THEGAYUK

Category: Entertainment

  • FILM REVIEW | American Sniper

    ★★★★ | American Sniper

    Add American Sniper to the list of good Clint Eastwood movies.

    While it’s not his best film ever (see Unforgiven and J. Edgar) nor his worst film (see the recently poorly received Jersey Boys), it’s a loyal and factual re-telling of the true story of Chris Kyle, a member of the elite Nave SEALS. He was the most lethal sniper in the history of the US Military, having 160 confirmed kills. He was also a husband and the father of two children, but being the best sniper and serving his country were the most important things in his life.

    Kyle (played valiantly and accurately by Bradley Cooper) in the beginning of the film is a ranch hand in Texas. His life doesn’t amount to much, especially after he finds his girlfriend in bed with another man. But after injuring his arm, he decides to join the navy. His commitment for his country becomes embedded in him after the catastrophic events of 9/11. After months of gruelling training, he and his team are sent to Iraq to fight the enemy. And they are tasked with some of the most dangerous missions in the military. This includes heading directly into enemy territory and looking for a man called Shiekh Al-Obodi (Navid Negahban), one of the leaders of the Taliban.

    Kyle serves four tours, in between each one going home to be with his family but getting the pull to serve again. He’s urged against it by his pretty wife Tanya (an amazing Sienna Miller). Even the birth of his two children doesn’t keep him home. He continues increasing his sniper kill tally, which includes women and children who threaten to kill US soldiers. Kyle is also determined to kill a man called Mustafa (played by Sammy Shiek). Mustafa is a Syrian shooter who had competed for his country in the Olympics. He’s also killing the insurgents (the Americans on the ground). Kyle is determined to kill him as he has killed one of his fellow soldiers. The film then becomes a cat and mouse story to dramatic effect, where Mustafa aims to shoot the soldiers but Kyle aims to shoot him. It all culminates in an amazing shootout between the US soldiers trapped on a rooftop in Sadr City while the enemy comes in from all sides, all in the midst of a massive sandstorm. It’s one of Eastwood’s best film sequences I’ve ever seen.

    However, American Sniper doesn’t end there. Kyle, after getting shot in the massive shootout, returns home, but has a hard time rejoining society, and his wife has a hard time getting connected with him. He’s a changed man, but seems to slightly recover after he starts helping soldiers at a local veterans hospital and also helps to train them on weapons and combat tactics to lift their spirits. American Sniper would’ve had a better impact if the film ended after the shootout in Sadr City. This last bit of the film seems to be tacked on to tell the rest of Kyle’s story.

    Cooper plays Kyle to great effect, however, he’s a bit too old to be playing Kyle in his younger years. But Cooper is believable as a soldier during the war, he holds his gun and interacts with his fellow (younger) soldiers very well. It’s a performance that has just won him a nomination for the Best Actor Oscar. Miller is the standout of the film, she’s excellent as Tanya – it’s the best performance of her career. And while American Sniper looks and feels like a good film, the last ten minutes don’t need to be there. American Sniper is adapted by the book of the same name by actor turned-screenwriter Jason Dean Hall. Kyle was shot and killed in Texas in 2013 by a 25-year old Marine Corps Veteran, a veteran he was trying to help.

  • TV REVIEW | Cucumber, Banana, Tofu

    ★★★★ | Cucumber, Banana, Tofu

    He’s a clever bugger that Russell T. Bloke – you know the one who is basically is the godfather of Gay TV.

    Forget Kim Kardashian breaking the internet, Russell T Davies’s Queer As Folk broke terrestrial television with many asses back in 1999 and it looks as though he’s about to do it again with a brand new interwoven, multi-platform series that celebrates sexual and gender diversity, like no other writer or broadcaster for that matter, has ever done before.

    The erect penis has been studied, not just in this office, but scientifically, yes money has been spent on measuring how hard penises are – and they (the scientists) came up with a scale of hardest – from Tofu to Cucumber. Meet Henry, the story which Cucumber, the terrestrial offering from Channel 4. He’s a man in his late forties who hates the gay scene. Absolutely loathes it. It doesn’t resonate with him anymore, the young’un with their apps and inability to hold a conversation longer than their ejaculations. He’s been in a sexless, long term relationship for years and is having a bit of crisis of his placement in ‘the community’; fifteen years on is this how Stuart Jones would have turned out?

    But let’s get this straight, as best we can, Cucumber isn’t Queer As Folk 2.0. It’s a different story, a different set of characters. It’s gay-centric, but packs huge laughs, sex and asks the big questions: What do ‘WE’ want? That’s the big ‘WE’ of course – and while Cucumber focuses mainly on a gay man, Banana delves into the world sexuality and gender and rips it open in a way that could break the digital channel.

    Banana is the other side of the story. The young guns with their apps and their multi-sexual and gender identities and how these can collide. If Cucumber is generation gay, Banana is generation ‘Whatever’.

    Boxes and labels are so 1997/2004, so BBC 3… Generation just-get-on-with-it, are about to have their say, and while viewers on e4 probably won’t bat an eyelid, their parents might just be a little confused at the ever changing landscape.

    Then there’s Tofu an on-demand series, this is where the beauty of interwoven, multi-channel programming come into its own. Prepare to see people, yes real people, from all demographics talk about their sex lives. Even legendary Corrie actress Julie Hesmondhalgh talks sex – and as we heard at the press conference, “you heard it here first…”

    Potentially not a groundbreaking as QAF, (times have changed) but certainly just as necessary. It is about time than the LGBT demographic had something more than a storyline here and there. We want our own series dammit and Cucumber, Banana and Tofu deliver this in loads… (wipe the smile off your face, you dirty bugger).

  • THEATRE REVIEW | Fleabag: Epically Entertaining and Daringly Dirty

    ★★★★★ | Fleabag

    Fleabag is a kind of play where you are unsure of what you will be watching. Especially as the sign on the theatre entrance read: ‘Warning: References to sex’.

    Fleabag is a one-woman sixty-minute show that portrays the life of one young woman in the most hilarious, sympathetic and filthy fashion. Loved it. It starts in an interview setting, and then it trails off to her hot encounters and her needing to take ‘hot’ photos of herself to please her many admirers. ‘Take A Dirty Picture For Me’ comes to mind.

    It all happens in the space of 48 hours, and whilst it is funny in the writing, it shows great depth when the theme of feminism is introduced in an almost caricature way. Maddie Rice played the role master-mindedly. She makes her character appear ‘laddish’ and pertaining to be a player.

    Though many things she did and said were crude and filthy, if a bloke said and did the same things as Maddie, to his ‘blokey’ mates, no one would batter an eyelid. But because it was a female, some audience members cringed with discomfort.

    Maddie Rice plays the unnamed character with utter and sheer brilliance. Her wit and humour were 10/10. It was that funny that I thought I had booked tickets to see a stand-up comedian at ‘Live at the Apollo’ show. Maddie really captured the role as written by Phoebe Waller-Bridge, with precision and dedication. It felt as though the role was written for her.

    Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s writing was a delicious treat to our ears, and a true and daring piece of work that was worthy of the full-house show it received.

  • CBB: Katie Reveals Perez’s ‘Small’ Penis secret

    Another day, another truck full of drama from the Celebrity Big Brother house. As the rulers of the fairies continue to shower their power over the other housemates, Katie reveals that the King may be lacking in certain areas.

    Talking to Big Brother and questioning how Alicia can be “so, so stupid”, Katie continues her rant and admits that she’ll never get on with Perez concluding with some words of advice. “Someone with a penis that small should never wear leggings.”

    Tonight the King Perez and Queen Cami-Li will choose four housemates to face eviction, despite their royal spats at each other. Cami-Li says she can see why Perez has no friends, however, Perez is adamant that the British public love him.

    Would you have Perez over for dinner? Vote below for who you want to win CBB 2015.

  • FILM REVIEW | The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas

    After my recent visit to Auschwitz, watching a film about The Holocaust might not seem like such a great idea. However, I remember this film coming out in the cinema, and wanting to watch it – but never quite got round to it. ★★★★★

    And thanks to the wonders of Netflix, I have now seen it – and wept! The film is based on the book by John Boyne, and follows the adventures of an 8-year-old boy, Bruno. The son of a high-ranking Nazi, you don’t really get a sense of what his father does and it doesn’t seem to impact on his son and his friends as they play at being pilots (remember using your arms as wings, running around pretending to be a plane?)

    The only sing that something is odd is when his father gets a promotion and this upsets Bruno’s life, shifting his mother, sister and father to an undisclosed location. The new house is beautiful, very modern for the 40s and lots of rooms to play in, leaving Bruno to choose his bedroom and the view of the “farm”. When questioned, his father finally explains to his wife the true nature of the new posting. The odd smell… the strange hired help.

    And then Bruno goes exploring and encounters the boy in the striped pyjamas, Shmuel. This is where this film comes into its own; the viewpoint of an 8-year-old. In their world, nothing’s nasty, nothing’s fatal, in their world food is found, no-one starves, lost relatives can be found, someone on the other side of a fence can still play games, lying doesn’t have major consequences, summer is endless and life is beautiful.

    Or is it?

    Whilst we see what is happening around them, their own wide eyed world view is based on what is in front of them, no wider picture, nothing bad happens. And that’s what makes this film unique, the two main characters are children and we see things through their eyes.

    When Shmuel loses his father, Bruno offers to help and a simple plan is put in place… with consequences. I wont spoil it for you, but stock up on tissues.

    The two main characters are amazing in this film, understated performances and totally believable. Asa Butterfield who plays Bruno is all wide eyed Arian with an 8-year-old’s simplistic world view. He has all the benefits of being of the right genetic stock, and still doesn’t understand just yet what’s going on, whilst his family can see the other side and his mother suffers a near breakdown when she realises whats going on.

    Jack Scanlon plays Shmuel and is so believable, they caught him at the right time, skinhead with missing teeth, he excels in the part as a camp inmate. The script is pitch perfect, the costumes spot on and the sets are believable, having seen the wooden stables the Nazis used to house inmates in Auschwitz-Birkenau, and the bunks use to house 2 or 3 inmates at a time, this really is faultless.

    Watch this film if you can, read the book, then read up on the subject – get an understanding on this subject. Visit the Holocaust Educational Trust site and support their work: www.het.org.uk

    Available to buy from Amazon

  • FILM REVIEW | Erebus: Into The Unknown

    ★★★★ | Erebus: Into The Unknown

    In 1979 257 people perished in an Air New Zealand flight in which an aircraft slammed into Mount Erebus in Antarctic, becoming one of the world’s worst air disasters.

    The flight was a sightseeing excursion that left Auckland in the morning and was expected to return that evening. Sightseeing tours were a new and exciting breakthrough in the world of air-based tourism. Passengers were treated to breath-taking views, being wined and dined as a sub-zero, frozen world passed seamlessly beneath them.

    When the DC10 aircraft failed to return alarm bells started to go off and operation Overdue was mounted. Within hours the lives of thousands of people would be changed forever, in New Zealand’s worst aviation accident to date. The nation was in shock for 200 of its citizens that died. Countless families, friends and a nation mourned for those lost on the inhospitable mountain side.

    In this film, the story focuses on eleven ordinary police officers who were called upon to retrieve the shattered bodies of those victims. Eleven ordinary men who faced an extraordinary harrowing and life-changing battle against the bleak, forbidding landscape that forms Mount Erbus experiencing mass death on a massive scale.

    Operation Overdue was the New Zealand police operation to lead a recovery operation. The first of these officers left from Christchurch on the 29th November 1979. It included the Chief Air Accident Investigator, Ron Chippindale, who led the site investigation, and the New Zealand Police search and rescue coordinator, Inspector Robert (Bob) Mitchell, who led the recovery operation. Just 11 New Zealand Police officers were selected from squads that included members of the Disaster Victim Identification (DVI) team and Search and Rescue. Accompanying these men was a handful of mountaineers. By the 10th of December, their job of recovering, bagging and repatriated bodies was complete. The DVI managed to recover 114 intact bodies, 133 bags of human remains and countless personal belonging back to the victims’ families.

    Using a mix of archive and re-enactment, Directors Peter Burger and Charlotte Purdy have created a powerful documentary that uncovers the power of the human spirit. That even against the greatest odds, courage can overcome fear.

    Although short, this documentary film manages to capture the emotional rollercoaster faced by those directly involved with the disaster.

  • FILM REVIEW | Big Eyes, A Radical Departure For Burton

    ★★★ | Big Eyes

    In a rather radical departure from his last few very edgy movies acclaimed director Tim Burton has opted to make a biopic about Walter Keane the infamous plagiarist who in the 1950s claimed that his wife’s populist art was his own work. It’s a colourful lightweight drama that never gets dark even when Keane’s trickery is exposed, thanks mainly to the entertaining performances of its stars Christoph Waltz and Amy Adams.

    The movie opens with a blond-wigged Margaret Ulbrich leaving her unseen husband and taking just Jane her young daughter, a suitcase and a handful of her artwork. Her destination is San Francisco’s new trendy hotspot North Beach but getting a job as a newly single mother is not easy and so she supplements her income at the furniture factory where she works by setting up shop at an outdoor art fair. Her signature style of painting forlorn looking children with enormous soulful eyes doesn’t attract many sales but it does attract the attention of the garrulous older man in the next booth who is pitching his pictures of street scenes of Paris.

    A compulsive womaniser, Walter Keane turns on the charm for Margaret and she, still feeling vulnerable and lonely after her recent separation, agrees to go out on a date with him. The couple hardly know other when Margaret receives a letter from her husband’s lawyer threatening to sue for custody of their child, and so she accepts Walter’s spontaneous marriage proposal to safeguard her chances of holding onto Jane.

    After they return from a romantic wedding and honeymoon in Hawaii, Walter starts hawking their art around town and despite the fact he is a sharp fast-talking salesman, the best deal he can come up with is renting a couple of walls in a Jazz club to display their work. His Montmartre street scenes are totally overlooked but when the club patrons spot Margaret’s soulful eyed children and want to buy them all, he claims that they are all his own work too.

    Margaret is somewhat infatuated with her new husband who she credits with giving her a new lease of life, so when she discovers the lie she goes along it. She is persuaded by Walter that having a man as the artist, is the only way to successful sell the art. He also manages to charm everyone into helping him make this new venture so successful including the San Francisco Examiner reporter Dick Nolan who plants stories about Walter and the art in his newspaper’s society pages.

    As their success explodes all Margaret has to do is stay at home and churn out more paintings in complete secrecy as even Jane, now a teenager, must not be allowed to know the truth. When Walter hits on the notion of printing cheap poster copies of Margaret’s kitsch art the public cannot enough of them, and one of the very few dissenting voices is that of the New York Times Art Critic John Canady who denounces them to the world.

    When his sheer greed turns Walter into a real menace, then Margaret finally packs up her suitcases once again and flees with her daughter, but this time to Hawaii. It takes Walter a year to track her down and when he calls her bluff about exposing him as a fraud, she finally goes public with the fact that she is the real artist. A supremely over-confident Walter immediately denounces these claims in the Examiner, but for once he has misread Margaret who is no longer frightened of him, and so she promptly sues him and the newspaper for slander.

    The judge clears the newspaper of any liability at the Trial but when the rest of the proceedings degenerate into a public squabble between the couple, he deems the only way to resolve the true authorship of the Art is that both of the Keanes paint a picture there and then.

    The chemistry between Waltz as the obnoxiously charming con-man and Adams as the pretty put-upon vulnerable Margaret with her fine Christian morals is what makes this story seem so believable even when it’s hard to even begin to conceive that all this appalling art could have resulted in amassing such a fortune. Burton makes this adaption of this true story an incisive commentary on how early 1960’s society even in a consumer-driven California still had these impenetrable expectations of what women could do.

    This easy going movie will hardly rank as one of director Burton’s best but it is reasonably entertaining and easy on the eye and to that end we should give credit to the design team for the locations, the sets and costumes that were all so perfect down to the last detail.

  • FILM REVIEW | Wild, Witherspoon Shines With Talent

    ★★★★★ | Wild

    After her cancer-ridden mother died just aged 45, Cheryl Strayed fell to pieces. Heavily in debt and with her marriage disintegrating she developed an obsession for sleeping with countless strangers and an addiction to heroin. Her solution to finding a path to recovery and do some major soul-searching was deciding to hike alone the entire Pacific Crest Trail (PCT) that stretches some 2663 miles from California right up into Canada.

    The stunning scenic route takes in some extreme terrain such as the unforgiving heat of Mojave Desert and the deep snowdrifts of the Sierra Nevada. Even though the rigours of the PCT has defeated many experienced hikers, completely green newbie Cheryl was convinced that she nevertheless would succeed. However, on day one, she could barely lift her heavy backpack that she had stuffed it with too many things that she would eventually realise were unnecessary for this arduous journey.

    As she starts the long hike northward Cheryl discovers that as she can barely manage 5 miles per day, she will never walk anything like the whole distance in the 3 months she had estimated. She also quickly discovers that she has the wrong gas for her primus stove so her diet now has to consist of cold mushy oatmeal and dried fruit. Racked with pain and a body full of red sores and a pair of bloody feet, Cheryl has to fight hard not to give into her inner voice that keeps telling her she can quit anytime.

    With only the occasional rattlesnake and her well-worn poetry books to keep her company and relieve the tedium and the agony, she can hardly contain herself when she finally encounters a fellow hiker en route even though the advice he imparts to her both encourages and scares her rigid at the same time. By now it has really dawned on her that she is woefully unprepared for such a massive undertaking. The only thing that seems to sustain her besides her sheer stubbornness, is a real need to ‘find’ herself again.

    Director Jean-Marc Vallee armed with a script by Nick Hornby fills the journey based on Cheryl Strayed’s own memoir with flashbacks of her tumultuous and troubled past which help us understand her determination to make this trip work. Bobbi her working class mother had suffered at the hands of a physically abusive husband which somehow never dented her sheer optimism and just before her untimely death she had gone back to college to get the education she had missed out on as a child. The bond between Bobbi and Cheryl, who was just 22 years old when her mother died, was the most important thing in both these women’s lives and the reason why the death propelled Cheryl so quickly into a downward spiral.

    When Cheryl reaches the first town along the PCT which is a resting place for all hikers, she retrieves a care package that her ex-husband has mailed c/o the local Post Office. She also discovers that word has got out about her and her oversized backpack has been nicknamed ‘The Monster’ but it also elicits advice on how to discard half its contents to make it more practical.

    As a lone woman on the Trail, Cheryl feels very susceptible and she views every man as a potential predator. One is a harmless roving reporter for the ‘Hobo Times’ who riles Cheryl up for insisting on calling her a hobo. Another is a kind farm worker who offers her a hot meal and a shower, and she even comes across a male hiker dipping naked in a stream who cannot get his clothes on quick enough when she appears. Her encounter with two hunters is however quite scary, but with quick thinking on her part Cheryl soon scrambles for safety.

    The stunning setting makes this heartbreaking journey such a visual treat, and the story of self-preservation of this doggedly determined troubled soul is one that will resound with so many people on so many levels. Reese Witherspoon, the movie’s star and producer optioned Cheryl Strayed’s book even before it was published and topped the NY Times Bestseller List as a vehicle for herself and to kickstart her career that has been in the doldrums since her Oscar win in 2005. It paid off big time as she totally immersed herself in the role and gave an impressive career-best performance as Strayed (even though she was 12 years older than her, and even odder still, just 9 years younger than Laura Dern who was electrifying as Bobbi her mother).

    The movie is bound to do more than just make us appreciate what a talented actress Ms Witherspoon really is, as it is also bound to inspire lots of other lost souls to buy themselves a pair of hiking boots and attempt this near-impossible journey, and maybe cause a ‘traffic jam’ or two along the P.C.T. in the future.

  • BOOK REVIEW | Dr.a.g

    ‘Dr.a.g. isn’t what you wear and it isn’t who you are. It’s how you wear who you are.’

    Drag (a man who is ‘dressed as a girl’) has become a diverse form of expression that challenges, entertains and educates by pushing boundaries, while embracing beauty, comedy and glamour. The performers in this illustrated book are evidence of that diversity, captured by some of the top photographers working in the world today. All of them have graciously donated their work to make the book possible. What started as a small independent film fundraiser has grown into this beautiful coffee-table book.

    Actor and author Christopher Logan launched the ‘dr.a.g.’ book a few years ago, but the project stalled when his original publisher fell into bankruptcy. Logan believed in the project, garnered a loan, and kept the existing distribution contracts. Logan is bringing back the glamour with photography books. In a world when the printed word is easily downloaded, the book that survives is the photo book. “You just cannot experience the vibrancy of these photographs online. They are meant for the printed page,” says Logan.

    The ‘Bookthefilm Edition’ features famous faces from Frank Marino, Jackie Beat and Lady Bunny to Joey Arias, Jeffree Star and Jim Bailey. Additionally, several portraits from noteworthy drag queen photographers are included in this book, including Magnus Hastings, Austin Young and more. The book also features everyone’s favourite queens from RuPaul’s Drag Race including Chad Michaels, Courtney Act, Yara Sofia, Roxxy Andrews, Detox, Akashia, Tammie Brown, Nina Flowers, Bebe Zahara Benet, Jujubee, Morgan McMichaels, Shannel, Ongina and Raja.

     

  • Drag Race To Come To The UK?

    The gayverse is all of a buzz after sources said that RuPaul’s drag race could be coming to Channel 5 later this year.

    Last year it was reported that Jonathan Ross had obtained the rights to develop a UK version of the hit drag show in the US. Jonathan previously said, “I’ve been working with Jodie on a UK version [of the show]… Unfortunately, we have had to take a break because of some family issues. But we’re hoping to pick it up again in the near future.”

    Last month we spoke to La Voix who said that she’d jump at the chance to star in the UK series. La Voix became one of the UK’s most famous drag queens after appearing on Britain’s Got Talent in 2014.

    Michelle Visage, who is a judge on Drag Race is currently starring in Celebrity Big Brother which is being aired on Channel 5.

    The Race Family page said that they were expecting to reveal more information within the next two weeks. We reached out to Channel 5 for comment on the show, a spokesperson for the channel said, “There are no discussions around a UK version of the show”.

  • Katie Hopkins Was A Big Brother Guinea Pig Pilot In 2000

    So this isn’t the first time that Katie Hopkins has been impounded in a house and filmed 24/7.

    The Daily Star have dug and dug and have found out gay icon wannabe Katie Hopkins was once a guinea pig for the pilot of Big Brother in before the launch in 2000 and they even have a picture of her swigging cider and flashing her bare bum (oh the shame).

    The voice of Big Brother Marcus Bentley confirmed the reports by tweeting, “Katy Hopkins was a guinea pig on the first ever Big Brother !”

    Katie Hopkins has become a bit of favourite housemate in this year’s celebrity Big Brother with 14% of THEGAYUK readers wanting her to win. Nadia is currently the favourite to win. Vote who you want to win below.

    Yesterday celebrity blogger Perez Hilton, felt the wrath of Katie after questioning her decision to have sex with her now husband, who was married to another man. The pair got into a row which ultimately left Perez in tears.

    Today it emerged that Ken Morley was removed from the BB compound after breaking BB’s rules and regulations. He is the second celebrity to be removed after Jeremy Jackson was booted on the 10th January.