18-year-old CJ is exactly the kind of gay anti-hero desperately needed right now. I say ‘anti-hero’ rather than using the term ‘role model’ because car-loving, former “bad ass” teen CJ doesn’t want to stand out or be different, despite the efforts of others; he just wants to do regular teenage things and be left alone and it’s CJ’s ‘just another average jock’ quality that ironically makes him an everyday gay hero.

When he was 16 and getting physically and verbally bullied at school and cold-shouldered by his small town community, his mother wrote a desperate letter to gay filmmaker Joe Wilson, a former local resident, after Joe announced his marriage to Dean Hamer in the town’s newspaper. This was one of the few friendly letters from his home town which Joe received after the announcement.

Drawn back to Oil Town, Pennsylvania by Kathy Springer’s plea for help and by the unexpected firestorm of controversy sparked by his wedding announcement, Joe travelled back there and filmed the events which unfolded, creating the documentary, Out In The Silence.

I’d recommend watching Joe Wilson and Dean Hamer’s gay movie doc if you can – there’s details about upcoming screenings on the film’s website, as well as where to buy it on DVD/VOD. You can also read more about Out In The Silence on The Huffington Post.

Oh I get it: The Twilight movies are kind of gay and Taylor Lautner is well gay, so like a well gay scene with gay werewolves who are super gay ‘cos they wear gay denim shorts and dance to gay music like It’s Raining Men is well funny … and gay, but dudes kissing ain’t cool, so showing them like they’re going to kiss is well gross, and funny, but not gay ‘cos they don’t really, and then at the end one of the gays calls the other gays “girls”, which is well funny gay. Gay. GAY!

I don’t know what’s the most depressing thing about this clip: the clip itself; the comments about it on Youtube, proclaiming the movie to be ‘awesome’; or the fact 20th Century Fox are so proud of this scene that they’ve uploaded it.

Have to say, though, the Taylor Lautner stand in is pretty good. Oh, and a $12m opening weekend kind of sucks too.

He may have just turned 50, but Antonio Banderas is looking (nearly) as good as ever. He’s also been cast as one of the leads in gay director Pedro Almodovar’s latest movie, The Skin I Live In (La Piel Que Habito). It’s 20 years since the Spanish pair last worked together and 23 since Banderas played a psychotic gay stalker in Almodovar’s Law of Desire.

In this new horror/drama film he will play a plastic surgeon who enacts a brutal revenge on the man who raped his daughter. Almodovar promises a “horror story without screams or shock.”

So nothing like The Human Centipede, then. Have you heard about this movie? It’s been causing a storm and making people vomit in cinemas with its story of another sadistic surgeon who wants to, literally, create a human chain … permanently. Now you might not necessarily think having your mouth fixed to a guy’s arse is a bad thing, but we’re not talking rim-jobs here: there’s stitching involved…

Watch the trailer if you’re feeling brave; just don’t do it after you’ve eaten your dinner.

Something to read, something to watch and something to listen today.

If you’ve got an hour to spare and fancy some seriously rude banter between a self-titled ‘gay bear’ and a Hollywood movie director, check out the first Blow Hard podcast. It’s a hilarious barrage of anecdotes and innuendo between Kevin Smith and his buddy Malcolm Ingram (who directed recent, hairy feature doc, Bear Nation) as they talk films, beards and cock and reach new levels of double meaning! Check it before Tom Cruise’s lawyers pull it down…

…Gay director James Bolton (The Graffiti Artist, Eban and Charley) tells the Bay Area Reporter that life imitated art while making his recent film adaptation, Dream Boy. Apparently the filmmakers encountered a lot of local homophobia while shooting the gay movie in Louisiana, the setting of the story in the original novel, and Bolton wouldn’t go back in a hurry…

…Gen Silent is a sad, moving, but also heart-warming look into the silent minority of older LGBT people living in care homes who hide their sexuality for fear of discrimination and abuse. This is the generation who launched the gay rights movement and for who there is no ‘happy ever after’. You can watch the trailer below:

Ah, the gay best friend; that media coined phrase which forever relegated us to mere supporting status at the movies: a source of camp fun and bitchy one-liners and of course a shoulder to cry on when it all goes tits up.

NewStatesman.com (we’re going high-brow today) has a great piece about the potted history of the GBF on film, as well as pointing out a few good exceptions. The article notes that the traditional role of gays in movies was to counterpoint the straight characters’ sexuality. “The sissy made everyone feel more manly or womanly by filling the space in between,” observes actress Lily Tomlin in 1995 documentary The Celluloid Closet.

Film journo Ryan Gilbey cites Scott Pilgrim Vs the World as proof of a brave new era for the gay best friend, a world in which they’re fully-fleshed and integral to the story – Wallace Wells (Scott Pilgrim’s gay roommate) even gets a sex life in the movie!

In fact, Scott Pilgrim Vs the World even flips the old convention on its head so that Scott is the ’sissy’ character’ and often acts like the GBF of old, while Wallace is far more together and ’straight acting’.

We still have to be vigilant, however, judging by the trailer for The People I’ve Slept With (or maybe it’s just the way the trailer’s been cut)…

I love the story in the UK’s Sun newspaper about how a fashionable corner of London suddenly became home to the most cultured bit of gay porn when actor Stephen Fry (Wilde, Gosford Park, Alice in Wonderland) picked up a gay mag in a Kensington pub and proceeded to read out loud some explicit naughty-naughty to his boyfriend and a couple of pals. Next thing the whole pub is listening in on Fry’s dulcet-toned narration – a bit of a change from voicing the Harry Potter audio books!

And judging from the picture it looks like someone’s bagged themselves a twink, doesn’t it Stephen… as The Sun oh so subtly puts it: “The couple looked extremely comfortable together despite Fry being twice the age of 26-year-old (Steve) Webb and about a foot taller.”

With it’s comic and touching portrayal of an alternative family thrown together unexpectedly and seeking to establish some kind of ‘normality’, Patrik Age 1.5 is bound to draw close comparisons with The Kids Are All Right and right-wing commentators will likely bundle the two movies together as evidence of an onslaught against the ‘traditional family’, but this gay movie was actually made two years ago and is only now getting a much deserved international roll-out.

This time the parents are a thirty-something, gay, married male couple – gay marriage being legal in their native Sweden. Sven and Göran seemingly have it all – successful careers; plenty of a money; a big house in the suburbs – but there’s one thing lacking in their perfect homo home life: a baby.

Hard-drinking Sven has been down this road before: he has a hostile teenage daughter from his first marriage to Eva and tries to hide his reservations by throwing himself into work and hitting the bottle. Family doctor Göran, on the other hand, is ready to embrace fatherhood with open arms and busies himself preparing the nursery while they await news of a placement from the adoption service.

Their hopes of starting a young family get a big knock back when Social Services informs them no country is willing to give up a child to a gay couple. More desperate than ever, the two men indicate they would consider any child, but a mix up with the paperwork results in a big surprise and 15-year-old juvenile offender and major homophobe Patrik on their doorstep, expecting to be taken in.

The refreshing thing about this gay film is that it’s evolved beyond the typical portrayals of confused sexual identity and coming out tribulations – this gay couple is just another couple trying to cope with parenting and the drama comes from the tensions between the two men and young Patrik, who’s like a match to Sven’s touchpaper, sending him over the edge with gleeful tales of first-hand queer-bashing.

The downside to painting Patrik as an institutionalised youngster with a history of knife crime is that his likely behaviour and state of mind can never be realistically portrayed in such a warm-hearted and rosily-shot comedy drama – gritty realism this ain’t. So we get sudden, occasional bursts of foul, offensive language and remarks from Patrik, as if the filmmakers have remembered the character’s backstory, until Göran quickly finds the teen’s gentler side by way of a shared interest in gardening.

Yes this gay movie is often predictable and as warm and fuzzy as a microwaved teddy, but once you get past the implausibility of the set-up, you’ll easily be engaged by the sympathetic acting and sharply funny moments. There is also some social comment on the wider acceptance of gay couples within communities – most of us, I’m sure, can identify with the awkward introductions and school-age name-calling and doorbell ringing from local rugrats.

Above all Patrik, Age 1.5 is a sweet, funny and positive film and although the main characters’ sexuality is integral to the story, the movie should appeal to anyone with a heart and an open mind.

Plenty of stuff to watch today, starting with this teaser trailer for still-recovering-from-the-wrap-party gay movie comedy, Buffering. Self-described as a ‘ram-com’, it follows an enterprising gay couple’s plan to beat the recession, which also seems to have hit the wardrobe budget on this movie! Looks a riot.

If you skip over to Apple’s Movie Trailers page there’s a heap of gay interest promos: you can watch the trailer for Howl – Jame’s Franco’s Oscar-baiting turn as gay, beat generation poet Allen Ginsberg – as well as H.P. Mendoza’s ‘fag hag musical’, Fruit Fly (more on that soon).

Swedish gay family comedy, Patrick, Age 1.5 (The Kids Are All Right, with subtitles), is also trailered and hiding away at the back is gay director François Ozon’s latest film, Hideaway (Le Refuge). You can watch an interview with him in which he describes his craft at Guardian.co.uk – he also appears to ‘out’ Gerard Depardieu as a woman.