Trailer: Cannes Film Festival Winner 'Sauvage'

(all images via Strand Releasing)

 Director Camille Vidal-Naquet’s feature film debut, Sauvage, which chronicles the journey of a 22-year-old gay street hustler, garnered praise and accolades when the film premiered at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.

Strand Releasing has now acquired the North American rights to the provocative film which Vulture called “the most sexually frank film at Cannes.”

The film’s star, Felix Maritaud, was honored with the best actor prize during the Cannes Film Festival’s Critics’ Week. You may recall Maritaud’s previous star turn in Robin Campillo’s (BPM) Beats Per Minute which won the Grand Jury prize at Cannes in 2017.

Vidal-Naquet describes the lead character as a “solitary young man who hits the road and wanders from one encounter to the next, longing for love, driven by an unquenchable capacity for love that keeps him going, regardless of the violent world around him.”

Although the movie received acclaim at the famed film festival, the debut did not go without some controversy.

One scene, in particular, was graphic to the point that some audience members got up and left the screening.

Vulture describes the scene:

At one point, Léo goes home with a city-dwelling couple who treat him like an unthinking animal, making cruel cracks about his appearance and inspecting his teeth as though they were checking the quality of a product. It’s hard to watch this happen to someone as open-hearted as Léo, and that’s even before one of the men orders Léo to get on all fours, then begins to lube up a gigantic, intimidating butt plug which he will wield almost like a weapon.

But the director defended the graphic approach to the material, saying, “It wouldn’t be honest to make a movie about prostitution without talking about these kinds of things."

In addition to the gritty, coarse world of male prostitution, Sauvage also finds vulnerability and balance by touching on Maritaud’s unrequited love for a fellow hustler.

The film is set for a late 2018 release and recently dropped the first trailer. Watch below.

Best Rated LGBTQ Films & TV Since 2010

From the film God's Own Country

One of the top movie and television review sites, Rotten Tomotoes, has compiled lists of the ten best reviewed LGBTQ films and television shows since 2010 (so no Brokeback Mountain).

The list crosses genres from Academy Award and Emmy Award-winners to foreign language projects.

I’m going to preface the list by saying I can think of some excellent films that didn’t make the Top 10 list, but this is based on Rotten Tomatoes reviews, not mine.

Here are the lists – how many of these have you seen?

Top 10 LGBTQ Movies of the 2010’s:

1. God’s Own Country (2017) - Certified Fresh at 99%
2. Moonlight (2016) - Certified Fresh at 98%
3. BPM (2017) - Certified Fresh at 98%
4. Tangerine (2015) - Certified Fresh at 97%
5. Tomboy (2011) - Certified Fresh at 97%
6. Call Me By Your Name (2016) - Certified Fresh at 95%
7. Behind The Candelabra (2013) - Certified Fresh at 95%
8. Carol (2015) - Certified Fresh at 95%
9. Pariah (2011) – Certified Fresh at 94%
10. A Fantastic Woman (Una mujer fantástica) (2018) – Certified Fresh at 94%

The cast of Banana

Top 10 LGBTQ TV Shows of TtheE 2000’s:

1. Banana (2015) - Fresh at 100%
2. The Fosters (2013 - 2018) Fresh at 97%
3. Queer Eye (2018 - TBD) Certified Fresh at 96%
4. Pose (2018 – TBD) Certified Fresh at 96%
5. Orange is the New Black (2013 – TBD) Fresh at 91%
6. Cucumber (2015) Fresh at 91%
7. Looking (2014 – 2015) Fresh at 90%
8. Will & Grace (2017 – TBD) Certified Fresh at 86%
9. The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story (2018) - Certified Fresh at 86%
10. Sense8 (2015 – 2018) Fresh at 86%

(h/t Instinct)

Podcast: The Best Of LGBT Film, Music, TV & Pop Culture In 2017

This podcast is a big one as I celebrate the best 2017 had to offer regarding:

Best LGBT films:
• Call Me By Your Name
• God's Own Country
• Beach Rats
• Dream Boat
• Tom of Finland
• BPM
• In A Heartbeat
• No Place Like Home


Best music from out artists:
• Wrabel - "The Village"
• Halsey - "Strangers"
• Eli Lieb - "Next To You"
• JoLivi - "Love Who You Wanna Love"
• Rayvon Owen - "Volume"
• Trey Pearson - "Love Is Love"
• Billy Porter - "Edelweiss"

• Best in LGBT Pop Culture - including the return of "Will & Grace," "Star Trek's" first same-sex kiss, the Disney Channel's first gay storyline, RuPaul's second Emmy win and the historic win at the Academy Awards by "Moonlight"

Plus - good news LGBT headlines in the U.S. and around the world

This is a fun show to look back and feel good about the best 2017 had to offer the LGBT community.

Hit play.

Gay-Themed "Call Me By Your Name" Leads 2017 Independent Spirit Award Nominations

This year's Independent Spirit Award nominations have been announced and the highly-anticipated gay drama Call Me By Your Name starring Armie Hammer and Timothee Chalamet received six nominations including Best Feature, Best Director, Best Cinematography, Best Editing, Best Male Lead (for Timothee Chalamet), and Best Supporting Male (for Armie Hammer).

Call Me By Your Name bows in New York City and Los Angeles this Friday before opening nationwide.

Also, Sundance favorite Beach Rats picked up two nominations, one for Best Male Lead (for Harris Dickinson) and Best Cinematography,

Additionally, French AIDS/ACT UP drama BPM (Beats Per Minute) got a nod for Best International Film, as did A Fantastic Woman from Chile, in which trans actress Daniela Vega plays a transgender singer faced with discrimination and loss when her lover dies.

Here’s the full list of nominees:

Best Feature
“Call Me by Your Name”
“The Florida Project”
“Get Out”
“Lady Bird”
“The Rider”

Best First Feature
“Columbus”
“Ingrid Goes West”
“Menashe”
“Oh Lucy!”
“Patti Cake$”

Best Director
Sean Baker, “The Florida Project”
Jonas Carpignano, “A Ciambra”
Luca Guadagnino, “Call Me by Your Name”
Jordan Peele, “Get Out”
Benny Safdie, Josh Safdie, “Good Time”
Chloé Zhao, “The Rider”

Best Screenplay
Greta Gerwig, “Lady Bird”
Azazel Jacobs, “The Lovers”
Martin McDonagh, “Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri”
Jordan Peele, “Get Out”
Mike White, “Beatriz at Dinner”

Best First Screenplay
Kris Avedisian, Story By: Kyle Espeleta, Jesse Wakeman, “Donald Cried”
Emily V. Gordon, Kumail Nanjiani, “The Big Sick”
Ingrid Jungermann, “Women Who Kill”
Kogonada, “Columbus”
David Branson Smith, Matt Spicer, “Ingrid Goes West”

Best Cinematography
Thimios Bakatakis, “The Killing of a Sacred Deer”
Elisha Christian, “Columbus”
Hélène Louvart, “Beach Rats”
Sayombhu Mukdeeprom, “Call Me by Your Name”
Joshua James Richards, “The Rider”

Best Editing
Ronald Bronstein, Benny Safdie, “Good Time”
Walter Fasano, “Call Me by Your Name”
Alex O’Flinn, “The Rider”
Gregory Plotkin, “Get Out”
Tatiana S. Riegel, “I, Tonya”

Best Female Lead
Salma Hayek, “Beatriz at Dinner”
Frances McDormand, “Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri”
Margot Robbie, “I, Tonya”
Saoirse Ronan, “Lady Bird”
Shinobu Terajima, “Oh Lucy!”
Regina Williams, “Life and nothing more”

Best Male Lead
Timothée Chalamet, “Call Me by Your Name”
Harris Dickinson, “Beach Rats”
James Franco, “The Disaster Artist”
Daniel Kaluuya, “Get Out”
Robert Pattinson, “Good Time”

Best Supporting Female
Holly Hunter, “The Big Sick”
Allison Janney, “I, Tonya”
Laurie Metcalf, “Lady Bird”
Lois Smith, “Marjorie Prime”
Taliah Lennice Webster, “Good Time”

Best Supporting Male
Nnamdi Asomugha, “Crown Heights”
Armie Hammer, “Call Me by Your Name”
Barry Keoghan, “The Killing of a Sacred Deer”
Sam Rockwell, “Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri”
Benny Safdie, “Good Time”

Robert Altman Award
“Mudbound”

Best Documentary
“The Departure”
“Faces Places”
“Last Men in Aleppo”
“Motherland”
“Quest”

Best International Film
“BPM (Beats Per Minute)” (France)
“A Fantastic Woman,” (Chile)
“I Am Not a Witch,” (Zambia)
“Lady Macbeth,” (U.K.)
“Loveless,” (Russia)

Queer Film: BPM (Beats Per Minute)

France's submission for Best Foreign Language Film at the Oscars, BPM (Beats Per Minute) takes an unflinching look at ACT UP Paris in the early years of the AIDS epidemic, and we get the first American trailer today.

Clip description:

In Paris in the early 1990s, a group of activists goes to battle for those stricken with HIV/AIDS, taking on sluggish government agencies and major pharmaceutical companies in bold, invasive actions. The organization is ACT UP, and its members, many of them gay and HIV-positive, embrace their mission with a literal life-or-death urgency.

Amid rallies, protests, fierce debates and ecstatic dance parties, the newcomer Nathan falls in love with Sean, the group’s radical firebrand, and their passion sparks against the shadow of mortality as the activists fight for a breakthrough.

Variety raved about the film:

What does it take to fight a pandemic? Knowledge, courage and resilience, certainly, but also rough-and-tumble argument, a range of friendships both consoling and abrasive, a healthy sense of gallows humor and soul-sustaining supplies of loud music and louder sex.

French writer-director Robin Campillo understands all of this in “BPM (Beats Per Minute),” his sprawling, thrilling, finally heart-bursting group portrait of Parisian AIDS activists in the early 1990s. A rare and invaluable non-American view of the global health crisis that decimated, among others, the gay community in the looming shadow of the 21st century, Campillo’s unabashedly untidy film stands as a hot-blooded counter to the more polite strain of political engagement present in such prestige AIDS dramas as “Philadelphia” and “Dallas Buyers Club.”

Candidly queer in its perspective and unafraid of eroticism in the face of tragedy, this robust Cannes competition entry is nonetheless emotionally immediate enough to break out of the LGBT niche.

Watch the trailer below.

2014 Broadway Bares Solo Strips Highlights

Ten men and drag queen Kizha Carr raised $16,140 by baring almost all before a capacity crowd at the 2014 edition of Broadway Bares: Solo Strips on Sunday, May 11, 2014, at BPM Nightclub in NYC.

This year's lineup of Broadway Bares: Solo Strips performers included Callan Bergmann, Joshua Michael Brickman, Anthony Rooar DeCarlis, Todd Hanebrink, Vince Oddo Julius Rubio, Ricky Schroeder, Michael Scirrotto, Dennis Stowe and Ryan Worsing. Hosting the evening was Terren Wooten Clarke as Kizha Carr.

Broadway Bares: Solo Strips is a sexy tease for Broadway Bares, one of BC/EFA's annual signature events. This year's edition, Broadway Bares: Rock Hard!, will feature 150 of New York's most desirable dancers.

Broadway Bares: Rock Hard! will be held Sunday, June 22, with two performances only at 9:30 pm & Midnight at Hammerstein Ballroom, located in the Manhattan Center at 311 West 34th Street in NYC.

Broadway Bares - Solo Strips 2014

Broadway Bares: Solo Strips brings all the sizzling sexiness of Broadway Bares to a smaller, more intimate venue. Enjoy choreographed, solo stripteases by 10 of Broadway Bares' sexiest male dancers as they take it off to raise money for Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS.

Tickets for Broadway Bares: Solo Strips go on sale today. A limited number of premium reserved table seats are available for $100; additional reserved table seats are $40. General admission standing tickets also are available for a $15 donation. Tickets can be purchased online at broadwaycares.org or by calling 212.840.0770, ext 229.

Broadway Bares: Solo Strips on Sunday, May 11 at BPM Nightclub (512 West 42nd Street, NYC).