Blueprints: "Moonlight"

To celebrate Pride Month, every week of June Jorge has been highlighting the script of a movie that focuses on a different letter of the LGBT acronym. For “G”, he looks at the poetry in Moonlight. 

When La La Land took the Best Picture statue at the 2016 Oscars for about five minutes, it wasn’t an Earth shattering surprise. It was the kind of movie that wins Oscars. The twist, from a mixed up envelope, was the fact that a small independent film about queer people of color had actually managed to go above all the other nominees for the big trophy was what had made the Earth shatter.

Moonlight is not a traditional Best Picture winner, in everything from themes to distribution model to narrative structure to protagonist. It won three Oscars in total, including Best Adapted Screenplay. It is also not a traditional screenplay. Let’s see how the script transmitted emotion through descriptive lines...

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Soundtracking: "Love, Simon"

by Chris Feil

Love, Simon is chasing the ghost of John Hughes, a brand of uplift where teen woes are packaged conventionally and without condescension for maximum warm fuzzies. Naturally that package must include an anthemic sound, music that connects with the generation it depicts and becomes part of the fabric of what we remember about the film. But if Love, Simon is supposed to be a gay alternative on Hughesian comedy, does the sound also have its gay twist?

Simon’s signature sound comes from Jack Antonoff and his band Bleachers, bookending the film. Instead of the singular force of Simple Minds’ “Don’t You Forget About Me” as Hughes employed in The Breakfast Club, it’s more like the film uses Antonoff as the artist to hang its headphones on instead of one song. He’s a straight musician, but Bleachers is fairly embraced by the queer teen set - at least the kind that the film depicts. Though in an age where Troye Sivan can produce hit bops about bottoming, is that really enough for the film to define itself musically?

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Showbiz History: Anne & Ellen, Liz & Dick, Rosemary & Baby

Here's what was happening on this day in showbiz history...

1930 Jim Nabors (aka Gomer Pyle) born in Alabama

1942 Anne Frank receives a diary for her 13th birthday. The diary will become world famous and receive multiple stage and film adaptations, most famously in the Oscar nominated '59 version from director George Stevens.

1963 Cleopatra has its premiere in New York City after years of tabloid sensations during the making of courtesy of Liz & Dick. Ever courting controversy, Liz & Dick did not attend the premiere!

1965 Actress Cathy Tyson (niece of Cicely!) born in Liverpool. She'll make a big splash (and receive a Golden Globe nomination) for her film debut in Mona Lisa when she's just 21...

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Blueprints: "The Kids Are All Right"

To celebrate Pride Month, every week of June Jorge will be highlighting the script of a movie that focuses on a different letter of the LGBT acronym. For “L”, he looks back at one of the most touching family dramas of the past decade.

For years, one of the biggest goals of the LGBT community (although certainly not the only or the most important one) has been to be seen as peers by the rest of the world. As people that, albeit in a different manner, go through the same experiences and have the same types of feelings: growing pains, heartbreak, the ache to share our lives with someone special…

On film, this sentiment of “We’re just like you” has been the most prevalent in family-focused narrative. The Kids Are All Right magnificently balances the act of showing a lesbian couple as readily familiar as any heterosexual marriage, while at the same time depicting struggles unique to them. Let’s take a look at a breaking point in the story; a moment where this harmony between a pleasant exterior and the turbulence of the couple is broken, and how it looks in the page. Via a single strand of bright red hair...

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Doc Corner: Dances with Films Festival

by Glenn Dunks

The spectre of films past linger over two documentaries at the Dances with Films independent film festival (June 7th-17th at the TCL Chinese Theaters in Los Angeles). Their ability to bring an audience back to something more innocent is perhaps one of the strongest elements of this festival that prizes the atmosphere of a summer camp rather than a crazed film festival in the snowy mountains or on the sunny beaches.

The more obvious of the two that I was able to sample is Alexander Monelli's At the Drive-In, a film that you could glimpse at a pass and suspect you have already seen a dozen times at other festivals. Film festival audiences are, after all, more naturally disposed to watch a documentary about a venue like a drive-in or a classic movie palace or a dying/dead/forgotten part of the filmgoing experience. The inherent nostalgia and cinematic reverence of these topics make them solid programming on any festival’s behalf...

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