Another movie star comes out as bisexual… yawn. Actually, despite all the headlines today about Mad Max actor Tom Hardy claiming to have had sexual relationships with men, there’s a whole lot of smoke behind the story.

Reading the scoop on other blogs you might be left with the impression that sexy hellraiser Hardy made this ‘gay sex’ revelation in a heart-to-heart with UK celeb gossiper Now Magazine, but they’ve actually ripped the quotes regarding Tom’s sexuality from a late 2008 interview with Attitude mag.

So a chameleon-like actor implying to a gay magazine that he dabbled as a youngster in little more than some ‘behind the bike sheds’ gay hand job action is hardly surprising given the audience and Hardy has the kind of intense bad boy reputation where nothing would be very surprising about him and probably nothing much would dent his cred with mainstream movie fans.

Next!

Undead gay art porn movie L.A. Zombies has been scaring up the most attention from gay news tubes on its rampage towards Toronto International Film Festival, but another gay film is quietly preparing to show for the first time to the crowds at the major movie fest.

Beginners is from director Mike Mills (Thumbsucker) and stars Ewan McGregor (who must be glad at least one gay film he’s made might get seen) as a son coming to terms with two big revelations from his 71-year-old father – one that McDad is a big gay and is in a relationship with a much younger man.

Dad is played by Christopher Plummer (hopefully in a restrained performance) and his young lover has the face of Goran Visnjic (remember him from ER and that Madonna video?).

This is only Mills’ second feature, but the director/designer/graphic artist is a talent to watch and this unassuming gay movie could do big things – or it could be rubbish; that’s the joy of film festivals.

I don’t have a trailer for Beginners, so here’s a music promo for a just wrapped gay movie called Buffering, instead – more on that soon. Tune = catchy.

Sending up ’80s buddy cop movies and highlighting the obvious homoerotic undertone is hardly a new thing – even honorary gay bear Kevin Smith’s done it – but this music video from new dance act Grum is kind of funny/sweet and has a hypnotic soundtrack.

The fan-geeks have packed away their lightsabres, wizard staffs and Wonder Woman bracelets and San Diego’s wet dream to everything sci-fi and fantasy, Comic-Con, is mothballed for another year.

And we’re going to have to wait at least another year for any hint of a gay superhero or major gay character in a comic book movie – in fact the only gay superhero news to come out of the weeked didn’t originate from Comic-Con at all; the revelation that Superman actor Christopher Reeve had a gay affair with another dead actor is the kind of ‘news’ that only crops up when someone’s got a book to sell.

Probably the biggest hope of some kind of homo representation lay with Buffy creator Joss Whedon’s just-cast superhero mash-up movie, The Avengers, which will feature a host of Marvel Comics’ most famous caped crusaders in one film. This ensemble approach, spreading the action among a broad set of characters, offered a chance to show some real diversity and maybe a screen role for Northstar, Marvel’s first gay superhero, but his skin-tight lycra suit will be staying in the cupboard for this movie.

Whedon had this to say: “I’ve been toying with a great, gay super hero with some guy-on-guy action for awhile now. I think that there needs to be some balance.”

So some hope, then. For now we’ll just have to look forward to Hollywood hunk Chris Evans doing duel acting duties in this movie and next year’s Captain America blockbuster.

Chris Evans also crops up in another film which had an exclusive screening for fans at Comic-Com and which features a prominent gay character. How to describe Scott Pilgrim vs. the World? Maybe if you crossed a PG-friendly Kick Ass with (500) Days of Summer you’d be somewhere close. It’s about a nerdy, bass guitar playing, 23-year-old slacker who falls in love with a mysterious young woman. In order to be with her he has to dispatch her seven evil-villain-type ex-boyfriends.

If you watch the trailer, Kieran Culkin’s wiser character dishing out the advice is actually Scott’s gay roommate. They share a bed, but ‘nothing’s going on,’ – isn’t that what Kieran’s older brother said?

The universe can be a strange place, or at least Google’s algorithm can. Take, for example, an idle search on the term ‘gay movie’ using their search engine. This brings up a news item about a supposed gay Nigerian movie called Men In Love. Sounds pretty gay interest so far, except that the news title reads “John Dumelo: ‘I Hate Gays.’”

Can’t say I’ve ever heard of Ghanaian actor Dumelo but the news tube is quick to label him a “ladies man and suave.” So with his heterosexuality intact the article goes on to describe a scene from his upcoming gay movie, Men In Love – Dumelo apparently gets his naked ass slapped by another male actor while lying face down on the bed. Sounds pretty hot, but Dumelo explains his character is “under a spell” from the other homo and “only prayers can save him in the end”.

He continues, “I hate gay people. I did the movie to raise awareness that gay is evil and demonic. It’s a gay movie to let the world know it’s demonic. I hear it is becoming an increasing canker in some African countries and awareness has to be raised about it.”

So there I am, casually looking up gay movie related stuff on the net, only to be told that I am “evil” and “demonic,” but as a way to occupy my time before I burn in hell Google wants me to “meet gay men” and buy into a gay dating website they’re advertising on the same page. What’s up with that?

As director Bruce LaBruce points out to The Age, having his latest movie L.A. Zombie – part porn, part arthouse – banned by the Australian Classification Board is the best single bit of promotion he could possibly have just before the movie’s worldwide premiere at next month’s Locarno Film Festival in Switzerland.

In his own words: ‘I’ll never understand how censors don’t see that the more they try to suppress a film, the more people will want to see it. It gives me a profile I didn’t have yesterday.”

Richard Moore, director of Melbourne International Film Festival which won’t now be screening the movie, adds that “it’s nonsensical and patronising to not allow people to decide what they want to see.”

And of course the vast majority of viewings of L.A. Zombie will be on a TV or computer screen, so refusing to allow the movie to screen at Australian film festivals won’t affect that many people, but it will boost DVD sales significantly, meaning more people will watch it than had it not been banned. Nonsensical? Yes!

The version of L.A. Zombie – or 28 Gays Later – given to the Australian censor was a ’softcore’ version with all the hardcore gay sex removed – the most sexually graphic thing in it was a “cucumber-shaped” prosthetic penis “with a scorpion’s stinger” and a couple of full-frontals. There will, however, be a hardcore version.

L.A. Zombie stars French gay porn star François Sagat as an alien zombie who turns up in modern day L.A. with a thirst for bloody corpses and gay sex. He combines the two and goes on a rampage through the city, literally fucking dead guys back to life.

It’s deliberately shlocky and tongue-in-cheek and LaBruce makes another good point that “(the censors) pass so many mainstream films that have the most extreme violence, with brutal treatment towards women, and torture and dismemberment, but because they didn’t show a penis, they can be screened with impunity.’’

Welsh gay rugby star Gareth Thomas – the sort of guy you WOULD want to meet down a dark back alley – must have found the news that Mickey Rourke wants to biopic his life as rather a backhanded compliment: great that a Hollywood legend has noticed you and considers your story “the perfect model for a film,” but then not exactly flattering that a 57-year-old who could play the Jocker without much make-up wants to portray you (Gareth is 35).

Actually all this ‘Mickey Rourke wants to play gay sports star in a movie’ is misleading – the prospect of Rourke acting in a film about Gareth Thomas’ highly successful rugby career and subsequent coming out has not been raised. So far it’s just a ‘my people talking to his people’ situation. Would be great if this movie does make it to the screen – not half as interesting, though, as a fly-on-the-wall doc going behind the scenes in those testosterone filled locker rooms; a friend who played rugby at university told me all sorts of eye-popping stories…

Thomas Dekker (right) in All About Evil

Is 22-year-old Thomas Dekker modelling himself on James Franco? He might not yet be filling galleries with questionable artwork, but lately he’s been working with drag queens and has a fondness for playing gay. He also shares Franco’s love of mixing the commercial mainstream with more Avant-garde projects.

So the equally brooding young star of Heroes, A Nightmare On Elm Street and The Sarah Connor Chronicles plays a bisexual film student in Gregg Araki’s upcoming Kaboom and further into the future will portray TV’s first real-life gay character in Cinema Verite.

His latest movie release is a little more to the fringes: he’s currently co-starring in something called All About Evil: The Peaches Christ Experience in 4-D! The best I can describe the movie is a camp, exploitation horror take on Sweeney Todd set in a run-down movie theater – with drag queens.

Dekker plays a teenage horror fanatic who spends all his spare time at his local indie cinema watching gory films. When other regular audience members start disappearing he suspects the bloody murders on screen might be less fictionalised than he first thought…

All About Evil is directed by Joshua Grannel, who also goes by the stage persona Peaches Christ and runs horror-themed nights in San Francisco which mix movie screenings and live performance.

The film is currently touring the US – check dates – and will be screening in New York on July 30th & 31st for an extravaganza of music, perfomance, film and horror.