A queer-leaning Venice Critics Week

by Nathaniel R

Three Nights a Week

The titles have been announced for one of the exciting sidebars at Venice. Critics Week is for feature debuts for emerging filmmakers. That means they're eligible for the Lion of the Future prize, determined by a jury from all debuts across the festival. What's more at least three of these titles are queer films so maybe the Queer Lion will be competitive this year, too! As with the Lion of the Future prize, all sections of the festival counts so a special jury chooses The Queer Lion after screening the qualifying films (in this case anything LGBTQ themed). Venice runs August 31st through September 10th, 2022. Once again this year Elisa Giudici will be covering Venice for us...

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Happy 4th if you celebrate

Happy Fourth of July

Tootsie (1982)

Apologies for the radio silence this weekend -- though we've been updated the Oscar charts -- but we took the weekend to recharge via Fire Island (not Fire Island the movie though that's come up in conversation multiple times). After "The Invasion of the Pines" today, the annual tradition wherein drag queens ferry it from Cherry Grove to the Pines, we're headed back to our less glittery, less eye-candy filled lives *sniffle*. So this post is illustrated with the three photos from the TFE archives that best sum up this weekend...

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Link World Dominion

• Variety Actors on Actors with Anne Hathaway and Jeremy Strong
• Vanity Fair interviews Julie Andrews who talks Mary Poppins, The Princess Diaries and her new voice role in Aquaman 2
• Deadline Scarlett Johansson to star in Kristin Scott Thomas' directorial debut My Mother's Wedding. We haven't seen her onscreen since Black Widow last summer but she has a lot of projects lined up now.
• MNPP gifs of Trevante Rhodes as Mike Tyson in a new Hulu miniseries called Mike

more after the jump including stop motion feature Wendell & Wild, Judy Garland's centennial, Stranger Things hairdos and music revivals, and the new Jurassic World movie...

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Review: 'Everybody's Talking About Jamie' Knows How To Put On a Show

By: Christopher James

Sometimes saccharine is just sweet enough. Everybody’s Talking About Jamie piles it on thick, but what else are drag queens supposed to do when applying their makeup. Amazon Prime’s latest film acquisition is a charming delight. It’s packed with warmth, heart and plenty of sass. While it is very much a story rooted in the now, Jamie’s love of drag comes from understanding of the queens that came before him. In fact, what’s so interesting about the film is that the main antagonists aren’t his peers (though some are harsh), it’s from a generation above that hasn’t evolved with the times.

Simply put, Everybody’s Talking About Jamie is a crowd pleaser worthy of any crown...

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Doc Corner: Tribeca '21 — 'Socks on Fire' and 'North by Current' explore queerness in rural America

By Glenn Dunks

It’s thankfully no longer all that rare to see stories of queer people in rural settings. Especially in documentary. But that doesn’t make it any less special to see their stories—once so often relegated to traumatic narratives centering violence—told by queer filmmakers. Two films in particular at the recently wrapped Tribeca Film Festival examined the changing dynamics of (some) American small-town life. Both take elements of memoir and even non-traditional storytelling to create unique films that make strong arguments for the sheer human decency that many in minority communities desire.

While Bo McGuire’s Socks on Fire and Angelo Madsen Minax’s North by Current tell stories that confront the still very tangible realities of being LGBTQ+ outside of the more accepting big cities, they do so with artistic flair and the confidence that comes from generational change...

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