Movies of 2010: The Year in Queer

I am having a really hard time deciding if 2010 was a great year for queer characters in movies or if it was a typically dismal year.  On one hand, I cannot remember the last time queer characters seemed so prolific; of the near-eighty movies I spent money to see, almost a quarter of them contained at least one distinctly non-hetero character.  On the other hand, most of these characters were white gay men.

Lesbians had their share of representation in the year’s most commercially popular LGBT-themed movie (The Kids are All Right), but many people rejected and problematized its characters.  Some documentaries (Stonewall Uprising) tried to bring important historical milestones to the limelight, but failed to bring anything new to the table.

And let’s not even talk about the prominently released movies featuring any bisexual or trans-identified characters or queer people of color, mostly because there were none.

However, if you looked hard enough in 2010 – and I mean really hard – you could find movies trying to represent other facets of the queer community.  They were out there, but they were hardly accessible.  Now that it is 2011 and many of last year’s movies are now easily available on Netflix, perhaps you can tell me whether or not it 2010 was a year worth remembering for queer folks.

I have compiled a list of some of 2010’s more noteworthy titles – good and bad – and have assessed exactly how “queer” they are, based both on how prominently queer characters are featured and on the sophistication of the filmmakers’ tackling of gender and sexual politics. Then, I awarded each movie with a ranking on my patented “Queer-O-Meter,” which ranks a film on a scale of 1 (Michele Bachmann) to 10 (Todd Haynes).

So, without further ado, let’s talk about some of 2010’s movies:

Black Swan (Dir. Darren Aronofsky)
What’s the Deal: The journey of an infantilized ballet dancer’s descent into madness as she allows her sanity to be consumed by the lead role she takes in Swan Lake.
Is it any Good? Directed with the sort of raw, uninhibited brushstrokes you might see in a Jackson Pollock, Aronofsky’s latest is a ludicrous mixture of the horrifying and the downright silly.  Yet the approach – coupled with Natalie Portman’s incredible performance – adds an element of lunacy that is glorious, visceral and tragic.  It is the best film of the year.
Queer-o-Meter: 4. I fretted over the much-ballyhooed sex scene between Portman and her co-star Mila Kunis, as it very well could have encapsulated the male-fantasy cliché that overshadows most “lesbian” sex scenes in movies.  But their entanglement, while undoubtedly erotic, is really more about the transposition of Portman’s basest physical sensations to the lead role that ultimately dooms her.  The scene works, but not for the reasons you might believe.

Burlesque (Dir. Steve Antin)
What’s the Deal: An aspiring singer (Christina Aguliera) moves to L.A. and finds herself the lead performer at a neo-burlesque club, which happens to be run by a woman who looks an awful lot like Cher.
Is it any Good? Disappointingly middling, it’s certainly not the campy train-wreck I was hoping for.  I wanted the movie to be “Showgirls” bad, but it is far too earnest to be taken either seriously or with irony. Rewatch Cabaret to see this material done with some real passion.
Queer-o-Meter: 5. There are some sassy gay characters in this movie, and they are mostly left on the sidelines to say and do sassy gay things.  But Cher’s first screen appearance in years (she sings too!) is bound to make Burlesque worthwhile for some.

Chloë (Dir. Atom Egoyan)
What’s the Deal: Catherine (Julianne Moore), convinced her husband is cheating on her, hires a prostitute named Chloe (Amanda Seyfried) to seduce him and subsequently recount their sexual escapades.  Catherine is surprised to find herself both repelled to hear these stories as well as aroused.
Is it any Good? I’m no film historian, but something tells me that when you make an erotic thriller, it’s probably best to ensure your movie actually contains erotic elements. The story is plagued with red herrings and Seyfried posed a more threatening screen presence in Mama Mia! than she does here.
Queer-o-Meter: 6. Moore’s increased sexual awakening in light of her husband’s infidelity results in her sharing with Seyfried the movie’s steamiest sex scene.  It’s a shame we are almost asleep by the time the movie reaches that point

Easy A (Dir. Will Gluck)
What’s the Deal: A high-school student takes payment from her male classmates, agreeing to say she had sex with them.  Unsurprisingly, her reputation at the school quickly turns sour, branding her as a social pariah.
Is it any Good? You can’t fault a movie like this for its ambition; it touches on teenage sexuality, the hypocrisy of those extolling “moral values,” and the importance of family and community when talking about sex.  If the movie handles all this material a bit clumsily at times, I can forgive it thanks to Emma Stone’s terrific lead performance.
Queer-o-Meter: 8. Based loosely – with considerable self-awareness – on The Scarlet Letter, there are not too many PG-13 movies out there dealing with sexuality so frankly and honestly.  Some gay characters are featured, but Easy A more broadly touches on how easily our bodies, when perceived as instruments of sexuality, are policed by forces who would rather restrict our erotic expression.  Mainstream movies with this kind of truth are true rarities.

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (Dir. Niels Arden Oplev)
What’s the Deal: Based on the Stieg Larsson über-hit, the movie follows a soon-to-be incarcerated journalist spending his remaining days of freedom to investigate the years-old disappearance of a wealthy Swedish entrepreneur’s niece.  He gets help from a mysterious computer hacker named Lisbeth Salander.
Is it any Good? Much of the pleasure to be had from this movie is its pulpy, sinewy approach to the police procedural.  Pulpy and unapologetically brutal at times, this Swedish film is as much fun as any other Hollywood flick you were likely to see last year.  The sequels are not as great, but they have a terrific character at the center.
Queer-o-Meter: 9. Lisbeth Salander, as played by Noomi Rapace, is quite simply one of the most fascinating movie characters in recent memory.  So much of her identity manages to transcend the labels we use in life to compartmentalize others.  Lisbeth is also an ideological force of nature, taking her own feminist brand of revenge on the villains and misogynists who see her as less than nothing.

I Killed My Mother (Dir. Xavier Dolan)
What’s the Deal: A semi-autobiographical tale of a gay teenage boy as he deals with the chaotic relationship he has with his mother.
Is it any Good? Think of it as some kind of cross between The 400 Blows and Mommie Dearest.  I swear I mean that as a compliment.  The tumult between mother and son in this movie can be a touch overblown at times, but the 20-year-old Dolan’s eye is impeccable.  Practically every frame of this festival hit is breathtaking.
Queer-o-Meter: 9. The imagery of Almodòvar clearly inspires Dolan in this movie.  I also love the thin veil the son uses to mask his sexuality from his mother.  When he is finally outed, the truth shocks his mother.  But we truly wonder whether her ignorance is a result of being shut out, or if she never really bothered to reach out to her son at all.

I Love You Phillip Morris (Dir. Glenn Ficarra and John Requa )
What’s the Deal: Based on the true story of Steven Russell (Jim Carrey), a man who comes out to his family as gay, follows the life of a con-man in order to maintain both his affluent lifestyle and his relationship with the love of his life, the titular Phillip Morris (Ewan McGregor).
Is it any Good? Dark, but never mean-spirited, there is an undeniable sweetness at the core of this movie.  As often as Steven’s criminal acts appalled me, his romance with Phillip is quite moving.  This movie works because this central love feels so right.
Queer-o-Meter: 7. When rationalizing his life as a con-man, Steven asserts that “being gay is expensive!”  Such a generalization might have irritated me, but such stereotypes are oddly fitting in the pitch-black comedy of Phillip Morris.  The movie’s final con, rather brilliantly staged, counts on the internalized homophobia of an entire criminal punishment system in order to work.  Commentary on heterosexism in film is rarely pulled off so subversively.

Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work (Dir. Ricki Stern and Anne Sundberg)
What’s the Deal: A year in the life of the 75-year-old comic legend as she moves from job to job in order to maintain her lifestyle and her relevance in popular culture.
Is it any Good? If you have money, Joan Rivers will whore out her talents for you.  She does not think that is a bad thing, and I ‘m not sure I do either.  Her journey in this documentary is terrifically compelling, and she earns through her work ethic an entirely new level of respect from me.
Queer-o-Meter: 4. Joan has been a gay icon for years and years, and she loves her gays right back.

The Kids are All Right (Dir. Lisa Cholodenko)
What’s the Deal: Two children track down the man who provided sperm for their two lesbian parents twenty years ago.  The biological father (Mark Ruffalo) begins a relationship with the kids, much to the moms’ chagrin.
Is it any Good? You might expect to find a plot like this in a second-rate sitcom, but Cholodenko and her cast do wonders with the magnificent people they create.  The characters, at once loving and flawed, are written and performed with enormous complexity.  There are no villains to be seen here, and no character comes out of the movie emotionally unscathed.
Queer-o-Meter: 3. This is a really tough call, because the central lesbian relationship here is about as white-bread heteronormative as you can get.  That’s caused a lot of progressive critics to laud the film’s “gays are just like us” sexual politics, but it’s also caught a great deal of flack from queer groups for celebrating what they see as the movie portraying same-sex couples as almost offensively inoffensive.  That argument is valid, but I think for it to hold water the case would need to be made that the movie celebrates its own whiteness and ostensible non-queerness.  I would counter, given the painful journey these characters ultimately take, that the movie is a deceptively nuanced critique of those same values Cholodenko’s critics blast her for apparently promoting.

La Mission (Dir. Peter Bratt)
What’s the Deal: Set in San Fransisco’s Mission District, a traditional, latino widower reacts angrily upon learning his son is gay.
Is it any Good? The film sheds light on a community rarely given any attention in the movies, and the world Bratt creates feels truly lived-in.  Unfortunately, he handles the coming-out story with less elegance; the dialog in those scenes feels as if it was pulled directly from a “Coming Out to Your Family” pamphlet.
Queer-o-Meter: 7. Maybe a viable market for movies like La Mission has not yet been defined, or maybe I simply did not peruse the theater listings rigorously enough.  Regardless, I am dismayed that this is the only film on my list featuring queer people of color. Perhaps that is what makes the perspective taken in La Mission more refreshing than it should be.  I appreciated seeing the issue of coming out tackled in a non-white setting, and the deconstruction of the father’s masculinity and homophobia feels genuine.

Patrik, Age 1.5 (Dir. Ella Lemhagen)
What’s the Deal: A happy gay couple eagerly awaits the arrival of their new adopted son, but a clerical error results in their unwitting agreement to adopt a homophobic fifteen year old boy.
Is it any Good? Like The Kids are All Right, the plot behind Patrik feels lifted from the most hackneyed sitcom.  Unlike Kids, Patrik never transcends its plot contrivances to establish characters worth our investment.  Every emotion, every lesson and every tear feels like a cog in a machine meant solely to get the characters to the happy ending the writers always intended.
Queer-o-Meter: 3. The movie’s message, above all else, affirms the notion that gay couples are capable of doing everything straight couples can do.  Nothing about Patrik’s sexual politics feels radical, but the movie does score some points for exploring the underlying conflict between the two dads honestly.  How the movie actually chooses to resolve those conflicts is a completely different discussion.

Prodigal Sons (Dir. Kimberly Reed)

What’s the Deal: An autobiographical documentary from transgender filmmaker Kimberly Reed, who returns to her hometown with her new identity.  Reed also follows her mentally unstable adopted brother, who learns his grandparents are Rita Hayworth and Orson Welles.
Is it any Good? Quite.  The film may be an autobiography, but it is hardly a vanity project.  Reed trudges deeply into her family’s painful history and she comes out no less transformed by the experience than any of her other family members.  It’s a tough sit, but it’s a redeeming one.
Queer-o-Meter: 8. Working with her brother, who still loves her as much as he challenges her, Reed ultimately realizes that while she spent her entire adult life reclaiming her identity, her past remains a part of her that cannot be forgotten.  You will not find a more personal story of a queer protagonist this year.

The Runaways (Dir. Floria Sigismondi)
What’s the Deal: A biopic of the all-girl teenage rock group the Runaways, centered principally around Cherie Currie (Dakota Fanning) and Joan Jett (Kristen Stewart).
Is it any Good? If you have seen one musical biopic, you really have seen them all.  But you aren’t likely to have seen one shot quite like The Runaways.  Sigismondi’s music-video style of filmmaking actually lifts this somewhat dry material, giving it a distinctive look all its own.  Stewart and Fanning are also particularly well-cast in the lead roles.
Queer-o-Meter: 9. There is a lot of girl-on-girl action to be had from the two leads, whose relationship defies any sort of easy explanation.  I appreciated the near-ancillary approach to their sexual bond, as it feels consistent with the cultural revolution the Runaways were hoping to incite as a group.

Sex and the City 2 (Dir. Michael Patrick King)
What’s the Deal: Do you really need me to tell you?
Is it any Good? A third-grader’s diorama would be more successful in recapturing the spirit of the TV show than this movie is.  This franchise is almost unrecognizable at this point; a shallow, insufferable love-letter to consumerism and ethnocentrism.
Queer-o-Meter: 2. SatC2 opens with a gay wedding, and we get to see some of the show’s peripheral gay characters.  It’s a nice gesture, but it cannot obscure the fact that Michael Patrick King actually gave a very uncomfortable-looking Liza Minelli a cameo, forcing her to bellow out not a showtune, but Beyoncé’s “Single Ladies.”  Hasn’t Liza been through enough?!

Scott Pilgrim Versus the World (Dir. Edgar Wright)
What’s the Deal: Scott Pilgrim falls in love with the enchanting Ramona, but in order to win her heart, he must defeat her seven evil exes.  Note I did not say “seven evil ex-boyfriends.”
Is it any Good? Very good.  Wright, who directed Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, is a true master of genre deconstruction, and his talents are beautifully suited to this material.  The film feels like a video game in the best possible way, and its ode to geek culture is as affectionate as it is accurate.  If a better screenwriter was around to flesh out the romantic leads, this movie might have been great.
Queer-o-Meter: 8. One of Ramona’s seven evil exes also happens to be her evil ex-girlfriend.  She comes and goes just like every other boss battle in this movie, but the movie’s strongest supporting performance comes from Kieran Culkin as Wallace, Scott’s gay roommate.  Unafraid to express himself sexually, Wallace changes boyfriends more frequently than he changes socks.  His character is a far cry from the cartoonishly effeminate sexual eunuchs passing for gay best friends in most Hollywood flicks.

Stonewall Uprising (Dir. Kate Davis and David Heilbroner)
What’s the Deal: A painstaking recount of the raid that inspired the legendary Stonewall Riots, as told by those who were actually there: drag queens, barflies, bystanders and even some police officers who participated in the raid.
Is it any Good? Years from now, when schools will finally allow the likes of Harvey Milk and the LGBT rights movement to be considered a part of American history, Stonewall Uprising will make for a terrific historical chronicle.  For those of us who already know the story, however, the movie offers nothing new.
Queer-o-Meter: 5. This watershed moment in queer liberation is portrayed in an entirely positive light, but there is nothing in the filmmaking here that brings any interesting context to the queer liberation movement we are a part of today.

Review: Absurd Plotting Stalls Swedish Gay Comedy

For the very concept of Ella Lemhagen’s Patrik, Age 1.5 to work, you must be generous in your assessment of the main characters’ intelligence.  The Swedish film, which will be playing at Minneapolis’ Lagoon Cinema for the remainder of the week, relies on a pivotal yet entirely obvious plot twist so early in its running time that failure to buy into the script’s logic will at best prove a minor irritation in an otherwise well-intentioned family dramedy or at worst pull you out of the film entirely.  For me, the latter occurred.

Göran and Sven are a committed, loving gay couple who move into a small neighborhood filled with the kind of conservative, smug carbon copies that have been occupying the suburbs since Richard Yates’ 1961 novel Revolutionary Road.  Göran is a physician who is moving his practice into town and apparently the driving force behind the couple’s quest for white-picket marital harmony.  Sven brings a bit more reluctance and emotional baggage to this marriage.  He was once married to a woman, has a non-relationship to his daughter, and struggles with drinking and smoking.

Sven and Göran are eager to expand their family, with the movie starting right after the prospective Dads are deemed eligible for adoption.   But with no countries actually willing to offer their children to a homosexual couple, their options grow desperately slim.  When Göran finally receives a letter containing a profile of one “Patrik, age 1.5,” they are eager to accept despite warnings that their son-to-be comes from a troubled family.  To their surprise and dismay, a much older boy also named Patrik finds his way on the dads’ doorstep (conspicuously absent is a social worker to accompany the kid).

Convinced the adoption agency sent them the wrong Patrik, they set out to resolve the mix-up right away.  Adoption officials eventually reveal a clerical error had been made, and Patrik’s profile ought to gave read “Patrik, Age 15.”  Rather than subject him to an indefinite period in government-run foster care, Göran agrees to take in Patrik until another, more accommodating family might be found for him.  Given Patrik’s juvenile record, this news comes much to Sven’s chagrin and ultimately jeopardizes what was once a happy marriage.

What makes the premise behind Patrik, Age 1.5 so difficult to swallow is that at no point do Sven and Göran so much as entertain the most feasible – and actual – explanation behind the adoption Agency’s mix-up.  Perhaps it was fervent denial that inspired the dads’ inability to connect the dots.  Maybe it was sheer stupidity; I am not positive.  What I do know, however, is how transparently Lumgarden (who also wrote the screenplay) intended the future dads’ incredulity to trigger the script’s progression from one milestone to the next, and not vice-versa.

That decision to acquiesce character development for the sake of plot progression continues throughout the movie’s duration, and that is what ultimately robs Patrik, Age 1.5 of its ability to incite laughs and jerk tears with any kind of emotional authenticity.  We are told about Patrik’s “troubled past” and Sven’s reluctance to embrace fatherhood again.  But we are only given such notions, really, because the dialog tells us how to feel.  Apart from resorting to cheap metaphor (the allegedly sober and decidedly unhappy Sven’s late-night escapades to enjoy a drink and a smoke) or utter contrivance (a conveniently placed child video-monitor always manages to capture exactly what Patrik is feeling throughout the movie), very little in the script or the performances give a visceral sense of who these characters are.

It’s really a shame Patrik did not do enough to flesh out its characters.  Some of the ideas presented have a genuine sweetness at their core, and there are points where characters come to the verge of finding closure with a truly bittersweet honesty.  Too eager to wrap up on an unambiguously joyous note, however, the movie rewrites its characters’ motivations in order to attain the kind of happily ever after treacle usually reserved for most American romantic comedies.

Unlike the two moms in the funnier and more moving The Kids are All Right, the characters have no real sense of control or accountability for the decisions they make in light of their circumstances.  With Patrik, every action and reaction from the characters feels predetermined, ostensibly written, and disappointingly tepid.

Review: Movie About Two Moms is Better Than All Right

A great deal of fuss has already been made of Lisa Cholodenko’s lesbian family dramedy The Kids are All Right.  Setting precedent as arguably the most pedigreed American film to feature queer women who don’t wield ice picks or set Manderlay ablaze in a jealous fit of rage, this Sundance hit has piqued the interest – as well as scrutiny – of queer audiences who hope finally to see their lives reflected substantially in a major motion picture.  Whether or not the movie succeeds in giving audiences a socially responsible portrayal of a happy, healthy homo family could be debated extensively, but apparent cultural baggage is easily the movie’s least interesting point of discussion.  What make The Kids are All Right a truly compelling work are its thematically complex narrative, its beautifully written characters, and the intelligent performers who orchestrate the material with delicacy, empathy, and wit.

The performers in question are led by Julianne Moore and Annette Bening, who respectively play Jules and Nic, a long-married couple living in an impeccably-kept home with their two children.  Jules and Nic, whose mutual love is never in question, grapple with issues bound to occur after twenty years of marital bliss; the sex is not as thrilling as it once was, their fundamental perspectives on parenting have diverged, and as their children move increasingly close to adulthood the alarming notion of the empty nest looms overhead.  Both women have their own midlife coping mechanisms:  Jules has recently begun her own landscaping company and Nic indulges herself with more glasses of wine than she probably needs.

The titular kids here include Joni (Mia Wasikowska), the moms’ studious and college-bound daughter, and Laser (Josh Hutcherson), a teenage boy whose antics with his ill-behaved best friend – drug-using, Jackass-worthy skateboard stunts – embody the classic perception of awkward teenage boneheadedness.  With Joni turning 18, Laser increasingly pressures his big sister to take advantage of one of her unique new adult privileges: to determine the identity of their mothers’ sperm donor.  Joni relents, and she finally tracks down their biological father Paul (Mark Ruffalo), an amicable albeit id-driven restaurant owner with minimal responsibilities and seemingly little desire grow up.  Eventually, Paul makes a connection with the recently-acquainted fruit of his loins, and their budding relationship adds a new, alien complexity to Jules and Nic’s family dynamic.

Though The Kids are All Right ultimately moved me, I cannot say I was enamored right away.  Perhaps due to the aforementioned cultural baggage, there exists an impulse on Cholodenko’s part to portray this unconventional family and their problems as utterly conventional.  This impulse makes for some rather labored exposition, the brunt of which happens in the movie’s first dinner table sequence.  Cholodenko and her co-writer Stuart Blumberg scribe just the perfect exchanges and banter to inform you exactly who these characters are and how they tick.  It is a moment of such precise button-pushing that I began to worry The Kids might in the end have little else to offer but manipulation and maudlin sentiment.

But Chodolenko eventually entrusts the actors with her characters, and they are the ones who truly give the movie its potency.  The way they carry each line tells more about the characters and their history than any amount of wobbly exposition possibly could.  Indeed, there is not a weak performance in the bunch.  As the familial interloper, Ruffalo’s Paul is an entirely genial presence, and even if the film ultimately works out of his favor, at no point is he dismissed as the film’s antagonist.  The film’s young performers nail their roles as well, and work quite effectively as the film’s moral center.  Wasikowska – whom we last saw playing Alice in the most recent Tim Burton debacle – is as sharp as the character she plays, and Hutcherson adds emotional resonance to the movie’s most underwritten role.

As great as the supporting cast is, however, the true standouts are the moms.  Bening feels like she is playing a more nuanced variation of the driven woman she developed for American Beauty, and Moore further establishes herself as queer filmmakers’ most powerful ally in the acting world (see The Hours, Far from Heaven, and A Single Man for further evidence).  There is an important moment relatively early in the movie – where Nic and Jules, over lunch, recount the day they met – that beautifully exemplifies the two actresses’ chemistry.  Their story is told with a perfectly recited cadence and feels lovingly rehearsed, as if the couple had spent the previous twenty years determining exactly how it ought to be told.  Lesser actors would have treated this as throwaway banter.  Bening and Moore find a layer of texture I am not sure the writers ever perceived.

It is exchanges like the lunch sequence that bring The Kids are All Right its sense of purpose.  It is less about the ideas it presents than it is about the characters and the world they have made for themselves.  All five principle characters feel truly and painfully real, neither explicitly demanding our sympathy nor imploring us to take sides in their conflicts.  That’s quite a feat, taking into account how each character at some point commits a selfish and hurtful act against somebody else.  Perhaps this is why the lack of resolution and general messiness of the admittedly hopeful denouement feel perfectly suited to the story that preceded it.  I truly believe that one day Jules and Nic will come to terms with all the problems they face in this story.  But it will take a lot more than a 100-minute movie for them to find out where they stand.

Thank goodness the actors and filmmakers chose not to compartmentalize their characters and the issues they face; their sense of warmth and empathy has resulted in one of the year’s best films so far, queer-themed or otherwise.

Scissor Sisters – Night Work: the 80′s just got gay(er)

Night Work has a pulse to it that makes you believe that if you dance as hard as this band wants you to through your life, your love and your problems – your ass will be as firm as the one Robert Maplethorp used in the photo that adorns this album’s cover. While there are still themes of love on the album (Fire with Fire, Skintight), you get the sense the band has abandoned the long-term relationship ideals highlighted in 2006’s Ta-Dah! in favor of returning to the glitter n’ grit that marked their debut (We can talk about relationships but there’s better things to fill your head with). Electric, raw and campy all at the same time, Night Work exists in the world that happens after the sun goes down.

It’s been four years since we last heard from the Scissor Sisters. In 2004, lead singer Jake Shears first introduced us to his falsetto while the Scissor Sisters promised – or threatened? – to take your mama out and show her a good time. The debut also featured their electro-pop take on Pink Floyd’s Comfortably Numb, discussions of queers on piers, the indisputable fact that you can’t see tits on the radio and proved them to be a band that could jump from genre to genre, threatening to spin out of control but always somehow keeping their footing. It was an electric debut, one that brought them large success in the UK where it reached #1 as well as being the best-selling album of that year. By comparison, they were relegated to niche staus here in the States where the album peaked at #102.

Riding on the wave of their success (3.3 million world-wide), the band didn’t waste a lot of time and even tapped Sir Elton John for help on their follow up. Ta-Dah! debuted at #1 in the UK and peaked at #19 here in their homeland. However, while the band once again explored a variety of sounds and grew in strength in terms of composing a song, they relied on making a bigger sound with bigger production and ultimately polished some of the excitement out of the album. Night Work brings them back to finding strength in their spontaneity.

You can tell by the attention to detail, the track sequencing and the fact that the band discarded a whole album worth of material before ultimately going back to the studio to record Night Work, that Scissors Sisters takes themselves seriously. But having fun at the same time has always played an important part in what makes the Scissor Sisters work (for example, the band’s name is inspired by a sex position). The song, Any Which Way finds Shears in a kaledescope of double-entendres, seemingly unable to resist making one more pun: “No talk of commitment/When I receive a shipment/Oh I need express delivery.” The song also features the first appearance of Ana Metronic, the band’s matriarch and master of ceremonies, as she asks you to take her anyway you like it, “in front of the fireplace/In front of your yacht/In front of my parents,” with the caveat that you must smell like cocoa butter and cash.

After offering himself (and the band) up in Any Which Way, Shears quickly turns into a seductive dom on Harder You Get as he uses his lower register to great effect. Jake Shears has a mighty fine falsetto, one that can always put a smile on your face, it’s good to see his lower register can do the same. The shower, literally and figuratively, drips at the end of the song and suddenly the Sisters are off with Running Out, their New Wave-inspired rumination on drugs, fame and the complications of keeping everyone around you, well, around. The song, pulling vocals ques from The Knack’s My Sharona and production elements reminiscent of those found on David Bowie’s Scary Monsters, rides on an 80’s swagger that I can never resist. On the other side of things, the song Skin Tight finds the band’s sentimental side working pretty well. Sometimes sincerity can turn camp into corny, but Skin Tight effectively constructs a song that builds upon itself until it shoots out as that particular brand of Scissor Sisters’ glitter cannon. When it works it works.

If the album has a lull it’s in the back-to-back songs Something Like This and Skin this Cat, where the album’s otherwise-catchy repetition found in the songs don’t take them anywhere new. However, with one exception, there’s not a track on this album longer then 5 minutes, and the album switches, swaggers and moves oh-so-rapidly that it’s unlikely you’ll tune out for too long: again, there’s a reason that ass is on the cover.

Nightlife effectively bookends what was started with Night Work, finding the band as energetic as when they started the late-shift, still firm in their conviction that “our love is taboo … [but] you can find your life in the night life”. The epilogue, then, is found in the closing track Invisible Light. A lot has been made about this track when talking about the album, but it’s one of those tracks that makes you take a moment and say this band can do this and that?!?!

In 2004’s debut album, they closed the album with Return to Oz, a song depicting broken promises of gay fantasia. One riddled with drugs and disease. In 2006, the album ended with Everybody Wants the Same Thing and reflected the movement towards mainstreaming GLBT culture. In 2010, they raise an army to scale the walls of that broken-down Oz in order to have an eternal dance party, hypnotized by, you guessed it, an “invisible light.” The song is a dance floor-ready homage to the gay bar. Not to be outdone by their 2006 partnership with Sir Elton John, in 2010 they got Sir Ian McKellen to do his best Vincent Price-esque Thiller Monologue. This track does more than just ape Thiller, though: in Ian McKellen’s version he’s asking for “sexual gladiators” and “fiercely old party children” to “wake from their slumber” and come back to the those broken promises and build a dance party. One that will go on forever. It’s a moment where the band borrows another popular popular 80′s convention – Fuck art, let’s dance. Camp is fun and these guys nail it.

Favorite Tracks:
• Night Work
• Harder You Get
• Running Out
• Skin Tight
• Invisible Light

Review: Stonewall Doc Reflects (Poorly) on the Birth of a Movement

In the early hours of June 28, 1969 at the Stonewall Inn, an assortment of dandies, dykes, drag queens and other queers reached their breaking point, and something finally snapped.  As the New York police stormed the squalid innards of the Greenwich Village bar, some two hundred Stonewall patrons opted not to cooperate with authorities, and a routine raid quickly escalated into a full-on revolt that spilled over into the streets and arguably provided the jump-start needed to energize a movement now forty years in the making.  The rest, you might say, is history.

That is the history Kate Davis and David Helibroner recite in their new film Stonewall Uprising, a dutifully chronicled and somewhat perfunctory document of the outburst widely touted as the breakthrough moment for the modern LGBT social movement.   The film, which is currently enjoying a limited run at Minneapolis’ Lagoon Cinema for the next week, is probably best-suited for those not terribly familiar with the movement’s history.  For bone fide Friends of Dorothy already familiar with the historic event, it might feel like little more than an 80-minute drive down the rutted Yellow Brick Road of queer history.

Most would argue that to fully appreciate the significance of the Stonewall Riots, it should be made clear just how bad things were for gays and lesbians in New York.  Uprising spends almost half its running time familiarizing the audience with a queer subculture then growing in the slums of New York City, amidst constant police interference, an unsympathetic local government and a national media climate hell-bent on protecting society’s vulnerable from the dangers of the homosexual.  With rather effective bluntness, Davis and Helibroner pepper their doc with numerous grainy public service announcement excerpts and reflective interviews to affirm just how difficult life could be for a New York homo circa 1969.  The service announcements – uniformly branding the homosexual as the precursor for society’s degradation – are played for the absurdist chuckles of an audience that presumably knows better, but once they become juxtaposed against interviews from spectators and participants of the Stonewall Riot who were forced to endure such a climate, the reality and frustration start to settle in.

Eventually the movie begins recounting the riot itself, which is delineated through occasionally riveting interviews and faux archive footage and photographs created exclusively for the documentary.  The dramatized material did not completely work for me, though I do not hold it entirely against the filmmakers for this; the Stonewall Riot notoriously lacks substantial visual media sources and, to their credit, the directors are upfront with their decision to employ this “new” footage.  Still, other great documentaries – namely 2008’s Oscar-winning Man on Wire – put this technique to great use, and Davis and Helibroner fail to give these sequences any sort of visual distinction.  Ironically the transitions between staged and genuine footage were distracting in their seamlessness.  The directing team ought to have stuck with their talking head interviews to convey their narrative – sometimes telling can be more effective than showing.

More importantly, though, Uprising fails to do more than provide an easily-digestible retelling of the night’s events that wouldn’t be out of place in a high school classroom or on the History Chanel. I doubt I would be making a radical claim if I asserted that the LGBTQ rights movement has progressed far enough that a more polemic take on the riots would prove both for a more interesting argument and more challenging filmmaking.  Few out there – including me – would question the near-mythical significance of Stonewall as part of this movement.  But like most myths, they warrant deconstructing.  When witness justified the use of violent force toward the end of the movie, they insist “Sometimes in history, there is a place for violence.”  That may very well be true, but that is exactly the kind of loaded statement this documentary might have explored.  There are other questions the directors could have delved into.  What were other LGBT activists throughout the country doing to shape the movement?  Why is Stonewall not considered worthy of inclusion in a standard-issue history textbook in schools? Forty years removed from the event, have we as a movement and a people begun to lose sight of what all those rioting queens ultimately gave us?  Disappointingly, none of these questions seem to be of any interest to the filmmakers.

Even with the many missed opportunities, one moment in Uprising made the movie worth my (well, my boyfriend’s) well-earned cash.  One of the interviewees, a raiding NYPD officer, recalling how rioters had his team pinned down.  His story is essential; as he recounts the dread he experienced at the hands of his drag-donned assailants, we finally get a sense of a very real anger conveyed by a group of people who had finally reached point break.  The officer, whose interview provides the movie’s final moment, also gives the doc its most profound display of retrospective wisdom.  Reflecting on the job he was obligated to carry out, he laments, “they were breaking the law…but what kind of law was that anyway?”

Young, gay filmmakers tackle gay life in 1968

Two local young gay talents, Wesley Meirick and Elijah Chhum, are on the fast track to creating a film about what it was like to be gay and coming of age in 1968. The “Gay Filmmakers,” as they like to be recognized, are both attending the film school at the Metropolitan Community and Technical College (MCTC). Chhum told TheColu.mn: “our parents would like it if this (our being gay) was just a phase.”  It certainly does not seem as though this is how others will perceive their dedication to the topic of being gay in an era that existed over a decade and a half before either was born.

Chhum is the older of the two and is the cameraman of the project.  Meirick is making his directorial debut but is quick to assert that they are really co-mingling roles and responsibilities to where he considers them both to be co-producers and co-everything.  The filming will take place locally in Minneapolis at an artist studio downtown.  The talent consists of five lead actors and somewhere around 20 stand-ins.  Meirick is originally from Iowa and Chhum from Rochester, Minnesota.  Both are gay men who are out at MCTC and cited that it is sometimes a difficult thing to deal with at school.  Yet this did not dissuade them from setting out on this courageous endeavor to portray a young gay man in his coming of age.

Loosely based on their own experiences, they have shared the script and it is a powerful story with all of the drama one might expect from being identified as LGBT in the late 1960’s.

Chhum currently works for Vision Management Group where he has managed Meirick as a model.  This is their first collaboration as filmmakers although they have worked together in such local runway shows as Voltage and the recent Vita.mn poolside fashion show held at the Calhoun Beach Club.

The leads in the upcoming film are Faith Udeh, originally from Nigeria and a singer in a Christian Hip Hop group, Valarie Falken, Shawn Maguire (the main character), Elliot Graber (his love interest) and D.C. Diltz who plays a homophobic fifty-something cop.  Diltz is himself a retired ex-cop who was shot in the line of duty.  The main character and his love interest are, themselves, not gay but the Editor is gay and the Assistant Director asserts that she is queer identified.

1968 is the “working title” of the production which will be entered into the Minnesota History Center film completion.  The deadline for submission is September 10 so the project is indeed ambitious.

As for what the future holds for the two talented young men who set to graduate the program at MCTC soon, Chhum says he believes he remain in Minnesota making more movies and Meirick is hoping to be accepted for Fall 2011 to the University of his choice. One thing is for sure, their stars are rising!

Sex and the City 2: Our Review

Stealing a page from such revered epic masterpieces like The Godfather and The Deer Hunter, Sex and the City 2 kicks off with a wedding.  Is it too deplorable of me to have fantasized how this sequel might have further emulated those classics by mimicking their denouements as well?  I cannot be the only person to have shelled out $10 for this debacle to be remotely tickled by the idea of these horrid people reenacting Deer Hunter’s climactic Russian Roulette finale, can I?

I apologize for making such a mean-spirited digression before this review even begins, but that was by far the most interesting reaction I could muster from the equally mean-spirited Sex and the City 2, a droningly empty and singularly painful sequel to a 2008 movie I actually sort of dug .  But the movie is not actually bad for the same boring, sexism-and-ageism-fueled reasons you might have read in other reviews.  The unbridled sex talk is still there, and I am glad it is; if anything, more movies need women – particularly women some years removed from their twenties – talking so vividly about their sex life.  What makes SatC2 so truly deplorable is the contemptuous view it has for its audience.  It is a faux glam-kitschy, gloriously vapid and borderline anachronistic tribute to awful human beings who languish – without the slightest trace of irony – in lifestyles of masturbatory excess and single-minded materialistic fetishism, proceeding tacitly to scold the audience for having the gall not to be as wealthy or as beautiful as they are.

In spirit of the beloved half-hour program that preceded the movies, each character has her share of issues to face, many of which having been wreaked upon them as punishment for the simple crime of having too much money.  Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) worries about her already fizzling two-year marriage to Big (Chris Noth) after he requests a two-days-a-week sabbaticals from their marriage in their separate condo (in this crappy housing market, the tortured souls are forced to hold on to two homes).  Charlotte (Kristin Davis) feels threatened over the braless endowments of her bosomy Irish nanny.  Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) struggles with the banality of unemployment upon telling off her chauvinist boss and a pre-menopausal Samantha (Kim Cattrall) employs the power of countless hormones and meds to kindle that eternal fire nestled safely inside her loins.  It’s a true wonder that Bergman never thought to ponder the philosophical depths of these issues back in his heyday.

Needing some much-deserved escapism from their bourgeois purgatory, the girls opt to resolve their problems by doing what they do best: buy shit until their problems go away.  In a move that makes the Arthur Fonzarelli’s shark-jumping exploits feel like an exercise in Italian neorealism, Carrie and company inexplicably find themselves embarking on an all-expense paid sojourn to a luxury resort in Abu Dhabi.  To his credit, director Michael Patrick King – who might as well have titled this Sex and the Emirate – shoots the girls’ exotic new setting with a near-pornographic glee; the resort actually manages to boast more dynamic characterization than any of the four protagonists.

The city looks great, but then the movie arbitrarily decides it wants to make a statement on the oppression of women and sexuality at the behest of religious zealotry.  I do not doubt the noble intentions behind making such a bold statement, but I cannot help but question the sincerity of the filmmakers when the emotional climax of this proclamation involves a character furiously brandishing condoms in a city marketplace teeming with outraged bystanders – a scenario played entirely for laughs, I might add.  And so the dubious message SatC2 devolves into a half-hearted, lazy critique of non-western sexual politics that meanders dangerously into condescending territory.  King may just as well have shoehorned in scenes with the gals screaming “Hey!  Look how enlightened we are!”

I know what you are asking: what does Abu Dhabi have to do with any of the aforementioned conflicts for any of these girls?  I cannot answer that for you, but if you are worried about the problems introduced at the beginning of the movie not being resolved before the final credits roll, never you fear; each sub-plot is wrapped up with all the concision and ease of a Band-Aid application, supplying for us a neat little coda of happy endings having little to do with the travails these girls experienced in the 147 preceding minutes.  But I suppose that is not really a big deal – after all, who needs lessons and story arcs when there are clothes to be bought and shoes to be worn and oodles of privilege to be flaunted?

Too Hot To Handle: Pride drops artist’s work saying it’s too erotic

Is the 2010 Twin Cities Pride Art Show pandering to the conservatives? Last week, well known local erotic artist Marc Debauch was notified by the director of the upcoming Pride Art Show and Grand Marshal Reception that his work was “too erotic” to be displayed. The image above titles “Mansweat” is one of those paintings in question. Two others have been rejected, one of a nude man in a pool of water with his back to the audience and another nude man facing forward, not unlike Michelangelo’s David.

I wonder what standard the committee or individual making this determination followed?  Debauch’s work is well known to many people around the world and much of it is explicitly sexual in nature.  Had there been portrayal of intercourse, naked erections, ejaculation, etc., I could see why the image would be deemed inappropriate for the venue in which is currently being staged.  The Art Institutes International Minnesota (Ai Minnesota) is the official sponsor of the show. 

However, Ai Minnesota is located downtown Minneapolis - just a short walk away from The Saloon where similarly attired (or not) images of young gay men loom 10 times larger than life on the corner of 9th and Hennepin in clear public view to all.   The Ai Minnesota call for submissions does not specifically address artistic standards.  They simply identify what is required in terms of how the art is to be delivered and the cost of entry.  Earlier this month there was a notice that the deadline had been extended, presumably related to the low response to the call.  A call between Debauch and Rob Anderson – the director of the show – failed to provide the artist with clear specifics on why his work was being rejected.  Debauch wrote a response to the call challenging the decision.

In his email he states:

“Dear Robert, I have had time to think about our conversation today  and bounced it off of many people, including  several gay and lesbian artists in our community. The jury for the 2010 Pride Art Show has set a dangerous precedent in rejecting my art, because they deemed it too erotic for the venue. Why was nothing mentioned in the 2010 Pride Art Show Guidelines about erotic, nude or semi-nude artwork being ineligible for the show?”

A flurry of communication has been coming in to both the artist and the show’s officials expressing concern about the decision.  Although the jury may still be out on this topic and whether the piece will be displayed at the show, the bigger question is whether Pride is continuing to support increased censorship in order to draw lucrative corporate sponsorships and huge numbers year after year. 

Many GLBT community members have become increasingly concerned that Pride seems less and less Queer friendly and more driven by the almighty buck.  Jennifer Pritchett, owner of The Smitten Kitten, states “When you let money make decisions for you, you run the risk of those decisions being antithetical to your mission.”

Debauch has been contacted via email by Dot Belstler, the current Executive Director of this year’s Twin Cities Pride.  Belstler writes “I am so sorry this has caused you and your colleagues such pain. It was certainly not the intent – nor was censorship. In the future, we will attempt to be more clear in the call for Art, but please understand that sexually explicit content must be handled with sensitivity.”  She also addressed the issue of censorship in the following statement “In this particular case, I believe “Mansweat” may have been confused with the full frontal nudity pictured in “Morning on the Balcony.”  Of course “Mansweat” is not too erotic, it is a beautiful painting and we would be proud to display it in the show.”

These comments have left many wondering what constitutes erotica in a digital age.  Any search engine will pull up a flaccid penis photograph while searching for information about syphilis.  As for art and nudes – sculptures of male nudes grace the entries of some of our most noted institutions including Westminster Presbyterian Church.   In this age, why should an oil painting of a male nude without an erection be considered too hot to handle?

What do you think?

Sensational “Arabian Nights” Honors Stars Who “Brought Drag Back To Rochester”

The term “drag show” doesn’t wholly describe the performance that took place this past Saturday at Rookie’s Bar at the Ramada Hotel in Rochester.

The not-for-profit Rochester Girls, Inc. presented “Arabian Nights” as the theme for its annual spring show to raise funds for the group’s upcoming calendar year.  The three-set show featured members from the house cast of Illusions out of La Crosse, dancers from Blue Lotus Middle Eastern Dancers and of course, the Rochester Girls themselves.

As a matter of variety, the breadth of individual performers’ experience ranged from brand new Hanna Detox to 60-something siren Champagne.

The Rochester Girls typically organize four local drag shows per year and – with the exception of the spring show – donate the proceeds to any number of charities including the Professional AIDS Network, Minnesota Greyhound Rescue, and Paws and Claws Humane Society.

Rochester Girls co-founder Darren Wendt (who performs as Sidonia Dudval) noted the particular importance of Saturday’s show as marking the 10 year anniversary of the passing of Rochester drag queen Celeste DeVille.

DeVille, whose real name is Tony Hegna, perished in a single-car crash while driving home from a Twin Cities drag show in 2000.

“Celeste and Savannah [Skye] were really the two people responsible for bringing drag back to Rochester in the late 1990’s,” Wendt said.  “What they did led to the founding of The Rochester Girls.”

“This show also honors the memory of Sadie Seville who passed away in November of 2007,” he added.

Without further ado…

Eager patrons filed into the bar and packed the room by the time Illusions emcee John announced that Blue Lotus dancer, Raja, was ready to take the stage.  Outfitted with Isis Wings for dramatic effect, Raja opened the show on an intriguing – and authentic – note.

Raja and other members of Blue Lotus took the stage several times by the end of the evening – including a sensational rendition of Hot Chocolate’s ‘You Sexy Thing’ featuring dancers Charron and Adeline. Rochester Girls member Leroy LeBlanc coupled with Raja later on in the show to perform ‘Touch Me’.

Other highlights of the evening included two live vocal performances from the remarkably Josh Groban-esque singer, Scotty.  The first was a theatric (genie costume and all!) song from Aladdin and the second was (appropriately) a Josh Groban number.

Savannah Skye and Sidonia Dudval commanded the stage in true diva fashion and although each strutted to Lady Gaga, their individuality as performers made their time on stage uniquely thrilling.

Drag kings Antonio and Reggie added a touch of suave and soul (respectively) and Prince Amir offered a new twist on traditional belly dancing.

The aforementioned is only a sampling of the remarkable performers who offered their time and talents in support of a worthy organization.  To see these acts – and others – check out The Rochester Girls’ next show.

The 100 Queerest Places in Twin Cities History

Bet you didn’t know that Solera, a downtown Minneapolis restaurant, is housed on the site of a former X-rated movie theater, or that the first governor of Minnesota was rumored to have had “unnatural sex” in his mansion with a gubernatorial stable-hand.

“Minneapolis has a lot of queer history,” says Van Cleve, “it just tends to get glossed over because of our image as a part of ‘flyover territory.’”

With that in mind, Van Cleve set about pawing through the Jean-Nikolaus Tretter Collection at the University of Minnesota, one of the world’s largest compilation of LGBT historical documents and materials, trying to piece together the queer history of the Twin Cities for a competition run by OutHistory.org. The Tretter Collection started out, Van Cleve said, as the private collection of Jean-Nikolaus Tretter, a Vietnam veteran, former Navy linguist, spy, and local LGBT activist.

“He started collecting whatever was around: newsletters, pamphlets, the immediate material that activist groups were producing,” Van Cleve said. “He got a reputation as an odd guy…but people kept passing him little scraps of the movement, thinking ‘Jean might be interested in this.’”

Tretter’s private collection took a turn for the historically significant in 1983, when representing Minnesota at that year’s Gay Games in Los Angeles. While there, he met Jim Kepner, a premier gay archivist and activist. The meeting convinced Tretter to collect in a more systematic way, chronicling the worldwide evolution of LGBT life and culture. Since 2001, the collection of photos, pamphlets, memorabilia, books, and many other documents has been housed at the University’s Twin Cities campus.

Drawing on this vast archive, Van Cleve has put together a list of the 50 queerest places each in Minneapolis and St Paul, starting with Governor Alexander Ramsey’s house (of stable boy infamy) and Minneapolis’s Gateway District (site of the Gay 90′s, and the city’s first Gay Ghetto, which was destroyed in 1960′s urban renewal projects). Van Cleve continues on through the 1970′s-era lesbian separatist enclave in St Paul’s West Seventh neighborhood, and continuing into the present with Minneapolis’ Boom Island – site of last year’s Black Pride – and Stevens Square Park, the launchpad for the yearly Trans March. Van Cleve cuts a broad swath with the 150-plus-year tour, showing the disparate threads of the Cities’ LGBT history intertwine and how they have been partially woven into the the history of other “undesirable” groups – Blacks, immigrants, and the homeless – as well as the history of politics and power. It’s not all heavy history, though: Van Cleve still included all your favorite bars and the hottest (historical) cruising spots.

Van Cleve, an Urban Studies graduate of the U of M, was drawn to his project, he said, by a love of local history. He said he hopes to win the competition – first prize is worth a $5,000 grant from the Arcus foundation – but wouldn’t ever want to turn it into a book.

“Books get locked in academia in a language people can’t always comprehend,” Van Cleve said.

The best part about the project, said Van Cleve, is the openness of the list: designed as a Wiki, enabling anyone to upload their (researched) history of a place in Minneapolis.

“Anybody’s welcome to comment and tell their stories,” Van Cleve said. “Email me and tell me a story, and I’ll try to put it on the site. That’s the best part about GLBT history, the personal accounts.