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.

I always thought Three Men and a Baby WAS a gay movie. Seriously, three white collar, middle aged guys living together in a fabulous Manhattan apartment. And was there ever a whiff of female love interest for any of the guys?

I either dreamt it or read it somewhere recently that there are sinister plans for another sequel where the ‘little lady’ is now all grown and a single mom junkie or something: Three Men and a Crack Whore.

Like I said: possibly dreamt it. It’s just like that time James Franco climbed in through my bedroom window dressed as Kirsten Dunst and gave me a lap-dance – did that really happen?

Anyway, a start-up film company based in North Carolina is planning a gay take on Three Men and a Baby, where the ‘baby’ is actually an estranged 17-year-old delinquent called Jack. He turns up on his gay father’s doorstep just as pop is about to propose to his boyfriend; cue all sorts of camp drama and emotional to-and-fro.

Dalliance Films – who don’t want to be labelled a ‘gay film company’ but are three-quarters gay run – had hoped to shoot Timing this Summer, but the recession has forced them to push back until next year.

They’ve not been idle, however. Already in the can is a short thriller called Three for Dinner (is there a ‘three’ theme) and they’ve used their initiative and put together a five-minute trailer for Timing (see above) in order to raise interest (and more importantly, finance).

'Homewrecker', courtesy of VanderHart Productions

The occasional news item that I like to imaginatively call ‘gay movie news round-up’ is going transglobal this week with blog-worthy headlines from no less than three continents:

…You wait all this time for a sexually explicit gay movie starring François Sagat to come along, and then two arrive together! Both have now screened in competition at Locarno’s long-established film festival and you can read a review of L.A. Zombie and a review of Man at Bath courtesy of IndieWire…

…Speaking of L.A. Zombie, looks like a battle is gearing up in Australia over the right to screen Bruce LaBruce’s gay art-porn-zombie flick. Banned by Australian censors and pulled from the Melbourne International Film Festival line-up as a result, an underground alternative to MIFF is defiantly planning to screen the film as part of a “public disobedience freedom of speech event” on 29 August.

”If the police turn up and physically stop me, what can I do?” said Richard Wolstencroft, Director of the Melbourne Underground Film Festival. “But they really hate coming to this sort of thing, they’re embarrassed … if we get 100 people along, it will be a victory.”

He’s also promised to “play something just as interesting” if the gay zombie movie does get pulled, “but it might be worse.” Another Gay Sequel: Gays Gone wild! perhaps?…

…It seems even being a young, multi-million pound movie star doesn’t get you dates these days – people are so picky. Daniel Radcliffe (who’s fans aren’t talking to me) tells his transgendered musician friend Our Lady J. for Out magazine that he was in a three-year relationship that ended recently. Now he’s “chasing girls” and heading to Broadway (surely that’s an oxymoron?)…

…Vancouver’s Queer Film Festival starts today. By 22 August some 51 gay movies will have been shown, 13,000 festival programs will have been bent out of shape, 26,000 buttocks will be slightly numb, hundreds of phone numbers will have been exchanged and about a trillion glasses of wine will have been quaffed.

Closing night film is Strella, described as a “post-modern Greek tragedy”. The festival guide is packed with info and worth checking out even if you can’t attend…

…Finally, the US producers of spoof gay movie Homewrecker turned out to be prophetic (hopefully) when they decided to have the gay characters in the film refer to their partners as “husband” in support of gay marriage and against Prop 8.

I remember seeing a picture as a hormonal teen of a slim, toned, slightly Arabic looking young man in nothing but a towel giving the most piercing backwards glance to camera and thinking it was just about the sexiest thing I’d ever seen. It was created by gay fantasists Pierre et Gilles and the model was French actor Salim Kéchiouche.

31-year-old Kéchiouche is adored by directors and artists as the very definition of ‘brooding’. He’s played plenty gay on film and stage, notably portraying the lover/killer of controversial Italian director Pier Paolo Pasolini. He got his first acting break at 16 in gay movie Full Speed after being spotted by director Gael Morel. He’s gone on to work with the openly gay director three more times.

As well as a heavily punched gay score card Kéchiouche has a habit of playing boxers in his movies, which is handy because he was the kick boxing champion of France in ‘98. He’s also got a reputation for getting his bits out in his movies – just do a Google search; you won’t have to look far.

His latest movie is called The String (Le Fil). It’s a sexy, uplifting drama about forbidden love in which he plays a gay handyman who falls for the son of his wealthy employer and the two young men are then engulfed in a torrid affair that crosses religion, class and family ties. Engrossing stuff, and Salim gets naked (again).

The String, directed by first-timer Mehdi Ben Attia, recently won the Audience Award for Best Picture at San Francisco’s Frameline gay and lesbian film festival. DVD hits stores in October.

A little bit more drip-feed about the Wachowski’s next movie project which now has a proper title and no longer has to be referred to as that ‘hard-R, cinema verite-style, Iraq War set gay love story between an American and Iraqi soldier told from the near future.’

Cobalt Neural 9, as the movie is now called, is at the casting stage and Deadline has a piece about how agents and reps aren’t happy that their precious clients are being asked to go up for a movie part without being given a full script and about which so little is known.

I don’t see what all the fuss is about – surely when you reach the kind of status that the Wachowskis have you’ve earned the right to be protective and secretive about your new film. And how many agents seriously read a script from front to back and advise their hot property on the basis of the writing? I doubt many in the business would have been able to visualise the first Matrix movie after reading it in 90 black and white pages.

Personally I think the Wachowskis should never actually make the movie, rather just keep on releasing tantalising tidbits to whet our appetite and leave it to our own imagination – could the finished movie ever be as interesting? Find out in 2012.