Director Rick Stout brings the right-wing movement into uncharted territory with his new flick, Demographic Winter, which firmly points a finger at gays, feminists and lefties for the declining population rates. Because, you know, we threaten marriage and there can be no babies without marriage.

Says one interview subject, "Now we have forty years of social science that makes it absolutely clear that the deterioration of marriage and the encouragement of sexuality outside of marriage is just not good for society." The scariest part to these people: the decline of developed nations. That means African nations could be on top. Nooooo!

Though this trailer doesn't spell out any clear answers, the screen does flash this ominous query: "What if the solutions were clear to academia, but weren't politically correct?" That sounds like the makings of a social cleansing project. And it frightens us.

Hey, movie-making homos! We've got some great news for you - the Outrate.net Online Short Film Festival opened its virtual doors to your myriad masterpieces.

Some details: "Entry is free up until July 29, then it's about fifteen bucks until entries close August 29. Every short that's entered is screened on the site until finalists are announced mid September, and last year the festival attracted over a quarter of a million page views, so it's a good chance to get your work out there." Indeed!

Above you see Jim Cashman's "Dinner Conversation," which won last year's top prize.

The Iris Prize Festival kicks of in Cardiff, Wales today. Judges and audiences will screen 30 short films and offer what organizers say will be the largest gay flick prize ever: £25,000.

Of the contest, Welsh actor Matthew Rhys,who plays gay on Brothers and Sisters and patronizes the festival, says:

I'm confident the international jury will find it difficult choosing an overall winner.

However, we should remember that all the film-makers who've reached the finals in Cardiff are already winners for getting this far.

We've never believed that "everyone's a winner" bullshit. The person who wins is the winner. The others are just more talented losers than the people who didn't make it. But, then again, we're cynical assholes…

• National Gay and Lesbian Task Force executive director Matt Foreman has some harsh words for Democratic presidential contenders:

We find no evidence that the Democratic frontrunners counter Republicans’ anti-LGBT speech with routine and positive inclusion of LGBT people in their visions for a whole and healthy society… The Democrats include us — sorta — but only in response to a direct question and typically in the language of careful legislative reform.

Word!

• Jim McGreevey and soon-to-be ex-wife Dina Matos McGreevey make another court appearance. Judge urges them to settle and stop wasting time/money. And, for some reason, Mato-McGreevey thinks she's entitled to $56,000 a month in alimony. Was her book really that much of a bomb?

• Venice film festival gets gay with Queer Lion Award.

• PlanetOut announces mixed second quarter fiscal results.

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Madonna has uttered another big mouthful. After she's done robbing several continents of their last pennies with expensive concert tickets, the self-proclaimed "visionary" is planning to dip her toes back into the film industry, but this time behind the camera to hide her wrinkles. On her new plans:

Making movies for me was never about being a big movie star, it was about being a good actress. But it's not easy with critics going after you before the movie is even released. It's easier to be a visionary as a director.

Guy Ritchie is probably worried that his wife will surpass his own directing abilities, which we all drank in when we saw the new Swept Away. What? You mean you didn't see it?

BATTING PRACTISE FOR LOURDES AND ROCCO IN CENTRAL PARK [Hello Magazine]

We summoned the courage to fight the hordes of gays attending the premiere of The Devil Wears Prada on Friday night, and it was worth every impolite shove and ounce of shade thrown our way.

Full disclosure: we never read the book, but it's hard for us to imagine it being wittier or any better executed than the film, which had us in stitches the entire time. Everything was exaggerated for the sake of comedy, especially the offices of Runway (Vogue) magazine, where everyone runs around in complete panic in anticipation of the Editor-In-Chief's arrival. And panic they should, because Meryl Streep's Miranda Priestly is absolutely terrifying, but it's in her subtlety, not her wild-eyed rage. In fact, Streep hardly ever raises her voice and ends her impossible demands with a simple "That's all."

Anne Hathaway plays Andrea Sachs, Priestly's new hipster-dowdy assistant who quickly gets a fashion makeover and look absolutely great. Costume designer Patricia Field really outdid herself by picking outfits for Hathaway that would put some real Vogue girls to shame. We missed the Princess Diaries movies and the only other time we saw Hathaway was in Brokeback Mountain, where we felt she did a commendable job despite the over-acting. In The Devil Wears Prada she is brilliant, perhaps because she is working with Streep.

The script is hilarious, the dynamic between Streep and Hathaway is perfect, and we also loved Emily Blunt's performance as Priestly's first assistant who is obsessed with getting thin so she can look fabulous for Paris Fashion Week. On her efforts to get thin, "I just started this new diet. Basically I don't eat anything, and then when I feel like I'm going to faint, I eat a cube of cheese."

In our humble opinion, this is the movie of the summer. Go see it now before you're at your next gay BBQ and are missing all the jokes.

The Devil Wears Prada [Official Site]

We know it's a year away, but we are excited for the new Spiderman movie, which will come out in May 2007. The premise so far as we can tell is that Spiderman is infected by some sort of evil and has to battle against himself while also saving the city from a humongous sand monster.

The still above shows star Tobey Maguire stripping off his costume to show that he is once again ripped after a bit of a rough patch last year. We are relieved because we always thought he was cute, but then again we are always suckers for nerdy boys with lisps.

Spiderman 3 Trailer [Apple]

One thing we have been asking ourselves throughout this "is Superman gay?" brouhaha is "why is this getting so much media attention, including ours?" No one ever suggested that Superman is actually gay, including The Advocate in their original article, so are we just talking about his tights? All the press about the issue has been so vague that it smacks of a publicity stunt.

Brent Hartinger over at AfterElton believes that it is one big media concoction made up by the folks at Warner Brothers to A. Market their movie to the gay audience and B. Create controversy and buzz in the days leading up to the film's premiere. It seems they have been pretty successful, if our own coverage of the "issue" is any indication, but we are getting sick of such cynical (and shoddy) pandering.

We believe that if Warner Brothers wants to start a real "gay Superman" controversy, they should provide some meat for the story. Put a gay love triangle in the new movie or something; don't just talk about how wearing tights is sort of gay, because that is not worthy of a controversy, even by our standards, and we live for controversy.

We're almost as frustrated by this as we are by the new Beyonce single. All we're asking is for someone somewhere to put in a tiny shred of effort.

The Last Gay Word: Who the #%*& Cares if Superman is “Gay”? [AfterElton]

We were first introduced to gay filmmaker Gregg Araki in high school when we saw The Doom Generation, but it was a few years later that we were truly won over by his earlier film The Living End. It's a tale of a street hustler and a filmmaker, both HIV+, driving across the country on the run from the cops and having lots of hot sex along the way. It's fraught with danger and sexual energy, has very spare dialogue, and requires some degree of interpretation.

Araki takes risks, and consequently his films aren't for everyone, but they are thought-provoking and always feature incredibly hot guys. Because of his groundbreaking work in gay cinema, he is being honored at the Provincetown International Film Festival with the 2006 "Filmmaker on the Edge" award. The festival started yesterday and continues through June 18, if you live nearby and want to catch a movie and see some crazy film queens running around in thongs (at least that's how we imagine it).

Gregg Araki is a filmmaker on the edge [In Newsweekly]
Provincetown International Film Festival [Official Site]

Maybe we should take it as a positive sign that there are no gay films on the Entertainment Weekly "Top 25 most controversial films" list. Not being controversial must be progress, right?

Actually, no. It's surprising that movies like Brokeback Mountain and Philadelphia did not make the list, considering the huge cultural poopstorm that followed their respective releases, while Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ sits in the number one spot. It may seem like a minor oversight, but we suspect personal politics are at work, and we wish a magazine with as huge a readership as Entertainment Weekly would make a better effort to ensure more even-handed research.

If you'd like to tell the folks at Entertainment Weekly what you think about their lop-sided list, you can email them here.

The 25 Most Controversial Movies Ever [Entertainment Weekly via AfterElton]

We only wish that there was a Darryl Stephens for every Tom Cruise in Hollywood. Stephens is out of the closet and seems to be everywhere at once: in gay television on the Logo original series Noah's Arc, and now as the star of two new films. Not Quite Right, his latest, premiered last Saturday at the NewFest in New York, and Boy Culture, based on the novel by Matthew Rettenmund, is currently in theaters.

For those who only know and love Darryl from Noah's Arc, his role in Boy Culture is quite a departure, and this is what you can expect:

Noah's Arc fans will probably be a little shocked. This character isn't campy or soft or fashionable at all. He's quiet, introspective and kind of simple. Noah is almost a gay superhero next to this guy.

Our pal Rod sat down and talked with Darryl about his career and the responsibility of being the star of the world's first black, gay television series. Read the whole interview at Rod 2.0.

A Conversation with Darryl Stephens [Rod 2.0]

We know that we highlighted the muscled god that is actor Ryan Reynolds once already this year, but we felt compelled to show a bit more of him since we found this clip from the movie Buying the Cow, which we assume went straight to video since we have never heard of it before. And that really is a shame because it means that Americans never got to enjoy the 40+ seconds of Ryan's bubble butt running around on the big screen. Watch the video [NSFW] after the jump.

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• Not only is George Michael admitting he is a complete mess, he is writing a song about it. Hopefully he'll include the lyrics in the liner notes. [ITN]

• Michelle Williams may have a sort-of-lesbian romance with Cate Blanchett in the upcoming Bob Dylan movie and Heath Ledger will co-star! What a reversal. [PEN15 Club]

• Sophia Coppola's Marie Antoinette period drama got booed by the press at Cannes. Coppola says it's "not for everybody," but we expect the gays to love it, though we wonder how arch Kirsten Dunst is capable of being. [Gabsmash]

• It's hard to get onto the cover of Vanity Fair nowadays. Really hard, in fact, unless you're dreamy and tragic like Anderson Cooper. [The Bosh]

We probably know less about the X-Men than we should, since it is such a symbol of gayness and we are even in the right generation to be obsessed with the comic books, but today was the first we heard that the character Colossus is a homo. Apparently, he almost came out in a recent issue of the Ultimate X-Men comic book, and he is interested in Wolverine (aren't we all?).

His super power is that he can turn parts of his body into steel, which sounds a bit intimidating, but we are still intrigued, especially since he is being played by the sexy and Canadian Daniel Cudmore in the upcoming X-Men 3 movie. Now let's just imagine him and Hugh Jackman in a carnal, superhero embrace.

X-Men 3: The Last Stand - Our gay Colossus can convert body tissue in a steel-like substance. Seriously. What can you do? [Queer Beacon]

We are foaming at the mouth to see the new X-Men 3 movie, especially now that we know Magneto will be extra fierce. The plot of the latest installment focuses on the idea that mutants can be "cured" of their mutantness. Now anyone who knows the X-Men knows it is a very thinly veiled metaphor for the gays, so gay actor Sir Ian McKellen, who plays maverick sometimes-villain Magneto, pretended during filming that he was blowing up Jerry Falwell and everyone else who believes that homosexuality is a disease with a cure. We already find comic book movies oddly moving, but we think this one might make us cry.

Ian McKellen Channeled Anger Into Role Of Magneto [Starpulse]