"San Juan Hill"

Pictures taken directly outside my front door today. omg, WEST SIDE STORY ("san juan hill" surely isn't foolin' anybody) is filming on the street where I live. My friend, after talking to some neighbors, believes the main filming business is going to be happening about two blocks from us (something about gels over apartment windows) so we probably won't be able to see a dancer number outside the window but we can always dream.

UPDATE: more photos after the jump

Click to read more ...

"Get Into It...Queen"

This week we had the good fortune to be a Club Cumming (Alan Cumming's bar here in Manhattan) when Miss Natalie (formerly of Broadway's Kinky Boots) performed. She's an incredibly dynamic live performer, with a huge voice and screen-ready comic timing. I expect big things. After an amazing 80s medley, she performed this hilarious original which might well be our choice for 'Song of the Summer' or, at the very very very least, an essential song for everyone's Pride playlists. 

Get into it, queens!

[YouTube | Spotify | Apple Music]

Sylvia Miles (1924-2019)

by Nathaniel R

Two time Best Supporting Actress Oscar nominee and party fixture Sylvia Miles died yesterday, three months shy of her 95th birthday. The NYC native rose to fame as a cult figure, a pioneer of Off Broadway plays, part of the Studio 54 scene, and a rather daring actress. She was often seen with Andy Warhol (eventually starring for him in Heat, his randy 1972 picture, with Joe Dallesandro) never quite going mainstream. Both of her Oscar nominations, for example, came from very brief gritty performances, at least in Oscar terms...

Click to read more ...

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...

Click to read more ...

Tribeca 2019: "Lucky Grandma"

And here is Jason Adams reporting from Tribeca again...

It's easy to recognize Grandma -- she's the one called Grandma. But if you're sitting about ten feet away from Chinatown NYC as I am as I type this review, it's even easier -- I could step out onto the street and see a dozen women who look just like Grandma. If I happened to walk just a little further away to the local movie theater, I wouldn't see a single Grandma, not one. And that is what makes Sasie Sealy's film Lucky Grandma feel so easily revolutionary. Grandmas are everywhere, but this is the one...

Click to read more ...