Movies Dearz

The short films shown at various film festivals sometimes end up outshining the feature offerings. Recognizing this, The Film Collaborative and First Run Features have teamed up to gather some of the best shorts from the 2010 GLBT circuit and release them on DVD. Volumes 1 of Fest Selects: Best Gay Shorts and Fest Selects: Best Lesbian Shorts are both out today.

While they vary wildly in tone and style, the eight films included on the Best Gay Shorts edition are generally excellent. A couple of them — My Name is Love and Steam — may strike some as uncomfortably dark, and the partly animated Mouse's Birthday is just plain bizarre, but the high quality of these assorted filmmakers' techniques can't be denied.


After, a stylish tribute to the stories of Dennis Cooper, kicks off the collection. Written and directed by Mark Pariselli, it is awash in Cooper's trademark mix of kink and tragedy. Three gay college students sit silently on the stoop of their house, watching a group of seemingly straight boys play football at a park across the street. When an athlete being observed unexpectedly shows a tender interest in one of them, each of the students fantasizes about a sexual encounter with him. Faithful as it is to Cooper, don't expect a happy ending.

Two of the films featured were shown at last year's Long Beach Q Film Festival, for which I served as a programmer. I'm very happy to see them included here. Gaysharktank.com, by the clever Guy Shalem, is a hilarious expose of modern gay life utilizing the ultimate online dating site. The short's stellar cast includes Coco Peru, Jack Plotnick, Jai Rodriguez and Drew Droege. Pierre Stefanos' sweet Bedfellows spins a decades-spanning love story. While the two lead actors don't age convincingly during the 30+ years depicted, it otherwise all but proves that true love can be found when least expected.


Gayby is a very funny short about a straight woman desperate to bear a child before her biological clock runs out. With what could be termed mixed motives, she turns to her now gay college-era boyfriend to help her conceive "the old fashioned way." Writer-director Jonathan Lisecki has a great ear for contemporary dialogue and is a sharp observer of relationships between women and the gay men they love.

Matthew Wilkas, the attractive actor who plays Gayby's male lead, also headlines another film included in Best Gay Shorts entitled Curious Thing. Billing itself as "based on true stories" of straight-bi-gay confusion, it focuses on the complex attraction between two seemingly straight guys. It will likely remind viewers, as it did me, of one's first crush on our typically straight best friend in high school or college. The actors' performances here are particular good.


The aforementioned My Name is Love, Mouse's Birthday and Steam round out the collection. The first is Swedish filmmaker David Fardmar's painfully autobiographical story of a young man's first gay encounter going horribly awry. Mouse's Birthday, by Barry Morse, relates in avant-garde (and then some) fashion an encounter between a rodent, a cockroach and a thong-clad, mohawk-sporting muscle boy. It serves as both cautionary tale and pride statement, with fun choreography by fellow indie filmmaker PJ Raval.

Finally, the Twilight Zone-esque Steam focuses on two hot men (literally and figuratively) who find themselves mysteriously trapped in a doorless gym's sauna following a sexual encounter between them. The denouement struck me as somewhat muddled theologically and morally, but the short gets considerable points for its provocative originality. And did I mention the guys are hot?

In short (pun intended), these new gay and lesbian releases are well worth one's investment.

Review by Rev. Chris Carpenter, resident film critic of Movie Dearest and the Blade California.

For a few years now, I've been looking for a buyer for my nearly complete, nearly mint if loose collection of original Star Wars action figures. I am fortunate to not be in a financial situation where I feel I have to sell them, but my partner and I could use the space they currently occupy. No one has yet offered me what I understand them to be worth. I know that it will be a painful day, should it come, when I finally divest myself of my favorite childhood playthings.

George Lucas, the creator of the Star Wars saga and the pop culture empire it spawned, is accused of "pillaging the playgrounds of our childhoods" and of inappropriately "fingering the late adolescence" of numerous detractors in the entertaining documentary The People vs. George Lucas, opening in Los Angeles and other major cities today. Lucas's alleged crime? Releasing twenty years later revised "special editions" of his original film trilogy and a new series of prequels that, his critics charge, cheapened and distorted the filmmaker's original creation or (more accurately) fans' cherished memories of it.


Director Alexandre O. Philippe incorporates an impressive amount of footage not only from the Star Wars movies (both the original and revised versions) but from the many fan films and spoofs that have been produced over the decades, many of which Lucas approved (check out the marvelous StarWarsUncut.com if you never have). It becomes clear that Lucas has been more tolerant of his fans and their homages than they have been to him.

While the more recent Star Wars Episodes 1-3 have their faults in both the storytelling and acting departments, one commentator in The People vs. George Lucas rightly points out that "super-nerd nitpicking" is more to blame for their poor reception among many admirers of Lucas's original series than the films' actual quality. Expectations for 1999's Star Wars: Episode 1 - The Phantom Menace, the first movie since 1983, were excessively if naturally high. Whereas many adults surveyed despised the comic relief, possibly-racist Jar-Jar Binks character, the documentary shows that children loved the character and weren't offended in the least by him.

Sure, childhood memories are precious, and I fondly recall waiting in line for hours as a teenager for the thrilling first screenings of both The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. But George Lucas, "tinkerer" though he may be, hardly deserves the hatred leveled at him by those who are overly invested in his original films and/or simply refuse to grow up.


L'Amour Fou, another documentary opening today in New York City and on May 20 in Los Angeles, similarly explores the challenge of letting go of one's past loves and life. In this case, it is the true story of fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent and his longtime partner, Pierre Bergé. The men met in 1957 at the funeral of Saint Laurent's mentor, Christian Dior, and remained together until Saint Laurent's death in 2008. The designer's remains are interred in a lovely garden at their home in Marakech, Morocco.

Bergé was subsequently tasked with the responsibility of selling their valuable art collection, which included works by Picasso, Matisse and Rembrandt in addition to one-of-a-kind art deco vases and African sculptures. The surviving partner solemnly refers to the collection as "a part of my soul, a part of my life." Bergé speaks eloquently and insightfully of his 50-year relationship with Saint Laurent, including the difficult period in the 1980's when Saint Laurent battled addictions to both drugs and alcohol (he became sober in 1990 and remained so until his death).


Despite Bergé's remarks, little is shown in L'Amour Fou that effectively depicts intimacy between the men. Their relationship was no secret, as Bergé was Saint Laurent's ever-present right hand during fashion shows and other public events. The documentary, however, seems strangely coy when it comes to showing the two together. I found this disappointing, although the sequences of their various art pieces being assessed, dismantled and shipped off to auction are effective at conveying the slow dissolution of the men's partnership.

L'Amour Fou reveals much through predictably beautiful settings/trappings and striking photography (it is one of those rare, non-nature documentaries that should be seen on a wide theatrical screen), but the impressive relationship it celebrates remains unnecessarily remote.

Reverend's Ratings:
The People vs. George Lucas: B+
L'Amour Fou: C

UPDATE: L'Amour Fou is now available on DVD and The People vs. George Lucas is now available on DVDfrom Amazon.com.

Review by Rev. Chris Carpenter, resident film critic of Movie Dearest and the Blade California.

Back in my comic book reading youth, The Avengers was always a must-read. A Justice League of America for the Marvel Comics set, the super group included such faves as Captain America, Hawkeye and Iron Man in spectacular battles that only the world’s greatest superheroes could win. One of the Avengers’ many-many members was the mighty Thor, the Norse God of Thunder. Although he had a cool weapon (an oversized hammer he called Mjolnir), his stoic nature and stilted, archaic dialogue (filled with “thee’s” and “thou’s” and such) never endeared him to me much.

So now that it has come time in Marvel Studios’ prolonged build-up to next year’s Avengers movie to introduce Thor to the movie-going masses, I was a bit skeptical that this chapter would be a sword-and-sorcery snooze fest. Thankfully, I was wrong, as Marvel has wisely followed the format of the two hit Iron Man movies and injected Thor (in theaters now) with plenty of humor and over-the-top fantasy sequences, enough at least to distract you from the fact that this is basically a feature length prologue to 2012’s main event.


Following in the footsteps of his fellow Aussie Hugh Jackman, relative newcomer Chris Hemsworth (best known stateside as Kirk’s father in the most recent Star Trek movie) gives a robust, star-making performance as the title character...

Click here to continue my Toon Talk review of Thor at LaughingPlace.com.

UPDATE: Thor is now available on DVD and Blu-ray from Amazon.com.

Even though I was just a few years older than she was, I vividly remember little 2-year old Chastity Bono sending all us viewers a good night kiss at the end of her parents' hit 1970's TV show, The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour. Her mother, of course, went on to become an acclaimed solo singer and Academy Award-winning actress. Her father was a sometime actor (including a role in the original Hairspray) before serving as mayor of Palm Springs and, a few years later, dying tragically in a ski accident.

And little Chastity? Well, she is now a he in the wake of successful gender-reassignment surgery and hormone therapy that began in 2009. Having legally changed his name to Chaz Salvatore Bono (the middle name was his father's birth name), the now-son of Sonny and Cher is the subject of an eye-opening documentary, Becoming Chaz. It is scheduled to premiere on OWN: The Oprah Winfrey Network tomorrow night, but Reverend got an advance look at the film.

"I've hated my body since puberty," Chaz says on camera of his pre-op state. "In high school, I often went to bed praying I would wake up as a boy." He started considering transitioning from female to male in the late 1990's as he saw cultural acceptance growing, partly due to the acclaimed movie Boys Don't Cry. Chaz gratefully recalls Sonny encouraging him to dress and act like a boy following his parents' divorce when Chaz was four years old.


Years prior to the decision to transition, Chastity had come out publicly as a lesbian. Jennifer Elia, Chaz's longtime partner, plays an integral part in the documentary. A recovering alcoholic, Jennifer's sobriety is put to the test during the "exhausting process" of Chaz's surgery and recovery. Chaz's own, 10-year addiction to prescription painkillers proved its own challenge, resulting in a low tolerance to the drugs intended to give him comfort during and after his initial operation and following six years of abstinence.

"I believe this happened when it was meant to happen," Chaz says of his transition. The post-op Chaz appears much happier in the documentary than he does before surgery, whether he is playing video games with good friend RuPaul, buying a suit for the premiere of his mother's movie Burlesque, or serving as a role model/consultant to trans children and their parents. On bravely going public with his decision to transition, Chaz reveals, "I'm doing this to try to put a public face on a serious issue."

Becoming Chaz also helps to answer a long-standing question on the lips of many: what has been Cher's reaction to her only daughter's decision to become a male? (She has a biological son by fellow singer Greg Allman.) Cher was initially silent but allows this film's accomplished directors, Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato (who previously made 101 Rent Boys, Party Monster and the wonderful The Eyes of Tammy Faye) to interview her extensively.


"I wasn't happy," Cher says of her first reaction to Chaz's decision to go public. She later recounts hearing Chastity's (female) voice for the last time on her answering machine. "That's when it hit me." Whereas Jennifer does call Cher from the recovery room following Chaz's surgery to assure her everything had gone well, Cher apparently couldn't bring herself to be there personally.

One scene in the film shows Chaz watching his mother's appearance on Late Night with David Letterman in late 2010, and being moved by Cher's first public or private reference then to Chaz as a "he." Cher clearly continues wrestling with her child's decision but seems to be coming along. Be sure to watch through the end credits of Becoming Chaz to see Cher's and Chaz's face-to-face reunion at the Burlesque premiere.

Immediately following tomorrow's broadcast of Becoming Chaz on OWN, Rosie O'Donnell will interview Chaz and the filmmakers about their experience making it on The Doc Club with Rosie O'Donnell.

Review by Rev. Chris Carpenter, resident film critic of Movie Dearest and the Blade California.

from Movie Dearest

Director Roland Joffe has had some major highs (Best Picture and Best Director Oscar nominations for his first two movies, The Killing Fields and The Mission) and significant lows (Super Mario Bros., which he produced; the sexed-up, Demi Moore version of The Scarlet Letter; 2007's torture-porn flick Captivity) in his 27-year film career. He returns to surer, more classical footing with There Be Dragons, a visually stunning, undeniably intriguing saga about a controversial Catholic saint. The film, released nationwide by Samuel Goldwyn Films today, is being heavily promoted among clergy and church groups, à la The Passion of the Christ.

Josemaria Escriva (played here by Charlie Cox, best known from Stardust and the Heath Ledger-starrer Casanova) was a young priest during the Spanish Civil War of the 1930's. He received a vision that showed him one didn't have to become a member of the clergy or live an overtly religious life to do God's will in one's life. Escriva subsequently founded Opus Dei, Latin for "Work of God," which is probably best known among moviegoers as the conspiratorial, murderous order depicted in The Da Vinci Code. While Escriva is shown flagellating himself in one scene in There Be Dragons, not unlike the self-abusing albino monk played by Paul Bettany in Ron Howard's 2006 movie, the resemblances pretty much stop there. Escriva, who died in 1975, was canonized as "the saint of the ordinary" in 2002 by Pope John Paul II (who was just beatified himself). Today, Opus Dei counts 90,000 members worldwide, including the new Archbishop of Los Angeles and two of this film's producers.


To its credit, Joffe's screenplay takes as much inspiration from Oscar Wilde's famous (and truthful) quote, "Every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future" as it does Escriva's biography. There Be Dragons features a decades-spanning mystery as its main storyline. An investigative journalist (played by Dougray Scott of Mission: Impossible II and Desperate Housewives, among other credits) is writing a book about Escriva, whom his elderly father knew personally as a young man. Escriva and the writer's father, Manolo (a strong turn by American Beauty's Wes Bentley), were fellow seminarians for a time and became close friends. They parted ways, however, when Manolo enlisted in the war effort.

While Escriva is founding Opus Dei, Manolo becomes enmeshed in a love triangle between himself, his military leader (Rodrigo Santoro of 300 and I Love You Phillip Morris) and a lovely Hungarian revolutionary played by recent Bond girl Olga Kurylenko (Quantum of Solace). Secrets are buried and both friendship and faith become tested in these characters' wake.


There Be Dragons is overly earnest at times, and the film's array of British and American actors don't even try to play Spaniards convincingly. Cox makes an attractive and admirable man of God, but Escriva as written here is mostly one-dimensional. An impressive supporting cast of pros including Derek Jacobi, Geraldine Chaplin and Charles Dance helps to give the movie greater credibility.

The production is beautifully designed by Oscar-winner Eugenio Zanetti (What Dreams May Come) and photographed in gorgeous hues by Gabriel Beristain (Derek Jarman's Caravaggio). There Be Dragons is truly one of the best-looking movies in recent memory.
I came away wishing it were a bit more objective in depicting a recent saint about whom much is known as well as the religious order he founded, but this is still one of the more genuinely spiritual contemporary films to hit the big screen.

Reverend's Rating: B

Review by Rev. Chris Carpenter, resident film critic of Movie Dearest and the Blade California.

In only its second year, this past weekend's TCM Classic Film Festival in Hollywood had noticeably greater attendance over the initial outing in 2010 and sold out all passes. The fest also featured an increased number of screenings, celebrity appearances and special events. Clearly, a new star has been born on the ever-expanding and diversified film festival circuit, and TCM plans to build on their success not only with a third event in 2012 but a first-time classic movie lovers' cruise this December.

Signs that the 2011 festival would be bigger than the first were in evidence opening night, with the addition of a bleacher area for people to watch red carpet arrivals for the opening night selection, a lovingly restored 60th anniversary edition of An American in Paris. The 1951 Best Picture Oscar winner's co-star (with Gene Kelly), Leslie Caron, was in attendance and reportedly charmed the crowd with her radiance and recollections.


While we had tickets for the oversold screening of An American in Paris, my partner and I willingly sacrificed them in order to attend a simultaneous showing of one of our few mutual all-time favorites: 1947's The Ghost and Mrs. Muir. Neither of us had ever seen it on the big screen, and it was a wonderful experience to view it "the way it was meant to be seen" as so many TCM Fest films are rightly presented.

Dorothy Herrmann (one of the daughters of the film's composer, Bernard Herrmann) was on hand to introduce the film and relate how its score was her esteemed father's personal favorite. "It sure wasn't Psycho," she said of her dad's preference for his work on The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, to the amusement of the audience. Herrmann was represented at the festival by a number of films in a special tribute that included Citizen Kane, 1951's The Day the Earth Stood Still, and Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver, the latter of which served as his final film score.


Rex Harrison and Gene Tierney (in roles reportedly slated originally for Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn) memorably play characters who gradually fall in love despite the ultimate taboo: he's dead and she's alive. In this respect, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir may hold special resonance to this day for GLBT viewers who have felt love impossible for them, or for anyone who is still searching for that one "immortal" relationship.

The great Peter O'Toole graced the fest in person on both Friday and Saturday. On Friday, he attended a screening of 1964's Becket, in which he co-starred with Richard Burton, and sat down for a lengthy chat about his life and career with TCM's Robert Osborne that will be broadcast later this year. On Saturday, O'Toole was immortalized in front of Grauman's Chinese Theatre by placing his hands and feet in cement. "It's been years since I've been this intimate with concrete," O'Toole told the crowd in a very funny, self-effacing nod to his drinking years. Sober for some time now, O'Toole's appearance will definitely be remembered as one of the festival's highlights. Also noteworthy was Friday night's appearance by Kirk Douglas to introduce Stanley Kubrick's Spartacus. While long past his loincloth-clad prime as seen in the 1960 epic, Douglas followed his stealing of this year's Oscar telecast with a number of memorable comments.


On Sunday, I took in back-to-back screenings of two renowned films I'd never seen: the rarely-shown British drama Whistle Down the Wind (1961) and George Stevens' much-acclaimed literary adaptation A Place in the Sun (1951), based on Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy. The former is a still-provocative piece about children who mistake an escaped killer (Alan Bates, in his first lead film role) hiding in their barn for the second coming of Jesus Christ. Produced by eventual Oscar-winner Richard Attenborough (Gandhi) and the first film directed by Bryan Forbes (who would go on to make the original version of The Stepford Wives among other movies), Whistle Down the Wind impressively walks a very fine line between affirming faith and denouncing it.

Hayley Mills, daughter of actor John Mills and headlining ingénue of Whistle Down the Wind as well as a number of 1960's Walt Disney productions, was on hand to discuss the film, adapted from an allegorical story written by her mother, and her enduring legacy as an actress. "It's normal for kids to act," Mills replied in response to the question whether she was a "natural" actress. "I was terribly lucky," she said in all humility. She recounted her first day on the set of Disney's classic Pollyanna as "the most stressful and challenging" of her entire career, not least because she had impulsively cut her bangs off the night before shooting to the dismay of the production team. Mills, who has more recently appeared on stage in The King and I and in a number of TV series, is as lovely and vivacious now in her mid-60's as ever.


A Place in the Sun, which was nominated for Best Picture but lost to An American in Paris much to some film lovers' enduring dismay, was a revelation. The movie's packed screening during the TCM fest was designated a tribute to the late Elizabeth Taylor, who stars in the film alongside Oscar nominees Montgomery Clift and Shelley Winters. Clift (who was never more attractive on screen than he is here between the tight white t-shirts he sports and, tragically, a near-crippling car accident he was in a few years later) plays the poor son of a Kansas religious worker who does everything he can to infiltrate the upper class, including possibly killing his pregnant girlfriend (Winters).

One would never think Clift was gay (he was, though deeply conflicted) based on his smolderingly heterosexual performance here. Taylor declared that between Stevens' direction and her partnering with Clift, A Place in the Sun was the film that taught her what it meant to truly act. Oscar-winning actress Eva Marie Saint, who co-starred with Taylor in both Raintree County and The Sandpiper, spoke admiringly with Robert Osborne after the screening about the impact of Taylor's work and life.


The festival's closing night on Sunday offered three equally tempting films at the same time: Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, also starring Taylor; a 70mm print of West Side Story; and Disney's classic pairing of music and visuals, Fantasia. I opted for the latter, and was impressed by the number of younger patrons who came out to see what was for most of them the first opportunity they had to see the movie on the big screen (its last theatrical release was in 1990).

Fantasia was as spectacular as ever as shown in a beautifully restored, vibrantly colored digital print in Grauman's Chinese Theatre. Dancer-choreographer Marge Champion was in attendance (she reportedly served as a model for the ballerina-hippo in the film's Dance of the Hours segment), as was Walt Disney's daughter, Diane. The audience watched and listened in rapt silence, apart from moments when it was appropriate to laugh, and applauded heartily at the end of each of the movie's "movements."


The TCM Classic Movie Festival prides itself on catering to a "community" of reverent film lovers from around the world, and that community was out in force in Hollywood the last weekend of April. Kudos to MCs Osborne, Ben Mankiewicz and Leonard Maltin as well as to chief programmer Charlie Tabesh for their contagious dedication to the art, history and cultural impact of the industry's best work.

Report by Rev. Chris Carpenter, resident film critic of Movie Dearest and the Blade California.