In September 1989, Torch Song Trilogy had just ended its run at the Queen’s Film Theatre. It was well worth going to pains to see it. Indeed, if you haven’t seen it yet, then do make an effort either on DVD, one of the streaming media or if it ever returns to the cinema theatres. The lead, Harvey Fierstein, also wrote the original stage play and the screenplay. The theatrical origins of the piece are quite obvious but not intrusive – except at one point.
This is the section where the drag-queen Arnold Beckoff [Fierstein]’s Ma turns human, after having been presented as a monstrous harridan. It needed a much more subtle modulation. IN the theatre there was probably a scene change of some minutes duration at this point. Here the transformation takes seconds.
This film runs the gamut of Gay male life. We go from bars to backrooms to long-term relationships [semi-marriages], and brutal killing by queer-bashers. Despite this violence and a certain emotional aggro, this is a deeply optimistic and humane film. And it ends – praise be! – on a sentimental up-beat.
About the performance: Anne Bancroft [Ma] and Harvey Fierstein are as subtle as a hurley caman across the skull. Matthew Broderick turns in a quite subtle performance, which is impressive – he could have sailed through it on the strength of a pretty face [we don’t see much of the rest of him, more’s the pity]. the rest of the players performed so much like a repertory company that one wondered if they were some sort of repertory company?
Links:
- YouTube – Torch Song Trilogy (Trailer)
- IMDB – Torch Song Trilogy
- Carrington and Braveheart
Sitting through Carrington I wished that I was at Braveheart, I did not quite think the opposite at Braveheart. Mel Gibson is going to have to face the fact that dallying with women in their twenties is beginning to look dubious in a man who’ll soon be a grandfather.
Arrangement 92019) starts off with a character in the shadows texting – with a musical song sung by Garth Ross (My Time Is Your Time) playing in the background indistinctly. The first verse of the song sets up the story in a number of ways:
The Secret is a short gay film about hidden love. Julian is in a dilemma. He loves the person, he is in a relationship with, less than his best friend. It is a story of a journey, of coming to terms with who you love and not what society and other pressures say who you should love. Both the main actors are very handsome, and their acting is really good considering their young age. The film is only 3.37 mins long, but it successfully gets its message across. Do make an effort to watch it, and I would love to have your comments. 
a railway line. You can almost hear the mothers saying ‘don’t go near the line it is dangerous!’
In ‘Thirteen or So Minutes’ we meet Lawrence Jefferies and Hugh Greery in the bedroom just after sex; the post-coital sex talk is about how both of them are ‘straight’, but what develops is that both of them had talked openly to each other in the bar about themselves and their lives. What transpires out of this after sex talk is that they fell in love with the person, not just because each of them was men, or that one was a man and the other a woman which would be normal for both of them. That life is beautiful, and it makes no difference what gender they are, that falling for someone just means you are alive and awake
Hand Off is a movie written and directed by Chadlee Skrikker, is 24 minutes long and is about rugby in Cape Town, South Africa. Jaco decides to admit his feelings about Willem just after they have come out of the changing room having cleaned up following rugby training. 
fantasy. It at this stage almost has a feeling of 
