Cloverfield: Come for the alien invasion, stay for Godzilla. With Vogel backside, Hud junk, and endless misdirection.

  

For movie night last night, we saw Cloverfield (2008).  I don't usually review movies from that long ago, but there are some nice n*de photos of the cast, the utter lack of LGBTQ representation requires comment (this scene is just a tease), and I have some questions.

The first is: we thought that it would be thematically linked to The Cloverfield Paradox (2018), about a space station that accidentally gets zapped into a parallel universe.  But there's no connection except the name.  Cloverfield (2008) is a "found footage" movie, presenting a videotape that was found in the ruins of what used to be called Central Park, no doubt dug up by archaeologists thousands of years after our civilization was destroyed by an alien invasion.

There's a prelude that is not connected to the rest of the movie in any way: An extremely wealthy middle-aged man films the ruins of New York from his apartment.  There are many fires below, so no doubt the Apocalypse has already begun.  He awakens his wife, and they discuss how much they love each other and kiss a lot.  He takes his shirt off, but this was a DVD, so I couldn't get a screen shot, and I can't find him in the cast list.  

We cut to an interminable party with a huge number of immensely rich young adults, all white except for the token black guy, having interminable boring conversations and being elitist (they're shocked when a lady knows who Superman is).  Are straight people's lives really this boring?  

The takeaways from the endless boredom are:

1. This is a going-away party for Rob (Michael Stahl-David, top photo and left).  He's moving to Japan tomorrow to take a huge, huge promotion with a massive, multi-million dollar pay increase.  We never find out what his job is, but I assume it will have something to do with saving the world from the alien invasion.  

2. His friends don't think he should go, because he'll have to leave his girlfriend, Beth, who is the most beautiful woman in the world, and way too good for him.  It's a miracle that someone that beautiful wanted to be with him in the first place, and he'll never find anyone close, so why would he give her up?

3. Ron and Girlfriend Beth argue, and she goes home.  Turns out that he had an affair with Lily. his brother's girl, so now Beth wants to dump him.  Fortunately his brother Jason (Mike Vogel, left) doesn't know. yet.

4. Rob's friend Hud (TJ Miller, below) is filming the party, and asking for testimonials from people, but mostly stalking the Girl of His Dreams, Marlena, who seems to be an extremely famous fashion model.   She is not at all interested, but he keeps trying.  All women have stories about that obnoxious guy who refuses to take "no" for an answer: that's Hud.

Suddenly there's a news story about an oil tanker that overturned in New York Harbor, near the Statue of Liberty.  The apartment is in Lower Manhattan -- they can see Harbor from the roof, so they all go up to look.  There's a power blackout, and rockets zoom over the city, some exploding.  They're being invaded!

Rob says "I know what started this. I saw it."  We flash back to the subway, where he's filming his girl, and accidentally catches a sinister-looking bald man, who gets up from his seat. That scene is repeated several times, but it is never explained.  It's an alien invasion, not a terrorist attack. 

Everyone runs outside.  Suddenly the head of the Statue of Liberty crashes onto the street!  With a stick up her nose.

More zaps from alien spacecraft zooming across the sky.  Plus a giant monster is  smashing into buildings, and smaller, human-size spider-beings are killing people.  This seems like an inefficient weapon for an  invasion.  

Everyone runs into an all-night bodega. That is, Rob, Brother Jason, Lily (Jason's girl, whom he had an affair with), Cameraman Hud (left), and the Famous Model. The promo says that there are six friends; this is just five.  Will they be joined by someone else later?

The other party guests scatter. 

The police or military tell everyone to evacuate the city by crossing the Brooklyn Bridge.  Except it is bombed by the aliens, and they have to return to Manhattan.

Rob talks on his cell phone to someone, but all we hear are clicks.  Then he says "I know what I have to do," and heads toward the monster!  Obviously he was talking to the aliens, and now is under their control.  This is never resolved.

They try to take subway tunnels, where they are attacked by the spider-monsters.  The Famous Model is bitten.  Fortunately, they find a triage unit set up in a department store, but it's too late for the Famous Model: she starts coughing blood, and dies.  

Brother Jason has already been killed, I forget how. So only Rob, Cameraman Hud, and Brother's Girlfriend Lily are left.

More after the break

"28 Years Later: The Bone Temple": A cured zombie, the Devil's son, a Jimmy cult, musclemen, d*cks, and 8 gay actors.

  

Link to the n*de dudes

We just saw 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple (2026), the sequel to 28 Years Later, with 14-year old Spike (Alfie Williams) swept away from his island haven into a mainland Scotland ravaged by a zombie apocalypse.  He unwillingly joins a cult run by Sir Lord Jimmy Crystal (Josh O'Connor), who fancies himself the son of Old Nick.  His Satanic Majesty has given Sir Jimmy the task of roaming his countryside and eliminating the remaining humans.  After torturing them, of course.

Very graphic torture. He begins by forcing Spike into a fight-to-the-death with Jimmy Shite (all of the followers wear blond wigs and are named Jimmy, after early 2000s tv personality Jimmy Saville).  Spike wins by stabbing him in the thigh; the others laugh and jeer as blood spurts out like a fountain.

Then the Jimmies invade a farmhouse, string up the occupants in a barn, and skin them alive.  But a woman who escaped returns, sets the barn on fire, and we see people burning to death.

Meanwhile Dr. Kelson (Ralph Fiennes), who is building the Bone Temple as a monument to the dead, pacifies the gigantic zombie Samson (Chi Parry-Lewis) with morphine and befriends him.  They even dance together.  The gay subtext is so overt that one suspects that it's intentional.  Finally Kelson figures a way to restore Samson to sentience with anti-psychotic drugs.

Spoiler Alert: The Jimmies stumble upon Dr. Kelson, and seeing him surrounded by bones, red in color, and dancing with a demon, assume that he is Old Nick.  Sir Jimmy soon discovers that he is not, but insists that he pretend to be, so he won't lose face with his followers.  So Kelson puts on a sound-and-fire show to Iron Maiden's "Number of the Beast."  He's about to let them leave, but he sees Spike as a Jimmy hostage, and changes his mind: in the old order, God sacrificed his son, so Old Nick wants the same.  Sir Jimmy is crucified upside down.

Bone Temple was definitely made with an eye for masculine beauty.  There are several shirtless musclemen.  Chi-Lewis Parry's prosthetic p*nis is  much more visible, and in some scenes his incredibly muscular body is not covered with muck.

We see some other p*nises, including Dr. Kelson's (but to be fair, name one of Ralph Fiennes's movies where he doesn't show his d*ck).

I was worried that Spike would get a girlfriend.  He bonds with a girl, but she is much older, and treats him as a little brother or son rather than a potential boyfriend.

In fact, there is no hetero-romance anywhere, among anyone, except when we get a close-up of a photo of Dr. Kelson's long-dead wife, to heterosexualize him.

And so many of the Jimmies are played by gay actors that one suspects a deliberate casting decision

The Jimmies:

Jack O'Connell as Sir Jimmy Crystal.  Straight, but has played gay men several times (n*de on RG beefcake and Boyfriends)

More after the break

Cody Kearsley: Metis actor with two gay roles, Moose Mason and a post-Apocalyptic zombie. Plus Cody and another Metis guy n*de

Link to the n*de dudes

Having found success with one Riverdale hunk, I thought I'd check on the others.  How about Cody Kearsley, who played one of Kevin Keller's boyfriends: Moose Mason.

You remember Moose from the comics: stupid and muscular (the two usually went together in the media of the day), and so insanely jealous of his girlfriend Midge that he pulverized any guy who even glanced at her. 

In the kinder, gentler 1990s, he was modified to be less violent, and his "stupidity" was explained as undiagnosed dyslexia.  

On Riverdale, the Moose-Midge relationship is troubled by mutual cheating, Moose with Kevin and Midge with Fangs Fogarty of the Southside Serpents.  After Midge is murdered, Moose dates Kevin for awhile, but is afraid to be outed as bisexual.  Eventually he leaves town, and Kevin moves on to the also-bisexual Fangs before getting dumped for Toni, Cheryl's ex girlfriend, and Moose come back to town...well, basically everyone hooks up with everyone.   It's a soap opera, after all.

Let's go back to Cody Kearsley.

Cody belongs to the Métis people, descendants of First Nations members and French settlers from the early days of European colonization.  There are 587,000 Métis in Canada, and a smaller number in the U.S..  Like many First Nation people, they have a tradition of Two-Spirits, adding 2S to LGBTQ and celebrating Gay Pride.

There are three Métis languages, with only a few thousand native speakers but many more learning them to embrace their cultural heritage.  Cody is learning Heritage Michif, spoken primarily in southern Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Montana, and North Dakota.  It is a French-Cree hybrid, with some vocabulary from English and Western Ojibwa.

Can you see the French origin of the days of the week? (Hint: lundi, mardi, mercredi, jeudi, vendredi, samedi, dimanche)

Cody actually grew up in Oliver, British Columbia, in the Sylix Okangan Nation that comprises seven communities on the Canadian-U.S. border.  He attended the Southern Okangan Secondary School, then moved to Vancouver to complete his senior year.

He was active in community and school theater, starring as Bobby Child in Crazy for You and Danny Zuko in Grease.

More after the break

Alfie Williams: A missing p* enis, a youthful scoundrel, a zombie fighter. Is he or his character gay? Or both? With Chi d*ck update

 Link to the n*de dudes

I was checking my Instagram yesterday, when it recommended that I follow someone named Alfie Williams.  Never heard of him.  This is the first time Instagram has recommended someone other than a fitness trainer or bodybuilder.  I figured it must be either because he plays a gay character or he is gay in real life.

In the small photo on my cell phone, Alfie looked like a guy in his 20s, but when I checked his Instagram on my laptop, he turned out to be a young teenager.  14 in 2025.

So, an out-and-proud 14 year old, or playing an out-and-proud 14 year old?

Turns out that research wasn't at all difficult; there are a lot of interviews and articles about Alfie.

He was born in 2011 in Gateshead, across the river from shipping and partying center Newcastle-upon-Tyne in northern England.  His father is Alfie Dobson, an actor and bodybuilder with nine credits listed on the IMDB.

Alfie Jr. broke into acting with the short film Phallacy (2021): a 12-year old boy wakes up to find his p* enis missing. Doctors say there is nothing they can do (transmen get a working p* enis from their vaginal tissue, but the boy doesn't have anything to work with). Don't worry, when you grow up, you'll find a lot of things to do in the bedroom that don’t require one.

  Sounds like a lot of LGBTQ symbolism and hegemonic masculinity going on.  An inclusive start to your career, Alf.

Next came Ghost Theo, a resident of the Land of the Dead in Episode 3.5 of the dark fantasy His Dark Materials (2022).  He only has one line.

An unspecified character in BBC Radio 4's adaption of the soap opera Our Friends in the North, about four Newcastle blokes whose lives intersect from 1964 to 2022.

Young John Henry Sayers in A New Breed of Criminal (2023).  The adult John Henry Sayers (played by Alfie's Dad) and his brother Stephen (Steve Wraith) were real-life gangsters who ran the city of Newcastle in the 1990s. 

But it is Alfie's starring role in 28 Years Later (2025) that prompted the flood of interviews and articles.

I saw the original 28 Days Later (2002), where bicycle courier Jim (Cillian Murphy) gets into an auto accident, and wakes up from a coma "28 days later" to discover that he's a survivor of a zombie apocalypse.  He meets two other survivors, Mark and Selena, but one is immediately killed.  The other announces that just because they're the last two people left on Earth, they're not going to f*ck; but they do.  They fall in love, adopt a survivor girl, and escape to an idyllic rural future together.  

Guess which is killed, and which falls in love.  

Right.  Offensively blatant erasure of gay potential in order to promote the myth of universal heterosexual desire and practice for the 10 millionth time. 

In 28 Years Later, 12-year old Spike (Alfie) is living with his parents in a survivor community on Lindisfarne, a tidal island that was home to a famous Medieval monastery and the Lindisfarne Gospels. Dad (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) takes him to the mainland for a coming-of-age ritual, and they are separated for some reason.

Aaron Taylor-Johnson's d*ck is on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends

More after the break

Andrew Keegan: From "Teenage Caveman" to "Broken Hearts Club" to...well, he kissed Dean Cain

  

Link to the n*de photos

Teenage Caveman, 2002, is not a good movie.  You find out instantly that the cavemen are actually living in a post-Apocalyptic world.  But it's good for beefcake.  Some of the guys strip to show their bottoms while preparing for s*x.  Stephen Jasso, who plays Vincent, also had unsimulated s*x in the controversial, "show everything" Ken Park -- frontals on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends

And it gave us a memorable scene where the hunky 23-year old Andrew Keegan, playing the head teenage caveman, is tied to a post with his hands over his head, showing us his bulked-up post-teen idol physique. 

Born in 1979, Andrew Keegan was one of the more popular teen stars of the 1990s, playing mostly operators, rebels, and scallawags, such as Zack Dell in Camp Nowhere (1994), and "bad boys" in guest roles on TGIF sitcoms like  Full House, Moesha, Step by Step, and Boy Meets World.

By the late 1990s, he was starting to bulk up, and the teen magazines started going wild.  They specialized in shots of his bare chest peeking out from his shirt, as if he had been caught in the midst of getting dressed (or undressed).

Gay-vague  "not into girls" roles on Party of Five (1997-98) and Seventh Heaven (1997-2004), led to  Broken Hearts Club (2000): 

Andrew played Kevin, one of a group of gay friends who hang out in West Hollywood (others include Timothy Olyphant, Billy Porter, Justin Theroux, and Zach Branff).  They deal with coming out, AIDS, and so on.  Kevin kisses mysterious newcomer Cole, played by Dean Cain, something that was unheard-of for two straight actors in 2000.

"It Ends with Us": Not a post-Apocalyptic thriller, a drama about a lady with clunk rings and a hunk named Atlas

    

Link to the n*de photos

It Ends With Us showed up in my Netflix recommendations.  Obviously a post-Apocalyptic movie about the last generation of humanity struggling for survival. The icon shows an elegantly dressed woman talking through her fingers at an elegantly-dressed man, but that must be before society falls apart.

Scene 1: The woman who talks through her fingers in the icon is driving through an autumnal road to a quaint New England town with a sign saying Plethora, Maine.  Maybe the  human race goes extinct due to a vampire outbreak. 

 She stops in front of one of those gigantic "middle class" homes, and hugs and cries with the woman inside.  Geez, she's wearing like a gold ring the size of a baseball on each finger. How will she stake vampires that way?

Wait -- according to IMDB, this isn't about vampires.  It's a drama about domestic abuse!  Why such a misleading title, almost identical to The Last of Us, about survivors of a zombie Apocalypse?

I'm still watching.  I never see dramas, so this will be an adventure in snarky comments. And it will be fun to watch a movie produced by, for, and about straight people, like going undercover in a foreign country.

The lady in the house tells the Finger-Talking Woman -- who has the ridiculous name Lily Bloom  -- that this is her father's funeral (thanks for letting her know!), then criticizes her for taking a job out of town, so she couldn't be by his side every second.  Oh, and she informs Lily that she is her mother. She acts so oddly that I thought she was the housekeeper.  Why would the wife of the dead guy say "your father's funeral" instead of using his name?  

Scene 2: Lily Bloom goes up to her room -- huge, cluttered with girly stuff like pictures of fairies and a ballerina music box.  She brought nothing with her when she moved out?

Mom follows her upstairs to say "He really loved you." Yeah, that's what all abusers say.  "At the funeral, you're going to have to say five things that you loved about him."  Um...er...he was...um...

Left: Dad Kevin McKidd, in 1996. 

Time for the funeral, at city hall, super-crowded -- Dad was the mayor, also a husband and a father.  Give him a medal!  Time for Lily's eulogy, but she can't think of anything, so she steps down from the podium.  Murmur, murmur.  

Scene 3: Back in Boston, Lily sits on the roof of a high-rise apartment building, no doubt planning to jump, but The Man of Her Dreams, Ryle (Justin Baldoni, top photo) bursts in, angry, kicking over chairs.  He joins her on the ledge to discuss how much he hates maraschino cherries.  She wants to know if he is upset over "a woman...or a man."  Acknowledging that gay people exist!  But I'll bet that's all the representation we'll see.  

They exchange job information, which I understand is common for straight people in their first meeting:  Florist, neurosurgeon.  Guess which Lily is. 

Their falling-in-love conversation takes up the next seven minutes of screen time, but they don't make a date for later. Are you sure there won't be any vampires?

Scene 4: Adolescent Lily in her bed,putting flowers into a scrap book. Gratuitous leg shot as she gets up, brushes her teeth, writes in her diary, and puts on her starter set of huge, clunky rings -- well, she couldn't write in her diary with them on, could she?  

Looking out the window, she sees a young man sneaking out of the abandoned house next door and sorting through the garbage for food.  

He gets on her bus!  She gazes in Boy-of-Her-Dreams longing.  Lily's going to have two abusive boyfriends? 

It takes about five minutes of screen time for her to arrange a meeting and get his story: "My Mom kicked me out...because..."  You're gay?  Nope: because she doesn't like him interfering with her boyfriends "beating the shit out of her."  They beat him up, too, but he can't mention it because he's macho.

Lily invites him home to shower and change clothes, and watch Ellen.  A lesbian exists in their world.  He stares at her clunker rings; she criticizes the outfit that she gave him.  So, for straight people, is criticism like flirting?

Scene 5: The adult Lily heads toward the store she's leasing for her new flower shop, while Mom tries to discourage her on the phone: she saw on the internet that "45% of all flowers die."  Just 45% ?

As Lily is cleaning out the old stuff, a woman named Alyssa comes in to ask about the "help wanted" sign.  It's leftover from the previous owner, but Lily might need some help soon: "I'm opening a flower shop." 

"Ugh!  Never mind, I hate flower shops.  They're depressing, full of dying things." 

"You're hired!"  So you get a job by criticizing the job.

Montage of the two bonding over cleaning out stuff, painting, and so on.  

Alyssa's husband Marshall (Hasan Minaj) calls  -- darn, I thought she was a lesbian.  He's across the street with her brother, watching the Big Game, but she drafts him into helping out. 

Ulp: Alyssa's brother is -- Ryle the neurosurgeon!  

They gaze at each other for about three minutes of screen time.  Don't straight people, like, talk?  Finally Alyssa and Marshall get tired of it and suggest a double date.  

Cut to a karaoke bar, with Ryle and Lily trying to ignore their mutual attraction -- they're single adults, what's the problem? --  and Alyssa and Marshall aggressively pushing them together -- they've known Lily for like three hours, why do they care?  After about ten minute of screen time, they kiss.

Scene 6: Adolescent Lily on a picnic with the Abused Guy, whose name is Atlas (Alex Neustaedter).  The Greek god who is holding up the world, not the book of maps. 

Left: Atlas

They discuss Lily's Dad beating up her mom.  In other news, Atlas will be joining the Marines, so they can't continue their relationship. 

Scene 7: BFF Alyssa's birthday party, at her gigantic palace, with a living room bigger than a hotel atrium.  Around a thousand people there, all heterosexual couples.  Why does she want to work in a flower shop, again?

Lily runs into Ryle the Neurosurgeon again, and tells him, "Stop flirting with me."  Then they go up to his room. Mixed signals, lady.

Scene 8: In the morning, Lily walks the six miles down to a kitchen big enough to prepare meals for the population of a medium-sized city.  Apprised that she has spent the night, Alyssa cautions that Ryle the Neurosurgeon goes through women like candy mints.  He's ok for a hookup, but if you're looking for a serious relationship, forget it.  Then why were you so aggressively pushing them together?

More after the break

The bodybuilders behind the "Last Man Down": A dentist, a quidditch champ, a dentist, a big brother, a queer actor

The promo for the post-Apocalyptic thriller Last Man Down, on Netflix, was entirely involved with a shirtless, mega-muscular Grizzly Adams-type chopping wood.  What gay man wouldn't click on that? 

 Unfortunately, the story begins with a dead wife -- ugh -- and moves on to Grizzly meeting The Girl, who heals him, yada yada yada.

But I wasn't dissuaded.  The Grizzly Adams-type, producer-writer-star Daniel Stisen,  is so hunky that he must have appeared in something a bit less heterosexist, right? Or even gay-friendly?

Daniel was born in Mandel, a small town in southern Norway, to a bodybuilding father who taught him the tricks of the trade from an early age.  He began competing in powerlifting at age 16, and bodybuilding at age 20.  In 2006, he moved to Oslo to begin a modeling career and start his own bodybuilding website.  

According to his modeling profile, Daniel won't do nude shoots (darn it!).  He does give us a butt shot in Last Man Down, but the scene is ruined by the presence of a naked lady.  

He has a 50" chest, a 33" waist, and size 9 shoes.

Daniel's first role was Bodybuilder in Long Flat Balls 2 (2008) -- a comedy, not a porno.  After that, in Norway, London, and the U.S., he played: Hunk, Bodybuilder, Bodybuilder, Guard, Poker Player, Soldier, Soldier, Fighter, Police Officer, Police Officer, Body Guard, Warrior, Fighter, Bouncer, Body Guard.  Hardly any named roles.  

He's written and produced several short films, which don't have plot synopses on IMDB, but the titles tell all you need to know: Kill-X, Soldaten, Last Survivor, Gain, Retribution. Machismo to the max.

His Instagram and Facebook pages are full of his bodybuilding photos, with few depicting other people, so I can't tell if he has a girlfriend or a boyfriend, or both, or neither.  But a search on "Daniel Stisen" and "gay" revealed nothing but a lot of gay men drooling over his "perfect body."  

Oh, well, I tried.  But nearly every male cast member of Last Man Down seems to be a bodybuilder, so I researched the rest of them.

1. Kamil Lemieszewski,: no gay references, but a photo of him in the shower on Big Brother Poland gives us a glimpse of his penis.

More after the break

"Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts": Specifically, Literally, Audibly, and Canonically Gay

Kipo (Karen Fukuhara), a cheerful, adventurous 13-year old girl living in a post-Apocalyptic "burrow," is swept onto the surface by an  underground earthquake.  It's forbidden for burrow dwellers to go "above," and she is horrified by the tales she has heard.  But she has to travel through a ruined city to get home.

A lot of the script is Korean, so I'm thinking Seoul.

The surface is occupied by many mutated animals, some sentient, some not.

Mod Frogs, concerned with fashion and world domination, appear to be the dominant species.  But there are also tribes of Timbercats, Snäkes with umlauts, Newton Wolves, and Fitness Raccoons.  It reminds me of Kamandi, the last boy in the world, in 1970s DC comics.

The big bad, a mutated mandrill named Scarlemagne (Dan Stevens), is particularly interested in Kipo, and keeps sending his agents to capture her.

 Fortunately, Kipo's father Lio (Sterling K. Brown, who played a gay character on The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel) has been to the surface before -- for reasons of his own --  and left clues about how to get back down below.

Kipo hooks up with:
1. Wolf (Sydney Mikayla), a warrior-girl who grew up on the surface

2. Benson (Coy Stewart, seen here playing a gay teen opposite Nolan Gould in a music video).  He's a fun-loving, carefree 13-year old who has spent several years on the surface.

3. Dave (Deon Cole), a sentient bug about the size of a human baby, who turns into a muscular superhero, but never when it would be useful.

A lot of beefcake and gay connections in the voice cast.  On the show, it seems obvious that  Benson and Kipa are going to fall in lo-ooo-oove.  But I skipped to the last episode to make sure:

They get back to the burrow.   It is ruled by Hoag, an over-fastidious, micro-managing type.   And...and...

Benson has a meet-cute with a boy.  A boy with pink hair and twin earrings yet.  "I think I'm falling in love with you" plays in the background.

Um...um...Benson is gay.

The episode ends with the four friends starting out on a new adventure, so Benson won't have time to do much dating, but...

It's not just subtext.

More research reveals that in one episode, when a monster makes them live their "biggest dreams" so it can live on their brain energy, Benson dreams of a rad party with dozens of cute boys.

And his plot arc involves looking for a boyfriend.

And he specifically, literally, audibly, and canonically says:  "I'm gay."

"The Mitchells vs. the Machines": Don't Say the Word, but Katie is....

 

Just a few years ago, there were no openly identified gay characters in any children's or family movie or tv series, ever.  Then, gradually they began appearing, in quick, blink-and-you miss it scenes: two dads drop off their son for a sleepover, a boy has a rainbow flag on his wall. More often than not, they still refuse to Say the Word, leaving the "lies, secrets, and silence" intact.     

I heard that the 2021 movie The Mitchells vs. the Machines was different: it doesn't try to hide the fact that protagonist Katie is gay. 

Creator/director Mike Rianda noticed that he was basing Katie's character on queer people.  He knew that the studio bigwigs wouldn't allow non-heterosexual people to exist, so he made Katie gay without telling them.  Then animator Lizzie Nichols wrote them a "heartfelt" letter: "We do not want to silence ourselves for fear of a bigoted few. We have to be on the side of what is right and just."  There was some pushback and some "very nervous people," but in the end they agreed.  

So let's see how they reveal Katie's queerness to the viewers.

Prologue: Some real family photos, with the taglines "blessed" and "family first," and a voiceover: "We all want to be the perfect family." Ruh-roh, "family is everything" rhetoric usually means "only heterosexuals need apply."

Scene 1: We start in the midst of an apocalypse, with robot monsters searching for "the last humans," and the family driving in a panic. 

Flashback to a few days before.  Katie Mitchell tells us that she has always felt like an outsider -- she never "fit in" -- (queer code 1),  so naturally she became a filmmaker (queer code 2: a rainbow button.  But you have to be looking for it to notice).  

Since Dad is played by Danny McBride, I have moved this review to Righteous Gemstones Beefcake and Boyfriends.

The Last Straight Kids on Earth

42 days after a zombie  AND giant monster apocalypse destroys his town and probably the world, teenage video-game addict Jack (Nick Wolfhard, left) seems to be coping well.

The monsters and zombies can be easily outrun, there is plenty of food and other supplies to scavenge, and he has his technogeek bud Quint (Garland Whit) for company.  There's only one thing missing:

The Girl.

That's right, only 1 1/2 minutes into The Last Kids on Earth (2019), and Jack is summoning The Girl as the meaning of life, the key to his dreaming, the only thing missing in the apocalypse.

Sigh.  Why is it always the Eternal Feminine?

I suppose I shouldn't be surprised, but after watching Twelve Forever and reading Welcome to Wanderland, a series dedicated to finding The Girl seems old fashioned and even offensive. 

The tv series is based on a series of children's books by Max Brallier, who although cute, doesn't appear to have any sexual or gender diversity in his works.

He does admit that "there are gay kids out there" in response to a homophobic comment on his twitter page.  Just none among The Last Kids on Earth.

To be fair, only Jack expresses heterosexual interest.  The other characters could be gay, just closeted.

The Girl is June (Montse Hernandez), all-around athlete, top student, editor of the school newspaper, practically perfect in every way, whom Joe was crushing on before the world ended.  In the first episode, Joe and Quint discover that she has survived the apocalypse by hiding in the school.

What a coincidence?

They also hook up with the school bully Dirk (Charles Demers).  The four "last kids on Earth" (and a friendly cat-monster named Rover) move into a decked-out treehouse with a zombie-proof moat and get down to the business of survival.

According to Netflix, this is a tv series, but there is only one "episode," 67 minutes long, online.  IMDB lists six episodes, perhaps covering the five books in the series, where the kids learn more about their situation, and eventually have to fight to save the world.  There is some stunt casting, including Bruce Campbell from The Evil Dead series and Mark Hamill.

And maybe they'll find someone gay along the way.

The Top 10 Dour Hunks of "The Last of Us"

 

If you're watching several post-Apocalyptic tv shows at the same time, it becomes difficult to remember which pandemic just killed almost everyone (Station Eleven), which resulted in a world full of plodding, snarling zombies (The Walking Dead), and which resulted in vampire-like beings (The Strain).  Then there's The Last of Us on HBO, where mutated fungus in flour-based products results in near-instantaneous transformation into a creature covered with nauseating bulbous tumors. 

 I'm still watching, but every time a bulbous monster appears, I keep my eyes closed, or scroll through the social media on my cell phone.  As a result, I'm not entirely sure what's going on, so don't yell at me if I get something wrong.  These are just my impressions.  But I did notice some beefcake.

1. Construction worker Joel (Pedro Pascal, top photo) lost his daughter on the first night of the Apocalypse (she is presented as the protagonist, just to mess with viewers' heads). Twenty years later, he is living in Boston, a horrifying dystopia much worse than anything conjured up on The Walking Dead, a police state where they have public executions of anyone who breaks any of the hundreds of repressive laws.  Hardened and dour, he is working as a smuggler along with his non-romantic business partner Tess. 

2. Joel's screw-up younger brother Tommy (Gabriel Luna) also survived, but the two are estranged because Tommy went over to the Dark Side or something.

Joel and Tess are hired to deliver sassy 14-year old Ellie to a location I can't remember.  She's special because she's the first person in history to be immune to the fungus, so her blood can be used to make a vaccine.  

On the way out of decrepit, decayed Boston, partner Tess is inundated by disgusting bulbous monsters.  Then it's just the two, trudging through the pristine forests that are just outside the city.  Wait -- outside of Boston there are miles and miles of suburbs.  They stop in various places for supplies and fight the disgusting bulbous monsters.

3. For a reason I'm not clear on, they have to stop by Bill and Frank's -- a gay bear couple (Nick Offerman, left, Murray Bartlett, below) who live in a very nice house with hot water and electricity, pair rabbit stew with Beaujolais, and play Linda Ronstadt songs on the piano. 

4,  In Episode 3, we see their 20 year relationship from beginning to end.  Bill, a survivalist, was hiding in an underground bunker when the military rounded up everyone else in town to kill (to prevent infection?).  He lived alone for several years, until Frank showed up.  He had never been romantic with anyone before, but apparently his only human contact in years sparked some interest.  

I like the scene where they are preparing for sex for the first time: Bill takes his towel off, and Frank's eyes bug out -- apparently the bear is quite well-hung.  I don't like them both being isolated, interacting with no humans other than Joel and Tess, and being dead.

5. Next, in Missouri for some reason, Joel and Ellie encounter dour revolutionary Kathleen and her dour nonromantic partner Perry (Jeffrey Pierce).

6. The revolutionaries want to find and kill hardened bandit Henry (Lamar Johnson) and his deaf, sick, autistic brother Sam (how vulnerable can you get?).  But Joel and Ellie bond with the two.  They fight disgusting bulbous monsters together.  But Sam is bitten!   You know this won't end well.

7.  This doesn't technically count, but in the video game version of The Last of Us, deaf, sick, autistic Sam is a teenager, played by Nadji Jeter.

8. Joel and Ellie finally reunite with Joel's younger brother Tommy (was that the game plan?), who is living in Jackson, Wyoming with his pregnant wife.  But they argue, and the two leave. 

 In Colorado for some reason, Joel is severely injured.  And guess what: in Episode 7, the teenage Ellie is revealed to be a lesbian!  She had a girlfriend back in whatever horrible dystopian place she was living in before Boston, but the girl got monster-ized.

While Joel is fighting his life-threatening injury, Ellie encounters dour cult leader David  (Scott Shepherd) and his nonromantic partner James, who threaten and traumatize her in various ways before she kills them.  

9. I spend most of each episode desperately trying to avoid looking at the disgusting bulbous monsters on the screen, but I got a brief glimpse of Philip Prajoux (right), playing one who infects Joel's nonromantic partner Tess by exuding tentacles into her mouth.

10. Riley Davis (bottom) reputedly plays a "Young Firefly Soldier" (Fireflies are terrorists or freedom fighters, depending on which side you are on), whom Joel provides with drugs in Episode 2.  

I'm including him without a shirtless photo because I spent ten minutes paging through references to a woman named Riley Davis on the old McGyver tv series and looking at the instagrams of 12 people named Riley Davis, all women.  This actor has four citations on the IMDB, but not The Last of Us or Lions in Waiting, which is the source of this photo.

Oh, well.  The last episode of The Last of Us airs on March 12th.

"Black Summer," Season 2: Bury Your Hunks

I watched the first season of Black Summer when it appeared on Netflix two years ago: the first days of a zombie Apocalypse (very fast-moving zombies, not the Walking Dead kind).  Everyone is rushing through the ruins of Calgary, trying to "find my husband!" or "find my wife!"  No gay characters, no gay subtexts, only the tiniest bits of buddy-bonding that come crashing down when one or both of the guys gets monsterized.

Did I expect anything better from the second season?  I went through each episode until it was impossible to stomach, and then depended on plot synopses.

1. The Cold.  A man drives a car through a zombie-infested park.  He drives past a couple of men asking for help, but stops for a lady.  Sure, he stops for the girl.  But it's a trick: she has a partner (Kelsey Flower)
who kills him so they can steal the car.  

The rest of the episode is mostly about people asking other people for help, and being killed.

2. Prelude.  Officer Ray Nazeri (Bobby Naderi) quickly packs his stuff, while saying "Don't worry, babies.  It will just be a few more minutes." But his kids have already turned into zombies.  He leaves.

The kids look to be in their early teens.  I have never heard any father refer to any children over the age of 5 as "babies."

Meanwhile, two guys are  scavenging in a store.  Anna comes to the door: "Please let me in!"  They do.  So, in the Apocalypse, men are zombie chow, but women can get whatever they want?  But it's a trick -- Anna lets her group in (Rose, Spear, and Sun) to take all their supplies.

Later, Spear (Justin Chu Cary, top photo) is shot, so the rest of the group throw him down an embankment to die.  Sun, who speaks no English, is separated from the group.  Rose and Anna, a mother and daughter, approach a mansion.

3. The Card Game.  Freddie (G. Michael Gray), Sonny (Dakota Daulby, left), and their mother are holed up in the mansion.  Anna comes to the door and yells "Please let me in!  I'm a girl!"  They argue, but decide that since she's a girl and therefore precious in the Apocalypse, ok. They play cards, go on a supply run, and eventually Anna and Rose kill Sonny and the mother.  Freddie survives. .

4. Cold War.  Officer Ray's faction ties up Sun and tells her to approach the mansion, yelling "Please let me in.  I'm a girl!"  Another faction shows up, and everybody fights.  Everybody dies except for Officer Ray, Sun, Anna, Rose, and a guy who says he'll help them find an airplane and fly to safety.

5. White Horse.  The injured Spears, in the woods, meets...another guy!  Wait -- I thought men only met women in this world.   "The name is Braithewaite (Bechir Sylvain).  I know you." "Are we dead?"  "I don't think so.  Anyway, I got a place in the woods we can go to."

After initial misgivings, Spears decides to trust him.  On the way, they see a mysterious person on a pale horse.  Must be one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: the Pale Horse represents death.  

They build a fire,  talk, fight, fight zombies, take refuge in a crazy guy's house, kill the crazy guy for his supplies.  Eventually Spears remembers that, back in the hood, he killed Braithewaite.  Or thought he did -- two bullets weren't enough.  Braithewaite sees the pale horse again, just as Spears prepares to finish the job. Boo!  The only two guys together in the whole series, and they're enemies!

6. Currency.  Mance's group -- two guys, two girls, of course -- rush through the snowy woods to a cache of supplies parachuted down from an airplane.  Sam, who has a previous claim, suggest that they work together to drag it out of the valley, then split it equally.  Ray's group shows up, and everybody fights over the cache and dies.

IMDB lists only the main cast, and the episode credits just lists "guest cast" without telling which actor played which character, so I can't track down any more beefcake photos.

7. The Lodge.  Rose, Anna, and Boone,  the man who offered to  guide them to the airplane find a mountain resort that has electricity, heat, food -- hot water for showers!  No zombies, and it hasn't been trashed.  Too good to be true. Spears joins them.  They have dinner, glaring at each other suspiciously.  

While Rose is in the kitchen, making a cake for dessert, she hears gunshots.  Anna has killed Spears.  She explains that he was infected, and about to turn.  Boo!  Bury your hunks!

8. The Plane.  Rose and Anna, Ray's group,  and Mance's group all converge on an airplane hanger.  A plane lands to rescue them.  Of course, it doesn't work out that way.  Everybody attacks each other, dies, gets zombified, and attacks each other some more, until no one makes it onto the plane except for Sun, who speaks only Korean.  Hey, the pilot speaks Korean!  Uh-oh, this is too good to be true.  She's dead, right?

Beefcake: No.

Gay Characters: No.

Gay Subtexts: No.  I thought Braithewaite and Spears would have one, but no.

Everybody dies: Yes.

My Grade: F