Best Shot: Trevor (1994)

For Pride Month... A great moment in Oscar gayness

This week's Best Shot spotlight shines on an adorable miniature. Since June is Pride Month we're looking at Great Moments in Cinematic Gayness throughout the month. Great Moments in Oscar Gayness are rarer things and usually come with significant caveats. When they award actors for playing LGBT characters it's literally only when they are straight and labelled "brave" for playing the character and the character is either dying or victimized in some way. Their ultimate Best Picture rejection of a universally acclaimed frontrunner in Brokeback Mountain (2005) left another stain on the Academy's rainbow colors.

But in Oscar's gay history, there is a beautiful moment that comes without so many uncomfortable footnotes.

Trevor, a sweet funny short about a boy who realizes his schoolmates have figured out his gayness took home an Oscar in a surprise tie, one of only six in their history, at the 67th ceremony. To make the moment even gayer in retrospect, the late producer and casting director Randy Stone thanked Jodie Foster ("Jodie, I love you") from the stage. (Stone and Foster were frequently each other's dates at film events in the 1990s and he was even rumored to be the biological father of her sons.)

More...

Click to read more ...

Great Moments in Gay - Bring it On

In Great Moments in Gay, Team TFE looks at our favorite queer scenes in the movies for Pride Month. Here's Kieran Scarlett on Bring it On (2000)

Peyton Reed's Bring it On is one of the best high school movies of all time. It's best to get that out of the way first in any writing about the 2000 flick about the politics of high school cheerleading. It's often dismissed, forgotten or written off as a trifle, which couldn't be further from the truth. It so stylishly inhabits its own cinematic universe and does such an excellent job of world building--something that's often missing in a lot of high school movies where the environment can sometimes feel generic or a retread of superior movies. Its first scene brilliantly employs a Greek chorus-style device set to a cheer routine to introduce the world and its characters. And it manages to do so much more gracefully than a similar device in Woody Allen's Mighty Aphrodite, arguably a more high-minded film. Bring it On is not a guilty pleasure. It's simply a pleasure.

The way Jessica Bendinger's script handles so many issues feels revolutionary. This was 2000 mind you. Right in the middle of that murky period when it was being sussed out whether campy punchlines or true humanization would become de rigeur for queer representation in film and television. [More...]

Click to read more ...

The 50 Greatest Films by Black Directors

Slate magazine has drawn up an interesting list of great black films, the twist being that they have to have been directed by a black person rather than about the black experience so out go Old Hollywood musicals like Carmen Jones or Cabin in the Sky or Oscar favorites like Sounder.  In the wake of recent conversations about Hollywood's power structures and overwhelming whiteness, Slate assembled a field of critics and filmmakers and scholars to produce the list.

Eve's Bayou

I need to get cracking on my gaps in knowledge from this list, especially because of the titles I've seen from this list several were great and the ones I didn't personally connect to were still interesting (Night Catches Us) or memorable (Eve's Bayou - I've been meaning to give that another shot now that I'm older). Unsurprisingly Spike Lee has the most titles with six. Curiously, though I've seen many Spike Lee joints (and tend to like them - I'd have included Chi-Raq on this list), I've only seen half of his titles that actually made it (gotta get to Mo' Better Blues, Crooklyn, and When the Levees Broke soon). The list is after the jump...

Click to read more ...

Nothing Compares 2 Link

• MNPP picks 5 favorites from Roger Deakins great filmography - love the write up
• i09 Netflix is going to be the exclusive home for Disney, Marvel, Lucasfilm, and Pixar movies when it comes to streaming
• The Guardian looks back at the career of Burt Kwouk (RIP) who played Cato in The Pink Panther franchise
• Variety looks at the top Emmy races. Where are we guaranteed movement in the often stagnant fields?

• Hypable Disney's gay erasure problem (not the pop band) and why the hashtags #GiveElsaAGirlfriend and #GiveCaptainAmericaABoyfriend are so popular. (Captain America already has a boyfriend, of course, but why did Disney include that Sharon Carter kiss?)
• Flickering Myth Chris Nolan's Dunkirk shoot has begun (photos from the set). Since he's sick of not being Oscar nominated for directing he's making a World War II picture instead of sticking with sci-fi, magicians, or Batpeople
• Playbill the 61st annual Obie Awards, a prestigious off Broadway prize, have been announced. Winners include Red Speedo (which we briefly wrote about), the musical Dear Evan Hansen, and two shows that have transferred to Broadway and are now up for Tonys: The Humans and Eclipsed. 
• Boy Culture on the Madonna Prince tribute at the BBMAs and subsequent fallout - there's always fallout. Haters gonna hate
• MTV Teo Bugbee on the new "tasteful?" nudity in Game of Thrones. I feel bullied by the internet in regards to this show (i don't watch it and don't like it whenever I casually see part of an episode) but this piece is great

In Nostalgia We Trust
Have you seen the new Star Trek Beyond poster? It's pretty but wouldn't this tactic have made more sense for the initial reboot than for a third sequel?  Also just how long until we reach peak nostalgia as a culture? Everything is just old things repackaged.

Yes, we've always had remakes and franchises all the way back to the early talkies but it seems much more dominant now, the whole pie rather than two pieces. 

When something new is actually super old. Blatant Nostalgia Attack! pic.twitter.com/rbVwbuhGYv

— Nathaniel Rogers (@nathanielr) May 24, 2016

Come to think of it Force Awakens’s poster shoulda been a replica of 1977’s poster? With Poe giving the Leia leg. pic.twitter.com/kA3Ri7AHYK

— Nathaniel Rogers (@nathanielr) May 24, 2016

Sydney Film Festival line-up announced

Whilst the world's cinephiles eyes are all turned to the mother of all film festivals, Cannes, down under the Sydney Film Festival have just announced their cracking line up. While it's not one of the most prestigious festivals, it's carved a perfect spot for itself on the cinematic calendar in June each year. It's one of the first festivals to be able to screen films only previously shown at Sundance and Berlinale in the first half of the year, and the then just concluded Cannes film festival. Sydney Film Festival of course has its own world premieres of Australian films, and while this year doesn’t have as many as previous years, there’s some exciting works all the same. Here is just a sample of what’s in store for Sydney siders.

Australian World Premieres
Opening the Festival and also running in competition will be Ivan Sen’s Goldstone, which is a sequel to his Mystery Road which opened the festival in 2013. Ivan Sen is one of Australia’s most influential and consistent Australian directors whose casts always reflect the diversity of Australia and in particular the traditional owners of the land, so this is a must see. There’s even Jacki and David Wenham to bring the star wattage. Other Aussie treats to keep an eye out for is queer teen drama Teenage Kicks by Craig Boreham, and gore fest horror film Red Christmas by Craig Anderson refreshingly featuring Dee Wallace as a middle aged horror heroine.

Auteurs, LGBT films, and documentaries after the jump!

Click to read more ...