By Romeo San Vicente
Colin Firth gets intimate with Kevin Bacon in the new film "Where the Truth Lies."
Sex degrees of Kevin Bacon
Interested in watching a sex scene between Kevin Bacon and Colin Firth? If so, then get ready for "Where the Truth Lies," the latest film from acclaimed Canadian director Atom Egoyan, based on the novel by Rupert Holmes. "Truth" recently premiered at the Cannes Film Festival to good reviews and the usual straight-press controversy that accompanies any depiction of famous actors in bed together. Bacon and Firth star as '50s-era celebrities in the Dean Martin/Jerry Lewis mold, whose careers are destroyed when a woman is found dead in their hotel bathroom after a menage a trois. The movie will probably run into an MPAA minefield no matter how explicit the sex is, given the group's history of slapping NC-17 ratings on anything sexual. For Egoyan's part, however, neither he nor his bold male leads seem that concerned about possible censorship.
'Fried Green' lesbians on Broadway?
Can a lesbian love story, stripped of its queerness for the movies, find new, more authentic life on the Broadway stage? That's the question surrounding the latest incarnation of "Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle-Stop Cafe," Fannie Flagg's Southern-fried novel that included a love affair between two women. Broadway producer Jeffrey Finn (the man behind the James Earl Jones-starring revival of "On Golden Pond") is planning to take "Tomatoes" to the stage. According to Finn, the play will hew more closely to the novel than the film, and Flagg herself will be involved in the adaptation. So maybe this time around, audiences won't suffer through the narrative confusion of female characters who look and feel and act like lesbians, but somehow magicallyÉaren't. That'd be nicer than a plate of actual fried green tomatoes.
Clive Barker's 'Demonik' new movie
Queer horror king Clive Barker and director John Woo want to unleash demons onto both big and small screens. The two have teamed up to produce "Demonik," a project that will involve a theatrical feature and a video game. Barker may write the feature script, based on a treatment that Woo's Tiger Hill Entertainment has picked up, and the video game is already in the works for a 2006 release from companies Terminal Reality and Majesco. No story line has been made public yet – fear loves mystery, after all – but what is known is that gamers will be able to play as though they were "Demonik"'s chief villain. And if horror-movie fans take the evil bait, Barker may have a new "Hellraiser" on his bloody hands.
'Lassie' comes home again
She's back. Or should we say "He's back"? Either way, Lassie, the most famous of all canine screen stars, is having a comeback. "Lassie," a new feature film starring Samantha Morton, Peter O'Toole, and Peter Dinklage ("The Station Agent"), will revisit the plot of the 1943 film "Lassie Come Home." In that movie – featuring an 11-year-old Elizabeth Taylor and an adolescent Roddy McDowall – an impoverished family is forced to sell their beloved collie to make ends meet. The dog, though, has other plans, journeying 500 miles back to the people she loves most. The real question now is, which gender will play the famous dog this time around? Historically, male dogs have played the female Lassie – making "her" something of a drag queen. Both detail-obsessed and tradition-minded fans will have to wait until the film's 2006 release for the answer.
