By Romeo San Vicente
HBO checks 'The Trans List'
Timothy Greenfield-Sanders, the director of "The Out List" and "The Black List," has returned with his latest interview-based documentary, "The Trans List," which focuses on the lives and stories of transgender people, some famous, some not. Produced for HBO (which will air it later this year), the film is currently making festival rounds, and returns to the format of the filmmaker's earlier work: subjects looking directly into the lens and telling their stories without any intrusion from off-camera. It's a simple, elegant way of making interviews happen, and one that the filmmaker has perfected over time. The community's most well-known faces will make appearances – people like Laverne Cox, Janet Mock, Caitlyn Jenner and Buck Angel – but the film will also focus on everyday trans Iraq War veterans, surviving Stonewall participants, community activists, and people like Amos Mac, publisher of "Original Plumbing" magazine. Fingers crossed that by the time it airs Ms. Jenner will be over her very public fixation on a certain reality show host-turned-Presidential candidate. And if not, well, we're watching it anyway.
Steve Buscemi will 'Lean On Pete'
Never forget, please, that back in the 1980s when non-gay actors were usually too afraid to play gay characters, Steve Buscemi launched his film career with a classic piece of Queer Cinema, "Parting Glances." So it feels right and fitting that after a critically lauded stretch of acting work these past three decades, he'll be joining forces with acclaimed gay filmmaker Andrew Haigh ("Weekend," "45 Years"). The film is titled "Lean On Pete," and instead of a boy and his dog tale, this one's about a boy and his horse. Well, maybe not "his" horse, exactly. A personal project for Haigh, he'll adapt Willy Vlautin's novel about a 15-year-old boy looking for his long-lost aunt, his only companion a stolen racehorse named Lean On Pete. One of Buscemi's former "Boardwalk Empire" co-stars, Charlie Plummer ("Granite Flats"), will play the boy, with Buscemi playing a character named "Del." More casting news to follow, no doubt, but look for this one sometime in 2017.
'Vita & Virginia' unites lovers Sackville-West & Woolf
One of the 20th century's most talked about literary love affairs was the one between Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West. Often ignored by scholars, who tended to focus their attention on the two writers' heterosexual relationships, their story has been told a few times now in various media, reclaiming a vital piece of queer cultural history. A play by Dame Eileen Atkins is the basis for this new project, "Vita & Virginia," which will be produced in England and directed by Chanya Button ("Burn Burn Burn"). More news to come on this one, obviously, since the leads have yet to be cast. But this is just the kind of British period drama we live for now that "Downton Abbey" is no more, and we were always not-so-secretly hoping for a couple of well-spoken aristocratic women on that program to conduct a clandestine affair. We'll finally get our wish with this one.
Kristen Stewart is all about a female James Bond
It's funny how ideas take hold on the internet. Case in point: a female James Bond. Nobody from the world of James Bond-based decision-making is really talking about this. But Gillian Anderson did. So did "Game of Thrones"' Emilia Clarke. So did Bollywood star Priyanka Chopra. They'd all like their shot at playing Bond, and who can blame them? And now it's a thing. So when the subject came up at a recent press junket with Kristen Stewart, she didn't exactly throw her hat in the ring of speculative consideration, but she did express enthusiasm for the subject, which is kind of the same thing. Calling the middle-aged while male version of bond "stale" (and she's right), she laid out her idea for how the next Bond film might introduce the change: a Bond Girl becomes a Bond girlfriend becomes Bond herself. It's sort of perfect, really, and why didn't we think of that? Now, Bond People, if Idris Elba is off the list (and we have no idea if he is or he isn't, but let's all pause for a moment to shed a couple of tears), then why not give one of these women the chance to prove her 007 chops? It's certainly time.
