Q-Seattle Events: Tacky Tourist Clubs

Tickets for the more than 165 movies and videos that will be shown during the 2007 Seattle Lesbian & Gay Film Festival are now on sale. Buy them online (click the "Buy tickets" button on the schedule) or at Ticket/Ticket locations.

Pick up a paper version of the schedule at many locations including the LGBT Center, Changes in Wallingford, Bailey/Coy Books, Broadway Video, Kaladi Brothers Coffee, On 15th Video [most of which are on our map]. But the festival's website offers superb schedule tools that make a paper version almost superfluous.

The festive festival opens Friday October 12 with a gala premier showing of The Walker followed by a party in SLU (which is, of course, one of several names for the new neib in the South Lake Union area.) It's one of four movies+parties that are part of the festival. You can get privileged access to all of them with a $70 Party Pass.

Read more about the Festival. PlanetOut offers this summary.

And if you'd like to work for your tickets to festival shows, consider becoming a volunteer. An online form allows you to pick your shifts. Volunteers serve as ushers, setup and breakdown events, staff the will call and membership tables, greet guests at the hospitality center and festival receptions, and more.

Labels: Gay events, gay party, Gay Seattle, movie, Seattle

The weather in the past few days reminds us that we're moving again toward the indoor season when a nice warm dry movie house becomes a welcoming cacoon.

Each October, the creative folks at Three Dollar Bill Cinema fully satisfy that urge with the Seattle Lesbian & Gay Film Festival. This year's fest runs October 12 through 21 featuring a schedule packed with filmic presentations from first- and only-run features, to shorts, to retro TV shows.

Tickets go on sale to the general public on September 25 online and at Ticket/Ticket locations, but you can jump to the front of the line by becoming a Three Dollar Bill member for at little as $33. Members can buy tickets to any showing right now.

The festival opens Friday, October 12 at The Cinerama on with the gala west coast premier of the Paul Schrader's new film, The Walker starring Woody Harrelson as the black sheep of a blue-blood American family and gay best friend to DC society matrons. The all-star ensemble cast of Schrader's political drama/noir thriller includes Lily Tomlin, Lauren Bacall and Kristin Scott Thomas as wealthy DC grande dames, along with Ned Beatty, Willem Dafoe, and Mary Beth Hurt.

Your $27 ticket to the premier also includes a spectacular party following the screening at the soon-to-be-repurposed Naval Reserve Building on Lake Union [get directions]. The party kicks off the festival in high style with beverages, delicious offerings from some of Seattle's finest restaurants and chefs, and dancing into the night to the DJ's beats. And you don't even need to drive. Round trips on a big bus between the Cinerama and the Naval Reserve Building will be provided.

The challenge, of course, is figuring out which of the films you want to see and are able to see. This is a Seattle-style festival, so you'll have to pick your faves since won't be able to see all of the 121 presentations on the busy schedule. Most of the films are split among four venues: the Cinerama downtown [get directions] and -- on Capitol Hill -- the Harvard Exit [get directions], Northwest Film Forum [get directions], and Broadway Performance Hall [get directions]. But the geographic challenge increases with other shows at SIFF Cinema at Seattle Center [get directions], Central Cinema on 21st Ave. [get directions], and the downtown library [get directions].

Films are scheduled from noon to night on weekends and from 5 pm into the night on weekdays.

Print out the schedule or pick one up at many places around town. The nifty festival website this year lets you not only buy tickets and see capsule summaries of the films, but also helps you make your decisions with a very nice personal calendar feature.

And there's more than just films to keep you busy. The schedule also includes parties, panel discussions, free workshops more to to choose from.

Labels: Gay events, gay organization, gay party, Gay Seattle, movie, Seattle

So if you passed up all the opportunities to see it with a crowd of your best friends, you can now see the filmed-in-Seattle written-by-a-Seattleite movie, Boy Culture in the comfort of your home with whoever you might want to invite over.

It's now available on DVD. Sticking with the Seattle theme, we will of course, direct you to Amazon to buy it.

More about it on this blog here, here, and here.

YouTube link

Oh, and a trivial side note: Poetic local blogger (via LiveJournal) Ajax in the City is in the movie somewhere as an extra. Hey, at least it proves the movie's localness, eh, since they could always cut in a shot or two of the Space Needle, but couldn't quite replicate Seattle extras if it were filmed in Vancouver like most supposedly-in-Seattle shows.

Labels: celebrities, Gay Seattle, movie, Seattle

Now, this sounds like fun -- something (forgive us) that we don't usually say about karaoke.

Three Dollar Bill Cinema and Northwest Film Forum jointly issued a challenge to local filmmakers to "take a stab at creating goofy, tongue-in-cheek karaoke videos for their favorite songs, then belt it out loud in front of a live audience -- all while enjoying their favorite libations, of course."

It's their second annual Karaoke Film Challenge. The results will be on display Tuesday, July 31 at the Film Forum auditorium at 1515 12th Ave [get directions] at 8 pm. The evening is hosted by DJ KY Jelly "in one of his final Seattle appearances."

Tickets are $6.12 for Film Forum members and $9.70 for the general public. Advance purchase is recommended.

This could be a great preview for a new summer film series from Three Dollar Bill Cinema coming soon to the heart of Capitol Hill. Features From the Black Lagoon offers free outdoor screenings in the unique setting of Cal Anderson Park [get directions]. The three features in the series will be shown using film projectors rather than the DVD projection typically used for similar outdoor movie events. All programs are free and fun for the whole family, starting at 8:30 pm.

The series kicks off Saturday, August 11 with Creature From the Black Lagoon. The creepy classic will be shown the way it was originally produced and meant to be seen: in 3-D.

On Saturday, August 18, gay icon Carmen Miranda performs The Man in the Tutti Frutti Hat and other fruity numbers in the must-see Busby Berkley musical The Gang's All Here.

On Saturday, August 26, Supergirl will swoop into the park to save the planet from the evil clutches of Mommie Dearest's Faye Dunaway.

Those many who find karaoke more enjoyable than us should know that Three Dollar Bill continues to sponsor its regular Cinaoke nights at Jewelbox Theater at Rendevous, 2322 Second Ave [get directions]. You can be the star of your favorite movie musical. Just like regular karaoke, you pick a song from a list of hundreds, but these are all tunes from musicals, so you'll sing along while the movie and lyrics are projected onto the screen. The next Cinaoke performance is Monday, August 13 starting at 8 pm. Door opens at 7 pm. $5 cover.

Labels: Gay events, gay organization, Gay Seattle, movie

Boy Culture, a feature film co-written and directed by local Seattle boy, Q. Allan Brocka, opens Friday, April 27 at the Varsity Theater, 4329 University Way NE [get directions]. Hurry. It's scheduled for only a one-week run. It shows at 7:15, and 9:30pm each evening with an additional 5pm screening on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. On Saturday and Sunday only, you could also catch a matinee at 3pm.

The movie is based on critically-acclaimed novel by Matthew Rettenmund. It's won 16 national and international awards while screening at film festivals, including the Seattle International Film Festival. It garnered the Grand Jury Prize for Best Screenplay at Outfest.

Here's a plot outline:

BOY CULTURE is told in the form of a candid confession by "X," a wildly successful male escort. After ten years of sex-for-pay, "X" gets romantically entangled with his two hot roommates and a reclusive elderly client, Gregory. But before Gregory will agree to sex, he tells an unsettling love story spanning fifty years and dares "X" to try something he hasn't felt in years: emotion.

The deeper story is really about emotional risk -- that it can be more of a risk not to take one than to take it. I believe this is an important issue in gay modern life.

The film was shot in Seattle. (Really. Seattle. Not Vancouver impersonating Seattle.)

More here in a prior post.

Labels: Gay events, movie, Seattle

AfterElton.com has an advance review of a "rough partial screening" of the new movie version of the Broadway musical version of John Water's cult classic movie Hairspray. (Whoa. That's some genealogy.) The musical, of course, had its pre-Broadway run here at the 5th Avenue Theater and has been back in various various versions since then. The new movie is scheduled for release this summer.



Blogger ChristieKeith has good news for fans of what has become a highly unlikely show-business franchise:

And yeah, John Travolta plays the Divine role of Edna Turnblad and yeah, that didn't work so much for me, but the rest of it? Divine is smiling down from heaven. ...
So, other than Travolta's semi-suckage, how was the movie? Oh, just basically completely brilliant. ...

Hairspray succeeds, in all three of its incarnations, because at heart it's a feel-good movie about fighting the good fight. Tracy Turnblad, a plump high school girl who knows she's destined for greatness as either the first woman president or maybe a Rockette, gets picked as one of the dancers on an afternoon music show on a local TV station. She uses her new-found fame to take a public stand for racial equality in segregated 1962 Baltimore, saying that if she were the first woman president she'd "make every day Negro day!"

Hairspray is all about the triumph of good over evil, and a huge hunk of that goodness comes from Tracy, who is the best heroine ever, and the one with the most bouffant hair. ... She's played in Shankman's film by newcomer Nicole Blonsky, who was discovered by the producers at the social networking version of the soda fountain, MySpace. ...

[S]he's a radiant ball of pure sunshine in the role. Her voice is gorgeous, and she's just the prettiest thing, with the most beautiful eyes and the aforementioned extremely high bouffant hair.

[Hat tip: Queerty.]

Labels: celebrities, link bites, movie

Last week, we mentioned the new film, Wild Tigers I Have Known, that Three Dollar Bill Cinema will be presenting at Northwest Film Festival starting Friday, but the film group has even more in store this month. Starting Thursday night, they'll present a series called "Scandalous!" at the Film Forum movie house on 12th Ave [get directions].

The series includes several films and shorts that were shocking in their day. Each screening is on Thursday evening at 7 pm. Tickets are $10 (regular) or $9 (for Three Dollar Bill Cinema members). A series pass is available for $25. Tickets are available online through TicketWindow. Buy individual ticket(s) or buy a series pass.

These rarely-seen films, some on newly restored 35mm prints, tackled queer themes like none before as filmmakers began to challenge this enforced morality of the time by addressing off-limits subjects.

From polite lessons in socially acceptable behavior to vicious (and homoerotic) scenes of life behind bars, these taboo-breaking films demand your attention.

Tea & Sympathy

Cunningly, they start with the "polite lessons" tomorrow (Thursday, April 12 at 7pm) when they show director Vincente Minnelli's 1956 film Tea & Sympathy.

A sensitive outsider at an all-boys prep school struggles to fit in among his jock peers and prove his "manhood" with help from the headmaster's wife. Deborah Kerr and Leif Erickson reprised their roles from the hit Broadway play.

A Wikipedia analysis notes that the film's lessons were so polite that the cencors of the day and -- probably -- many in the audiences didn't even notice what they were watching.

The character of Tom can be interpreted to be either homosexual or maybe just a somewhat effeminate heterosexual. Since the Hays code was in effect when the film was produced, this possibility of a double reading was probably intentional. Of course the central message of the film, that it is OK to be different, remains fundamentally the same, no matter what one reads into the main character's sexual orientation.

In addition to Tom, the movie also features two other characters whose possible homosexual tendencies are delineated in such a subtle way that their portrayals may have been under the radar for 1950s audiences as well as censors: The first character is Tom's roommate, who, while a jock, does not have any experiences with girls nor apparently any eagerness to make them and who also defends Tom in a way that suggests sexual attraction. Being too simple-minded to enjoy Tom's pursuits like classical music or to consciously recognize his own hidden motivations, he is also somewhat protected from closer scrutiny by his surroundings as he seems to be like the other boys at the surface.

Caged

The 1950 film Caged, directed by John Cromwell, inspired several knockoffs and dozens of comedy routines since then.

An innocent young girl learns how to survive women's prison the hard way under the iron fist of a cruel matron. Agnes Moorehead (Bewitched), Eleanor Parker (The Sound of Music) and the ultra-imposing Hope Emerson star in this outrageous Oscar-nominated noir classic.

From a New York Times review: "Caged, considered the best woman's prison film ever made, represents a union between realistic socially conscious drama and the more stylized world of film noir."

With this uncompromisingly pessimistic statement on human nature, John Cromwell reaches his peak as a director. Under his expert direction, Eleanor Parker gives the best performance of her career and creates a convincing metamorphosis from a innocent young girl to a hardened criminal. Her performance is nuanced, low-keyed and emotionally charged.

Un Chant d'amour. Plus Kenneth Anger shorts

In a 2003 web article by Mark Adnum we get this analysis of the film and the filmmaker:

Jean Genet set an example for other self-performers like James Dean, Joe Orton and Andy Warhol to follow. His real life, like those of his successors, emerging as by far the most compelling work of art he produced. Like those other iconic artists, Jean Genet is Jean Genet's consummate creation, and finding the boundary between the day-to-day realities of life and his creative existence is a bit like exploring a Mobius Strip. ...

Un chant d'amour is clearly influenced by Genet's North African military service, his homosexuality, and his 'shrugged-off' sense of separation from the 'group.' In the film, soldiers sweat their days away in the solitary cells of a military jail/oven in the desert, and dream of frolicking with each other in the grass and flowers of home. When desire and/or boredom overcome them, they rub themselves erotically against their concrete cell walls, blow cigarette smoke to each other through glory holes, or dance. A guard watches them through peepholes, simultaneously aroused and terrified by their bizarre and sometimes brazenly sexual behaviour. The film is a showcase for Genet's legendary sense of homosexual carnal glamour ? a sense or characteristic emphasised by Fassbinder in his film adaptation of Querelle de Brest (1982), and an area where Genet was way ahead of his time ? and his formidable knack for sound and image poetry. The fact that Un chant d'amour is Genet's only film is a big loss for film lovers. It is a remarkable and unique short film that has been regrettably uncelebrated.

It was more than just the outre subject that kept the film off of screens, according to Adnum.

Apparently made for the private porn collections of wealthy French gays, and later disowned by an embarrassed Genet ? á la George Michael ? on the grounds of his new found artistic maturity, Un chant d'amour (1950) was banned from public exhibition in France upon its initial release, and has won only sporadic screenings since, often in censored form. It is semi-pornographic, featuring full-frontal male nudes playing with their hard-ons, and fetishistic close-ups of sweaty feet, armpits and thighs. Watching the film is a confronting experience that can feel a bit like watching porn, so in a way it's no wonder that it has remained fairly obscure.

The evening is completed with three short films by Kenneth Anger. This page includes brief summaries of the films to be shown at the end of the month. (Unfortunately, the YouTube clips on the page have been removed in the GoogleTube copyright purge.)

Maximilian Le Cain, an Irish filmmaker, gives a detailed analysis of Anger's films and their significance.

Offering a description of himself for the program of a 1966 screening, Kenneth Anger stated his 'lifework' as being Magick and his 'magical weapon' the cinematograph. A follower of Aleister Crowley's teachings, Anger is a high level practitioner of occult magic who regards the projection of his films as ceremonies capable of invoking spiritual forces. Cinema, he claims, is an evil force. Its point is to exert control over people and events and his filmmaking is carried out with precisely that intention. ...

Anger's films are cinematic manifestations of his occult practices. As such, they are highly symbolical, either featuring characters directly portraying gods, forces and demons (Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome, Lucifer Rising) or else finding an appropriate embodiment for them in the iconography of contemporary pop culture (Puce Moment, Scorpio Rising, Kustom Kar Kommandos, also Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome). ...

Scorpio Rising represents the densest, most complex montage of Anger's career. [T]he hero's 'preparation' features images of Brando and comic books. This comparative editing is developed in the second part by the blasphemous, contrasting incorporation of images from the life of Jesus appropriated from a Z-grade Sunday school movie, a copy of which Anger is supposed to have discovered left on his doorstep by accident while editing Scorpio Rising. It is the perfect vehicle for conveying Anger's perception of an effete Christianity perishing in the face of the new phallic virility that the bikers embody.

But if all of that sounds too much like a film-school semester paper, they movies can be enjoyed as well for their transgressive eroticism.

We get this tidbit of biography from Wikipedia.

Anger was one of America's first openly gay filmmakers, and certainly the first whose work addressed homosexuality in an undisguised, self-implicating manner. He developed a close friendship with Dr. Alfred Kinsey of the Institute for Sex Research. Anger would later recall that Kinsey was his first customer after Kinsey purchased a copy of Fireworks when they first met in 1947. Anger eventually helped Kinsey build his film archive. The Anger Collection includes correspondence between the two men, as well as letters to and from former Institute director John Bancroft. Anger would later speak openly of his participation in Kinsey's research, including being filmed masturbating.

Anger talks about his carreer and current plans in this interview.

So, please don't be mistaken. This is not an assignment. There will be no quizes when the projector stops. But head to the Film Forum for a chance to see films that aren't often shown.

Labels: Gay events, gay organization, Gay Seattle, movie

Three Dollar Bill's Cinema, producers of the annual Seattle Lesbian and Gay Film Festival, offer an off-festival presentation next week of a debut film by Cam Archer, Wild Tigers I Have Known. It will be shown at Northwest Film Forum (NWFF) Friday April 13 and runs through Thursday, April 19, with two showings each evening, at 7 pm and 9 pm. NWFF is at 1515 12th Ave [get directions] just south of the Capitol Hill police station.

From the NWFF press release:

Archer's explosive debut feature, executive-produced by Gus Van Sant and Scott Rudin, may be the millennium's first example of a neo-American Underground film: ferocious, passionate, somewhat taboo in its subject and likely to divide contemporary audiences.

A young boy and a loner, Logan develops a crush on an older boy, Rodeo, but must compete with the attention Rodeo gives his girlfriend. After school Logan spends time conversing suggestively on the phone, taking walks in a forest where mountain lions roam and hanging out with his only friend who, like him, knows that he's different. Made with a ragged inventiveness on a miniscule budget, WILD TIGERS is a fearless and original portrait of adolescent foolishness and heartache.

The indie film's slow-loading Flash site gives this rundown of the story:

Logan is a soft spoken and lonely 13 year old boy with a crush. Unlike his equally lonely friend Joey, who obsesses over the sexual exploits of the popular boys, Logan is fixated on the boys themselves, particularly Rodeo Walker.

Rodeo is the only one of the group of cool kids who shows any friendliness towards Logan, in other words, he doesn?t go out of his way to make Logan's life miserable.

As they strike up a mismatched friendship, Logan's infatuation with Rodeo inspires him to create a new persona named Leah. Leah and Rodeo grow close through whispered late night phone calls, and when Leah agrees to meet Rodeo face to face it is Logan who must finally prove that he can ask for what he so achingly wants.

Reviews of the film use words like "taboo" and "transgressive" since the story deals with adolescent sexuality and dreams. We suspect, nonetheless, that it will resonate with many viewers.


YouTube link.

Labels: gay organization, Gay Seattle, movie

Boy Culture is a gay move that was filmed in Seattle two years ago, made the rounds of the festival circuit (including SIFF), and finally got its premier last week with a splashy tres gay premier party in LA last week. It opened for regular runs in New York, San Francisco, and LA, but won't make it to a Seattle screen until April 27 when it opens at the Varsity.

The film is garnering mixed, but generally positive reviews. New York Times critic Jeannette Catsoulis gives this glowing summary:

Based on the novel by Matthew Rettenmund, "Boy Culture" is a slick and absorbing drama about an attractive gay hustler named X (Derek Magyar), with an extensive investment portfolio and a restricted clientele of 12 wealthy men. When not servicing his "disciples," X conducts a volatile relationship with his two roommates (Darryl Stephens and Jonathon Trent) and criticizes the gay lifestyle in cynical voice-over. Only when he takes on a reclusive and much older client (elegantly played by Patrick Bauchau) is he forced to pay attention to a story other than his own.

Boy Culture stars Darryl Stephens of Logo's Noah's Arc, Derek Magyar, and Jonathon Trent

Employing a thoughtful, probing tone, the screenplay (by Philip Pierce and Q. Allan Brocka, who also directs) is a cerebral blend of insight, wit and raunchy self-awareness.

Gay.com's reviewer reminds readers that the novel author's previous book credits included Hilary Duff: All Access, Totally Awesome '80s and Encyclopedia Madonnica. He warns, "so don't expect that your horizons will be dramatically expanded."

But the reviewer comes around to the film for more than just its display of sexy man-flesh:

Rettenmund describes his novel as "sexy fluff" and a "spanking of gay culture." The book succeeded not only as a comic novel, but also as an observant critique of gay male relationships. In the hands of Allan Brocka, whose first film, "Eating Out," almost played like a gay sitcom, the film version of "Boy Culture" is engaging, deliciously directed and, most winningly, downright sexy.

And there's plenty of sexy man-flesh:

Obviously, Brocka knows what a gay audience wants to see -- plenty of sex, naked asses and bare chests. But he also explores something unique to gay male relationships -- that two men often have double-trouble with commitment.

But, beyond all that, there's the fact that the movie was actually filmed in Seattle and not in Vancouver-pretending-to-be-Seattle like so many TV shows or -- even worse -- LA-pretending-to-be-Seattle like that horny-doctors show.

Before its Seattle festival premier last year, Boy Culture's director, Q. Allan Brocka, explained to Seattle Weekly why he shot the movie here:

The book was originally set in Chicago and so was the adapted script [by Brocka and Philip Pierce]. We found it was incredibly expensive to shoot anywhere outside of Los Angeles. None of us knew anyone in Chicago or really anything about the city, so the budget would've been enormous. I was absolutely against shooting in LA. It just felt completely wrong for the story. Both my line producer and I are from Seattle, and I had always wanted to shoot a film there. When we discovered we could actually afford to shoot there, we happily packed up.

Lambert House helps actor "play gay"

According to the New York gay party paper, HX, which features Boy Culture on this week's cover, local Seattle services even helped one of the film's actors, Jonathon Trent, become comfortable playing Joey -- a character described by the magazine as "a teen twink with just enough space in his cranium for parties and a lusty crush on X."

Trent, who identifies as straight, hadn't played gay before. So once on location in Seattle, Brocka had Trent visit Lambert House, a center for LGBT youth under age 22, where he might meet and observe real life Joeys. Brocka himself spent time at the Lambert House during his formative Seattle years and admits he met a number of real life hustlers there?some of them destitute teens kicked out by homophobic families. "Darryl went along with Jonathan once for moral support and they stopped Darryl [from entering] and said, 'You're aged out.' Aged out!" recalls Brocka with a laugh.

Trent found the experience valuable. "[The gay kids at Lambert House] were kind of similar to Joey in the sense they were on their own, didn?t have a lot of people or family taking care of them," Trent shares. "They were cast out like Joey was. But they were a little more street and edgy and hardcore. I made Joey into someone who was sweet and innocent?or at least playing innocent to attract people."

[More on the premier party underwear shortly.]

Labels: celebrities, eye candy, Gay Seattle, movie

GSBA presents a 6pm reception with the director and a 7 pm screening this evening of the film Inlaws & Outlaws, which was produced by a Seattle-based organization. Tickets for non-GSBA members are $10. It's at Broadway Performance Hall [get directions]

The event will be emceed Seattle comic Peggy Platt, and will be attended by stars of the film. It includes a hosted reception donated by Herban Feastas well as a silent and live auction featuring prizes from Alaska Airlines, Geraldine?s Restaurant.

The film?

As the gay marriage debate rages on, this new film by Drew Emery gets past all the rhetoric to capture the heart of the matter: it's about love. Everybody has a story to tell about meeting their mate, deciding to commit and struggling with the ups and downs of a long-term (or not-so-long-term) relationship. By weaving together a series of refreshingly honest interviews, Inlaws & Outlaws takes a humorous and wide-angled look at real relationships of all shapes and sizes. Whether straight or gay, young or old, coupled or single, by the end, you'll be rooting for them all ... and falling in love with love.

The February 23rd event introduces the film to the Seattle business community and launches the filmmakers' Washington state Hearts + Minds Campaign, which will distribute the film at the grassroots level in early 2007.

[via Seattlest since we missed GSBA's announcement.]

Labels: fundraisers, gay organization, Gay Seattle, movie, Seattle

Three Dollar Bill Cinema, producers of the Seattle Lesbian & Gay Film Festival, will host one of its unique Cineoke parties (that's karaoke set to movies) as part of the Northwest Asian American Film Festival (NWAAFF).

The festival itself starts tomorrow with a pre-festival kickoff at Theatre Off Jackson [get directions]. The first film screening is Thursday. [Schedule] Three Dollar Bill's Cineoke is Saturday evening, January 27 at 9:30 pm at Theatre Off Jackson. Online tickets are still available through Brown Paper Tickets for most of the festival screenings and parties. Walk-up and rush tickets will be available at the door if there's room. A full-festival pass costs $70.

The festival is the largest showcase for Asian American films and videos in Washington. This year's lineup includes eight feature films and over three dozen films from the United States and Canada.

The festival opens tomorrow with two films that were featured at the Sundance Film Festival in 2006 and have since received numerous awards and critical raves: Eve and the Fire Horse by Vancouver, BC director Julia Kwan, and Journey from the Fall by Vietnamese American filmmaker Ham Tran.

The opening-night films will be presented in 35mm film at Northwest Film Forum on Capitol Hill [get directions].

Three Dollar Bill will be a co-presenter with NWAAFF of the Seattle premier of the Asian American musical Colma: The Musical directed by Richard Wong.

Taking place in the suburban town of Colma, where the dead outnumber the living 1500 to 1, Colma: The Musical takes the music of H.P. Mendoza and weaves it into a fresh personal look into the ups and downs of early adulthood.

Best pals Rodel, Billy, and Maribel find themselves in a state of limbo; fresh out of high school, they are just beginning to explore a new world of part-time mall jobs and crashing college parties. As newfound revelations and romances challenge their relationships with one another and their parents, the trio must assess what to hold onto, and how to best follow their dreams.With 13 original musical numbers, you'll be singing along with the musical that the LA Weekly proclaimed had "more wit, energy, and imagination in any one frame...than in an entire decade's worth of lame Hollywood attempts to revivify the genre."

Other features at the festival include the family drama Red Doors (dir. Georgia Lee), the underground film Scumrock (dir. Jon Moritsugu), Feature documentaries include Mighty Warriors of Comedy (dir. Sung H. Kim), The Cats of Mirikitani (dir. Linda Hattendorf), and The Slanted Screen (dir. Jeff Adachi).

Labels: events, Gay events, movie, Seattle

R-Place [see map] will host a party Wednesday night from 10pm to Midnight for the movie Eating Out 2: Sloppy Seconds.

And no, unfortunately, you won't get to see super-hunk Marco Dapper or any of the other hot-stud stars in person, but you will get to watch trailers for the film. And they'll be giving away posters and other schwag including DVDs of Eating Out 1.

To whet your apetite, check out these behind-the-scenes shots of some of the men of Eating out.


We mentioned the movie yesterday because of the Dapper hunk pics, but in case you missed it amidst the eye-candy, the movie opens Friday at the at the Varsity [get directions].

The Boy Culture blog has a great interview with the Marco Dapper and many pictures. (And yes, guys, he's straight. Sigh.)

And here's another trailer, just in case you really need to know what the movie's about:

Labels: gay bar, Gay events, Gay Seattle, movie, Seattle, shirtless hunk