You knew it was going to be an easy day in class when you walked in and saw one of the school’s Bell & Howell Filmosound 16mm projectors set up in the middle of the room. If the teacher was a technologically challenged sort, they’d let the class AV geek (sometimes that was me) thread the film through it and run it. You got to sit back and watch a film, and it was a safe bet that the film would be a lot more interesting and engaging then whatever teacher taught that particular class. Or to put it another way, you knew you had a good teacher when the sight of the film projector was a bit of a let-down.

My favorites were the Bell Labs educational films. Least appreciated on my list were the Highway Safety Institute films that grossed and scared the crap out of me to the point where I almost refused to get a driver’s license. Oh…and the sex ed films about the dangers of heavy petting. Who cared about that stuff anyway?

Then there were the films warning us about the dangers of homosexuality. I think I saw this one in high school…

Yeah, I laughed. As someone who actually sat through some of those old 1950s morality films, I can tell you that whoever did that one got it just about perfect…down to the stilted dialogue and cheesy narration. All that was missing from it was the randomly warbly sound of the old 16mm projector audio.

But some of us still remember the real thing…

That’s what me and my peers all got back in grade school. They were showing this crap to us as early as 8th grade. Before the personal computer came along, before the internet, before cable TV and home video, the only things we knew about homosexuals and homosexuality, were what we were taught in films like that one.

I’m sure those 1950s film makers had no idea, no clue themselves, that some of the kids watching that film were gay themselves, or that the others in the class would one day learn that an old classmate they’d gone to school alongside of is gay, and have to reconcile the kid they’d known with the image of the sick and twisted homosexual monster that they were taught. I’m sure those 1950s film makers had no idea, no clue themselves, what it was like to be either one of those kids, all grown up now, looking apprehensively at each other.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I was flitting around the web and came upon some posts about a newly animated version of the tale of Peter and the Wolf.  The YouTube clips absolutely fascinated me, both in their artistic style and the interesting modern take on the story.  I discovered it was available on iTunes for a couple bucks so I bit. 

It’s the first video I’ve ever downloaded from iTunes and it was the best couple bucks I have ever spent on a movie, even a short one (it’s about 32 minutes).  If you enjoy good stop motion animation, and fresh takes on old childhood tales, and beautiful classical music, then you should definitely go grab a copy.  It’s available on DVD at Amazon for about 18 bucks, but as I said, you can get it off iTunes for only two and the video quality is excellent.  I was skeptical as to how good the video from iTunes could be considering it is so compressed, but it displayed on Bagheera’s HD monitor as well as any DVD, and the sound quality was excellent.

The story takes place in a more modern day Russia, in the forest outside a small village Peter lives with his grandfather, in a ramshackle house surrounded by a high wooden fence.  Grandpa is terrified of the dangers of the forest, and the howl of the wolf, and as the film opens we see him doggedly reinforcing his fence and plugging all the openings in so nothing can get in…and it seems, so Peter can’t get out.  Grandpa is very protective…perhaps a bit too much so.  When Peter pries a piece of scrap metal off a small opening in the fence so he can look out, grandpa drags him away, nails it shut again, and sends Peter to town to get some food (presumably the boy doesn’t have to go through the forest to get to town…but never mind…).

Peter and grandpa are a couple of poor folk living in a run down shack in the sticks.  As he walks into town the town’s kids, in their nice new winter clothes, all stare at him like he’s from another planet.  He makes his way to a small shop, accidentally bumping into one of the town bullies.  I’ve never seen the bully type so deftly and surely brought to life as in this film.  They drag Peter into an ally and throw him in a dumpster.

Back home, and in tears, Peter is comforted by his pet duck…his only friend.  Suddenly, a bird with a broken wing crash lands in the yard.  Peter watches fascinated as the bird tries to tie itself to a balloon that Peter brought back with him from town, so it can fly again.

But the bird is too heavy for the balloon to hold it up.  Peter determines to help the bird go free again, and sneaks into grandpa’s bedroom and grabs his keys as he sleeps.  He unlocks the padlocks, pushes hard against the door, and then it gives way and Peter and Duck and Bird all tumble through…

…and the lovely Prokofiev music begins.  Up to that moment, the entire thing has been done with only the background sounds audible.  There is no dialogue throughout the film.  Just the sounds of the forest and town, the howl of the wind, and the random sounds Peter and Grandpa and Duck and Bird and Cat make as they go on about their lives.  When the Prokofiev score suddenly starts up, just as the boy and his friends break free of the confining fence, it is an almost magical effect. 

Peter gazes in wonder at an immense tree and a frozen over pond, just outside the fence door.  He helps bird up onto a limb and watches delightedly as it sails through the air dangling from the balloon.  Duck and Peter take turns sliding around the frozen pond.  They all have fun.  But eventually grandpa sees them and drags Peter back inside.  Then the wolf begins to howl, and Peter realizes his beloved Duck is still outside.

You have to watch this thing, to believe how much new life the artists have given to this old story.  It is breathtaking.  The stop motion animation is first rate and the characters are wonderfully drawn.  The expressiveness given to Peter in particular, a boy trapped in a hard life seemingly alone and apart from the rest of the world, is remarkable.  All the more so when you realize that this is traditionally done stop motion animation.  The art has come a long, long way from the original King Kong.  Duck and Bird and Cat and Grandpa, and even the random townsfolk and the bullies all are distinctly drawn personalities, and the Wolf is satisfyingly feral and menacing…almost as though Prokofiev’s Wolf theme assumed physical form.

It doesn’t end the way Prokofiev ended it though.  I won’t give it away, but you could almost wish Prokofiev had thought of this one instead.  It is perfect.  When you know you can defeat the wolf, the bullies don’t matter anymore. 

The book, Prayers For Bobby, has been made into a film starring Sigourney Weaver….

More Here…

I stumbled across This really intriguing new animated take on the story of Peter and the Wolf…

…There’s a few clips from it out there on YouTube and I was looking them over, absolutely fascinated by what the artists were doing. Anyway, in the comments one person wrote that they almost cried when the Wolf ate the Duck. And someone else responded back a tad put off…

hey, just to let you know, sometimes people like to read the comments before watching to see what other people thought of the clip; and sometimes my computer scrolls down and i catch the comments before watching…so giving away the ending isn’t always prudent. thanks!

So have you watched Milk yet? He gets killed at the end. Whoops…sorry…

Paul Newman died yesterday…

Fast Eddie: Cause, ya see, twice, Sarah… once at Ames with Minnesota Fats and then again at Arthur’s, in that cheap, crummy pool room, now why’d I do it, Sarah? Why’d I do it? I coulda beat that guy, coulda beat ‘im cold, he never woulda known. But I just hadda show ‘im. Just hadda show those creeps and those punks what the game is like when it’s great, when it’s REALLY great. You know, like anything can be great, anything can be great. I don’t care, BRICKLAYING can be great, if a guy knows. If he knows what he’s doing and why and if he can make it come off. When I’m goin’, I mean, when I’m REALLY goin’ I feel like a… like a jockey must feel. He’s sittin’ on his horse, he’s got all that speed and that power underneath him… he’s comin’ into the stretch, the pressure’s on ‘im, and he KNOWS… just feels… when to let it go and how much. Cause he’s got everything workin’ for ‘im: timing, touch. It’s a great feeling, boy, it’s a real great feeling when you’re right and you KNOW you’re right. It’s like all of a sudden I got oil in my arm. The pool cue’s part of me. You know, it’s uh – pool cue, it’s got nerves in it. It’s a piece of wood, it’s got nerves in it. Feel the roll of those balls, you don’t have to look, you just KNOW. You make shots that nobody’s ever made before. I can play that game the way… NOBODY’S ever played it before.

Sarah Packard: You’re not a loser, Eddie, you’re a winner. Some men never get to feel that way about anything. 

It’s not so much the great actors are all going now…though that’s sad enough.  It’s that good films with good writing take second place to cheap thrills anymore.  When I was a kid, the cheap thrills were the ‘B’ movies.  Now they’re the ‘A’ list productions that get millions spent on them and the flicks with good stories and great characters are the ‘B’ movies.  Sigh.

People remember Newman and Redford in Butch Cassedy and the Sundance Kid.  But for me it’s The Sting.  And what I really liked about The Sting is that it snookered the audience as thoroughly as Newman and Redford did crime boss Doyle Lonnegan.  And they even give you a glimpse of the sting they’re about to play on you.  There’s a scene right before the big finale where Newman’s character is getting dressed up in front of a mirror, and he puts something in his mouth.  A small capsule of something.  I was sitting in the audience and I saw it and I wondered what it was.  Well, I found out.  Swear to god…I was completely taken in.  It was fun.

When asked why he stayed married to the same woman for 50 years, he said "I have steak at home, why go out for a burger."   I really envy folks like him.  You’re a winner Eddie…

Giant. Nazi. Robot.

Code_Guardian
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Yes, I’ve made this complaint before, so just bear with me because I need to make it again.  I am fucking tired of movies about gay romances that end tragically! Can we please see stories about same sex love that succeeds, that triumphs over adversity? My thanks in advance.

I am so starved for romance that I can relate to, that the other night I find myself trolling YouTube for film clips from Japanese "boy’s love" anime that I don’t have yet.  If you’re unfamiliar with the genre, which sometimes goes by the name "Yaoi" in both manga and anime, it’s mostly torrid soap opera style love stories of the sort you might find in any paperback romance novel, save for the cultural differences in style, and the fact that they’re about gay male couples.  I’m told the audience for these stories in Japan are mostly teenage Japanese girls. 

I like them for the beauty of the males in the storylines, and the torrid romance of the storylines.  I used to smirk at some heterosexual friends, female, who had racks and racks of those Harlequin Romance paperbacks at home.  Well, I sure couldn’t smirk at them now.  I guess it was just a matter of not seeing any of it that I could relate to.  I tell myself these days that I’m finally having the teeny-bopper experience I couldn’t back in 1969-1970.  Well…apart from all those Tiger Beat magazines I used to buy, take home, devour, and hide under my bed, all the while telling myself that I was a perfectly normal heterosexual guy.

So…anyway…I’m busy trolling YouTube for some same sex romance, and I come across a set of 10 posts comprising an entire live action Japanese film titled, appropriately enough, Boy’s Love.  Ohmygod, thinks I, the leads are go goddamned Cute!  So I start watching the first one.  And I notice that it’s in Japanese with no sub-titles.  Oh well.  I keep watching, while trying to deduce the plot from the visuals.  Later on I find this about the film on Wiki…

Just doing his job, magazine editor Taishin Mamiya (Yoshikazu Kotani) interviews high school model Noeru Kisaragi (Takumi Saito). Despite Noeru’s bad attitude, an enchanting picture of the ocean he draws leads Mamiya to invite him out for dinner afterwards. They connect at the restaurant, but while in the bathroom there Noeru solicits Mamiya sexually. The next morning, Noeru’s office calls the magazine office where Mamiya works. "Your editor was rude. Have him come and apologize." When Mamiya goes to Noeru’s house to deliver the apology, he sees Noeru with a dirty-looking man. Mamiya is shocked to discover at that moment that his interest in Noeru goes beyond article research–he truly wants to know more about him.

Heh.  Yeah.  Sort-of.  There’s more to it, including a jealous classmate who the commenters on YouTube took to calling "Harry Potter" because of his glasses and bookish look I suppose.  But it’s pretty much your standard gay soap opera plot.

Warning…Major Spoilage after the jump…

Read the rest of this entry »

So I was watching Mambo Italiano on Logo the other night, and it was kinda good…better then most gay romantic comedies I’ve seen.  I could even identify somewhat with the main character, Angelo, though not his internalized homophobia.  He’s a geeky kinda guy, way too analytical for his own good, and too impatient with others.  He’s cute, but not dazzlingly gorgeous.  The film is full of Italian ethnic humor that doesn’t stereotype so much as remind you how human we all are beneath the cloth of culture and tradition.  There were, I’m certain, a lot of cultural in-jokes that were going right over my head most of the time, and yet I laughed.  I could see myself, and the Pennsylvanian Baptist culture I grew up inside of in the characters in that film.  Well…except for the confessional scenes…

The film hinges around what happens to the main character’s life after he comes out to his family, and in the process shoves out of the closet his boyfriend, who is a policeman.  His parents don’t take it well, his boyfriend, aghast, eventually lets himself be "cured" by a woman his own Italian mother sets him up with, and who he decides to marry.

[SPOILER ALERT] If you haven’t seen the film, I’m about to spoil the ending for you.  But I need to do that in order to make the point I want to in this post.  Sorry.  Perhaps you should consider skipping the rest of this post until after you’ve seen the flick…

Anyway…

The main character, Angelo, sees his life start to unravel around him.  His love life…his job…his relationship with his family…it all starts to come undone.  But this is not a tear jerker.  Believe it or not…it’s funny.  Not funny in a way that is contemptuous of its characters, but the opposite…funny because it has a genuine fondness for its characters and all their human eccentricities, which come roaring out under stress.  After his boyfriend breaks up with him, Angelo volunteers at a local gay community center, as a way of trying to meet someone else, even though at this point he really doesn’t want anyone else.  There he meets Peter, who is not quite as hunky and gorgeous as his ex-boyfriend, but is handsome and seems to have a sweet, decent character.  Peter tries to get Angelo to go out with him, but Angelo is still grieving for his boyfriend, who is soon to be married.

Here’s what I like about this film: you can see it setting us up for the dramatic showdown at the boyfriend’s wedding, and yet instead of getting the scene where Angelo rushes to the chapel to declare his undying love and beg his boyfriend to take him back, instead of getting the scene where the vain and beautiful boyfriend finally realizes What Really Matters In Life, and dumps the scheming selfish homophobic woman his mother set him up with to go live happily ever after with the One He Really Loves, what we get is a scene where the vain and beautiful boyfriend actually Does marry the woman his mother set him up with after all, so everyone can assume he is a 100 percent manly heterosexual kind of guy…while at the same moment, Angelo goes back to the gay community center, and accepts Peter’s offer to go out on a date with him.  It’s a wonderful ending.

And yet…

…it’s all too easy.

The filmmakers may have outraged one hoary movie house cliché, but they paid homage to another one: that beautiful people are shallow.  It’s easy to dismiss Angelo’s boyfriend as superficial, internally homophobic, selfish and cruel because…well…he Is.  And that makes it easy to see how Angelo is far better off dating, and then being loved by Peter, who is perhaps not as beautiful, but genuine.  The happy ending is possible, because we know that the boyfriend was wrong for Angelo.  In fact, it’s a pat film ending we’ve seen hundreds of times before; the plain but true heart, winning out over the vain and hollow beauty.

But…what if the beautiful boyfriend wasn’t so shallow?  What if he was as beautiful inside, as he was outside?  What if he had a kind and decent heart after all?  Well, in Mambo Italiano that simply would not have worked, because Angelo wouldn’t have had to suffer being shunned by him when they were both school kids, let alone abandoned after he came out to his family.  This story would not have worked with an honorable boyfriend.  So he had to be shallow and selfish.  Okay…fine…but then why did he have to be beautiful too?  Well…we might have wondered what it was that attracted Angelo to the boyfriend in the first place…but it could just as easily have been status.  The boyfriend could have come from a rich and influential family.  But no…he had to be beautiful.  Because only beauty, particularly in males, is a reliable external indicator of a shallow, flawed inner character.  In the Hollywood mythos, the beautiful man is almost always the most untrustworthy character in the film.  Not necessarily the most evil, but the most untrustworthy.  Ironically, he’s probably also a faggot.

It’s too easy.  Show me a story where the hero had to choose between pursuing a beautiful boyfriend who is not only beautiful, but noble, and an average Joe who thinks wanting a soul mate is the stuff of cheap paperback romance novels.  Mr. Average is not contemptuous.  He considers himself a realist.  And you see in him a potential to beauty that is utterly strangled inside of a concrete bound mentality.  But this is no tale of the ugly duckling or the frog prince.  Mr. Average knows he could be more attractive then he is, he just doesn’t want to be that.  He doesn’t care.

In other words, turn the Hollywood morality tale about how beauty is only skin deep on its head.  Our hero sees that it’s the beauty within that matters, from discovering how beautiful Mr. Average could be, if only he wasn’t so damn apathetic.

We can all be beautiful, each of us in our own way.  But more often then not we’re taught that we are not beautiful, and we come to believe it.  So we don’t take care of our bodies. We don’t buy those bright attractive clothes.  We become shy, too afraid to make the first move toward that beautiful someone we happen to chance meet.  And we project that insecurity out in front of us, everywhere we go.  And so the beautiful someone walks out of our lives forever.

But sometimes they do anyway.  The beautiful one in this story is just not in love with our main character.  And because he is noble, he isn’t cruel or cold about it.  He is patient.  He is kind.  You’re a very nice guy…and someday you’ll make someone very happy…but not me.  You are not right for me.  Not like that…  He’s a decent guy.  He doesn’t want to break our main character’s heart.  And worse, he is not only beautiful, he is absolutely right for our main character.  But our hero isn’t right for him.  That can happen.  So they just don’t connect.  That the beauty our hero sees in him turns out to be much more then just skin deep after all, only makes that rejection all the worse.  That’s how it usually is.  Ask me how I know.

Mr. Average on the other hand isn’t so much shallow, as indifferent.  He could be better then he is, but he doesn’t think it’s necessary.  And he’s right.  He’s talented, but he knows he can get by in life on idle just fine thank you.  It isn’t until late in the film that we realize that he’s actually quite beautiful on the surface.  He isn’t selfish or stupid.  Just…indifferent.  Love isn’t perfect Mr. Average quietly insists.  You have to compromise.  You have to take what you can get.  Mr. Average would make a decent enough boyfriend, but not one our hero would walk through fire for…and for that matter, vice versa.  It isn’t love, it isn’t even lust.  Mr. Average offers only an escape from loneliness.  And what is more, he thinks this should be enough for both of them.

But while the beautiful one is searching for his soul mate, that person just isn’t our hero unfortunately.  Our hero is made to realize that finding that soul mate is a very rare thing.  Maybe you get one chance at it.  A lot of people don’t even get that.  By the end of the flick he comes to believe that it probably won’t happen to him unless he gets unreasonably lucky.  I mean…win the lottery kind of lucky.  Mr. Average is offering him a kind of consolation prize.  Forget the quest for a soul mate, he says.  Be reasonable.  Accept what life offers you, and don’t yearn for what it does not.   Beauty is only skin deep after all.  The irony here is that he’s right in one sense, and yet he is most profoundly wrong in the sense that matters.

What will our hero do?  Does he settle for Mr. Average?  More then anything he doesn’t want to live a solitary lonely life.  But if he is not happy in a relationship, won’t that be just as lonely?  Does he keep on trying to find his heart’s desire, and just hope there is something better somewhere, somehow, in a world that seems to him like loneliness is the rule, not the exception.  Or does he accept what life offers, and walk away from what it probably will not?  Perhaps our hero might settle for Mr. Average…until something better comes along.  Perhaps he even proposes this to Mr. Average, and Mr. Average shrugs and agrees.  Sure…let’s both call it an affair, until something better comes along…  But would that really be a salve for loneliness?  And if he did that, and lightning struck and his soul mate did finally come along, would he still be a worthy lover?  In the end the beauty he is struggling to find and embrace one day, is his own.  But is it worth it, if the prize is an utterly solitary life?

I’d watch that movie.  But that is not the kind of film Hollywood dreams are made of.