Favorite Men of 2012 Monday, Apr 15 2013

Earlier this year, I posted a few of my favorites of 2012  lists: favorite albums, favorite movies, favorite songs. One more that I’ve been meaning to post is a list of the men I started following online in 2012. Some of these have pages on Facebook that I liked. Others have YouTube Channels or Twitter feeds that I follow. And one or two are just men I now Google frequently!

In no particular order, my favorite men of 2012 were:

Andy Murray 

2012 was a breakout year for the Scotsman Andy Murray. He made it to his first Wimbledon final, won the Olympics, and then won his first grand slam tournament at the U.S. Open. I’ve liked Murray for a long time, but I LOVE Rafael Nadal, so I have to agree with tennis commentators who suggest that some of Murray’s success is due to Rafa’s absence. But when you get right down to it, Murray worked hard for his success and deserves all of the victories he scored last year. I just hope he’s able to keep it up and doesn’t fall back down to #4 by the end of summer. Tennis benefits when all four of the top players have a real shot at winning each tournament.

PJ and I got to see Murray play Federer in the semis of the 2009 Southern & Western in Cincinnati. Murray takes some heat from gay viewers, but I think he’s hot! He’s got the best legs in men’s tennis, and he’s competitive with Federer for best chest.

But more importantly than looks, he’s a great competitor on the court, and he’s fun to watch. I really do hope that 2013 brings him a lot of success (except for when he plays Rafa!).

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Good Boys: A Review Saturday, Aug 4 2012

Last night, PJ and I watched the 2005 Israeli movie Good Boys, written and directed by Yair Hochner. It stars Daniel Efrat as Menni and Yuval Raz as Tal, two prostitutes in Tel Aviv who meet and then are hired to have sex together while their John watches. They then spend the night together, and both men feel that they’ve made a special connection to one another. They agree to meet up again the next evening; the movie follows their efforts to do so.

Here’s a trailer, of sorts:

Menni is clearly the more successful prostitute: he’s cuter that Tal and he dresses better, and the sign of his success is that he has regular clients rather than works the streets. But he still has problems, not the least of which is the appearance of a female prostitute he once slept with, resulting in a child. While Menni identifies as gay and has little interest in raising his daughter, he feels some need to make sure the two of them are safe.

Tal, on the other hand, lives hand to mouth and is constantly on the lookout for easy money. He’s not as cute as Menni and therefore takes more risks with his clients. Consequently, he’s in more danger as he works the streets.

Just before they’re supposed to meet up, Menni and Tal each meet another man. Menni runs into a younger hustler who has been beaten up. He befriends him and offers him a place to stay. The two then embark on a mini-quest to return Menni’s daughter to her mother or her parents. Tal picks up a trick in the bar just when he’s supposed to be meeting Menni. The trick turns out to be bad news, and film cuts back and forth between Menni’s efforts to find his daughter’s mother and Tal and Tal’s efforts to end his “date.”

Overall, this is an interesting, provocative movie. It seems to depict prostitution rather realistically — it doesn’t romanticize these men’s lives or work. The leads are both excellent in their parts, and I think we come to care for them and whether they’re going to make it or not. The movie is only about 75 minutes long, making it a short, but well-made little movie. It’s another good example of Israeli queer cinema.

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Weekend: A Review Saturday, Nov 12 2011

Last night PJ and I went to see Weekend, a new gay independent film about two men, Russell and Glen, who meet on a one-night stand and end up spending a weekend together. Here’s the trailer:

This movie has gotten great reviews, and we assumed we would have to wait until our trip to New York next month to see it, so we were really excited when our local art theater, The Athena, announced that it was showing here. It’s not a perfect movie, but I really enjoyed it — it’s far and away better than the average gay independent movie!

Tom Cullen plays Russell, a not quite fully out gay man in search of connection after spending the evening drinking and smoking pot with his best straight friends. Chris New plays Glen, an artist who politicizes his gayness by talking loudly about gay S&M while hanging out in straight bars and then arguing with the other patrons about it, for example.

As the two men spend the weekend talking, arguing, fucking, and partying, they begin to open up to one another as they’ve never opened up to anyone before. The most appealing aspect of the film is the emotional honesty that these characters have. You feel like you’re eavesdropping on real conversations. For example, Glen and Russell talk about their coming out stories. Both of their stories feel real and honest. These moments seem incredibly wise and insightful but not out of character — Glen and Russell are never wiser than men like them would be. I tend to like talky pictures; that’s definitely what I like best about Weekend.

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J.C. Leyendecker: A Book Review Sunday, Nov 6 2011

After reading Hide/Seek, I became interested in illustrator J. C. (Joseph Christian) Leyendecker, so I looked around for a good book to read about him. Eventually, I settled on J.C. Leyendecker (2008) by Laurence S. Cutler, Judy Goffman Cutler, and the National Museum of American Illustration. This book is a wonderful collection of Leyendecker’s illustrations accompanied by excellent essays about the Golden Age of American Illustration, Leyendecker’s life, and Leyendecker’s distinctive work. I enjoyed reading (and looking at) it!

Leyendecker’s importance in the history of early twentieth-century American illustration can’t be overstated. He produced over 300 covers for The Saturday Evening Post and was one of, if not the, most popular advertising illustrators of the 1920s and 30s. His images became iconographic representations of sophisticated, urban American chic.

Leyendecker was also gay, and his illustrations often incorporate homoerotic imagery. I find the way this book discusses this element of his art to be very interesting:

Knowing that revealing his secret would threaten his popularity and success, Joe never came out of the closet…. He also attempted to conceal his sexual orientation in his work, which was often characterized by heterosexual female adoration for handsome males depicted in overtly erotic poses. Yet, ironically, he was the most manifest homosexual artist of the early twentieth century–a virtual hero–as his work clearly demonstrates to today’s enlightened audience.

To create such delicious illustrations, he smoothed oils on models’ muscles, enhancing the light reflecting on male surfaces he admired most: one model said that Joe always painted him in a darkened studio, with only candlelight highlighting the erotic qualities of his gleaming form. The gay subculture saw the irony in his work and appreciated the erotic images he lavished upon the world.

These homoerotic images appealed to heterosexual viewers as well, however. In a subtle subversion of heterosexual mores, unattractive men turned to them in their quest to be more appealing through the products being advertised. Sportsmen never saw the football players’ images as anything but manly, for they reveled in the enthusiasm created among the fans. College men, particularly Ivy Leaguers and prep school chums, were proud that their alma maters were highlighted. And most of all, women were drawn to Joe’s images, dreaming of intimacies with men who possessed “The Leyendecker Look.”

While Leyendecker was not publicly out, he did have a partner, Charles A. Beach (1886-1952), whose image is sometimes featured in Leyendecker’s work, as in this illustration, which is included in the Hide/Seek exhibit:

Beach is on the left. Beach is also the model featured in the book’s cover illustration.

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Hide/Seek: A Book Review Sunday, Oct 30 2011

PJ and I missed the Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture exhibit at the National Portrait Gallery earlier this year, so PJ ordered a copy of the catalogue. We’re going to have a chance to see the exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum of Art in December, so I started reading the catalogue, which was edited by Jonathan D. Katz and David C. Ward.

This is the first time that I’ve read a book about an exhibit before seeing the exhibit. The book version of Hide/Seek is a great read, whether one ever sees the actual exhibit or not. In particular, Katz’s opening essay describing the exhibit and providing historical context for the works in it is a particularly fine essay.

For a couple of decades now, scholars have argued that before modern notions of sexuality became prevalent, “homosexuality” was coded as being effeminate and the penetrated partner in any sexual activity. Thus, a “heterosexual” man could have sex with a “homosexual” one without impugning his reputation as a straight man, provided he performed the masculine role of penetrating the gay man. Katz’s explanation of this theory is one of the best I’ve ever read.

Katz explains this concept in order to interpret George Bellows’s The Shower-Bath (1917):

He reads this image to explain why, even though it depicts an “obvious” homosexual in the foreground, it was an extremely popular. His reading is convincing, and it made me think about this period of American cultural history differently. This print is nearly contemporaneous with one of my favorite novels, Henry Blake Fuller’s 1919 Bertram Cope’s Year. Thinking about this novel in terms of Katz’s argument would be a very interesting way to approach the book.

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Eating Out: Drama Camp: A Review Saturday, Oct 29 2011

Last night PJ and I watched Eating Out: Drama Camp, the latest in the farcical series of gay movies that specialize in the sexual hi-jinks of young gay men and their lady friends.

In this fourth installment of the franchise, Zack and Casey, the leading men introduced in the third movie, Eating Out: All You Can Eat, are still together but having some problems in the bedroom: Zack, played by Chris Salvatore, no longer seems interested in Casey, played by Daniel Skelton. These problems are compounded by their heading off to a drama camp, where temptations to stray abound.

Eating Out: Drama Camp is hilariously sexy and loads of fun! This is queer, bawdy humor at its best.

The third installment of this franchise seemingly sent the series in a new, much more interesting direction: the main characters were all played by gay men, the plot revolved around Casey’s efforts to seduce Zack, another gay guy, and it all added up to a lot of heart. While maybe it shouldn’t matter whether the actors are gay, I really liked that Skelton and Salvatore were out during their promotion of the movie. I was tired of some of he earlier movies’ stars efforts to distance themselves from the plots’ gay content. Likewise, I liked that All You Can Eat was about one gay guy chasing another openly gay guy. The is-he-or-isn’t he plot of the second movie wore thin for me. And I liked the combination of sexual humor, romance, and sentiment in the third movie. It all added up to a queer comedy made for and by queers, something I both admire and enjoyed.

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Role/Play: A Review Saturday, Apr 2 2011

Last night, PJ and I watched Role/Play from Netflix. This 2010 movie written and directed by Rob Williams stars Matthew Montgomery and Steve Callahan as divorcing gay marriage activist named Trey and a recently outed soap star named Graham who’s been caught in a sex tape scandal. These men happen to meet at a gay bed and breakfast in Palm Springs. Here’s the trailer:

I was really looking forward to seeing this movie for a few reasons. First, I have an irrational love for all things Matthew Montgomery. He’s a good actor, so I don’t want to reduce his appeal to the mere physical, but it’s also the case that I just think he’s hot and adorable. He’s definitely got charisma, uniqueness, nerve, and talent, to borrow RuPaul’s catchphrase. And hotness. Plus, he seems to make intelligent choices in his films, by which I mean that you know that, if he’s in it, it’s going to be an interesting film even if it’s not always absolutely great.

I’ve also tended to like Williams’s movies, which include Long-Term Relationship, 3-Day Weekend, and Make the Yuletide Gay.

And finally, the plot sounded interesting: these two wounded men meet, get it on, fall in love, decide what to do next.

Overall, Role/Play is an interesting film that’s trying to do exactly what I keep saying I want a gay independent movie to do: just tell a human story without the angst of coming out or the narrative pyrotechnics of a random drug abuse or murder plot. The problem is that the script just doesn’t get as incisive or as interesting as Williams hopes it is. Consequently, I liked the idea of the movie more than I liked the movie.

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Bear City: A Review Sunday, Mar 6 2011

Last night, PJ and I watched Bear City from Netflix. The movie follows Tyler, played by Joe Conti, as he searches for true love among the hairy, meaty, butch men of New York City’s bear scene. Along the way he makes new friends in the community and quickly learns that bears and men in relationships with bears have their own issues to deal with.

Here’s the trailer:

Perhaps I should start by admitting that I’ve never been into the bear scene. I don’t find big, hairy men particularly sexy — but then again I don’t tend to find any group, as a group, particularly sexy (except maybe male models!). Because of my lack of interest, I wasn’t entirely sure that I was going to enjoy this movie.

However, I quickly saw that my own preferences were not going to be a hindrance to thoroughly enjoying this movie. Bear City is a delightful romantic comedy that kept me laughing and entertained. The writing is funny, the actors are engaging, and the plot is a Sex and the City-ish look at this group of friends. I definitely recommend it.

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SotW: This Time by Cassidy Haley Saturday, Feb 19 2011

I  saw the video for Cassidy Haley‘s new single, “This Time,” on Towleroad and love it:

Haley’s video obviously uses Fight Club as a metaphor for a romantic relationship. While this is a rather pessimistic view of romance, the concept is interesting and well done. It captures much of the spirit of the movie but also gives it its own twist.

As usual, I immediately noticed how hot both of the guys — including Haley — are: I can be just as shallow as the next gay man. But I’m also impressed by the visual contrast between the guys’ hotness and the blood and violence of the fight club imagery. This contrast creates an interesting comment about relationships, gay or straight, I think. On the one hand, romance can be beautiful and sexually hot; on the other hand, relationships can be destructive and hurtful to the participants. Something that starts so beautifully can end up being tragically wrong. By the end, the video seems to ask why we do this to each other. Why do we hurt each other so much when we should love one another instead. At least that’s how I read the sadness of Haley’s face in the final part of the video.

Of course the video is also a commentary on the queerness of Fight Club. Weren’t we all expecting Ed Norton and Brad Pitt to make out during it?! This video is what should have happened!

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The Honey Badger Don’t Give a Shit Friday, Feb 18 2011

I saw this on a blog today and couldn’t stop laughing. I love it!

This faux nature documentary is narrated by Randall, a comic character by Christopher Gordon. You can check out similar videos on his YouTube channel.

At first I was a little nervous about this clip: using a “gay” narrator like this seems potentially homophobic — reveling in stereotypes and casting aspersions on an entire group of people, us gays. But then I decided that, as a comic piece, the creator is entitled to make us of us gays and even draw upon gay stereotypes to make us all laugh. I don’t think it’s hating on gays; it’s laughing at a certain type of gay. The sad thing is that such narration would make most nature documentaries more interesting!

Now I want a t-shirt that says, “The Honey Badger don’t give a shit!”

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