Film: 30 Love

To mark the 30th anniversary of BFI Flare: London LGBT Film Festival, we are delighted to announce the Top 30 LGBT Films of All Time in the first major critical survey of LGBT films.

Over 100 film experts including critics, writers and programmers such as Joanna Hogg, Mark Cousins, Peter Strickland, Richard Dyer, Nick James and Laura Mulvey, as well as past and present BFI Flare programmers, have voted the Top 30 LGBT Films of All Time. The poll’s results represent 84 years of cinema and 12 countries, from countries including Thailand, Japan, Sweden and Spain, as well as films that showed at BFI Flare such as Orlando (1992), Beautiful Thing (1996), Weekend (2011) and Blue Is the Warmest Colour (2013)....

BFI.

The top ten...

1 Carol (Todd Haynes, USA 2015).
2 Weekend (Andrew Haigh, UK 2011).
3 Happy Together (Wong Kar-wai, Hong Kong/Japan/South Korea 1997).
4 Brokeback Mountain (Ang Lee, USA/ Canada 2005).
5 Paris Is Burning (Jennie Livingston, USA 1990).
6 Tropical Malady (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Thailand/France/Germany/Italy 2004).
7 My Beautiful Laundrette (Stephen Frears, UK 1985).
8 All About My Mother (Pedro Almodóvar, Spain/France 1999).
9 Un Chant d’Amour (Jean Genet, France 1950).
10 My Own Private Idaho (Gus Van Sant, USA 1991).

Sake, Brokeback Mountain and My Own Private Idaho are chick flicks, and Weekend is as dull as a wet weekend.

Still, at least that hour-and-a-half depoliticised rictus grin, Pride, didn't make their final cut.

Pride: Lesbians And Gays Support The Miners (Not Today's Workers)

Don't forget to get your free tickets to the Pride premiere today!

They are available from those well-known bastions of working-class solidarity, the Daily Mail and Gay Star News.

And at all Picturehouse cinemas.

That's right.

Workers from Picturehouse have been on strike most of this year.

And don't forget, one of the many reasons GSN is so abysmal is cause they think it's okay not to pay people who work for them, and just get some unpaid interns in.

Solidarity!

Still, all hail Pride (the movie).

'I'd cross a picket line to see this feel-good movie about gays and trade unions and err...' Daily Mail.

'This is the best film ever since the last one we said that about*, can you put this on your poster?' Attitude.

* Weekend.

PS Other hilarious incongruities in the Daily Mail's film of the year.

Update: Another rave review, this time from Britain's only communist daily newspaper, the Telegraph!

Looking: Unexclusive!

Fagburn is proud to bring you this trailer for HBO's TV series, Looking, long after everyone else has.

Here's 10 TOPFax about it...

1. Even though you can only see 30 seconds-worth, some blogger-types have said it looks like being the greatest gay TV programme ever made!

2. It's a "dramedy" (Oh, do fuck off!) about three friends in San Francisco. They are gayers, incidentally.

3. It is made by HBO, who have done some other shows that - admittedly - are rather good. Well, Curb is anyway.

4. It's directed by Andrew Haigh (most of it). Though I thought Weekend was just a teensy bit overrated by the pink knicker-wetting crowd. Here's an interview with Haigh and executive producer/writer, Michael Lannan.

5. That lovely Russell Tovey's in it - his first proper gay role. Everyone loves Russell. He's like a big gay puppy.

6. Michael Groff stars, though he doesn't really mean that much over here, does he? He's been in Glee, but he's basically a Broadway babe.

7. Groff says there's going to be some "sexy" sex in it. "Sexy" gay sex! Woop.

8. The San Francisco-setting and all that facial hair made me wonder if it was set in the 70s at first - I had to whizz back and check I'd really seen that Apple laptop.

9. Apart from that, I have absolutely no idea what it will be like.

10. It airs in January in America. Dunno about the UK. Can't wait!

GLAAD: The Price Of Everything And The Value Of Nothing

In its first ever study of LGBT representation on film, GLAAD finds the major studios are really slipping on their gay pimpin’. According to their Studio Responsibility Index, only 14 of the 101 releases from major studios contained lesbian, gay or bisexual characters, with nary a transgender representation in sight...

Additional findings from the study include:

- More than half of those inclusive films (55.6%) featured gay male characters, while another 33% featured lesbian characters and 11% contained bisexual characters. Male characters represented 63% of LGBT images on screen, while female characters made up just 37%

- Of the 31 different characters counted (some of whom were onscreen for no more than a few seconds), 26 were white (83.9%), four were Black/African-American (12.9%) and one was Latino (3.2%). There were no Asian-Pacific Islander or recognizably multi-racial LGBT characters counted.

- The most common place to find LGBT characters in the major studios’ 2012 releases was in comedies, where nine of the 24 comedies released (37.5%) were inclusive. By comparison, 34 genre films (action, sci-fi, fantasy, etc.) made up the majority of the 2012 releases, though only three (8.8%) of those included any LGBT characters. Additionally, only one of 21 dramas (4.7%) and one of four documentaries (25%) were inclusive, while there were no LGBT characters in any animated or family-oriented films from the ‘Big Six.’

Queerty.

Fagburn would be fascinated to learn what anyone is supposed to learn from this, or indeed from any of GLAAD's endless queer headcounting "surveys" on LGBT representation in the media.
Apart from that the well-funded group is obsessed with quantity over quality.

Weekend gif shamelessly borrowed from Queerty - if only the fillum had been that short it might have been bearable.
GLAAD review of Weekend; "Drama. Contains two white gay men - onscreen for one and a half-hours each (approx.). Lesbian, trans, Asian-Pacific-Islander, and Black/African-American characters completely absent. Rating 3/10."

Weekend: The Greatest Film Ever Made Ever!

"Funny you should say that, I still haven't got round to seeing it yet, either..."

Weekend: Next Weekend

The Weekend lovefest continues apace.
Here's Tim Robey metaphorically spunking over director Andrew Haigh's face in the Daily Telegraph;
'The new British movie 'Weekend’ depicts a romance between two men with such intimacy and optimism that it is drawing audiences of all persuasions.'
While Tim "Timmy Teacakes" Teeman shot his load in The Times yesterday;
'Could this small British movie be the best relationship film ever — and not just a gay one?'
(Tim also gives away the ending - SPOILER ALERT! etc).
Note how both pieces stress its appeal to non-homosexual types - is that how they pitched it to their editors?
Are we supposed to be surprised?
I've enjoyed many, many films about straight people falling in love...
November's Attitude asks on its cover "Weekend: The Best British Gay Film Ever?"
But then you realise the competition's not exactly that great, is it?
Which is a recurring riff in writing about Weekend.
Is it any good?
Don't ask me, I ain't seen it yet - but I will dutifully trot along to my local arthouse cinema when it opens next weekend.
Probably.
Obviously I won't pronounce forth until I've actually watched it, but seeing as most of the people who've been raving about it are posh gay tits I can't stick - and who thought "Wow! They made my boring bourgeois wannabe hipster life into a movie with two fit blokes!" - I'll almost certainly hate it.

Glasgay!: By The Way

Glasgay! is now underway by the way.
Have to say after looking at the programme looks a bit more well thought out and interesting than "these sort of things" usually are.
Edwin Morgan, Scottee Scottee, Weekend Q&A with director Andrew Haigh, Margaret Cho, Mark Eitzel...

Fagburn: A Nice Day Out

Only had time to had a quick look at the papers this morning - I'm off to London to be a culture ponce.
Going to see Grayson Perry's Tomb Of The Unknown Craftsman, but I'll probably spend the day at the British Museum.
I'll have a proper look at the papers this evening.
Nothing big happening, it seems.
Liam Fox hasn't resigned.
Or been sacked.
Or come out.
Lots of critics are getting very excited about Weekend - "the greatest film about gay men ever made", not the thing that starts when you finish work today.
"Laters".