10 things to see at BFI Flare (formerly LLGFF) 2014

Posted · 5 Comments

 Who doesn’t love a makeover? For more than a quarter of a century, it’s been the London Lesbian & Gay Film Festival but last year, the British Film Institute decided it was time to change things up and went looking for a new name for the capital’s biggest queer screenfest. The result is BFI Flare […]

Stranger by the Lake Guardian feature and S&S review

Posted · Add Comment

 Just a little heads up about a couple of pieces I wrote related to Alain Guiraudie’s terrific, unsettling thriller Stranger by the Lake, a naturalistic and intoxicating tale of sex and murder  at a French lakeside cruising spot that was released in the UK this weekend. For Sight & Sound, I reviewed it as one […]

Waxie Moon image © Tim Summers

Five reasons you need to meet Waxie Moon

Posted · 1 Comment

 Glamour, tragedy, gentleness, fierceness, masc, fem, a leather flogger and a magic wand. Waxie Moon has got it all. Seattle’s favourite “gender-blending queer lady boylesque performance art solo stripping sensation” is a truly phenomenal one-off who can rock a dive bar, classical dance stage or riverbank graveside with the same mix of grace, camp and […]

Nir Paldi stars in Theatre Ad Infinitum's Ballad of the Burning Star

‘Play the Nazi music!’ Why cabaret and drag are ideal for a show about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

Posted · Add Comment

 During their period of compulsory national service, which kicks in at the age of 18, most Israelis serve in the military. When Nir Paldi was conscripted, he didn’t undertake combat training. He directed a production of Hair, the musical. “It’s hilarious,” Paldi says. “There’s this youth regiment in the Israeli army that works in collaboration […]

Timberlina

12 alternative Valentine events

Posted · Add Comment

 Valentine’s Day. Ugh. Can you bear it? Well, here’s a dozen fun things to do in London this weekend that involve neither trying to book an overpriced set-menu dinner nor having to avoid smug couples on their way to overpriced set-menu dinners.   Ideas Tap Takeover: Love Lots of cabaret, theatre, film and spoken word […]

Guardian film blog Lego Movie

The LEGO Movie – Hollywood’s answer to the Occupy movement?

Posted · Add Comment

 Judging by the trailer for The LEGO Movie, I thought it might be really interesting in terms of its mashing up of different pop-culture worlds (DC superheroes, Lord of the Rings mythology, My Little Pony cuteness etc) in a way that chimed with what I like about sweding – treating media franchises as folk culture […]

Sharia Law photo by © Adrian Kinloch

Out in the Manor with Sharia Law

Posted · Add Comment

 As well as being the brains behind the web design for Not Television (and innumerable fantastic sites elsewhere), Adrian Kinloch is a stellar photographer. British born, living in New York and often in London, he has an acute, intelligent, sensitive and witty eye for a range of situations, from political protests to derelict borderlands, always managing to […]

Joey Arias with Kristian Hoffman and Bourgeois and Maurice in Lightning Strikes, a tribute to Klaus Nomi presented by Icy Gays at the ICA

Review – Joey Arias & Kristian Hoffman: Lightning Strikes at the ICA

Posted · 1 Comment

Review of Lightning Strikes, a concert at London’s ICA in which Joey Arias and Kristian Hoffman pay tribute to their late collaborator Klaus Nomi, and keep a particular flame of queer culture alive

Guardian film blog Robocop remake

RoboCop-out

Posted · Add Comment

 Gosh, but I love me some Paul Verhoeven. To my mind, the brilliantly perverse Dutch director is one of the greatest satirists in film history – certainly one of the finest ever to have worked within the Hollywood machine. He is consistently interested in wrongfooting audiences – challenging them to question their own engagement in […]

Inky Cloak's Cover Her Face starring La JohnJoseph at Bethnal Green Working Men's Club image by Leon Csernohlavek

Uncover Her Face – 1950s London’s secret queer and trans lives

Posted · 2 Comments

 Sexual intercourse, as Philip Larkin famously noted, began in 1963, “Between the end of the ‘Chatterley’ ban / And the Beatles’ first LP”. By those lights – the ones that take something’s beginning as being the point at which its reality broke undeniably and irreversibly into all levels of public consciousness – queerness began a few years […]

 
  • BFI Flare 2024 preview for Sight & Sound !function(d s id){var js fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0] p=/^http:/.test(d.location)?'http':'https';if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=p+'://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js';fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js fjs);}}(document 'script' 'twitter-wjs'); (function() [...]
  • All of Us Strangers review for Sight & Sound !function(d s id){var js fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0] p=/^http:/.test(d.location)?'http':'https';if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=p+'://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js';fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js fjs);}}(document 'script' 'twitter-wjs'); (function() [...]
  • Passages review for Sight & Sound !function(d s id){var js fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0] p=/^http:/.test(d.location)?'http':'https';if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=p+'://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js';fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js fjs);}}(document 'script' 'twitter-wjs'); (function() [...]
  • Lie With Me review for Sight & Sound !function(d s id){var js fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0] p=/^http:/.test(d.location)?'http':'https';if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=p+'://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js';fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js fjs);}}(document 'script' 'twitter-wjs'); (function() [...]