By Romeo San Vicente
Ewan McGregor to star in a gay movie … again
Romeo's still waiting for the long-delayed homo romantic comedy "I Love You, Philip Morris" to finally open in U.S. theaters, but Ewan McGregor (who plays Jim Carrey's jailhouse beau in that film) has already lined up a role in yet another gay-themed movie. He'll play a son who gets a double-whammy of news from dad – not only is the patriarch dying of cancer, he's also coming out of the closet – in "Beginners," a new movie from "Thumbsucker" director Mike Mills. Christopher Plummer, about as far away from "The Sound of Music" as you can get, will play the papa; no word yet as to who's going to play daddy's young boyfriend. McGregor, you'll recall, has already played queer (and often-undressed) characters in "The Pillow Book" and "Velvet Goldmine." Maybe finally playing the straight guy in a gay film is his idea of a "stretch."
Radcliffe goes from Hogwarts to 'Business' school
The timing couldn't be better for a musical that pokes fun at corporate incompetence, so if you need a silver lining for the current economic crisis, put this in your checkbook – Daniel Radcliffe is considering returning to Broadway in a revival of "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying." Gay producers Craig Zadan and Neil Meron are putting together a workshop performance in December to see if "Business" can live again. The show originally opened in 1962 with Robert Morse in the lead – appropriately, Morse is now playing a Kennedy-era big-bizzer on "Mad Men" – and was revived in 1995 with Matthew Broderick and a pre-"Will & Grace" Megan Mullally. If Radcliffe has the magic to make this new version fly, it'll show New York audiences that he's got more arrows in his quiver, as it were, than his super-serious (and full-frontal flashing) role in "Equus."
'Summer Heights High' guy gets 'Angry'
Attention everybody who has no idea what "Summer Heights High" was (aka most of you) and don't have any cool friends to tell you about the latest cult-cable comedy shows: Chris Lilley, hilarious Australian creator of that HBO series in which he played multiple characters (one of them gay), is coming back to the cable channel for "Angry Boys." Much like "SHH," Lilley will create and star as multiple characters, all of whom will explore, in mockumentary style, the complicated issue of what it's like to be male in the 21st century. In other words: more gayness is pretty much a lock. The show is shooting now, so expect it sometime in 2010. That gives you plenty of time to catch up on the other funniest shows on TV you haven't been watching, like "Summer Heights," "The Mighty Boosh," "Flight of the Conchords" and "Tim & Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!" to name a few of Romeo's favorites.
'Hope' for a 'Showgirls' sequel
As any fan of "Showgirls" will tell you, it's the greatest film ever made featuring a conversation between two adult women about the great taste of "doggie chow." And while original director Paul Verhoeven once imagined a sequel to the film following Nomi Malone's even more depraved adventures in Los Angeles, it never came to pass. But now some other people from "different places" have decided that the world has waited too long to know the fate of its doomed cast. Currently called "Showgirls: Story of Hope," this German-produced sequel will ostensibly center on the character of Hope (played in the original, and hopefully in this one, too, by Rena Riffel), the good girl gone even worse than Nomi. She apparently dies of a cocaine overdose, causing her brother to seek revenge. Revenge on what, exactly, is sort of up in the air right now. But if there's a scene of some guy punching a pile of cocaine in the face then it's going to be amazing.
