All Posts Tagged With: "movies"
Homosexuality & Hollywood
It’s being reported that Sacha Baron Cohen’s highly anticipated “Bruno” movie – his follow-up to Borat centering around Cohen’s flamboyantly gay Austrian fashionista – has been slapped with an “NC-17″ rating after its first submission to the Motion Picture Association of America. Because Hollywood studios almost never release NC-17 rated movies, it’s a near certainty that cuts to the movie will be made removing the more objectionable parts of the film (and that those parts will later be put back in for a director’s cut DVD). Why the NC-17 rating? According to the report:
Among the objectionable scenes is one in which Bruno — a gay Austrian fashionista played by Baron Cohen — appears to have anal sex with a man on camera. In another, the actor goes on a hunting trip and sneaks naked into the tent of one of the fellow hunters, an unsuspecting non-actor.
Admittedly I don’t know how graphic these scenes get, but I’m willing to bet that an equally graphic scene involving heterosexual sex would not provoke the NC-17 rating. I’m reminded of the cuts made to Stanley Kubrick’s underrated classic Eyes Wide Shut, in which his shots were digitally altered in the famous orgy scene so as to block out a couple instances of lesbian sex, thereby reducing the rating from NC-17 to R.
This story comes on the heels of an even more bizarre story: Times Online reported a couple weeks ago that I Love You Phillip Morris, a new comedy starring Jim Carrey and Ewan McGregor as incarcerated gay lovers, from the guys who brought you Bad Santa, may go straight to DVD in the United States for lack of an American distributor:
Film industry insiders said the movie, which features a graphic sex scene and frequent references to gay sex, had fallen foul of anti-gay prejudice in America.
I’m skeptical that this movie won’t eventually find a distributor, but the fact that it’s even having trouble is a little startling. In the wake of Brokeback Mountain and Milk – both profitable films that portray gay sex and deal explicitly with gay subject matter – it seems a bit bizarre that Hollywood would conclude that American audiences wouldn’t be open to this movie.
It shouldn’t be that startling, however. Homosexuality in film tends to fall into a few limited categories:
- Tragedy: gay characters ultimately meet with a tragic fate, usually death. See, e.g., Brokeback Mountain, Milk, Philadelphia.
- Comic relief: gay characters or homosexuality in general is used as a gag. See, e.g., I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry, any movie with a hilariously flamboyant gay dude.
- Female companions: gay characters exist solely as the fun-loving, sassy friend of the lead heterosexual female, esp. common in romantic comedies. See, e.g., My Best Friend’s Wedding.
- Murderers: gay characters are psychotic killers. See, e.g., Monster, Rope.
I Love You Phillip Morris doesn’t appear to fall into any of these categories. The gay characters here are not mere comic relief, they’re the center of the story. And while homosexuality was also at the center of I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry, the joke there was OMG THOSE STRAIGHT GUYS HAVE TO PRETEND TO BE GAY, THAT’S TOTALLY ZANY, and while I haven’t seen it, I’m told that at one point in the film the characters are told to kiss to prove their homosexuality lest they face some severe consequence I can’t remember, and the joke is that that would be just too gay so they don’t do it. I Love You Phillip Morris doesn’t appear to be going for that kind of humor.
I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry, incidentally, made over $120 million domestically. You hear that, and you hear that I Love You Phillip Morris is struggling to find an American distributor, and you basically want to shoot yourself in the fucking head.
Trailer for I Love You Phillip Morris after the jump (no trailer out yet for the Bruno movie). Read more…
Greatest Active Film Directors
Entertainment Weekly recently came out with a list of its “25 Greatest Active Film Directors.” It’s a horrible list. The ordering, the omissions – it’s borderline offensive. As a public service, I have both corrected EW’s list and expanded it to the top 50. Seriously, no need to thank me.
Best Valentine’s Day Movies
Second only perhaps to Halloween, Valentine’s Day is a great day for watching movies. Whether you’re in a relationship or not, who wants to brave the crowds of couples paying for expensive dinners when you can stay in, have a home-cooked meal, and pop in a movie? Here now, two V-Day movie lists – one for those who have found real love, and one for the loveless (but not at all bitter about it).
Movie Question for the Agora
What’s the most American movie you can think of? We’re doing movie nights here where each country screens a film. This past week the Brazilians chose City of God, a fantastic movie directed by Fernando Meirelles (The Constant Gardener, Blindness) about crime in Rio de Janeiro. I’ve heard that the Germans might be showing The Lives of Others, another great movie about surveillance in East Berlin toward the end of the Cold War. It’s a little more difficult for the Americans, since we make so many movies. Some of us were thinking a movie about American politics would be fitting (something like Mr. Smith Goes to Washington), or because it’s a legal program a legal drama (e.g., 12 Angry Men), or because it’s an international legal program something like Judgment at Nuremberg. But there are also certain movies about American culture – roadtrip movies, or movies about suburban malaise, or movies that are made or take place during a particular pivotal era in American history. There have been a bunch of ideas floated, but I thought I’d open it up to you guys: if you could choose only one movie to sum up American life and culture, what movie would you choose?
Oscar Predictions
Oscar nominations were announced today, with some fairly surprising inclusions and omissions in a few categories. Of particular note is that the Dark Knight was not nominated for best picture, because the Academy apparently wants to make itself as irrelevant and boring as humanly possible. Anyway, I’ve already given my rundown of what I considered the best in film this year, so I won’t bother rehashing who should and should not have been nominated. But before I read anybody else’s predictions, I am going to lay down my own for the major categories. We’ll see how poorly I do when the Oscars are presented on February 22nd.
The Year in Film
This was not a year of perfect, universally adored movies. The best films of the year all contain the kinds of quirky appeal that tend to divide audiences, and all of them are flawed. But quirky, flawed movies can often be the most compelling, interesting, and endearing.
Top 50 Film Commentaries
With both Milk and Frost/Nixon opening nationwide this coming weekend, I thought it would be fitting to take a look back at some of the best social or political commentaries to appear on the big screen.
Top 12 Horror Movies
So I realize it’s a little late to deliver a list of my favorite horror movies given that Halloween was yesterday. But because Halloween was yesterday, I was watching some horror movies I’d never seen before, and wanted to be able to include them here. This list is complete with some brief thoughts from yours truly, as well as clips and trailers. I of course haven’t seen every scary movie ever made, so there may be some glaring omissions here, but I think it’s a pretty solid list.
AM radio, Long Drives, and No Heroes
So I am driving home from a business trip and listening to some classic country music station on AM skip radio, hoping for some Johnny Cash, when a Paul Harvey segment comes on. Paul Harvey? I wasn’t sure he was still around. Maybe he is not because if he is he must be about 150? It may have been an old recording for all I know, but his story was really cool and got me to thinking.
He talked about a guy named Jim, who was in the middle of the WW2 Allied beachhead landing in Italy, with the U.S. 3rd Infantry Division, during Operation Shingle, at Anzio.
Steven Spielberg Movies
It feels a little bit like the world’s going to hell in a handbasket today, but I’m just gonna keep doing these movie rankings. On this day of uncertainty and turmoil, I thought I’d go with a director known for being warm and fuzzy: Steven Spielberg. He gets a bit of a bad rap in some circles, but I think that’s a little unfair. I think it’s true that some of the films he’s made that are considered his best work are over-rated (Schindler’s List, Private Ryan), and it’s also true that he’s made some fairly bad movies over the course of his career. But it’s difficult to ignore a big chunk of his work that is truly great stuff. From best to worst:
- Raiders of the Lost Ark
- Jaws
- Catch Me If You Can
- Jurassic Park
- Munich
- A.I.: Artificial Intelligence
- Close Encounters of the Third Kind
- Minority Report
- E.T.: Extraterrestrial
- Schindler’s List
- Saving Private Ryan
- Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
- The War of the Worlds
- The Lost World: Jurassic Park
- Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
- The Terminal
- Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
Some significant omissions that I haven’t seen: Amistad, Hook, Empire of the Sun, The Color Purple, 1941, The Sugarland Express.
The real dividing line in this list in my view is between #12 and #13. The movies from 13 down all ultimately fail, while those from 12 up are at least good, if not great. I have a feeling this list is less in keeping with conventional opinion than my previous two. That’s probably because I’m not really a great lover of Spielberg’s work. With the exception of the top 5 on this list, I’m not moved by much of his work. Still: those top 5 are really good stuff.