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.

Round-up of today’s gay film news:

…Gay parenting comedy The Kids Are All Right starring Julianne Moore and Annette Bening got off to a storming start this weekend, grossing a massive half-a-million dollars from just 7 screens in limited US release. This gives it the best opening screen average of any film this year and suggests a cross-over hit of big proportions…

…UK tabloid The Sun exclusively reports that singer Robbie Williams is teaming up with his former Take That bandmate Gary Barlow for a new track called Shame. If that doesn’t exactly get you whooping with excitement, the promo for the song is apparently going to be a riff on gay movie Brokeback Mountain with the two singers lip-synching to some ‘cowboys alone on the hill-top’ action.

Apparently this is a lighthearted poke at their “love-hate relationship”. Whether the drunken tent buggering scene will make it to the video is unknown…

…Chris Evans is very happy with his Captain America costume. He told Empire movie mag:

It’s an amazing costume. Given the fact that his costume is red, white and blue, and it’s tight (yes please! – Ed.), and it could be kind of flash and over the top – and given the fact that the movie takes place in the ’40s and ’50s – they’ve done a really good job of making it look really cool.

“I think everyone that’s going to see it is going to say, ‘Okay, well done. Well done. I think they got the costume right. The casting they completely ruined, but the costume they nailed.’”

Oh Chris, don’t be so hard on yourself… pretty good chance of you being nailed too…

…Finally, Peccadillo Pictures has picked up Italian gay pasta comedy Loose Cannons for UK distribution and will be releasing the movie in the Autumn. Looks kind of dated from the trailer, but it’s been a massive hit in its native country, only being beaten to the top spot by Alice In Wonderland, so keeping an open mind on this one.

Last year I reported that South East Asia was becoming a major centre of gay movie-making, but this year it’s been the turn of Latin America, who’s individual countries have been turning out hit gay movies at an impressive rate.

I recently reviewed new DVD release Raging Sun, Raging Sky, a lush, erotic fable from Mexican director Julián Hernández which builds on his earlier gay films and shows his skill in putting gay themes slap-bang in the middle of an arthouse sensibility.

Raging Sun, Raging Sky – at three hours long and with virtually no dialogue – is a sign of the growing confidence among filmmakers in the region who aren’t afraid to sometimes put the artistic ahead of the commercial. This has been evidenced by a strong showing of South American movies at gay film festivals this year.

A recent winner, scooping the ‘Outstanding Artistic Achievement’ award last week at L.A.’s Outfest, is the very well received Undertow from Peruvian director Javier Fuentes-Leon. Set in a small fishing village in his native Peru, the story – best described as an arthouse Ghost for a gay audience – centres on a married fisherman who’s only crime is to fall in love with a local, gay artist, but events unfold that are beyond his control and he eventually has to choose between tradition or true love.

Another recent hot ticket on the gay film fest circuit is Leo’s Room from Uruguay. This ‘coming out’ melodrama stars attractive Martín Rodríguez as the title character, a young man just split from his girlfriend who starts to come to terms with his sexuality and retreats into a world of cruising men online. It’s actually sweeter than it sounds and lots of complications are thrown in Leo’s way en-route to finding his perfect match.

It’s not all serious, though: Plan B, a funny gay movie from director Marco Berger, shows how the best laid plans can go spectacularly wrong. Bruno, played by Manuel Vignau, hatches a scheme to get back at his ex-girlfriend who’s just dumped him. It involves secretly befriending her new beau in order to throw a spanner in the works – things get turned on their head when the new boyfriend and Bruno develop a close relationship which questions both men’s sexuality.

Plan B is from Argentina, quickly establishing itself as the Hollywood of the Latin gay movie scene with Vile Romance and Last Summer of La Boyita also dropping this past year. Vile Romance is a very dark, erotic thriller form director Jose Celestino Campusano who’s made a name for himself in his native country as a kind of gay Tarantino with a fascination for crime and violence.

Last Summer of La Boyita is a co-production with gay director Pedro Almodovar’s Spanish film company and explores themes of gender identity and acceptance in a beautifully made coming-of-age story set on an Argentine farm in the 1970s.

Latin American films are confidently putting the ‘T’ into LGBT cinema with two films from Brazil – Elvis & Madonna and Paulista – both featuring central transgender characters, although in very different styles. Rom-com Elvis & Madonna has a boyish looking, pizza delivery woman falling for a showgirl, while Paulista is a Sao Paulo set drama which intertwines the love lives of a sexually diverse group of youngsters living in the same apartment block.

South American gay movie directors aren’t afraid to explore the controversial, either. Aluisio Abranches’ film From Beginning To End may look on the surface like a typically torrid gay romance between a sexy young man and his handsome, older lover, except that in this case the two men are half-brothers and their adult sexual relationship is the culmination of an unnaturally close childhood bond.

With so much diversity in the movies coming out of Latin America right now, in both content and style, it’s an exciting time for gay cinema in the region and with many of the directors just hitting their stride it’ll be interesting to see what comes next.

Dir. Julián Hernández. Mexico, 2009. 192 min.

It’s impossible to approach a review of Raging Sun, Raging Sky in the same way you might a more conventional gay movie – it has virtually no dialogue and little narrative structure. The film is more akin to an ambitious work of art in a gallery that leaves you to form your own interpretation, which may or may not fit with the director’s original intention.

Raging Sun, Raging Sky is the final part in Julian Hernandez’s loose trilogy of gay films referencing the firmament (the others being Broken Sky and A Thousand Clouds of Peace). The four elements (earth, water, air and fire) are also heavily used symbolically and metaphorically throughout the film, especially water here representing the purity of love.

At the beginning of the film a young woman travels through the city trying to make a genuine connection with someone, anyone, but her pure heart is drowned out by the troubled voices around her. Increasingly desperate she is rescued by young, handsome Ryo (played by Guillermo Villegas), a kindred spirit and a sucker for love. The two yearning souls laugh and cry with relief and Ryo takes Meche back to his place where they make love.

Their passion is not for keeps, however, and Meche (her faith restored) promises Ryo he will find his “mighty companion”. This turns out to be an ex lover, Kieri, who has lost himself into cruising for sex and the instant, physical gratification of a casual fuck. That’s not to say director Hernandez is here passing judgement or looking down on sex for pleasure; in fact he shoots the long cruising sequences with a lush, dream-like quality – cottaging never looked this good!

A third central character is introduced: Tari (Javier Oliván) is a fiery and impetuous stalker who also has eyes for young Ryo and either represents Kieri’s lustful side or the lovelessness of cruising in general. It’s an unhappy ménage à trois in any case and the increasingly jealous Tari kidnaps Ryo and forces Kieri on a sacrificial path to reclaim his lover as the film moves into purely mythical territory, Kieri being helped on his quest by a sun goddess called El corazón del cielo (The Heart of the Sky).

The film really is beautiful both visually and in its timeless romanticism, representing Ryo and Kieri as two perfect soul-mates who only need to open their eyes and have faith to find true love. Without dialogue (or clothes for the actors!) director Hernandez relies on his camera to tell much of the story and to create drama – a gay rape scene is made all the more disturbing by the use of striking horror film techniques.

The actors also work hard to bring warmth, tension, conflict and character to the screen with only movement and expression to work with. They do a great job, particularly the devilish Tari who’s at turns menacing and sympathetic.

Yes the film is often pretentious and unjustifiably long, but watching Raging Sun, Raging Sky requires you to change down a couple of gears, sit back and let your senses be ravaged; you’ll certainly be glad you did and this homoerotic fantasy is an impressive final chapter in Julian Hernandez’s trilogy.

(Raging Sun, Raging Sky is released 12 July 2010 on DVD in UK)

A confused young man moves with his family to a new area. In his bedroom closet he discovers a diary that belonged to the girl who used to live there and in it she describes the dreams she had about an older man – Jesse is also having dreams about a similar older man.

He tries to talk to his parents, but they aren’t understanding and end up arguing with Jesse. Upset and even more confused, Jesse storms off into the night and eventually ends up at a gay leather bar where he finds his gym coach. The coach takes him back to the school gym for some late night exercise before telling Jesse to hit the showers while he goes back to his office.

However, something draws Jesse’s coach to the locker room and he ends up naked with Jesse under the steamy water, even getting his wrists tied to the shower taps with a gym rope for Jesse’s amusement.

Later we see Jesse getting intimate with his girlfriend in her parent’s pool and they’re about to make out, but he can’t go through with it and runs off to his best friend Ron’s house. He confides in his buddy about his confused feelings, telling him “there’s something inside of me” and asks Ron to sleep with him to ease the pain.

In the end, however, it’s the love of his girlfriend that enables Jesse to fully suppress his feelings and no longer have a man inside him … for now.

This is actually the story to A Nightmare On Elm Street 2 with all the nasty bits taken out.

It’s no secret how homoerotic and just downright gay the movie it – Freddy actor Robert Englund talked to Attitude magazine about this and a recent documentary on the series confirmed the writer’s intention – and horror fans regard it as a classic example of ‘homo horror’.

One little clue that could have easily cleared up the question of Jesse’s (played by openly gay actor Mark Patton) sexuality is the fact he has a poster of 80’s popstar Limahl on his wall, which you can spot in the movie’s trailer at 0:41. Limahl, in case you’ve forgotten or weren’t born, did this…

If you live in the US and really don’t like your postman or woman very much, you can enter a competition to win $1,000 worth of gay movies on DVD (or lesbian movies for the girls). It’s being run by gay film distributor Wolfe Releasing to celebrate 25 years in the business and they’re doing draws every month this year, so if you miss out this time, you’ve got a few more chances.

Wolfe Releasing started life as a tiny mail order business providing bookstores with gay themed videos to rent out (this was before Blockbuster existed) and just kept growing. Their contribution to gay film is being celebrated at this month’s Outfest L.A. Film Festival (starting today) with screenings of some of their current gay movies including Undertow, Plan B and Elena Undone.

Undertow – a ghostly gay love affair between a married fisherman and a painter – forms the International Centrepiece screening at Outfest, while inter-sex high school comedy Spork is the closing night film.

You can read all about the festival’s screenings and events in their online guide – takes a bit of getting used to, but loads of info.

Gay movie specialist and arthouse distributor Strand Releasing has picked up US rights to gay director Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s prize winning movie Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives.

The Thai film, which took top prize at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, is about a dying man who is visited by the spirits of his loved ones in human and animal form while he spends his last days out in the the wilderness. It’s a real curiosity (and the trailer doesn’t help much) but surely one to watch. Director Weerasethakul – affectionately referred to as ‘Joe’ in the West – has a unique voice and vision and often references his own sexuality in his films, along with commons themes like nature, dreams and reincarnation.

Strand are planning to release Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives sometime next year. I, on the other hand, can barely recall what happened before Sunday morning…

Proof that blogging can land you in a sexy, gay movie (phone not ringing yet – I am cheap though… ) young, celeb blogger Gossip Boy (a kind of good-looking Perez Hilton that you don’t want to slap) has been cast as a Hollywood actor-slash-model in ‘time-bending campus drama’ Judas Kiss.

Gossip Boy (also known as Julian LeBlanc) joins Charlie David, Brent Corrigan, Richard Harmon and Timo Descamps in this story from first time director J.T. Tepnapa about a disillusioned, gay filmmaker who’s past catches up with him – literally. After all these bits of juicy casting news, the filmmakers just need to make Judas Kiss now so we can watch it.

And congrats to Tepnapa and his producer Carlos Pedraza for more than hitting their target on project funding website KickStarter – now they can afford all those fancy crane shots. Kickstarter.com is such a great idea – I need a new kitchen.