Fill Your Beefcake Quota with "Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Long Haul"

Fans are upset because the new Diary of a Wimpy Kid movie, The Long Hall (2017), doesn't star Zachary Gordon or Devon Bostick.

Come on, the guy is 19 years old and buffed.  Do you really want him playing the 11-year old wimp Greg Heffley?

Jason Drucker, seen here with "Rowley" Owen Aztalos, is really 11 years old.  A better choice.

And actor/model Charlie Wright as sarcastic older brother Rodrick has some beefcake potential that Devon Bostick didn't.

Plus there are many other opportunities for physique-watching.  Hot tubs, showers, swimming pools.  Check out Tom Everett Scott, who played Johnny Galecki's boyfriend on stage, as Dad.

It's a road movie, so the usual junior high nightmares take a back seat to hotel and roadside-amusement nightmares and Greg's quest to meet Mac Digby, the creator of his favorite video game, plus an ongoing antagonist, Mr. Beardo (Chris Coppola).  He gets a shower AND a hot tub scene.

No heteronormative "boy meets girl" preteen romance, only minimal homophobic anxiety-jokes -- in that regard, it's far superior to its predecessors.

Unfortunately, it eschews plot development for scatological jokes and seeing how much abuse Greg's body can take -- it takes a lot. I suggest renting the DVD and going through on fast forward.

See also: Diary of a Wimpy Kid

Joe Dempsie: From Gay Skin to Gladiator

The two boys checking out each others' packages are Chris and Max (Joe Dempsie, Mitch Hewer) of the British teen drama Skin (2004-2007), which was controversial for its portrayal of teenage nudity, and sex.  Max is gay, and Chis is straight, but a sexual opportunist, up for anything that will help him accomplish his devious plans.

The actors are friends in real life, both Straight but Not Narrow.  Mitch Hewer has played gay characters several times, and Joe has played a gay teenager in the British radio play Once Upon a Time (2010), and several gay-subtext characters.

1. Clive on an episode of Doctor Who.

2. Will, an old friend of Merlin's














The villain John in The Fades is heterosexual, but at least he gets naked.

From 2010 to 2013 he played Gendry in the heroic fantasy series Game of Thrones.   He didn't expressed any romantic interest in anyone for many episodes, giving gay fans the opportunity to "read" him as gay.  But it was a "tease."  Gendry eventually fell in love with a woman.

Philipp Danne: Teen Horror Hunk

Born in 1985, Philipp Danne is well-known in Germany as a hunk with a chiseled physique who specializes in horror movies: his characters encounter zombies and monsters, a virus that turns you into a zombie, and a few psycho-slashers.

  Hunks in horror movies usually spend so much time falling in love with women before, during, and after the crisis that men are either irrelevant or competitors, but Philipp seems to be surrounded by male friends instead.  And he's had time for a few especially intense gay subtexts in his non-horror related roles:

Klaus, best friend of class bully Diego (Martin Dimant) in The School Trip (2004).

Robert Greinier, the high school swimmer who competes with Rico (Fredrick Lau) and is killed in Freischwimmer (2007).

I haven't seen the Finnish film Black Ice (2007), about a heterosexual romantic triangle, but rumor has it that Philipp plays a gay-vague character (not one of the triangle participants).

Der Mann auf dem Baum (2011): about unmarried father Hans (Jan Josef Liefers) buddy-bonding with the college student Martin (Philipp) after they collide in a skateboarding accident.  They team up to prevent Hans' son from being taken away to Denmark.

And that's not including his tv work.

Lion Boy's Incredible Changing Age

Not the boy from L'Enfant Lion (1993), a movie directed by  Patrick Grandperret.  This is a weird Tarzan clone from the Golden Age of comic books.  He appeared in 16 issues of Hit Comics between 1940 and 1942, but never got a cover.




Lion Boy has a traditional Tarzan back story: parents killed when their plane crashed in the jungle, raised by lions. Ok, he was raised by lions -- that's why he wears a leopard skin loincloth (sometimes).

How long ago was that plane crash, exactly?  Lion Boy varies tremendously in size.  Sometimes he stands waist-high to the adults, and sometimes he's taller.

And in muscularity: sometimes he's buffed, sometimes not.

And in hair and loincloth-color.

Not just betwen stories: between panels.  Here he seems to have aged from about 6 to about 16 in ten seconds.

Now he is a tall, slim young adult, and his loincloth has changed into yellow shorts.

George Tuska (1916-2009) wrote the script under the pen name Merton Holmes.  He worked on many classic books, including Crime Does Not Pay, Captain Marvel, The Incredible Hulk, Ka-Za, Superboy, The Teen Titans, and Iron Man.

Guess he was too busy to use a model sheet.