A Strange Sense of Deja Vu

When I was editor of Genre magazine way back when, photographer Hudson Wright delivered a shoot to us from St. Croix featuring model Josh Saunders. It's unlikely Britain's Gay Times ever saw the cover we printed in March 2003 when they designed their latest, but they certainly know what all gay publishers know — a set of hot abs makes those newsstand figures rise. Not that it matters to the average reader (vintage beefcake never goes out of style, does it?), but I wonder if GT knew they'd been sold a second-hand model.

Hudson Wright/Splash Out/Gay Times [ohlala paris]

Letting it all Hang Out

Picked up the new issue of Vman yesterday — the best deal you can get on the newsstand for $4.95. This one's chock full of hotness, and the best Bruce Weber bathing trunk scrap book I've seen in a while.

>> Of note also are two interviews, one with Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who featured brilliantly in the film adaptation last year of Scott Heim's Mysterious Skin. When asked if he was worried about playing a gay character, Gorden-Levitt replied:

"Oh come on! The Rock played gay! No one's worried about that anymore. I'm about to do two studio movies, and none of the directors or studio people were like, 'I don't know...I think the kids think he's gay!' Plus to me, gay is a normal person who likes people of the same sex. The character I played in Mysterious Skin had a very damaged, unhealthy sexuality, whether he was with women or men."

>> A few pages later Brandon Routh is confronted with the question of whether or not he feels comfortable that Superman is a gay icon. His reply?

"He's a heterosexual icon as well. Females lust after him just like males. I think even heterosexual men look up to him and think, Wow, he's a handsome man. I'd like to be like that. If they don't, we're doing something wrong, I suppose."

Way to dodge that question! And on the other hand, I was never aware that Superman qualified as a gay icon. The new Clark Kent also confides that he wasn't required to remove his shirt for director Bryan Singer in order to get the part. Said Routh: "They could tell I was big enough and they could train me." Indeed.

Sigh. [turns page] On to something a bit more revealing...

Previously
Josh Hartnett Piles on the Glam [tr]

VMAN: Josh Hartnett Piles on the Glam

Josh Hartnett goes from gender-bending glamazon to street tough in these hot new photos by Mario Testino from the latest issue of Vman, which imho is the best-produced men's fashion magazine in the U.S..

Rough, sexy, Josh never looked better. I think that lipstick shade is just right for him.

But wait, there's more. In his new movie, Lucky Number Slevin, he gets the crap beaten out of him by a number of people and spends a lot of time in a towel.

It's about time we saw more of Josh Hartnett.

Previously
V Like It [tr]
VMan V.2 [tr]
Ben and Josh, Sittin' in a Tree [tr]

The Art and Letters of Becks

Folks can't seem to get enough of David Beckham. Two letters and a drawing done by the footballer have sold for £1,058 at auction. They were written when he was 16, and sold Monday to an anonymous buyer. They show no interest in skin care but do show an interest in girls. Becks wages at the time were £120. According to the BBC, he earns approximately £100,000 a week at Real Madrid now, while other reports which include his revenue from sponsorships peg him at $83,000 a day.

Annie Proulx Pelts the Academy with Sour Grapes

With her typically brash economy of language, Brokeback Mountain author Annie Proulx offers up her Academy Award experience, "three-and-a-half hours of butt-numbing sitting" which ended, as we all now know, with a shocker.

Proulx spins her Pulitzer Prize-winning prose into a no regrets diatribe directed at Tinseltown in this Guardian commentary.

On entering the venue:

"On the sidewalk stood hordes of the righteous, some leaning forward like wind-bent grasses, the better to deliver their imprecations against gays and fags to the open windows of the limos - the windows open by order of the security people - creeping toward the Kodak Theater for the 78th Academy Awards. Others held up sturdy, professionally crafted signs expressing the same hatred."

On "the Academy":

"Roughly 6,000 film industry voters, most in the Los Angeles area, many living cloistered lives behind wrought-iron gates or in deluxe rest-homes, out of touch not only with the shifting larger culture and the yeasty ferment that is America these days, but also out of touch with their own segregated city, decide which films are good."

On the Best Picture:

"And rumour has it that Lions Gate inundated the academy voters with DVD copies of Trash - excuse me - Crash a few weeks before the ballot deadline."

And on choosing a Best Actor:

"Hollywood loves mimicry, the conversion of a film actor into the spittin' image of a once-living celeb. But which takes more skill, acting a person who strolled the boulevard a few decades ago and who left behind tapes, film, photographs, voice recordings and friends with strong memories, or the construction of characters from imagination and a few cold words on the page?"

Proulx ain't happy. And she calls her bitterness as others might see it, signing out: "For those who call this little piece a Sour Grapes Rant, play it as it lays."

Blood on the Red Carpet [guardian]

Are You Ready to Jump?

Even those keen to deface subway advertising have Brokeback on the brain.

As seen by Towleroad correspondent Adam in the NYC E Train Subway Station at Spring Street. Click for larger version.