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The Gay Deceivers

This screwball comedy from 1969 has a pretty wild premise: two guys try to fake being gay just to dodge the military draft. If you watched this today, it would probably come across as super offensive, and I honestly have no clue how people felt about it back when it first hit theaters. My guess is it probably wasn't a huge hit. The humor is really broad and kind of goofy, with a lot of obvious puns that actually reminded me of those cheesy sitcoms from the 80s and 90s. It makes me wonder if this movie actually inspired some of those later shows. The story follows two best friends, Danny and Elliot, who are desperate to get out of the draft. They decide the best way out is to pretend they're in a relationship, but the Army doesn't just take their word for it and puts them under surveillance. Even though they’re both young and have girlfriends, they’re forced to move into an apartment building full of gay residents to keep up the act. It’s a total mess because they’re trying ...

Todo a la vez (la mirada de Paco y Manolo) (Spanish Documentary) [Everything At Once]

Documentaries are a tricky thing. First of all, they are not everyone's cup of tea and secondly unless they make for an engaging viewing, a lot of time you question the content of such things. Sadly, this documentary falls in the latter category. Paco and Manolo are two Catalan photographers from the outskirts of Barcelona who have been together for thirty years. Both have managed to work as photographers and have captured their images in a Kink magazine, a very personal photography fanzine with a Mediterranean homoerotic aesthetic. They record the sex appeal of the working class with use of natural light, abandoned places and stark rooms. The artists become discreet witnesses of the subjects and intimacy of those men who want to be photographed. They contact the artists through social networks with the desire to be portrayed naked and in doing so not only bare their bodies but their inhibitions as well. The clothes fall, the bodies are freed, and the souls end up being captured by the lens of this intensely cultured, cinematic and urban couple.

An interesting story, but why was there a need to make a documentary of this. Neither the four was completely on the couple and their dynamics nor was it on the subjects and their intimacy. In my opinion, the documentary was all over the place. I am just not sure what was the intention behind making this? Following two eccentric photographers, who will work only by their rules, photographing gay men who are open to shed their inhibitions, is really not something that many people would lap up in todays time, especially when the runtime is just under 2 hours. Besides watching naked guys getting it on camera, this one can easily be avoided. (3/10)

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