Jeff and I recently watched the new documentary Fabulous! The Story of Queer Cinema. It’s a great companion to the 10-year old The Celluloid Closet (and the original book), because it covers the recent explosion in gay-themed movies and focuses more on non-mainstream independent filmmakers (people covered in the Queer Theory class I took).

Fabulous! features lots of great interviews with directors like Todd Haynes, Gus Van Sant, John Waters, Angela Robinson, John Cameron Mitchell, Don Roos; actors like Alan Cumming, Wilson Cruz, Heather Matarazzo, Dan Bucatinsky; and writers like B. Ruby Rich and Michael Musto. In fact, it features more talking heads and less film footage than I remember in The Celluloid Closet. But it’s interesting to hear all their personal reactions and thoughts, and not all of them paint the rosy picture you’d expect (the DVD bonuses includes even more interview footage, on a variety of topics like “First Gay Movie Memories” and “Favorite Movie Love Scenes”).

The documentary ends with a brief mention of the then yet-to-be-released Brokeback Mountain. While I loved Brokeback, I’m not sure it’s ushering in the golden era of gay filmmaking that everyone predicted or hoped for. What’s more interesting is the coverage of Jonathan Caouette’s Tarnation, which he originally assembled himself using home movie footage and iMovie. With the popularity of websites like YouTube, I wonder if the next wave of Queer filmmakers will emerge from the Internet…

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When people in NYC ask where I live, I usually just tell them it’s the block with all the shoe stores (W 8th St). But that’s increasingly untrue as more and more stores go out of business and the block has a record number of retail vacancies.

According to The Villager, a bunch of new restaurants are supposed to be coming to fill these vacancies. However, the new Subway they’re putting in (which, at the other end of the block, is as close to me as the OTHER Subway at 8th & University), isn’t inspiring much confidence in this plan…

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I like to think I’m internet-savvy, but I had simply not been able to locate and download the leaked copy of Jennifer Hudson’s “And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going” from the upcoming Dreamgirls. Then one of my RAs just bopped into my office and told me he’d gotten it through a link posted on a Whitney Houston message board (and no, I don’t know the link).

So after listening to it, I’m even more impatient for the premiere. I think Hudson manages to throw in enough new vocal runs to make the song her own, while still evoking the ferocity of Jennifer Holliday’s original rendition. Let’s just hope her acting matches her singing.

Nitpicks? The mix was a bit off and the chord structure of the final orchestra hits seemed wrong. But I’m sure that can be fixed.

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32 (my age as of Sept 9) + 7 (the age of my blog as of Aug 25) + 3 (the number of years Jeff and I have been together as of today) = 42.

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