Adolescence – Page 41 – Discover great gay stories.

DEKKOO DISPATCH 034 – ‘STAY’ AND ‘FOUR’

Title – ‘Four‘

Director – Joshua Sanchez

Starring – Wendell Pierce, Emory Cohen, Aja Naomi King, E.J. Bonilla

Release Date – 2012

Title – ‘Stay‘

Director – Brandon Zuck

Starring – Brandon Tyler Harris, Julian Brand

Release Date – 2013

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Happy September everyone. I doubt many of you have children, but if you do I hope you’re very much enjoying having them off of your hands and back in school! And if you’re still in school then I’m so very sorry. Maybe these two films will cheer you up!

We’ve brought you two short films now from Brandon Zuck (‘The Happy Ones‘ ‘Goodbye Blue Sky‘) and this one is my favorite so far. ‘Stay‘ is an intimate drama (with a hint of action that we’ve become used to with Zuck’s work) taking place in the Florida keys (having the convertible top down while it’s raining is soooo Florida) concerning friendship, drugs, and intimacy issues. Ash tries and tricks his ex-boyfriend (Jacks) into joining him for a road trip that’s actually a drug deal. Once Jacks finds out he’s infuriated and only calms down when there’s an offer of money (sigh. typical dude-bro). The rest of the film is spent with discussions about their relationship – a lot of which feels very honest and heartwarming. After researching the film a bit more I found out that Brandon Zuck is attempting to make it into a feature film – very cool!

Continuing on with the theme of character-studies our featured feature film of the week is ‘Four‘ – a heartfelt drama about 4 people living their lives and trying to figure out how love works. The film premiered at the Los Angeles Film Festival and took home an ensemble acting award for all 4 actors. For a tight 75-minute film it’s an incredibly honest piece of work and one definitely worth watching.

June – A young man struggling with his homosexuality who turns to anonymous online dating sites to find some kind of happiness.
Joe – A hardworking family man. Everyone he knows would describe him as honest, happy, and smart, but he hides his homosexuality from everyone and seems disgusted with gay men that aren’t him or those he holds in his favor.
Abigayle – Joe’s daughter who has to take care of her ill mother when her father is ‘away on business’.
Dexter – Half bad boy / half poet who wants to find love. A bit of a slacker, but charming nonetheless.

Over the course of one night these characters talk, kiss, scream, cry, and try to interpret the world around them. The most interesting plot line is definitely June & Joe who’s interactions sometimes feel like spoken-word poetry. Joe’s outgoing nature is the perfect compliment to June’s shy bordering on mute personality. I do wish the movie went a little further in its investigation of Joe’s family. There’s an easy 10 minutes that could have been added to it, but my guess is that the filmmaker wants us to understand how secrets can congeal in a nuclear family and remain undisclosed. Regardless this is a very moving film that I think you’ll all very much fall in love with.

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Watch ’em with: You and yourself

Mix it with: A drink that reminds you of your first love

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DEKKOO DISPATCH 026 – ‘Animals’

Title – ‘Animals‘

Director – Marçal Forés

Starring – Oriol Pla, Augustus Prew, Dimitri Leonidas, Roser Tapias

Release Date – 2012

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Happy Outfest! I hope everyone who’s in sunny Los Angeles is having lots of fun and watching lots of sexy cinema at the film festival. If you’re not in LA then you should join in on the fun by watching the Outfest award-winning film ‘Animals‘ on Dekkoo which took home the Artistic Achievement prize back in 2013. I’m really psyched this film finally has arrived because it’s one of my all time favorites!! This is the first feature film of Marçal Forés who also directed ‘Everlasting Love‘ and while the two films are actually very different thematically, they’re very similar in regards to gorgeous cinematography (by Eduard Grau – ‘A Single Man’), exciting musical choices, and extremely attractive men. The soundtrack to the film in on vinyl and it’s one of my most played records. Soooo good!

When I was growing up there was always lots of talk about having an imaginary friend. I was always sort of jealous when I’d watch movies and all these kids that were my age had this intense connection to something that I couldn’t really fathom. I wanted to be crazy too!! While I didn’t have an imaginary friend I certainly had a favorite teddy bear. I slept with it every night all the way through high school in fact (there were one or two replacements along the way). But right when I went to college he went in the closet and I don’t really miss him. In the film ‘Animals‘ though a teddy bear named Deerhoof is both Pol’s imaginary best friend and sole companion.

Deerhoof can walk and talk (in English bizarrely enough!) and talks to Pol about life, music, and comic books. Early on in the film we see Deerhoof grabbed by a dog and we get our first glimpse of how attached Pol is to his best friend and companion. But its not only the dogs that want to steal away Deerhoof, but also Pol’s brother who you can tell used to have a closer relationship before he joined the police force. Now he just acts as a demanding parental figure that wants Pol to get rid of Deerhoof and face reality. Luckily Pol has a few friends at school like Laia (who has a major crush on him) and Mark.

Complicating Pol’s serene yet angsty life of comic books and cool Spanish punk music is Ikari, the new incredibly sexy boy in school. Pol can’t keep his eyes off him and eventually Ikari lets him inside a world that well… I don’t want to ruin the surprise, but the film definitely takes a turn! I feel like I’ve been making this movie seem normal minus the teddy bear, BUT IT’S NOT! Most people compare it to ‘Donnie Darko’ and I can’t really argue against that. It’s very surreal, goes unexpected places, and is quite serene and thought-provoking by the end. I had the privilege of being able to talk to the director right after watching it for the first time and I immediately asked him how much of an influence the short film ‘BUGCRUSH’ (which happens to be my favorite short film of alllll time) had on it and he smiled knowingly and said, ‘Quite a bit’. So if you’ve seen that then you know a little bit of the tone of the film at least.

Take a trip with Pol, Deerhoof, and the rest of the gang in the genre-bending and very queer film ‘Animals‘. On Dekkoo now!

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Watch it with: With a few of your ‘cool’ friends.

Mix it with: Being stoned sativa-style works for this one.

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DEKKOO DISPATCH 025 – ‘The Country Teacher’

Title – ‘The Country Teacher‘

Director – Bohdan Sláma

Starring – Pavel Liška, Zuzana Bydžovská, Ladislav Šedivý, Marek Daniel

Release Date – 2008

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It’s Wednesday!! Only 2 more workdays until 4th of July weekend! I don’t know what your plans are, but I’m venturing into the desert and drinking Tiki drinks poolside for 4 days straight. Heaven… Did everyone see the exciting news about ‘Screwed’ being picked up by Dekkoo out of Frameline?? I’ve seen it and it’s an incredibly sexy Finnish tale of first lust with a great sense of humor about it. I talked to a few people who saw it at the sold-out screening at Frameline and they said it was a super high energy screening. Get psyched!

As a city-living boy for most of my life I’ve always romanticized the life lived in the countryside. When I saw ‘The Country Teacher‘ at the Miami Gay and Lesbian Film Festival back in 2008 it completely fed into that romanticism and I was swept away by the golden fields of hay and the ancient practice of drawing of water from wells. Of course we’re also talking about a movie from the Czech Republic so in addition to the romantic stuff we’re also talking about insane Eastern European drunks that harass people and beat each other up. Although come to think of it that seems sorta romantic as well…

Anyways let’s talk about the characters at the heart of this emotional drama. Petr is a teacher that decides to move to the countryside from the busy city for unspecified reasons. After arriving and settling in (his landlord/boss gives him 6 months before he can’t stand the small town anymore and runs away) he falls asleep on a bed of hay and wakes up to find Marie standing over him, the woman who owns the farm he’s wandered into. She’s kind to him and invites him out to socialize with some of the villagers. He comes to realize that Marie is falling in love with him, but he’s too awkward to admit what we here at Dekkoo realize right away… he’s gay. He really likes her and feels affection for her, but he’s much more interested in her teenage son and offers his teaching skills to become more ingrained in his life.

I don’t want to go into much more detail because Petr goes through quite a journey in the film and it’s very emotional. By the end of the film you’ll absolutely fall in love with Marie who is so unbelievably kind and I fear that there aren’t many of her sort left in the world. ‘The Country Teacher‘ is a striking picture that combines the best of European art-house cinema and Queer self-discovery cinema into one wondrous picture that will leave you swooning.

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Watch it with: By yourself or someone else that won’t talk much. It’s very meditative.

Mix it with: Coffee.

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DEKKOO DISPATCH 019 – ‘BLOKES’ & ‘REMINGTON AND THE CURSE…’

Title – ‘Blokes‘

Director – Marialy Rivas

Starring – Alfonso David, Pedro Campos, Paula ZÃºÃ±iga, MarÃa de Los Ãngeles GarcÃa

Release Date – May 22, 2010

Title – ‘Remington and the Curse of the Zombadings‘

Director – Jade Castro

Starring – Martin Escudero, Lauren Young, Kerbie Zamora, Janice de Belen

Release Date – August 31, 2011

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Heya! Hope everyone’s week is going swell. It’s that time of the year in the film world when everyone seems to be asking, ‘Are you going to Cannes?’ I’m not, but that doesn’t stop me (nor should it stop you!) from watching some Cannes-worthy films this week and it just so happens the short film, ‘Blokes‘, was an official selection of the Cannes Film Festival a few years ago!

Luchito lives in a poor apartment complex somewhere in Chile during the military dictatorship which lasted from 1973-1990. He lives with his nosy mother who keeps barging in on him while he’s trying to jerk off to thoughts of the hunky boy playing soccer in the courtyard downstairs. Luchito is a dreamer and to that end spends a lot of time staring out of his window. Finally he gets to see his crush naked with a girl, but that’s just the start of a cat and mouse game with an ending involving a really big ‘cat’.

‘Blokes‘ was based on a short essay by a famous queer Chilean author and activist named Pedro Lemebel. I can’t read Spanish, but the google translation hinted that it was written really beautifully.

Next, we’ve got a mega silly film that I couldn’t get out of my head for weeks afterwards: ‘Remington and the Curse of the Zombadings‘ is a super queer zombie/witchcraft-comedy out of the Philippines which is known for a very flamboyant gay community due to the presence of the ‘Bakla‘. Sadly, gay people are barely tolerated in certain communities and violence does occur which is one of the focal points of the film.

The story concerns Remington (a super-cute Martin Escudero) who was cursed at a young age by a Pops (Roderick Paulate) who he mocked for being gay while Pops was mourning for a dead lover. However the curse is hardly your average cut-and-dry you’ll die soon or you’ll get boils on your butt. No! It’s that Remington will become gay when he gets older! Fast-forward 10 or so years and the curse starts to take effect right at the same time a rash of strange murders begin to plague his small community.

Watch the trailer and you’ll quickly get a sense if this movie is your taste. I’d highly recommend it though. Where else can you watch a straight guy struggling with a gay curse and having mood swings between the girl he’s falling in love with and his ‘straight’ best friend while at the same time solving a murder mystery?!?

Some fun facts about the movie:

-Once Remington starts to ‘turn gay’ he starts talking in bakla slang like ‘Hi Mumsie!’ and ‘Must dash!’ and you’ll notice that those subtitles are in pink!

-There’s a cameo by Daniel Fernando who was in the classic film, ‘Macho Dancer’.

-Remington can’t control his ass in one dance scene; emoji’s and rainbows take over the frame and it’s legit one of the best parts of the film.

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Watch ’em with: Your mega-gay friends

Mix ’em with: A Mojito, or two, or ten…

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