the groundhog day project

Let us get the silly out of the way up front. The setup in Egypt is silly-- and the set builders did not to a great job (except for the fact that they, of course, did not want this set to be taken seriously) as there is some weird thing on the wall that looks more like a... Had to double check, but it's a harpy on the wall between Emmy and the next mummy. And, who wrapped Emmy up like that, anyway? And, what was the point of it? Was she just going to stay in the tomb forever? And, how is it so well lit? And, why do the cracks all look horribly fake? Why are the hieroglyphs scattered instead of spaced uniformly spaced?Why are there some weird repeating shapes even with the tops of the alcoves that look like a deformed pharoah's head with an erection, and why are they not evenly spaced? You had one fucking job, set decorator, art director, production designed, whoever the fuck messed this up. Nevermind the Staff of Aesculapius-looking decorations at the sides of the mummy alcov...

The thing is, while I looked up Gregory Widen (the screenwriter) I couldn't find anything connecting him to gay themes or whatnot. Couldn't find much about his life at all. But, Russell Mulcahy (the director)--yeah, he's gay. "No one has ever known we were among you... Until now." Then there's the soundtrack songs by Queen. We open on professional wrestlers, men in tight clothes jumping on each other. CUT TO men in furs tackling each other in the past. And, then MacLeod has to run off to a secret meeting in the parking lot. MacLeod, by the way--Lambert was cast before the director even knew he was only just learning English. Basically, he was cast for his look. It isn't just because it's an 80s action movie that it leans into a homoerotic male gaze. That's kinda the nature of film. If a shot is going to linger, of course it will do so lovingly a great deal of the time. How else do you stare at anything but with strong emotion. ...

Todd VanDerWerff, Vox [W]hen you consider that Love, Simon is a major studio release--a teen romance, no less--explicitly about a gay protagonist who's grappling with the best way to come out to his family and friends, the very fact that it's so blandly competent seems all the more remarkable. We're living in a time when gay kids can have their own sweetly mediocre studio movies with all the best intentions. Isn't that something? K Austin Collins, The Ringer : Watching queer go mainstream in the 21st century entails weighing and reweighing how it feels when the rest of the world keeps reminding you that it's still playing catch-up--in slow motion, no less. Meanwhile, you're out and about living your life, or trying to, while having to make the best of that fact. That's the bargain. Every day I get to wake up and ask myself, Shall I be a bitch about representation today? I typically choose not to be, but it's never an easy choice. I happen to ha...

I was... am tempted to keep today's entry short, to say something simple and cheesy about love. I told my daughter Saer this and she took my keyboard and wrote the following: Happy Valentines Day to my beautiful readers! I can't find the words to properly express how much I love you all for the support you show by reading this blog. But I guess that's what Valentine's Day is all about--love. And the world needs more of it. I'd hug all my readers if it were possible but it is not, and it's sad so *cyber hugs* LOVE. I was going to go with something shorter. Like love is love . Whether or not you want to believe that Alvie and Boots are gay , there is definitely love between them, and they definitely play well at being domestic, at being parents. And, if you watch this movie and don't feel some empathy and love for both of them and for Savannah, you have no heart. Watching this as a kid--and remember that when this movie came out I was a year younger than ...

So, for future readers, the Winter Olympics are going on this week and next. Among the competitors is Adam Rippon, a male figure skater from the US who is openly gay. On a post (which I cannot find the specific one I saw yesterday) on Facebook by some conservative page I follow, maybe Fox News, maybe the page that used to be called People Against Obama's Liberal Adgenda [sic], about Rippon, some immediate (and expected) comments were all about how his sexuality is irrelevant, just do your sport and leave politics out of it... Which 1) of course they don't care when it's not about them, or doesn't agree with them. Like they--and I will lump them all together under one "they" for the moment, because fuck them--tell celebrities not to talk about politics, just do their acting job, dance like the trained monkeys they are and shut up about anything else, because actors, as we all know, are not people, are not voters with the same rights as everyone else, and of cou...

For the record, I would have rather had more research and depth for yesterday 's entry. Given the short time frame I've got to research stuff for this blog, I just couldn't find a good source about queer coding in cinema. Found a few sources talking about how certain characters in, say, 1950s' films can be understood as gay even though their films could not really have them be, given the Hays Code. But, they just didn't get into details about what aspects of a character demonstrated coded homosexuality. Unfortunately, the topic proved more complicated than I had hoped. But, life--and this blog--goes on. The starting point today is a bit from Ebert's (1981) review of the film. He tells us that "the film doesn't like women [and so] its sex scenes all create fear and hostility." I got into this a bit the last two days , and I must at once both agree and disagree with Ebert's sentiment. On the one hand, I do not believe the hostility and fear t...

A couple questions linger as I complete my week with West Side Story . The first: why did Saul Bass give us such a static opening image? Sure it changes color, but as far as movement goes, it's got nothing on Anatomy of a Murder , The Man with the Golden Gun , Psycho , Spartacus , Vertigo , North by Northwest ... and more. Bass usually goes for something more... interesting. I read that he was also responsible for the aerial shots that take us from that overview of Manhattan into the smaller zones, until we get to the West Side and the playground and the Jets. But, that slow movement doesn't make up for the static image of Manhattan. His end credits are nice, putting the credits onto walls and signs. Between that and the aerial shots, he certainly evokes a specific time and place. But, I can't help but feel a little disappointed that the initial shot is so static but for the color. The second: Why are there rows of doors around the neighborhood? Here, strewn in a...