Burlesque and Some Other Movies are Nominated for Awards etc

The GLAAD Media Awards are hardly on most people's radars and yet here they are throwing up a slate of nominees that seems like an oddly inclusive representation of the year 2010. There is the token breakout indie (The Kids are All Right, the all-but-signed-sealed winner), the token blockbuster (Scott Pilgrim vs The World), the token comedy (Easy A), the token foreign-language hit (The Girl Who Played with Fire) and the token movie people are surprised to discover others actually like (Burlesque).

OUTSTANDING FILM - WIDE RELEASE
Burlesque (Screen Gems)
Easy A (Screen Gems)
The Girl Who Played with Fire (Music Box Films)
The Kids are All Right (Focus Features)
Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (Universal Pictures)

In case you've been under a rock for the past week, I very much liked Burlesque, and it's heartening to see a corporation as iffy as GLAAD recognise a movie that - *gasp* - we're not to meant like because it reinforces stereotypes of superficiality, camp and bad taste. Sometimes it feels like GLAAD should enforce a subtitle in their organisation title - GLAAD: We're Just Like You, Please Love Us!

While I haven't seen Girl and Easy A, both of which unfortunately slipped me by at cinemas, their inclusions at least don't sound embarrassing. And as much as I found annoying about Edgar Wright's Scott Pilgrim adaptation, the gay character of "Wallace Wells" was not one of them. The Kids are All Right is an obvious inclusion, but I do find it interesting that they didn't throw a bone to Tyler Perry whose For Colored Girls was surprisingly high (or should that be "down low") on gay content. This list of nominees isn't exactly hurting for white candidates, is it? Of course, they could have been really daring and nominated Jackass 3D! Let's just be thankful they didn't nominate Kick-Ass for that film's offensive weird, creepy fake-gay subplot. Yikes, what was that about, anyway?

OUTSTANDING FILM - LIMITED RELEASE
Howl (Oscilloscope Pictures)
I Love You Phillip Morris (Roadside Attractions)
La Mission (Screen Media Ventures)
Patrik, Age 1.5 (Regent Releasing)
Undertow (Wolfe Releasing)

I have Howl sitting here waiting to be watched, but from almost every source I have spoken to it is not a good movie, which is a damned shame. I Love You Phillip Morris, on the other hand is very good and a hilarious, daring take on the prickly subject matter. GLAAD probably felt they had to nominate it since it's one of the few films that wears its gay badge with pride, thrusts it in your face and then has sex with it in a public toilet as George Michael looks on. La Mission, a father-must-deal-with-sons-homosexuality-in-culture-that-won't-accept-it drama starring Benjamin Bratt, has a lot wrong with its screenplay (namely the character of Lena, played by Erica Alexander), but it has some interesting things to say on gay relationships between races and generations so I'm happy to see its inclusion here. Undertow and Patrik Age 1.5 I have not seen, but I've heard nothing but good things about the former. I think it will be playing at the upcoming Melbourne Queer Film Festival and I anticipate checking it out.


Speaking of MQFF, they will also be screening Gregg Araki's Kaboom, which recently released an amazing new poster (above), Xavier Dolan's Les amours imaginaires, Prima Donna: The Story of Rufus Wainwright's Debut Opera and the aforementioned La Mission.

OUTSTANDING DOCUMENTARY
8: The Mormon Proposition (Red Flag Releasing)
Edie & Thea: A Very Long Engagement (Sundance Channel)
Prodigal Sons (First Run Features)
Sylvester, UnSung (TV One)
Out: The Glenn Burke Story (Comcast SportsNet Bay Area)

The only of these that I have seen is Kimberly Reed's Prodigal Sons and it's probably the best film from the entire GLAAD roster. I highly recommend everyone seeking that one out. Even if you're not too interested in the life of a transgender woman, it's got a fascinating old Hollywood hook that should reel you in. It's a doozy!

That's all they have for the film categories, which is a shame. Oh what I'd give for a serious selection of nominees for "Best Performance by a Straight-Playing-Gay" or "Best Gay Film about an All-Boys Choir". I'm sure there are dozens of those released on the gay arthouse/festival circuit every year, right? To read the rest of nominees you can do so at The Hollywood Reporter.

High Praise

It amazes me to this very day to read movie websites and blogs that still harp on about Shakespeare in Love beating Saving Private Ryan to Best Picture honours. Even though people don't seem to realise that Saving Private Ryan would have made for perhaps the most cliched Oscar-winner in the history of the Academy (Spielberg! Hanks! WWII! Vin Diesel!) In that debate I remain firmly in the camp of Shakespeare, but if given the option between that or The Thin Red Line... well, the call would be close.

Meanwhile over in the Best Actress category people still think Cate Blanchett was robbed for her performance in Elizabeth, who was beaten to the golden statue by Gwyneth Paltrow for Shakespeare in Love. At the time I was all about Blanchett and in my very young life as an Oscar watcher (the first ceremony I remember sitting down and watching the entirety of was one year earlier when Titanic swept the board) I couldn't quite fathom how she lost. Since then I am all about Paltrow in the battle of Best Actress '98.

However, I imagine that all those people who cry foul over Blanchett's loss have never seen Lisa Cholodenko's High Art, for if they had they would have a far bigger snub complaint in the form of Ally Sheedy's performance as "Lucy Berliner". I had never seen it either and had only heard mythical whispering from the likes of Nathaniel Rogers and... umm... er, anyone else? Now that I have seen it, on the eve of Cholodenko's next lesbian love tangle The Kids Are All Right (released 5 September), I can wholehearted agree that Ally Sheedy should have an Academy Award on her mantel right now.

As Nathaniel mentions in the piece I linked to, "How could any of (the five nominated) performances not have been nominated", since there was Meryl Streep with cancer, the next big thing making Royalty Porn, Hollywood's daughter reciting Shakespeare, an aging international stay bonding with a small child and the star of a biopic of a tortured musical genius. Still, one watch of High Art and you've got to wonder the Academy let Sheedy's performance pass through their fingers. Is it because a) the film's confronting homosexuality (something I am unaware of them embracing at that stage), b) High Art came at the tail end of the '90s indie movement at a time when all the big names were breaking out and taking their culturally hip audiences with them along with their multi-million dollar budgets or c) they couldn't resign themselves to the fact that an actress who made a name for herself in 1980s teen dramas was actually capable of giving a performance richer than one by Meryl Streep and the traditionalists couldn't handle it.

Hmmm.

Yes, "hmmm" indeed!

Nevertheless, Sheedy deserved that Oscar. It's interesting to wonder what may have happened if she had even been nominated. What would her career be like today? Since High Art in 1998 Sheedy's most high-profile work has come on TV series such as CSI, Oz and Once and Again. Her recent cameo in Todd Solondz' Life During Wartime should hopefully kick start something, maybe another auteur will notice her, remember how great she is capable of being and cast her in a great role.

It's interesting to look at the 1998 Best Actress race and wonder what happened to some of the also rans. Christina Ricci, so very good and Golden Globe-nominated in The Opposite of Sex, has slid so far down the chain of great actresses since that role that it's nigh on depressing (Black Snake Moan and Monster notwithstanding although even those have their detractors). Jane Horrocks' Golden Globe-nominated performance in Little Voice lead to this and it's arguable that Meg Ryan (also Globe-nominated) has effectively been a complete non-entity since You've Got Mail. Ally Sheedy's in good company then.