Premiering at the Sundance Film Festival this weekend Velvet Buzzsaw is the latest thriller from Nightcrawler’s Dan Gilroy. The movie re-teams Gilroy with actor Jake Gyllenhaal here who plays a snobby gay art critic in Los Angeles (stereotype much?) whose life get weird when some paintings by a virtually unknown artists become a hit. But the creator, and his works, might be more sinister than any of them realize…
The film also stars Rene Russo, Toni Collette, Zawe Ashton, Tom Sturridge, Natalia Dyer, Daveed Diggs, Billy Magnussen, and John Malkovich.
While many had predicted that racially charged dramas Blindspotting or Monster would take the coveted Grand Jury Prize, it was coming-of-age dramedy The Miseducation of Cameron Post that walked away with the festival’s top honor Saturday night.
Adapted from Emily M. Danforth’s 2012 novel and directed by Desiree Akhavan, Miseducation centers on a teenage girl (Chloë Grace Moretz) who is outed as a lesbian and sent to a gay conversion therapy center by her evangelical aunt. Sasha Lane, Forrest Goodluck and John Gallagher Jr. co-star in the film.”
“The Miseducation of Cameron Post” takes place in the early 1990s and Cameron’s guardians send her to a Christian camp called God’s Promise, which specializes in gay conversion therapy. In much the way “Shock Corridor” examined mental institutions more than half a century ago, “The Miseducation of Cameron Post” is really about the misunderstanding of Cameron Post as parents, doctors, and so on struggle to curb certain desires that ultimately don’t need to be “fixed.” Luckily, no one’s threatening a lobotomy or genital-shock therapy here, although the movie argues that Christian organizations that force nonconforming kids to deny their true nature are no dangerous and harmful.
GLAAD, The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation laid off nearly a quarter of its employee’s on Friday blindsiding workers who claim they did not see the cuts coming.
GLAAD cut 11 people from its staff of 45 with Interim president Mike Thompson attributing some of the cuts in part to the problems GLAAD faced last year, when former president Jarret Barrios resigned amid controversy about whether GLAAD improperly backed a proposed merger between AT&T and T-Mobile.
“It’s no secret that GLAAD experienced some real challenges in 2011. While the changes that took place subsequent to last summer’s tumult were in many ways healthy for the organization, the reality is that the experience had financial impacts for the organization. Our restructuring is reflective of that.”
But the restructuring seems to have little impact on no impact on GLAAD’s extra curricular events.
Despite the financial hardships that’s causing GLAAD to lay off staff GLAAD will still be spending a ton of money to host panels. cocktail parties, receptions and a cineGLAAD Lounge at this years Sundance Film Festival. Is this what Thompson calls “restructuring”? Or does Thompson and GLAAD think its funds are better used by rubbing elbows with celebrities in Utah, hosting gay filmaker parties and preaching to the choir instead of retaining its own staff and doing what the organizations mission statement says of “holding the media accountable for the words and images they present”?
How many employees could GLAAD have retained with the money that it will spend at the Sundance Film Festival?
Restructuring is one thing. Priorities is another. Perhaps if GLAAD finally would get its priorities straight and actually do the job it’s mission statement says and stops wasting money then perhaps more people in the LGBT Community would be more willing to donate to it.
Keep the Lights On chronicles an emotionally and sexually charged journey of two men in New York City through love, friendship, and addiction. Documentary filmmaker Erik (acclaimed Danish actor Thure Lindhardt in his first leading role in a U.S. film) and closeted lawyer Paul (Zachary Booth, Damages) meet through a casual encounter, but soon find a deeper connection and become a couple. Individually and together, they are risk takers-compulsive, and fueled by drugs and sex. In an almost decade-long relationship defined by highs, lows, and dysfunctional patterns, Erik struggles to negotiate his own boundaries and dignity while being true to himself.
The film is set for it’s World Premiere on January 20th at the Sundance Film Festical in Park City, Utah
The Prop 8 Trail is ongoing, Rep. Tammy Baldwin’s congressional hearing was last Friday regarding the Anti-Homosexuality Bill pending in Uganda’s Parliament, EDNA of course is postponed, Obama is about to probably make ANOTHER promise to TRY to get Congress to repeal DADT, and where in the world IS 350K a year Joe Solmonese?
He’s at SUNDANCE on YOUR dime!
Thats right! Instead of doing some REAL work at the HRC, because we all know everything is going so well for us in Washington Little Joe right? Solmonsleaze jets off to Sundance to be on a panel hosted by GLAAD, which, after canceling this year’s Queer Lounge at Sundance, was really the only place for queers to gather. Aside from the lobby at 8: The Mormon Proposition screenings.
And this isn’t even the first time that Joe’s pulled this shit. Remember how he skipped traveling to New Hampshire in January 2008 during the all-important presidential primary, and instead jetted out to Hollywood for the premiere of the new season of the “The L-Word”?
During a press conference E!’s Ted Casablanca and Taryn Rider asked “hotter than hell” actors Jon James Franco and John Hamm about the Prop 8 Trial in California and how it might relate to the the courtroom trial in the film “Howl” about openly gay brat poet Allan Ginsberg which both actors are starring in thats debuting at the Sundance Film Festival
Said Hamm: “There’s a line in the movie [that says] ‘I think that publicity engendered by this trial is going to bring this poem to a much wider audience than it ever would have had.’ I think that argument can certainly be made for the Prop 8 situation, where publicity engendered by all this brings to light the absurdity of ascribing second-class status to an entire group of people. The more people that see that…I just think in a lot of ways the publicity and press surrounding these issues will only serve to help.”
Said Franco: “Like I said before when Milk was coming out, I hope we’ll get to a time soon where we’ll look back and say, ‘I can’t believe that we were discriminating against this whole group of people and saying, ‘You don’t have the same rights as everybody else.” I hope that the time comes very, very soon, when we can all look back and say that was ridiculous.”
Watch these two incredibly intellegent and handsome actors in the interview below
GLAAD, The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation laid off nearly a quarter of its employee’s on Friday blindsiding workers who claim they did not see the cuts coming.