Gay Movies

[colmx]

I wantched Formula 17 the other night... Taiwan Gay movie

Thinks its mentioned above...

Its about a gay 17 yo who comemes to taipei looking for love... but falls in love with a 31 yo playboy/heartbreaker... well worth looking out for...

Bf tells me ist available on VCD in thailand, thai dubbed with english subs

[noctiluca]

I can't wait for "Brokeback Mountain" to come out! I watched the trailer and had tears in my eyes already! I like "Latter Days" too. I know I am a sucker for romance.

I wonder if anybody know anything about the film "Hellbent" that is supposed to be a gay horror/thriller and will come out this year. Wonder if it's any good.

I also heard they are remaking one of the first Thai films to have gays, katoey, transvestite/transsexual as major characters. It is called "Pleng Sood Tai" or the Last Song. I remember the story vaguely since it's been so many years. I think it has one gay couple and one lesbian couple, well if you can count the relationships in the film as "couple". It's a tragic story, though. A beautiful transsexual (or transvestite, I can't remember) fell in love with an up-country good looking young man. They first lived with each other, but something happened along the way and the young man changed his heart and fell for another girl (who dated a butch lesbian). The story goes something like that. No one ended up happy except the straight couple, of course. I, however, heard that the remake would not follow the same story, but with different, newly made up characters. Probably made it into a more up-to-date version, hopefully with at least a happy-ending homosexual couple.

I'm sure most of you probably not watching some of Thai drama series on TV anyway, but just an FYI, there is now a gay couple on a Thai drama/soap opera called "Rak Paed Pun Kao" or Love 8009. This caused a bit controversy when it was first on air a year ago, but now audience, those who do not have prejudice against sexuality, seems to embrace this couple. It's on MCOT Channel 9 (free TV), 6 pm Sunday. Of course, given this is on Thai TV, they are only subtly shown that they are a couple. No kissing or explicit (only implied?) sexual consummation yet. (or ever?) Sometimes, for those who never follow the show, you have to really pay attention when they hug or hand touch each other to notice if there is anything there. Having said that, I think this is a big step for Thai TV, since most drama or shows usually portray gays either pathetic or hilariously stupid. I used to follow the story when it was the first season, but now since there are not a lot of their screen time on Year 2 (except at the beginning of this season, and there are other straight couples on the show), I kinda lost interest.

Anyway, these are just my two cents.

[wowpow]

The Longtime Companion

Midnight Dancer

Jeffrey

The Broken Hearts Club

All the Queen's Men

Torch Song Trilogy

Ma Vie en Rose

9 Dead gay Guys

Stage Beauty

The Night Larry Kramer Kissed Me.

Bishonen

The Times of Harvey Milk

My Beautiful Laundrette

Brokeback Mountain ?

Wedding Bouquet

Pricilla Queen of the Desert

Cabaret

Sunday bloody Sunday

Cabaret

Edward II

Gods and Monsters

Love Valour and Compassion

Philladelphia

Prick up your Ears

The Killing of Sister George

Something for Everyone

and from the small screen

Angels in Ameerica

Queer as Folk

Brideshead Revisited

Oz

[Guest endure]

What a brilliant programme was Oz!

[remmy]

I think Oz is horrible, its more like straight men raping eachother in prison thay gay film!

[noctiluca]

Could anybody suggest where in BKK to get good gay movies, including the ones mentioned in the previous posts? I mean are there any video stores out there that rent these movies, or is the only way to get a hand on them is to buy, if so any DVD/VCD store you can recommend? Sometimes, you just in the mood for a good gay film (for me, preferably romantic comedy. Like I said I'm a sucker for romance. )

[Ijustwannateach]

^noctiluca- Of course we're not allowed to recommend any illegal activities on the forum, so I certainly hope you won't go to the small copy-DVD shop outside the Baskin Robbins on Silom and look at the wide range of gay movies they have there.

I'd just like to mention an interesting movie I saw recently- Ethan Mao- about a Chinese-American kid who gets thrown out of his home because his father finds out he's gay. Worth a look.

"Steven"

[Buki]

hhmmmm...

Bishonin

"duda" Doubt

brokeback is going my favorite now.

[DUMPSTER]

There's also a shop that sells gay dvd's in mbk. I think, 4th floor near the escalators, opps a printers if I remember rightly. They also copy your old videos to cd etc.

[Guest endure]

One series that I wish had been subtitled for us English speaking folks to see was 'Crystal Boys' a TV series made in Taiwan in the '70s. I managed to 'obtain' the original programmes but they're no good to me without subs. I once emailed the TV studio that made the programme in Taipei but never received a reply.

[jdinasia]

No one mentioned ...

Trick

It's My Party

Y Tu Mama Tambien

... was Priscilla Queen of the Desert mentioned? It got an Oscar (for best costumes)

[PeaceBlondie]

Not to be arguing, but "Y Tu Mama, Tambien" only had that one bisexual scene, limited to the two drunk guys kissing, and then later waking up in the same bed and freaking out. The masturbation scene at the country club was typical machismo, not gay. What a powerful movie, though, about the decadence of the rich, the futility of a valueless life, the obvious clash of the rich in comparison to the poor. Great movie, even if you're not familiar with the ranges of sexuality in Mexico.

[BambinA]

transamerica

the crying game(this one makes guys freak me away...even i have no dick .. )

[jdinasia]

Not to be arguing, but "Y Tu Mama, Tambien" only had that one bisexual scene, limited to the two drunk guys kissing, and then later waking up in the same bed and freaking out. The masturbation scene at the country club was typical machismo, not gay. What a powerful movie, though, about the decadence of the rich, the futility of a valueless life, the obvious clash of the rich in comparison to the poor. Great movie, even if you're not familiar with the ranges of sexuality in Mexico.

I saw it as a teenage coming of age movie. Not a GAY MOVIE ... but certainly has that underlying sexual tension.

Worst gay movie ever .... Mandragora

[the gent]

Derek Jarman's " Sebastiane " for its depiction of the politics of homosexuality and the Latin dialogue which brought back happy memories of conjugation; duco, ducis,ducit,ducimus,ducitis,ducunt!

Lesbianism was never better portrayed than in " The Hunger " with Catherine Deneuve and Susan Sarandon......positively luscious.

[phayao]

Let me give you more titles:

"O Fantasma" (Portugal)

"Ernesto" & "Plata Quemada" (Argentina)

"La Virgen de los Sicarios" (Colombia)

"El Diputado" & "La Ley del Deseo" (Spain)

"Death in Venice" & "Saló" (Italy)

"Les Nuits Blanches", "Le Paillason Maudit" & "L'homme Blessé" (France)

"Everybody loves somebody sometimes" (Germany)

I'll keep posting more....

[thaibebop]

Any one ever seen If These Walls Could Talk?

[Ijustwannateach]

Title: "Metrosexual" (Gaeng Chan something something- sorry, threw away my ticket).

What it is: A new Thai movie, I believe directed by the same guy who did the volleyball movies

Overall recommendation: I recommend in a very limited way that persons interested in the thinking of high-so queenie gays and pampered high-so Thai women see this film.

Synopsis: A member of a social group of 5 women is getting engaged to a Thai man who seems unusually sensitive, fashionable, understanding, and, well, "metrosexual." Her other four friends have their doubts, however, and investigate him with the help of a gay "auntie."

Review in Detail (warning, spoilers follow):

Once again, it is rather hard to call this a "gay" film, being more a film about what the high-so community of Thai women in Bangkok do with all the time they have on their hands (one of them is almost employed as a reporter, while another threatens her salon worker with a pay cut if she doesn't bring her a mobile phone in time to receive a call). In a similar wise, the volleyball films were more about the antics of kathoeys than their relationships, and more about friendship than romance. I've yet to see a mainstream Thai film in which viewers were threatened with any sexual chemistry at all on the part of the main gay characters, and this film is no real exception. There are one or two seconds of guys hugging and pressing their waists together (which prompts the subtitler to use the word "canoodling," an old and little-used favourite word of mine, which used to make that equally archaic joke work: "Do you like Kipling? I don't know, I've never kippled." That one hasn't worked since the fall of the Western canon).

However, as we all know, if two gay Thai men were ever to make love in a mainstream film, the klongs of Bangkok would turn to lava, viewers' eyes would burst and bleed, and in general we'd have Ragnarok, Armageddon, the Second Coming, and the real, final end of special membership deals at California Fitness once and for all. So I have to admit that given that constraint, this film has moved a tiny fraction of a micrometer closer to depicting something in the same galaxy as real gay hi-so Thais. There, I ###### them with faint praise.

Things To See The Film For:

1. The opening scene with hot shirtless Thai models

2. The funny older Japanese boyfriend of one of the Thai ladies

3. A Thai with a 'fro being made fun of

4. The "big-headed" animated scene with one of the ladies as a high school girl on a sports day

5. The incredibly expensive, anal, and colour-coded apartment of the lead male role

Things I Could Have Lived Without:

1. Most of the plot

2. The incredibly dated and stereotypical "telltale" signs of a man's being gay, including such waffle as:

a. Index and ring finger same length

b. Gay man will check for dirt on shoes like a flighty lady

c. Eating vanilla ice cream

d. it just goes on, and on....

3. The nearly continual advertising for the MK chain of restaurants, to the point of making knowing too much about how to cook at MK the sign of being gay....

4. The only stable gay couple depicted is a pair of old queenie types, of course also very stereotypically effeminate- nothing wrong with such couples, except the pattern is getting very, very tired in Thai cinema

In the end, of course, the point is more about whether the leading lady is making a mistake or not in marrying the guy- is he gay, or is he not? And exploration of gay sexuality itself goes almost completely by the board, despite several tantalising openings to it that are uniformly unexplored. The leading lady realises her girlfriends are just doing their best to help her out, and all's well that ends well. Hoo-rah. Yawn.

"Steven"

P.S.

Just to comment on the quality of Thai graduate students, a friend of mine teaching them had a young woman, in theory a candidate for a master's degree in linguistics, give her class presentation on how to tell a guy is gay, using examples chosen from this movie.

[DUMPSTER]

Great review and thanks for saving me 120 baht. I thought it might be as you say and I couldn't think of anything worse than sitting through another one of these movies. I would guess many Thai gays will go and see it as my b/f was talking about wanting to see it.

Don't they deserve something better than this kind of crap? Though i'm not sure they know any different! It's either porno or gay jokers with nothing in between. How sad is Thai cinema!

[PeaceBlondie]

"The Last Dance" or "Last Song" was mentioned by noctiluca in post #32 of this topic. We saw the remake, with subtitles, and it appears they recast the old movie without updating anything. Still the same ridiculous stereotypes that were in vogue 20-some years ago, still the same tragic near-endings and endings that gay is bad, sinful, etc.

Well, some of the motorcycles were late models, but that's about it.

Perhaps it indicates what someone else has alluded to here: that Thailand still hasn't made a real gay movie about real gay men in love. However, it took Hollywood until 2005 to make "Brokeback Mountain" which was really about the 1960's and early 1970's.

[Guest endure]

I watched 'Happy Togther' again last night. Brilliant. Such a shame that Leslie Cheung has gone.

[thaibebop]

Has anyone seen Saving Face? It's a movie about Chinese lesbains in America who are going against their families wishes by being involed. I heard it was good, yet I have not found it anywhere to rent.

[noctiluca]

I am glad that someone mentioning latest Thai (gay-related or almost-gay-related) films again. By no means, I am not an expert, not even an amateur film critic. I just love watching movies, not as much a film buff, just someone who frequently visits cinema theaters, especially when it is the genre I like.

Actually, I love "Gang Chanee and E-Ab" or Metrosexual in English. Not so much as a gay movie, but more so a chic flick movie. The title is very misleading in Thai, that even some Thais loudly announce that they won't see the movie. The emphasis in this movie is on "Chanee" (meaning gibbon, the word some katoeys/gays use to call real women, which personally I think it is rather an insult), more than "E-Ab" or closeted katoeys/gays, who try to cover up their sexuality by acting manly. The title, I believe, is only used to lure or attract people to see the movie, or in some cases, people's responses to the movie, because the words "Chanee" and "E-Ab" are strong words (but not rude, to me anyway).

I find this movie refreshing, something a bit different from most Thai films, which usually evolve either around lame joke/comedy or lame ghost/horror stories. I understand this type of chic flicks is probably done to death in western movies, but in Thailand, there are a few and not many of them are worth watching. The movie is probably nothing new in Hollywood and not up to their standard, but seriously it is much better than a lot of Thai films out there. Most importantly, it offers some good laughs (not on lame jokes, emphasis on with not at), and something for Thais (perhaps, no longer for westerners) to think about friendship, plus gay issues on the side. Although a lot of things in the movies are cliche and evolved around stereotypes, I think it is a good sign and good beginning for Thailand to have a Thai film that deals with gay (not usual queen/katoey) issues in a not-so-negative light. Hollywood started out like that too, didn't they? Look how much better gays are portrayed now.

Anyway, like I said, this movie is a chic flick, not a gay flick. I love the perfect interaction of the girls in the movie, considering they are not professional actresses!! They actually have real jobs working as news announcers/anchors for a TV station. For some of them, this is their first acting gig. The main plot of the movie is just to show you real friendship will survive anything. The gay or not-gay boyfriend is just a secondary issue, to point out that gays should be open about their sexuality and nothing is wrong with that. It's better than deceiving one self and loved ones, which could bring more catastrophes later.

I do realize there are a lot of stereotypes used in this movie, mentioned in the post above, especially the one about how to detect who is or who is not gay (which it may only work with effeminate queens). I know it's old and lame, and probably no longer workable in this day and age; I don't like that part too much either. But you have to admit now it is much harder than ever to know who is or who is not, even when you are gay yourself!! With "metrosexual" and all that. How can you really tell the real metrosexual from the closeted homosexual, not to mention bi. Oh! My head hurts! I guess we only have openness and honesty to rely on. Yeah...right.

I think it is still a long way (but not too far) for Thai films to have a positive gays or gay couples (not effeminate queens or katoeys--nothing is wrong with that, either) as you and me as the main, if not leading, characters (not if the Ministry of Culture is still around, but that's another story!). There are certainly attempts to do just that, though.

I don't know if anybody had a chance to watch a last year indy Thai film version of "Rainbow Boys" by Alex Sanchez. It is not too bad, a tiny better than I expected, very very indy/amateur feel to it. I am even surprised how it got made first in Thailand, instead of Hollywood or off-Hollywood. Anyone know the insider story?? Another one in a more or less similar movie is coming out called "Silom Soi 2". I heard they bill the movie as gay-erotica, with the leading couple are both gays (not katoeys or queenies), so I am not sure if it will be ever shown in theaters, even at House, or if it is going straight to DVD/VCD. I saw a teaser of the movie, and I have to admit that one of the leading men is hot (considering I am usually more attracted to Caucasians).

I also heard that there is a movie currently being made by a more or less well-known Thai gay director Poj Arnon, with leading gay characters. One is a cop and one is a criminal, who--I don't know how realistic--are in love, or have a love history. I am very skeptic about this film since Poj is known for his uneven performance (and notoriety about kept boys). I only hope his intention is truly well meaning, and the good result is coming through.

Also on the line, probably released next year, "Me...Myself" by Mono Film. Not sure if this is a gay flick per se. My only scratchy knowledge of the film is that it is about a supposedly gay guy who has amnesia due to an accident, rescued and taken care of by a girl who fell in love with him, starring Amanda Ever Ingham.

I have not seen the new version of "Pleng Sood Tai" or The Last Song (or Dance or whatever). The intention of remaking the film may be good, but I heard the movie itself is not so. Not sure what went wrong. They added a gay couple (and subtracted lesbian couple) into the film. Probably not making that much of the profit. I, however, have no doubt that many katoeys/trannies went to see this films.

Anyway, back to Gang Chanee and E-Ab/Metrosexual, I think both the actors who play one of the girl's fiancé and his old school friend are kinda cute. <Small spoiler here!>I wish there is a small scene at the end of the movie that shows they get together or he openly has a new boyfriend or something. The inferior thing about the fiancé in the film is that he dubbed his voice in the film (his Thai is not strong, given that he grew up abroad). It makes his acting or at least his voice fake somehow.

By the way, who has seen "Adam and Steve"? Is it any good? I miss the time that I had easier access to gay films (note not porns!), like going to theaters to see gay/indy films. Although Bangkok is not too bad in this regard since we have House and Apex, but still...

<Sorry about the lenght of this post! Sometimes, I can get carried away.>

Edited July 17, 2006 by noctiluca

[noctiluca]

Just remember. I'd like to defend Metrosexual a bit, regarding it is about lives of hi-so women or not. Perhaps, they are more fortunate than most Thai women to have education and good jobs, but they are not hi-sos. They are more like middle class/office working/educated/modern Thai women. You won't see hi-sos or hi-sors working the way they do in this movie. You can, however, if you choose, watch hi-so/soap opera types on every channels of Thai free TV. That's where you get to see hi-so life (i.e. rich, no jobs, nothing to do but shop, scream or slap each other senseless for a man, etc.)

Oooopppsss!!! BTW, in my previous post above, I had typo. The actor who stars in "Me...Myself" is Ananda Everingham (a male actor). And it is the length of the post not "lenght".

Edited July 17, 2006 by noctiluca

[Ijustwannateach]

Thanks for another point of view, Noctiluca! You should post on here more often.

[tourleadersi]

I have to say that the movie to have the greatest impact on me was Philidelphia. Absolutely tragic and brought home to me just how much prejudism there is out there towards gay men. I have enjoyed other gay movies mentioned here already, Bird Cage, Beautiful Laundrette etc.

Just recently I watched the first season of 'The Shield' a series from HBO I think. It explored the issue of a rookie cop discovering his sexuality and trying to reconcile it against his strict religious beliefs. It is eventually used as a weapon against him by other members of the police force.

I think these types of themes are important and I'm curious as to how they are recieved by the gay community in general. As a straight male I have no feelings either way towards the issue of being gay. I don't get freaked out if I am propositioned (probably only about 4 times in my whole life, to be honest I was flattered) and at the same time I'm not one of these straight men who say "I have loads of gay friends" as if to prove that I am not homophobic. I can say that the gay men that I have known have been surprised at my relaxed attitude towards lifes choices (I have a bit of a rugger bugger build, well I would if I laid off the pies). I have found these programs really eye opening and thought provoking.

[kat]

I liked "Parting Glances". I know it's a bit dated and all from the 80s/90s, but it stayed with me. I also liked this obscure, faux, gothic drama about a lesbian vampire: "Because the Dawn".

edit: Has anyone ever seen "Orlando" with Tilda Swinton? It's not gay per se, but it is so gay if you know what I mean. It's based on Virgina Woolf's novel, and Quentin Crisp plays Queen Elizabeth I. It is one of my favorite movies of all time. It's really well done and if you find it in BKK you should see it.

Edited July 17, 2006 by kat

[Eddy689]

Oscar nominee " My beautiful laundrette" is perhaps the best.

Also " A home at the end of the world" starring Collin Farrel, the DVD and VCD's are available in Thailand.

Where can I buy VCD what store so that I buy good one pls. send me information or can write down to my email.. [email protected] .. still waiting

I'm here in Thailand ...

Edited July 29, 2006 by Eddy689

[popshirt]

I miss the time that I had easier access to gay films (note not porns!), like going to theaters to see gay/indy films. Although Bangkok is not too bad in this regard since we have House and Apex, but still...

What and where are House and Apex. Please, I wanna know. Thanks

[meadish_sweetball]

I liked "Parting Glances". I know it's a bit dated and all from the 80s/90s, but it stayed with me. I also liked this obscure, faux, gothic drama about a lesbian vampire: "Because the Dawn".

edit: Has anyone ever seen "Orlando" with Tilda Swinton? It's not gay per se, but it is so gay if you know what I mean. It's based on Virgina Woolf's novel, and Quentin Crisp plays Queen Elizabeth I. It is one of my favorite movies of all time. It's really well done and if you find it in BKK you should see it.

Seconded, it's an excellent movie. Top class.