Ana Gasteyer
Photo: Featureflash/Shutterstock.com.
By: Romeo San Vicente*/Special to TRT–
Geography Club meets soon
Brent Hartinger’s highly successful young adult novel Geography Club is the little gay engine that could. The sweetly unassuming story of closeted high schoolers who find each other through a clandestine gay student group known under the code name “Geography Club” became a runaway hit, then a play adapted by the author and, now, a feature film from the writing-directing team of twin brothers Gary and Edmund Entin. Wrapped in 2012 for a 2013 release, the movie stars up-and-comers Cameron Deane Stewart (Pitch Perfect) and Ally Maki (Step Up 3D), with established support from Scott Bakula, Nikki Blonsky, Marin Hinkle (Two and A Half Men) and Ana Gasteyer.
Gay-themed movies for families are few and far between, so be on the lookout for this one very soon at a gay film festival near you before it finds its home on cable. That’s where its intended tween audience will have a fighting chance of seeing it.
Super Troopers 2. That’s right, Super Troopers 2.
There are two kinds of people in the world: people who know that Super Troopers is the funniest movie of the past decade or so (OK, yes, Anchorman, we know, relax) and people who’ve never seen Super Troopers. From the admittedly quality-variable comedy team known as Broken Lizard (you really don’t want to see their follow-up film Club Dread, trust that) the absurdist 2001 cop comedy featured drug eating, cat impersonating, bisexual swinging and maple syrup drinking, to roll call just a few of its idiotic charms. And now it’s back to the well for more bad policing for director Jay Chandrasekhar and his fellow Lizards Kevin Heffernan, Steve Lemme, Paul Soter and Erik Stolhanske. It’s early stages yet – that buzzkill word “development” lingers over the project at the moment – but it’s really never too soon to get excited over this idea. If you’re not it’s because you’re in the sad majority of Earth-dwellers who need to catch up on the first low-brow masterpiece. The rest of you, begin guzzling the nearest bottle of Mrs. Butterworth’s.
Saffron Burrows facing her share of The Troubles
It’s entirely possible that you’ve given fewer passing thoughts to the career trajectory of Saffron Burrows than you should, but the bisexual Brit actress has already done so much to entertain you – including a brief stint dating fellow bi actor Alan Cumming – that you kind of owe her a moment of attention, don’t you think? Well, here’s the latest breaking Burrows bulletin: the former model and star of The Bank Job will appear in a U.K. crime thriller later this year called Crossmaglen (stumped? It’s a town in Northern Ireland). Co-starring Ben Kingsley, Michael Gambon and Vinnie Jones, it focuses on an IRA gunman (Scottish character actor Tony Curran) who accidentally kills a woman and her children on Christmas Eve. Obviously, life gets much worse for him from that point forward, so abandon all hope that it somehow turns into a cuddly Irish remake of It’s A Wonderful Life. Look for this troubling “Troubles” drama in December, the jolliest calendar month featuring the year’s most depressing films.
Shoplifters of The World unite and take over the multiplex
Who doesn’t love The Smiths? Unnaturally happy people, yes, but few others. Since the early 1980s, Morrissey and Johnny Marr, the mopiest U.K. guitar heroes of their generation, have captured the loyalty of millions of lonely listeners even though they broke up not long after they began. And therein lies a tale. It seems that a troubled young American fan, heartbroken over the 1987 demise of the Morrissey/Marr alliance, held a heavy metal radio DJ hostage at gunpoint and forced him to play hours of Smiths songs (and it would take a gun to make a metal dude switch from “Reign In Blood” to “Frankly Mr. Shankly”). And now that bizarre story is a movie, Shoplifters of The World, a comedy from gay director Stephen Kijak (Scott Walker: 30th Century Man) starring Downton Abbey’s Jessica Brown Findlay, Thomas Brodie-Sangster (Love, Actually), Jeremy Allen White (Shameless) and Will Poulter (Son of Rambow). Currently still in production, you’ll have to content yourself with the ongoing feud between Moz and every other living non-vegan for entertainment until the finished product rolls into theaters. Lingering thought, though: Where is that DJ today and did he ever learn to love “There Is a Light That Never Goes Out?”
*Romeo San Vicente has only ever stolen the lust-filled hearts of every man he meets. Believe it. He can be reached care of this publication or at DeepInsideHollywood@qsyndicate.com.
