Angels in America
by Mike Nichols
from HBO Home Video
Academy Award-winners Al Pacino Meryl Streep and Emma Thompson lead an all-star cast in a 6-hour HBO Films Event. Directed by Mike Nichols and written by Tony Kushner based on his Pulitzer Prize-winning play: Angels in America.Running Time: 352 min.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA UPC: 026359229923 Manufacturer No: 92299
Tony Kushner's prize-winning play Angels in America became the defining theatrical event of the 1990s, an astonishing mix of philosophy, politics, and vibrant gay soap opera that summed up the Reagan era for an entire generation of theater-goers. Post-9/11 would seem to be too late for a film version--philosophy and politics don't always age well--but this 2003 HBO adaptation, ably directed by Mike Nichols (The Graduate), provides a time capsule of the '80s and reveals the deep emotional subcurrents that will give the play lasting power.
The story centers around Prior Walter (Justin Kirk) and Louis Ironson (Ben Shenkman), a gay couple that falls apart when Prior grows ill as a result of AIDS. But cancer is not the only thing invading Prior's life: He begins to have religious visions of an angel (Emma Thompson, Sense and Sensibility) announcing that he is a prophet. Louis, who doesn't cope well with disease and suggestions of mortality, leaves and starts a relationship with Joe Pitt (Patrick Wilson), a closeted Mormon who works for Roy Cohn (Al Pacino, Dog Day Afternoon)--the real-life right-wing lawyer, notorious for his ruthless behind-the-scenes machinations. Add in Joe's depressed and hallucinating wife Harper (Mary Louise Parker, Fried Green Tomatoes), his determined but open-minded mother Hannah (Meryl Streep, Adaptation), a fierce drag queen/nurse named Belize (Jeffrey Wright, Basquiat, reprising his celebrated performance from the Broadway production), and you've still only begun to discover the wealth of characters and storylines in Kushner's ambitious work.
The powerhouse cast (also featuring James Cromwell, Michael Gambon, and Simon Callow) is uniformly superb. The script has its weaknesses--some of the fantastic elements, including Prior's journey to Heaven towards the end, fall flat--but even what doesn't work is bristling with ideas and a ferocious desire to capture human existence in this time and place. --Bret Fetzer
Touch of Pink
by Ian Iqbal Rashid
from Sony Pictures
Alim is an Ismaili Canadian who lives in London thousands of miles from his family for one very good reason--he has a boyfriend. His ideal gay life begins to unravel when his mother shows up to find him a proper Muslim girlfriend and convince him to return to Canada for his cousin's extravagant wedding.System Requirements:Run Time: 92 minutesFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: COMEDY Rating: R UPC: 043396059771 Manufacturer No: 05977
Girl Explores Girl - The Alien Encounter
by John Bacchus
from Ei Independent Cinema
Zero Patience
by John Greyson
from Strand Releasing
"John Greyson, the director of Lilies and Proteus, has woven a tall tale of love and loss, sex and science, history and hysteria in the age of AIDS. Greyson revives renowned Victorian Sir Richard Burton who constructs a sensationalist multimedia museum display focusing on Patient Zero, the gay French-Canadian flight attendan accused of bringing AIDS to North America. Fast-paced, hilarious and provocative, ZERO PATIENCE is essential viewing." - Program note from Toronto International Films Festival
The Wolves of Kromer (1999), Lee Williams, James Layton; Narrated By Boy George; Directed By Will Gould
from First Run Features
A mix of revisionist fairy tale and social satire, this gay allegory imagines urban runaways as storybook werewolves lurking around the fringes of a quaint little village. Gabriel (James Layton) is a rascally, seductive veteran of the wilds who fancies young Seth (Lee Williams), an innocent newcomer tossed out of his home by parents appalled at his sudden transformation from normal boy to... wolf. Sporting shaggy fur coats, long fingernails, and pointy Spock-like ears, these handsome young cubs are a cross between Dickensian street urchins, Peter Pan's Lost Boys, and modern homeless kids. Harmless (except when committing petty crimes and doing some minor hell raising), they are feared and despised by the good churchgoing folk of the town, demonized in sermons, and blamed for the crimes of a few citizens whose pious façades hide the true evil in this rural paradise. It's a modest little tale with a simplistic view (it's a fairy tale, after all) and easy scapegoats in the scheming elderly villagers, but it's a clever approach accomplished with suggestion and sly revisionism. A rebellious city girl puts a cute twist on "Little Red Riding Hood" when she seduces the cute, naïve Seth, and a priest proclaims, "There were no wolves in the Garden of Eden," before loading his gun for a hunting expedition. Sweet, romantic, and sad, there's even a "happily ever after" worked into an otherwise tragic turn. --Sean Axmaker
In the cozy English village of Kromer, where few things are as feared as the werewolves who wander the surrounding forests and fields, two young and handsome wolves, Seth and Gabriel, meet and fall in love. Although their habits and appearance are essentially human - except for the pointed ears, coats of fur and bushy tails - the wolves are considered outcasts and a dangerous menace to the village folk. Seth and Gabs roam the fringes of Kromer, keeping their fur and friendship out of sight. But certain townspeople, afraid of those different from themselves, devise a fiendish plot to pin a murder on the hated and feared wolves. The local priest - himself a bit lycanthropic - stirs up and angry mob that pursues the young prey to the end.
This tale of young love fighting the hypocrisy of an older generation, combined with elements of the classic British murder mystery, gives the film a rich and lively texture, and allows the character's diversity to show interesting contrasts. Our young wolves and their pack are urbane, glamorous and clubby but live in a world that is far from a metropolis. Their world is in fact a timeless world of waterfalls, lakes and valleys. In contrast, the village folk live an outward life of church going and piousness yet have evil on their minds.
The Sticky Fingers of Time
by Hilary Brougher
from Strand Releasing
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