Festivals & Awards · LGBT & Queer
Cultural Makeovers: Tranny Fest 1998
When gender gets in the way, as it so often does, these gender pioneers say “Change it!” Trannies of every stripe — drag queens and kings, transsexuals, intersexuals, etc. —[…]
Category: Genres
Frank Capra’s American Dream (Kenneth Bowser, 1997)
This beloved film artist was driven as much by self-doubt as by his belief in the power of the “little man” The rise of Frank Capra from sickly, abused, impoverished[…]
Unmade Beds (Nicholas Barker, 1997)
An arresting look at the limited lives of four New York singles, playing themselves British director Nicholas Barker’s New York cult hit Unmade Beds has an unintended effect that will[…]
Activist & Political · Documentaries · Reviews
I Am Cuba (Mikhail Kalatozov, 1964)
The supreme masterpiece of the poetic documentary form Three recent views of Cuba: the repressive, fragmented, poverty-stricken last gasp of modern Communism offered by the U.S. media; the wonderland of[…]
Thanhouser Classics: Long-Lost Pleasures from the Dawn of Cinema
Thanhouser produced 1,000+ titles between 1909 and 1917, but less than 200 survive. Silent cinema is often written off, even by cinephiles who pride themselves on their intimate knowledge of[…]
LGBT & Queer · Reviews · Visual Artists
Devoutly Elusive: Love Is the Devil (John Maybury, 1998)
Timid top George Dyer meets pushy bottom Francis Bacon, with art and death the inevitable result In a typical moment in this artful biopic of Francis Bacon, the ultra-queer painter[…]
Comedy · Experimental & Underground · LGBT & Queer
Primal Gross-out: Pink Flamingos Restored
The seminal trash classic all dressed up with somewhere to go Cinema, like any art form, has its milestones — the first “story film” in The Great Train Robbery (1903),[…]
Words and Music: An Unsung Masterpiece?
Forgotten biopic offers a baker’s dozen of delights Is Words and Music, MGM’s 1948 “and then they wrote” biopic of songwriters Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart, a masterpiece? Although long[…]
Actors & Personalities · LGBT & Queer
The Sissy Gaze in American Cinema
Shed a tear for that shimmering, noble, lost creature of the cinema — the sissy! What’s wrong with Hollywood? Nowadays you hear everyone asking that. This very morning, I heard[…]
Horror · LGBT & Queer · Reviews
Queer Horror: Decoding Universal’s Monsters
Monsters and drag queens and dykes — oh my! After decades of being devalued by lousy prints on video and television, Universal’s classic ’30s horror films have been resurrected, refurbished,[…]
Goosing Mother Goose: The Fairy Tales of Tex Avery
“Fairy tales, unlike any other form of literature, direct the child to discover his identity and calling, and they also suggest what experiences are needed to develop his character further.” –[…]
The Spirit Moves: The World of Kenji Mizoguchi
The roots of artistry are often sought in autobiography, and for filmmaker Kenji Mizoguchi, this seems an especially appropriate place to start. Mizoguchi, with Ozu and Kurosawa one of the three undisputed masters from[…]
A Quickie Look at the Life & Career of Tex Avery
As if radically rethinking the Hollywood cartoon weren’t enough, our boy Tex can also be thanked for inventing or perfecting Porky Pig, Daffy Duck, and perhaps the greatest character in[…]
Thom Fitzgerald’s The Hanging Garden
The ultimate in queenly revenge as an obese ugly duckling becomes a sleek, sophisticated homo The fairy tale about the ugly duckling who turns into a swan gets the gay[…]
Billy’s Hollywood Screen Kiss
Again Hollywood cheats on the issue of two men kissing – when are they going to get it right? In the past few years, two distinct trends have dominated gay[…]
Brought Low by Life: Mizoguchi’s The Life of Oharu
Nobody suffers like Oharu The first time I went to see Mizoguchi’s The Life of Oharu, I asked a friend who was familiar with the film to come with me. Although[…]
Animation · Festivals & Awards · LGBT & Queer
Queer Cartoons at the 1998 San Francisco International Lesbian and Gay Film Festival
“Ooh, Batman, it hurts!” Cartoons have always been a rich repository of queer subtext. How else to explain all those too-close buddies and their serious lack of female companionship? (The[…]
Festivals & Awards · LGBT & Queer
Queers Without Fears: The 1998 San Francisco International Lesbian and Gay Film Festival
“Just as in real life, many of the characters in these works – fictional, real, or reconstructed – don’t fit a precise, undeviating profile.” There are encouraging signs in this[…]
Music & Musicals · Pre-Code · Reviews
What Kind of a Cowboy Are You? Eddie Cantor Goes West in Whoopee
“All Singing! All Dancing! All Color! All Racist!” Whoopee is a find, a treasure, a thing of beauty and a joy forever. Most of all it is a chunk of Flo[…]
Kurosawa on Video: Stray Dog, The Bad Sleep Well, The Lower Depths
Three of Kurosawa’s scathing critiques of Japanese society past and present – in beautiful new video transfers. Akira Kurosawa has been seen as one of the three components of a[…]
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