TCM Film Festival: Final Diary - Xanadu

By Christopher James

Have you ever watched a movie and realized it was instantly going to be part of your personality? Last weekend at a midnight screening of Xanadu, I thought I was merely filling a critical hole in my gay camp movie repertoire. The Olivia Newton John 1980 roller skating musical was a bomb when it first opened. Yet, through hit songs like “Magic” and “Xanadu,” the film hung around long enough to become a cult classic. Obviously the term “roller skating musical” doesn’t inspire much confidence in a film’s storytelling prowess. Xanadu isn’t a “so bad it’s good” curio piece. Instead, it’s an ambitious, messy, misunderstood masterpiece about the ebbs and flow of art and taste...

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"Elemental" to close Cannes

by Nathaniel R

Pixar's Elemental will close the Cannes Film Festival this year (Out of Competition) on May 27th before hitting theaters on June 16th. If you missed the original Cannes lineup post, that's here. The only other Pixar features to premiere at Cannes were Up, Soul, and Inside Out. Elemental is directed by Peter Sohn (The Good Dinosaur) 

In other TFE-specific Cannes news, our favourite Italian Elisa Giudici will be covering the festival again for us this year and we couldn't be happier about that. Stay tuned for more on Cannes.

Erotic Thrillers: Part 3 – Bare Witnesses

by Cláudio Alves

Making your way through the Criterion Channel's Erotic Thrillers collection, you'll start noticing a recurring concept here and there. One of the most prevalent is voyeurism (peeping toms or bystanders) twisted by the advent of violence. That very idea can lead to a consideration of the audience as another variation of the voyeur, whether in a critique or apologia. Fear and desire often mix, the horrified spectator enlivened by the hideousness they just saw even as trauma lingers in the psyche. Excited by danger and drunk on terror, they're laid bare for the camera in more ways than one.

As our cinematic odyssey reaches the end of the eighties, we encounter three tales of eroticized witnessing – Curtis Hanson's The Bedroom Window, Bill Condon's Sister, Sister, and the program's first woman-directed picture, Sollace Mitchell's Call Me…

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Drag Race RuCap: "Grand Finale"

CLÁUDIO ALVES: It’s over. RuPaul’s Drag Race has finished its fifteenth season, crowning one of its best winners yet while putting on a show full of musical interludes, political messaging, and gorgeous gowns. Though the excitement of lipsync tournaments à la season 9 is somewhat missed, the queens seem happy with a repeat of the season 14 format, where each finalist presents a solo number before Ru picks a top two to lipsync for the crown. Anyway, that’s a matter for later. First, dear Nick, tell me your general thoughts on the finale...

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Doc Corner: Little Richard and Brooke Shields

By Glenn Charlie Dunks

Little Richard and Brooke Shields are not exactly two people I would expect to pair together. They are both icons, sure; albeit for very different reasons. Little Richard (aka Richard Wayne Penniman) is a musical legend whose flamboyant style as a singer and as an entertainer was matched only by the talent of his songwriting and his singing. Shields, on the other hand, was labelled the beauty of a generation and whose zeitgeisty cultural footprint dovetails into a variety of societal taboos that cast a long shadow over the entertainment.

What ties them together in this moment right now is that they are the subjects of two new documentaries...

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