A First Trailer for Haigh's "Lean on Pete"

Chris here. Andrew Haigh's adaptation Lean on Pete made it all through the fall festival season with only a few stills to entice us. But now we have a gorgeous new trailer to feast our eyes upon ahead of the film's March release. You might recall that the film's young star Charlie Plummer won the young actor Marcello Mastroianni prize at the Venice Film Festival - looks like we've got one of 2018's major breakthroughs, as he has the plum role of the kidnapped John Getty in Christmas's All the Money in the World.

After the impressive triple punch of Weekend, 45 Years, and HBO's short-lived Looking, we are ready to line up to anything Haigh delivers. But this story of a boy escaping home with the horse he tends to seems like an interesting narrative progression for the writer/director, and his keen emotional insights seem to be perfectly calibrated to study a troubled teen. And he looks to deliver some of his most gorgeous visuals

With this and The Rider, Chloe Zhao's horse-centric festival darling and Indie Spirit nominee, it looks to be a big spring for horses on the indie scene. Insert your "Andrew Hayyyyy" joke here. What do you think of this first trailer?

Valentine's - Weekend

Team Experience is celebrating Valentines Day with favorite love scenes. Here's Jose...

Early on in my life I decided that all my favorite romances had to end with the lovers apart. And I mean, seriously, can you name a perfect romance that ends with happily ever after? From Casablanca to Dr. Zhivago and Roman Holiday, it's as if the movies have always told us that a brief, but powerful romance, the kind which makes us swoon in our 80s like Gloria Stuart in Titanic, is the kind of romance we all should crave. But it wasn't until I watched Andrew Haigh's Nottingham-set Weekend in 2011 that I realized as a gay man there was finally one of these romances for someone like me (I won't go into details of how this movie seems to me my biopic...) in which no one ended dead, as most gay romances do in fiction.

In the last scene we see Russell (Tom Cullen) and Glen (Chris New) together, they share a brief kiss as they say goodbye before Glen heads to America. Even though there is nothing really "tragic" about their farewell, it's this idea of the person existing in the same planet, as you have to find the will to move on, that's most devastating. I can see the lovers running into each other years in the future (I doubt they remained Facebook friends, I wouldn't have, would you?) and either of them going into full "of all the gin joints..." Bogie mode as they wonder "what if".

What are some of your favorite non-tragic gay romances? What romantic movie do you feel could be your biopic? 

Looking: The Movie Review

Manuel here with an extra episode of HBO LGBT to celebrate the release of Looking: The Movie. I get the title format but would it have hurt Andrew Haigh to give it a less generic title. I mean, “Looking for Closure” would have been a bit on the nose but it’d have fit nicely with the show’s episodic titles (which included “Looking for a Plot” and “Looking for Home” after all).

I have gone on the record before saying how much I treasured Looking—recapping its second season right here was wonderful and a chance to really flesh out why I think Haigh and Michael Lannan’s show was such a striking meditation on gay male intimacy...

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Great Moments in Gay - 'This kind of stuff' in Weekend (2011)

In June we're celebrating favorite queer moments in cinema. Here's guest contributor Bill Curran on a pivotal low key scene in Weekend... 

Jamie: "What's going on?"

Russell: "Nothing… nothing's going on."

Pride is hard. We’re in a month filled with delirious rainbow floats, umpteen “Yass Queen” gifs, and appropriately lascivious street dancing down many city streets around the globe, and yet I’d like to pause and consider how pride is not merely happiness or acceptance, but respect. And respect is hard. 

Respect—one’s own worth in relation to others—is the motoring theme behind much of Andrew Haigh’s Weekend (2011). In this sense, if Weekend can be considered a landmark 21st century film (as indeed it should be, by any number of artistic rubrics), then the pivotal scene is this exchange between Russell (Tom Cullen) and his best (straight) mate Jamie (Jonathan Race). It is the sea change climax before the more expected bittersweet one... 

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Andrew Haigh to make Alexander McQueen biopic

Murtada here with the biopic news of the week.

After 45 Years I’d watch whatever Andrew Haigh decides to do next. His follow-up choice though would be exciting even in a vacuum; without knowing any of his previous films. Haigh is going to make a biopic of the late fashion designer Alexander McQueen (1969-2010). The movie will be based in part on the biography Alexander McQueen: Blood Beneath The Skin, by Andrew Wilson, which was published in the UK last year.

McQueen had a fascinating life which could make for a great film in Haigh's hands. Growing up in a London council flat, his talent took him from Savile Row to Givenchy to his own eponymous design house that continues to thrive. Alongside John Galliano, he was dubbed fashion’s "British enfant terribles". Carrying on the tradition of designers like Jean Paul Gaultier who went against the norm and shocked the surprisingly staid fashion establishment.

Who should be cast after the jump......

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