Matt Bomer
Photo: Warner Bros.
By: Romeo San Vicente*/Special for TRT–
Lesbian happy endings coming soon from Carol
In 1952, Patricia Highsmith’s romance novel The Price of Salt did an unexpected thing: a stylistic detour for its author (the lesbian mystery author of Strangers on a Train and The Talented Mr. Ripley, Salt was published under a pseudonym), it also allowed for the possibility of an optimistic resolution for its lesbian characters in a time when those sorts of outcomes just weren’t on the literary menu. Sixty years later, of course, this doesn’t seem unreasonable at all, which means the time is perfect for a film adaptation starring Mia Wasikowska and Cate Blanchett. The movie’s called Carol – the name of Blanchett’s character, a woman who falls in love with the younger Wasikowska – and it starts shooting in New York and London early in 2013. To be directed by John Crowley (other credits: the Andrew Garfield drama Boy A and Is Anybody There? with Michael Caine), the screenplay is from lesbian writer Phyllis Nagy, which means one more lesbian line of defense against the usual movie missteps involving male fantasy versions of women in love with women. Look for this love affair to light up screens sometime in 2014.
Kylie Minogue is Walking On Sunshine
It’s a Glee/Smash/Mamma Mia! world. We just live in it. And thanks to this cultural trend, the jukebox musical’s prospects have never been brighter (at least until that Jersey Boys movie hits theaters – we’ll see). But while the wave is high, who better to ride it than Kylie Minogue? The actress-turned-pop-diva-turned-actress, whose performance of a melancholy love ballad in the acclaimed arthouse hit Holy Motors was that film’s most tender moment, is having a moment of her own. She’s signed on to star in Walking On Sunshine, a musical about two women who fall for the same man in Spain that’s stuffed full of ’80s pop hits. U.K. actress Gemma Arterton – Quantum of Solace’s hilariously named Strawberry Fields, also starring as Gretel in Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters with Jeremy Renner – plays Minogue’s romantic rival. And it can be assumed she knows how to carry a tune, too. She’d better, anyway. Otherwise when they get to the part where it’s time to sing “I Should Be So Lucky,” Kylie might have a bit of an advantage.
Countdown to Matt Bomer in Space Station 76
Gay Indie Film Alert! Evie Harris from Girls Will Be Girls has directed a movie. OK, her alter ego, Jack Plotnick, is the actual director. But whatever, same thing give or take a wig or two. The sci-fi comedy, Space Station 76, is based on a Los Angeles stage production that Plotnick’s been developing for some time, and it’s quite the team effort. Actors Kali Rocha, Michael Stoyanov, Sam Pancake and Jennifer Elise Cox (Jan in The Brady Bunch Movie) all pitched in on the screenplay and stage version, while the movie stars Matt Bomer, Jerry O’Connell, Marisa Coughlin, Patrick Wilson and Liv Tyler. True to its name and set in the futuristic 1970s, its convoluted soap opera plot involves space travelers named Misty and Sunshine and involves robots, bisexual secrets, Valium addiction, Women’s Lib, asteroid assaults and a lot of feathered hair, pretty much everything you want from outer space that isn’t already named Buck Rogers. Check film festival listings first, but it’ll eventually crash down into an arthouse near you. Or possibly one in a galaxy far, far away.
Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry: Together again
Before House M.D. turned him into a worldwide household name, Hugh Laurie was better known, alongside Stephen Fry, as one half of the U.K. comedy team whose TV series A Bit of Fry and Laurie launched both their careers. Laurie’s been kind of busy during the past decade starring on the planet’s number one show, so the pair haven’t worked together in some time. But that’s about to change with a new animated version of Oscar Wilde’s The Canterville Ghost. A comic satire about British/American culture clash in a haunted English manor – an American family moves in and encounters the ghost of Sir Simon de Canterville (Fry) and that of his afterlife nemesis, Death (Laurie) – the story has a perennial appeal and has already been adapted countless times. Just never by Fry and Laurie as CG animated ghosts. Directed by Kim Burdon with music by 84-year-old composer Ennio Morricone, it’ll be a great literary enlistment tool when you introduce your kids to Oscar Wilde during the 2014 holiday season. At that age they’ll appreciate it more than The Importance of Being Earnest.
*Romeo San Vicente hopes that Stephen Fry will be his British sugar daddy. Ian McKellen keeps saying no. He can be reached care of this publication or at DeepInsideHollywood@qsyndicate.com.
