NEW YORK, NY – A talented, ambitious, and gay African filmmaker living in NYC, N. Mabasa-Mathope is not letting being homeless and HIV+ stand in the way of making his dream movie project a reality. And with over 530,000 YouTube views of the short film version, the buzz is definitely on about future hit dramedy,…
dvd of the week In the Coen brothers’ latest film, they focus on one of Greenwich Village’s folk musicians who failed. In the winter of 1961, Llewyn Davis (Oscar Isaac) is sleeping on the couches of the friends who aren’t angry with him, reeling from the suicide of his former singing partner and a furtive…
In last nights Academy Awards, hosted by Ellen DeGeneres, Jared Leto took home the award for Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role for his portrayal of Rayon, a trans woman living with AIDS in 1980s Texas, in Focus Feature’s Dallas Buyers Club. While accepting the award, Leto said “This is for the…
The nominees are set and the excitement has been building as we near the big night, March 1. Yes, it’s once again time for the Golden Raspberry Awards! If you are unfamiliar with the Razzies, as they are popularly known, think the polar opposite of the Oscars, awarded for the worst in film for the…
dvd of the week Steve McQueen’s remarkable 12 Years a Slave is based on the 1855 autobiography of Solomon Northup, played in the film by the great British actor Chiwetel Ejiofor. Solomon was born free and educated in upstate New York, and while his wife and children are away, he is kidnapped and sold into…
dvd of the week The plot of Gravity is quite simple. NASA astronauts have taken a space shuttle into orbit in order to repair the Hubble telescope. It is Matt Kowalski’s (George Clooney) last mission and Dr. Ryan Stone’s (a brilliant Sandra Bullock) first. While they are on a space walk outside the shuttle working…
dvr this Turner Classic Movies, 2:45 p.m., Friday, Feb. 28 Endlessly debated when it was released in 1994, Philadelphia is both an AIDS story sanitized for the masses and yet revolutionary in its depiction of the gay experience. Jonathan Demme’s direction is smooth and restrained, and Tom Hanks’ performance is legendary: so moving, so empathic…
The Lego Movie The Lego Movie could be the greatest advertisement ever made. I mean this in two ways: First, after I saw the movie, I walked immediately to Target and bought Legos, the first time I’d given myself and not a child Legos since I was a child myself. I’m sure that the sales…
If you’re like most people, when choosing your Oscar pool picks, you guess on a bunch of them, and definitely for the winners of the three short film awards. For many years, the short films were nearly impossible to see; the compilations of all of the nominees often didn’t show up at theaters until after…
As Gloria in Gloria, Paulina García has such a gravitational effect on your eyes, ears and empathy that it’s nearly impossible not to be enrapt with her, as an actress and as a middle-aged Chilean divorcée coping with both loneliness and with falling in love again. Unfortunately, Gloria was not nominated for the Best Foreign…
