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OUT ON DVD: Michael Fassbender Feels Shame, Gay Dysfunction In Domain And American Translation, And More!

By Lawrence Ferber April 17, 2012 at 3:51pm
Despite the arrival of springtime sun, it’s a dark week in queer home video entertainment. Hot Irish actor Michael Fassbender plays a sex addict we wouldn’t mind enabling in Shame, while a French Bonnie and Clyde take a queer-hunting road trip in American Translation. In Domain, a gay teen falls in with his dysfunctional auntie, while a real-life gay genius you probably haven’t heard of gets his due in Paul Goodman Changed My Life. Okay, perhaps that last one isn’t so dark. FIRST: It’s a Shame
http://youtu.be/Op9iQiB_ANI Shame ($39.99 BluRay, 20th Century Fox) Directed by British artist-cum-filmmaker Steve McQueen, Shame sees Michael Fassbender (X-Men: First Class, Prometheus) play Brandon, a sex addict in modern-day Manhattan. When Brandon’s equally damaged sister (Carey Mulligan) shows up, old wounds are reopened. Shame is as raw and explicit as it gets in mainstream cinema and Fassbender rules the screen—particularly during a controversial, admittedly grim gay bar rendezvous. DVD extras include featurettes on the star and director, as well as, “The Story of Shame” and a digital copy of the film. But we’re sure plenty of you will buy it just so you can slow-mo through Fassbender’s many nude scenes.   NEXT: Auntie doesn’t know best in Domain  
http://youtu.be/NgZLWwKj5Ow   Domain ($24.99 DVD, Strand) While still getting a grip on his sexuality, gay teen Pierre (Isaïe Sultan) becomes attached to his seductive yet troubled aunt Nadia (the awesome Beatrice Dalle), an intellectual struggling with demons and the bottle. Pierre’s mom warns him away from the self-destructive woman, but the lad is drawn in to her world of twisted queens and over-the-top drama. Auntie Mame, this is not. NEXT: A sexually confused couple hunt the most dangerous game in American Translation
http://youtu.be/NV_njOxnXV4   American Translation ($19.99 DVD, TLA) Billed as a modern Bonnie & Clyde, directors Pascal Arnold and Jean-Marc Barr’s sexual thriller follows a hot young Frenchman Chris (Pierre Perrier), and his new lover, Aurore (Lizzie Brocheré), as they roam the Gallic countryside seducing and killing gay hustlers. Is Chris doing this because he’s a tormented closet case?  And why is Aurora helping to dispose of the bodies of gay hustlers he bangs and then kills? There’s more questions than answers, but Perrier’s numerous charms make it clear how his character can get away with murder.   NEXT: Queer intellect Paul Goodman finally gets his due  

http://youtu.be/prHtmk7yfuc

Paul Goodman Changed My Life
($29.99 DVD, Zeitgeist)

One of the mid-20th century’s most outspoken and prolific queer Jewish intellectuals was Paul Goodman, co-creator of gestalt therapy. This activist, essayist, pacifist, poet and pundit made J. Edgar Hoover’s  shit list in the 1950s and ’60s  for being a subversive influence on America. (Goodman was such a part of the zeitgeist he even had a cameo in Annie Hall.)  Today, he is considered by some “the great unrecognized genius of our time,” somthing that  director Jonathan Lee’s documentary–with its deliciously retro Mad Men vibe—will hopefully help change.

 

ALSO ON DVD

Born to be Wild

Harold & Maude (Criterion DVD/Blu-ray)

Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol

Treme: The Complete Second Season

 

 

 

 

 

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4 Comments*

  • Guillermo3

    Probably a bad movie in every way [exploitative[,but Chris(Pierre) sure is pretty!

  • Guillermo3

    Glad to see there’s finally a film on Goodman !!! Haven’t noticed any public comment on him since his death.
    Dating myself,but reading “Growing UP Absurd”,on a prof’s recommendation in the late 60’s,I found it already dated.
    “The Empire City”,on the other hand, is a great novel for anyone,of any sexual orientation.

  • James M. Martin

    I cannot tell you how excited I am to see Goodman in a documentary. The trailer is superb. Goodman’s writings had a profound effect on many of us in the Sixties, and he, along with the Beats, served as role models for those growing up absurd. I had not known that he was a co-founder of Gestalt Therapy as I assumed it sprang fully grown from the head of the late Fritz Perls. It makes sense that when I researched a book I wrote about a “Me” Generation human relations seminar similar to est, I came upon Perls, who for all his faults emerges a fascinating, charismatic individual on the order of Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, Ginsberg’s mentor. Now I see that Goodman, too, was one of the “crazy gurus.”

  • Joseph

    Fassbender is German-Irish: dad is German, mom is Irish.

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