Link House

In Contention on another 'Year of the Woman.'
Acidemic's wildly surprising top ten. Erich is his own man as a critic. Which is why I like reading him.
BoingBoing life size wax figure of Patrick Swayze in Road House. No really.
Playbill if you're in NYC for the holidays, a ton of good shows are closing. Here's your last chance to see them.
Movie|Line Mike Ryan looks back at his year interviewing celebrities.
The Wrap 25 new films for the National Historic Registry including A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and The Exorcist.
Chateau Thombeau Joan Crawford in a loud dress. (love the punchline)

And now from the completely random department,  Ranker has a list of the "steamiest incestuous relationships on film" a perfect topic for the, uh, holidays? The list has a surprising amount of good films on it (from Chinatown --um the incest is not steamy. Ewww! -- to The Lion King (yes, really) to The Dreamers). But the obvious exclusion, and you can't really make a list this specific without including it is Close My Eyes which features a very young and constantly naked Clive Owen as a man who just really loves his big sister. Do you love Clive Owen? Like a brother or...

Where he be anyway?

Sometimes I doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion

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JA from MNPP here, doing the 2001 thing, briefly noting a flick from the year that left a bit of an impression on lil' ol' me. Yes, Richard Kelly's Donnie Darko. I can and have - seriously I have, click here to see - list a bunch of reasons why I believe this movie's too cool for school, but it really, the essence, it all boils down you see to that delightful line uttered there above. Sometimes Beth Grant doubts our commitment to Sparkle Motion. Sometimes I doubt our collective commitment to Sparkle Motion.


But then I pop in a cassette tape of "Head Over Heels" by Tears For Fears and I contemplate how exactly one does suck a fuck or what the sex lives of Smurfs are all about or if "feces" means "baby mice" or whether "cellar door" might just be the most beautiful phrase in all of the English language and so I poke my finger into a hole in the eyeball of a metal-faced rabbit-man that represents the fabric of space and time itself and I feel a little more, a little less, complete. Why am I wearing this funny man suit anyway? It's like child-proselytizer Jim Cunningham put it best:

"Is that all the gusta you can musta?"

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Screen Queens

Hi, Matt Canada here with a weekly column looking back at gay cinema classics. I think that alot of people, gay and straight alike, view gay films as formally, thematically, and socially ghettoised and sub par. It is my goal that this column will reflect the diversity, breadth, and quality of the gay canon. This body of films encompasses everything from those made by gay filmmakers dealing explicitly with gay issues (Milk); to gay authored films that are nominally straight stories, but are interpreted by many as allegorically commenting on Lavender themes (George Cukor's Rich and Famous); camp classics (Mommie Dearest); gay films authored by heterosexual directors, screenwriters and/or producers (Brokeback Mountain); and those "heterosexual films" that have always been appropriated by gay audiences as queer (All About Eve). With such a wide array of possible films to look at, this column will bring something unique to the table each weekend.

First up is Beeban Kidron's Too Wong Foo Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar (1995) starring Patrick Swayze, Wesley Snipes, and John Leguizamo as drag queens. The story of three drag queens on a road trip across the less metropolitan wilds of the country's interior, where there's a breakdown which subsequently forces interactions with less refined locals, was not a very novel idea the year after the success of The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. It has long been derided as a bad American remake of said film. However, when I first saw this film at around eight or nine (oblivious to my sexuality), I had never heard of Priscilla and loved the film's campness, lavish frocks, sequins, smiles and happy ending. Even as I grew up and my tastes matured, I continued to love everything about the film. It was practically the only gay themed film I watched in my adolescence with straight friends and family. They loved it. I loved it. It was one of the only positive and shared experiences of gay culture as a closeted youth.

So that is all well and good, but now that I have an honours Film degree and a dissertation on gay cinema behind me, bitchy humour, cocks in frocks, and a happy ending can't still have the same effect, right?

...I am not going to lie, I was almost embarrassed by how much I still loved it. Do not get me wrong, I did realise its faults on this viewing: including but not limited to the completely unbelievable script, desexualized gay men, condescending attitude towards women, and deus ex machina conclusion. However, I still find the film immensely enjoyable. The three stars as drag queens are great and obviously having loads of fun. They have everything you want from celluloid female impersonators: over-acting, bitchy one-liners, and an innate campness. However, the relationships between the three queens and especially the relationship between Swayze's Grand Dame and Stockard Channing's battered-housewife carry some real emotional weight and are expertly acted, if not flawlessly written.

The film is not perfect but it is a definitely more than a Priscilla rip-off. I think it deserves some revisiting. As some English queens say - it's camp as tits - and I love it.
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Linker

Glark makes an of-the-moment funny. RIP Swayze [thx Joe Reid]
Dave Kehr interviews Lars Von Trier but also discovers some new (old) Italian masterpieces that sound intriguing
Indiewire A Single Man will be distributed this year by the Weinsteins. Colin Firth is gunning for Best Actor. I love festival season. It always makes the awards race seem so near
New York Times 5 great upcoming performances: Gabourey Sidibe and Carey Mulligan have more buzz than they can deal with already but this article also contains less common drooling over Robin Wright Penn in The Private Lives of Pippa Lee


Variety Nicole Kidman continues on her gloriously pathological quest to work with every fine director in the world. Tomas Alfredson (Let the Right One In) will direct The Danish Girl. Unfortunately Charlize Theron has bolted. I want to root for Theron, I do. But her filmography bores me
Some Came Running Glenn Kenny on three TIFF titles
Self Styled Siren isn't too fond of Mad Men. Her new post on it and movies she loves from the era might make an interesting sidebar for you if you've been reading and enjoying the Mad Men @ the Movies series right here
In Contention maybe Robert De Niro is worth watching in Everybody's Fine?
/Film Karyn Kusama's next project may terrorize, destroy or otherwise alter Rachel Weisz's gorgeous body

Finally, as you probably read yesterday (what? I'm busy. I've had two hellish days of spotty internet service. Leave me alone) Hollywood Elsewhere loves Annette Bening in Mother and Child. Loves the whole film actually. Will it find distribution in time for an Oscar run?

I think it's "cute" that Jeffrey Wells thinks it's the best performance of The Bening's career. You see, someone says that just about every time with her. That's how you know you're dealing with a major actress. With lesser actresses everyone always agrees on what their "best" is, you know? It was Warren Beatty who said it about Running With Scissors but then, he has vested interest in her eventual (?) Oscar crowning.

Patrick Swayze (1952-2009)

When I heard tonight that Patrick Swayze had died, losing his battle with cancer at 57, my mind leapt immediately to Ghost (1990). Before Demi Moore's famous tear even finished falling in that movie theater of the mind the image was cross dissolving with scenes from other movies. I kept returning to Point Break (1991) in which Swayze played an improbable combo of surfing guru and bank robber and from which I nabbed this blurred screen shot.


I found it difficult to find a frame where Swayze wasn't in motion. Which, if you stop to think of it, is more than fitting. Dancing was his lifelong passion and rather serendipitously he became a household name by teaching it to the world (Dirty Dancing, 1987). His most famous roles smartly capitalized on his physicality whether he was throwing punches (bad movie classic Road House) fighting wars (the miniseries North and South) girlishly rethinking that lithe masculinity (drag comedy To Wong Foo, Thanks For Everything Julie Newmar) or chasing big waves (Point Break). Even his name, Swayze, suggested movement.

Ghost, his biggest hit, was less physical but it resonates in other ways now. In that improbable Best Picture nominee he played a man who died too soon. He played that sad story in real life, too -- minus Whoopi Goldberg as medium. The movies will be his medium now, his way of staying with the world.
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