Film News 9/1/06

Supercritic Jonathan Rosenbaum has contributed an essay to the DVD of Kicking and Screaming and commentary to the latest Criterion edition of Playtime. He's also been contributing a series of fun articles to DVDBeaver.com. I saw an interesting quote from him in a review of The Last Movie.

Joss Whedon won a Hugo award for Serenity. He also recently made a list of favorite tv characters which is written in his trademark style. Rumors continue to flow about who might play Wonder Woman. Pay no attention. Speaking of Whedon, Amber Benson (beloved for her role om Buffy) will guest on an upcoming episode of Supernatural.

The Beat has information on Ursula K. Leguin's reaction to the movie version of her book The Farthest Shore made by Studio Ghibli.

Q World Video asks notable personalities about their favorite gay films. Recently they asked Wash Westmoreland (Co-director of Quincenera and The Fluffer with husband Richard Glatzer):

My favorite LGBT film is A TASTE OF HONEY, a "kitchen sink" drama set in Salford, England in the early sixties. It is the story of Jo (Rita Tushingham) a teenage girl who is abandoned by her gloriously wanton mother (Dora Bryant), gets pregnant by a black sailor (Paul Danquah) and shacks up with Geoff (Murray Melvin), a young gay man she meets in a shoe shop. Geoff's character has no coming-out moment, no self hatred, or angst over his circumstances; he just moves in with Jo, starts "doing the place up" and thereby forms one of cinema's very first queer families. Made at a time when homosexuality was illegal in Britain, the film was the vision of a 19 year-old usherette, Shelagh Delaney, who, legend has it, was bored with the irrelevance of the plays in her theater. It was a big influence on QUINCEANERA , which features a pregnant latina and her gay cholo cousin. In both movies, the affectionate central relationship is clothed in antagonism and irreverence. "What do you do?" Jo asks Geoff with blunt curiosity, "Go on tell! I've always wanted to know..." And this was in 1961!"

I found this interesting because by coincidence I recently watched A Taste of Honey, and when I saw Glatzer's (very solid) film, I could clearly see the influence.

Dalkey Archive is moving from Illinois to Rochester, NY. This neck of the woods will be a bit sadder, but at least they seem to be thriving.