Tribeca: Three Bizarro Twin Gay Films

Tribeca wraps tonight but we're still writing. Here's your host Nathaniel on three LGBT offerings. Portions of this piece were originally published in his column at Towleroad

The Tribeca Film Festival, founded in 2002 at least in part to help revitalize the Tribeca neighborhood after 9/11, has migrated and grown over the years; in 2014 I saw almost everything in Chelsea. An apt location because there seemed to be a lot of gay movies. Here are three, the first two of which seem like warring fraternal twins and the other which may or may not have psychotic doppleganger issues.

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Tribeca: Five Films From Midnight

Here's Jason on five films off of the Midnight Movies portion of the Tribeca Film Fest's expansive programming.

Rupert Evans in the great new horror film "The Canal"

Every year when the New York Film Festival rolls around I always find myself a little bit saddened by the lack of horror offerings. Oh sure I'm always up for the latest Claire Denis joint, I'm not complaining, but sit as it does on the cusp of Fall my mind's usually turning towards Autumnal things at that time, which for me equals Haunted Houses just as much as it does Oscar-Bait. But if I wait around til Winter's passed it's good times again for a genre-loving New Yorker, since the Tribeca Film Festival always offers up a thorough Midnight Movies program. Here's my quick takes on five of the flicks they're offering this year that go bump in the Spring night.

Saving the best for first, The Canal tells the story of a film archivist named David (played by Rupert Evans) who moves his expectant wife into that old standby, The House They Really Should Have Done Research On Beforehand. Sure enough as the mysteries pile up so too do the news-clippings of its horrifying past, which begins to seep its insanity into everybody inside. Somehow the Kubrick it reminds me of is Eyes Wide Shut more than the similarly plotted The Shining (that green party dress the wife wears gives off total Kidman sensations, not to mention all the Christmas-bulb lighting) but it comes across as a harrowing Kubrickian experience all the same. Think if Stanley had directed Don't Look Now. [more...]

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Link Flood

Entertainment Weekly Mark Harris sounded off on horror television like Hannibal and The Walking Dead "with gore less is more"
LA Times treasure trove of silent films found in Amsterdam including Mickey Rooney's first film role at age six
The Playlist interviews Denis Villeneuve (Enemy, Prisoners) on working with Jake Gyllenhaal, and his future projects
The Wire watching Noah during the Los Angeles earthquake

Playbill talks to F Murray Abraham about his career resurgence at 74
Variety Spain's Malaga festival reveals its winners. Maybe we should look at some of these as Oscar submission possibilities
Salon a new book makes the case for Wonder Woman as one of the greatest superheroes
The Wrap Game of Thrones and The Secret Life of Walter Mitty win the very first "Location Manager" awards - both shot partially in Iceland which is where it's at lately but more on Iceland in a special series in April
Comics Alliance the creator of the beloved Batman TV series died at 91 
Salon Catherine Keener does not think she should be called 'Spike Jonze's muse' 
Slate loves Darren Aronofksy's Noah but thinks the environmental message is problematic 

Must Read
We like her. We've always really liked her. Sally Field pens an open letter about being the mother of a gay son to encourage people to join the fight for civil rights and marriage equality and the like...

Sally Field and her son

One of the great privileges of my life to have been allowed to be a part of Sam’s journey.

There are people out there – organizations and politicians, strangers who have never even met Sam – who would rather devote themselves to denying his happiness...

Not only a wonderful actress but a wonderful person.

In the History of Shamelessly Greedy Ideas We Have a Winner
The movie industry's fever for making movies just like television with endlessly padded storylines to win more billlions from our pockets continues. Variety reports that J.K. Rowling's 54 page Harry Potter tie-in book "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them" will now become a film trilogy.

P.S.
I CANNOT WAIT to see what people choose for their "best shot" from CAN'T STOP THE MUSIC (1980) on Tuesday night. It's absolutely insane. tacky. ridiculous.  And I'm not just talking about the opening glitter splooge credits and rollerskating sequence with Steve Guttenberg and his padded crotch.

If you'd like to join the Best Shot party, the movie is available for instant watching on Netflix, Amazon Instant and iTunes. Just pick your best shot and post it and we all party with the same movie on Tuesday night. Here's the upcoming schedule for other movie selections. 

Scream Queens, Rusicals, and Snatch Games

If you can't love yourself, how in the hell you gonna love someone else? Amen. I love myself therefore I forgive myself for being three weeks behind my promised RuCapping. I hate calling tv posts recaps, though that's the web's preferred terminology, because I'm not about to recount everything that happened. That's for the contestants themselves to do on reality television. That's the whole structure, right? Step 1: Talking head commentary on clip you're about to see from contestant involved. 2: What you actually see from the contest. Step 3: A recap of what you just saw via the same or different talking heads. Then the next day on the internet everyone who is not on the show recaps again. We're a very redundant pop culture, we are!

But I do feel bad for going AWOL because these three weeks of RuPaul's Drag Race were really movie friendly and you know how I love my TV at the Movies. After the jump brief notes on the queens forays into celebrity impersonation, horror movies, and off-key musicals.

6.3 SCREAM QUEENS

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Sundance: Horror Comedies Shine with 'Cooties' and 'In the Shadows'

Our Sundance Film Festival coverage continues with Glenn Dunks on two of the festival's midnight movies.

Horror comedies can be so tricky sometimes. Is the film a horror movie with comedy or a comedy with horror elements? It might sound like semantics, but I feel it’s the difference, for instance, between Scream and Shaun of the Dead, both of which are excellent examples of the tight rope act that is the horror comedy genre mash-up. They knew exactly what they were doing and ultimately work as both a horror and a comedy without forgoing one half or the other. Cabin in the Woods, on the other hand, by all rights should have been a smart and scary horror movie, but instead lacked the tension that its jokes should have been buffering. It’s a tricky minefield to manoeuvre, but when it goes right the results can be fantastic. 

ravenous pre-teens and vampires after the jump...

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