Knight at HOME at the Movies
Celebrating Gay Pride 2007

Something for everyone as we observe our fabu-lush community in all its diversity!
What better way to entertain not just your gay friends but anyone in desperate need of fashion tips (of the flamboyant
sort) than with MGM's
The Adventures of Priscilla Queen of the Desert Extra Frills Edition?  This funny and
insightful road trip movie (through the Australian Outback no less) was an instant classic in the queer cinema canon upon
its release in 1994.  Hugo Weaving, who went on to memorable parts in
The Matrix series, The Lord of the Rings trilogy and
last year's
V for Vendetta, heartthrob Guy Pearce of First Snow, L.A. Confidential, Memento, and renowned British actor
Terrence Stamp play three drag queens on Priscilla, the pink painted bus, who are heading across the Outback for a resort
engagement.  Naturally fun, trouble, and a LOT of fabu-lush drag queen musical numbers ensue along the way.  This
terrific edition includes deleted scenes, a newly lensed making of featurette with queer writer-director Stephan Elliott (who
reaffirms, sorry girls, that Pearce is STRAIGHT), an audio commentary from Elliott, blooper reel, and more.  A must have,
natch.


So is Wolfe Video's 2-disc Vintage Collection version of 1986's
Desert Hearts.  This bona-fide dyke classic about a
demure, shy professor (Helen Shaver) who comes to Nevada to get a divorce and learns to accept her true self thanks to
a comely ranch hand (Patricia Charbonneau) is just as sultry and sexy as it's heated location.  And who can forget Three's
Company's Audra Lindlay as the mean old owner of the ranch who doesn't want our two lovely lassies getting together?  
Wolfe's edition offers a second disc with new making of interviews with the two stars conducted by writer-director Donna
Deitch, a newly recorded commentary track by Deitch and MORE footage from the famous steamy love scene.  Another
must have that both ladies and gents will enjoy.


"I like 'em big and stupid and gay as hell" - to offer a variation on the Julie Brown 80s song.  Nothing could fit that
description more appropriately than the funny, dumb, sexy, oh so gay
Reno 911: Miami.  The big screen version of
the Comedy Central reality parody of "Cops" features none other than the short shorts wearing
Lt. Jim Dangle leading his
troop of imbecilic fellow officers as they bask in good old hedonistic Miami.  20th Century Fox's disc of the recent comedy
hit offers an unrated version (read: raunchier) and a host of special features - deleted and expanded scenes, cast
commentaries and much more - all adding to the hilarity.  One of the funniest sight gags of the year had to be Thomas
Lennon as Lt. Dangle sitting naked at his sewing machine, eagerly making a new pair of short shorts.


John Stamos fanned the flames of many a gay man's ardor when he played a gay wedding planner in last fall's charming
made for TV movie
Wedding Wars.  In the film, Stamos is asked by his straight brother to put together his wedding.  
Only problem is that his intended's father is a conservative senator (James Brolin) who goes on the record against gay
marriage.  That's too much for Stamos' character who forms a one man picket line outside the Senator's mansion.  A
topical social cause is inserted into the typical romantic comedy convolutions and the comely cast certainly helps this nice
little waste of time.  A shirtless Stamos and a love scene with his on-screen partner would have gotten this one an even
higher rave!  The disc includes a brief making of featurette.  From Sony Pictures.
The handsome herd of nipple ponies and their equally alluring filly friends are back in Dante's Cove - The Complete
Second Season from Regent Releasing.  Dante's Cove has to be one of the dumbest guilty pleasures on television (it
airs on the Here! channel, the gay man's version of HBO).  It's sort of a sexy, sultry update of
Dark Shadows - that is if
Barnabas and Willie had been getting it on in one room, Angelique and Josette in another.  The show, a gothic soap
opera writ large, focuses on the assorted doings of a group of EXTREMELY buff men and women who between strutting
around in next to nothing and boffing one another (men on men, womyn on womyn that is) are involved in a centuries old
feud between a scheming witch and a glowering warlock.  The acting's dreadful, the plots and special effects not far behind
but OH THE EYE CANDY!!!  This is one guilty pleasure that earns its moniker.  This 2-disc set includes the hour long
episodes and several behind the scenes featurettes including a welcome one singling out the openly cast members.


Logo, the other gay cable network, has also released (via Paramount Home Video) the 3-disc
Noah's Arc - The
Complete Second Season.  The shorthand description of the show is a gay male Afro-American version of "Sex and
the City" and if you forget who the characters are each episode begins with their names and description in the credits
making it even easier to follow along.  As in
the first season, Noah, the would be screenwriter is in and out of the
relationship with his own version of Sex's Mr. Big character and continues trying to pull off fashion get ups that are a cross
between Carrie Bradshaw chic and Butch Queen Draguna.  The other three of the trio (the sexpot, the queen, and the
conservative intellectual) all have their assortment of relationship problems as well.  Not quite as fresh as season one,
nevertheless the show continues to entertain and like
Dante's Cove, offers male eye candy aplenty in every outing.  There
are several fun making of featurettes included in the set as well.  Surprisingly, the show won't return for a third season but
will instead try to make the leap to feature films - maybe making it there before
Sex & the City does.


I want to give a quick shout out to
Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D List - The Complete First Season from
Universal Studios. Even though I wasn't able to review a screening copy of the release, I'm going to give it a hearty
recommendation as I think Griffin's is the best reality show on TV.  Mainly because
she's a very funny lady and the laughs
are consistent throughout each episode.  This first season focuses on her now defunct marriage to husband Matt who
appears easy going and indulgent - a nice contrast to Griffin's constant anxiety - a yin and yang from which plenty of
laughs occur.  I can't tell you about extras as I haven't seen them but this is a fun show worth picking up.


Finally, for all you fans of classics, comedy AND camp, look no further than Warner Home Video's
The Lucille Ball Film
Collection.  This 5-disc set is a MUST HAVE for all three fans of those film categories.  For starters, the set features Ball
in one of her patented tough show girl roles.  This is in 1940's
Dance, Girl, Dance in which Lucy plays Bubbles the street
wise ballerina not afraid to give the customers what they want and re-emerges without batting an eye as Tiger Lily White -
a more wholesome version of Gypsy Rose Lee.  To give the burlesque act class and some laughs, she enlists the classy
Maureen O'Hara from her old troupe.  Maria Ouspenskaya (of the
Wolf Man movies) is in fine form as the head of the
ballet school and there's nice support from Ralph Bellamy.

Two years later Ball gave what is considered by many to be her best film performance (and it was her own favorite) in
1942's
The Big Street, an adaptation of a Damon Runyan story (of Guys and Dolls fame).  Ball plays the hard bitten
showgirl Gloria Lyons who is crippled by her nasty mob boss boyfriend and attended to by the adoring busboy "Pinks"
(Henry Fonda).  Pinks endures the constant bitter tongue lashings of Lyons as she schemes to fix herself up with wealthy
playboy Decatur Reid and Pink is so enraptured by her that he gets all his friends to help.  The memorable supporting
cast includes several of Orson Welles' Mercury Theatre Players - Agnes Moorehead, Ray Collins, etc., who, not surprisingly,
turn in wonderful performances.  But it's Ball whose expert playing requires her to go from morose to hard as nails, from
tears to vicious laughter in an instant who really delivers.  And in her one song, Ball is actually dubbed by someone who
matches her speaking voice fairly well.

Ball's bravura performance in
The Big Street led to a contract with MGM who promptly starred her and her famous red
tresses alongside another redhead - funny man Red Skelton in the ravishing Technicolor romp
DuBarry Was a Lady.  The
movie's basically an excuse to showcase a lot of oddball talent and several spectacular musical numbers courtesy of Cole
Porter (including "Do I Love You?" and "Friendship."  Lucy again plays a golddigging showgirl who this time must choose
between love (with the cutie pie Gene Kelly) or the riches offered by the silly Skelton who is suddenly wealthy after winning
a sweepstakes.  Virginia O'Brien, doing her deadpan shtick, offers expert support and a song or two.  And Lucy was never
quite so lovely as in this breathtaking escapist fare.  Light as a feather, this is an often overlooked example of MGM's
famed luxurious studio artistry.

The set jumps years ahead to 1963 with
Critic's Choice, the fourth and last time that Ball co-starred with Bob Hope.  A twist
on
Please Don't Eat the Daisies about a cranky, insufferable theatre critic and his patient but supportive wife, Lucy plays the
wife who pens a not very good play that the husband insists he must review "for the sake of integrity."  Complications
arise when Hope becomes jealous of the amorous attentions Ball receives from the director of her magnum opus, Rip
Torn.  Though Lucy is lovely to look at and the film is based on a hit play, it's extremely dated material and offers few
laughs.

With
Mame, from 1974, Ball hoped to have a hit movie that would solidify her as a movie star with a new generation (at
the ripe old age of 63!). But not even her vast television audience could save the critics from savaging what was probably
the musical movie with the worst reviews in the medium to that date (
The Wiz with Diana Ross would just about tie it about
five years later).  Tough as iron by that point in her career, Ball insisting on having everything HER WAY and that included
keeping every single moment from the already too long musical and dumping Madeline Kahn in favor of Jane Connell
from the Broadway production when Kahn crossed her before filming started.  But Ball was smart to keep Bea Arthur and
other expert Broadway actors in the cast (and insisted wisely on Robert Preston as her leading man).  Warners gave the
movie a sumptuous budget and it shows (Theodora Van Runkle's costumes are a gay man's dream of couture).  

But sparing no expense and ceding to their star's wishes at every turn couldn't erase the fact that Lucy was, um, a tad
elderly for the part to begin with (as the soft focus Vaseline close ups laughably attest) and that she was tone deaf in the
extreme.  This latter fact was known to millions familiar with Lucy's exploitation of this fact after years of it on her sitcoms.
So why not dub her? It had to be the will of the star, overriding studio hesitations, that made that happen (it hadn't
stopped Warners from dubbing Audrey Hepburn in
My Fair Lady a decade earlier).  Whatever the reason, Ball's singing is
so dreadful that what can one do but laugh helplessly as she croaks out "It's Today" and "If He Walked Into My Life?"  
Late in the picture when Bea Arthur sings a smashing snippet of "It's Today" you hear the song performed by a comedic
and vocal master and it's like night and day.  

But for all the critical drubbing, the movie still has real moments of heart and comedy (Arthur orders a "tiny triple" like
nobody else and commands Ball to "get her ass on that moon" with comedic assurance).  A fresh approach and editing
shears might have helped but there's something so dreadfully wonderful about the end result that I confess to a special
love for the film in all it's fabu-lush, icky, sentimental splendor.  There's nothing quite like this bloated version of
Mame
and I wish Warners had given us more special features (imagine these outtakes).  There is a vintage making of
featurette, along with the trailer that are great to have, however.  In fact, each of the films include specialty material circa
the year the particular film was released - always a nice bonus from Warners.

The Lucille Ball Film Collection offers proof that even without the TV show, the world would have fallen in love with Lucy.