HBO’s LGBT History: In the Gloaming (1997)

Manuel is working his way through all the LGBT-themed HBO productions. This series is usually on Wednesday's but tomorrow Ann Dowd is in the house. Stay tuned! - Editor

Last week we looked at the earnest adaptation of one of the best-selling non-fiction account of the early years of the AIDS epidemic, And the Band Played On. It feels rather like a backhanded compliment to the well-meaning if sprawling film, but you should really watch it to see Lily Tomlin, Steve Martin, Ian McKellen, Swoosie Kurtz and Richard Gere doing their thing. This week, we’re still not done looking at the AIDS epidemic. You have to begin to wonder whether HBO knew there were other stories worth telling that included the LGBT community, but then AIDS really was seismic in the way it defined LGBT representation in the decade(s) that followed, so it’s hard to argue against its ubiquity.

But ubiquitous doesn't describe the next topic: Here we are with the moving directorial debut of a famous actor starring a six-time Oscar nominee, an Oscar winner, a future Oscar nominee, a startlet from a Hollywood dynasty, and a young actor who’d go on to become a Tony winner and then the star in a long-running successful medical drama, and it is almost impossible to find. This week we're talking In the Gloaming... 

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Links Today. ANN DOWD Thursday!

The Guardian have you heard about the school Tilda Swinton helped found in Scotland? Is there no end to her wonder?
HugoHugo made a cheeky piece of Jurassic World / Chris Pratt fan art "Clever Girl" that went viral immediately. Sadly almost no one is crediting the source! 
Deadline in the absolute worst "WHY?" inducing news of the week, Maleficent is getting a sequel. I mean, the answer is "Money, duh!" but in TFE's opinion if the answer is only "money" to any movie-making question than we have a problem in the movies
In Contention Kris Tapley thinks Inside Out is Pixar's best film (quite a statement)

MNPP shares the happy news for Winona Ryder fans "Noni got a job!" i.e. a lead role for once - new Netflix show
Screen Crush on the rise of "selective sequels"
Towleroad Kristen Stewart's mother confirms that her daughter is dating a female personal assistant. Adds a whole new eyebrow raise to how damn good Kristen was pretending to be a female personal assistant in Clouds of Sils Maria, doesn't it?
VF BD Wong talks villainy in Jurassic World
The Mary Sue knew that it was necessary to remind genre writers that there are ways to motivate your female characters beyond being raped (sigh)
The New Yorker Perez Hilton, celebrity offspring and #NoKidsPolicy
Uproxx Mike Ryan continues to be awfully skilled at the art of the celebrity interview. Here is Amy Poehler on Parks & Recreation and Inside Out and even the Golden Globes
Towleroad has a new look / redesign. Check it out. Lot easier navigating to the types of stories you're interested in
MNPP remembers Jonathan Schaech's beauty as The Doom Generation (1995) turns 20. What a trippy movie that was back in the day
Boy Culture Burlesque star Blaze Starr -- Lolita Davidovich played her in the movie Blaze (1989) -- has died
Nights in WeHo The stars of Magic Mike XXL came out in full force for LA Pride. Smart outreach.

Programming Notes
Ann Dowd is a very busy woman -- talent like that will fill up your schedule -- so we've had to do some tinkering with this week's schedule. So this week's gone a bit crazy and everything's been pushed back to Friday (Women's Pictures & our Best Shot edition of Magic Mike) and Ann will be taking over Thursday! This is the last time that you will ever read "Ann Dowd" and "Magic Mike" in the same sentence unless she has a surprise cameo in XXL that we don't know about. 

P.S. You'll also notice that there are suddenly dozens of articles about Warren Beatty's Dick Tracy (1990) up around the web. This occassion is the 25th anniversary of its initial release today. Sadly none of these "it's so beautiful!" odes to the movie's exquisite visual work link back to our Hit Me With Your Best Shot episode (we celebrated the movie two weeks ago) but what can you do?! "Best Shot" remains the web's Best Kept Secret of Cinephilia Eye Candy.

Here's what's up next in that series. Join us and spread the word so it's less hush-hush, y'all.

Curio: The Lighter Side of Tom Hanks

Alexa here. This past Saturday, Gallery 1988 opened its newest group show of pop-culture inspired art, and it's a happy one: NO SAD STUFF includes paintings, prints, and sculptures influenced by Tom Hanks films from 1984-1994. This means pieces celebrating the likes of The Money Pit, Big, The Burbs, Turner & Hooch and, of course, Splash and Forrest Gump (among others).  

Seven pieces from the collection after the jump...

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Review: Sense8, season 1

Tim here. We've had a little more than a week now to play around with the new Netflix series Sense8, which has hopefully been enough time for everybody to process it. For myself, I'm still working on that: it's a whole lot of show, frequently not to its benefit. But it dreams no little dreams.

The show is the brainchild of J. Michael Straczynski, whose Babylon 5 largely created the "pre-planned serialized television" in the 1990s, and siblings Andy and Lana Wachowski, of The Matrix and its many attempted follow-ups, all of which have been met with widespread derision and a small but freakishly adoring cult. In the interest of full disclosure, I should confess that I'm part of that cult. I even really liked Jupiter Ascending. So feel free to not trust anything I have to say about anything ever again.

Straczynski's achingly earnest liberal humanism blends seamlessly into with the pie-eyed optimism and sincerity of the Wachowskis' post-Matrix work, especially the swooning globalist poetics of Cloud Atlas. The result is a show that wears its politics and its sentiment right out in the open, with actors navigating big mouthfuls of dialogue that sound like an op-ed first, a stoned philosophy student's stream-of-consciousness second, and things that human beings would ever say out loud to other human beings third (another legacy of Babylon 5. I'm not even entirely sure I mean that as a complaint. Artlessness born out of sincere passion is a very different thing than a simple lack of talent. It's charming, albeit in a shaggy way.

More...

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Beauty vs Beast: Sidewalk Stories

Jason from MNPP here with this week's "Beauty vs Beast" -- the very first movie that I ever saw being filmed in person was on one of my first trips to New York City; I guess it must've been in the spring of 1997? There I was walking down a side-street near NYU, a wide-eyed country bumpkin in the big city, when who should suddenly be standing in front of me but Jack Nicholson. Jack Nicholson! That'll stop you dead in your tracks. Beside him was Helen Hunt and Greg Kinnear and you guessed it, it was James L. Brooks' multiple Oscar winner As Good As It Gets.

I watched them film for about half an hour (it was the scene where they were getting into the car to go on their mid-movie road-trip) in awe, and now whenever I think of this movie I think of that experience and how fundamental it was to cementing this city as where I wanted to live my life. There's magic around every corner, wedged terrifyingly in every crack of the sidewalk. Long story short today is Helen Hunt's birthday (and Greg Kinnear's birthday is on Wednesday) so As Good As It Gets it is...

PREVIOUSLY Last time around we anticipated the weekend's great big movie (movie-a-saurus) with a claw-off between the Tyrannosaurus Rex and the Velociraptor in Steven Spielberg's 1993 original Jurassic Park - ya'll love your Clever Girls and the Raptor slashed her way to the winning circle with 60% of the vote. Said forever1267:

"Velociraptors are one of the few movie monsters that really scared me while watching the movie. They aren't supposed to be smart! They're not supposed to be able to open doors! They're not supposed to be clever! Chills!"