If you, like me, spent your teen years obsessing over getting into the next high school musical, you'll find a lot to identify with — and enjoy — in Drama Queers!Author Frank Anthony Polito's fab follow up to his debut novel Band Fags!, Drama Queers! recounts in loving detail the trials and tribulations of, you guessed it, being a "drama queer".  Stuck in the "sorry little suburb" of Hazel Park, Michigan circa 1987, Polito's semi-autobiographical protagonist, Bradley James Dayton, yearns to be a star of stage and screen ... but first he has to ...

The British are coming, but this time they aren't sporting redcoats and muskets. Instead, they have Rupert Everett in drag and two hot, female singer-songwriters in their arsenal. Having sampled this assortment, I predict the Brits will have a better run in the colonies in 2010 than they did 230+ years ago!First up is the DVD release today of the delightful St. Trinian's, from Sony Pictures Home Entertainment. One of the highest-grossing independent British films of all time, it features the openly gay Everett and an all-star cast of gay faves including Colin Firth (the current ...

David Oliveras' Watercolors, about a high school art student who falls in love with a hunky if troubled member of the swim team, made quite a splash (no pun intended ... OK, maybe a little) at Outfest, Los Angeles's GLBT film festival, way back in the summer of 2008. It is finally being released theatrically this weekend in Los Angeles and New York as part of a gay mini-fest sponsored by Regent Releasing/here! Films and Gay.com.The plot of Watercolors is reminiscent of the superior, 1999 British film Get Real, in which a self-accepting gay ...

Kirk Douglas was sexy, to be sure, as the loincloth-clad star of Stanley Kubrick’s epic 1960 film Spartacus. Apart from that loincloth, though, Douglas doesn’t have anything on the sometimes-nude hunks that populate the new Starz series Spartacus: Blood and Sand, which premieres on the cable channel tonight. Seemingly inspired by the blockbuster 2007 film 300 as much as by historical accounts of a slave uprising against ancient Rome, the series is a stylish if graphically bloody soap opera. A lot of money appears to have gone into Spartacus: Blood and Sand, and its high-powered producers include filmmaker ...

Recently, I and my fellow Movie Dearest Men on Film Chris Carpenter and Neil Cohen were pleased to be invited to join the Gay & Lesbian Entertainment Critics Association.  The newly formed group wasted no time in giving out its own annual kudos, christened the Dorian Awards, to the best in LGBT-themed film and television.A Single Man was named both Film of the Year and LGBT-Themed Film of the Year, as well as star Colin Firth for Film Performance.  Glee also won three Dorians, for both TV Musical or Comedy and Campy TV Show of the ...

The 2010 Palm Springs International Film Festival ran January 5-18, ending just before torrential rains hit southern California. Chances are the celebratory crowds who attended wouldn't have minded if the storm had arrived earlier. This year's fest featured nearly 200 movies from over 70 different countries, and saw Oscar winners Morgan Freeman and Helen Mirren mingling with the likes of Mariah Carey and the super-cute stars of The Big Gay Musical!Indeed, the festival's 21st annual edition included 20 GLBT-themed movies, an all-time high. It's Gay!La centerpiece on January 14 was the California premiere of I Love ...

Oh, those wacky folks at the Hollywood Foreign Press Association sure proved their populist nature with tonight's Golden Globe Awards. Winners included such box office hits as Avatar, The Blind Side, Sherlock Holmes and, most surprising of all, The Hangover.  Meanwhile, such critical darlings as The Hurt Locker and Up in the Air were left with little to no recoginition, a fact that will surely cloud Oscar predictions for the rest of the season.See the comments section below for a quick look at all the winners. ...

The results are in:  your predictions for the Best Picture winners at this year's Golden Globes are Up in the Air for Drama and Nine for Musical or Comedy.  In fact, you were in complete agreement as exactly one third of the 84 votes in each poll were placed for both of these contenders.Runners up, respectively, were Avatar and Julie & Julia. See the comments section below for the complete results of both polls, and tune in to NBC tomorrow night to see if the Hollywood Foreign Press agrees with us. ...

It's a new year (and a new decade), with plenty of new and exciting films just around the bend. But which one is your absolute must see for 2010?Is it the latest adventures of Harry Potter, Buzz and Woody, Iron Man, Carrie Bradshaw or the Twilight gang? How about new versions of such old favorites as Alice in Wonderland, Clash of the Titans or Robin Hood? Or do you just want to see more of Jake looking like this?Make your choice and place your vote in the MD Poll located in the right hand sidebar. The ultimate "must ...

The late, iconoclastic director Robert Altman wasn’t gay, but several of his films reflect an open-minded attitude toward GLBT people. Although best known for the 1970’s hits M*A*S*H and Nashville, Altman made a string of adaptations of stage plays in the 1980’s. Among them was Streamers (1983), which will be making its DVD debut on January 19.Written by Tony Award-winning playwright David Rabe, Streamers stars Matthew Modine (in one of his first screen roles) as the leader of several young Army recruits waiting to be deployed to Vietnam. In the interim, they find themselves increasingly torn by ...

GLAAD (Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation), the nation’s GLBT media advocacy and anti-defamation organization, has announced the nominees for its 21st Annual GLAAD Media Awards.As expected, A Single Man and Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire led the nominees for Outstanding Film - Wide Release, where they are joined by Everybody's Fine, I Love You, Man and Taking Woodstock. Meanwhile, Casi Divas, The Country Teacher, Little Ashes, Phoebe in Wonderland and The Secrets fill out the Limited Release categoryNominations for television include three-time winner Brothers & Sisters in the ...

“Butch” and “straight-acting” have long been used by gay and bisexual men to judge the perceived masculinity — or lack thereof — of other men as well as their own masculinity. Such terms have provoked debate within the GLBT community, however, and they certainly aren’t used by everyone … at least not to mean the same things.The Butch Factor, being released on DVD January 19 by Wolfe Video, delves into this ongoing struggle to identify what makes one more or less of “a man” than another in the eyes of some. Filmmaker Christopher Hines scoured the US ...

Nancy Meyers obviously knows what women want … "women of a certain age", that is. The writer/director of What Women Want, Something’s Gotta Give and It’s Complicated has got to give her audience strong female leads with seemingly bottomless bank accounts, a screwy love life to sort out, and a clueless adult child (or three).Oh, and there has to be an aging male chauvinist for our heroine to skewer ... before the two fall madly in love. It’s no coincidence that both Something’s Gotta Give and It’s Complicated were once known as “Untitled Nancy Meyers Project,” since they ...

Daybreakers is hitting theaters at just the right time. Following the over-commercialized cheer of Christmas and in the midst of the Hollywood awards season, this clever twist on the vampire genre provides a much needed, big-screen jolt of social satire and blood-drenched horror.Set ten or so years from now, Daybreakers details an Earth that has been overrun with bloodsuckers following the outbreak of a bat-borne pathogen. Unlike the mindless ghouls of, say, I Am Legend, these vampires have retained their human memories and civility, and don’t look much worse for wear apart from paler complexions, discreet fangs and ...

Reverend was dumbfounded to discover in late November-early December various online articles and blog posts dismissing Tom Ford's gorgeous directorial debut A Single Man as having been "de-gayed" prior to its release. Most of these writers and bloggers hadn't seen the film, while I had and could attest that A Single Man (based on the landmark novel by Christopher Isherwood) isn't only the best gay-themed mainstream film since Brokeback Mountain, but also goes its predecessor a step further in that its multiple gay characters aren't self-loathing closet cases living hypocritical, double lives.While George Falconer ...

Hugh Jackman is the obvious choice for Man of the Year because, well, he inspired a porn copycat named Huge Jackman.We’re kidding, of course. Jackman is so beloved because he’s a gorgeous action hero who can also sing and dance, as evidenced by his smooth Oscar hosting this year. This year he also pleased fans everywhere by offering his film X-Men Origins: Wolverine to the “hometown” that earned the most votes. Tempe, Arizona won the honors and Jackman led the film's cast at a huge premiere. He ended the year starring opposite fellow Cinematic Crush ...

We’ve loved Jane Lynch since we were first blown away by her performance as butch lesbian dog trainer Christy Cummings in Christopher Guest’s Best in Show. We also loved her in A Mighty Wind, The 40 Year-Old Virgin and countless TV guest spots. Heck, we would have even loved her in Taxi Killer if we knew what that film was. This year, however, Lynch has burst onto the national consciousness as Sue Sylvester on Glee.As Faculty Coach of the fictional Cheerios cheerleading squad, Lynch’s Sue is a tracksuit-wearing ball-buster who brings new meaning to the word “power mad”. ...

The 2009 Broadway season boasted shows loaded with GLBT sensibilities: tap-dancing British boys, naked flower children, and, yes, even mothers throwing silverware and singing about being bipolar. However, the best of the best was Shrek The Musical. It touts one of the cleverest, funniest and most inventive scores to come along in a great while. Shrek shines as a beacon, not just for the GLBT community, but also for anyone anywhere who has ever been made to feel less than they are simply because they're different.The book and lyrics by David Lindsay-Abaire (a wordsmith to keep an eye ...

Soap operas have had gay characters before, but none have been as fully-realized as Oliver Fish and Kyle Lewis, the One Live to Live couple (collectively known as "Kish") expertly brought to life by Scott Evans and Brett Claywell.Since their storyline began in early 2009, Llanview Police Officer Fish has come out on national TV, been ostracized by his conservative parents and, oh yeah, unknowingly fathered a secret love child (this is a soap after all). Meanwhile, his former college boyfriend Kyle has dodged blackmail charges, returned to med school and almost got married in a mass gay ...

The title of Glee is most fitting, for that is exactly what we are filled with each time we watch it. Creator Ryan Murphy's musical dramedy — think Election meets High School Musical by way of American Idol — defied all the odds to become a pop culture sensation in 2009. And, if the continuing string of hit iTunes singles, four Golden Globe nominations (more than any other TV program this year) and a growing fan base of dearly devoted "Gleeks" everywhere are any indication, it is only just beginning.Glee's deft mixture of relentless optimism and biting ...