By Romeo San Vicente
Fossil hunting with Kate Winslet and Saoirse Ronan
You already know Kate Winslet and you're finally figuring out who the staggeringly talented Saoirse Ronan ("Mary Queen of Scots") is, even if you still can't quite pronounce her name. But soon you'll get a fresh chance to learn the name Francis Lee, the director whose beautifully queer independent drama, "God's Own Country," won the World Cinema Dramatic Special Jury Award for Directing at Sundance 2017, as well as Best Film at the British Independent Film Awards. He's got a new movie in the works called "Ammonite" starring the aforementioned A-listers, and we think it's poised to be the next contender in the lesbian fave sweepstakes. Winslet will star as 19th-century paleontologist Mary Anning (credited with making important scientific discoveries in the Jurassic marine fossil beds along the English Channel), with Ronan as the young woman Anning develops a relationship with during a seaside convalescence. With credits like this in the mix, we're guessing awards and stuff, and a lot of windswept English natural beauty. It shoots in March, even though we're sort of ready for it right now. We'll just make do with watching "Carol" for the 13th or 23rd time until this one's ready.
Gregg Araki presents "Apocalypse" soon
Veteran indie filmmaker Gregg Araki ("Mysterious Skin"), pioneer of the New Queer Cinema, has a new series coming to Starz in March. It's called "Now Apocalypse"; he co-wrote it with Vogue.com sex columnist Karley Sciortino (Viceland's "Slutever" series) and he's got heavy-hitter co-producers Steven Soderbergh ("Logan Lucky") and Gregory Jacobs ("Magic Mike XXL") on board. As usual it's populated by a sexy young cast – Avan Jogia ("Twisted"), Kelli Berglund ("Lab Rats"), Beau Mirchoff ("The Fosters"), and Roxane Mesquida ("Kaboom") – and set in a fractured version of Los Angeles where everyone is chasing love, sex, money and fame, until people start having prophetic dreams about dark conspiracies and, well, the apocalypse. Whatever, it'll be hazily glamorous and there'll be old Cocteau Twins songs on the soundtrack, right? We're ready.
Nico Tortorella is coming soon with "Fluidity"
It's not every day that a niche cable hottie comes out the way Nico Tortorella did. The snackish co-star of "Younger" and co-host of MTV's bizarrely addictive "How Far is Tattoo Far?" (the show where frenemies blindfold each other and commit heinous acts of tattooing as revenge) didn't just casually shrug into gayness. No, Tortorella did it up in grand style, by coming out as non-binary (pronoun usually "they" but seems fairly chill about it), polyamorous, married in complementary wedding gowns to their non-binary bisexual partner Bethany Meyers, and then going on "The Wendy Williams Show" to joyfully explain it everybody. Obviously, we're fans now. Which means we will be hunting down a little film called "Fluidity" from director Linda Yellen when it gets itself out of post-production and onto the queer film festival circuit. It would appear to be about a bunch of Millennials looking for love and intimacy in New York, and finding out that they're all… fluid? Look, we don't really know. But we're extremely ready for Nico's red carpet look.
"Queer as Folk" getting the Bravo reboot?
It appears that it's time to inflict "Queer as Folk" on a whole new generation. The 1999 UK series, created by Russell T. Davies, the one that launched Charlie Hunnam's career, and spawned an extremely popular and hilariously hate-watchable Showtime series set in the wildest, sparkliest Pittsburgh you've (n)ever seen, might be returning to American television thanks to Bravo. Davies is already on board as an executive producer, though there's no cast set up yet and no word on any other details either. Listen, make it happen, Bravo, because we're going to watch; in fact, we're into it all the way, but when it shows up we do hope everyone on the creative team understands that we have "Pose" now and the "L Word" reboot in the works, and "Drag Race" and queer characters and queer narratives on other programs and the entire queer internet to keep us entertained, so a little trio of gay white twinks is, frankly, from the olden times. What we're saying is… y'all better werk.
Romeo San Vicente is hard at work erasing binaries.
