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[…]
Category: Genres
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[…]
Experimental & Underground · Festivals & Awards · LGBT & Queer
The Secret That Won’t Stay Hidden: Queer Innovators at the 1998 San Francisco International Lesbian and Gay Film Festival
In James Broughton’s Hermes Bird, a seven-minute close-up of a penis in various stages of arousal, the filmmaker reads a line from one of his poems: “This is the secret[…]
Bugis Street (Yonfan, 1995)
A bittersweet look at the daily lives of the tranny whores of a legendary red-light district of 1960s Singapore – with free make-up tips! This sweet, sad sketch of a[…]
Directors · Exploitation & Erotica · LGBT & Queer
Seduction Is Universal: Thoughts on Radley Metzger
The master of Euro-erotica is starting to get his due in recent revivals The “golden age” of porn during the ’60s and ’70s was more fool’s gold than real for[…]
Asian · Books · Exploitation & Erotica · Horror
Book Reviews: Video Premieres, Vampires on Video, Jackie Chan, Immoral Tales, Filmmaking on the Fringe, Horror and Science Fiction Films
VideoHound’s Vampires on Video, by J. Gordon Melton (Detroit: Visible Ink Press, 1997). Trade paper, $17.95, 335pp. ISBN 1-57859-002-7. Vampires continue to be an important fixture on the cultural landscape,[…]
Animation · Experimental & Underground · Reviews
A Crazy Cake: Jan Svankmajer’s Conspirators of Pleasure (1997)
Noodles up the nose, murdered dolls, toe-sucking fish – these are the hallmarks of Prague’s zaniest surrealist! Forget magic realism; this is magic surrealism, of the highest order. Czech filmmaker[…]
Opera Queens: Werner Schroeter’s Love’s Debris (1996)
Thrill as the withered opera hags revisit their vital past! Scream as the mock-incestuous-lesbian sisters kiss and waltz! Shudder as hunky baritone Sergei Larin makes goo-goo eyes at a twink![…]
Queer Love: Neil Hunter and Tom Hunsinger’s Boyfriends (1996)
This sweet, sad queer ensemble piece from Britain surpasses its more pompous American counterparts. The bitchy, bittersweet gay ensemble movie of the pre-2000 era, e.g., The Boys in the Band or[…]
Marginalism in Andrew Davis’s The Fugitive (1993)
A bottle of “Black & Beautiful” hair dye gives Harrison Ford his ticket to the demimonde When I saw The Fugitive, I watched it with a particularly critical eye. Earlier,[…]
Queer Kisses: The Cinematic Taboo Before 2000
What is it about the sight of two men kissing that drives Americans insane? Frank Oz’s In and Out can be read on one level as an attempt to relocate[…]
Hong Kong Films, 1997: Enjoy Yourself To-Night, Final Justice, Midnight Zone, Once Upon a Time in China and America
“I refuse to fever in the lousy ballroom of Mongkok!” Hong Kong cinema is in clear disarray with the transfer to China, a star system in virtual collapse, talent dispersing[…]
Exploitation & Erotica · Producers & Studios · Reviews
Albert Zugsmith’s Opium Dreams: Confessions of an Opium Eater
Can one man’s brain contain Written on the Wind, The Incredible Shrinking Man, LSD, I Hate You!, and Confessions of an Opium Eater? If the man is Albert Zugsmith it could.[…]
Future Imperfect: Sci-Fi’s Nationalist Narratives
The future’s no future, but that’s okay – your spaceship is almost ready! Science fiction is, inevitably, an American genre, its narratives – literary and cinematic – fueled by the[…]
Festivals & Awards · LGBT & Queer
Queer Voices: The 1997 San Francisco International Lesbian and Gay Film Festival
The world’s biggest lesbian and gay filmfest shows the pleasures and pitfalls of gay auteurs caught between assimilation and opposition. Watch out for the “Stepford” homosexual! Gay culture is at[…]
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