Teen Wolf in... a Hospital ☑ a Bank ☑ a Motel ☑

Lydia freaks out well and oftenWould you forgive me for continually not writing up Teen Wolf episodes if I gazed off into the distance like I was seeing something invisible and horrific, as psychic Lydia does, and let out a bloodcurdling scream? Because that is actually what I do each morning on my second cup of coffee when I realize I have about 45 minutes of free time for the next 12 hours of deadlines and demands and I've already wasted 15 of it on the first cup.

Let this post serve as my train-of-thought apology to those of you watching Teen Wolf which I hope you will accept and do, respectively. It won't be the last time I go "damn, I wish I had time to write up Teen Wolf!" but ...yeah. Moving on so we can catch up. 

Deucalion barks a lotThis season began, memorably, with an episode called "Tattoo" (written to accomodate star Tyler Posey's new tattoo... thus rationalizing the hilariously dumb 'how do werewolves get tattoos when they heal so fast?' C-plot). Since then it's settled into three repetitive mysteries. The first is about when a team of hateful alphas who want Derek (Tyler Hoechlin) to kill his pack will attack?Answer: Every episode. mystery solved! [more]

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A Link Odyssey

The Flick Filosopher "my back let me show you it" on the faceless objectification of women in movie posters
Pacific Standard investigates what's going on with all those shlocky monster movies on Netflix Instant Watch. One studio is just churning them out by the dozen!
Splash Page Andrew Garfield wonders why we can't have a gay Spider-Man 

Vulture does some mathematical analysis from 1989-to-Now and, nope, Hollywood just doesn't make movies about women anymore
Deep Dish (site is NSFW) picks the best (& worst) of the season. A lot of Nashville, American Horror Story, and Downton Abbey but Don & Betty win "best sex" for Mad Men. I concur.
Hollywood in this week's Truly Tasteless News, they are already planning a movie about the Boston Marathon Bombing. It might be well-written -- the guys from The Fighter are onboard -- but still... a little time to heal people. 

Finally, Jose from Movies Kick Ass never cared much for Stanley Kubrick while still respecting him (he and I are similar that way) but Jose was finally converted to 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) by way of this week's big screen viewing at BAM in Brooklyn as part of their Big Screen Epics series. And how!

Coincidentally I was also there and the size of the screen, the beauty of the theater (thanks BAM) and the immersion of the sound also made me a new and real convert. It was as if I'd never seen the film before. Suddenly so many movies... so many movies seem like they owe their best moments and even their existence to it. (Hi, Tree of Life!) I suddenly need to reevaluate every Kubrick on the big screen. In fact, the only film of his I've seen in the size it deserves is Eyes Wide Shut (1999)... though in that case, size didn't matter. I was unmoved. 

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.