Review: Sandra Oh in "The Chair"

by Lynn Lee

In my younger days, I wanted to be an English professor.  I was pretty serious about it, too – serious enough to major in English, get a fellowship, and enroll in a Ph.D program.  Ultimately, I realized academia wasn’t for me and left with just a master’s.  I’ve never regretted that decision.  Yet I still wonder occasionally what my life would have been like if I’d stuck with my original dream.

So it’s no wonder I immediately let myself sink into The Chair, a new Netflix (mini?)series starring Sandra Oh as the titular chair of the English department at Pembroke University. That's a fictional Ivy League school in what looks like a permanently snow-covered New England college town, although the show was actually shot in Pennsylvania.  Basically, it’s my alternate-universe existence if I were as cool and charismatic as Sandra Oh and as brilliant and committed as her character, Ji-Yoon Kim...

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50th Anniversary: "Midnight Cowboy"

by Mark Brinkerhoff

Gay pride month is nearly upon us, so what better time to revisit Midnight Cowboy, the first LGBT-related Best Picture Oscar winner, which arrived in theaters 50 years ago this week. It remains, incidentally, the only X-rated film (for “homosexual frame of reference" and its "possible influence upon youngsters”) ever to win the Academy’s top award. 

Centering on Joe Buck, a wannabe hustler from Texas who finds himself entirely out of his depth in the big city (New York, that is), Midnight Cowboy succeeds poignantly, in the words of its director, as an “exploration of loneliness.” It also doubles as — and doubles down on — disastrous toxic masculinity: how men often are conditioned to (mis)treat others, not to mention themselves, as disposable, degradable objects of disaffection. 

In this ambling story, callousness reigns supreme, with humanity increasingly lost in the constant shuffle, on the streets of Manhattan...

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Tweetweek: Aunt May, His & Hers Emmy Nods, Everything Being James Franco's Fault

Readers... I'm back from my critics retreat (which featured such spotty internet that I finally gave up on the internet altogether but the ability to focus without it was kind of amazing -- try it sometime) Regular posting will begin again Monday. Tonight please enjoy this roundup of amusing tweets as I try to catch up on news, emails, and social media. Yours truly, Nathaniel...  

Just realized that all four stars of #Ghostbusters were nominated for #Emmys this year! #SNL pic.twitter.com/NoFTHDD35v

— Jarett Wieselman (@JarettSays) July 13, 2017

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HBO’s LGBT History: Bernard and Doris (2008)

Manuel is working his way through all the LGBT-themed HBO productions.

Last week we looked at the provocatively titled but rather limp documentary Middle Sexes - Redefining He and She. This week, we turn our attention to Bernard and Doris, a rather enjoyable little film about billionairess Doris Duke and her gay butler Bernard Lafferty. It’s an otherwise lightweight exercise for actors and director alike but it does allow us to talk about that ubiquitous “gay guy/straight gal” pairing we’re all too familiar with.

Bernard and Doris (DVD)
Directed by: Bob Balaban
Written by: Hugh Costello
Starring: Susan Sarandon, Ralph Fiennes, James Rebhorn.

At one point in Bob Balaban’s HBO film, Doris Duke, “the richest girl in the world” as she was known ever since her father left his entire fortune to her, demands that Bernard - the increasingly flamboyant Irish butler she’s grown quite fond of - step aside from driving and let her take the wheel. She’s much too drunk to bear his slow pace and much too bossy to let herself be convinced otherwise. Inevitably, the unlikely couple are stopped by a cop and Doris is asked to step outside the car and told she’ll have to be breathalized. More...

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Yes, No, Maybe So: "Monuments Men"

Weep not for the embedded trailer I was going to use to discuss Monuments Men which vanished moments before I hit "publish". Trailers are not works of art we must protect from the Nazis so it's okay if they regularly get yanked or are seen in non-embeddable ways. They are but commercials for movies that we hope are works of art themselves. If you'd like to see the trailer to George Clooney's latest Oscar missile, click here.

I keep meaning to read the bestseller this film is based on but it basically about a group of older men on a special war time mission. They make like thieving soldiers to steal art from the Nazis before its destroyed.

YES

• Run, Jean Dujardin, run!
• Shoot Nazis, Bob Balaban, shoot 'em! [more...]

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