Those extensive GLAAD nominations

by Nathaniel R

Despite being a proud member of the LGBTQ+ community there is one organization that I've rarely understood: GLAAD or The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation. The things they've backed over the years have been puzzling though obviously their purpose is just. All minority groups can benefit from organizations that work to prevent systemic discrimination and in the case of what we see and hear in the arts, harmful depictions. But anyway... on to this season's nominations!  In completely nonsensical news they've maintained their "wide" and "limited" categorizations for movies -- which were previously smart distinctions in the world of cinema -- but applied them to the world of streaming where we all live now. The categories are instantly rendered comical. How can The Prom be a wide release but The Boys in the Band be a limited release when they're both available on the exact same platform in the exact same amount of households for the exact same price? 

Ah well, nothing about 2020 made sense so it's naturally bleeding into 2021 now. After the jump their nominations...

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Best International Feature: France, Portugal, Spain

by Cláudio Alves

Europe is the most represented continent in the history of the Best International Feature Oscar. However, while some of its countries are regularly honored, others have been submitting for decades without luck. France, for instance, is the reigning champion of the category, having been nominated forty times. In contrast, Portugal - my country – holds the record for the most submissions without a single nod. For this chapter in our trip through world cinema, we arrive at these two nations' 2020 submissions as well as Spain's Netflix contender…

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Gay Best Friend: Nigel in "The Devil Wears Prada"

In this series by Christopher James we investigate the 'Gay Best Friend' trope in movies.

With the release of The Prom this Friday, people have been talking about the ethics of straight men taking on gay roles. As Nathaniel noted in his review, James Corden’s limp wrist and flouncy take on Barry is a tone deaf disaster. A large part of this comes from him, a straight man, constantly feeling like he must don exaggerated gay affectations rather than actually sketching out a three dimensional character. In 2020, we are in a place where we do have big name, openly gay actors more than qualified to tackle the gay roles that Hollywood writes.

While queer people should be prioritized when telling queer stories, there are many great gay performances by straight men. Perhaps one of the strongest examples is Stanley Tucci as Nigel in The Devil Wears Prada. While it’s clear from the jump that Nigel is gay, Tucci doesn’t “play” into the stereotype. Instead, his first point of reference for Nigel is a driven professional who is comfortably hyper-confident in his field...

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Doc Corner: Queer x3 to Japan, NYC and Manchester

By Glenn Dunks

LGBTIA people of colour are seen far less on our screens so I wanted to use this week’s column to focus on a few films that give them a spotlight which are now accessible to audiences. Of the three titles, the one that feels the most urgent is Graham Kolbeins’ exuberant Queer Japan that traverses the (often quite interconnected) underground scene of Japan’s queer population. If Kolbein’s film is vibrant and busy, then Gustávo Sanchez’s transgender narrative of I Hate New York manages to somehow find the grit and the dirt in NYC long after it seemingly vanished. Lastly, while that city’s Harlem ball scene has been well memorialized on screen, Deep in Vogue by Dennis Keighron-Foster and Amy Watson finds a different angle across the pond in England’s scene...

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The Furniture: Ammonite's Many, Many Fossils

"The Furniture," by Daniel Walber. (Click on the images for magnified detail)

Fossils! They’re cool.

In Ammonite, they’re also a metaphor - a simple one, I’d argue. To be frank, I found the 19th century seaside lesbian paleontology drama to be a bit dull, throwing quite a bit of symbolism up on the screen without ever making a real case that this director needed to make this film about these women.

But I did quite enjoy the sheer number of visual cues, some of which do work quite well. Victorian women, the film suggests, were like fossils. Society confined them to small, dim spaces where they slowly ossified...

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