07/16/2009
Movies: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Harry Potter, Gay Actors
Nathaniel Rogers would live inside a movie theater but for the poor internet reception. He blogs daily at the Film Experience.
Feature Presentation
HARRY POTTER AND THE HALF-BLOOD PRINCE is the biggie this weekend. It's already breaking records since its midnight opening. Six movies into the franchise you can already guess how you'll feel about this new edition and whether or not you want a ticket. The new film is the richest looking Potter film since The Prisoner of Azkaban but it's a bit of a mess story-telling wise, unable to keep all its plot threads involving searches for Voldemort's soul, mysteriously adjusted memories, Ministry of Magic disappearances, teen romances and attacks on Muggles neatly intertwined and coherent. Those who've read the book will mentally fill in the details and wonder why anyone else complains about the plotting.
Though the primary trio of teen wizards are still not exactly exciting actors, the supporting cast is as lively as ever. It's wonderful to see gay Dumbledore taking more of a central role as he prepares Harry for darker times to come. The new additions to the cast are also engaging: Freddie Stroma (previously seen in his skivvies here on Towleroad ) makes a dashing Cormac McLaggen (whether proudly straddling his broomstick or eyeing Hermione), Jessie Cave is quite funny as lovestruck Lavender Brown (she's got a thing for Ron) and Jim Broadbent (Moulin Rouge!), one of the best actors in the world, is as wonderful as always as Slughorn, a professor who likes to "collect" the brightest and best among students to augment his own reputation. You can guess who he wants to collect.
Half-Blood Prince is, despite its flaws quite enjoyable and if you're into the franchise you'll undoubtedly have a lot to discuss afterwards about what they subtracted, what they added and what the last two movies will be like.
Potter is fun but the best movie arriving this weekend is... AFTER THE JUMP
(500) DAYS OF SUMMER starring Zooey Deschanel and Joseph Gordon-Levitt. The marketing tagline "this is not a love story. this is a story about love." is accurate for once. It's a romantic comedy but it's not so romantic. Boy meets girl but things don't go so well. The movie is so fresh, inventive, energetic and well scripted that you'll fall in love with it... or at least in deep like. Deschanel may have played the quirky fantasy girlfriend one too many times now but she knows how to withhold enough to make her character Summer both aggravating and enchanting which is exactly what the movie needs her to be. Gordon-Levitt, who has been building up a reputation as one of the best young actors in the business, proves his worth again here. He's so different from film to film (it's hard to imagine that this is the same actor that carried Mysterious Skin) and he nails this movie's tricky bipolar tone. Plus, he's adorable whether happy and dancing or mopey and heartbroken.
Bonus Scenes
Quite a few gays and gay favorites got EMMY nominations this year as NewNowNext notes. I normally think it's tacky when hosts of awards shows are up for a competitive prize the same night they're hosting but I can't say that it wouldn't be sweet to see host Neil Patrick Harris win for his funny womanizer performance on How I Met Your Mother. Now that Jeremy Piven's award-hogging Entourage role was snubbed (Piven took the last three trophies), maybe he can. Before that potentially happy day arrives, a moment of silence for The Snubbed.
Asian heartthrob and longtime movie star Tony Leung Chiu-Wai, the star of the gay romance Happy Together (1997) and Ang Lee's erotic spy thriller Lust Caution (2006), among many other fine films, has broken his arm. His trainer kicked it while they rehearsed for a new picture about Bruce Lee's martial arts mentor. Oh, to be the cast upon that arm!
Yet more new Alice in Wonderland pics. They're releasing so many you'll be able to combine them all to make your own two hours flip book movie in no time. This time the cast members are holding wee animals. Helena Bonham-Carter gets a pig. She seems confused by it. Remember when Tori Amos suckled one for promotional photos for "Boys For Pele"? Good times.
Alexander Skarsgård, True Blood's sexy blond vampire, nearly won the coveted Thor role in one of the next superhero franchises. He lost it to Chris Hemsworth (Star Trek) so up next instead: co-starring with James Marsden in a remake of Straw Dogs. This pairing is bound to set off impure thoughts.
Speaking of losing superhero roles... Is Henry Cavill the most overlooked man in Hollywood? It's a good question since he keeps losing high profile roles. The Tudor's co-star seems to have it all: talent, incredible looks, a decent resume thus far. Why isn't Hollywood taking the next step with him? It's yet another reminder that the entertainment industry is a complicated place. The variables in play on every film and career are legion.
Commentary Track
Which is one of the reasons why... and I'll have to wrap up with this since I'll lose my cool... I'm still madhot angry about that casting director who advised the closet for actors. Screen, television and stage careers for actors are complicated enough as is: a combination of luck, talent, beauty and sex appeal, age, temperament, location, workplace compatibility, what type of genres are in vogue, what the competition is like...you name it. So many things are out of their control. How they present themselves to the industry is one of the only things they can control. Why complicate that already tough job by building up a persona based on lies? If you ask me The Closet is too easy and lazy a scapegoat for why some actors don't succeed in the way people think they might. Fact: most actors don't succeed, gay or straight. (Though success, it should be noted, is relative and if actors are working at all regularly, they are a success even if people don't know their faces and names)
I'm as perplexed as anyone as to why, say, Cheyenne Jackson who is talented, hot, by all accounts professional and in exactly the right age range for the good male roles, hasn't had any real big screen parts since his fine work in United 93. But if we don't have the brave Cheyenne Jacksons we will never get to the awesome ____________ . You know him, that actor everyone loves in 2015 who was always out of the closet and became a huge star anyway. Everyone will look at him and wonder why anyone in 2009 was still thinking that the closet was a good idea.
Posted 5:32 PM EST by Nathaniel_R in Daniel Radcliffe, Film, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Nathaniel Rogers, News | Permalink
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The only marketing I've heard on 500 is on NPR and goes something like, "The movie about the only two kinds of people in the world: men and women".
Wow, talk about heterosexist and transphobic! It brings to mind the line from "Parting Glances" about the narcissism of straight people.
Posted by: David R. | Jul 16, 2009 6:21:13 PM
The nerve. Some people were arguing that what Todd Holland said was true--that may be so, but he said nothing of combating it--just, "stay in the closet."
Uh, okay. What message does that send? Not a good one. With Twitter, Perez Hilton, and the ever growing blog sphere, how do you think that's going to play out?
Oh, and I agree with you on Cheyenne--at least he works, though. I work for a big TV network, and I constantly throw his name for projects.
Posted by: Marcus | Jul 16, 2009 6:32:30 PM
I saw Harry Potter last night and was really offended that they left out Professor Dumbledore's big coming out scene. It's like they completely straight-washed this wonderful gay character.
Posted by: crispy | Jul 16, 2009 6:34:05 PM
You're "madhot angry" about the casting director's simply practical advise?
Well, that's rather easy for you to pontificate about, isn't it, since, to the best of my knowledge, you're not trying to get male lead roles in "straight" romantic films.
And, then, you give examples of out actors stuck in film career neutral proving him right [before the Gay Thought Police beat the Party Line into him, that is]. Or did you mean to say he was right now but won't be in six years????
"But if we don't have the brave Cheyenne Jacksons we will never get to the awesome ____________ . You know him, that actor everyone loves in 2015 who was always out of the closet and became a huge star anyway. Everyone will look at him and wonder why anyone in 2009 was still thinking that the closet was a good idea."
Sorry, I left my copy of the "Hipper Than Thou Queer Theory Loony Tunes Translation Guide" at the Biracial Handicapable Trans Lesbian Intersex Laundromat & Tofu Shoppe.
I diss others in other professions all the time for not being out on the job but actors who want to play anything other than character roles are the exception.
Posted by: Michael | Jul 16, 2009 6:40:06 PM
Thank you for your comments on Todd Holland.
Obviously the closet worked for his career and those of his generation but he is perpetuating his homophobia by his comments...
At what price...one needs to ask...I think Cheyenne and John Barrowman are are better actors and fuller people because they are who they are...perhaps even "happy" because they have a life and a family and I think that will be reflected in their work...unlike KS who had to relocate to England to "work" and whoose work IMHO has just plain SUCKED.
Posted by: MCnNYC | Jul 16, 2009 6:43:17 PM
Barrowman's work has been (almost?) exclusively across the pond, and Jackson's resume is very theatre-centric. (Don't misread that as a bad thing. I saw him in the Altar Boyz thing at NYMF and fell over. I absolutely adored All Shook Up and Xanadu, despite myself and all thanks to Jackson's brilliant charisma.)
Hollywood isn't England/the BBC, and it isn't Broadway.
I'm for throwing open that closet door and seeing every single one of them march out into the open, but realistically? I'd rather someone really good stay in the closet a while (not beard or deny it, just keep it close to the chest) rather than lose a promising career to the angry Homophobic beast of Hollywood. (Hollywood is notoriously ahead in Fashion by two years and behind in Values by five. They operate under what they think middle America wants.)
Posted by: Eddy | Jul 16, 2009 8:02:49 PM
I thought Half-Blood Prince was by far the best Harry Potter movie thus far - and the first one that I think will be good after multiple watchings. It got the Empire Strikes Back treatment and the writer & director didn't hold back on the darkness -- which the HP franchise desperately needed.
I'm excited to see the JGL movie. He is, indeed, one of the best young talents out there. Not so excited for his GI Joe movie...
Posted by: Ryan | Jul 16, 2009 10:56:10 PM
Is that "fill-in-the-blank" for Russell Tovey?
Posted by: mike shackleford | Jul 16, 2009 10:56:21 PM
I have the most impossible crush on Joseph Gordon-Levitt. I would be putty in his hands.
Posted by: Jordan | Jul 17, 2009 5:57:34 AM
Henry Cavill is the main reason I love The Tudors! So hot with that short hair.
Posted by: Jack M | Jul 17, 2009 8:17:18 AM
Henry Cavill is certainly fun to look at - but he seems to consistently play the same two moods - haughty peevishness or angry cluelessness. Im not convinced he really has much range.
Posted by: AERES | Jul 17, 2009 10:31:43 AM
"Is that "fill-in-the-blank" for Russell Tovey?"
I have a major crush on him, but he's simply never going to play romantic leads, not because he's gay, but because of those adorable, lickable ears, among other things, he's not conventionally handsome like Cheyenne Jackson is. He's incredible as George in "Being Human" (and heartbreaking as John Chivery in the recent "Little Doritt") but that's quite different from having enough name clout to open a major studio movie.
Besides, I don't think he wants that--he was asked to audition to replace David Tennant as The Doctor but turned it down because, as he said, "In England, being The Doctor is like being a rock star and I didn't want that".
"Well, that's rather easy for you to pontificate about, isn't it, since, to the best of my knowledge, you're not trying to get male lead roles in "straight" romantic films"
Bingo, that's the bottom line. I don't need some actor to be out, they're just going to say in interviews "It's just a part of me, not my whole being" anyway, I live in Los Angeles and know actors and it's a horrible, cruel, hideous business, I don't begrudge anyone for not wanting to put a big "Don't Hire" on their chest.
Posted by: Henry Holland | Jul 17, 2009 11:58:54 AM
David R... the opening scenes and the line you mention about (500) DAYS had me really worried that it would be a lame 'men are from mars. women are from venus' comedy but it's really not. It's so much better than what one can reduce it to for marketing purposes.
Michael... history is full of people proving everyone wrong and history is full of change coming sooner than the naysayers expected. See: the entire history of gay rights. See: black president. See: tons of other examples.
There are plenty of people who said that no "out" politicians would get elected and that's totally changed. Have some faith in the future.
All straight actors are "out" (they bring dates to premieres. they get married. they have affairs with each other) so the common line in defense of actors staying in the closet (aside from "nobody will hire you fear-mongering) is that it's nobody business. it's their persona life. But acting is a PUBLIC PROFESSION. You go to premieres. You go to awards show. You get interviewed. It is a profession which necessitates that you talk about yourself.
Posted by: Nathaniel R | Jul 17, 2009 12:26:35 PM
David R --- there really are only TWO kinds of people in the world MALE OR FEMALE .... what a tool (a trans person is either dressing as one or the other, or changing gender between the two)... do you really want them to includer intersexed people in a movie tagline.... what a tool.
As for Cheyenne Jackson --- have the writer not seen Mr. Jackson foolish full front and erect sex site phote that includes his face?
Dumb move --- he better like Broadway.
Posted by: Willie | Jul 17, 2009 4:47:25 PM