New on DVD: Goat

By Sean Donovan

Goat has an important discrepancy between its advertising and the final film we end up watching. The poster, released just before the film’s 2016 Sundance in-competition premiere, specifies a clear focal point and it is male nipples. A man’s tight nipples exposed as other clothed men gather around him pouring liquor down his chest. Any hunch as to what sizable market population Goat is trying to advertise to? If you need more clues, how about the fact that this film was produced by queer cinema legend Christine Vachon, features the star of Pride Ben Schnetzer, and the straight male pop star Nick Jonas (confusingly labeled a gay icon by Out Magazine), and the man who wants to be gay icon so much it hurts, James Franco, in a dual role as producer/supporting actor? No more clues needed: Goat is hunting for THE GAYS. 

The opening credits more or less bear out the promise of this advertising, set as they are to a slow-motion montage of bouncing shirtless men. Yet the resulting film is a very dark, gritty experience, lacking even the typical scenes of sexualized rowdy excess that one usually finds in films about fraternity bros...

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Linkin' on Heaven's Door

Los Angeles Times Lily Tomlin's classic one woman show The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe is being relaunched in LA as a 12 person play (!)
/Film Rogue One releases its final trailer. I'm personally not watching(I like to save something for the movie theater) but it's here if you want it
Variety JK Rowling will never leave us alone. Five films are planned in the Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them franchise.
Tracking Board here's interesting news. Mark Rylance will team with Embrace of the Serpent director Ciro Guerra for a movie based on a 1980 Nobel prize winning book called Waiting for the Barbarians
Deadline Netflix in the lead to get The Helicopter Heist starring Jake Gyllenhaal

The New Yorker on Bob Dylan's Nobel Prize in literature
Interview talks to rising star Ben Schetzer (Pride, Goat, Warcraft)
The New Republic Miriam Bale on both of the new films about Christine Chubbuck, Christine (starring Rebecca Hall) and the experimental documentary Kate Plays Christine.
EW It's come to this. We know have "power lists" in magazines not of actors or producers but of superheroes. Wonder Woman is currently #1 
In Contention supporting/lead options open w/ Viola in Fences & The Bening in 20th Century
Awards Daily Annette Bening will be honored at AFI 
Towleroad Kristen Stewart talking up her current relationship with Alicia Cargile
Boy Culture Miley Cyrus on her pansexuality
Playbill There will be a live audience for Hairspray Live on NBC- website coming soon with how to apply! 

Just 4 Fun
Jezebel "I wore a tail for 1 week and learned nothing" 
AV Club Documentary Now has done a full Talking Heads parody album! 

Has the Whole World Gone Insane?
Film Comment are film critics losing sight of film in the rush for content / social media?
IndieWire interviews the man behind the satire twitter account "Arthouse Donald Trump" which was hilarious and prismatically accurate of loudmouth cinephiles and Trump
Daily Beast Billy Bush is now attempting to drag NBC down with him into the mud after his "Pussygate" suspension - classy!
Gothamist a Talking Trump Zoltar machine appears in Brooklyn spewing prophesies
THR the whole Devin Faraci (Birth. Movies. Death editor) story that blew up this week when a former colleague accused him of touching her without her consent
Awards Daily ...airs a different perspective, mourning the loss of Faraci's voice against misogyny in the fanboy community, particularly during Gaming Gate. 

Exit Video
Harry Belafonte's company produces this PSA on police brutality. Actors Michael B Jordan and Danny Glover and other luminaries star

Against The Wall from Against The Wall on Vimeo.

Warcraft. What were they thinking?

Six questions that trouble me still from the Warcraft screening last week...

What on earth does Glenn Close need the money for?"

For some reason they only hired sexy men to play these monsters

That's just one of many questions I screamed into the abyss whilst watching this expensive, silly, over-stuffed but under-nourished video game adaptation. What's more this was only one of about 7 questions I screamed to which no answers came in a single scene of the movie. I couldn't even begin to tell you what was going on other than it was important enough to precede the climax of the movie. But I'll try. A young sorcerer (Ben Schnetzer) enters some sort of black gooey CGI cube and meets some sort of anthropomorphized supernatural force with sounds just like Glenn Close and finally looks just like Glenn Close as it solidifies and turns to camera upon which she/it/they bestow(s) on the young sorcerer some sort of magic that they've been withholding from some sort of bureaucrat mystics association so that he can return to battle another sorcerer to become "The Guardian" of the world of Azeroth where this all takes place...and that's not even the A plot!

The A plot is slightly less confusing...

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Review: 'Pride,' the Year's Most Adorable Movie

This article originally appeared in Nathaniel's column at Towleroad. It is reprinted here with their permission...

Truth is stranger-than-fiction and also often gayer. The new feature PRIDE dramatizes a largely unknown historical anecdote from the bitter year-long miner’s strike in Thatcher-era Britain when a group of gay activists fundraised for the miners. This alliance is at first an awkward tense match but it eventually finds heartwarming pockets of oxygen when these two unlikely groups are breathing the same air.

It begins with a handful of gay activists (“and lesbian!” their only female member interjects with a small wave in a recurring joke), notice a sudden decline in police bullying in their neighborhood. They make the connection: the conservative government has a new minority to scapegoat. They form a group called LGSM “Lesbians and Gays for the Striking Miners” to help the people suffering without paychecks for months on end — a byproduct of Margaret Thatcher’s war against the unions.

At first, though, these gay heroes can’t even find a miner’s group that will take their money in this cross culture dramedy. [more...]

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