HBO’s LGBT History: If These Walls Could Talk 2 (2000)

Manuel is working his way through all the LGBT-themed HBO productions...

Last week we looked at a number of HBO TV episodes from 1998 (wasn't '98 the gayest?) that gave us a broader cross-section of gay men on screen than the AIDS victim/activist/mourner trifecta we had so grown used to in the HBO films of the early 1990s. Today, we turn our attention to HBO’s first openly didactic piece of LGBT filmmaking with an anthology film helmed by a group of female writers and directors that aimed to trace a (narrow) history of the (white) lesbian experience in the twentieth century.

If These Walls Could Talk 2, much like the anthology film that gives it its name (they’re not really sequels per se, the first dealing with unwanted pregnancies), is comprised of three stories set in the same house and dealing with the same issue: namely, lesbianism. Taken together, the three short films that make up the piece (set in 1961, 1972 and 2000) track a by now familiar narrative of lesbian representation. The melodrama of the early 1960s, steeped in silence and euphemisms, gives way to a romance set against the backdrop of the vexed relationship between lesbians and feminism in the 70s, ending in a “new normal” vision of lesbian parenthood. Schematically we move from a couple to a community and then to a family. A fascinating progression but one which seems much too facile, especially when the first entry is by far its most rewarding. [More...]

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Sad Wednesday

Feeling blue today. I know there is much to be happy about but some days it just gets to you even if, with a little perspective, you know that your life is kinda all right. Call it The Pixar Depression (and please do click on that link for an illustration).

I was sad to read this morning that The Dissolve has closed shop effective immediately. They had so many good writers, and were kind enough to link us a couple of times. I hope we hear so many of their regular voices elsewhere soon. 

With the Pixar depression caveat in mind, let's just say that running a daily website about the movies is tough work. Though it can be emotionally and intellectually rewarding, it's no easily sustainable road financially... and can also be tough socially and creatively (you don't know what I'd give for a little corporate sponsorship in these parts -- the ability to hire full timers and meet in an office space and brainstorm ideas on a wipe board, and not to have to beg for donations). I sometimes think the movie web is not unlike the current movie business. If you're not on the blockbuster side of things (which for the entertainment web means paparazzi celebrity sites, aggregate list sites, and superhero movie rumor sites) you're only ever going to scrape by if you can scrape by at all. 

THINK HAPPY THOUGHTS IN THE COMMENTS TO CHEER US ALL UP

And today hug a fellow cinephile! The internet brought so many of us together but we are still a rare and precious breed. 

Halfway: Top Ten (Thus Far) and Best of Miscellania

½way mark - part 7 of 9
It's list time. [cue catchy as yet unwritten TFE jingle here]. We're nearly done with our "halfway mark - year in review" festivities so here is the top ten pictures and a few more Oscar-ish lists for good measure this fine Tuesday.

Top Ten (Thus Far)
in order of official release in 2015

-You know there are people in this world who go on first dates that are perfectly fine and then they wait awhile before they engage sexually.

-That's disgusting."

Appropriate Behavior (USA) d. Desiree Akhavan 
Jan 16th (Screened in January 2014)
Laugh out loud funny and encouragingly specific, it's a shame this Iranian American LGBT romantic comedy didn't break out bigger. It's available for full as a purchase/rental on YouTube.

Shhhh."

'71 (UK) d. Yann Demange.
Feb 27th (Screened in September 2014)
One of the scariest movies I've ever seen, full stop. Jack O'Connell wholly believable as a soldier abandoned in the projects during The Troubles, terrified for his life. 

Of Horses and Men (Iceland) d. Benedikt Erlingsson
Mar 11th (Screened in November 2013 - Iceland's 2013 Oscar Submission) 
It only took a year and half to make it to the States, but this extremely strange tragicomedy (?) about men and their horses is totally memorable. Somehow, despite expert direction and a unique fully formed sensibility, it's a debut feature?!?

7 more pictures after the jump...

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Review: Terminator Genisys

Tim here. "The best Terminator movie since T2: Judgment Day" is a statement like "Jai Courtney's best-ever performance in a movie": they both have the functional shape of a compliment, but they're not actually saying very much that's complimentary. And they're both true of Terminator Genisys, the little movie that couldn't over the 4th of July weekend, and is currently on pace to be one of 2015's most visible and embarrassing box office flops.

That's not... entirely... fair. It is probably the case that Genisys gets more wrong than it gets right, starting right from that ghastly title (it's derived from an in-movie brand name designed for maximum marketing impact, but that hardly makes it less obnoxious). But it doesn't only get things wrong, and some of its successes are genuinely worth the time it will take to watch the first half of the movie on Netflix several months from now.

The plot is a jam-packed muddle, but the basic strokes are that, in the war-torn California of 2029, human resistance leader John Connor (Jason Clarke) is about to stamp out the evil artificial intelligence system Skynet, but before he can, Skynet sends an assassin robot called a T-800 (Brett Azar's body with Arnold Schwarzenegger's younger face CGI'd on) back in time to 1984.

More...

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Can't Buy Me Link

The Movie Scene weighs in on the twitter vitriol for Pixar's Lava
NYT on famed movie producer Jerry Weintraub (1937-2015)
Film Stage Penélope Cruz returns (finally) in Spanish drama Ma Ma about a teacher with breast cancer - I'd expect fall festivals
AV Club impressive mashup of Ant-Man trailer as 50s weird science type movie, complete with Vincent Price narration
/Film in very against-type casting news, Michael Fassbender will play The Big Lebowski's "Dude" in one of Jason Reitman's live-read events

Pajiba Your first look at Pedro Pascal in Netflix's new drama Narcos -- will it be Netflix's next big hit?
Kenneth in the (212) Seems that Amanda Peterson of the 80s youth hits Explorers and Can't Buy Me Love has died at only 43. No cause of death yet 
Playbill this sounds like a bad idea: Ian Fleming's James Bond aiming for a stage musical adaptation in 2017 or 2018
i09 every Justic League hero in one montage - yes, Batman v. Superman is trying to boost excitement via Comic Con -- including many so lame they'll surely never make the big screen
Comics Alliance Guardians of the Galaxy promos its new animated series with poster, etcetera 
Playbill have you heard this awful 'what are audiences coming to?' story? Some guy tried to charge his phone in on the stage (in a fake electrical socket) at the hit comedy Hand to God

Magic Mike XXL keeping the interwebs talking...
Peter Labuza on 35mm "whiteness" and filming black blodies in Magic Mike XXL
Pajiba unanswered questions about Mike's furniture career. You know, the important stuff
Salon on XXL's dedication to a thematic taboo: Failure 
Cosmopolitan has Disney princes reimagined as strippers -- hasn't this erotic Disney trend reached its sell by date yet? I mean the craze started, what, 11 years ago or something

Showtune to Go
In addition to Magic Mike being in the pop culture air lately, during channel flipping this week I caught Hugh Jackman's filmed stage show of Oklahoma! again and remembered how much I loved Patrick Wilson in it on Broadway and began wondering why he doesn't do musicals anymore? To be frank, I don't understand his career choices at all but he should definitely do another stage musical. It's a no brainer. So let's combine the two threads with a Tony clip of Patrick Wilson's stripper musical based on the 1997 Best Picture nominee which predated Magic Mike by a lot. (Lots of fun star cameos in this Tony clip including some we've lost -- Anne Bancroft. *sniffle*)