This film festival is so rich with interesting films and talented people and I'm having a ball. Just got out of a reception for the cast of "Ugly Betty" who did a wonderful panel that included star America Fererra and most of the cast and I will post on that seperately later today or tomorrow. Great little beef on a stick things from Sonora Cafe on LaBrea and chatting up Eric Mabius and Judith Light made for a fun party.
Kicked off the day pretty early with yet another program of short films under the heading of "Straight Boys." Outfest audiences love their short films and the theater was almost completely full. This year, the shorts have been particularly good. This one was highlighted by this pee-your-pants funny animated short called "Bro and Dude's Cool Afternoon." It's in the outrageous vein of "South Park" with an animated Lance Bass as the main character who takes a few hits but nothing like those reserved for creepy Mark Foley and Ted Haggard. Funny. Funny. Funny.
I really liked the 21-minute "Flatmates," a Swedish film about two rommates, one gay, one straight, whose sexual tension comes to a head one night. And really excellent was "Shawram and Abbas," a 37-minute film from the Netherlands about two Iranian refugees who pretend they are gay in order to obtain asylum in the Netherlands.
The shorts were followed by the provocativly titled feature "Men in the Nude" ("Ferfiakt") a Hungarian film about a middle-aged novelist married to an actress whose life is turned upside down when he falls in love with a 19-year-old Russian hustler. The title is a bit misleading but certainly succeeded in achieving a packed theater. The movie was well-done and beautifully acted by the three leads and I liked it a lot. But the characters did have their clothes quite often.
I was going to end my day with the screening of the feature "Bubble" but a journalist friend of mine had a DVD of it on him and slipped it to me this afternoon. So now I can stretch out on the sofa and watch it at home and give you my thoughts on it later...plus this allows me to catch "Big Brother 8" !!!