Hello 2014, and with the new year comes a fresh batch of home entertainment!
Pedro Almodovar returns to his queer, campy roots with I’m So Excited, and cult/low budget auteur David DeCoteau is back with another homoerotic horror flick, 3 Wicked Witches.
Finding Me: The Series compiles dramatic webisodes about urban young queers of color, while Mark Ruffalo stars as a white male sex addict in Thanks For Sharing.
How about we take this to the next level?
Our newsletter is like a refreshing cocktail (or mocktail) of LGBTQ+ entertainment and pop culture, served up with a side of eye-candy.
($40.99 Blu-ray; Sony)
Pedro Almodovar ramps up the camp and takes off with this fun, sassy comedy that harkens back to his early, super-queer works. When a plane’s landing gear gets jammed up en route to Spain, its trio of gay flight attendants attempt to sedate the passengers before they freak out, yet a few — including an assassin and psychic — manage to stay awake and cause havoc. Frothy fun stuff! Extras include featurettes devoted to the film’s making and promotion.
($29.99 DVD; Ome Productions LLC)
Sprung from the 2009 indie feature film and 2011 sequel about a young gay black man, Faybien, and his clique of Jersey City-based friends, this 13-episode, almost five-hour long web series continues their adventures — plus that of newcomer Omar, described as a “directionless thug” — in love, life, and self-discovery.
($14.95 DVD; Rapidheart)
Cougars and boyflesh and a killer clown puppet, Oh My! Prolific homoerotic director David DeCoteau is back with this tale of three cougars who exact revenge, via a “possessed clown doll,” on a frat house full of frequently stripped down young hunks.
($24.99 Blu-ray, $19.98 DVD; Lionsgate)
Mark Ruffalo plays Adam, a (straight) sex addict surrounded by friends enduring similar struggles — including Pink, making an impressive dramatic debut. When Adam falls for a woman (Gwyneth Paltrow) sworn to avoid ex-addicts, can he make things work? Extras include a making-of, commentary track, gag reel and deleted scenes.
ALSO OUT:
Inequality For All
Runner Runner
We Are What We Are
The Act of Killing
KDub
More proof that gay movies/series should never see the light of day. Same camp and stereotypes, different actors. And they actually have the audacity to charge $41 and $30 for it? Lol MUST be on meth! I’ll definitely be going with Runner Runner.
RomanHans
Too bad there’s nothing like Finding Me: The Series. Oh, wait.
Lefty
I’m So Excited is classic Almodovar – probably the best filmmaker working in cinema today.
It was deceptively simple, but in hindsight was about so much more than it appeared to be about.
It’s so sad when some gay people complain about camp “stereotypes” – they’re just types and those types exist in huge numbers in the gay community. The campyness, the overt drug use, and copious sexual antics on board the plane were some of the most subversive scenes I’ve watched in a movie in God knows how many years.
It was utterly joyous, dramatic, moving, hilarious, shocking and – as with all Almodovar – was a beautifully constructed and layered piece of cinematic storytelling.
There’s nothing wrong with camp types. Almodovar clearly accentuated it and i think that was partly – and clearly successfully – to piss off this new breed of dreary conservative gay people who loathe anything camp and see it as a bad refelction on their new respectable, middle-class, humdrum, “normal” gay assimilation aspirations.
Subversive and pissing off the right people as ever.
Long may Almodovar continue… x
Michael
I’ve been watching Almodovar for decades and this is without doubt the very, very worst thing he’s ever done. It’s not so much about the “stereotypes” he delivers here but how shockingly acted they are. Sorry Lefty but I cannot imagine what moment in this appalling excuse for a film you could possibly have found “moving” or “joyous” or remotely “subversive”.
The one “classic” element is how gay it all is and of course we’ve come to expect that from him but we’ve also been geared to expect sophistication, intelligence, and innovation from him, in the humour, in the drama, in the narrative. There is None of that here.
Lefty
@Michael: But it’s a light comedy (on the surface), so it was never going to be as emotionally deep as All About My Mother or Talk To Her, for example; nor was the acting going to be as realistic – it was broad, as were the gags and the themes.
However, I found a great deal of it moving and intelligent. Again, it was a broad and light comedy, so the kind of sophistication Almodovar began to incorporate into his films from the’90s isn’t really going to work here.
Re the acting – I thought the three main gay characters were by far the best acted and they were superb. Javier Camara is one of the best actors in the world; he can do comedy as well as any of the greats and likewise straight acting. Of the three Almodovar films he’s been in, this was the lightest, but although there was nothing in it as heart-wrenching as his final few scenes in Talk To Her, I did think the scene in I’m So Excited where he stands in the background crying as he listens to his boyfriend on the phone telling his wife and kids that he loves them incredibly moving. But as with all Almodovar films, it’s the sheer humanity of them that’s ultimately the most moving.
But the whole thing: overt campiness, the drug use, the way sex was used and shown, the blurred lines of sexuality – it felt very modern and anarchic in its attitude to what was going on and, as I say, in the current climate of sexual conservatism and gay assimilation (which I’m not criticising); all of the above felt very subversive and yet closer to the way people actually think and feel and behave.
There was also the subtext about the economic crash in Europe and the plane going round and round in circles, unable to land; the stuff about the Spanish monarchy which is very current and again subversive.
And underneath it all was this strange melancholy, which really stayed with me after I watched it.
It’s the lightest, campest of comedies, but with a serious subtext and a feeling of sadness about the state of the world, I think.
It was a joy to watch and, like all Almodovar, repays repeated viewings…