Tag: Holiday

Short Film Spotlight: Holiday

The new 20-minute short film Holiday follows twenty-something Maurice (Tijmen Govaerts) and his older brother Louis (Oscar Willems), who join the rest of their family for a weekend getaway filled with unexpected tension.

No longer a kid, but not quite an adult, Maurice is having trouble finding his place. He’s also starting to notice how much of a gap has grown between the generations.

Fueled by angst and growing more and more frustrated by his family’s myriad secrets, he starts adding a certain level of tension to each relationship, forcing a breaking point that his well-mannered relatives refuse to cross, no matter how awkward things get.

A sharp, well-observed comedy-drama from Belgian writer-director Michiel Dhont, Holiday teases at deep emotion hidden just under the surface. Watching the short film, it’s easy to imagine it expanded to feature length, delving further into each of the characters. Nonetheless, the game cast lend naturalistic performances that make the family feel authentic and relatable.

Watch a short trailer for Holiday below. The film is available now on Dekkoo.

Holiday Hits: Shared Rooms

A sexy, feel-good romantic comedy, Shared Rooms explores the meaning of home and family through three interrelated stories of gay men finding connections during the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day.

Laslo and Cal (Christopher Grant Pearson and Alec Manley Wilson), a married couple, take in a teenage relative who was kicked out of his home after his parents discovered he was gay; Sid and Gray (Justin Xavier Smith and Alexander Neil Miller), two men looking for a quick hookup, end up finding a much stronger connection; and Julian and Dylan (Daniel Lipshutz and Robert Werner), a pair of roommates, are forced to share the same bed for the week – much to the delight (and horror) of the one harboring a secret crush on the other.

Directed by Rob Williams (3-Day Weekend, Make the Yuletide Gay), Shared Rooms brings together these three interrelated tales of gay men seeking family, love and sex during the holiday season. You can check out the trailer below. The film is now available on Dekkoo.

Make the Yuletide Gay with Dekkoo!

College senior, Olaf ‘Gunn’ Gunnunderson (Keith Jordan) is head-over-heels in love with his ultra-gay sweetheart Nathan Stanford (Adamo Ruggiero). Though they don’t want to part ways, the boyfriends are each headed off for Christmas break, returning home to their families.

Nathan’s cold parents won a trip to Israel, but somehow “forgot” to tell their son. When he hears that he’s to spend the holidays alone, he decides to make his way to Wisconsin to be with his sweetie and family. When he gets there, there are a few surprises: Gunn is in the closet; Gunn’s mom, Anya is a major Christmas freak who says “Dontcha” frequently; and Gunn takes after his dad Sven – anatomically speaking – a fact learned when Gunn’s stoner dad greets Nathan at the door in an open bathrobe.

With constant double-entendres flying from Anya’s mouth and Gunn Sr. always stoned, no one seems to notice that Gunn is gay and dating Nathan. With the closet walls closing in on Nathan, he decides to flee back to his empty home – the Gunnunderson’s are a little too insane even for him!

Giddily exuberant, this gay holiday classic from writer-director Rob Williams’ is romantic and filled with laugh-out-loud jokes. Make the Yuletide Gay is guaranteed to get you into the holiday spirit.

Watch the trailer for Make the Yuletide Gay below. The film is now available on Dekkoo.

 

 

DEKKOO DISPATCH 051 – ‘LOGGERHEADS’

Title – ‘Loggerheads‘

Director – Tim Kirkman

Starring – Kip Pardue, Michael Kelly, Tess Harper, Bonnie Hunt, Chris Sarandon, Michale Learned, Robin Weige

Release Date – 2005

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Merry post-Christmas everyone! I hope everyone got that special gift (:cough: sling :cough:) you had on your wish list. I got one of those nifty VR thingys which has been fun to play with. I have yet to watch any Dekkoo films on it, but that’s definitely in the future! Last week I recommended ‘Make the Yuletide Gay‘ to watch with your family as the perfect Christmas movie and this week since I figure many of you are still with family I’d recommend another good movie to watch with the fam.

Before ‘Brokeback Mountain’ set the world on fire in 2005 there was a smaller film called ‘Loggerheads‘ that made quite a splash via the Sundance Film Festival and Outfest where it won the grand prize. Following three characters and their search for inner-fulfillment Tim Kirkman’s third film is a quiet yet stunning piece of filmmaking. The three main characters from a sort of triangle:

kip

Mark – A handsome drifter, Mark sleeps on the beaches of Kure Beach where loggerhead turtles come to bury their eggs. An activist of sorts, he does his best to make sure tourists don’t inadvertently kill the turtles. After he meets George, an owner of a motel in the area, he begins a romance made more complicated by his relationship with his non-accepting family and his HIV status. The uber-sexy Kip Pardue plays the role of Mark who’s been in tons of films including ‘The Rules of Attraction‘!

tess

Elizabeth – “I know that it’s hard to be the wife of a preacher” is spoken to Elizabeth at one point in the film and for me that pretty much spelled out the difficulty she has going through her life. Elizabeth’s life is ruled by the church and her husband’s unwavering belief in the bible. That’s why she no longer talks about her gay adopted son Mark and why she becomes very nervous when a new family moves in across the street who could be gay. I believe Elizabeth is the one that makes the most progress in the film – she appears to give up several times, but something within her always pushes her to re-visit an emotion that defeated her once before.

bonnie

Grace – Now midway through her life the one decision she constantly regrets is giving up her child to adoption. She sees her son in so many people passing by on the street that she decides that it’s time to find him so she can find some peace within herself. Grace quits her dead-end customer service job to move back in with her mother and begins the search for her son. Grace is a character that you really feel for in the movie. Her mother convinced her that giving up her baby would have been good for the future, but now that she realizes that her future isn’t so great she pines for the life that she could have had as a mother. It’s also great to see Bonnie Hunt (‘Jumanji’!) in such a touching role.

The way that the movie cuts all three of these storylines together really elevates the film to another level where you feel connected to all of these characters. I also love the fact that all of these plot lines take place in small towns. It’s charming and gives the film a boost of authenticity that city films can lack. I hope you get lost in the romantic, longing, and intense spiritual feeling of hope that ‘Loggerheads‘ imparts.

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Watch it with: Family & Friends

Mix it with: A White Wine

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DEKKOO DISPATCH 050 – ‘MAKE THE YULETIDE GAY’

Title – ‘Make the Yuletide Gay‘

Director – Rob Williams

Starring – Keith Jordan, Adamo Ruggiero, Hallee Hirsh, Kelly Keaton

Release Date – 2009

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It’s that time of the year again folks. Time to take out all those ornaments and take down a few of the more racy photographs you’ve got hanging on your walls before your parents show up. The holidays have always been friend and foe to the gay community. While we’ve been able to make the best of them by celebrating the season with friends and lovers it also reminds us that we sometimes can’t be with our families because we’ve been kicked out or ostracized. Luckily things have been getting a lot better (especially for younger gays) and our families have started to accept the idea that Christmas can include handsome hunks in love.

That’s the topic of this week’s CHRISTMAS SPECIAL Dekkoo Dispatch! The straights have ‘A Christmas Story’, but we’ve got ‘Make the Yuletide Gay‘ to… make the Yuletide gay-er? I mean let’s face it. Christmas is pretty darn gayyy. You’re decorating a tree, wearing silly sweaters, making eggnog cocktails, and waiting for a stranger to come into your house in the middle of the night to give you a ‘gift’. These are all homosexual activities that the straights have claimed in the name of Christmas! But I digress…

‘Make the Yuletide Gay‘ has been a yearly holiday viewing tradition for many homosexuals I know since it came out in 2009. It’s universal tale of acceptance, love, and family-above-all attitude is exactly the kind of vision of Christmas that we all hope becomes a reality for everyone. The story revolves around the adorable couple of Olaf (aka Gunn) and Nathan. In school they’re completely out and proud. Olaf even sports an HRC t-shirt at the beginning of the film. Snazzy! For winter break they head their separate ways with Olaf travelling to his family in the Midwest and Nathan going on a cruise with his parents. Once we arrive there we quickly realize that Olaf, while out in school, is definitely not out to his family. Of course there’s a twist – Nathan suddenly shows up on his doorstep without knowing he’s still in the closet. Thus begins a movie full of the comedy of hiding in plain sight.

I say hiding in plain sight because a lot of the movie’s comedy plays on the parents being a little ‘thick’. The mother, played by Kelly Keaton, is so gosh darn adorable and nice. While watching her I couldn’t help but think of Stephanie McVay in ‘The Edge of Seventeen’. She’s the ideal Christmas mother: constantly baking cookies, making hot cocoa, and telling embarrassing stories about her son to his boyfriend. The father, played by Derek Long, is a stereotypical ex-hippy stoner professor. He’s extremely calm, rational, yet also completely out of it. Thus jokes made by Nathan about usually taking the ‘top’ bunk fly right over their heads to hilarious result. The other character I should mention is Abby. She’s the next-door neighbor that Olaf’s parents are trying to set him up with. Awkwardness definitely ensues.

This is absolutely a perfect movie to watch with just about anyone, but especially your mostly-accepting to totally-accepting family over the holidays. It’s definitely PG to PG-13 so you won’t have to worry about your mother fainting over a sex scene.

We at Dekkoo wish you all the best over the holidays and we’d be remiss not to remind you that the gift of Dekkoo is a totally amazing present for any gay, young or old.

 

 

 

 

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Watch it with: Family, Friends, Aliens, you name it!

Mix it with: Spiked Eggnog

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