Queer as Folk (UK version) - Season 1

I spent the weekend watching Queer as Folk (UK version) season 1 from the morning, episode one to four straight until 2.30 pm and continue after shopping split, from five to eight. All in a day!

Since I have watched season one Queer as Folk (USA version), I not much anxious of to what going to happen next and no more nerve breakdown as the time I watched QaF Season 1 (USA). Perhaps I am not ready to watch it (stopped at Season 2, episode 4, need to find time and put my mind together, lots of things happening lately.)

It brings sentimental in it. Reminding me to the time during prep-colleg and good time in university in Penang, which all of those are worth remembering. To which I will never forget nor regret for what I did.

It has been quite sometime to hear English accent (London outskirt’s to be exact, which I made terrible laugh when I first heard to them spoken to me, way back like ages ago – their vowel U pronunciation sounds ticklish funny. No offend, though!)

Having watched QaF of both UK and USA version, I would rather say – US version has many issues that it tackled about whilst UK version of more towards reality – not everyone has super great look and only going for sex. But, US version has better impression. I’ll vote 10 for US version, and leaving 9 for UK version.

Now, looking for suitable time to do two hours marathon for second season (or better, finale) QaF UK.

H. Shahirasul Idrewoods

15-Nov-2008

Movie Review: Giorni (also know as Days)

Claudio lives by a tight schedule. Upon waking, he showers, shaves, puts on a perfect tie, walks to work, drinks soda water, and takes his pills the second after his wrist-watch alerts him to do so. Claudio is HIV positive. Something he didn’t quite pencil in.



As Giorni opens, we see two men making out in the back of a car. We don’t know who they are, but we soon learn the powerful connection one made to the other. We also learn that Claudio is one of those men, upset and ashamed at his actions for he is moving to Milan with his longtime partner Dario.

But something happened to Claudio something that even he is unable to completely understand. By chance, Claudio runs into Andrea a cute younger employed waiter who also just happens to be the other guy that was in that car. Andrea has taken instantly to Claudio and wants to be a part of his life for one reason and only one reason - he’s in love.

At first Claudio tries to forget Andrea. Claudio sees him as too young and foolish to know what he wants. But at the same time he has to listen to his partner Dario making plans for the two of them for years to come when Claudio believes he doesn’t have years to come.

Andrea doesn’t care about years he cares about life now, even if that means making love to Claudio without protection with full knowledge that Claudio is HIV positive. He loves Claudio so much he doesn’t want protection to ruin the moment.

Giorni is perhaps one of the intense romantic yet disturbing films I’ve seen in a while. Through the excellent performances from Thomas Trabacchi (Claudio) and Riccardo Salerno (Andrea) you can really get the sense that their characters deeply care for one another - yet at the same time you cannot quite forgive the actions or the lack to stop actions from HIV positive Claudio. Giorni is one of those movies that get you so enthralled with the characters that you find yourself understanding them even in the mists of them making such horrible choices such as knowingly having unprotected sex with someone cursed with an incurable disease.

It would be easy to not understand Andrea and his careless passion towards Claudio. It seemed at times he may have had a death wish or was just confident that he couldn’t get sick. And it was equally hard to understand Claudio who knew he was sick, who had to deal with it day in and day out from his mother and sister to his doctor who prescribes him pill after countless pill. But throughout the movie it felt like Claudio and Andrea were inseparable, throughout life and perhaps even in death.

Giorni accomplishes what few films do. The movie got us involved and made us think. This is not a movie for homophobe’s to watch although I doubt they would get past the DVD’s cover of two men happily cuddling with each other in bed. And, Giorni is not a movie to watch if you think the movie is going to be a happy tale because the cover has two men happily cuddling with each other in bed. There is a lot of serious talk in Giorni and a lot of serious outcomes.

Giorni is both beautiful and sad and at times painful to watch. Yet it is an important film. Not because I feel that the gay population needs to see it and certainly not because the film is something you don’t normally see, but because the thoughts and more importantly the lifestyle has to exist in our real world. Perhaps to be judged, perhaps to be discovered, perhaps to be examined. That is what film does, it is meant to represent life not to hide it.



A really moving and tendered Italian movie that really need examination from many perspective. I would rate it 5/5.

Movie Review: The Trip (2002)

A love story spanning two decades between two men who are at the opposite ends of the political spectrum during the 1970s and 1980s. In 1973, Alan Oakley lives as a straight, uptight Young Republican working for an establishment newspaper--until he meets Tommy Ballenger, a Texas teenager who has moved to Los Angeles to work for gay rights. When Alan first meets him at a party organized by Peter Baxter, an older entertainment lawyer, Alan sees Tommy as a potential interview subject for his book, a conservative attack on gay rights that he plans to call The Straight Truth. Before he knows quite what has happened, Alan finds himself in bed and falling for Tommy. Alan and Tommy soon become the perfect couple, which rouses the envy of Peter, who promptly devises a cunning plan to break them up that includes publishing Alan''s long-abandoned, long-repudiated manuscript anonymously.

Runtime: 95 min
Country: USA
Language: English
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance





Not every love has the best ending the world, nor they will live happily ever after. Those we had experienced, will be our best that we can keep. "The best of your writing does not come from your head, but from you heart!" "It was just another negative view and people hate what they seem don't understand."

With the settings from the year 1975 until 1984, but the contents valid at any point of year... A great movie...

A must watch! I would rate 4.5/5

Movie Review: Beautiful Thing (1996)

It has been quite sometimes that I have been watching (or speaking as it matters) in thicked English accent. Sometimes, I myself found it to be hardly enough to understood.

But, that is not case here why I'd suggesting this new PLU Theme Movies (GTM, another term for those who don't). This is another movie that I think has it own meaning trajectories and that go far beyond what we usually think of things to happen.

Main character is Jamie Gangel and Steven (Ste) who fall in love with other, and yet they are young, still going for school and living next door to each other. Ste who lives with hot-temper father and bullying brother, founds his escape with Jamie - often taken home by Jamie's mother, Sandra. Put on the same bed, sleeping as top-and-tail, it laters develop another term to Sandra, "Seventy minus one".

Ste who cannot accept and think what would the society think of him to be known as queer, afraid that others will know and tried to hide it from everyone, especially his father. Since they have no other place that they can share the romance without letting know by others, Jamie proposed to Ste that they can go to gaybar at Gloucester (and bus 180 route takes them there) and Ste being seen to start to accept who he really is without the worries that they are the only two in the world that being different.

It caught laters, that their relation exposed to Sandra - and it amazes me enough to see how Sandra cope with it and giving her support for her son (and son-in-law). She even said to her mate, "I will never have grandchildren."

The story ends where Jamie and Ste dancing together right in front of their town-house and crowd watching them densely dancing will full emotion towards each other. How Jamie and Ste cope with their feeling, and how they are not afraid of the society labels inspired me.

This is a must watch for everybody, since being different doesn't mean that we have to be separated from our loved family - but it should ties us closer.

One way ticket takes me anywhere, northbound, southbound, I don't even care. I know the grass is greener there. Age is only a number.

Some things are just hard to say. When it's going to happen, it's going to happen at last.

IMDB review: This tender story of two teenager's sexual coming of age in a working-class development in London is an inspiring, tender, emotional tale. Jamie is a reserved teen, close to his pub manager mom, who prefers old Hollywood musicals to sports. His friendship with his hunky neighbor Ste, a fellow student who suffers through a troubled family life, soon develops into a sexual and eventually a loving relationship. How the two boys tentatively handle their nascent sexual drives and how it affects their family and friends is handled in both a fresh and surprisingly upbeat fashion. A wonderful comedy-drama and possibly the best coming out film to date.

Aleph: It comes to me that either we face it or we'll never know of ourself. You're on your own when you're swimming, but loves will give the route for you to follow. I give 5/5 - a must watch!

Movie Review: Breakfast with Scot (2007)

Ever wonder if two committed person taking care a child? How would it looks like, then? How if one of the person is not ready, thus creating situations into their daily lives? Or one of them trying to be in closet?

I think this movie answer so many part of two committed guys, on how they see life, and how can they put more colours into their life and blend it so that the colours can also bring emotion. How Eric still trying to keep closeted of his personal life, though the things he tried to hide was well known to his friends and co-workers (including his boss), the reason they don't want to say anything was they want to respect his choice. Hardly enough, that Sam tries to heat their relation and putting thing of being couple into their daily lives, but being rejected by Eric whenever they are in public.

Being cold for sometimes, Eric later realises that people already knew that he is gay - and yet they still don't mind. He tries to nurture Scot's ever growing tendencies to be closeted as his, but only to find that he can never run away from being who he is and who he was.

Despite being the one who ruined the atmosphere, Eric then being the one that warms his committed relationship and put away the homophobic shyness (internalise homopobia) in himself.

Breakfast with Scot brings another dimension, on how relationship and life and colours and emotions play greater roles into being who we are and how we choose to live with and to live about. Not only that, we need to assimilate from personal life and professional life so that people not going to see that we are not someone without talent.

I love this movie, and will watch it again... I hope we can benefit much from this movie on the part of understanding our own emotions.

IMDB Comment:

This is a fantastic script - hilarious with heart. Ed and Sam have been in a committed relationship for four years. Ed's a former hockey player turned sportscaster and Sam's a sport's lawyer. But when Sam's adventure seeking brother Billy, takes a job in South America, his ex-girlfriend, Julie, is discovered dead from a drug overdose leaving her son Scot (not Billy's son) to Billy. But Billy is missing in action so Sam is left to pick up the pieces. But the problem is Ed never wanted kids. When 11 year old Scot arrives and they open his duffle bag, inside they find... one pink musical hairbrush, two plastic containers of beads and faux-gold chains, a pink poodle belt, and four pairs of white sock-ettes with lacy fringe at the top... they realize Scot is more out of the closet then they are even though he does not know it yet. A unique boy in an even more unusual situation, Scot throws Ed and Sam's life into complete disarray. When Billy finally show's up to take Scot back to South America - Ed and Sam can't bear the thought of losing Scot. In the spirit of ABOUT A BOY, BILLY ELLIOT and MA VIE EN ROSE, BREAKFAST WITH SCOT explores what it truly means to be a family, hilariously contrasting familial stereotypes with the realities of family life and showing how it feels to be a boy who doesn't quite fit into the role society has prepared for him.

In sum, a PLU movie does not need to have sex frames to make it lively.

Movie: Boy Culture (2006)

I just finished watching a movie (G-themed, mind you). Part of it was hillarious, I laughed, I mean like a lot. The setting was nice, probably due to the opening, where a charming dude (he's 25) comes into the screen, and start telling about his story. Unlike other movies/dramas which I watched earlier, this one is different. He tells stories of himself, or what he does (and later did) and how he has profoundly found his true heart's wants and needs.



It makes me think of that we don't have to be so different to be loved, or having something so special to be proud of. Love is about being together, sharing the moment, the understanding and what's worth for having something you don't have in him.

You might not agree to some part, and that gives you tha chance of living - since, I don't think that everyone wanted to live the same boring days, do we?

So, when the chance come, we would always try to be defensive and avoiding it, even though we know the one that we really wants is knocking on our heart. Instead of pondering, and answering something that you might later regret, nod for your for once, and give the true answer. Since your Mr. Right might be in front you and you might be losing him for stupid answer that you wish you haven't throw it over.

We always tried to be obtuse which what we are and how we can live our lives, I mean, we are free to decide, but have anyone thinks of LOVE comes eventually, without the need to force it over? Yeah, I used to think about this before, and still am. Until I watched this movie, it gave me another perspective that I think usefulif I shared it here. Love sometimes need force, since this kind of relationship is closeted, and only force can bring it over.



Confession is all you need. To your loved one, and to your heart. If he's the one, and he's Mr Right - go for it.

And love is not a prime number, it is not one or about two persons only. It cannot stand and support it owns character, it needs another relationship that we called FRIENDSHIP. And through friendship, love will bloom and given another colour.

Indeed, when you have someone you love, then go for him. Don't regret it later!

So guys, I am strongly recommending to watch this movie: BOY CULTURE.

BOY CULTURE is the candid confession of "X", a wildly successful male escort. After ten years of sex-for-pay, "X" gets romantically entangled with his two hot roommates and a reclusive elderly client, Gregory. But before Gregory will agree to sex, he tells an unsetting love story spanning fifty years and dares "X" to try something he hasn't felt for years: emotion.

Runtime: 88 min
Country: USA
Language: English
Genre: Drama

Another comment:

X, as we are told to think of the narrator of this gay love story, is a hustler. He has only a few clients, but they each pay him well. He lives in luxurious digs in Seattle. He has a couple of roommates and they give us most of the plot. X is cynical and clever, his friends are more romantic and maybe not so sophisticated. It all turns out more or less as you will probably suspect from very early on, but you just might have a good time watching it. I did

Watch the preview below,