sundance

Will Country Music come out of the closet?

A few years ago, Willie Nelson released an iTunes single called “Cowboys are Frequently Secretly Fond of Each Other.” As a novelty tune prompted by the popularity of BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN, it hardly represented a serious attempt to introduce gay subject matter into country music. But, in its own jocular way, it did break through a verboten barrier for the genre and cause some folks in Nashville to look around at each other and think: Just how many music-industry “cowboys” are we talking about here? And just how necessary is the secrecy?

The Mormon and the future Footballer’s Wife

If you’re ever in Nashville and looking to party, you should probably connect with these two. Tenisha and Jared were made for each other so there is no doubt that our revolutionary dating site GIRLS SEEKING BOYS SEEKING BOYS would’ve matched them up in a heartbeat. We’re guessing their first date would involve a little bit of tequila, and a lot of drama. So, check out how these two would present each other.

BUNDLED, BURIED & BEHIND CLOSED DOORS: short doc about the physical landscape of the Internet

Bundled, Buried & Behind Closed Doors from Ben Mendelsohn on Vimeo.

I guess Senator Ted Stevens really was onto something when he described the Internet as a series of tubes. Ben Mendelsohn created this masterful short documentary, BUNDLED, BURIED & BEHIND CLOSED DOORS, that pulls back the curtains to give us a fascinating look at the actual, physical infrastructure of the digital “cloud” that we increasingly inhabit (and which permits the existence of lolcats). “He takes us inside 60 Hudson Street in New York City, a nondescript building that houses one of the major nodes of the Internet on the east coast.” I’ve walked by this building many times throughout my eight years in NYC (Can I call myself a New Yorker yet?) – probably even while writing a tweet – but without realizing I was passing the main hub that makes this whole Twitter thing possible.

Design Dish: Winemaking at home & chairs that flip

Flip Chairs: Each of Daisuke Motogi’s candy-colored chairs can be flipped upside down or sideways to create new seating options. A high-backed chair becomes a low seat, or a lounger becomes a rocking chair. Come to think of it, it’s about time the rocking chair had a design makeover…

Get a Sneak Peak at Season 2 of AOTL – Plus The Best of Fashion and Style with Joe Zee

Life has seemed rather dull lately, hasn’t it? Well, Joe Zee is here to save us. ALL ON THE LINE returns on November 25, but you don’t have to wait to get your fill of fashion rehab. Joe Zee and SUNDANCE CHANNEL are teaming up with YouTube to make sure you’ve got enough AOTL to get you through Thanksgiving.

Rolex mentor and protégé: director Zhang Yimou and Annemarie Jacir

When Chinese director and Rolex Arts Initiative mentor, Zhang Yimou, was asked to select a protégé more than a year ago, he said he chose Palestinian filmmaker Annemarie Jacir “because of her work and background. We Chinese have a special affinity with Third World countries like Palestine. I fully support people from developing nations who dream of filming in their own land.” Yimou makes colorful, monumental films like A WOMAN, A GUN AND A NOODLE SHOP (2009), HOUSE OF FLYING DAGGERS (2004), HERO (2002) and RAISE THE RED LANTERN (1991). He has won awards at festivals around the world and yes, even at our beloved Sundance (for THE ROAD HOME). He just completed his next film, THE FLOWERS OF WAR, a story about “Chinese sex workers in 1937 [who] volunteer to replace university students as escorts for invading Japanese soldiers.” It stars Christian Bale and opens in China next month…

What Do You Need on a Sunday Morning — A Bloody Mary or a Ride to Church?

Our Girls Seeking Boys Seeking Boys dating site is a hit. Up next we’ve got Sherrié and Shane to contend with. These two are a perfect example of why meeting your best friend through an internet profile is probably the way to go. You need a best friend who knows what you’ll need after a Saturday night out, whether it’s a Bloody Mary or a ride to church. So, read on for Sherrié and Shane’s profiles…of each other.

Art Buzz: Getty’s massive LA art project & Tokyo’s squished subway riders

Pacific Standard Time: “Pacific Standard Time,” the Getty-funded series of exhibitions throughout LA county, draws together tons of museums, private galleries, homes and commercial spaces in a crazy, semi-random celebration of creativity. There’s literally no way you’ll get to all of the featured exhibits, but Angelenos should try and swing through a handful this week…

Gandhi’s KUMARE and other documentary tricks

On the heels of CATFISH and I’M NOT THERE comes Vikram Gandhi’s KUMARÉ, the SXSW Audience Award winner that should be showing up in theatres sometime this Spring. The director calls it “compassionate rule-breaking,” and his exploration of spirituality definitely breaks the rule of disclosure. A dozen or so people are hoodwinked into becoming spiritual disciples of someone they believe to be an Indian guru, but who’s really just a 30-something Columbia grad in India making his first film – that, and he happens to be named Gandhi.

The TWILIGHT curse on actors

Be thankful you’re not in a wildly popular film franchise. It can be career suicide! Yes, you get to be incredibly famous and make tons of money—as long as you stay safely within that franchise and keep delivering the same role to a young audience hungry for the repetition. Just as younger LORD OF THE RINGS cast members have had a hard time striking gold outside that series of lucrative adventures, so have the TWILIGHT gang been finding that not only do vampires suck, but out-of-the-box career ops can too.

With THE TWILIGHT SAGA: BREAKING DAWN Part 1 poised to make trillions starting November 18, it has to be bittersweet for the cast, who’ve struggled to break the dawn for themselves by scoring with non-Twilight projects (and they’re gonna need some really soon).

Pasadena’s literal fork in the road

Back in the fall of 2009, local Pasadena resident Bob Stane received a very public prank gift on his 75th birthday in the form of guerrilla art.

Naked News: Smiling is nature’s Botox

• Smile! Because it’s not that bad (actually, it probably is that bad), but mostly because it makes you look younger.
  
  
• ONWEE 4 ME: Teen sexting linked with psychological distress.
  
  
• Gloria Steinem: “I think we need to get much angrier.” Hell ya, bitches!
  
  

How To Handle Your Drama Queen

Surprise! It looks like we’ve got a Drama Queen on our hands this season.

A Dating Site for Girls Seeking Boys Seeking Boys: Cast Hook Ups

From eHarmony to Grindr there are plenty of ways to find a mate, a date or, um, whatever the polite term is for what guys use Grindr for. But, what about finding the perfect best friend? SUNFILTERED dreamt up a GIRLS WHO LIKE BOYS WHO LIKE BOYS ‘dating site’. Perhaps we’ll call it Girls Seeking Boys Seeking Boys. We’re using the Nashville couples to test it out, but (of course) there is a twist. We’re having the besties fill out profiles FOR EACH OTHER.

Best of Kickstarter, 11/14

We scoured the pages of Kickstarter to bring you this week’s best projects. Have a great Kickstarter project of your own or see one you think deserves some extra attention? Let us know about it the comments and we may just feature it in our weekly roundup.

BOOKS

“Plaster of Paradise”: One of my all-time favorite books, “I’m With the Band,” a groupie memoir authored by the legendary Pamela Desbarres, contains frequent mention of Cynthia Plaster-Caster. Cynthia, a fellow groupie, infamously cast rock stars’ private parts in plaster to be immortalized for all time. Now, she’s taken to Kickstarter to fund her memoir. The only bummer is that book stores will have to close forever after this thing hits shelves, because no book will ever be as awesome…

Movies that suck (and some that don’t): what’s playing this week on Sundance Channel

Who said you can’t have dessert first? Start your holiday indulgence early with this week’s episode of Love Lust, Chocolate edition. Then get ready for the season premiere of Girls Who Like Boys Who Like Boys with a jam-packed week of your favorite episodes from season one. And if you just can’t get enough, check out all the sneak peeks and behind-the-scenes looks at season two in Nashville, including a full episode available to watch with your friends online.

On Thursday night, EYES WIDE SHUT sets the mood when Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman get creepy sexy. Then Sundance takes things a bit further and celebrates vampire sex appeal on Friday night with Love Lust & Vampires, followed by the original vampire killing hottie, BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER (with Luke Perry, remember him? That kid was gonna be a star! Lesser known fact: Donald Sutherland and Paul Reubens also make appearances.) Speaking of which, if they ever get around to making that once talked about BUFFY reboot, Buffy original Kristy Swanson says she’s up for the job, any job, actually…

First Olympic marathon athletes

The other weekend, my neighborhood was teeming with runners from all over the world who were in New York City to race in the world’s largest marathon, for which I woke up in time (no small feat for me on the weekends) to witness the thrilling come-from-behind-victory for the women’s race by Firehiwot Dado of Ethiopia. (Even more impressive to me than her win was the fact that Firehiwot Dado has the word “fire” in her first name.) Her winning time of 2:23:15 and, for the men, Kenyan Geoffrey Mutai’s record-setting time of 2:5:5 compelled the television commentators to remark that the marathon had now become a sprint at the elite level and it won’t be long before the 2 hour mark is beaten…

Top 10 Hollywood Hot Messes Who Need a Gay Best Friend

Nobody provides water cooler fodder than the hottest hot messes in Hollywood. We love ‘em to little bits and crushed-up, little, prescription medication pieces simply because they can’t seem to stop…screwing up. Lindsay posing in Playboy? Like Marilyn? Again? Courtney Stodden is getting her breasts examined on national television? I don’t get it–does bleach leak into your brain? Of course, instead of dipping into the schadenfreude we could be real pals and get these ladies and gents some help…in the form of a gay man, of course. Nothing says intervention quite like one of our beloved gay boyfriends telling us to wake up and smell the vodka all over our clothes!!

Study links sex with animals to penile cancer

No, seriously. We know this sounds like something straight out of The Onion, but a team of urologists in Brazil actually studied this. One theory on the connection is that sex with animals could cause micro-injuries to the penis, a well known risk factor in the development of penile cancer. You’d think you’d have to survey, like, millions of men to find this kind of connection, right? Turns out, in rural Brazil, not so much. The researchers studied just under 500 men, 118 of whom were penile cancer patients – the rest had healthy schlongs. And here’s where it gets crazy: 45% of the penile cancer patients reported having sex with animals, and 32% of the healthy men admitted to bestiality. Yes, you read those numbers right: 45% and 32%. For the discriminating zoophilia fan, it turns out that the kind of animal you schtup makes no difference to your penile cancer risk – mares, cows, pigs and chickens – they all popped up in this survey.

The 2010/11 Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative

Yesterday, Brian Eno made an appearance at the New York Public Library to introduce a work by his musical protégé, Ben Frost. It was part of a weekend of performances marking the end of the fifth cycle of the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative, a year-long program that pairs promising young artists with masters in their field for a year of creative collaboration. This year saw artist Anish Kapoor paired with Nicholas Hlobo, choreographer Trisha Brown with Lee Serle, filmmaker Zhang Yimou with Annemarie Jacir, “polymath patrician” Hans Magnus Enzensberger with Tracy K. Smith, dramaturge Peter Sellars with Maya Zbib as well as Eno and Frost. The opportunity to work alongside such world-renowned artists is so coveted and exclusive that nominees are selected by an anonymous panel of experts who conduct an exhaustive international search…

Watch a Full Episode of GWLBWLB With Your Friends Right Now!

What, our Twitter premiere wasn’t enough? You want more GIRLS WHO LIKE BOYS WHO LIKE BOYS? Well, try this one on for size, you can watch the premiere online right now or any episode whenever you want (after its premiere, of course). Better yet, you can watch it with friends, lovers, frenemies or total strangers whose snark makes you snarf.

GWLBWLB Nashville Premieres TODAY– Only on Twitter

Sundance Channel just can’t wait to share the new season of GIRLS WHO LIKE BOYS WHO LIKE BOYS with you. So, we’ve teemed up with Twitter to host the first ever television show premiere via tweet!

Want to watch the first episode TODAY? All you have to do is follow @SundanceChannel on Twitter and stand by for an exclusive link to the first episode! You’re welcome.

Weekly movie trailer roundup: Adam Sandler’s fake-real movie vs. his real-fake one

If you’ve been unfortunate enough to have already seen the trailer for Adam Sandler’s latest movie, JACK AND JILL, you might have asked yourself – Is this shit for real? – only to discover the sad, sad fact that it was indeed. If there’s any lesson to be learned from Eddie Murphy’s career (besides having your mouth so glued to Brett Ratner’s butt you have to follow him wherever he goes, like into the Oscars and right back out of them again), it’s not to dress up as the fat, female version of yourself and then star opposite her. But Sandler did it anyway, and it looks so unbelievably bad, so excruciatingly unwatchable, many people are questioning its authenticity, citing the parody trailers in the beginning of TROPIC THUNDER as more believable.

Sharing is not caring: Just say no to small plates

“We don’t share,” my friend Ali said. Our server’s eyebrows arched into tight half moons as she surveyed the five of us seated around the communal table at the hot, tapas-style seafood restaurant. She glanced back at Ali as though she was waiting for the punch line, for Ali to laugh and say, “Gotcha! Bring us five forks and one of everything, please!” But she said nothing, her face poised in a hardened expression. A few uncomfortable beats later, our server tried again.

“We recommend sharing because of the timing. Since the dishes are small plates they will come out at different times from the kitchen.” But Ali held strong.

“We’re all good friends and we don’t need to be polite anymore,” she explained with a firm smile. “We don’t like sharing.”

Martin Sheen is the grumpiest old man ever in THE WAY

Martin Sheen has never been crabbier than in THE WAY, the Emilio Estevez-directed “trail movie” that chronicles a grieving father’s pilgrimage walk from France to Spain to scatter the ashes of his only child. When Daniel (Emilio Estevez) ditches his dissertation to travel the world, he dies suddenly in a freak accident on the Camino de Santiago, the famous Christian pilgrimage trail spanning Spain. His father Tom (Sheen), who was already pissed at Daniel before he died, decides to finish the journey to honor the lost life, and boy is he mad about it.