SMA Greets New Decade With Emile Hirsch As #1

Posted on January 6, 2010 by queerlefty

The stability in the top spot masks some true drama in the struggle for top honors on the first Sexiest Males Alive list of the new decade (see #1-10 below). The two guys to fight it out for Climber Of The Month, Jay Brannan and Leonardo DiCaprio (climbing eleven and ten spots, respectively), have one thing in common: Their complete refusal to be written off. They may be down for a while, and you may be hard pressed to find a reason for them to bounce back anytime soon, and then, BAM, they rocket upwards nonetheless. For Brannan, his impressive improvement should be attributed to his new single, Christmas Really Sucks, and the cover art that came with it, while Leo was helped by my accidental rewatching of Titanic. Continue reading →

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My Favorite Movies Of The Decade

Posted on December 30, 2009 by queerlefty

I knew this list thing was going to be hard, but when I couldn’t even decide a proper name for the list, I was on the verge of giving up. By naming it My Favorite Movies Of The Decade I’m trying to say two things. First, to underline how such lists will and should always be subjective. These are the movies that amused, enraged and engaged me the most in the 2000’s, and I will make my case for them on that ground. Continue reading →

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My Favorite Movies Of 2009

Posted on December 22, 2009 by queerlefty

You should know a couple of things before you read the list of my favorite movies of 2009. First, this list will be subject to change. There are still lots of great 2009 movies I have yet to see, either because they have yet to premiere in Norway, I simply don’t know about them, or because I just haven’t gotten around to them yet. I know, people speak glowingly about The Hurt Locker, Adventureland, Inglourious Basterds (etc., etc., etc.), but I haven’t seen any of them (0r many other essentials, shame on me). This is a ranking of the movies I was in a position to have an opinion on as of today. Glaring omissions may be fixed later, as they were last year, but to my defense I’ll say that I’ve spent quite some time rewatching classics of the 00’s in the last couple of months, in preparation for the upcoming Movies Of The Decade list. Continue reading →

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My Favorite Albums Of The Decade

Posted on December 21, 2009 by queerlefty

I’m not one of those who have a natural aversion to lists. I like to read them, and to rank stuff for myself. But when they go public, I invariably start to think about what’s wrong with them. Therefore: Mine does not have nearly enough women. It’s too Anglo-American. It’s biased towards the latter half of the decade (I think). Jazz, electronica, soul, etc. etc. etc is underrepresented. I apologize. Give me another ten years to improve. Now, let’s unveil my fifteen favorites of the 2000s, and a selection of other good releases to top it all off. Continue reading →

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‘Jay, Can I Stay In Love With You?’

Posted on November 26, 2009 by queerlefty

I may have come relatively late to the musical genius of Jay Brannan, but by now he’s been something close to everything all the time for me for months. I guess being more ignorant than hostile to his music probably disqualifies me from being a convert, the types of people best known for embracing their opposites most fervently, but nonetheless, a new Jay Brannan single has now become one of those things that makes my heart beat faster. I noticed it for the first time when Jay released In Living Cover last summer, and now, thankfully, it’s happening again. Stubbornly in-character, the perennial misanthrope has released Christmas Really Sucks. Enjoy Thanksgiving, guys, apparently it’ll be all downhill from here. Continue reading →

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Taking Woodstock Out Of ‘Taking Woodstock’

Posted on November 21, 2009 by queerlefty

Ang Lee doesn’t owe me anything. If any, I owe him to be grateful for the impressive string of great films he has made over the years, from Sense and Sensibility and The Ice Storm, to Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon and Brokeback Mountain. But being an acclaimed director sometimes has to feel like the most ungrateful job in the world. Every individual moviegoer will find their own, highly specific individual reason to tell themselves that they didn’t quite like your movies. But it doesn’t have to be something they didn’t like. It could just be something they think they’d have liked even better. When people are in that mood, it doesn’t help to ask them whether they think the movie would have been better if they’d taken over the reins (they’re supposed to say no), or more pointedly, to say that that’s the reason why you’re the director and they are not. Continue reading →

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Early Gay Crushes: Jesse Eisenberg

Posted on November 12, 2009 by queerlefty

Regular readers may be starting to see a pattern in these installments. My Early Gay Crushes can, if simplified somewhat, be divided into two categories, depending on how old and/or mature I was when they happened. In the first category you have people like Zac Hanson, Jonathan Taylor Thomas, Joshua Jackson and Leonardo DiCaprio. These crushes in some ways happened when I was still too young to appreciate fully that they were actually gay crushes, in the sense that I was not yet fully socialized into believing that having gay feelings was something weird and undesirable. First category may have been confusing, but mostly in a first celebrity crush kind of way. Continue reading →

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With Hirsch On Top, October SMA Returns To Normal

Posted on November 1, 2009 by queerlefty

In a show of force, Emile Hirsch this month showed that he can still dictate the terms of the competition, even though he was demoted to second place on the Sexiest Males Alive (SMA) list for August. He may have been the standardbearer, but Zac Efron still had to convince me more why Emile should not retake the top spot, than why he was the right guy to remain atop the SMA. Zac predictably failed at a task that was outside of his control, which means the regular order is reinstated. Continue reading →

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The Significance Of Stephen Gately

Posted on October 19, 2009 by queerlefty

As a former Boyzone fan, I was of course deeply saddened by last week’s news that the group’s co-singer, Stephen Gately, had died. I say former not because I need to distance myself from my fandom, but rather because I haven’t felt the need to listen to them for years. There’s something about not really appreciating something until it’s taken away from you, however. I’m not more of a former Boyzone fan that I have been listening to them endlessly ever since the story broke a week ago. Continue reading →

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The Nobel Peace Prize: Is It Too Soon?

Posted on October 9, 2009 by queerlefty

Out of respect for Hillary Clinton and the Clinton legacy. I never got myself to fully choose between Clinton and Barack Obama in the Democratic presidential primaries, once my favorite candidate, John Edwards (yeah, I know) dropped out. But even if I never wholeheartedly took sides (although I leaned toward Obama, and endorsed him for the general election), I always felt the need to defend him against allegations from diehard Clintonites that he was all talk and no action, or that it was somehow naive to hope that his idealistic rhetoric would actually make it into political reality. It cost very little, because I actually believed in him, deeply. And ten months into his first term, that belief has not been seriously reduced. I think this is because my trust in him never resembled that uncritical caricature pushed by Clinton’s most ardent supporters. Oddly, that caricature is more easily found in the way the Nobel Committee is justifying giving its 2009 Peace Price to Obama. Continue reading →

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