take it to the limit

 "What did you expect?"

Look, I haven't been writing. Sorry. I think part of me died when people responded so negatively to Scream 4. Besides, try and name one good movie released this year. Go on...  Exactly!  Anyway, I'm inspired.

Did you ever have one of those childhood besties - you know, the ones who go through all your major life moments with you?  You put on her face for Prom.  You promised her she wasn't a slut while driving to her first abortion and she assured you that you weren't bulimic just because you always threw up chicken lo-mien.

Invariably, something innocuous happens in your twenties and you stop being super close.  Then you go from not being close to assuming you might be in a fight so more years go by without talking until you bump into each other in the champagne aisle at CVS and you both just start sobbing, vowing never to be parted again.  The next thing you know, you're the best man at her wedding where, even though she swore up and down that she's off the sauce, she downs a fifth of Jack Daniels and winds up fucking a cater waiter on the golf course in her wedding dress.  Does any of this sound remotely familiar?

This is the experience of Lars Von Trier's Melancholia (2011).  Thank God.

Chock full of homages to Tarkovsky and Cassavetes, Melancholia is a return to form for Lars - much closer in DNA to Breaking the Waves than his past few features.  But who cares?  The real story is here Kiki Dunst.  I love her.

I love how fantastic she looks in her wedding dress (Kiki, where did you get all those boobies!?).  I love that we're in our thirties and we can put the past behind us.  I love that she's not afraid to look like hell.  I love that she's boozy.  I love how much she can convey without dialogue.  I love her teeth.  I love that we both get near-crippling anxiety.  I love the contempt she has for Charlotte Gainsbourg (really, Lars, you couldn't get Nicole back?).  I love this movie.  Melancholia is your best coffee table book come to life, infused with unexpected, raw emotionality juxtaposed alongside state of the art effects better than anything you'd see in Transformers.

It's nice to feel something again.  I was getting worried.

eat your heart out.

"You're pissed at everyone because you're gay."

I have a complex relationship with Jeffrey Dahmer.

I hold him personally responsible for robbing me of my best slut years. While the kids nowadays can go to any bar or club or theatre festival or app to find a hot in high-waisted jeans and metallic frames, I stayed locked inside my room throughout twenties – absolutely certain that any clandestine affair with even the most devastatingly handsome investment banker was going to end with me face-down stapled to the floor of some Tribeca loft. I’m getting ahead of myself.

A while back, I was talking to my friend about the death of gay cinema and he explained that the issue at hand is not the death of gay cinema at all, but the death of independent cinema. Oh, yeah.  He's right.  We all sort of took for granted that pop culture would always be Nirvana and My So Called Life. We were wrong.

Don't get me wrong - the '90s wasn't all Crystal Pepsi and hypercolor.  Unlike the 1980s, the nineties was actually a shitty time to be a gay teen. Liberace and Keith Haring were dead. Gone were the days of jelly bracelets and pouty-mouthed camp counselors. AIDS and the recession took all the fun out of being a fag.

Queer Cinema was alive and kicking thanks to Gregg Araki and Gus Van Sant, but average kids  who were looking for role models (and who didn't live in LA or Portland) were SOL. We didn’t have Glee.   We didn't even have the questionable queer content on TV like Soap or Dynasty.

In fact, aside from Marty from Showgirls, the most famous gay of the 90s was Jeffrey Dahmer.

Despite the proliferation of queer cinema in the nineties, it wasn’t until the early aughts that a proper movie based on Dahmer would see the light of direct to Blockbuster distribution.

Dahmer (2002) is the kind of movie that Chloe Sevigny and Brett Easton Ellis watch ironically projected on a tarp in someone’s backyard thinking they're such a riot while they talk incessantly about themselves and not even bothering to learn the name of their hostess.

It is not very good, this Dahmer film, but it does teach us some very important lessons.

• Lesson #1:  Banjees are a gays best friend.

True story.  In the middle of Jeffrey's Korean phase, a lobotomized gay boy managed to escape the manse. Mute and naked, this poor kid came stumbling across a couple of Banjee girls on their way home from walking their little brothers to school.  These girls were concerned. The cops were not.  Refusing to get involved in another faggoty domestic dispute, they brought that poor boy right back to Jeffrey's house where he was promptly dismembered.

• Lesson #2  Don’t go home with any guy who talks like Emma Pillsbury.

No good can come from it.

• Lesson #3  This is what Jeremy Renner’s O-face looks like.

In case you were watching Thor and, you know, got to wondering.

• Lesson #4  If I lived in Wisconsin in the early 90s, I would be DEAD.

With his shaggy hair and lanky build, Jeffrey Dahmer was a catch!
I mean, he worked in a chocolate factory…

dinner's in the oven

I've been learning a lot from Lea Michele's twitter lately.  The most important thing?

If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all.

xoxo
(At least we got this video of Dave Franco. )

I'm so excited. I'm so scared.

I watched about three minutes of the last Final Destination movie and hated it - the actors were smug - the effects were lame - it obviously hated gay people (one word: Nascar). Despite this incident and because of the efforts of FaggotyassAward nominated actress, Emma Bell, my feelings towards 5nal Destination have shifted.  After a particularly anemic summer, its' nice to have something to look forward to... on HBO in six months (Bless).

xo

the most wonderful time of the year

Happy Gay Pride, dolls! 
Remember to wear sunblock, stay hydrated, respect your elders and don't be racist.

xoxo

Tina: Light and Dark

“Please, don’t drink anymore!”

Start doing your crunches, boys! It’s already time to start squeezing ourselves into our best cut-off shorts for those annual weekends at Camp Crystal Lake. In honor of this, the only Friday the 13th of 2011, I’m going to let you in on a special secret:  My favorite Jason movie is….

Friday the 13th, Part 7: The New Blood (1988).

While by no means the best, The New Blood is unquestionably the gayest entry in the Friday cannon. I’m talking Telekinesis, dolls. Jason Voorhees versus Lar Park Lincoln (“Tina”) pretending to be Carrie White. A force to be reckoned with, Tina is the only final girl in horror history capable of snatching the pearl necklace right off of a mean girl’s bust line without even getting her hands dirty.

“You’re more interested in this telekinetic stuff than you are in me!”

Aside from the fact that the men of Friday the 13th Part 7: The New Blood never manage to feign even the slightest interest in any of its women, our male protagonist this go-around is a show-queen ("Nick") with a denim fetish who only musters expressions of mild concern when faced with the prospect of his entire social circle being massacred at the hands of Jason. This film is gayer than a Sex and the City marathon on Fire Island – this film is gayer than my run-on sentences.

Our girl, Tina, has been having a rough time ever since she was a toddler. 

The pressure of being constantly mistaken for Heather O’ Rourke(RIP) at the Malibu Colony Mall finally caught up with her and she wound up killing her daddy with her dark magixxx.  It happens. Years later, Tina’s finally out of the nut house and trying to work it out with the help of her obviously-evil therapist (who came highly recommended by Blake Carrington).

Tina’s mother spends more time maintaining her blow-out than actually trying to be of any help to anyone (or bothering to check the B&B review section on priceline.com), so it should come as n

o surprise that they wind up at Camp Crystal Lake for their annual weekend getaway. Therapist is not so much concerned with Tina’s recovery as much as he is hell bent on her having another nervous breakdown so he can act out all his favorite scenes from Carrie. And you wonder why I fired my analyst!

As is the case in most of these Friday the 13th movies, there are a bunch of kids in their early-thirties next door having a birthday party or something. Nick invites Tina over in hopes of having a fresh voice to sing his duet harmonies for Karaoke Hour. Before he can even pull out the Miss Saigon sheet music, Tina starts having visions of Jason. Kids die. You get the drift.

Lucky for Tina, those Crystal Lake waters are apparently the stuff of Isabella Rossellini’s magic youth serum because, when the going gets tough, her dead father comes swimming up to the surface, looking better than ever.  He's back in the game and ready to drag Jason straight to Hell. What a good father.  

By the end of the movie, Tina throws a television at Jason - She makes Jason's head expand until his hockey mask no longer fits right - She electrocutes Jason with a fallen transformer - She hangs Jason with some spare wiring - She hits Jason in the head with nails - She drops Jason through the floor into the basement - She shoves Jason down a flight of stairs - She hits Jason in the face with a lamp. Tina even blows up the house, all the while never chipping her french tip!

I haven't even scratched the surface of the glory that is Friday the 13th Part 7: The New Blood, but I must start coordinating my denim for tonight's screening of Friday the 13th Part 8: Jason Takes Manhattan.  I'll see you there and we can talk all about it.

Editor's note: Dr Crews was NOT, in fact in Dynasty - that's was the guy from Jason Takes Manhattan.  I'm sorry Dr. Crews was such a loser.  I will not apologize for finding excuses to embed clips from my favorite stories.

how meta can you get?

"What am I supposed to go to college?  Grad school?  Work!?"

Scream 4 (2011).

The good.

This movie is good.

The bad.

Nothing in the movie is bad.  Well nothing except for the god-awful presence of that dippy girl from the Friday Night Lights show who needs to stop being in movies.  Full stop.


The Exquisite.

(minor spoilers ahead)

Going in, I think we all had our theories as to how a new Scream trilogy could be relevant today. Obviously Sydney would have to die in the opening. Obviously Sydney would wind up being the killer, vanquished only by Gail Weathers in a stab off leaving a whole cast of doe-eyed teens to carry on the legend of Ghostface.  I’m happy to report back that we were dead wrong. Scream 4 is better than any of us could have imagined.  Williamson does, in fact, know best.

While the original Scream loved its teenage protagonists, Scream 4 stabs into them with Chayeskian zeal.  This movie is rock'n roll, spitting in the face of an entire generation who have defiantly rejected narrative storytelling.  Scream 4 loathes the A.D.D. culture engendered by a twenty-four hour news cycle.  Scream 4 hates Taylor Lautner, and the Jersey Shore.  Scream 4 does not want you to leave your iphone on the dinner table - it's rude.  Scream 4 is lashing out at tweens who just expect fame and fortune because they see it on television, gutting Rebecca Black like a school of carp in its wake. 

In this arid climate where theatrically released, big budget horror movies are ostensibly dead, Scream 4 is everything - a long lost postcard from the nineties sent to remind us that things used to be really good.  Believe it or not, it's been nearly fifteen years since a celebrity was famous for actually having some modicum of talent. In an America that is trying to pass off Donald "Rosie is a fat pig" Trump as a serious political contender, Scream 4 is mad as hell and it's not going to take it anymore.  While I hate to draw lines in the sand like that dreadful Tea Party (that doesn't help anyone), if you can't at least appreciate this film for its pinsharp social commentary then you are no longer invited to my Sunday brunches. 

There are gay characters, sure.  More importantly, though, Scream 4 is post-gay movie. We homos don't have to live in subtext anymore - being gay doesn't make you the psychopathic serial killer it did in 1996. Gays and straights coexist and can even band together to get through the night. We’ve come a long way, baby. Listen - just because we don’t have to live in the shadows or act out in shame, that doesn’t mean that Scream 4 isn’t a gay movie. Trust me, there were more queens packed into the Acrlight Cinedome last Friday than at the Elton John's Baby Shower. People dressed up like Drew Barrymore, people brought their dogs – it was like gay Christmas!

"Don't fuck with the original."

If we gays love one thing, it’s a strong female protagonist and Scream 4 delivers them in abundance. Aside from Hayden Pantypants and her fabulous haircut, this is the film where Sidney Prescott officially surpasses Laurie Strode as the Queen of franchise horror. Neve Campbell is remarkably tuned in. While she clearly could have given a shit about Scream 2 or Scream 3, in this go around she is serving us Final Girl 2.0. Sydney has become a hero, someone who can go head to head with the object of her dread and maybe even come out ahead. Her return to the small town that made her is electric. This movie is fresh, it's funny, and it reminded me why I used to be scared to use movie theatre restrooms. 

Alas, Scream 4 was a flop at the box office this weekend  - proving once and for all that people don't want ideas or compelling characters with climactic denoument in their movies.  They want bunnies who poop jelly beans.   So, if you haven't already, go and see Scream 4 and then go and see it again. Do it for our country, dolls.  Don't let the terrorists win.

xoxo