THEGAYUK

Category: Entertainment

  • Austin Armacost: Janice Dickinson Is A C**T

    Yep, that’s twice now CBB’s Austin has dropped the C bomb on Janice.

    Austin Armacost is not Janice Dickinson’s fan, not by a long stretch, after calling the “world’s first supermodel” a c**t twice in 48 hours.

    Austin’s rant at Janice happened after a week of arguments, which came to a boiling point after Janice nominated Austin not to receive a letter from home after she screwed up the task to enable housemates to get a letter from a loved one. In a show of solidarity, Janice threw her letter away but was given it to read by Big Brother later on.

    In tonight’s episode, Austin’s anger at the mother of two seemed to have gotten the better of him after going on a rampage.

    He said,

    “You are a terrible example of a women and a mother, your children would be so embarrassed, you’re f**king the worst excuse for a women ever.”

    To which Janice sticks her fingers up at Austin and tells him to “kiss my a*s.”

     

    Austin responds,

    “You’re such a good mother to throw your middle fingers up on National Television, you f**king embarrassment of a mother, you should be ashamed.”

    At this point Janice hides under the covers, while Austin lands the blow,

    “That’s right, I didn’t think you had anything to say, you stupid c**t.”

    He then criticises her lifestyle and job by saying,

    “What an embarrassment to society, run around with your tits out and you’re spreading your legs. You’re just such a nasty excuse for a woman…miserable…who has to pop from reality show to reality show like you do to f**king get a pay cheque. Get a job, learn a trade, get some education, you stupid f**king b*tch.”

    He goes to Big Brother to calm down and speaks about his family including about his mother’s arrest and jail time has affected him.

    “I have done nothing but be honest and truthful with everybody in this House and that is why from the start I wanted to share about my brother and my mom, because I’m f**king p*ssed off. I had to bury my brother and then send my mom to prison. I saw my mom for a week before I came to London and I come back to Huddersfield and see this amazing family that my husband has and that p*sses me off because my family is self-destructive.”

    Austin’s mother, Karen Armacost was sentenced to six years in jail for theft. She pleaded guilty to stealing $681,000 over four years from her former employee.

    After speaking to Big Brother he goes back into the house and says,

    “That was bang out of order to say those things. I’m not going to make excuses, it was f**ked up and inappropriate by any means that is an understatement. It’s absolutely the last things that should have come out my mouth.”

  • THEATRE REVIEW | Kinky Boots, Adelphi Theatre, London

    ★★★ | Kinky Boots, London

    It’s a huge hit on Broadway and it’s now finally opened in London. ‘Kinky Boots’ is in the house!

    If the name rings a bell, it’s because Kinky Boots was a 2005 film about a struggling shoe factory about to go out of business until they change their product line and start making boots that are sexy, and, literally, not worn by the everyday woman. The musical version of Kinky Boots follows the same story, but it’s got a book by Harvey Fierstein (Torch Song Trilogy and La Cage Aux Folles – books he also wrote), music and lyrics by Cyndi Lauper (“Girls Just Want to Have Fun”), and choreography by Jerry Mitchell (The Full Monty and Hairspray). That’s a lot of power and muscle behind a show, and it works, to a degree. (The show won six Tony Awards).

    Killian Donnelly (the breakout star of The Commitments and co-star of Memphis) easily and comfortably plays Charlie Price, whose late father leaves him his shoe factory in Northhampton. It’s losing money, and Price might be forced to close it down, something that would make his London-bound fiancee Nicola (Amy Ross) happy. By chance, he comes to the aid of a drag queen who is being beaten up in a park. The Drag queen, Lola, played very ably and loudly by Matt Henry, is grateful to Price for saving him. But their meeting turns into a business relationship where Lola plants the idea into Price’s head to have his factory make Kinky Boots – boots for him and his fellow drag queens – boots that are big, flashy and preferably red! And eventually, Lola gives up her life (and leaves her fellow drag queens) in London to go up north to help in the factory to lead in the design of some Kinky Boots. But he’s not too accepted in a town and factory where no drag queen has walked in heels before. Even though he’s dressed as a man, some of the other workers make fun of him, especially Don (Jamie Braughan), who challenges Lola to a boxing match. Of course, conflict and arguments take place between Price and Lola, and Lola decides that she’s had enough of the northerners and heads back down to London. Meanwhile, Price is being wooed by one his employees – Lauren (Amy Lennox – wonderful) But it’s bad timing as Price is about to show his latest models of shoes at a Milan fashion show – he’s got no Lola, no models, and tons of shoes that need to be worn.

    And you can only guess what will happen next. To say this show is predictable is an understatement.

    While there are no surprises in the plot, it’s the music that raises the show up a notch or two. Lauper has injected her personality into songs that only she can write – when all the actors sing “Everybody Say Yeah” – it’s a song that will stick in your head for the rest of the night – in a good way. And of course each actor has their own song moment – Donnelly sings his heart out in “Soul of a Man” while Lola is given “Hold Me In Your Heart”- a song that highlights his very deep baritone voice in a soulful way (it sounds a bit like the song in Dreamgirls – “And I am Telling you I’m not Going”. If there’s one person who steals the show it’s Lennox – she’s hysterical in the role of Price’s colleague who pines for him while he’s focused on keeping the business afloat.

    Production values are fine – the set morphs from factory to the fashion show. For me it’s the drag queens that make this show good – their sparkling clothing and sass and attitude and sequins are just right – for without them Kinky Boots wouldn’t be so Kinky at all.

    At the Adelphi Theatre 020 3725 7068 | http://www.kinkybootsthemusical.co.uk/tickets.php

  • End Of The Bromance As CBB James Nominates Austin Armacost

    It’s all over. The CBB bromance between Austin and James Hill is officially over.

    Done. Dusted. Finished. The great CBB bromance between Austin Armacost and former Apprentice star James Hill is officially over after James nominates Austin for eviction. We’re imagining Austin’s husband Jake is very happy about this news.

    On his nomination of Austin, James said,

    “the way he goes off and how he is treating people is very hard for me because you know I have to make the right decision and as much as I love him you know he is wrong and how he is behaving is wrong, it makes it very hard for me because he is my best friend in here.”

    Talking about his nomination to Bobby Davro, James says, “that was very hard for me mate.”

    The housemates facing eviction tomorrow night (Tuesday 22 September) are JANICE, BOBBY, JENNA and AUSTIN. Austin and Jenna are shocked to discover that they have been nominated by their friend, James, leading to a big row breaking out between Austin and the rest of the Housemates. Ooo errrr big dramz.
    CBB continues tonight on Channel Five from 9PM

  • Transparent Wins Big At The Emmys

    Transparent, the brand new Amazon comedy-drama has picked up two Emmys at yesterday’s award ceremony.

    The show’s star Jeffrey Tambor and its director won an Emmy each at yesterday’s ceremony for their roles in Amazon’s hit show Transparent, which follows the lives of a family after their father reveals that he is trans. Transparent also won best guest actor in a comedy for the former West Wing star Bradley Whitford.

    The Emmy win follows on from Jeffrey’s win at the Golden Globes in JanuaryIn his acceptance speech at the Emmys Tambor said,

    “I had a teacher who used to say, you know, ‘When you act, you have to act as if your life depends on it.’ And now I’ve been given the opportunity to act because people’s lives depend on it.

    “I’d like to dedicate my performance and this award to the transgender community. Thank you for your patience. Thank you for your courage. Thank you for your stories. Thank you for our inspiration. Thank you for letting us be part of the change. God bless.”

  • Cute Gay Couple Could Make X FACTOR History

    Chris Kennedy and his partner Gabriel Cabrera could make X FACTOR history tonight if they make it through to the judges’ houses.

    The pair, who met on a karaoke website, auditioned in front a 3000 strong audience and of course the 4 judges in a bid to make it through to boot camp and the judges’ houses. The couple go by the name The Shures.

    The married couple, Chris, 28 and Gabriel, 32 who both live in Milton Keynes sang Ellie Goulding’s Love Me Like You Do, to an audience that was clearly loving the love in.

    Openly gay judge, Nick Grimshaw commented,

    “It felt like you meant it and there was so much sincerity in it and I think that’s why everyone liked it in here. I could feel the love coming off you.”

    “You are a prime example to our generation and I am so glad gay marriage was legalised in this country,”

    “Gabriel you are the better singer in my opinion and I guess your voices do work well together but I think that when he took the lead, the song was much, much better.”

    The X Factor continues tonight at 8pm on ITV1.

  • Austin Evicts Farrah From Big Brother

    Farrah Abraham has been evicted from the Big Brother house after being chosen to get the boot by fellow housemate, Austin Armacost.

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  • THEATRE REVIEW | McQueen, Theatre Royal, Haymarket, London

    Crass yob or fashion god? Both, actually. All bile, venom and spunk, Alexander McQueen was a mutant oik messiah, a sartorial serial-killer maniacally slashing mediocrity into mouth-watering magnificence. ★★★★

    But that’s only when his brutally bi-polar, chemsex-twisted muse flew, of course, and new play McQueen – where he’s called Lee, his preferred name throughout – unflinchingly skewers his fatal, full-stop bungee-jump into oblivion.

    If the plot’s simple, the treatment, like McQueen himself, is insolently audacious. It’s the night of McQueen’s suicide, and an anxious Lee – (Stephen Wight) is surprised late at night by impulsive house intruder Dahlia (Carly Bawden).

    Instantly, Dahlia’s nerdy, conflicted, fan-girl worship acts as mental crystal-meth to Lee, and triggers an elegiac night of non-stop revelations. Burst after imagistic burst reveals Lee’s muses, mentors, likings and loathings, collapsing time and space with shockingly raw character expóses.

    That’s where McQueen truly impresses. If his supposedly blunt, scumbag genius was secretly held in contempt by snobs – Givenchy called him ‘le football thug’ – Lee in reality was painfully self-aware and insightful. One scathing scene gorgeously massacres smug faux-sophistication; a vapid reporter’s dissection of a woman is witheringly undone by Lee’s breezily compassionate take.

    So forget strict, dull, lazy biography nailed dead and rotting to the stage. Instead, this is fraught, suicide theatre superbly deployed as a multi-media, psychic minefield. Mime, pumping catwalk themes and video backdrops forensically flesh out Lee’s screaming inner self with an assurance clumsy naturalism would kill for.

    It’s an exact, brilliantly nuanced barometer of a frenzied gay genius’s mind. Time and again, music indelibly stains the action and spotlights Lee’s moods, from Nirvana’s brooding ‘Come As You Are’ to the hallucinatory grandeur of Handel’s Sarabande. And linear logic, throughout, is blatantly sacrificed for wrenchingly exact, emotional precision.

    That’s McQueen’s towering strength, shatteringly used in Lee’s lynchpin exchange with fashionista Isabella Blow, his triple-goddess muse, patron and financial angel.

    As played by Tracy-Ann Oberman, Blow’s a virtuoso study in slinky, fatally insecure hauteur. Both terminally damaged, she and Lee cling like frightened children to each other, as needy, emotionally naked and iconic as Rolling Stone magazine’s cover of John Lennon cradled by Yoko Ono.

    But that beautiful innocence makes only half of a shocking, Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf brutality. It’s as horribly fascinating as watching slow, incremental torture, a frenzied kaleidoscope of pain, grief, betrayal and back-stabbing, as Blow’s callously thrown aside, and Lee’s vicious need to succeed shapes his signature, ‘savage beauty’ ethic.

    Directly sourced from Darwin’s take on nature – ‘red in tooth and claw’ – Lee’s manic, unstable, all-or-nothing creative process was pure Russian Roulette. Onstage, nightmare despair follows each ecstatic peak, awesomely mimicked by surging son et lumiere effects, as Lee, anxious, fragile and broken, exits his unbearable, trampoline existence to Marilyn Manson’s nihilistic, misfit anthem, ‘Beautiful People’.

    Oddly inspirational, a slow-burn triumph of subtle but often savage insight, McQueen deliberately spits on hysterical, West End Wendy fireworks. Instead, it’s far more rewarding; resonant, fully adult theatre worthy of Tony Kushner and Patrick Marber, and more remarkably contemporary than either.

    Until 7 November 2015. Tickets: 020 7930 8800; trh.co.uk

    By Sasha DeSuinn | @msSashaDarling

  • Austin And James Get Naked In Celebrity Big Brother

    Hot naked alert as Austin Armacost and James Hill get Nekkid for Sherrie’s Birthday…

    There’s no need to introduce these pictures, just look and enjoy. Needless to say Mr Armacost and James Hill got starkers for Sherrie and Stevi’s birthday in tonight’s birthday.

    Continues tonight, Friday 18 September at 9 pm on Channel 5

  • FILM REVIEW: Everest: Breathtaking Epic Adventure

    In 1996, dozens of people tried to get to the top of Mount Everest. Some succeeded, and some died trying. The gripping and realistic ‘Everest’ recounts, in dramatic fashion, this event. ★★★★

    There were quite a few expeditions on Mount Everest in May 1996, and they all had one goal, to get themselves, and their clients (who each paid $65,000), to the top of Mount Everest, and it was up to the expedition leaders to make this happen. Rob Hall was the leader for Adventure Consultants, and he happened to have Jon Krakauer on his team (journalist Krakauer, who was on an assignment for Outside magazine, would go on to write ‘Into Thin Air’ – a book about the disastrous events that took place on the mountain during this climb ). Hall was also responsible for 7 other clients. The Mountain Madness expedition was led by Scott Fischer, who also had 8 clients, including Sandy Hill Pittman, a very wealthy New York Socialite who was, at the time, the wife of Robert Pittman, the founder of MTV. In addition to the clients, several sherpas (local people who are hired by the expedition companies to carry up the mountain supplies and food, to fix the ropes and ladders to make it easier and quicker for the clients to get up – getting everything in place) were part of the teams as well. Of course most of Hall’s and Fischer’s clients were not professional mountain climbers, they climbed mountains as more of a hobby, and expected to reach the top of Mount Everest because of the huge amount of money they paid. One of Hall’s clients was a postman (Doug Hansen). Another was a doctor from Texas (Beck Weathers). Also on Hall’s team was Yasuko Namba, a Japanese woman who had climbed six of the Seven Summits. And Hall and Fischer knew that it’s good for their businesses to have their clients actually make it to the top. So along with these two expeditions groups, other groups of people trying to climb the mountain at the same time were from South Africa, France, Tibet, and 13 members of a Taiwanese team.

    But the weather gods were not smiling on Hall and Fischer and their clients during this climb. And this is the story that ‘Everest’ the film successfully and gloomily brings to life. We are introduced to the teams six weeks prior to the start of their expedition. Hall (played by Jason Clarke) is from New Zealand who leaves his pregnant wife (Keira Knightley) behind to go to work. Beck Weathers (Josh Brolin) says goodbye to his wife (Robin Wright) in Texas to try to accomplish the almost impossible task of getting to the top of Mount Everest. Doug Hansen (John Hawkes) meets up with the gang in Nepal, as does Sandy Hill Pittman (Vanessa Kirby), which is the starting point for all expeditions. It is in Nepal where the teams get to know each other and bond, but it’s when they get to base camp that the adventure, and danger, begins. Base Camp is already at such a high altitude (17,600 feet), that climbers need to be acclimatized so their bodies can get used to the high altitude. It’s also where the operations for the expeditions take place, led by Helen Wilton (Emily Watson). ‘Everest’ takes us on the journey of these team climbing the mountain. But first they need to navigate the Khumbu ice fall, soaring ice towers and crevasses so deep that there really is no bottom. Camp I and Camp II are where the teams stop and rest and basically take their time. But it’s Lhotse Face that is one of the most challenging bits on the mountain. It’s a 3,600 foot wall of ice that they have to climb to reach Camp III, where most climbers need to use bottled oxygen to breath. But it’s above 26,000, right below Camp IV, which is where the climbers use as the final stop before their ascent, called the ‘Death Zone’ because it’s where humans cannot survive for long. If climbers have survived as high up as Camp IV, then it’s full throttle ahead to reach the summit, usually at midnight so that the teams can reach it before noon, that if they survive the heavy gusts of wind and the Hillary Step, a 40-foot tower of ice and rock on an exposed part of the mountain that becomes a human traffic jam for people getting to the top, as well as coming back down. But it’s the climb back down that is hardest. The climbers are exhausted, some suffering from high altitude conditions, but it’s the lucky ones who are in ok shape, and it’s these people who have to decide whether to save the almost dead or to leave them behind to save their own lives. As recounted in ‘Everest’, Hall and Fischer’s teams encountered a major storm on their way down, but it was not the only mistake that took place on that climb. Besides too many people on the mountain, Hall took Hansen up to top, way past the agreed time. And the search for them cost another climber his life. Fischer was not in the best of shape as he was climbing to the top, and had a much harder time going down. And a storm overtook the climbers, which turned out to be unexpected and deathly. And it’s reenacted in ‘Everest’ to extreme detail; high winds, blowing snow, climbers struggling just to survive, dead bodies littered here and there, and almost blacked-outconditions. ‘Everest’ also recounts Weather’s struggle for survival, Hall’s loyalty to his client, and the operations team realizing that there is nothing they can do for the people trapped on the mountain.

    ‘Everest’ successfully, and grippingly, tells the story of the people who survived the mountain that fateful year. And while there have been a few books and one television movie made about this event, ‘Everest’ is based on the book by Weathers ( Left for Dead: My Journey Home from Everest (2000)), recollections from some of the survivors, as well as satellite phone conversations between the climbers, their families, and base camp. And the actors who portray the real life characters are superb. Josh Brolin has his best role in years as Weathers, a man who amazingly was left for dead on the mountain but somehow survived. Jason Clarke as Rob Hall is excellent – he’s determined to get his clients to the top and at the same time determined to get back home to see the birth of his first baby. Emily Watson as Wilton, the base camp operations coordinator, is concerned, and then doomed, after she realizes that a few lives have been lost on the mountain. And John Hawkes as postman Hansen gives us a portrait of a man who wants to be there but is not experienced in any way to climb the mountain. Luckily Knightley is relegated to a role not on the mountain, she plays Hall’s wife back at home, and there’s nothing she can do to help him. Gyllenhaal’s role as Fischer is relegated to a few scenes, mostly up on the mountain – he’s far from being the star of the movie. Director Baltasar Kormakur (2 Guns, Contraband), working from a script by William Nicholson and Simon Beaufoy, takes us with the teams on their journey, and it looks all too realistic. While there are lots of characters to keep track of (the all important Sherpas are virtually ignored), especially when they are all wrapped up, ‘Everest’ brings to the big screen the real life 1996 Mount Everest disaster. Eight people eventually died during this expedition. ‘Everest’ was shot at high elevation on the trek to Everest in Nepal, in the Italian Alps and at Cinecitta Studios in Rome, and Pinewood Studios in the UK. It can be experienced in IMAX 3D as well as standard 3D and 2D. ‘Everest’ is an epic adventure that will take your breathe away.

     

     

  • FILM REVIEW: Faults

    A down on his luck cult expert is hired by a couple to deprogram their daughter in the new online film Faults.

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  • Transformer: A Night With Lou Reed At Soho Theatre, Polymorphous Perversity

    Does gay culture have Alzheimer’s or rather, collective amnesia? Sure, for straight, non-artistic philistines Jonny Woo seems ground-breaking, but truthfully, he’s one rich link in a historically brilliant chain. ★★★★

    The once-signature beard, teamed with trowelled-on make-up? Straight from the Cockettes, the 1960s, San Franciscan performance art troupe, via David Hoyle’s car-crash Liza Minelli make-over. Ditto the confrontational rants, identity politics and shot-gun conflation of trash and fine art – uh, hello, John Waters and Divine, anyone?

    And let’s not forget gorgeous lifestyle peacocks Quentin Crisp and Colin Swift (don’t know them? Do a Google), the epitomes of waspishly debonair decadence. ‘I love watching ballet’, Crisp hissed, ‘You never know when the dancers will slip and break their necks’.

    And something of that same, devilish relish instantly curdles easy, audience enjoyment tonight. Because, if ever a show demanded snarling contempt for punters, it’s this. See, Lou Reed – the ragingly gay, rock ‘n’ roll beast so timidly evoked tonight – wasn’t even borderline polite. Screw social graces – he brutally massacred finesse with the aplomb of a fresh, human turd served at a Buckingham Palace banquet. Sure, Woo serves up a live, Reed songbook and patter, but it’s a pale, disappointing Xerox of Warhol sleaze, venom and spunk, West End Wendies doing a Lou Reed-Lite karaoke.

    Let’s get specific. The biggest, howlingly apparent problem is a skewed, dramatic spine, all Hunchback of Notre Dame excess but no pay-off. It’s the sin of pride. perhaps, or, less religiously, King Midas Syndrome, the belief that sexually diverse mind-sets turn everything they touch to pure gold.

    Not here. Unshakeably sure of his own cachet, Woo simply assumes, limpet-like, that his blessed touch automatically annexes and glorifies all things queer in his own image. If only, if only, as Tennessee Williams should’ve said to Salvador Dali. Full points to Jonny for even trying, but I deeply missed Lou’s clinically insane, live-gig frazzled mania, nowhere evident tonight.

    It’s unfair, perhaps, to compare Transformer to the utterly deranged, swamp-rock transvestism of The Christeene Machine, another Soho Theatre stand-out. But frankly, Jonny, bless his surely rock ‘n’ roll heart, just pussyfoots, and merely apes, but never memorably embraces, piss-stained leather pants dementia.

    Still – as with the filthiest, most depraved sinner – there are points of brilliant redemption. Breaking London drag superstar Pretty Miss Cairo is an outstanding Candy Darling, even though that transsexual, Warhol luminary would rather cut her bashful, self-effacing dick off than get naked on stage. And better still is Fi McCluskey’s jaw-droppingly stunning Valerie Solanas, the militant feminist who shot Warhol nearly point-blank in ’68. Reciting still-incendiary verses from the SCUM manifesto – the Society for Cutting Up Men – McClusky gives every ounce of witchy, confrontational venom a sublime, poison perfection.

    So should you see Transformer, and part with your hard-earned, precious shekels? Oh god, yes, even for just the memory of that glorious, unrepeatable era when the streets of early 70s Soho were awash with drugs, pansexuality and promise – a time, we hope, might soon come again.