When We Rise: Soon

ABC has ordered the gay-rights miniseries “When We Rise” from “Milk” screenwriter Dustin Lance Black, according to media reports.

Gus Van Sant will also serve as executive producer and will direct the first two-hour episode of the eight-hour miniseries, reuniting him with Black after previously directing the 2008 Harvey Milk biopic.

Produced by ABC Studios, “When We Rise” chronicles the personal and political struggles, setbacks and triumphs of a diverse family of LGBT men and women who helped pioneer one of the last legs of the U.S. Civil Rights movement from its turbulent infancy in the 20th century to the once unfathomable successes of today.

The series will tell the history of the gay rights movement, beginning with the Stonewall Riots of 1969. It was originally put into development at ABC in 2013.

Laurence Mark and Bruce Cohen will also serve as executive producers on the miniseries.

The Wrap.

Confirmed by an excited DLB.

But will it be as good as Stonewall The Movie?

Restless: One Star

"The sheer fatuity of the film's representation of bereavement and death is breathtaking, and even given that it is, arguably, supposed to be a semi-fantastical riff, there is something so insufferably smug about the whole proceedings. This film is so annoying that as the lights went up, I was to be found hanging from the cinema ceiling by my fingernails, growling."

Peter Bradshaw's review of Gus Van Sant's Restless in The Guardian.

GQ: Ungentlemanly Questions

Welcome to my blog! For my very first post I’d hoped to keep it light and talk about how my new swimming pool isn’t coming along at the rate I’d hoped (fingers crossed for summer 2012). Instead, more than a few friends and co-workers pointed me to a recent GQ interview with Taylor Lautner and I felt I had to respond. Evidently the GQ writer asked whether director Gus Van Sant and writer Dustin Lance Black made a pass at him when the three dined together in Los Angeles recently. Really Mr. GQ writer? I’m curious, will you be asking all of the handsome actors I’ve ever had the privilege of working with or meeting if I made passes at them as well? I’d love to be there when you ask Sean Penn that same question. Or, Mr. GQ writer, were you projecting your own unprofessional desires onto me and Gus? Perhaps? Or worse still, are you a homophobe? Above and beyond this clear attack on my character, I’m shocked that GQ would allow their writer to lean on the scurrilous, outdated stereotype that gay men are by nature sexual predators. I mean, would you have asked this same question if it were Diablo Cody and Kathryn Bigelow at dinner with Mr. Lautner? Leaning on lies, myths and stereotypes about gay people is hateful, harmful and outdated. It’s not the 1950s anymore GQ, it’s 2011 and it’s time to grow up.

The wonderful Dustin Lance Black launches his website's blog in angry mode.

• I learn from dreamy Dustin's website he's writing the script for a movie about the Barefoot Bandit. Yowsah yowsah yowsah!