Vote For Jake ..... please!

Still looking to do your good deed for the day?  Then here's the perfect one for you.  Jake Graf : filmmaker, queer activist ,  actor   (and queerquru's friend) is the very first transman ever to be nominated as LGBT Celebrity Rising Star in the British LGBT 2016 Awards.

We had the pleasure of interviewing him recently for our profile piece Jake Graf : Man of The Moment which if you have read you can see why we are more than happy to cast our vote for him in this new poll.  You can too .... you don't even have to British to do so .... and then you can pour yourself a (small?) drink and take a look at Brace one of Jake's films.

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http://www.britishlgbtawards.co.uk/lgbt-celebrity-rising-star-2016.html

Top 10 Coming Out of The Closet Scenes

It's not easy coming out as gay, whether in real life or on the small screen. The reactions of our friends and our families is not always what we may have hoped for.  Nevertheless its a journey that we as gay men and women need to take if we are to lead lives being true to ourselves.

The folks over at www.watchmojo.com have put together a compilation of Top 10 Coming Out of The Closet Scenes from a wealth of different TV programs.  Some are heartbreaking, but some are gloriously happy too. 

The Gayest TV Program In The World

The most watched TV program in the world is also the most unintentionally gayest one too.  The annual Eurovision Song Contest is watched by over 195 million people ( to keep it in perspective this years Super Bowl managed a mere 114.5 million viewers). 

It's a real music anomaly.  For starters the countries that send a singer to represent them in what are considered the Pop Olympics do not even have to be European ...... e.g. Russia and Australia are amongst the 40 odd nations to participate. And you certainly do not have to possess a ounce of musical talent as in its 60 year history it has pumped out more really horrible pop songs than anyone else, and despite all the money and talent thrown out it, Eurovision persists in keeping alive all these dire dated styles of music that never deserved to be born in the first place.  And the show goes on for ours and hours : o call it 'camp' would be a major understatement.  

What you need is chutzpah, be totally outrageous, grin from ear to ear, wear a silly outfit and sing really loud (and not necessarily in tune).  The trouble is it that it kind of casts a spell over the performers and even ex-participants seemed trapped into a lifetime of singing pure eurotrash. Like 40 year old Páll Óskar who once represented Iceland and now just cannot stop himself from singing a la Eurovision : just check out his latest video

P.S. Sometimes against all odds all the countries manage to vote a really talented act that has some how slipped in,  Like in 2014 when bearded chanteuse Austrian Conchita Wurst stunned the crowds with her big campy ballad 'Rise Like A Phoenix' and her very glamorous sparkly sheaf dress making that year the gayest show ever.

Eurovison 2016 runs May 10, 2016 – May 14, 2016

http://www.eurovision.tv/tag/expand/2016

Happy 66th Birthday Julie Walters

Academy-Award nominated actress Julie Walters think she is a dying breed. Her recent comments that there are too many 'posh actors' today and very few working class ones like her coming through the ranks,  caused a wee rumpus in the media,  She certainly does have a point as over in the UK every new star seems to be ex Public School (that's the same as a posh US Private School) : think Eddie Redmayne and Benedict Cumberbatch just to name few.  It has not however affected the demand for her work and Walters is back on UK TV screens next month for the second series of Indian Summers, Channel 4’s epic of intrigue and romance, set in the hill station of Shimla in the dying days of the British Raj.

Today on her 66th Birthday we look back at just a few of the highlights of her very successful career that have made her so immensely popular and a treasured gay icon.

Her breakthrough role came in 1983 when she transferred her performance in Willy Russell's hit play to the big screen in  Educating Rita and won her a Golden Globe, a BAFTA and her first Academy Award Nomination.

Walters rejected all the numerous offers that Hollywood showered upon her after Educating Rita and went back to the UK to star in Terry Jones movie Personal Services based on the true life story of the much-beloved Cynthia Payne the British brothel keeper and Madam who showed how hypocritical the UK sex laws were at the time.  The movie, a smash hit in the UK, flopped ignominiously in the US .... one audience member walked  out muttering that 'the movie contained something to offend everyone.'

That same year she played the mother of murdered gay playwright Joe Orton's in Stephen Frear's biopic of Orton called Prick Up Your Ears cementing a love affair between Walters and the gay community that has never diminished since.

Walters won her second Academy Award Nomination for teaching Billy Elliot to dance in the popular 2000 movie.

It was however Walters work with the TV comic actress/writer Victoria Wood that she won over everyone's hearts in the UK ..... and it is an enormous shame that none of the enormous body of work that kept us Brits hysterically scream in laughter ever found it's way to the worldwide audience that it so deserved.  From a vast secretion of favorite clips, queerguru has chosen two.  The first from this glorious Made-for-Tv Movie Pat and Margaret about two long-lost sisters who are now world's apart.

However there is a hardly a single Brit gay man of a certain age who doesn't know the words of this classic sketch called Two Soups off by heart which shows Walters at her very funniest.

Meanwhile check out her scene-stealing performance as the Irish landlady Mrs Keogh in the new Oscar nominated movie Brooklyn.

Happy 66th Birthday Julie Walters ..... and thank you for enriching our lives.

Helena Bonham-Carter is Never Out Of The Game

Helena Bonham-Carter acts up as a rule-bending librarian as she acts out  Rufus Wainwright’s “Out of the Game,” taken from his Mark Ronson produced album of the same name. The video directed by Philip Andelman was released last March but we never ever get bored watching it.

How To Look Swish This Season

Urban Dictionary defines the word 'swish' as English slang meaning 'good' but when it comes to our latest discovery of its use, we would beg to differ. queerguru thinks that Swish Embassy .... our favorite new fashion find.... is actually excellent!

Their very fresh vibrant range of T's and Tops are cute, funny and very suggestive and would be great additions to any hot homo's wardrobe.  You don't have to be gay to wear Swish,  but it does help if you are at least a wee bit fierce.

We caught up with  Swish's main man Dean up in his home town of Toronto and were shocked to find he had started out back in 2009. Initially it was a hobby to keep him out of trouble when he wasn't at his day job in corporate Canada, but then it grew.  Inspired by vacations to places like P. Town (and who wouldn't be?) where he was always a tad disappointed by the fact that whilst there were plenty of T's which left nothing to the (gay) imagination, but they were usually too crude to pass for general urban wear.

With the company's slogan of 'Wear A Conversation Piece', what Dean set out do was produce a range that  is camp, funny and with plenty of references to pop culture but with not-too-crude vernacular, and we think he has succeeded beautifully.  What also attracted queerguru to Swish is the way that it is so accessible for so many sectors of our community ......check out the section called "Bears and Otters and Wolves, oh my!"  And like most really good things that we queers start, straight boys and girls are soon going to be wanting these 'message' t's too.

Last year Dean stepped up the pace of Swish and devoted himself full-time to the business and expanded his product range. Now everything can be ordered online ... most of the T's are $29.95 ....but they will  also soon be available in selected stores worldwide (locations on the website).  

The T shirt below is one of Swish's best sellers, and it has a nice touch of irony combining one of the most overused terms of gay dating sights with the picture of a big fat unicorn

www.swishembassy.com

Happy 70th Birthday Brenda Blethyn

                                                                                                                                                           Photo @Jack Barnes

No disrespect to Frances McDormand but in 1996 the Academy Award for Best Actress should have gone to Brenda Blethyn for her superlative performance as Cynthia Rose Purley the unforgettable, big-hearted cockney heroine in Mike Leigh's Secrets and Lies. She had already picked up the BAFTA, Golden Globe and Cannes Best Actress Award  for the role and in our eyes, the Oscar was hers for the taking.  It also marked the start of her becoming a treasured gay icon too. 

As this quintessential English Actress celebrates her 70th Birthday today, queerguru looks back at just five of our very favorite performances from this long career of this sheer genius of a woman who excels in these larger-than-life characters that always have a big heart. Such as her role as Mari Hoff in the movie adaption of Jim Cartwright's hit play Little Voice, which in 1998 earned Blethyn another Academy Award Nomination.

In 2000 Blethyn played a small-town widow in 'Saving Grace' facing financial difficulty when she is persuaded to go into agricultural and grow a very special 'crop' with very hilarious consequences.

In 2005 she played Mrs Bennett who takes to her bed with the vapors in 'Pride And Prejudice'. 

In the  2007 Australian movie 'Introducing The Dwights' Blethyn played a cafeteria worker by day who did stand up comedy by night, with yet another tour-de-force performance.

Happy 70th Birthday Brenda Blethyn.