Reverend’s Preview: Love at LAFF

What is shaping up as this year’s most critically acclaimed gay-themed film will have its gala Southern California premiere during the 20th Los Angeles Film Festival, presented by Film Independent. The fest runs June 11th-19th at LA Live and various adjoining screening sites.

Love Is Strange will screen this Thursday, June 12th at 7:30 pm. It is writer-director Ira Sachs’ follow up to Keep the Lights On (2012), one of the best gay movies of recent years. Award-winning actors John Lithgow and Alfred Molina headline the cast of Love Is Strange as a New York City gay couple who decide to get married after 39 years together. Soon after the wedding, Molina’s George is fired from the Catholic school where he has taught music for over a decade. Ben (Lithgow) is already retired and living on a fixed income, so the two find themselves no longer able to afford their longtime apartment. No one is able to take them in together, so George moves in with a gay neighbor (played by out actor-singer Cheyenne Jackson) while Ben goes to live with his nephew’s family.

With stories all over the news of recently-married gay men and lesbian women terminated by their Catholic former employers, the central premise of Love Is Strange is nothing if not timely. The heterosexual Molina and Lithgow are both excellent and seem very relaxed in their roles as loving gay partners. Sachs’ no nonsense, naturalistic style of directing also serves the film well. In short, this movie should not be missed (it is scheduled for national theatrical release in August).

LAFF seemed light on LGBT-interest offerings last year, but the 2014 fest is definitely making up for it. Other gotta-see films to be shown include:

• Eat With Me, in which a mother separated from her husband moves in with their gay son. While she initially disapproves of her son’s lifestyle, they gradually bond over their experiences of men and food. This world premiere is David Au’s accomplished, feature-length expansion of his 2003 short Fresh Like Strawberries. MADtv’s Nicole Sullivan is a lot of fun as the kooky next-door neighbor and George Takei makes a cameo appearance as himself.

• Jersey Boys. I haven’t yet seen this adaptation of the Tony Award-winning Broadway musical and don’t know if it has any gay content, but it is a musical after all. Clint Eastwood directs the biographical saga of 1960’s singing sensations Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, with John Lloyd Young reprising his acclaimed performance as Valli.

• Limited Partnership. This eye-opening, world premiere documentary will be a free screening at the festival on Saturday, June 14th. It relates the little-known story of Tony Sullivan and Richard Adams, whose 1975 wedding in Boulder, Colorado became one of the first highly-publicized gay marriages in the US. They also subsequently became one of the first gay couples to confront immigration and residency issues (Tony was an Australian citizen). Shockingly, the couple received a denial letter from the US Immigration and Naturalization Service stating: “You have failed to establish that a bona fide marital relationship can exist between two faggots.” A subsequent, somewhat more sympathetic letter from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals denied their request to stay together on the basis that “neither partner can fulfill the female functions in marriage.” Thomas G. Miller’s film powerfully illustrates both how far we have come as citizens in the last 40 years and how far we have left to go.

• Out in the Night, another world premiere documentary about four African-American lesbian women in New York City who suffered a tragic miscarriage of justice in the wake of an attempted sexual assault against them in 2006. The movie poses the troubling question: How would this have unfolded if it had been four straight, white women instead?

• Violette. From Martin Provost, director of the great 2008 film Seraphine, comes this French biography of volatile, bisexual writer Violette Leduc. It recounts the early feminist’s encounters with such literary luminaries as Albert Camus, the gay Jean Genet, and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.

• Dear White People, which along with Love Is Strange was a breakout hit at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, is a provocative satire by Justin Simien about racial, gender and sexual politics at a prestigious university boasting an ensemble cast of young, rising talents.

• I Am Big Bird: The Caroll Spinney Story. While light on gay content (although its subject admits on camera to being accused of being gay by cruel fellow grade-school students), this Los Angeles premiere relates the endearing life story of the man behind one of our greatest pop-culture icons. Spinney has not only played Big Bird but Oscar the Grouch on Sesame Street and in feature films since 1969. Now 80 years old, Spinney has had more than his share of ups and downs. The new documentary by Dave LaMattina and Chad Walker is wonderfully nostalgic but also heart-wrenching at times for anyone who grew up with the support of PBS’s Children’s Television Workshop. We will always love you, Jim Henson.

And for those of us with shorter attention spans, be sure to check out the gay-themed short films Adjust-A-Dream, in which a gay couple evaluates a new mattress in a department store, as well as Drew Lint’s kinky Rough Trade.

To purchase passes or tickets and for full festival details, visit the LA Film Fest website.

Review by Rev. Chris Carpenter, resident film critic of Movie Dearest and Rage Monthly Magazine.

Reverend's Interview: Flying High

Most of us probably think of 1986’s Top Gun as the quintessential big-screen depiction of gay men in the military. The funny thing, though, is that there isn’t a single gay character in it. While the Tom Cruise-starring adventure is undeniably homoerotic, we’ve had to wait another 28 years for a major studio (Lionsgate) to back a military-set story featuring a gay soldier at its center. Burning Blue, opening in select theaters and available on Video on Demand beginning today, is that long overdue movie.

Lieutenant Dan Lynch (played by Trent Ford) is a Navy pilot aiming to become an elite fighter alongside his best friend, Lt. Will Stephensen (Morgan Spector, seen as Al Capone’s brother, Frank, in several episodes of Boardwalk Empire last season). Their relationship and ambitions are challenged when Dan, who is engaged to a woman, finds himself falling in love with a fellow closeted airman (Rob Mayes). Complicating matters even more is that the story takes place between 1995 and 2000, at the height of the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” era.

“It’s very personal but it is a work of fiction,” the film’s co-writer and director, DMW “David” Greer, recently told me. “I was in the military and came from that world, so it is drawn from personal experience.” Greer reported that he flew helicopters, not the F-16s depicted in Burning Blue, and that he was stationed in San Diego for a time. “Many of the situations in the film happened to me and many of the characters are based on people I know.”

A successful playwright, Greer is making his motion picture debut with this adaptation of his hit 2002 play. “It was challenging,” he said of the process of transferring Burning Blue from the stage to the screen. “I felt like I had cracked the code on writing a play years ago but I’m still not so sure about writing a screenplay. When I first thought of telling this story, though, I saw it very cinematically.”

The resulting movie is emotionally gripping and features some stunning shots of Navy jets in action, for which I assumed Greer had the Navy’s cooperation. “We had zero cooperation, less than zero,” he replied. Those impressive sequences in the film resulted from, according to Greer, “the marrying of really great B-roll stock footage and individuals’ digital footage; it was a challenge to convince investors that I could pull it off.”

In the film, a Naval safety specialist arrives to investigate a pair of flight mishaps. As he becomes suspicious of Dan’s sexuality, a witch hunt is launched against Dan and other potentially gay personnel. I asked Greer whether, based on what he has observed or heard, the acceptance of gay men and lesbian women in the ranks has improved since “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (DADT) was abolished in 2011.

“I think it has,” he answered. “I haven’t been at the heart of it for a long time but I have friends still in the service, and it really has improved.” Greer cautioned, however, “there is still homo-ignorance or homophobia and there are still people I know in the military who have not been completely forthright. But things definitely have improved.” He noted that there hadn’t yet been any screenings of Burning Blue specifically for military personnel but that he would love for one to be arranged.

Greer has called New York City home since 1983 but has split his time between New York and London for the last 20 years. “My husband is English,” he reported. If Greer was ever subject to military condemnation of his homosexuality, he has happily grown beyond it.

Interview by Rev. Chris Carpenter, resident film critic of Movie Dearest and Rage Monthly Magazine.

Reverend’s Reviews: Reality Bites

Maverick Chilean director Alejandro Jodorowsky is back with his first movie in 20 years, The Dance of Reality. While he was recently seen on the silver screen as the subject of Jodorowsky’s Dune, about his failed attempt to film Frank Herbert’s sci-fi novel in the mid-1970’s, it has been too long not having him behind the camera. His avant-garde, hallucinogenic, graphically violent and even scatological works such as The Holy Mountain, Santa Sangre and El Topo are definitely not for all tastes but they are also characterized by moments of profound beauty. Jodorowsky’s latest is his most autobiographical work but from all reports doesn’t lack his trademark, bizarre perspective. It is now in limited theatrical release across the US.

Several other new releases, most on DVD/VOD, offer biographical glimpses into some unique lives. The Jewish Cardinal (now availablefrom Film Movement) will be of particular interest to Catholic viewers, as it explores the rise of the late Jean-Marie Lustiger from parish priest to bishop and ultimately to serving as cardinal-archbishop of Paris. He also became one of Pope (now Saint) John Paul II’s closest friends and confidantes, and was considered one of the leading candidates to become pope following John Paul’s death in 2005.

Before all that, though, Lustiger was named Aaron at the time of his birth to Jewish parents. He converted to Catholicism in 1940 when he was 14 years old and took the name Jean-Marie for himself (although he kept Aaron as his middle name). His mother, who was arrested by the Nazis when she remained in Paris and soon after perished at Auschwitz, was tolerant of her son’s decision but Lustiger’s father later tried to have his baptism declared invalid. As a priest and bishop, Lustiger proudly proclaimed he was both Jewish and Christian, which didn’t go over well with either Jews or conservative Catholics. “I am God’s mixed child,” he declares in the film.

The Jewish Cardinal, which is very well-written by Ilan Duran Cohen (who also directs) and Chantal Derudder, primarily covers Lustiger’s episcopal period from 1979 to his death in 2007 but features occasional flashbacks to his youth. Laurent Lucas gives a powerhouse performance as the notoriously headstrong and temperamental cleric (Lustiger’s nicknames were “The Bulldozer” and the decidedly less fearsome “Lulu”), even if his later-years makeup is far from convincing. Also excellent is Aurelien Recoing, last seen in the lesbian-themed Blue is the Warmest Color, as John Paul II. Recoing is slyly nuanced as the beloved pontiff-turned-saint, and his scenes with Lucas are the highlights of the film. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in church history or Jewish-Catholic relations.

No less impressive and frequently heroic are the numerous, out LGBT politicians spotlighted in Cindy L. Abel’s Breaking Through. It is newly available on DVDand VOD courtesy of Breaking Glass Pictures/QC Cinema. Subtitled The Struggle for Equality in the Nation’s Capital, the documentary was an Official Selection at several 2013 film festivals and won the Audience Award at QFest Fort Worth in Texas.

Abel interviews culture war veterans Barney Frank, Tammy Baldwin, Alex Wan and Kathy Webb as well as political rising stars including California’s John Perez, Todd Gloria and Toni Atkins about their personal and professional journeys. Also winningly featured is Texas judge Phyllis Frye, the first trans person to reach such legal heights. As San Diego City Councilmember Gloria states happily, “The American dream is alive and well,” and the film proves it hard to disagree with him while it reveals so clearly how far LGBT Americans have come since the 1970’s.

I feel Kansas’s publicity-seeking Westboro Baptist Church is featured too prominently and repeatedly in the movie as the epitome of anti-gay sentiment in the US. More effective at depicting the opposition are several of the politicos’ recollections of being condemned by some of their “normal,” everyday constituents. Even the pro-LGBT content in Breaking Through gets a little repetitious in the extended director’s cut on the DVD (the original theatrical version is also included and may be more effective). The tried and true Frank sums the film’s thesis up best when he says, “You can’t live half in and half out” of the closet. Good advice for not only politicians but all of us.

The most unique, even downright odd, life on display in new movies is surely that of Walter Potter. He is described in Ronni Thomas’s documentary short Walter Potter: The Man Who Married Kittens as “an unexceptional country taxidermist” who lived in 19th century England. The film will have its world premiere in Brooklyn, New York this Friday, June 6th at the city’s new Morbid Anatomy Library & Museum. I kid you not.

Potter devoted much of his adult life to the creation of anthropomorphic tableaux featuring stuffed toads, dogs, rats, monkeys, birds and, yes, kittens. He eventually opened the Bramber Museum in his home village to house his works, the most elaborate of which was a posed wedding involving 20 kittens in elaborate garb (hence the short’s title). Viewed as both an extension of “Victorian whimsy” and an abuse of God’s creation, Potter’s collection was eventually auctioned off to various buyers in 2003.

If anything, The Man Who Married Kittens is too short at 20 minutes and gives only the briefest overview of Potter and his unusual art. Within its exhibition context this weekend, though, it will probably serve very well. I thought the short was fascinating and I would sincerely like to know more about the subject, so maybe Thomas or another director can yet develop a feature film. Is it charming or disgusting? If you’ll be in the Brooklyn vicinity, check the short out and decide for your self.

Reverend’s Ratings:
The Jewish Cardinal: A-
Breaking Through: B
Walter Potter: The Man Who Married Kittens: B+

Review by Rev. Chris Carpenter, resident film critic of Movie Dearest and Rage Monthly Magazine.

Monthly Wallpaper: June 2014 - Queer Cinema, International Edition

For the seventh year, Movie Dearest salutes Pride Month with a celebration of Queer Cinema. And this June, we're going global with an International Edition.

Dust off your passport and join us on a journey from the Far East to Down Under with such talented filmmakers as Almodóvar, Fox, Visconti and Wong as we revisit some of our favorite GLBT-themed movies from around the world.

All you have to do is click on the picture above to enlarge it, then simply right click your mouse and select "Set as Background". (You can also save it to your computer and set it up from there if you prefer.) The size is 1024 x 768, but you can modify it if needed in your own photo-editing program.