Beauty comes in many shapes and sizes

Wonderful picture of Matt and Steve:

 
Photo by Jimmy Baumgardner

Role / Play premiered yesterday and today at QFest in Philadelphia. Reviewed by Frank J. Avella here:

http://www.newyorkcool.com/archives/2010/May-June/film-reviews_QFEST.htm#role

"Rob Williams knows his audience, but he is also is a gay filmmaker who has something to say. How to meld the two? By featuring his hot, hunky actors naked and sneaking in lots of smart dialogue that comments on current gay culture... Role/Play is one of Qfest’s best offerings (saying a lot this year because the slate is impressive) and deserves to be seen for it’s beauty, it’s topicality and it’s significant content."

Read also Violet Tendencies's review: http://www.newyorkcool.com/archives/2010/May-June/film-reviews_QFEST.htm#violet

and From Beginning to End (Do Comeco Ao Fim): http://www.newyorkcool.com/archives/2010/May-June/film-reviews_QFEST.htm#from

Beauty comes in many shapes and sizes

Wonderful picture of Matt and Steve:

 
Photo by Jimmy Baumgardner

Role / Play premiered yesterday and today at QFest in Philadelphia. Reviewed by Frank J. Avella here:

http://www.newyorkcool.com/archives/2010/May-June/film-reviews_QFEST.htm#role

"Rob Williams knows his audience, but he is also is a gay filmmaker who has something to say. How to meld the two? By featuring his hot, hunky actors naked and sneaking in lots of smart dialogue that comments on current gay culture... Role/Play is one of Qfest’s best offerings (saying a lot this year because the slate is impressive) and deserves to be seen for it’s beauty, it’s topicality and it’s significant content."

Read also Violet Tendencies's review: http://www.newyorkcool.com/archives/2010/May-June/film-reviews_QFEST.htm#violet

and From Beginning to End (Do Comeco Ao Fim): http://www.newyorkcool.com/archives/2010/May-June/film-reviews_QFEST.htm#from

Kitchen Stories (2003) directed by Bent Hamer

Director: Bent Hamer

Writers:Jörgen Bergmark (writer)
Bent Hamer (writer)

Release Date: 15 January 2003 (Tromsø International Film Festival, Norway)
10 December 2003 (Rome, Italy, premiere)
19 February 2004 (Portland International Film Festival, USA)

Genre: Comedy, Drama

Plot: A scientific observer's job of observing an old cantakerous single man's kitchen habits is complicated by his growing friendship with him.

In post war Sweden it was discovered that every year, an average housewife walks the equivalent number of miles as the distance between Stockholm and Congo, while preparing her family meals. So the Home Research Institute sent out eighteen observers to a rural district of Norway to map out the kitchen routines of single men. The researchers were on twenty-four-hour call, and sat in special strategically placed chairs in each kitchen. Furthermore, under no circumstances were the researchers to be spoken to, or included in the kitchen activities.

( Awards )

@IMDb
@Amazon: Kitchen Stories (2003)
@Netflix

 

( more pics )

 

Cast (in credits order):
Joachim Calmeyer ... Isak Bjørvik
Tomas Norström ... Folke Nilsson
Bjørn Floberg ... Grant
Reine Brynolfsson ... Malmberg
Sverre Anker Ousdal ... Dr. Jack Zac. Benjaminsen
Leif Andrée ... Dr. Ljungberg
Gard B. Eidsvold ... Bakkerman (as Gard Eidsvold)
Lennart Jähkel ... Green
Trond Brænne ... Ordforer
Bjørn Jenseg ... Vaktmester
( rest of the cast )

 
Isak and Folke

Kitchen Stories (2003) directed by Bent Hamer

Director: Bent Hamer

Writers:Jörgen Bergmark (writer)
Bent Hamer (writer)

Release Date: 15 January 2003 (Tromsø International Film Festival, Norway)
10 December 2003 (Rome, Italy, premiere)
19 February 2004 (Portland International Film Festival, USA)

Genre: Comedy, Drama

Plot: A scientific observer's job of observing an old cantakerous single man's kitchen habits is complicated by his growing friendship with him.

In post war Sweden it was discovered that every year, an average housewife walks the equivalent number of miles as the distance between Stockholm and Congo, while preparing her family meals. So the Home Research Institute sent out eighteen observers to a rural district of Norway to map out the kitchen routines of single men. The researchers were on twenty-four-hour call, and sat in special strategically placed chairs in each kitchen. Furthermore, under no circumstances were the researchers to be spoken to, or included in the kitchen activities.

( Awards )

@IMDb
@Amazon: Kitchen Stories (2003)
@Netflix

 

( more pics )

 

Cast (in credits order):
Joachim Calmeyer ... Isak Bjørvik
Tomas Norström ... Folke Nilsson
Bjørn Floberg ... Grant
Reine Brynolfsson ... Malmberg
Sverre Anker Ousdal ... Dr. Jack Zac. Benjaminsen
Leif Andrée ... Dr. Ljungberg
Gard B. Eidsvold ... Bakkerman (as Gard Eidsvold)
Lennart Jähkel ... Green
Trond Brænne ... Ordforer
Bjørn Jenseg ... Vaktmester
( rest of the cast )

 
Isak and Folke

Big Diehl, The Road Home by George Seaton

I remember with pleasure the novella with the same character, Big Diehl, a barely legal boy who searched in the Army a way out his nightmare but also the family he was missing. Oddity of life was that leading off to a life in the Army, he also find another way, an isolated ranch owned by a lesbian couple, Chris and Maddie, who made her life to offer shelter to all these young boys and girls who are misfit of society. But for Big it was too late, or maybe too soon, he needed to go out and be in the Army, and prove to himself that he has a reason to be in this world.

Diehl left home and his first love, Joe, a same age kid who had not the courage to explore possibilities, as Diehl did. Maybe if Joe was with him, Diehl would have not joined the Army, to not leave Joe alone. But he had no bonds to stop him; during his life in the Army, Diehl met other boys, to his eyes they were replica of Joe, and he poured in them all the love he had for Joe and was not able to express. In reality, I think all these boys were replica of Diehl himself, and he loved them all since he wanted to be love only by one, Joe.

In the previous novella, I was quite taken aback by the fact that Diehl, even if he has clearly a good man waiting for him at home, Tony, another “host” of Maddie and Chris’s ranch, was not able to love him back as Tony deserved. Diehl is not a don juan, he doesn’t love them all since he is not able to feel real love; I think he is simply already taken, he is not free to be the right one for them, since he is already “promised” to Joe, even if he believes Joe doesn’t want him back.

When Diehl gets out of the Army, before heading back to the ranch, he decides to visit his father, to resolve a question that influenced all his life; he is not planning, or hoping, to meet Joe, and when it happens, it’s not with an angry disposition. Diehl doesn’t blame Joe for anything, he thinks to understand him and his reasons, and in any case, Diehl loves Joe, and if you love someone, you have to forgive him everything. So, when Diehl meets again Joe, it’s a good and sweet encounter, there are no recriminations or regrets, and they are able to clear things between them without losing other time, thank to Diehl’s good heart.

It’s strange, Diehl is so mature and quiet that he seems older and wiser than how he really is. He calls the boys he met during his life “kids”, like they are younger and in need of protection, and instead Diehl is this old man with all past experience to teach him lessons. And instead Diehl is barely old than them, 24 years old is still really young. It’s not age who taught him a lesson, it was life, a life someone his age should have not known. Despite the sadness to know that someone stole Diehl’s youth, there is at least the hope that he has still time, that he can have 50 or 60 or 70 years of happiness ahead of him, that when he will finally set somewhere, with the man of his dreams, he will have time to enjoy his life, and to replace bad memories with good ones.

Big Diehl is not a thriller or a adventure packed plot; it’s more a peaceful paced plot, while reading it you have the feeling of hot and still summer afternoons, of being able to listen to the nature sounds since there are no artificial sounds to cover them.

http://www.mlrbooks.com/ShowBook.php?book=BGDIEHL2

Amazon Kindle: Big Diehl: The Road Home

Series:
1) Big Diehl: http://elisa-rolle.livejournal.com/898055.html
2) Big Diehl, The Road Home

Reading List:

http://www.librarything.com/catalog_bottom.php?tag=reading+list&view=elisa.rolle

Big Diehl, The Road Home by George Seaton

I remember with pleasure the novella with the same character, Big Diehl, a barely legal boy who searched in the Army a way out his nightmare but also the family he was missing. Oddity of life was that leading off to a life in the Army, he also find another way, an isolated ranch owned by a lesbian couple, Chris and Maddie, who made her life to offer shelter to all these young boys and girls who are misfit of society. But for Big it was too late, or maybe too soon, he needed to go out and be in the Army, and prove to himself that he has a reason to be in this world.

Diehl left home and his first love, Joe, a same age kid who had not the courage to explore possibilities, as Diehl did. Maybe if Joe was with him, Diehl would have not joined the Army, to not leave Joe alone. But he had no bonds to stop him; during his life in the Army, Diehl met other boys, to his eyes they were replica of Joe, and he poured in them all the love he had for Joe and was not able to express. In reality, I think all these boys were replica of Diehl himself, and he loved them all since he wanted to be love only by one, Joe.

In the previous novella, I was quite taken aback by the fact that Diehl, even if he has clearly a good man waiting for him at home, Tony, another “host” of Maddie and Chris’s ranch, was not able to love him back as Tony deserved. Diehl is not a don juan, he doesn’t love them all since he is not able to feel real love; I think he is simply already taken, he is not free to be the right one for them, since he is already “promised” to Joe, even if he believes Joe doesn’t want him back.

When Diehl gets out of the Army, before heading back to the ranch, he decides to visit his father, to resolve a question that influenced all his life; he is not planning, or hoping, to meet Joe, and when it happens, it’s not with an angry disposition. Diehl doesn’t blame Joe for anything, he thinks to understand him and his reasons, and in any case, Diehl loves Joe, and if you love someone, you have to forgive him everything. So, when Diehl meets again Joe, it’s a good and sweet encounter, there are no recriminations or regrets, and they are able to clear things between them without losing other time, thank to Diehl’s good heart.

It’s strange, Diehl is so mature and quiet that he seems older and wiser than how he really is. He calls the boys he met during his life “kids”, like they are younger and in need of protection, and instead Diehl is this old man with all past experience to teach him lessons. And instead Diehl is barely old than them, 24 years old is still really young. It’s not age who taught him a lesson, it was life, a life someone his age should have not known. Despite the sadness to know that someone stole Diehl’s youth, there is at least the hope that he has still time, that he can have 50 or 60 or 70 years of happiness ahead of him, that when he will finally set somewhere, with the man of his dreams, he will have time to enjoy his life, and to replace bad memories with good ones.

Big Diehl is not a thriller or a adventure packed plot; it’s more a peaceful paced plot, while reading it you have the feeling of hot and still summer afternoons, of being able to listen to the nature sounds since there are no artificial sounds to cover them.

http://www.mlrbooks.com/ShowBook.php?book=BGDIEHL2

Amazon Kindle: Big Diehl: The Road Home

Series:
1) Big Diehl: http://elisa-rolle.livejournal.com/898055.html
2) Big Diehl, The Road Home

Reading List:

http://www.librarything.com/catalog_bottom.php?tag=reading+list&view=elisa.rolle

Like that Spark, Erotic Stories of New Relationships edited by Marcy Harris

This anthology is mostly a collection of sci-fic/futuristic story, with some shade of fantasy, especially in the first story. The New Relationships in the title refer to the new “type” of combination you can decline, and it’s not only referred to gay or lesbian story, but more to a future when gender identity will be a real thin definition, since being male or female will be only a characteristic, like being tall or having blue eyes.

Most of the stories have an erotic development, and more or less, lean more on the lesbian gender/genre, actually only the last story by Josephine Myles is a M/M romance story. Due to this, most of the stories focused on the need, almost thirst, of those women to find a gentle love, opposed to what they have always suffered from men. Loving a woman give them the security to find a real soul mate on the other side; plus give them strength, like having the chance to access some primordial and powerful knowledge.

These women are strong willed and independent, and they don’t need a man to feel strong, but they need love, and apparently only another woman is able to give them that. On a strange game of contraposition, the only M/M story is about two men who find pleasure in giving up the power to someone else.

Even if the setting is futuristic/fantasy, it’s not overloaded with details, sometime you realize the story is not contemporary only from little words or details, something that in few brushes give you the perception of future, or something far from today. Mostly the focus is the relationship between the two main characters and as I said, they are erotic stories, so there is also a lot of sex, but in a way, it has always a meaning more them “simply” sex, like through sex they are affirming something, their power and independency.

Content:
Clear Sight in the Double-Full Moon Night by Shawn Erin (F/F, Transgender)
A Balefire Chronicles Short Story: Poisonous Passions by Cynthia Gael (M/F)
A Last Goodbye by Roxanne Rhoads (F/F)
ToyGirls of the Personal Genome by Giselle Renarde (F/F, Transgender)
The Shock of The New by D. Mark Alderton (F/F, Transgender)
Navigator by Kathleen Tudor (F/F)
Passive Resistance by Josephine Myles (M/M)

http://www.circlet.com/?page_id=3

Amazon Kindle: Like That Spark: Erotic Tales of New Relationships

Reading List:

http://www.librarything.com/catalog_bottom.php?tag=reading+list&view=elisa.rolle

Like that Spark, Erotic Stories of New Relationships edited by Marcy Harris

This anthology is mostly a collection of sci-fic/futuristic story, with some shade of fantasy, especially in the first story. The New Relationships in the title refer to the new “type” of combination you can decline, and it’s not only referred to gay or lesbian story, but more to a future when gender identity will be a real thin definition, since being male or female will be only a characteristic, like being tall or having blue eyes.

Most of the stories have an erotic development, and more or less, lean more on the lesbian gender/genre, actually only the last story by Josephine Myles is a M/M romance story. Due to this, most of the stories focused on the need, almost thirst, of those women to find a gentle love, opposed to what they have always suffered from men. Loving a woman give them the security to find a real soul mate on the other side; plus give them strength, like having the chance to access some primordial and powerful knowledge.

These women are strong willed and independent, and they don’t need a man to feel strong, but they need love, and apparently only another woman is able to give them that. On a strange game of contraposition, the only M/M story is about two men who find pleasure in giving up the power to someone else.

Even if the setting is futuristic/fantasy, it’s not overloaded with details, sometime you realize the story is not contemporary only from little words or details, something that in few brushes give you the perception of future, or something far from today. Mostly the focus is the relationship between the two main characters and as I said, they are erotic stories, so there is also a lot of sex, but in a way, it has always a meaning more them “simply” sex, like through sex they are affirming something, their power and independency.

Content:
Clear Sight in the Double-Full Moon Night by Shawn Erin (F/F, Transgender)
A Balefire Chronicles Short Story: Poisonous Passions by Cynthia Gael (M/F)
A Last Goodbye by Roxanne Rhoads (F/F)
ToyGirls of the Personal Genome by Giselle Renarde (F/F, Transgender)
The Shock of The New by D. Mark Alderton (F/F, Transgender)
Navigator by Kathleen Tudor (F/F)
Passive Resistance by Josephine Myles (M/M)

http://www.circlet.com/?page_id=3

Amazon Kindle: Like That Spark: Erotic Tales of New Relationships

Reading List:

http://www.librarything.com/catalog_bottom.php?tag=reading+list&view=elisa.rolle

Monte's Marines (Dark Court 2) by Stormy Glenn

With this second book in the Dark Court series Stormy Glenn continues in her saga about the special elf people whose royal male member can give birth; it’s a series all centred around the male pregnancy theme, and plays a lot with all the stereotype of this type of stories: big and sturdy men who fall in love for little pretty boy and have to face the unthinkable, the possibility to become father; unthinkable not only since their partner is a man, and so it was pretty much impossible to have an unplanned pregnancy but also since this strong men don’t have any idea how to treat little baby and even less how they have to deal with the fathers of those baby, ethereal beautiful men, fragile like porcelain both in body than in will.

Doc, one of the Marines that in the previous book helped Zack and his elf lover Eljin, is sent on a special mission, retrieve Monte, who is not only Eljin’s cousin, but also the son of one of his best friend, Gunny. Doc has just had a lovers quarrel with Rocky, the man he is love since years, and sincerely he sees this mission as a way out to avoid having to face his feelings and being hurt. When he meets Monte, in dangerous circumstances, he falls in love for the beautiful man, and maybe even this is a way out to not face his real feelings for Rocky, it’s easier to love Monte, even more “ordinary”: true Monte is an elf, and a man, but he is pregnant with Doc’s baby, so, in a way, more comply to normal society.

In a way, with this ménages a trois, Stormy Glenn is deploying two different type of man on man relationship and so trying to match the taste of different readers. Rocky and Doc are the all male but gay version of a M/M relationship, both of them are everything other than effeminate, strong in body and in will; true, Doc is maybe a bit more emotional than Rocky, but indeed Doc has always known he was gay, and instead Rocky is living a “gay for you” situation, where he is thinking to have a relationship with a man, not since he suddenly feels attracted by other men, but simply since he fell for Doc, and Doc is a man.

Doc and Monte, and later Monte and Rocky, instead have the classic M/M relationship (using M/M in the slash meaning of the word, in contraposition to Gay novel, M/M romances are usually a bit more stereotype) where one of the two men involved is more feminine, if not for the anatomical difference, he could be easily mistaken for a woman, and he is for sure pretty like one. Plus, in this series, these elves are also fragile and submissive, they very much depend from their men and in a way, they expect their men to treat them as precious things. Indeed they are pretty much spoiled brat, and very aware of that, with no intention to change.

https://www.nobleromance.com/ItemDisplay.aspx?i=125

Series: Dark Court
1) Dark Side of the Veil: http://elisa-rolle.livejournal.com/1007526.html
2) Monte's Marines

Reading List:

http://www.librarything.com/catalog_bottom.php?tag=reading list&view=elisa.rolle

Monte's Marines (Dark Court 2) by Stormy Glenn

With this second book in the Dark Court series Stormy Glenn continues in her saga about the special elf people whose royal male member can give birth; it’s a series all centred around the male pregnancy theme, and plays a lot with all the stereotype of this type of stories: big and sturdy men who fall in love for little pretty boy and have to face the unthinkable, the possibility to become father; unthinkable not only since their partner is a man, and so it was pretty much impossible to have an unplanned pregnancy but also since this strong men don’t have any idea how to treat little baby and even less how they have to deal with the fathers of those baby, ethereal beautiful men, fragile like porcelain both in body than in will.

Doc, one of the Marines that in the previous book helped Zack and his elf lover Eljin, is sent on a special mission, retrieve Monte, who is not only Eljin’s cousin, but also the son of one of his best friend, Gunny. Doc has just had a lovers quarrel with Rocky, the man he is love since years, and sincerely he sees this mission as a way out to avoid having to face his feelings and being hurt. When he meets Monte, in dangerous circumstances, he falls in love for the beautiful man, and maybe even this is a way out to not face his real feelings for Rocky, it’s easier to love Monte, even more “ordinary”: true Monte is an elf, and a man, but he is pregnant with Doc’s baby, so, in a way, more comply to normal society.

In a way, with this ménages a trois, Stormy Glenn is deploying two different type of man on man relationship and so trying to match the taste of different readers. Rocky and Doc are the all male but gay version of a M/M relationship, both of them are everything other than effeminate, strong in body and in will; true, Doc is maybe a bit more emotional than Rocky, but indeed Doc has always known he was gay, and instead Rocky is living a “gay for you” situation, where he is thinking to have a relationship with a man, not since he suddenly feels attracted by other men, but simply since he fell for Doc, and Doc is a man.

Doc and Monte, and later Monte and Rocky, instead have the classic M/M relationship (using M/M in the slash meaning of the word, in contraposition to Gay novel, M/M romances are usually a bit more stereotype) where one of the two men involved is more feminine, if not for the anatomical difference, he could be easily mistaken for a woman, and he is for sure pretty like one. Plus, in this series, these elves are also fragile and submissive, they very much depend from their men and in a way, they expect their men to treat them as precious things. Indeed they are pretty much spoiled brat, and very aware of that, with no intention to change.

https://www.nobleromance.com/ItemDisplay.aspx?i=125

Series: Dark Court
1) Dark Side of the Veil: http://elisa-rolle.livejournal.com/1007526.html
2) Monte's Marines

Reading List:

http://www.librarything.com/catalog_bottom.php?tag=reading list&view=elisa.rolle