Advise & Consent (1962)

Extremely talky political melodrama at its most middling. I rather enjoyed some of the machinations exposed in this story (based on a Pulitzer prize-winning novel by Allan Drury, who was inspired by the suicide of Lester Hunt during the McCarthy era) of the Senate approval of a Secretary of State nominee during the Cold War, but Machiavellian power-dealing only took the movie so far before it slid into a gay blackmail story rather typical for the era, at least in terms of gay stories that explicitly appeared in mainstream film in the early sixties.

This one ends, quite predictably, in a suicide, a rather grisly one at that, signaling a finish to a movie that had already run its course. The gay twist did

Dark Shadows Delight #16: Craig Slocum as Noah Gifford

The male cast of Dark Shadows has already proven itself to me as the gayest in television history, with actors running the gamut of onscreen persona from snobbish queen and fussy dandy (Louis Edmonds as Roger) to dreamboat hunk (Joel Crothers as Joe/Lt. Forbes) to rugged suit man (Anthony George as Burke #2/Jeremiah) to outlandishly queer outcast (Jonathan Frid as Barnabas), but lo and behold, in March of 1968, they’ve outdone themselves with the brief addition of Craig Slocum, playing ne’er-do-well sailor

Buffy – s2:e15 – Phases

Oz is a werewolf. That’s far more manageable than a soulless vampire. Lucky Willow. Unlucky Buffy.

After the sturm und drang of Innocence, Whedon grants us a bit of levity with Phases. I hadn’t remembered taking this brief semi-break from tragedy, but it’s well timed. The show must go on, even though Buffy’s heart has been broken, Angelus is unleashed on Sunnydale, and pervasive doom hangs overhead. We’ve got Oz in the gang now, in a

Dark Shadows Delight #14: Nathan Forbes Practically Demands Fellatio From Barnabas

So now the almost entirely gay male cast has been granted new characters (save for Jonathan Frid, who gets his first shot at the pre-vampire Barnabas) and transported back to 1795, where men were men and wore trousers nearly tight enough for determining circumcision status.

In the scene where Barnabas confirms that he will be marrying Angelique, Lt. Forbes seems distressed, enough so to march over, outrageously splay his legs, and all but thrust his dick into Barnabas’s trembling mouth.

Frid plays the broken man here, still in his mourning attire but wearing gratuitously applied make-up, while Joel Crothers appears quite comfortable preening in Lt. Nathan Forbes’ anachronistic naval uniform, which looks as though a grandmother’s complete spoon collection has been affixed to the lapels. Now armed with a phallic saber and pre-1970s seventies sideburns, the actor reaches dizzying degrees of

Dark Shadows Delight #9: Rakish Irishman Jason McGuire Arrives at Collinwood with Rough-Trade Boyfriend Willie Loomis in Tow – Sexy Clips Follow!

Jason McGuire and Willie Loomis make the most blatantly sex-charged duo to hit Collinsport thus far. The eyes tell it all.

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At the eve of the ascension of Barnabas Collins, I’ve come to view Dark Shadows is one of the queerest television series in history. Now I’m beginning to better understand why I was obsessed by this morose soap opera at age four: I bore the imprint of what I saw on the screen. I was drawn to something I was incapable of

Joe Keenan’s Blue Heaven – My Undying Wish for a Screen Adaptation

For your consideration: Joe Keenan’s 1988 screwball comedic novel Blue Heaven for the screen. But how? When to set it? With whom?

After Mr. Lousy’s reading list was published, followed by the shocking (to Lousy) revelation that Doris W and I had dined with the book’s author Joe Keenan, I dug around the house for my own dog-eared paperback copy, which I found nestled between some film review compilations by Pauline Kael.

I re-read the novel (personally autographed – I had no idea that I’d brought it to dinner!) for the first time in 20 years, and perhaps as my copy spent at least a decade on a shelf fermenting with Pauline Kael, I have been

Phyllis Diller’s Back Half, Frank Langella’s Attic, Ron Palillo’s Ghost, George Takei’s Present, Pop Culture Passings as Proustian Madeleines, and the March of Mortality

Frank Langella used his eyes, tousled hair, and a turtleneck to seduce you with ease. His youthful seduction has been exchanged for an aged gravitas. He’d rather not have to look at the gradual transformation.

Frank Langella recently said in an interview on NPR that he doesn’t like to look at his movies. He made the analogy of going up into an attic and paging through photo albums, which forces you to look at your own aging over the years – and, as I extrapolate – the loss of the past, which is now contained only in a fragile image and perhaps an even more fragile memory.

For me, I don’t have to page through photo albums. Just watching old films, especially ones from childhood, sometimes brings me an acute sense of time passage and loss. Since I associate movies, TV, and music with specific periods of my life, I am often

Olympic Diver Matthew Mitcham Makes the Ukelele Adorable Again for 90 Seconds

Matthew Mitcham exposes the insole from the Australian uniform footwear. He always brings something unique – even to a uniform.

Though his generation is guilty of turning the ukelele into a hipster accoutrement that has transgressed the line of cute and simple into unbearable and overdone, especially in ostensibly sincere but more accurately cloying covers, Matthew Mitcham has once again beaten the odds and made the instrument fleetingly fun.

He first beat the odds first four years ago in Beijing when he knocked off China’s two top divers in the final round of dives to win the gold medal in

Russian Olympic Uniforms as a Rorschach Test

I accidentally gave myself a Rorschach test while looking at the flag borne by the leader of the Russian athletes in this procession. I’ve already discussed my great displeasure in the design. Now matters are more complicated as I’ve discovered two bulbous penises engaged in what I imagine to be frottage.

Just as I reckoned that the unflattering grey

Sonny: Nicolas Cage establishes himself as a film director vastly superior to Woody Allen

Sonny. Where to begin?

Nicolas Cage: Director. Holy shit.

First, there is somewhat of a Woody Allen phenomenon happening here. You know how Woody Allen cannot really conjure any character beyond himself, be it due to narcissism or limited artistic vision? Nowadays, when he isn’t the romantic lead in his