tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-89936102024-03-13T15:49:44.187+00:00Pink Saucelife, with a pink seasoning; an LGBT perspective.zefroghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10648770072305208615noreply@blogger.comBlogger806125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8993610.post-10303984077784670482021-11-19T22:08:00.009+00:002021-11-19T22:25:13.407+00:00Tick, Tick... BOOM! - reviewTick, Tick... BOOM! (by and on Netflix), titled after one of its hero's musicals, is the film directorial debut of Lin-Manuel Miranda, the acclaimed creator of Hamilton. Perhaps appropriately, it is about musical theatre and, itself, turns into a musical; covering the few days, in early 1990, leading to star-crossed composer Jonathan Larson's 30 birthday.
At that time, Larson, who went zefroghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10648770072305208615noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8993610.post-81926742929066712542021-10-14T19:01:00.007+01:002021-10-14T19:02:29.144+01:00Ridley Road - reviewHaving just was watched (and reviewed) Paris Police 1900, I find it interesting to be presented with another series with very similar theme to indulge in a little comparison.
Ridley Road, also available on iPlayer and only 4 episode long, is set in 1960s Britain, where a Jewish ingenue finds herself infiltrating the ranks of the National Socialist Movement (the British Nazis). Therezefroghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10648770072305208615noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8993610.post-59465201979746914272021-10-14T14:21:00.004+01:002021-10-14T19:03:37.304+01:00Paris Police 1900 - reviewParis Police 1900 is a French series currently on iPlayer, that somehow only took about 6 months (rather than the usual 2 years) to make it across the channel (who said Brexit made exchanges more difficult?!).
The series is set in... err... Paris, in 1899. On the surface it is a gory police thriller, following the meandering investigation of the murder and dismemberment of a young woman.
So farzefroghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10648770072305208615noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8993610.post-40462252309708181382021-10-08T23:00:00.022+01:002021-10-14T18:23:17.888+01:00The Normal Heart @ National Theatre - reviewThis is a brain dump written as soon as I got home from the show. More a more cogent review (which I completely agree with), check out: Review: The Normal Heart at National Theatre, by Hailey Bachrach.I know lots of people have been raving about this production of Larry Kramer's largely autobiographical play at the National Theatre, but I was disappointed.
Despite being fairly wordy and zefroghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10648770072305208615noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8993610.post-55181440390774777862021-09-12T17:50:00.002+01:002021-10-14T17:52:02.619+01:00Green Book - reviewGreen Book, currently on iPlayer, is the heart-warming tale of an unlikely friendship between a famous sophisticated black musician and a rough-around-the-edges Italian-American self-styled bullshitter. It is based on a true story.
This is a story of prejudices overcome and differences accepted. It is also about privilege. But, rather than being preachy and worthy, as it could so easily have zefroghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10648770072305208615noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8993610.post-52008429979829092482021-08-11T17:48:00.002+01:002021-10-14T17:50:03.927+01:00L'atelier (The Workshop) - reviewNot a little ironically, considering its premise of a group of young people taking part in a literary workshop, L'atelier (The Workshop - 2017), currently on iPlayer, is one of those French films where seemingly not much is said and even less happens. And yet it manages to be utterly intriguing and quite thrilling too.
The story is set in La Ciotat, a notorious former shipyard near Marseilles, zefroghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10648770072305208615noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8993610.post-40308592654949439972021-07-30T17:46:00.002+01:002021-10-14T17:47:46.175+01:00Deep Water - reviewDeep Water is an Australian murder mini-series (4 episodes) currently available on Netflix.
Despite being set in Sydney (around Bondi Beach), this is in many ways one of those dark, brooding serial-killer stories, recently popularised by the "scandi-noir" genre, although Detective Tori Lustigman (played by Yael Stone, of Orange is the New Black fame) is thankfully not quite as tortured as so zefroghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10648770072305208615noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8993610.post-61081920009459597302021-07-29T17:44:00.002+01:002021-10-14T17:45:59.314+01:00Uprising - reviewUprising on BBC iPlayer is a three-part documentary series, directed by Steve McQueen, centered around the New Cross Fire in January 1981, in which 13 black youths died at a house party.
The event took place in a context of heightened racial tensions, only a few months before the Brixton Riots and other violent protests across Britain (England, really, it seems), which are also covered in the zefroghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10648770072305208615noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8993610.post-67429479530994345222021-07-07T17:42:00.002+01:002021-10-14T17:44:06.075+01:00Good Trouble - reviewI discovered Good Trouble, a spin off another series I haven't seen (The Fosters), by chance, lurking on iPlayer.
The show is in its third season and is, to be frank, a wet dream of wokeness. Gammons should stay well clear of this or their already congested heads will most definitely explode.
The show covers pretty much ever subject that would make the average Dail Mail reader froth at the mouthzefroghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10648770072305208615noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8993610.post-59624404576975941102021-06-06T20:40:00.003+01:002021-06-06T21:15:40.449+01:00Waving the flag is no longer enough for companies claiming to support LGBT+ people
In reaction to the flurry of gayed-up corporate logos, the Hornby story earlier this week, and a visit to my local Sainsbury's this morning, I ponder the subject of corporate pinkwashing and how sticking a rainbow in the (real or virtual) window is no longer enough to show support. This morning, as I reached the tills in my local Sainsbury’s, I noticed a string of bunting bearing (zefroghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10648770072305208615noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8993610.post-75709938405190390522021-05-27T17:40:00.002+01:002021-10-14T17:42:07.668+01:00Amend: The Fight for America - reviewConstitutional law history is perhaps not the first thought that comes to mind as a vector of emotion and excitement. It is, in fact, probably likely to be the opposite.
Amend: The Fight for America (now on Netflix), fronted and produced by actor Will Smith, is a sweeping journey through 150 years of legal and social US history that tells how the oddly unloved 14th Amendment of the US zefroghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10648770072305208615noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8993610.post-4029428177659508182021-05-26T17:38:00.001+01:002021-10-14T17:39:29.368+01:00Loving - reviewMildred and Richard Loving should never have achieved fame. Dirt-poor, uneducated, and living in a backwater in Virginia, their only ambition was to be with each other and to lead a life devoid of trouble.
Their apparently innocent decision to get married in 1958, however, was to change the legal history of their country, leading to a Supreme Court decision striking down miscegenation state lawszefroghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10648770072305208615noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8993610.post-57195087677022821922021-05-24T14:10:00.002+01:002021-10-14T14:13:17.165+01:00S.W.A.T. - reviewWhen I decided to start watching S.W.A.T. (on Netflix, and apparently Sky), I was expecting the cheap and undemanding thrilled of a mindless action series, with lots of fights, car chases and explosions.
The show delivers those things in droves, and some of the writing (the expositionary bits particularly) can be pretty clunky at times. I wasn't however quite prepared for the deeper, zefroghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10648770072305208615noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8993610.post-27765644158523948662021-05-21T14:06:00.002+01:002021-10-14T17:39:41.553+01:00Special - reviewThe second and, sadly, final season of Special has just dropped on Netflix and it is as much a pleasure to watch as the first one. The semi-autobiographical, award-winning show follows, Ryan, a twenty-something, gay, mama's boy with cerebral palsy navigating the pitfalls of the heteronormative, ablist world as he decides to let go of his mother's skirts.There is the inevitable fag-hag (is zefroghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10648770072305208615noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8993610.post-90069674029485406512021-05-11T14:00:00.001+01:002021-10-14T14:05:33.018+01:00The Pursuit of Love - reviewI read the book and liked it better than Mitford's more famous (and sequel to this), Lone in a Cold Climate, and very much enjoyed it, so I was very much looking forward to this BBC adaptation. The buzz has been very positive too but I find myself having reservations.
If you can bear to sit through the first episode and a half, or perhaps even the first two, episode, and make it to the third, zefroghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10648770072305208615noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8993610.post-86866141824191167712021-04-08T13:46:00.005+01:002021-10-14T17:39:57.357+01:00Madame Claude/Mademoiselle de Joncquières (Lady j) - reviewIn the next installment on my pointless reviews of (mostly) French content on (mostly) Netflix that nobody reads, I will take a look at two films I watched last night. Both are period dramas (though it grieves me to say that some of the events depicted in the first one happened during my lifetime!) and both are tales of morality with women at the heart of them. Here the similarities stop.&zefroghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10648770072305208615noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8993610.post-68645205750390736622021-04-05T14:04:00.011+01:002021-04-06T15:11:28.797+01:00Little Keir and The Mean FayriesIt was the Friday before Easter - Good Friday - when everybody is sad but is looking forward to eating lots of chocolate in a couple of days. As he waited for the Easter Bunny to bring him his well-deserved chocolate eggs, little Keir decided to go to church. Because that is what nice people do on that day. No one is sure why he decided to go to that particular church, because it is quite well zefroghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10648770072305208615noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8993610.post-46741528521336124442020-10-19T20:05:00.001+01:002021-10-19T20:07:53.961+01:00The Greatest Showman - reviewTonight I watched The Greatest Showman, which I hadn't seen before and is currently available on All4 for a few more days.
I know it's a divisive film: some people love it and lots of people seem to loathe it.
While I found it reasonably entertaining, I have to say that it is a bad film. Not in the quality sense (and then again) but in the moral sense.
First the goods things: It looks good zefroghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10648770072305208615noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8993610.post-49930213109138987092020-10-15T12:08:00.007+01:002020-10-15T14:16:17.443+01:00Plenty of Time - A shortened storyI could carry on tinkering with it until Christmas and beyond, I'm sure, but I think the time as come to stop and let my short story go and live its stunted life in the big out there. Plenty of TimeFor James, this grey morning of July 2005 is like any other, as he wakes up, gets ready and walks to the tube station to catch his train to work. Until he makes a mistake. It is 3,400 words zefroghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10648770072305208615noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8993610.post-69391672400148319362020-10-03T16:21:00.019+01:002020-10-03T17:15:40.252+01:00Emily in Paris - A review from a French viewerLast night I ended up binge watching the whole series of Emily in Paris on Netflix, after spotting on twitter someone live-tweeting their viewing of the first episode, which is, admittedly, pretty bad. The series, which comes from the creators of Sex and the City, is the story of Emily, a girl from Chicago who ends up being given a job as her PR company's envoy to its newly acquired zefroghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10648770072305208615noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8993610.post-32913792061063345702020-09-11T21:15:00.004+01:002020-10-03T16:43:21.269+01:00Les Mignonnes/Cuties - a reviewThe original poster and Netflix's versionThere's a storm currently well past brewing in a corner of Twitter about a French film called "Les Mignonnes" ("Cuties" in English), directed by French-Senegalese Maïmouna Doucouré. The shitstorm started when Netflix announced last month that it was going to show the film and accompanied that announcement with its own poster, showing the young girls zefroghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10648770072305208615noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8993610.post-58689438037685626342019-05-07T10:55:00.004+01:002019-05-07T11:05:54.551+01:00Bank holiday arty-farterie
This was intended as a short Facebook status update...It's been a busy time at the cultural mill this bank-holiday weekend. Eddie dragged me to no less than 6 exhibitions (and there was ancillary cake, of course).
First it was was Tate Modern for the Pierre Bonnard exhibition on Saturday. I knew OF Bonnard, of course, but very little about him and his work, which doesn't attract me zefroghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10648770072305208615noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8993610.post-9523424562855496392018-12-24T11:15:00.005+00:002020-10-15T12:10:56.597+01:00Truce - a short storyI spent Christmas Day 2017 at a friend's place. After indulging in all sorts of delicious foods he had prepared, we lay in a mild torpor on his sofa, half watching television. One of the programmes unfolding before our bleary eyes happened to be the festive Dr Who episode, which included a scene in the trenches of the First World War during that infamous football match in 1914. This was, of zefroghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10648770072305208615noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8993610.post-70544064522181719382018-02-12T12:08:00.005+00:002018-02-12T12:32:15.825+00:00LGBT History Month - Standing on the shoulders of giants
"If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.", wrote Isaac Newton in 1675. It wasn’t an original thought even at the time but as we reach the middle of this year’s LGBT History Month, and as some wonder what the need is for such an event, this quote seems particularly apt.
Although, as in so many cases, evidence is scant, Newton seems likely to have been at least zefroghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10648770072305208615noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8993610.post-14166950550598681532017-10-09T20:30:00.005+01:002022-03-17T17:51:44.439+00:00A chronic case of androphilia
A couple of weeks ago, I received an email from a free lance journalist working for BBC Three. He explained he was working on an article about the resurgence of the use of the term "androphile" among right-wing men as a way to distance themselves from the supposed lefty connotations of the word "gay". Something that was news to me.
The journalist wanted to conduct a phone interview with me zefroghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10648770072305208615noreply@blogger.com1