Case Walker: ChaseDreams from "The Other Two" grows up, plays a monster, shows his delts. With n*de Chase, Tarver, and Fin

 

Link to the n*de dudes

Case Walker was as a kid growing up in Denver who  weekly podcasts on musical.ly and other social media platforms, and within a year had 1.7 million followers and a new television program: The Other Two, on HBO Max were Brook and Cary Dubek (Heléne Yorke, Drew Tarver, left), a failed dancer and aspiring actor dealing with the sudden fame of their 13-year old brother, Chase (Case Walker), aka teen pop sensation ChaseDreams. 

At least in the first season (2019).  In the second and third seasons (2021, 2023), Brooke and Drew get the lion's share of plotlines, negotiating increasing success, friendships, and romances.

 

For instance, Drew dates Lucas (Fin Argus), a method actor who stays in character off camera and therefore refuses intimacy. 

ChaseDreams still appears in nearly every episode, but he has very few centrics.  The writers just didn't know what to do with him. Turn him into a bad boy, with pink hair and a lot of tattoos? Make him a fake mental health advocate?  Have him date a girl who isn't a fan?

Viewers mostly ignored him. It was much more interesting to see a non-swishy gay guy who actually had a romantic life.

While we weren't paying attention, Case grew up.  As of this writing, he's 22 years old, and buffed.  No, ripped.  No, a Greek god.

More after the break

A classic gay-subtext romance in "Godzilla v. Kong: A New Empire." Plus some p*enises, of course.

 

Link to the p*enises

For Movie Night this week, we saw Godzilla v. Kong: The New Empire (2024).

I didn't actually understand what was going on most of the time:

There was a Hollow Earth, which you can only get to through a space warp.

A Lost Civilization that predates anything on the surface, where people communicate through telepathy and use crystals to manipulate matter and antimatter.

A Chosen One.

A tribe of giant apes that live next to a volcano, and keep a giant glowing stegasaurus captive.  King Kong joins them, becomes their leader after fighting an evil dude, and adopts a baby ape.

Another giant stegasaurus, which fights King Kong in Egypt and takes out the Great Pyramid of Giza.

Nearby Cairo is an Orientalist myth instead of a modern city with skyscrapers and Starbucks.  

Is that a gay couple?

A giant glowing moth.

A fight between the two dinosaurs and two apes that takes out Rio de Janiero.

I guess you just have to say "Look!  Monsters fighting!"

Five people go to the Hollow Earth to check on Disturbances in the Force or something.

1. Mikael (Alex Fern, top photo), the driver of the transport vehicle, who gets eaten by a man-eating plant right away.  

2. Ilene Andrews, an expert on the Iwi Culture of Skull Island, where King Kong lived before he moved to the Hollow Earth.

3. Her adopted daughter Ji, the last of her tribe, who doesn't speak.

4. Tripper (Dan Stevens, left), a roguish, devil-may-care monster veterinarian.  

5. Conspiracy theory podcaster Bernie (Brian Tyree Henry).

When Tripper shows up, you assume he's going to be smooching with Ilene by fadeout.  That's what happens in 300,000 action adventure movies, right?  

Nope.  He mentions that they were friends in college, but gives no hint of a past or present relationship. Instead, he starts flirting with Podcaster Bernie, who is suspicious at first but warms up to him.

They hug.

More after the break

Black Friday: Devon Sawa fights holiday shopper-monsters and wins the Girl. WIth a nude dude from the other movie.

 

Devon Sawa was the wunderkind of the 1990s, starring in some iconic coming-of-age movies with strong gay subtexts --  Night of the Twisters, The Boys Club, Wild America -- while getting the full Tiger Beat Fave Rave teen idol treatment.  In the 2000s he moved on to sleazy horror, like many former teen idols, and audiences moved on.  

After filling my review of Hacks with photos of the grown-up, bulked up, heavily inked Devon, I realized that I hadn't seen any of his work since Final Destination.  So I checked out his more recent work on the IMDB, looking for gay characters or subtexts.

No luck: a lot of gritty, hard-bitten cops, criminals, and cowboys who have sex with ladies. Two TV series: Nikita, with the icon of a lady showing her legs and the phrase "Looks do kill": and Somewhere Between, with an icon of a lady's face and bare shoulders looking bemused as she's floating in the air.  

 

The only one that appeared to have gay content was the horror/comedy Black Friday, about the day after Thanksgiving in the U.S., when shoppers mob the big box stores, jostling each other in search of deep discounts on Christmas presents. 

In this case, the shoppers turn into real life monsters, so toy store employees have to fight them off. I can imagine a lot of comedic bits, like a monster shopper using its disembodied arm to pull toys off a high shelf.  The Google AI notes that one of the characters is gay, and mentions a husband back home. 

Note: two movies called Black Friday, both about shoppers turning into monsters, premiered in 2020 and 2021.  This is the 2021 version.

Of course, I need to watch the trailer before investing in the whole thing.  

Scene 1: Pre-dawn, the morning after Thanksgiving. Toy store manager, horror veteran Bruce Campbell, says  "Happy Black Friday" over an intercom as Christmas music plays.  Horndog Devon Sawa makes a date with The Girl to get pancakes after the big rush is over.  It wouldn't be Christmas without the protagonist devoting his first scene to demonstrating that he's not gay.  

Femme Stephen Peck  assigns New Guy Ryan Lee to the registers.  Ryan Lee played Sue's gay friend on "The Middle," but most likely Stephen Peck, second from the left, is the one with the husband.  Unfortunately, the internet is full of another Stephen Peck, film legend Gregory Peck's son, so research is impossible.

Louis Kurtzman, who wears a flowery shirt, skates over to Gruff Michael Jai White,and announces that he's temping tonight. Flowery shirt -- maybe he's the one with the husband?

Left: Michael Jai White's physique.

Scene 2: Store Manager announces "There's no day more harmful than today." I thought stores made 30% of their sales on Black Friday.  New Guy, Gruff Guy, and a third employee pour booze into their coffees.

Scene 3: Showtime!  Everyone takes their places. They keep saying "tonight," but it must be before dawn on Friday.   

After a few shots of beserk, grabby shoppers, The Girl notices a shopper with head injuries growling about.  He rushes toward New Guy, who overturns a display of balls to stop him.

More after the break.

Jamie McGuire: The Smiley Creature from "From," with Halifax hunks and a nude Dylan Sprouse

Link to the nude photos

From, on MGM+, is set in the ruins of a small town, with a diner, a police station, a hotel, a farm, and some houses, where stranded travelers from various parts of the U.S. get stuck.  Every night humanoid creatures appear, dressed in 1950s costumes -- mechanic, nurse, librarian, tv cowboy.  They try to lure you outside, or trick you into letting them in, whereupon they turn into monsters and kill you.  

The Creatures are the main threat, and one of the biggest mysteries, in From. They are impervious to most weapons, but they don't have paranormal powers.  Their physiology is human, but dessicated, as if they've been mummified.  They were once regular humans: a Creature named Jasmine says "I didn't ask to be this way."  My theory is that some sort of dark magic went wrong during the 1950s, zapping the town into a pocket universe and transforming some of the townsfolk into Creatures.

Jamie McGuire's Smiley Creature has become a fan favorite, due to his especially huge, creepy grin and his quirky personality: he  seems delighted to be part of the world again.  He feels furniture, picks up objects.  He climbs aboard a stalled bus and plays at driving it.   

He was killed in Season 2, but Creatures never really die, so chances are he'll be back in Season 3.

Without the creepy grin, Jamie is quite handsome, so I wanted to know more about him.  

He's been interviewed a dozen times, but mostly about the Smiley Creature -- and he doesn't know any more than we do.  He just puts on a creepy grin and follows the director's instructions.

Researching Jamie McGuire turns out to be extremely difficult.  A Google search yields 3,000 entries about a romance novelist named Jamie McGuire, mostly reviewing two of her books that have been made into movies, Beautiful Disaster and Beautiful Wedding.    Dylan Sprouse, top photo, stars as an inked bad boy boxer. 

More Jamie after the break

"A Quiet Place II": Mark is too busy fighting monsters to find a boyfriend

For movie night Friday, we saw A Quiet Place II (2020).  I thought that the original (2018) was about English settlers in 19th century Africa, but actually it features a world destroyed by screeching alien monsters like the demogorgons from Stranger Things.  They are impervious to  bullets, fire, and everything else; they can easily break through metal and rock; and the slightest sound brings them running, so survivors have to be "vewy, vewy quiet." 

About the monsters: we know that they came in spaceships -- there are thousands of them , so there must have been hundreds of spaceships -- but why?   An alien invasion?  It would be a rather inefficient way of clearing the planet of humans.  By accident?  Were they being transported somewhere else?

In the original, the Abbott family has bunkered down on their farm.  Fortunately, teenager daughter Regan is deaf, so they all know sign language.  Mom and Dad (Emily Blunt, John Krasinski) spend their time discussing how much they love each other and having sex.  Then they have a baby (they construct a chest with an oxygen tank to muffle its crying);  Mom's foot is impaled by a nail; Dad dies; the house is destroyed; and Regan discovers that a high-pitched squeal from her hearing aid incapacitates the monsters so they can be shot or speared. All on the same day!

In the Quiet Place II,  Mom, baby, Regan, and teenage son Mark (Noah Jupe) set out to find another safe haven (barefoot: they never heard of mocassins). Even with a monster-incapacitating boom box, they have to be careful: the monsters are lightning-quick, so they might not have time to turn it on.)  

As of the summer of 2022, Noah Jupe is 17 years old, and posting sexy, artsy, somewhat femme photos to his instagram (top photo).

Make that extremely femme.  

They seek refuge with Emmett (Cilian Murphy), whom they knew from before.  Now he's a hardened recluse, living in a bunker in an old factory (with vaults for extra protection), drawing pictures of his dead son and keeping his dead wife's body in  a back room (well, burying her would make too much noise).

Cilian Murphy played a survivor of a zombie apocalypse in 28 Days Later (2002), and gave us a nice view of his butt and penis. Here he's grizzled beyond recognition.  I can't believe that was 20 years ago. Good times.

Now the story divides in two, with heavily contrived cuts that show the two groups in exactly the same situation.

Regan notices that the radio   keeps playing the old Bobby Darin song "Beyond the Sea."  This means that there are survivors near a radio station with no monsters!  But why that song, in particular?  It must be a clue: the monsters can't swim.  We have a safe haven on an island.

Plus, they could go to the radio station and use Regan's hearing aid to incapacitate all of the monsters in the vicinity!

Ok: 1. The monsters are not sentient.  Why not just broadcast your location?  2. No one listening will know what to do.

Regan and Emmett set out for the island.  They need a boat, but the marina is occupied by a band of feral rapist-cannibals led by the Marina Man( Scoot McNairy, left).

Meanwhile, Mom and Mark stay back at the bunker, where Mark is incapaciated by a bear-trap injury. When Mom sneaks out to the town pharmacy to fetch painkillers and more oxygen for the baby's crib, Mark decides to do a little exploring, stumbles across the dead wife's corpse, and yells, attracting a monster.  He grabs the baby and jumps into one of the vaults, but he didn't have time to secure the latch, so they are stuck in there, with the oxygen running out!

Finally Regan and Emmett make it to the island refuge, where survivors live in houses with electricity, have bonfires, play outside, and talk to each other in regular voices: monsters can't swim.  One expects a totalitarian police-state out of The Walking Dead, or maybe a weird cult, but no, they are perfectly nice.  

Reagan and Emmett explain their plan to the leader, Island Man (Djimon Housma), who agrees to take them to the radio station.  But then one of Marina Man's boats drifts to the island with a monster stowaway!  

I'll stop the plot synopsis there.

Beefcake: None.  There are some cute guys in the opening scene, set in a town Little League game the day the aliens land.  Otherwise everyone is grizzled and ragtag, except for Mark (he always looks like he just came from a fashion shoot).

Heterosexism:  Less than in the original.  Here it's mostly men mourning their dead wives.

Gay Characters:  No one expresses any same-sex desire, but Mark doesn't express any desire for anyone.  They could easily have established his heterosexual identity by showing him perusing a girlie magazine, but they don't.  Plus he plays a nurturer, taking care of the baby while Mom's gone.  You could easily do a gay-subtext reading.

My Grade: B

Monsterland: More Heterosexuals Than Monsters

 

Monsterland is an anthology series based on the book North American Lake Monsters: Stories by Nathan Ballingrad.  about "ordinary people" having encounters with supernatural beings like mermaids and ghosts.  None of the episode synopses specify that any are gay, so I chose the most likely suspect.

Episode #2. Eugene, Oregon:  "A lonely teen gets an unwelcome guest."  Maybe it's an incubus.

Scene 1:  Nick (Charlie Tahan), a scraggly, crazy-eyed, 30-year old teen, gazes longingly at two guys playing with nerf swords.  While they laugh at him for being a "freak," he tries to pick up Mom's prescription, but their insurance has lapsed.  

Scene 2: He trudges home, cuts up Mom's pills and microwaves her a burger and fries.  

I figured there was a Norman Bates thing going on, but Mom turns out to be real, gazing frumpily at the tv (like people on tv do to demonstrate that they're losers).  They play cards.  Then he tucks her in bed and plays a video game in a zoom room.

Whoops, there's a tall human-shaped shadow on the wall!  Nick politely introduces himself and asks what it is, but it won't answer.  Then Mom signals -- she had a bad dream.  So she tells him how sexy he is, and he crawls in bed with her.  Another mother and son in love.  Is heterosexual romance so necessary that if there's no girlfriend, Mom will have to do?

Scene 3: Nick posts a picture of the shadow to "What Is This?", and is directed to Shadow Watch.  The watchdog group appears in his room (or maybe this is a clever way of depicting a zoom room?): leader West (Ben Rappaport, left), "let's go Guatanamo on their ass" Dagr (Jack DiFalco), and sarcastic FinalGrl.  There have been 10 Shadow sightings so far this year.  They prey on the weak and vulnerable, feeding off your loneliness until they are powerful enough to strike: "They shatter families.  They sow darkness.  They killed my parents." 

The group diagnoses Nick -- shy, lonely, in love with his mother -- as an ideal victim.    

Scene 4: Scared to sleep in the house, Nick goes out to the garage and sleeps in the car.  If he's got a car, why does he walk everywhere?

He awakens at dawn, makes Mom breakfast, and rushes to work at a fast-food joint.  The boss fires him for always being late and stealing food.  (Shirtless shot as Nick rips his uniform off.)  

He trudges to an auto garage and asks if they know how to track down Mike Smith, who used to work there.  They don't. 

Scene 5:  Back home, Nick serves gruel for dinner.  If Mom can sit at the table, why does she need bells to signal him?  He pretends that he was in school all day, then tucks Mom into bed. A shadow hand reaches out from under the nightstand.  

Scene 6: The Shadow Watch group appears in Nick's living room.  Are these people ghosts?  "From now on, whenever anything bad happens to you, assume it's a Shadow attack!" 

 "What if I just got shit luck?" 

 "There's no such thing as luck.  It's not random.  It's strategic, organized by the Shadows.  That's why we need Fletcher."

Fletcher: The presidential candidate who keeps referring to "shadows" in his speeches, signaling that he's one of us.

We already have an unresolved plot thread about Nick's search for Mike Smith -- a long-lost father, brother, or boyfriend?  Now another one about this Fletcher, who may know more than he's saying.  Is there a government conspiracy behind the Shadows?

Dagr hugs Nick and says "You're not alone anymore," but then "Somebody get this bitch a drink before he grows tits."  Was he being homoerotic or homophobic?

Scene 7:   They all go to Nick's garage to drink.  Oh, they're physically present, not on the internet.  Time for back stories:

West lost his brother to a heroin overdose caused by a Shadow.  Dagr was 12 years old, so distraught by his Shadow that he was posting suicide notes on the internet, when West found him.  FinalGrl's parents died in a murder-suicide due to the Shadow.

The boys leave, but FinalGirl girl sticks around.  Nick gazes lustfully as she changes clothes.  Darn -- I thought for sure he was gay. It took 28 minutes to heterosexualize him.

I've seen enough.  I'll just fast-forward to the end.

At least there's no fade- out kiss. 

Spoiler Alert:

The Shadow is Nick's mother.

Love and Monsters: It's a Beatiful Day in the Neighborhood, Except for the Monsters

 

"In a post-Apocalyptic world, a boy travels across a monster-infested wilderness to reunite with his girlfriend." Heteronormative garbage!  Why did Bob order it for Netflix movie.  Besides, we've both been vaccinated.  We can leave the house.  Why even have a movie night?

Seven years ago, a giant asteroid threatened to destroy the Earth, so we sent missiles to break it up.  But 16-year old Joel and his girlfriend Aimee were too busy smooching and contemplating sex to pay attention.  Then chemicals in the missiles rained down, not hurting mammals or the environment but instantly transforming many cold-blooded creatures into gigantic carnivorous monsters.  Joel and Aimee rushed home, where their parents were rushing to evacuate the city -- Fairfield, California, near Sacramento, was "ground zero."

Seven years have passed, but Joel is still a teenager, living in an underground bunker.  All of his bunker-mates have paired off, leaving him without a romantic partner (they are introduced so quickly that I can't tell if any are gay, but in the last scene two women are sort of hugging).  He is also frustrated because he has been assigned the "worthless" jobs of cook and communications officer, while the others get glamorous jobs like supply run and bunker defense.  

Suddenly Aimee's voice appears on the radio -- she's living in a colony 85 miles away (about a week's journey) -- so Joel decides to drop by and pick things up where they left off.  Joel's bunkmates object -- he's never left the bunker, he doesn't know how to fight monsters, and besides, he's sort of a coward.  Besides, seven years have passed, and the world has ended -- how does he know that Aimee has just been sitting by the radio, waiting for him?  Joel dismisses their objects.  With inadequate supplies and a hastily-scrawled map, he's off.

Fortunately, the outside isn't as bad as everyone says.  It's bright and sunny, there are no corpses, food is plentiful, and the 1950s sci-fi monsters, although big and scary, are not numerous - and some are friendly.  

 This is not a Walking Dead world full of Negans waiting to steal your stuff and shoot you -- the sentients Joel meets are all exceptionally helpful.  A dog named Boy drags him away from danger, a robot named Mavys shows him photos of his dead mother, and clones of Tallahassee and Wichita from Zombieland give him survival tips: "you can get a hot meal or a good night's sleep, but never both." 

Aimee is in charge in a seaside commune full of elderly hippies.  She didn't realize that Joel was coming, or that he'd want to pick things up -- turns out that she moved on with her life and dated someone else, whom she lost last year (no, it's a guy).  No sex, sorry!

The whole commune is packing to join the bigger-than-life Australian sailor Cap (Dan Ewing), who lives on a yacht towed by a giant crab.

Wait -- why would Cap want to bring a lot of people who are too old to work, and require constant care, to come aboard his yacht?  And why would they want to go?  Aimee says something about the commune being "unsafe," but it looks fairly well fortified. 

Joel immediately resents Cap as competition -- he's goodlooking, muscular, charismatic, he has a sexy Australian accent, and he makes his own beer! 

Turns out that it's a plot complication to push Aimee and Joel back together -- Cap is planning to poison everyone in the commune so he can steal their supplies.  How about just threating to shoot them?  With his newly developed survival knowledge, Joel wins the girl and saves the day -- the newbie is a much better fighter than the girl who's been in charge of a survival commune for years.

Then Joel realizes that he misses his bunkmates back home, and leaves.  So he came all this way to reunite with his girlfriend, and leaves after one kiss?  I'd stick around for the sex, at least.

In the end Joel becomes the leader of the "leaving your bunker" movement, convincing colonies all over the West Coast that the outside isn't as bad as they thought. Humans can move out into the daylight and reclaim the world.   But they go outside for supply runs all the time -- wouldn't they know how bad it is?

This movie has an infectious optimism, a belief in the innate goodness of humanity that serves as a remedy for the incessant gloom-and-doom of the Walking Dead franchise. The monsters are beautifully drawn retro 1950s -- the  human-giant crab battle comes directly from Mysterious Island  (1961).  And no one dies!  

You can almost forgive the ridiculousness of the premise.  

But you really can't forgive the heteronormativity. Boy Meets Girl, Boy Loses Girl, Boy Wins Girl.  With Monsters.   

Zip and Zap, Peter Pan, A Crush on Dad, and A Gorilla Sherlock Holmes

The Spanish bad boys Zipi y Zape, sort of Dennis the Menace squared,  first appeared in a comic strip in Pulgarcito magazine in 1947, and have since spun off into many more comics, three movies, a television series, a video game, and tons of merchandising.  But Zip and Zap and the Captain's Island (Zipi y Zape y la Isla de Capitain, 2016) is, as far as I know, their first appearance outside el mundo español.

Zip (Teo Planell) and Zap (Toni Gómez) are lanky androgynous teenagers who remind me of the Sprouse twins on The Suite Life of Zack and Cody, except that they're constantly insulting and yelling at their parents: stick-in-the-mud novelist Pantuflo (Jorge Bosch) and his wife (who is so mousy and withdrawn that she doesn't get a name in the cast list).

At Christmastime, they visit an isolated island to meet with a publisher.  They get lost, and end up at a children's home run by the enigmatic Miss Pam (Elena Anaya), a sinister butler, and a cackling, demented nun.

The next day, Miss Pam tells Zip and Zap that, due to all their mischief, their parents have abandoned them. They will live at the children's home forever.  Oh, and won't you meet two other new residents, the too-cool-for-school Macky (Máximo Pastor, top photo) and super-inquisitive flibbertigibit Flecky (Iria Castellano).

Zip immediately starts a gay-subtext buddy-bond with Macky, while Zap gets a goofy hetero-crush on Flecky.

Did you figure it out?  Yep -- Miss Pam has lured the family to the island. She is using a retro Frankenstein machine to regress "troubled parents" to their 11-year old selves, before they lost their primal joie de vivre.  She's Peter Pan, making her own crew of lost boy-adults who shouldn't have grown up.

The children's home is occupied mostly by regressed parents, except they're not really regressed.  The parents are locked in a chamber while their young selves...but not really.  At the end of the movie, all of the regressed parents leave the island to rejoin their parents.

Wait -- Zap gets a crush on his own mother?  Why does that bother me, when Zip crushing on his own father seems fine?

But we're not done.  Miss Pam is also collecting people who look or act like literary characters...then...turning them into other things. So she turns a detective who acts like Sherlock Holmes into a gorilla.

Why not turn him into Sherlock Holmes?

A girl who looks like Pippi Longstocking has an octopus-submarine like Captain Nemo's Nautilus

The children are being controlled by a magic snow globe kept in an aquarium.

Did I mention that it's Christmastime, for no apparent reason?

I think you're just supposed to give your brain a rest, let the bizarre imagery flow over you, and wait for the father-son and mother-son couples to hug. 

By the way, in the 3 years since the movie came out, Toni Gomez has lost his androgynous long hair and hunked up a bit.  He does mostly modeling.

And Maximo de Pastor has hunked up quite a lot.  Look for him in Lucas in 2019.

Wait -- why is it the Captain's Island?  There is no captain.....