Drag Race RuCap: "You Can't Keep A Good Drag Queen Down!"

Like in the last couple of years, Nick Taylor and Cláudio Alves are following and recapping the new RuPaul’s Drag Race season…

Raja, Bob and Kim Chi came back for an unexpected, unexplainable intro.

NICK TAYLOR: Happy New Year, everyone!! Can you believe it’s already time for another season of Drag Race? Season 18 premiered this Friday, and I had a great fuckin’ time. The cast seems uniformly entertaining, and the challenges felt like the best kind of throwback to earlier seasons while still feeling right for 2026. In short, this was a great introduction to these divas, and I’m excited to spend four months watching them on my TV. RuCap OVER.

Oh wait, what did you think, Cláudio?

CLÁUDIO ALVES: I’m mostly glad they’re not all baby queens. We actually have a pretty seasoned cast after last year’s youth revolution. Multiple divas are even older than me! What a concept!!...

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“Heated Rivalry” is here to make the yuletide gay

by Cláudio Alves

HEATED RIVALRY | © Crave / HBO Max

First of all, everybody please say thank you to the Canadian taxpayers – Thank you, Canadian taxpayers! With that out of the way, let’s all come together and celebrate one of the loveliest surprises of the year in television, slipping right in at the end of 2025 to queer up the holiday season.

Written and directed by Jacob Tierney, Crave’s Heated Rivalry adapts the first two books in Rachel Reid’s Game Changers series of gay love stories in the world of men’s professional hockey. A good mix of angst and smut, like most projects born out of fanfiction with the serial numbers filed off, the novels are a delivery system for romance more than they are great literature, but that’s alright. Sometimes, that’s exactly what the heart yearns for, what the body needs. And, after the first two episodes, it was hard to argue against notions that Heated Rivalry was little more than soft-core under a very thin layer of respectability. There’s nothing wrong with that, but the show has proven itself more interesting. It has also become an international phenomenon…

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Critics Choice Voters All Infected By "Sinners"

by Nathaniel R

SINNERS

As a voting member, despite my votes rarely being reflected in nominations, it is my duty to share the annual Critics Choice Award Nominations. As is increasingly the case in modern awards voting, hardly a problem unique to the CCAs, there is far less spread the wealth than there use to be. I believe this is an unintended consequence of expanded Best Picture lists which theoretically narrow voters ideas about a) what they should watch and b) what they should vote for without "wasting" their precious few ballot spots. This year FOUR pictures had double digit nominations with Ryan Coogler's genre hopping vampire picture Sinners scoring 17 (gulp) nominations, just one shy of Barbie's all time record (18). One Battle After Another was in second place with 14 nominations. 

Anyway let's get to the nominations, some commentary, and a few Oscar punditry notes, too.... 

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"Peter Hujar's Day" Leads the Spirit Award Nominations

by Cláudio Alves

PETER HUJAR'S DAY, Ira Sachs | © Janus Films

In the past few years, the Film Independent Spirit Awards have come closer and closer to The Academy, taste-wise. For a while, it seemed like they were becoming another station of the cross on the long path to Oscar gold, a precursor like so many others. For those who loved these prizes for their independent spirit, such a state of affairs was… well, dispiriting. This year, there's been a notable course correction. In part, it's a change predicated on a season dominated by American big-budget studio fare and international productions – both ineligible here. Still, when Peter Hujar's Day by Ira Sachs is your nomination leader, you're clearly not trying to live in the shadow of Oscar. Instead, the Spirits are doing their own thing, and that's how it should be.

Come discover the full list of nominees, on both the film and TV front, plus some color commentary, after the jump…

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Drag Race RuCap: "Grand Finale"

No one had a better time at the DRAG RACE finale than Daddy Nurve.

NICK TAYLOR: The seventeenth season of RuPaul’s Drag Race has come to a close, and with it our third year of RuCaps. Sadly, it’s a pretty deflating limp across the finish line. Our repeated comments about this season’s success as reality TV carried by the queens through brute force has proven true via an episode which showcased its contestants as little as possible. No RuGirls from years past in the audience, no group numbers with the cast, paeans to live performance that are 200% per-recorded, it’s all just weirdly hollow. Last week’s LaLaPaRuZa had much better momentum, plus it got to lean on the personalities of the queens in a way this episode simply couldn’t. At least the right queen won in the end, plus we got a lovely tribute to Liza. The Oscars couldn’t fucking do that. What did you think? 

CLÁUDIO ALVES: Meh…

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