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  This is a strange one... Hey, I missed you guys! Due to the dedication to the new QPDX Podcast, 2 Girls 1 Podcast, I’ve been a little busy of late. However, I love writing about movies, and little could keep me away from this blog for long.
Celestial Clockwork, made in 1995 by Venezuelan director, Fina Torres (Oriana and Woman on Top), is one of the stranger movies I’ve ever seen. Recently, going through some of my older posts, I realized how few foreign films I’ve reviewed. So, I thought I’d start with one of the first that really surprised me.
The movie begins with beautiful Ana (Ariadna Gil) at her wedding altar. It’s clear that she loves the opera, and is terrified to get married. She’s about to speak her vows, when… she realizes that settling down would compromise her biggest dream, to be an international opera star! There is no choice, but to hightail it to France where she can train.
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 I saw a lot of movies in 2011. I can confidently say, that this list of movies comes without any frustration, and I’d hold up each and every one of them against any mainstream or non-queer content film. This was a bold and exciting year for queer cinema! […]
 Dirty Girl: Let Them Talk, is a movie opening today (Friday) with limited release. Set in 1987 Oklahoma, centers around Danielle, (Juno Temple) the dirty girl of Norman High. She becomes furious when her mother (Milla Jovovitch) announces she is marrying a Mormon, and begins to make friends with an adorable gay boy, Clarke (Jeremy Dozier). Clarke’s homophobic father is threatening to send him off to military school (to meet boys?), and Danielle decides they need to run away to find her biological father. Off they go to Fresno, California, in pursuit of a person Danielle has never met.
I’m always excited, for many reasons, to see Milla Jovovitch in anything, especially this whole Mormon-loving mom bit. Juno Temple as Danielle should be interesting. She had a role in Notes on a Scandal, and will be in the new upcoming Three Muskateers remake, as well as The Dark Knight Rises. We also get to see William H. Macy play a Mormon!
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  The Future, the newest film from Portlander now in Los Angeles, Miranda July, has been out for a few weeks now. If you too were also a fan of Me and You and Everyone We Know, then you were excited for the release of her next project. Most of the world got their first introduction to July from her first major release, but she’s been writing, and creating rad video and performance art for years. She was the first feminist film and performance geek that I met, and It’s been awesome watching her gain acceptance from the rest of the art scene.
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 Did she ever hook up with Pepper? I was rolling around in a pile of puppies yesterday, and had an epic realization. Queers love orphans. Many of us are, or can relate to being abandoned. It isn’t surprising that we identify. Isolation, persecution, lack of power, and desperation (word to the Oxford comma) are common in queerdom. As a kid, most of my favorite movies involved she-orphans, and when I started to click around the web, I realized how many movies carry the theme. I thought about doing a top ten, but it’s so subjective… I did decide to choose one ultimate movie. It’s okay if you don’t concur.
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  The title alone is pretty vivid and exciting. Welcome DJs Actions Slacks (Shannon Wiberg) & DJ Pukes In Vans (Nadia Buyse)! They are the new resident DJ’s at the Tonic Lounge – Chick-A-Boom feminist dance party! It’s a fundraiser for The Raphael House. In case you don’t know, it’s an anti domestic violence agency reaching out to all genders and orientations. As you may know, queer domestic violence rarely gets reported as victims can’t be sure that the police will be sympathetic. This is true for all kinds of domestic abuse as well.
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 !W.A.R. ! Women Art Revolution is a new film by Lynn Hershmann Leeson. In case you didn’t know, Lynn is a much respected artist whose works often explore feminism, consumerism, and privacy. She’s been making ground-breaking art since the 1950’s, and has been a key player in the feminist arts movement. In other words, she’s a pretty rad lady.
I got to see this film on it’s last day of screening at the NW Film Center. I’m saddened I didn’t attend earlier so that some of you could run out and see it. It’s worth your time and money. I knew something about the feminist art movement, specifically, the things happening for women during the late 1960’s and 1970’s, but nothing to compare to what this documentary showed me.
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 Type “Feminism is Dead” into your Google browser. Go on, do it, and come right back to my post. Personally, the things I pulled up were pretty repulsive. In 2009, Miss Venezuela, the winner of the Miss Universe Pageant, was asked what women should do to combat sexism in the workplace. Her response was, “there are no longer any barriers against us”. I pulled up a pontification from a Unitarian Minister explaining that feminism had achieved it’s goal, and now all of the remaining feminists are just man-hating radicals. Perhaps, there is something to that. Women wanting equality for women must be looney or bull dykes. These attitudes mimic the feminist backlash communicated in some 70’s B movies. The easy reaction is to be offended, disheartened, and feel minimalized. The smart reaction is to examine the media and the messages in anti woman film.
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 Queens... keeping the galaxy safe from boredom. I knew it. Somewhere, deep in the solar system, is a planet where only women can gaycation. Well, mostly drag queens really, but that’s better in my opinion. In 1991, the famous San Francisco drag queen, Doris Fish, released a really low budget movie called, Vegas in Space. She’d been scraping money together for eight years before she could actualize her dream. The best part? Vegas in Space is based on a party she threw.
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  It's hard to be pretty when being pretty makes you hard. The Adonis Factor, a film by Christopher Hines, is a look into the objectification and beautification inherent in the gay male world. Hines also brought us the movie, The Butch Factor. Both films discuss social and personal roles and image in gay culture. However, The Adonis Factor focuses more on beauty and image expectation.
I love queer documentary. I forget how narrow my perspective can be as a lesbian, and I’m always thrilled to find new beautiful pathways, and dark alleys in which to peek. I do kind of feel, that when I opened the door on this documentary, all that stood before me were boring pant suits. The emotional standpoint attempts to create empathy towards muscle ridden gay men, and remind us all that “beauty is a curse”. I can understand that breaking your back to reach a social expectation is grueling, but I’m not so sure sitting and watching an entire documentary on this one issue is eye opening.
I found the perspective narrow. Midway through, I got a sense that these men felt their pressure to work out and starve themselves was exclusive to them. There was an attitude that maybe straight people and other queer communities don’t have it quite as rough with pressure to be perfect. I did find some of the interviews to be interesting, but I couldn’t help that “I’ll give you something to cry about” feeling welling up inside me like an angry demon ready to devastate some carbs.
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