sundance

The power of a good tip

The next time you are in Nashville you have GOT to stop by the Red Lobster. If Jared and Tenisha are any example, the servers are, obviously, way more fun than the food.

Our favorite, courageously gay viral videos

It’s been a pretty good week for those of us obsessed with watching courageous kids kick ass on the internet. Nineteen-year-old Zach Wahls made a case for his two moms and reminded us all why Iowa rocks. Who doesn’t love a great speech for a great cause by a very smart young man? Meanwhile, over in California, 14-year-old Jonah Mowry lit up the internet with his vow to stand his ground in light of incessant bullying. Since we can’t just watch these videos over and over again (our neighbors have started to complain), we decided to take a trip down memory lane and list some of our other favorite gay videos. Do you remember them?

Art Buzz: Freaky rhyming couplets & a farewell to the New Museum slide

The Syphilis of Sisyphus: Now on view at Fredericks & Freiser gallery, Mary Reid Kelly’s newest video installation, “The Syphilis of Sisyphus,” portrays the artist (with ping pong ball eyes) as a pregnant French bohemian reciting twisted rhyming couplets. Her keenest words of wisdom: “My blistering wit and its deep lacerations are signs of advanced forms of Syphillization.”

Naked News: Teen sexting “epidemic”? Turns out we should all chillax

• Here’s something to LOL about: A new study shows that the whole teen sexting thing was — shocker — largely media hype, and that only 1% of kids age 10-17 have texted an explicit picture of themselves. And a million teens roll their eyes and say “We told you so.”
  
  
• Speaking of overreacting: Turns out that the trope that “men think about sex every 7 seconds” is total bull (Again: shocking, we know.) Actual research shows that men think about sex, on average, 18.6 times a day — and for women the average is 9.9 times a day. Not exactly the distance from Mars the Venus, right? For comparison: men think about food almost 18 times a day (and women almost 15 times a day).
  
  

Sundance Film Festival follow up: HELL AND BACK AGAIN

Well, the Oscars got something right. Though they overlooked Sundance 2011’s other top doc HOW TO DIE IN OREGON, HELL AND BACK AGAIN is on this year’s shortlist.

Director Danfung Dennis documents the story of 25-year-old Nathan Harris, a Marine Corps sergeant who was severely injured in Afghanistan. The film follows his recovery and transition back to life back home in North Carolina. Cut jarringly with Dennis’s own footage from behind enemy lines in Afghanistan, HELL delivers a violent jolt back home. This winner of Sundance’s World Cinema Jury Prize and World Cinema Cinematography Award is still in theaters, so if you haven’t seen it yet, go now.

Ladies — Is your best friend turning you into a gay man?

The best parts of having a stylish gay man by your side are trusting his opinion to help create an outfit and taking his advice on handling new relationships. However, sexuality aside, your friend is still male and, by nature, has a different perspective on situations. So we’re sure blindly following his strong opinion can sometimes leave you wondering, is he turning me into gay man? Keep your head up for a couple tell tale signs and gauge whether or not your platonic paramour’s pointers have you teetering on the edge of an inadvertant sex change or not.

Get your Sundance premieres right here: From Spike Lee to Bruce Willis and Lizzie Olsen to Ice-T

Sundance Institute announced today the films selected to screen in the out-of-competition Premieres and Documentary Premieres sections of the 2012 Sundance Film Festival. The Festival will be held January 19 through 29 in Park City, Salt Lake City, Ogden and Sundance, Utah. The complete list of films is available at www.sundance.org/festival.

The serial killer and the seductress: Now playing on Sundance Channel

Dominic West as serial killer Fred West in APPROPRIATE ADULT.

If you’ve gotten even a whiff of Hollywood’s turd platter this season (Tower Heist? Seriously?), then the Sundance Channel has the cure. Instead of Kristen Stewart, we give you Lena Dunham. Rather than Brett Ratner, we’ve got Stanley Kubrick. And in place of Adam Sandler’s drag, we’ve made Dominic West over as a serial killer. Here are our picks for this week’s films that won’t leave you brain dead:

Best of Kickstarter, 12/5

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.

FILM

GIRL WALK//ALL DAY: This Thursday, Kickstarter will premiere its first film, “Girl Walk//All Day,” at the Brooklyn Masonic Temple. Described as a “music video of epic proportions” and set to infectious Girl Talk tunes, the film tells the story of a young ballerina who follows her heart to New York City. Admission is free, but you have to RSVP.

Mountain Dance Trail: For her forthcoming documentary, dancer Gerald Milnes plans to tap-dance her way through West Virginia’s Route 33, hitting every square dance, hoedown and hootenanny she can find along the way.

What 12 days of Christmas actually costs

If commercials during the month of December were a true reflection of the holidays then apparently everyone gives their significant other gaudy jewelry from Kay’s or a brand new Lexus with a big red bow (which you can actually order from Amazon for fifty bucks). However, the benchmark for extravagant Christmas gifting was established by “The Twelve Days of Christmas,” the predecessor of all Christmas commercials (citation needed). First published in England in 1780, this carol sets the standard for Christmas purchases for the 1%.

Freight Farms: Turning used shipping containers into gardens

Is there anything you can’t do with a used shipping container? Designers have intrepidly redesigned these metal boxes that pile up at ports as everything from office buildings to portable commercial space to prison cells. Industrial designer Jon Friedman and environmental scientist Brad McNamara have found yet another potential use for shipping containers: small, self-contained urban farms. Combining hydroponics, solar power and rainwater harvesting, their Freight Farms concept recycles containers into “modular, expandable, portable crop production units.”

When sex and merchandise don’t mix

The only thing worse than sex being used to sell products that have nothing to do with sex is when sex is actually put into a product in some way when it shouldn’t be. Below are four sex product fails – don’t even think about them as potential holiday gifts, not even stocking stuffers. You’ve been warned:

• Bacon Lube: J&D’s wants the world to taste like bacon, so they made bacon salt, and baconnaise, bacon ranch and even bacon lip balm. So we guess it was only a matter of time before they made bacon lube. They say it started out as an April Fool’s prank but then got so many requests that they had to follow through with bacon-flavored personal lubricant and massage oil. Fortunately, it’s only available for a limited time.
  
  
• Erotic Energy Drinks: As if Red Bull weren’t bad enough – Big Cock cola and Little Pussy passion fruit drink are now available in Las Vegas. Of course they are.
  
  

The Mortified Sessions premieres tonight at 8pm

A young Will Forte

What would we find if we opened up your secret shoebox of middle school memories or leafed through your high school journal? The sometimes humiliating and often hilarious reminders of our past are revealed in “The Mortified Sessions,” a new Sundance original series that reveal mementos from celebrities’ past to shed light on who they are today. Awkward childhood photos, profane diary entries and embarrassing poetry take center stag as our favorite actors share their personal artifacts and anecdotes of their youth.

On tonight’s premiere episode, Ed Helms unearths some nerdy rock lyrics he wrote in high school. Find out how embracing his inner geek put him on the road to…

Top 10 Gay stereotypes that just need to stop

We see them television, we see them in movies, we see them in small-minded people who saw Will and Grace twice and have a sudden understanding of the gay community as a whole. Here are stereotypes we’re sick of seeing.

Get more GWLBWLB: Peter pushes some buttons

Oh, Peter! You kiss Kristin with that mouth? We’re all into pushing buttons (and envelopes), but we’re a bit concerned everyone’s favorite Nashville comic is headed for a beatdown.

Cai Guo-Qiang’s explosive new exhibit

It would be fair to say that Cai Guo-Qiang is “blowing up” on the art scene. Since the mid-80s, Guo-Qiiang – who grew up within spitting distance of a Chinese military base – has been making unusual paintings with gunpowder and other explosive materials. His charred, smoke-covered canvasses, some of which look like they might have been recovered from actual disaster scenes, capture the duality between destruction and creation by shockingly literal means. You’ve likely already seen one of his most memorable installations without even knowing it: in 2008, Guo-Qiang designed the opening fireworks and explosives for the Beijing Summer Olympics as its Director of Visual Effects. Clearly, this is evidence that I should have cultivated my early pyrophile tendencies as a child, because I’d definitely be famous by now…

Weekly movie trailer roundup: Worst poster edition

New movie trailers were a little slim this week, so what I bring you instead are four of the worst new movie posters. Let’s start with my favorite, MISSION IMPOSSIBLE: GHOST PROTOCOL. This isn’t the main poster, but one of a series featuring an image of each supporting character with the same slogan, only with Paula Patton here dressed up like a prom queen, the slogan “No Plan, No Backup, No Choice” reads more like an ad for birth control you might see in Planned Parenthood.

Tales of a NYC location scout

One of my favorite, little joys of living in New York City is having my way blocked by a film shoot. Sarcasm aside, there’s something pretty wonderful about walking down a random street only to suddenly remember a scene from a movie that was shot in that exact location. It’s a sensation that makes living in a somewhat difficult city (but one which has had an iconic role in countless films) worthwhile. And after living here awhile you occasionally come across an interesting street or building and you start thinking “This would be an awesome location for my theoretical rom-com about the pedicab driver who falls in love with an uptown girl” – in other words, pretending to be a location scout.

Super sketchy but awesome condom campaign of the week

We’ve all had our share of dubious Facebook friend requests – that regrettable one night stand you’d almost succeeding in forgetting, your former therapist, your ex, your mom. But what about a Facebook request from your unborn child? A bunch of guys in Brazil were recently friend-requested by babies with their own name, plus the “Jr.” suffix. It turns out that these friend requests were actually from a condom company.

A very Gaga Christmas

If you celebrated Thanksgiving like any American family—with the arguments and the sweet potatoes — you may have caught A Very Gaga Thanksgiving. I watched it and it was weirdly macabre and oddly lit. I loved it because I hated it; I hated it because I loved it. The Katie Couric interview! The 12 costume changes! The salami waffles and the interpretive dancing! The only bad thing about it is she’s not doing one for Christmas. But, I’m like Santa Claus and I give gifts, so I’m planning a Christmas special for her.

Curtain — Lady Gaga comes out of a long hallway wearing a tree, or IS a tree. A tree covered in dildos. She breaks out in “Bad Romance” as everybody in the world freaks out. She still does that song! We love that she still does that song! She’s standing inside a gingerbread house that is made up men wearing gold body paint and gold spandex booty shorts. Instead of singing the highest WANT YOUR BAD ROMANCE right where she catches fire in the vid, she sings WANTS A WHITE CHRISTMAS! And we all nod because yes, because who doesn’t want a white Christmas.

Sundance Film Festival Announces Films in Spotlight, Park City at Midnight, Next & New Frontier

Sundance Institute announced today the films selected to screen in the 2012 Sundance Film Festival out-of-competition sections Spotlight, Park City at Midnight, NEXT <=> and New Frontier. The Festival takes place from January 19 through 29 in Park City, Salt Lake City, Ogden and Sundance, Utah. The complete list of films is available at www.sundance.org/festival.

Best of the Web: ALIENS on ice & a Fozzie Bear biopic

ALIEN on Ice: If one thing is awesome about America, it’s that you can put just about anything “on ice.” This past month, the Old Murder House Theatre in Austin, Texas performed a live rendition of the 1986 sci-fi classic, ALIEN, and clips from the performance have, predictably, totally blown up on YouTube.

HAPPY FEET TWO: King of the ensemble film

Folks, we’ve got a number of ensemble films out at the moment – big casts with big names. One, J.C. Chandor’s MARGIN CALL, a first feature that attracted some of the biggest names in Hollywood, surprised even the most cynical of cinephiles. That’s a no-no in most industry circles, the prevailing wisdom being, “a new director just can’t attract the talent.” Go J.C. Chandor! Bring us back to the 90s! Other ensembles recently in theatres include TOWER HEIST and…HAPPY FEET TWO, which I would argue is the most ensemble-y of them all…

Collection of Occupy movement posters

If you plan on heading to an Occupy protest in your local hometown and want to wave a message that’s a step up from the crude signs made from pizza boxes and random flattened bits of cardboard (or like the one that Anne Hathaway was spotted carrying recently) then head on over to Occuprint. It’s a well produced online resource that “showcases posters from the worldwide Occupy movement” and “is meant to connect people with this work, and provide a base of support for print-related media within the Occupy movement.”

Today is World AIDS Day

Today marks “the beginning of the end of AIDS”:

• “Getting to Zero” is the theme of the UNAIDS efforts (the joint United Nations program on AIDS/HIV).
  
  
• Bono was on The Daily Show last night promoting his activist organization, One, and his fundraising one, Red.
  
  
• Add a patch to the One and Red campaigns’ 2015 Quilt, pledging to buy at least one Red gift this holiday season, and you’ll get to choose one of The Killers six consecutive Christmas songs benefiting Red for free.