BreakfastWithScot Tagged Articles at Cinematical

This time of year brings the cold weather, the gobbling preparations for turkey, and the beginning of the Christmas takeover as people start accosting each other with mistletoe and advertising shouts at you to BUY BUY BUY! This is also the time for Canada's oldest and largest LBGT film fest, image+nation. Last year, films like Yair Hochner's Good Boys and Ash Christian's Fat Girls reigned supreme. This year, the festival is celebrating its twentieth year, and kicks off tonight in Montreal.

It's also doing so with one heck of a lineup of films -- a collection of buzzed-about festival favorites and others that you've probably never heard of. While XXY is surprisingly missing from the line-up, there's lots of other flicks to make up for it. You can check out the full list over at their website, but here's a few that have popped up on Cinematical before:

Itty Bitty Titty Committee -- Ah, the latest comedy from Jamie Babbit, the woman behind the cult favorite But I'm a Cheerleader. This time around, she focuses on an all-American girl who joins a group of radical feminists. Our EIC Erik Davis reviewed the film from Berlin earlier this year, and also sat down for a chat with the women behind the flick, and James Rocchi added a second review from SXSW.

The Picture of Dorian Gray -- Back in 2005, Duncan Roy proclaimed that he put the "gay" back into Dorian Gray, with his Oscar Wilde adaptation, while also boasting about Ryan Phillipe's failed attempt to start up a rival picture. Unfortunately Variety's review says it has "a cavalier disregard for narrative logic, character development, and Wildean wit." Since it's been out for a bit without DVD release, this might be your last chance to see it...if you still want to, of course.

Suffering Man's Charity -- Even though our Scott Weinberg didn't give it a great review, I'm still dying to see Alan Cumming's latest feature, which stars himself, David Boreanaz, and a number of other tasty actors. This screening comes on heals of Cumming winning a Golden Apple at the Big Apple Film Fest, which Erik just blogged about.

Breakfast with Scot -- James Rocchi reviewed Laurie Lynd's film from TIFF this year, and called it a film "as agreeably, tastefully, charmingly slight and lame and trivial as anything the hetero mainstream could make out of the same plotline." It's about an ex-hockey player and his partner, who take in his brother's dead ex-lover's kid.

Black, White & Gray: A Portrait of Sam Wagstaff and Robert Mapplethorpe -- Not surprisingly, James Crump's film about Wagstaff, Mapplethorpe, and Patti Smith made the cut, but even if you don't get a chance to see it in Montreal, Fortissimo is lining up to distribute it.

A Walk into the Sea: Danny Williams & the Warhol Factory -- This documentary, made by Williams' niece Esther Robinson, focuses on one of the forgotten members of Warhol's infamous troupe of characters. As I described from Hot Docs this year, it contains some great, exclusive clips of Warhol, Edie, and the rest, as shot by Williams -- a man who had an affair with Warhol, but whose life and death are steeped in mystery.

[via indieWIRE]

It's been said that great moves forward don't have to be in mighty arenas; indeed, you could argue that some revolutionary acts are bold precisely because of their triviality. Breakfast with Scot -- a hometown favorite here in Toronto for the Film Festival -- is a heartwarming, fish-out-of-water family comedy. It details what happens to ex-hockey player Eric (Tom Cavanagh) when his partner Sam (Ben Shenkman) has to take in, temporarily, his brother's dead ex-lover's child, Scot (Noah Bernett). Breakfast with Scot shows us gay relationships, gay struggles, gay family. It is as agreeably, tastefully, charmingly slight and lame and trivial as anything the hetero mainstream could make out of the same plotline. The closest thing to a controversy in it is that, as near as I can tell, Eric and Sam aren't using real maple syrup for the title meals.

Eric used to play as a pro with the Toronto Maple Leafs; now, he's a sportscaster. (As a press piece I was handed leaving the screening noted, it's the first time a major pro sports team has let their logo and name be used in a gay-themed film. All I could hear in my head was a paraphrase of The Kids in the Hall: It's a Canadian fact.) Eric 's been so far in the closet for so long he's on a first-name basis with the shoe trees, though -- much to Sam's annoyance, as Sam would probably like to you know, hold his boyfriend's hand now and then. Much to Eric's annoyance, Sam has to take in Scot until his screw-up brother can get back from Brazil. And Scot is ... a bit of a fancy lad? Gay? Who can say -- Scot's 11 -- but he's boa-clad, fond of make-up and might as well be carrying a French horn in one hand and a three-dollar bill -- excuse me, a welded-together Loonie and Toonie -- in the other.