THEGAYUK

Category: Entertainment

  • FILM REVIEW | Hidden Away, A Spanish Teenage Gay Love Story

    Don’t be fooled into thinking that Hidden Away is just another boy meets boy love story with a less than great cover photo of its two male leads. It’s a very well told and acted Spanish teenage gay love story that’s very heartwarming and enduring as well. ★★★★

    Hidden Away is not told as a simple coming of age story, and it’s not told in chronological order, which makes understanding and piecing the film together a bit confusing. Director Mikel Rueda has decided to tell the story in a way in which is supposedly meant for the viewer to put themselves into the characters shoes. So it opens with Ibrahim, a 14-year-old young man, walking along the road hitchhiking, escaping from something which we won’t know until the very end. He’s from Morocco, but had gone to Spain a few years back looking for a better future. He’s been living in shelters, hoping to get his official papers so that he can stay in Spain. He lives in Bilbao, fully settled, attending school and living in a shelter for boys just like him. Then there is Rafa, also 14, Spanish, living with his parents. Rafa hangs out with boys just like himself, yet there’s one thing different about Rafa. He doesn’t like girls. There is one girl in particular who practically throws herself at him, but he just doesn’t reciprocate, much to the horror of his friends. Even though Ibrahim and Rafa’s paths initially cross (at one point in a club urinal), they don’t meet until a bit later in the film. And there’s a spark. A spark that at first betells an evolving and very close friendship between the young men, but then evolves into more than that. While there is no actual sex scenes in this film, Rafa and Ibrahim’s bond appears to be more than just physical, it’s emotional as well.

    Ibrahim gets mixed up with a local gang that gets him to sell drugs, while Rafa whiles away the time looking for any reason to be with him. They initially bond over a cigarette, but their friendship, and romance, blossoms after they spend a day together hanging out and going bowling. It’s a relationship that we know is too good to be true. And when Ibrahim receives a letter from the government wanting to extradite him back to Morocco, he sees no other way but to run away, with Rafa by his side.

    It’s the performances that make this film fantastic. German Alcaruz as Rafa brings an innocence to his part, a young man who knows what he wants and doesn’t care what his friends think. His facial expressions will melt your heart – Alcarazu gives a believable and touching performance. Adil Koukouh is also very good as Ibrahim. He’s bigger and more mature looking than Rafa, but he also has a special something that makes Rafa’s attraction to him seem very credible. Also very very good is Joseba Ugalde as Rafa’s best friend Guille. He knows he’s losing Rafa to Ibrahim and he’s OK with it, even when Rafa and Ibrahim have to go on the run, there’s a very touching scene when Rafa and Guille say goodbye to each and Guille tells Rafa that’s he doesn’t quite understand what is going on.

    Hidden Away is a bit difficult to comprehend in the beginning as the scenes do jump around, and the subtitles on this film are quite small and at times hard to read, but stick with it till the very end and you will be rewarded with a love story that’s unique in it’s telling and at it’s very core is a film that tells the story of young love, young love that we’ve all experienced.

    Available to by from Amazon

     

  • FILM REVIEW | Frequencies

    ★★★ | Frequencies

    This quirky and ingenious British film shows us a slightly dystopian future, where we are all born with a frequency that predetermines our future, our luck and affects our relationships.

    It follows Marie-Curie Fortune (aka Marie) and Issac-Newton Midgeley (aka Zak) as they grow, knowing their respective frequencies and how it will affect their lives, expect they seem to be continually thrown together as Marie tries to understand how they can only spend one minute together at a time, without some catastrophe happening.

    Think magnets, and how they repel and attract and you have an idea of how this film works – until it throws something else in the mix. The power of words and sound waves to alter this effect – certain words being able to raise or lower a persons frequency and enable two opposites to get close to each other.

    The film then goes on to look at how this power has existed since time immemorial and has been forgotten by the vast majority of the population…and there are darker ways in which to use this power.

    But music can provide a “reset” and counter-act the effects of the sound waves – whether used for good or evil!

    The film is lovely, it doesn’t go for the silver foil suits of other low budget sci-fi. Instead it places itself in the near future or possibly a parallel earth, leaving you a feeling of familiarity with the sets and clothes – and no doubt saving much needed cash.

    This gem is written, directed and produced by Darren Paul Fisher, who has had a hand in the In-betweeners and he does a mean turn here – playing with the ideas of words and sound waves leading to mind control but music being a reset on a button based in the soul.

    The grown up Marie and Zak are played well by Daniel Fraser and Eleanor Wyld, but the child and teen characters put in excellent turns.

    Overall, it can come off a little like a well-meaning episode of Doctor Who, but I for one don’t think that’s such a bad thing.

  • The Life Of A Gay Man’s Dog

    Kyle’s dog Luna thinks she gets a raw deal when it comes to dating as Kyle seems more obsessed with getting himself a boyfriend, but Luna has her needs too.

    She is adorable and so is Kyle Krieger, the man who Instinct Magazine once labelled ‘The World’s Hottest Hairdresser’ and once you watch their video you will want to make more effort ensuring that the four-legged member of your family also gets a chance to look for true love.

    P.S. See if you can spot any of the celebs who are the voices of all the dogs. They include actress Rumer Willis, actor Skylar Astin, YouTube Activist Tyler Oakley, singer Lance Bass, drag queen Courtney Act, Tv’s Fashion Police Brad Goreski, actor Darren Criss, and Footballer Robbie Rogers

    by @RogerWalkerDack

  • THEATRE: Blackouts

    Following a series of acclaimed performances, ‘Drag Fabulist’ Dickie Beau takes his first major solo show Blackouts across the UK in 2015.

    Conjuring the spirits of celebrated Hollywood icons in an innovative theatre experience, Dickie leads audiences on a bewitching adventure as he channels the ghosts of his childhood idols.

    Dickie secured exclusive access to audio tapes of Marilyn Monroe’s final interview conducted by journalist Richard Meryman. Published in LIFE magazine just two days before her death, Blackouts includes material never before heard in the public domain. As well as this rare audio footage, segments creatively appropriated from Dickie’s own recordings with Richard Meryman also form part of the story. Blackouts sees Dickie shape-shift through a shadowy soundscape of lost souls in a sensational trip to the subconscious underworld of his future self; bringing to life these audio artefacts.

    The show marks a significant development for Dickie’s trademark process of dissecting, then remembering (literally, putting back together and embodying), found sound. The digital script has been written entirely using this and incorporates much original source material, including the spellbinding Judy Speaks tapes – Judy Garland alone with a Dictaphone, making notes for a memoir never to be written. The resulting piece is a study of icons in exile from society and themselves, and the haunting impressions they’ve left behind.

    Tour Dates:

    Mayfest, Bristol Old Vic: Friday 15 & Saturday 16 May 9.30pm mayfestbristol.co.uk

    Chichester Showroom: Thursday 24th September 7.30pm www.theshowroomchichester.co.uk

     

    Further 2015 dates to be announced

  • TV REVIEW: Grace And Frankie, Intelligently funny

    “If anyone gets to sit on Ryan Gosling’s face it’s me…” And with that iconic line, I hereby crown Grace and Frankie, the new Netflix Original, a hit.

    Chalk and cheese duo Grace (Jane Fonda) and Frankie (Lily Tomlin), can’t stand each other, however for the last 40 years, they’ve been in each other’s life’s. One thing is now forcing them to re-evaluate their relationship, turning their lives’ upside down. Their business partner husbands (Martin Sheen and Sam Waterston) are leaving them, for each other – and they want to get married.

    Intelligently funny, but lacks the comedy pace of sayUnbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, Grace and Frankie has its share of ‘old women’ jokes but looks not to diminish the women’s newly single existence, nor bang the drum for gay rights and same-sex marriage, which is one of the critical issues being fought in the US right now.

    Whether Grace and Frankie is to become an overnight success will remain to be seen, it seems that Netflix are playing the long game with its creations, crafting a raft of programming to reflect its massive audience. Some are instance success like House Of Cards some are grower like Marco Polo. The audience for which this show is aimed isn’t so clear-cut. Is it Golden Girls? Is it Modern Family? The New Normal? We’re not so sure. But it is good. Very good. Plus you get to hear Jane Fonda say f**k. I mean that’s worth the view right?

  • FILM REVIEW: From Beginning To End

    There is good taste, and then there is incest.

    It’s surprising that we can sit and watch a lot of suspect and even deviant behaviour amongst (consenting) adults on the silver screen, but this is one topic that we feel is just a tad too icky even for us. Especially when it comes in the form of a melodramatic Brazilian telenova that is short on both substance as well as clothing, and is to all intents and purpose nothing more than a pretty piece of soft porn.

    It starts with two young half brothers, one 6 years old and the other 12, who are a little too close to each other for our comfort zone, and for their mother too who suspects there may be more here than what meets the eye. Flash-forward to the boys as grown men, one of the fathers dies, then the mother passes away too, and the boys seek solace in each other. Well that’s their excuse as they have barely stopped lusting after each other since they were kids.

    We are convinced that it’s not just lust, but real love, which is put to the test when the younger brother who is a potential Olympic swimming champion is told by his coach that he must move abroad to train. To Russia no less. Oh come on coach, you mean to tell us there are no decent swimming pools closer to Brazil?

    Love conquers all though and even a very pretty girl cannot steal the old brother away from his one true love, and this all plays out to a rather deafening over-laden heavy strings soundtrack. And we guess they will happily ever after? Who knows? More importantly, who cares?

    Why see it at all? Well the boys/men are rather stunning beefcakes that even with this limited script prove that they can actually act, and also writhe around naked together looking very sexy but without doing the act (it’s soft porn after all). It was a big box office hit in Brazil when it was released in 2009, and it has now surfaced on Amazon where you can waste £4.49 and more importantly 90 minutes of your time.

     

  • This Morning Toying With Semen Facial Segment

    Yep, this is how Morning Television rolls in the United Kingdom. From Jeremy Kyle to semen facials.

    TV execs have confirmed that they’re not oppose to featuring a semen facial on a programme coming soon. ITV’s flagship morning programme hasn’t shied away from controversial segments, having shown a live testicular cancer screening and a live rectum examination, both served as an important public service message to men and their partners, however This Morning also devoted a morning to bondage for beginners on the pre pre pre watershed show. The bondage programme ended up garnering 120 official complaints.

    According to sources, the experimental semen on face test will take place with a woman using a sample from her partner and although no date has been confirmed, it is thought that the programme could air sooner rather than later. They told The Sun:

    “The team speak with a huge number of possible contributors each day.”

    Some experts claim that a man’s ejaculate contains essential ageing properties such as proteins, zinc, magnesium, calcium, potassium and fructose, all that could cause a nourishing effect. It also contains Spermine, which ScienceDirect.com identifies “as a potent antioxidant and an anti-inflammatory agent” and “an important antioxidant of epidermis (skin).

    So is it time to get all bukkake on each other?

  • BRUCE JENNER: “I Am A Woman Now”

    ‘I JUST CAN’T PULL THE CURTAIN ANYMORE.’

    At the beginning of the interview Diane Sawyer made it clear that Bruce was still using the pronoun He, therefore our review of the interview reflects that.

    When Bruce Jenner won the Olympic Gold Medal for the Decathlon in 1976 he broke the hold that the Soviets had on that event for years and instantly became an American Hero. For years this strapping handsome 6’4” man was recognised as the World’s Greatest Athlete. Tonight however she is sitting down to give an exclusive interview with ABC TV’s Diane Sawyer to finally confirm the news that he worries may disappoint so many of the fans who have looked up to him for years.

    Jenner is visibly extremely nervous as the cameras start to roll but she soon finds confidence as he begins to tell the real story for the very first time. What we discover in the next two hours is an outstandingly honest and open person who is also disarmingly charming. Jenner doesn’t shy away from any of Diane Sawyer’s probing questions and is utterly frank with his answers. Jenner’s words evoke a response from Brandon, his son, who puts it very simply when he tells his Dad that he was proud of his when she won all her medals, but that pales into insignificance with Jenner’s bravery now.

    Jenner tells the waiting world “I am a woman now. I have told a lie all my life, and this is who I am. I cannot hide anymore and I just can’t pull the curtains”. He adds “I still have all my male parts but I identify as female.” He believes that what he is doing is going to change the world by talking about it all now.

    Jenner explains that this is the very last time he will do an interview as ‘Bruce’ as he is about to undertake more of his transitioning which she reveals she started back in the 1980s when for a few years she took hormones.

    A deeply religious and a family person Jenner married Chrystie the first wife in 1972 and they had two children before they divorced nine years later. Wife number two was singer Linda Thompson and they had two children before they separated five years later, and then in 1991 Jenner married Kris Kardashian and as well as fathering two daughters Jenner became the step-father to the infamous Kardashian sisters. Jenner shares that the first person he revealed her gender confusion too was Chrystie, and he is very quick to point out that this was not the cause for the failure of this, or the other marriages.

    Jenner makes a point of explaining to an inquisitive and rather bemused Diane Sawyer that he is 100% heterosexual and has never ever even considered having sex with a man. He however has done his homework on this particular topic beforehand and quotes a very simply way of explaining the situation.

    “Sexual identity is about who you go to bed with, whereas gender identity is about who you go to bed as.”

    Jenner has been an integral part of her family’s infamous hit Reality TV Show for years, so his relationship with all the children has been carried out under the glare of spotlights for some time now. His four eldest asked to be part of the interview so that they could publicly express their support for their father’s transition.

    I think even Diane Sawyer was surprised with the answer Jenner gave when she pushed Jenner on how the ubiquitous Kim Kardashian had reacted. Kim had said that her husband Kanye had turned her around to the whole idea. West used his own life as an analogy: “I can be married to the most beautiful woman in the world, and I am. I could have the most beautiful little daughter in the world, and I do. But I’m nothing if I can’t be me. If I can’t be true to myself, they don’t mean anything.” Kim added her own advice telling her dad “you’ve got to rock it”.

    Aside from the sensationalism of having a celebrity having the bravery to come clean to the world with such astounding and highly personal news, both Jenner and Diane Sawyer took time out to acknowledge the ongoing struggle of other people transitioning which is still so greatly misunderstood and still results in suicides and violent crime. Jenner expressed her deepest hope that talking about this topic in this manner on primetime TV may save more lives and give others the strength to become who they really are.

    When Jenner explained to Diane Sawyer that next time they meet she would only see Jenner as the woman she now is and she finished the interview with “I am saying goodbye to peoples perception of me, but I am not saying goodbye to me.”

    I think when the reviews are in, we will find she is even more of a Hero than ever before. Certainly in our book.

    The similarities of Jenner’s story with that of the Award winning TV series TRANSPARENT is remarkable . That featured a retired Professor also in his 60s who finally decides to transition and has to share the news with his adult children. It’s a rather joyous positive journey based on the real life story of the series creator Jill Soloway’s father .

    by @RogerWalkerDack

  • Did Diane Sawyer Mis-Gender Bruce Jenner?

    For many people watching last night’s Diane Sawyer special with Bruce Jenner, it seemed that she was misgendering Jenner after telling her that he was now a woman. It may have seemed disrespectful, but here’s why it wasn’t.

    Many took to social media to question Sawyer’s use of masculine pronouns, however, at the beginning of the interview, it was made clear that Bruce was still using male pronouns and had asked to be referred to in that way.

    A statement released by GLAAD may help people understand what might feel like a minefield when assigning pronouns to those who are trans, transitioning or transitioned.

    At this time, Bruce Jenner has not requested that a new name or pronoun be used, therefore we are respecting his wishes and will continue to refer to Jenner by his current name and with male pronouns. Some transgender people prefer to change their name and/or pronoun quickly. Other transgender people may take more time to decide what name and/or pronoun feels right to them. To be respectful, use the name and/or pronoun requested by the individual.

    During the 2-hour special, Jenner told Sawyer:

    “I am a woman now. I have told a lie all my life, and this is who I am. I cannot hide anymore and I just can’t pull the curtains”. He adds “I still have all my male parts but I identify as female.”

     

    He believes that what he is doing is going to change the world by talking about it all now.

  • FILM REVIEW: Girlhood

    Life is pretty bleak in this concrete jungle of soulless tower blocks of shabby apartments on this housing complex in a poor rundown suburb of Paris.

    Sixteen-year-old Marieme is hoping that one day she will break out of there so for a better life so she does her school work, plays American football, and then goes home to look after her younger siblings whilst her mother is out all hours doing cleaning jobs to keep the family together.

    However when Marieme learns that her grades are not enough to continue high school she gives up being a good girl and falls in with a gang of three girls who seem to wreak havoc wherever they go. At first, Marieme sits on the sidelines observing the girls led by a real toughie who calls herself Lady, but she soon gets drawn into their questionable activities when they slack off school every day. She swaps her braids for a more glam look and starts copying their more outrageous dress style. It’s not long until she is the one menacing other kids on their way to school to relieve them of every cent they have to fund the gang’s nefarious agenda.

    They use the money to check into a hotel to try on all the clothes they have stolen from the mall, get wasted on a diet of booze and pot noodles, and give a full rendition of Rihanna’s Diamonds. It’s their idea of a high life, sad as it is.

    Things change when Lady gets roundly beaten in a fight with a member of another gang, so an emboldened Marieme … known by the girls as Vic … steps up to the plate and takes on the victor and beats her up. It delights Djibril one of her brother’s friends who she has been hooking up with in secret, but it infuriates her bully of a brother, and when he threatens her, she knows it is time to leave home.

    In this situation the only way out is to start selling drugs, which she does for another gang in return for a share in a safe house in another neighbourhood. As tough she has become, this is very much a man’s world, and despite all her efforts, she is still a girl.

    It’s the third feature from French filmmaker Céline Sciamma and although it doesn’t quite have the same resonance of her award-winning Tomboy but it does nevertheless pack a powerful punch. It’s a bleak grim reality that these tough bad girls inhabit and come-of-age in but Sciamma does at least infuse it with a glimmer of hope…. and some compassion too. It’s zillion years away from the cosy life of Boyhood!

  • FILM REVIEW | Blackmail Boys

    When gay art student Sam ‘came out’ to his parents they disowned him and cut him off without a cent.

    Faced with high tuition fees, rent and living expenses to find in Chicago, he resorted to turning tricks as it pays so much better than any other manual labour. However when Aaron his long-term long-distance boyfriend moved to town and in with him, he resented the way that Sam earns his living.

    The first time one of Sam’s paying clients came for his weekly rough and tumble, the more worldly Aaron recognised him as an infamous gay-bashing bigot that had just written yet one more book denouncing the ‘evil ways of homosexuality. After his ‘appointment’ was over Aaron suggested that when the man came back for his next hook-up, that he should secretly film the whole naked encounter and use it to blackmail him. Not only would it possibly expose the hypocrite to the whole world, but if he wanted to buy the tape to keep them quiet, they could make enough money to insure that Sam could retire from his call boy career.

    It was a rather inconsequential plot for a lightweight movie made by the somewhat anonymous Shumanski filmmaking brothers from South Africa. Like their previous gay-themed movie Wrecked there is an abundant amount of full frontal nudity and explicit sex that at times just feels like porn with a plot. Its redeeming feature is its mumble core approach to filming (not often used in gay movies) that gave the whole piece an edgy feel to it.

    On the acting side indie actor/director Joe Swanberg who’s first ‘big’ feature Drinking Buddies was recently released to critical acclaim, plays the angry client Andrew Tucker. Looking at Swanberg’s resume to date you can see that he rarely keeps his clothes on through a whole movie, so it seemed no big deal for this straight actor to have explicit gay sex on screen. Interesting also to see young Nathan Adloff (playing Sam) in front of the camera after being so very impressed with his own writing/directing debut in a delightful sleeper from last year’s Nate & Margaret.

    It’s a harmless piece of boy-lite fare that by trying to push our buttons by what it thinks is daring, will only have us reaching for the remote control to skip over all those parts which fall flatter than some of the sexual encounters, to get to the end quicker.