blackleatherbookshelf | Entries tagged with gay movies

Sweating to The Oldies
3 Out Of 5 Stars

For a good chunk of the disco craze, especially in the gay disco world, there was a subset of artists that specialized in taking relatively current hits and then rearranging them into club items. Paul Parker may have been the best known of these men, and the biggest hit version was when Nikki French took Bonnie Tyler's "Total Eclipse Of The Heart" to number 2 in the 90's. Colton Ford's "Under The Covers" mines that same turf, plucking out songs like "By Your Side" by Sade, "Lithium" by Nirvana or "Losing My Religion" by R.E.M. and clubbing them up. There's also a surprisingly supple rock-dance cover of Faith No More's "Ashes to Ashes."

Unfortunately, Ford and his producers decided to include a capella interludes of other songs that bobble the flow of the disc. I'm not sure why these snippets were inserted between several of the songs (they aren't used as lead ins, these are strictly stand-alone cutlets). These sap the energy of away from an otherwise enjoyable dance album. Also, the cover photo? The remix version of the dosc has a more seductive and color friendly picture than the blue-tinted current picture. Ford is a man who made his bones as an adult film star, so why the totally unattractive pic? The music is OK enough to hold its own, the cover puts the CD at a disadvantage.

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Current Mood: cold
Current Location: Philadelphia
Current Music: "Losing My Religion" Colton Ford

A Good Fit
4 Out Of 5 Stars

This low budget gay classic has just the right touches of drama, humor and camp to be endearing and memorable. "Leather Jacket Love Story" was shot in 10 days in and around the Silverlake area of Los Angeles, as wanna-be poet Kyle tries to escape the pretensions of West Hollywood, and falls for dark and sexy construction worker Mike. Kyle is a awkward twink, Mike is a weathered older 30 something with the experience Kyle lacks.

The opposites attract almost immediately, and the sparks do fly. In particular, Christopher Bradley (as Mike) is charismatic and lights up everything he does. There are several nude love scenes, for those who buy "Gay Movies" based solely on body-part count, but Mike and Kyle give convincing fling. But can love bind two men so many worlds apart from each other? Hey, this is a gay fairy tale, complete with drag queens, sunny skies, packed leather bars (Los Angeles' notorious Faultline) and little capital D Drama. When the gay bashers inevitably show up, they get whupped in more a funny manner than anything else. The low budget soundtrack even tips its hat to the tacky sounds of 50's sitcoms.

"Leather Jacket Love Story" is a feel good movie and will give you plenty of smiles. I found it surprising that, in a very tiny way, I had a small part in the film. When Mike and Kyle head into a store to buy Kyle's first leather jacket, there are magazines on the background wall. To the left of the screen, ever so briefly, a copy of the eighth volume of "Rubber Rebel" magazine can be seen, a publication I edited and produced in 1996. It was a pleasant surprise and endeared "Leather Jacket Love Story" to me all the more.

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Current Mood: chipper
Current Location: Philadelphia
Current Music: "Leather Jackets" Elton John

Puppy Love
5 Out of 5 Stars

Denis is having a rotten week. He just lost his job of 11 years. His relationship is gone stale, and rocky. His Mother, a sweet and overbearing woman, is seriously ill. With all the turmoil going on around him, what does Mom suggest? "Get a dog." But when Dennis goes to the pound and can't decide which dog he wants, the one he finally chooses is gone when he goes back. When he finds out why, Dennis decides exactly what his modern mid-life crisis needs.

He makes his "Abrupt Decision" (the fifth feature from filmmaker Paul Bright) when he realizes that his creative collapse mirrors that of the dogs' dangerous lives. With some inspiration from his Mom (Cynthia Schiebel) and the reluctant support of his partner, Milosz (David LaDuca), Denis (Steve Callahan) decides that saving the lives of animals and educating people on their care is his way into a meaningful second act. You know how the saying goes, if you don't want to be upstaged in a movie, stay away from children and dogs? Despite the superb job by Steve and David, the pups are "Abrupt Decision's" scene stealers. But beware. Even with the cute pooches running amuck, this is a very emotionally striking movie.

In the new economy, where men like Denis can find their lives upended and discover that your expertise vaporized after 50 (along with a funny montage of a degenerating series of interviews - featuring me), there are many among us who will relate to the impact of "Abrupt Decision's" story. As Denis struggles to find the right decisions in matters of utmost importance, you may put down the doggy treats and reach for the hankies. I'll certainly say that the film is a must-see for pet-lovers, but it also carries an intimate, personal life story.

Current Mood: artistic
Current Location: Philadelphia
Current Music: "Puppy Love" Donny Osmond

Abrupt Decision: A Film by Paul Bright
(Featuring me as "Dr Pyramid"

Current Mood: cold
Current Location: Philadelphia
Current Music: "I Wanna Be Your Dog" The Stooges

When you turn back time, this is what you should find
4 Out Of 5 Stars

By far the best of Cher's many hit collections, this single disc "Very Best Of" takes the bulk of her top tens (even with Sonny) from assorted labels (Warners, Geffen, MCA, Casablanca) and packs the CD to its running limit. As Cher is one of the few performers to have managed a multi-decade run of chart toppers (she's been in the Top Ten every decade since the 60's, lastly in 2002), this is a testament to her longevity. She's also the oldest woman in rock history to top the charts, when "Believe" did so in 1998.

What makes Cher such pop flypaper? It's that she's such a force of personality that she could adapt to changing trends and genres, and still sound like herself. While some may find this facile, when pop is concerned, it is pure gold. It means you can get the hippie vibe of "I Got You Babe," the pure camp of "Gypsies Tramps and Thieves," the Casablanca Disco of "Take Me Home" and one of the first of the huge Auto-Tune hits in "Believe." Behind it all is Cher's deep, resonating vibrato of a voice, plowing into each song with both her skill and the song's need. Who else could take the sweet-syrup of Diane Warren's ballads and the lit-rock of Bob Dylan and claim them as her own?

More than anything else, Cher is a great song stylist. There are 21 songs here, and I can easily think of another half dozen that could have come on board. (My best choices would have "Walking In Memphis," the Marc Cohn hit and "We All Sleep Alone," or some of the Black Rose or Gregg Allman album tracks.) However, for pure pop history and chutzpah, "The Very Best of Cher" takes the prize for Cher collections.

Burlesque - Original Motion Picture Soundtrack

Current Mood: chery
Current Location: Philadelphia
Current Music: "Just Like Jesse James" Cher

Half a Boy and Half a Man
4 Out of 5 Stars

In the intriguing documentary "All Boys," film maker Markku Heikkinen travels to Prague and takes on the rise and stagnation of the Czech Boys gay porn phenomenon. While he talks to many in the scene, he concentrates on four particular men; Director Dan Komar, and three of his actors Rudy (stage name Aaron Hawke), Josef and Filip. While each of these men has a striking story, it is Aaron's that forms the film's emotional core.

Komar is an adult trapped in arrested development, surrounding himself with perpetual 18 to 20 year olds and making movies of them having sex. It's hard to tell if he's got any emotional investment in his charges; frankly, he is a blank slate emotionally. Josef is a boy who only wants to provide for his impoverished mom. Filip is a straight boy and a go-getter, who works three jobs and does porn for the extra money. These three stories seem to work on the supply and demand theory. Komar has money and jobs, the boys are broke and in desperate need. In a country that has just broken into uncharted territory, these fresh and innocent faces lunge right into an industry that would die without a constant conveyor belt of fresh names.

However, the dark side of this story is Rudu, who gets discovered sleeping under a bridge. He is the hot new kid on the DVD player, makes a load of fast money, and when his features no longer fit the Czech Boys mold, he doesn't have the maturity to move on. He goes from being a "superstar...like Jim Carrey" to a homeless drunk sleeping in a junkyard. From fresh new face to junkie in barely two years is a depressing arc to behold.

While Josef and Filip found their way out of porn and into a life after their twinky expiration dates, it is Rudu's face that stays with you. There's another man who appears briefly, admitting to being a prostitute after being in porn and is already damaged beyond likely repair...at the age of 27. (I won't even go into the fact that these boys are almost all barebacking.) "All Boys" takes a hard look behind the bright lights and gaudy colors to stare at what happens after the clock runs out.

Sex - Life in L.A. Part 2: Cycles of Porn

Current Mood: accomplished
Current Location: Philly
Current Music: "What You Need" INXS

Thriller, A Buzzkill
3 Out Of 5 Stars

An interesting, well acted art film that trips over itself too often. "Pornography, A Thriller" is basically three short films that overlap
each other in bizarre and David Lynch-ian fashion. You start with the
mysterious demise of one Mark Anton, an 80's porn star who disappeared under mysterious circumstances. The rumor is that he got tricked into a snuff movie. That sets up the next two acts.

Journalist Michael (Matthew Montgomery) is researching a book about the cultural significance of Gay adult movies and soon discovers he is being sucked into the odd story of Mark Anton. His lover, William (Walter Delmar), is soon acting weird when the Anton story begins consuming Michael. And they discover their neat new apartment may have been a porn studio. Even THE porn studio where Anton met his fate. After all these years, those involved with Anton aren't happy to find out someone is digging into this old urban legend, and soon Michael finds he has a bigger story on his hands than he thought.

That story also jarringly transitions to Los Angeles, where aging pornstar Matt Stevens (Pete Scherer) decides he will document Anton's dissapearance in his directorial debut., Again, dark forces begin to swirl around. And HIS boyfriend, also played by Delmar, soon tries to warn him away. Since this is allegedly a thriller, nobody listens to any warnings. Bad things are supposed to happen. And they will...or are they?

That is "Pornography's" major flaw. After awhile, the juxtapositions just become to circumstantial and awkward, and the thrills just aren't there. Suspense, yes, but not much by way of shockers. What could have been a compelling story flops around into artiness without resolving anything, and if you're going to put the word "Thriller" in your title, you need more than what is in the screen here to make your bones.

On the Other Hand, Death: A Donald Strachey Mystery

Current Mood: cold
Current Location: Philadelphia
Current Music: "To Live and Die In LA" Wang Chung

Body, Want to Feel My Body, Body
4 Out of 5 Stars

Beefcake everywhere you look, and why? "The Adonis Factor" takes to three cities to investigate (primarily Los Angeles, San Francisco and Atlanta, with a side trip to Palm Springs). Director and narrator Christopher Hines is on his second tour of this turf after his "The Butch Factor" in 2009, which was broader in focus. In "Adonis," he asks why big beefy men are the template for 'beauty' and talks to a bunch of them.

He also sidelines with talks with Titan Films, a plastic surgeon, a nude yoga instructor and a bunch of WeHo Twinks (who are all about ten years away from serious therapy). While the Adonises in the film fall into the spectrum of kind of sweet to genuinely annoying, it's the other interviews that shed light on the subject. The Goth Model Chris Catalyst is the most intriguing as a man who discovered his alternative nature and used it to his advantage. The trip to Lazy Bear is almost as interesting. One point I really wish Hines had spent more time on is the aging Colt Model as he muses on becoming the invisible former star. Which is amazing enough in the fact that he still looks like a million beefy bucks.

There are enough beefy men here of various ages (and several of them nekkid) to intrigue the voyeur viewers, but the underlying message is that the subset of A-Listers who cluster with fellow A-Listers aren't always as beautiful as you think. A trip into some smaller cities might have given the film more depth, then again, once goes where the pickings are best. Granted that finding poorly adjusted muscleheads in LA is like shooting sharks in a barrel, "The Adonis Factor" does a pretty good job at balancing the sexy and the smart.

Current Mood: thoughtful
Current Location: Philadelphia
Current Music: "Not in My House" Rooney

Crushed
3 Out of 5 Stars

Four short films that deal with love in the sense of how it can affect you when there's too much uncertainty involved make up "Crush," Michael J. Saul's rather uneven new movie. I found myself engaged by two of the segments here, bewildered by one and just flat out annoyed by the final episode.

The opening, "Don't Ask," is a musing on the lives of gay soldiers and the 'army wives' they leave behind. Cameron is about to leave on yet another tour of Iraq, and his partner James is struggling with the emotional freight of having to keep that part of their relationship private. While they played a loving couple very well, the story itself was less than compelling. Add a stridently annoying 'friend' who has to be the angry-war-hating loudmouth, and I was left wondering why this was the kick off to the DVD.

The second is a vampires in love segment, and was interesting in it's style, even if I am sick to death of vampires. But the two young actors were very good together and the open-ended final scene made me wonder where the story would lead to next.

The best of the four segments is "Strokes," about a gay art student's meeting/internship with his artist idol. Who just happens to be a caustic, bitter man whom nobody can stand to be with. The artist, Robert Brooks (Marc Sicilani) is note perfect as the disillusioned painter who wastes no time crushing Micheal The Intern (Jorge Diaz), even though all Micheal wants is to discover why his hero is the man he is. They play extremely well off of each other, and this was the one segment I was sorry to see end.

Finally, there is "Breathe." A soppy sponge cake of pre-adolescent desires as seen through a pair of awkward kids and their families as they go camping, it positively dripped syrup, and the narrator's whispery wet voice was as annoying as I could stand. Cloying, gauzy looking and saccharin, I forced myself to watch it all the way through. It's the kind of artsy cute romanticizing of young boys that gives gay movies a bad rep.

So there's the split - about 50/50 for my viewing entertainment. Individual mileage may vary.

Current Mood: curious
Current Location: Philadelphia
Current Music: "Cigarette" Ben Folds

The Diamonds Aren't Forever
3 Out of 5 Stars

Colin Diamond is having a crappy day. His wife of 21 years has left him for a hunky young French waiter. He beat his wife up over this, drank himself into a stupor, destroyed his house, and now he and his friends are holed up in an abandoned building with "loverboy" tied up in a cabinet. One should always beware of sleeping with Papa Bear's honey; he may be a murderous gangster.

This is the premise of "44 Inch Chest," a modest if stagy British film that features a few of my favorite actors. Ray Winstone is Colin, who is hurt, confused, vengeful and unsure of what he should do now that his life is destroyed. John Hurt plays Old Man Peanut, a greasy, profane thug who would be happy to slowly torture Loverboy to death, because that is what real men did back in the day. And then there's Ian McShane, the super cool gay gambler who seems to be the most rational (and therefore, the most deadly) of this band. He's happy to flaunt his sexuality, but not flamboyantly. It's more like a taunt; give him and his "9 and a half" any guff, he'll kill your puny butt and leave no witnesses.

Tom Wilkerson and Stephen Dillane round out the crew, and they all spend most of this movie cajoling Colin into manning up and getting rid of the punk that stole his woman. Other than the set-up and some effective flashbacks/dream sequences, the story plays out in the room where the gang has their hostage. Gangsters or no, this is no action movie. There's a lot of talk about the sanctity of marriage, what it means to be a man, what love means, and about the movie "Samson and Delilah." Frankly, without McShane, "44 Inch Chest" would not be all that compelling. It's time he got a lead of his own.

Current Mood: relaxed
Current Location: Philadelphia
Current Music: "Calling America" ELO

Stop! Or I'll...uh...Shoot!"
4 out of 5 Stars

Poor Aaron is having a bad day. He's on his last day of a lousy job. That crappy job has him hosting old ladies who "dress" like old movie stars to sites around Austin Texas that have been used in movie shoots. The new van driver is a creep. His company's boss is about to be revealed as a drug smuggler. The boss's henchmen are trying to kill him. Worse yet, his grandmother has decided she wants to toodle along in the van on Aaron's last day on the job. And things are about to get worse.

That's the setting for writer/producer/director Paul Bright's (Theft, Angora Ranch) new movie, the quirky crime caper "Aaron, Albeit a Sex Hero." Aaron (Matthew Charles Burnette) simply wants to finish a day's work so he can start a new job with a cruise line. Instead, he has to fight to escape drug runners, scorpions, rattlesnakes, spiders and Jessie, the new driver who is in on the trafficking. Oh yes, and to not embarrass himself in front of his grandmother...who is having a secret affair with one of the van travelers!

"Aaron..." dodges the usual gay-movie clichés in that Aaron is hunky but no James Bond. He's already come out, so there's no endless angst about "is he or isn't he?" Nobody here is a crazed interior decorator or show-tune queen. In fact, at just under 90 minutes, this movie moves at a rapid clip with little wasted space. Aaron has one night to make everything right, and maybe get his rocks off. "Aaron...Albeit a Sex Hero" is a fun watch, with both Matthew Charles Burnette and Rafiel Soto (who plays Jessie and is one hunky bad guy) are solid in their leads and make the best of this low-budget treat.

PS. I have a very small (2 lines) part...look for me. And watch the credits for an extra reveal.

Order through TLA Video Here or via Amazon Here.

Current Mood: artistic
Current Location: Silver Screen
Current Music: "Living in a Movie" Gary Myrick

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My Amazon Reviews: Colton Ford "Under The Covers"
My Amazon DVD Reviews: "Leather Jacket Love Story"
My Amazon DVD Reviews: "Abrupt Decision"
I Oughta Be In Movie (Trailers)
My Amazon Reviews: Cher "The Very Best of Cher"
My Amazon DVD Reviews: "All Boys"
My Amazon DVD Reviews: "Pornography: A Thriller"
My Amazon DVD Reviews: "The Adonis Factor"
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My Amazon DVD Reviews: 44 Inch Chest
My Amazon Movie Reviews: "Aaron...Albeit a sex Hero"

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Tim Brough's Black Leather Bookshelf

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Entries tagged with gay movies

My Amazon Reviews: Colton Ford "Under The Covers"

My Amazon DVD Reviews: "Leather Jacket Love Story"

My Amazon DVD Reviews: "Abrupt Decision"

I Oughta Be In Movie (Trailers)

My Amazon Reviews: Cher "The Very Best of Cher"

My Amazon DVD Reviews: "All Boys"

My Amazon DVD Reviews: "Pornography: A Thriller"

My Amazon DVD Reviews: "The Adonis Factor"

(no subject)

My Amazon DVD Reviews: 44 Inch Chest

My Amazon Movie Reviews: "Aaron...Albeit a sex Hero"