Comedy · Experimental & Underground · LGBT & Queer
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),[…]
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
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
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,[…]
“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 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[…]
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[…]
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[…]
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[…]
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
“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
“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
“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[…]
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
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[…]
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
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
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
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[…]
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![…]
