Oozing panache and bagging awards already, La Bola Negra is an eye-popping war and prejudice epic starring Penélope Cruz in a blond wig and Glenn Close speaking Spanish. We meet the ex-lovers who dreamed it up

When Javier Ambrossi and Javier Calvo – the directing duo known in their native Spain as “Los Javis” – began writing their queer epic La Bola Negra, they weren’t thinking about whether it would be stylish (which it is) or win numerous awards (which it has) or capture what they refer to as “the anti-fascist zeitgeist” (which it does). Instead, they thought only of scale. “I’m done with LGBTQ+ movies being niche,” says Ambrossi. “I was like, ‘Let’s make the biggest, gayest war movie ever.’” Job done.

At Cannes this year, the best director prize was awarded jointly to them and to Paweł Pawlikowski, who made the Thomas Mann road trip film Fatherland. La Bola Negra is now an Oscars frontrunner, with best picture and best director nominations all but guaranteed. Brimming with panache, the movie darts back and forth between three stories set in Spain: in 1932, a young man applying for membership of an exclusive casino is rejected on the grounds of his suspected homosexuality; in 1937, a callow nationalist soldier develops tender feelings for the injured republican prisoner under his watch; and in 2017, a queer historian inherits an unfinished story by Federico García Lorca. That story lends the movie its title and provides the thread that sews its strands together.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Everett Collection Inc/Alamy

© Photograph: Everett Collection Inc/Alamy

© Photograph: Everett Collection Inc/Alamy

The Massachusetts bar, which catered to lesbians, lifted its Covid mask requirement once a week to attract more patrons. The decision brought criticism and national attention, but did not save the business.

© Sophie Park for The New York Times

New data have prompted questions about changes in teens’ sexual orientations. But researchers disagree on how much the numbers can really tell us.

© Octavio Jones/Reuters

Chris Pappas, the Democratic nominee in New Hampshire, would make history if he won. On the campaign trail, he doesn’t dwell on it.

© John Tully for The New York Times

Since transitioning, Lane Michael Stanley has struggled with his interactions with straight men—especially the classic ‘man-hug’: brief, side-angled, all back slaps and no stomach touching. As he navigates this new territory, he reflects on his other relationships and forms of physical intimacy, examining his life and gender norms from both sides of his transition.

Straight men are generally more standoffish with me than I remember them being before. They make less eye contact, they touch less, they smile less. Do I not know how to read their friendship cues? Maybe straight men befriend other men differently from how they befriend women: no more touch of the arm that they swear is innocent, no more questions they feel entitled to ask or basic facts they appoint themselves to explain. Maybe I should learn to read a curt nod as a sign of camaraderie from men now, replacing whatever a straight man’s sly smile was supposed to convey before.

Or are they more standoffish because they can tell I’m gay? Maybe straight men want to keep me at a distance. Maybe there is a reality to the coldness I read from them, a hostility they throw my way unconsciously. Most of the gay men I know are friends with other gay men, so I’m not sure how gay/straight male friendships function, or if they really exist. My partner (a cis gay man) did have a close straight male friend, but they went barhopping and ended up trading blow jobs, so that doesn’t really count anymore. 

A mosque in London with charitable status is facing an investigation after it published sermons encouraging husbands to strike their wives and condoning the execution of gay people by "throwing them off a tall building".

The post London Mosque Encourages Worshippers to Beat Their Wives and Condones Throwing Gay People Off “Tall Buildings” appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.