The Matrix @25: Queering the Canon

by Cláudio Alves

Happy Easter! Happy Trans Day of Visibility!! Happy 25th anniversary to The Matrix!!! As luck would have it, these three occasions coincided this year, making for a lovely little cinematic celebration. After all, The Matrix is probably the most famous work by trans filmmakers – the Wachowski sisters – and Neo's journey can be seen as an allegory of gender identity. It was somewhat devised as such by its closeted auteurs who've reclaimed their work's intrinsic queerness after it became a powerful reference for the MRA movement and the alt-right. Like many misappropriated movies, The Matrix doesn't deserve its fans. Or, perhaps more accurately, a good portion of its fandom doesn't deserve The Matrix in all its glory.

But Neo isn't just a queer icon. He's also something of a Jesus figure, a Messiah for our cyber-noir future, bedecked in fetish fashions, armed with kung fu moves and impossible firepower. And like Christ, he is risen…

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Doc Corner: 'A Glitch in the Matrix'

Doc Corner, by Glenn Dunks, is back after its brief hiatus.

Rodney Ascher makes extremely goofy documentaries. I am sure that he comes at them with all the seriousness that their dark and sinister tones would suggest, but that doesn’t stop them from ending up as, well, extremely goofy movies. There was Room 237 about interpretations of Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. There was also The Nightmare, about sleep paralysis. Both goofy.

That doesn’t mean they’re not entertaining. In fact, that’s often their most commendable aspect. Lord knows, it certainly cannot be said that Ascher lacks imagination behind the camera and has an ability to gravitate towards subjects that demand more than a basic documentary toolkit to pull together...

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Charlink

• Boy Culture "A Star is Bored" a new novel from Carrie Fisher's former assistant
• Vanity Fair interesting piece on the new "primacy of the face" due to scial media - we're all disembodied talking heads now
• My New Plaid Pants it's Charlize Theron's birthday today. What are your favourite of her films?
• The Guardian Diego Luna talks about his new show Pan Y Circo
• IndieWire investigates what moviegoing is like in China now 
• The Guardian Dirty Dancing is getting an official sequel 33 years later and Jennifer Grey is returning 
• After Ellen, a lesbian site which is of course named after Ellen DeGeneres discusses the allegations against the famous comedian and her management team about the toxic work environment on her show
• Cartoon Brew Disney posts a quarterly loss for the first time in ages. Maybe this is behind the Mulan decision - quick money?
• ...TFE The Mulan streaming release news icymi
• Coming Soon trailer for Judas and the Black Messiah, a new Black Panther reelated biopic starring Daniel Kaluuya and LaKeith Stanfield
• Broadway World Club Cumming, the nightclub owned by Alan Cumming, is going to start offering virtual variety shows -- it's such a fun club here in NYC. Stay tuned for the guest list

Exit Video
Lily Wachowski talks about recent discussions of the trans allegory nature of The Matrix...

Pride Month Doc Corner: 'Disclosure: Trans Lives on Screen'

Doc Corner is celebrating Pride Month with a focus on documentaries that tackle LGBTIQ themes. This week a new documentary about transgender representation on screen, streaming on Netflix.

By Glenn Dunks

The Celluloid Closet casts a long shadow over queer cinema in the 25 years since its release when it became an arthouse box office and Emmy-nominated sensation. That film by Rob Epstein (a two-time Oscar winner) and Jeffrey Friedman opened the world of film to new textural readings that many LGBTIQ viewers had known and talked about for years but remained largely quiet in the mainstream while traversing through to the then budding space that queer filmmakers and stories had carved by 1995. And for those young enough to come to the film as a budding LGBTIQ cinephile, it made for a hell of an introduction to movies.

There are always going to be gaps in a film like The Celluloid Closet and the new Netflix documentary Disclosure: Trans Lives on Screen from director Sam Feder attempts to fill them. All that and add a quarter of a century of cultural and societal changes on top... 

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Posterized: Keanu Reeves

by Nathaniel R

Whoa. Keanu Reeves turns 55 later this year and he's made roughly that many movies, too. Time sure does fly since he's still implanted in our consciousness as that stoner-like raven-haired looker of convenience store, surfing, and bus adventures. Figuring him out has always been an impossible trip. Keanu means "cool breeze over the mountains" in Hawaiian but, that geographically specific well-known trivia aside, he's always been hard to visually or sonically place anywhere on the map OR within the pantheon of contemporary stars; Born in Lebanon and raised in Canada, though he's of Hawaiian/British/Chinese/Portuguese descent, and with a voice that conjures the early 80s and California. Who/what/where is he even other than on his own planet and his own unique star? 

Though it seems hard to imagine now, when he first came to fame he was a very unlikely candidate for longevity...

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