I Heart Hartnett

Josh Hartnett and I go way, way back.


By which I mean, of course, that I've had an infantile crush on him almost since he was a wee bairn (well, since he was a 20 year old in sweet horror film The Faculty, actually).


He's had a fascinating career including The Virgin Suicides, the much-underrated "O" (his vile Hugo was fabulous and utterly credible), Lucky Number Slevin (for about half of which he is dressed in just a towel. Which is nice) and the ambitious if ultimately rather flawed The Black Dahlia.

I am going to draw a polite veil over Pearl Harbour [sic] and Black Hawk Down. He was only young.


So today saw a double-bill of Josh's 2008 films, starting with August. This tries to capture the insanity of the dot.com bubble, the time just before 9/11 when companies were valued at hundreds of millions of dollars even though the vast majority of them would never make a profit.


It's a perfectly servicable film, trying a wee bit too hard at the stylish visual moodiness, and a bit wrong-footed by an odd cameo from David Bowie (no, really), as some sort of mega corporate giant rich geezer.


Josh is easily the best thing in it, easily filling the shoes of an upstart business tyke who is almost all bravado and no substance.

Whereas in the other half of the double bill -- I Come With the Rain (alas, not a porn movie with a punning title) -- his character was all palpable substance.


Hartnett plays Kline, a former detective who quit after spending more than two years tracking down a bizarre serial killer (this part of the film is strangely reminiscent of Michael Mann's 1986 Manhunter, all fucked-up mind games and a cop becoming a killer in order to track him down).


Elias Koteas's killer is spectacularly creepy, and his sculptures made from the body parts of his victims are straight out of Francis Bacon's gloriously nightmarish canvasses.


In his new role as a private detective, Kline takes a case to find a rich industrialist's missing son, a search that takes him via the Philippines to Hong Kong.

I do like movies set in Hong Kong.


At this point, the plot goes a bit bananas, involving a gang of triads, a revenge kidnapping (can you have such a thing?) that goes wrong, a character who appears to be some sort of mystic healer (or possibly a reincarnation of Christ), and Josh desperately fighting his nightmares.


Things twist and turn, sprawling back and forth in time, layers of dreams, flashbacks and reality all co-mingling in a glorious rain-sodden (and blood-spattered) stew.


I'm pleased to be able to report that Josh spends some time wearing only a towel, and some other bits of time standing around in his pants (including one scene where, all nonchalent, he seems to be stroking his, er, morning wood through his loose-fitting boxers. I swear this is true).


It's also a very sweaty film, for those people who like that sort of thing. In fact, my very straight (cough) friend D. also professed to liking it, and he's not the sort to put up with any stuff and nonsense.

For myself, I was content just to be reunited again with lovely Josh.

Oh happy days

I know you've seen this image before, from last year's London WNBR, but as I keep telling you, he wins my prize for the sexiest rider.


A brilliantly sharp-eyed and extremely generous reader has now sent me a fistful of images of him at last year's Brighton WNBR, where, apparently, he was in a cunning disguise:




And now, glory be, some new images of him have emerged this year -- in a different disguise, being all be-bearded and that, but giving us a fresh perspective on his fresh and lovely fresh loveliness:


I was particularly taken with his "I (love) bums" statement since I love his bum:


Here he gazes wistfully yet manfully into the distance, his winkie relaxing as his stands naked and proud...


Whereas here, in the final image, his winkie seems a bit more anxious.


No matter what his pose, I am in love (and my thanks again to my incredibly generous anonymous reader, who has also enabled us to have not one but two Reciprocating Motion World Exclusive Images. Thanks, Mister).

Racial background of US Presidents and Blogger

[With reference to Look Mummy, below]

Something very weird is happening at Blogger. In response to my ramblings about Pride, a kind reader left this comment:

It feels like Obama has been in office for a looong time, but there is still no way the equivalent of this could be seen in the homeland of our US "allies", who continue with the idea that there are no queers in their Goddamn man's military. It must be utterly galling for them to have to serve alongside the lezzers and woofters in the British forces.

Quite the opposite. There are many in the military who wish to end Don't Ask, Don't Tell, including General Petreaus, James Jones, Colin Powell and certain members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Don't lump the mouth-breathing troglodytes with the rest of us Yanks, ok?

It frustrates me when others paint Americans as unenlightened inbred hill folk, since the rest of the world isn't so much better. We did elect an Obama, after all. When will the British elect a Prime Minister of Pakistani descent? Or the French a Senegalese President? The Dutch a Moroccan Prime Minister? The Germans a Turkish leader?

See, you got me all worked up, and not in the way I'm usually worked up when I visit your blog! Oh well, I'll scroll down and look at the pretty pictures again.

I replied, with this -- but for some reason Blogger refuses to publish this comment:

There are many in the military who wish to end Don't Ask, Don't Tell, including General Petreaus, James Jones, Colin Powell and certain members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Well now I'm really confused. If all those powerful people want to end it, and if the saintly Commander-in-Chief also wants to end it, er... why hasn't it ended? Are they all just completely inept? Or is it that they don't actually care that much about this issue because, as Clinton found, queer rights don't play so well in the electoral heartlands?

Really, I'm struggling to reconcile the picture you've painted of all the views of all these lovely enlightened people with the fact that "don't ask, don't tell" is still in place.

You should in no way think this is an attempt to diminish your people and Big Up my own -- as you'll have seen on numerous occasions, I am much, much harder on British politicians than I am on any others.

But we've got to stop letting Obama off the hook just because he comes from a different racial group. That would be like letting Thatcher get away with stuff because she just happened to be a woman.

Of course these break-throughs are to be celebrated. But either these people are fit and proper to do their jobs or they are not -- and their particular circumstances should not be an excuse for mistakes or under-performance.

The whole point of Pride is to (or was to?) underline that queer rights are basic human rights. My post was a reflection of the fact that, for almost every practical purpose, we have finally managed to achieve queer equality in the UK. Other places are not so fortunate -- and we can either make excuses for that or we can keep the pressure up.

For sure, there are much worse places than the US for queer rights. But since we are supposedly the closest allies in the current insane wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and since I was commenting on the British military's always rather popular presence at Pride, it seemed a logical swerve to the US. I'm sorry you don't see it that way.

On reflection, I thought I'd not properly responded to another point, so I left a second comment -- which, for some reason, Blogger also refuses to publish. Here it is:

Oh, and I'm rather with you on the racial background of elected politicians. I'd like a world in which these things don't matter, any more than gender or sexuality or disability.

But if you want to prove the US is more enlightened because it has elected a leader from a different demographic background, most of us can play similar games: a few decades back both Britain's Head of State and Head of Government were women -- when will the US elect a woman President?

I've lost track of the number of lesbian and gay ministers that have served openly in the British Government. But I'm struggling to think of a single lesbian or gay US Secretary.

Race is one issue, and an important one (though I suspect more important in the US than in the UK, for all sorts of historical reasons). But it's not the only one.

I'm very suspicious about why these wouldn't publish. Very strange.

Incidentally, I might also have done a bit of demographic sleuthing -- don't minority ethnic groups in the US make up around 40% of the population (and heading for majority status in a few years)? In the UK the equivalent figure is about 7%, so if you want to do "what proportion of UK Prime Ministers should come from minority ethnic groups" it will be very, very much lower than the equivalent for US Presidents. Women, of course, make up a majority in both countries...

Look, mummy...

Of course I couldn't let Saturday's London Pride pass without a post.


Unfortunately (for me) I had a completely appalling view, so these are mostly other people's photos (and one or two are not even from London).


It's probably worth starting with this:


It feels like Obama has been in office for a looong time, but there is still no way the equivalent of this could be seen in the homeland of our US "allies", who continue with the idea that there are no queers in their Goddamn man's military. It must be utterly galling for them to have to serve alongside the lezzers and woofters in the British forces.


As is now traditional, the majority of the Pride parade consisted of people trying to sell things, mostly through the medium of male flesh -- although sometimes, as below, through the medium of drag.


Ironically, it was so difficult to see the Parade that they could have been advertising anything and we'd have been none the wiser.


Unless you were in that smart group who arrived hours early to bag your places (note that police officer's rather defensive and closed body language -- even though he's wearing an anti-stab vest along with all the accoutrements of the Imperial Storm-Trooper with which they like to bedeck themselves):


Comfortingly, there was the usual mob of crazed religious nutters, with the spokesperson rabbiting on about the low moral standards of daytime tv, and how that has warped all of our fragile little minds:


Fortunately none of the real people at the Parade seemed to care very much:


Although... is it me or, far from being an orgy of debauchery, does Pride now look tragically tame after the World Naked Bike Ride?


Still, at least some people make an effort:


And I suppose we must admit there is something just a little transgressive about the whole event:


And that transgression can give us all a frisson of pleasure, no?

The horror...

I sought to escape the heat and noise and crowds of Pride by dashing into the air-conditioned coolth of the Curzon Soho, to watch Claire Denis' new film White Material.


Starring Isabelle Huppert, some critics are acclaiming it as her best film since Beau Travail (a personal favourite, and on my list of the Best Films Of All Time. Though, in fairness, that's quite a long list).

White Material is set in a nameless Francophone African country which is spiralling out of control. "Rwanda" is never mentioned, but the parallels are clear.


Huppert's Madame Vial runs a coffee plantation where she's queen of all she surveys; she's dealt with problems before, and this looks, to her, like just another. But it isn't, and the sense of the country closing in on her and her family is inexorable and gripping and vile.


The casual brutality meted out to her neighbours is what we have come to expect from such situations, but it is still deeply shocking. The brutalisation of small children -- turned into remorseless and conscience-free killing machines -- is here depicted in all its horror.


There are occasional distractions, mostly provided by the luscious Nicolas Duvauchelle, who plays Huppert's lazy son. He gives us a glorious full-frontal, but in circumstances which are not really conducive to pervy enjoyment.


Huppert's performance, as a woman trying to hold everything together, is extraordinary.

The film left me with a powerful urge to re-watch two others: Don Cheadle's Oscar-nominated turn in Hotel Rwanda (a powerful if ultimately unsatisfactory film)...


... and the extraordinary documentary Shake Hands with the Devil: the journey of Roméo Dallaire. Dallaire was the Canadian general in charge of the UN Mission to Rwanda as the country began to collapse on itself.


Dallaire was given a hopelessly inadequate force but, despite ultimately begging the Security Council for reinforcements, he and his men were left to watch impotently as hundreds of thousands of people were butchered (for which the permanent members of the Council should be reviled).


The horror of that experience can be seen etched onto Dallaire's face as he returns to the country, to revisit the scenes of these crimes and to try to exorcise them from his nightmares. Unsurprisingly, Dallaire suffered a nervous breakdown on his return to Canada, a broken man. And he was "just" a witness, not a victim.


We are also witnesses through White Material, and it is both a gripping film and an important one.

Let's dance

And finally this morning, while we're on the subject of dance...


I think this is an utterly delightful series of portraits of professional dancers.


There's something about the pairing of images which is so touching.


The physicality of the dancers shines through in each type of image.


But some of them are clearly much more expressive when dancing, much more contained or cautious when having their portraits taken.


But there's an exuberance to most of them, too.


These images remind me of all those clothed/naked portraits I've featured over the years -- which also seem to convey multiple aspects of the sitter's personality in a way a single picture does not.


Very nice indeed, I think we can all agree.

Throwing some shapes

The Bonnie Tyler video made me think of this sequence.


I thought it might give you some helpful pointers if you were planning to execute your own dance moves today.


I also rather like the Shirley Temple-esque curls of our dancer/model's hair.


Although I find them strangely anti-sexual.


There is no doubting his flexibility, though: his pelvis must be made of rubber or some such.


As indeed must his spine.


But he's also very tactile -- I want to reach into the photo and touch him.


To gently cup his... [blah, blah, continued on page 94].

Happy Pride

Some of us might remember this from the first time round but, somehow, it feels much, much jollier now:



Have a jolly day even if, like me, you may have reached the point where exuberantly ripping-off your shirt is not something to be contemplated outside the privacy of your own home...

The longest day

I know I promised we'd probably had our last visit to this year's World Naked Bike Ride, but how could I resist this utterly gorgeous man:


... and anyway, the fact is I haven't lied. These images are, apparently, from this year's Fremont Solstice Parade.


You see -- not everyone's on a bike:


Here's the wonderful back view, incidentally, of that marvellously inventive "costume":


In fact, that's one of the aspects of this event I particularly like -- the way almost everyone seems to use body-paint to create a costume:


[Wasn't his winkie just the most adorable thing ever?!]

Although the chaps in this final image just seem to have painted themselves blue:


Not that I'm complaining, you understand. No indeed.