $2 (cum. $220.5) The Dumbing Down of Star Trek
10 THE INTERNSHIP $1.4 (cum. $41.7)

11 IRON MAN 3 $1.4 (cum. $405.4) Reviewed
12 THE PURGE $1.2 (cum. $62.7)
13 THE BLING RING $.8 (cum. $4.3) 
14 EPIC $.8 (cum. $103) 
15 BEFORE MIDNIGHT $.6 (cum. $5.7) 5 Reasons Why...  

In wide release: The Heat's $40 million bow makes it the biggest opening ever for Melissa McCarthy and, more impressively, Sandra Bullock who has had a lot of sturdy opening weekends over the past two decades. (ENTER OUR GIVEAWAY CONTEST) Incredibly Iron Man 3 is still hovering near the top ten, and is now the 5th highest grossing movie of this young decade (with The Hunger Games as its next target... just 3 million away).

In limited release: Joss Whedon's quickie Much About About Nothing adaptation crossed the $2 million mark at the box office; The hot arthouse debut was Pedro Almodóvar's I'm So Excited! (ENTER OUR GIVEAWAY CONTEST) which won $100,000 on just five screens. Unfortunately without the starpower of Penélope or Antonio and with lesser reviews than Pedro tends to wins, it's unlikely that this one will do as well as usual for him; And finally Before Midnight is losing theaters rapidly now and when adjusted for ticket price inflation will be the lowest grosser in the series. I was hoping for some sort of crossover miracle but the fanbase hasn't grown or its target audiences is too lazy not to wait for DVD. (le sigh)

WHAT DID YOU SEE THIS WEEKEND?

Great Moments in Gayness: Their Own Private Campfire

Team Experience is celebrating Gay Pride with their favorite moments in gay cinema... Here's Craig (of 'Take Three' fame) on a certain seminal early 90s trip... Happy Gay Pride Weekend Everyone!

The open road and the “messed-up” faces along the way are what haunt lost hustler Mike (River Phoenix) most in My Own Private Idaho. In Gus Van Sant’s seminal 1991 gay road movie Mike trips through narcoleptic encounters with both male and female clients, Wizard of Oz-style barns crashing to the ground, talking porno mag covers, tableaux vivants sex scenes and Shakespeare’s Henry IV. His is an eventful, hardscrabble life filled with grit and longing. Each scene arouses memorable moments that every Idaho fan — gay, bi, straight or whatever it takes to have a nice day — surely still carries with them.

The most hopelessly romantic moment in the film and one of its best scenes is Mike’s campfire stopover. Somewhere out there on the prairie, in their very own private corner of Idaho, Mike and his ‘prince’ Scott (Keanu Reeves) make a fire and hunker down for the night. The prairie is dark and the fire’s embers glow like Mike’s unrequited feelings. He wants to set his spurs a-jinglin’, so ventures a question

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