Year:  2010
Genre:  TV series, Lesbian, Drama, Reality
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Rose Garcia, Jill Sloane Goldstein, Mikey Koffman, Whitney Mixter, Tracy Ryerson, Nikki Weiss
Eye candy:  Everyone
Creator:  Ilene Chaiken
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

     Now that The L Word is no more, something has to fill the void.  The void where there are no hot lesbians having sex with each other on television.  And so here comes The Real L Word to fill that void, with REAL hot lesbians having sex with each other.  So we get a reality TV show that has obviously been cast based exactly on the characters from the fictional TV show.  That’s kind of a leap, isn’t it?  Remember when they tried to make a “reality” TV show out of the “fictional” Gilligan’s Island?  It’s kind of…weird.

     So we have Whitney, who plays the “Shane” character from The L Word.  And Jill and Nikki, the settled-down, married lesbians.  And Mikey, the tough chick.  And Tracy, the Mia Kirshner of the show, a supermodel-hot lesbian who is new to the scene having just come out of the closet.  And so on and so forth.  This show comes from the same person who created The L Word, so I guess she really understands the formula.  But a lot of it feels pretty forced.

     Now to the important stuff – how much naked lesbian sex IS there, you are asking.  And rightly so.  The answer is, a lot less than The L Word, a lot more than Spongebob.  In Season One, out now from Paramount Home Entertainment, there is really only one hardcode, naked scene.  It involves a strap-on.  I find it humourous, if not flat-out disingenuous, that the scene is filmed so we never get to see the actual strap-on device.  Like, we’re not going to be offended by two naked lesbians having full-on intercourse on screen, but seeing a plastic object shaped like a penis might push us over the edge?

     In the end, sex or no sex, naked or no naked, this show is OK.  I like many of the characters (sorry – real people) like Tracy and Jill and Nikki and Stamie.  And there are decent villains as well, Rose being the lightning rod for my disdain as she cheats on her smoking hot girlfriend Natalie.  But I can’t help but feel like I’m watching a half-assed copy of a show I once enjoyed more. 

Year:  2009
Genre:  Mystery, Romance, Lesbian, Supernatural
Countries:  Taiwan, Germany
Languages:  English, Mandarin, German w/ English subtitles
Starring:  Inga Busch, Ke Huan-Ru, Ting-Ting Hu, Jack Kao, Marek Harloff, Kevin Chen
Director:  Monika Treut
Run time:  89 minutes
DVD distributor:  First Run Features
DVD extras:  56-minute documentary film Tigerwomen Grow Wings, about three famous Taiwanese women (opera singer Hsieh Yue-hsia, writer Li Ang, and filmmaker Chen Ying-rong)

     Ghosted, out December 8th from First Run Features, is a Taiwanese-German supernatural lesbian romantic murder mystery.  Frankly, the words “Taiwanese-German supernatural lesbian romantic murder mystery” alone are enough to get me interested.  (Actually, full disclosure – just the word “lesbian” is enough to get me interested.)  There are many things I like about the film.  First, the “lesbian” aspect is downplayed and incidental.  This could just as easily have been a movie about a man who misses his wife, or a woman who misses her young male lover.  The fact that the protagonists in the movie are lesbians is merely an incidental thing – they just happen to have a same-sex relationship, and not much is made of that.  Which is great.  More movies should have gay and lesbian couples as the stars.

     Sorry, that is leading me on a bit of a tangent here…wouldn’t it be cool if there was a big, blockbuster action movie with a gay character in the lead role?  In most action movies, the hero gets some girl at the end, and the girl shows up as eye candy through much of the movie for no real reason except to make out with Bruce Willis when the movie ends.  His heterosexuality is entirely incidental to the movie.  Would it really make any difference if, at the end of Die Hard 5: The Die Is Cast Hard, ol’ Bruce made out with Luis Guzman instead of Natalie Portman or whoever?  It would not change the movie in any way at all.  In fact, I was kinda rooting for a Justin Long-Bruce Willis liplock to close out that last one…

     OK, back on topic.  So in Ghosted, not a lot is made of the fact that the main characters are incidentally lesbians.  That’s cool.  There are a few reasonably hot scenes between the leads, which serve more to drive the love story than to titillate.  And that leaves us with a Taiwanese-German romantic murder mystery.  There are a few culture clashes between the German film maker at the centre of the story and her Taiwanese lover.  But not many.  One speaks German and one speaks Mandarin and that leaves English as the language in which they communicate.  That’s about it.  So that leaves “supernatural romantic murder mystery”. 

     However, there isn’t really much of a mystery.  There are clues throughout the movie about what may have happened to Sophie Schmitt’s (Inga Busch) young lover Ai-Ling (Ke-Huan-Ru).  And there is a mysterious young Taiwanese woman named Mei-Li (Ting-Ting Wu) who may be taking the place of Ai-Ling in both Sophie’s life and in the world in general.  Is she Ai-Ling’s ghost?  Or is she merely a young woman inhabited by her spirit?  Or is she just a journalist looking for a story?  In the end it doesn’t really matter.  We do get a resolution to the mystery.  But I didn’t really notice that there had been a mystery until it was finally solved.  Oh yeah – I never knew how Ai-Ling died.  Hmm.  I guess it was that way.

     Which leaves “supernatural romance”.  Where Ghosted succeeds is in the realm of romance, and Inga Busch does a great job as Sophie, a woman who is mourning the loss of her lover.  She didn’t realize how much she loved Ai-Ling until after she was gone.  Her scenes with Mei-Li are tender and revealing, even though Sophie is determined to reveal nothing.  And it doesn’t matter, in the end, who or what Mei-Li really is.  What matters is who Sophie is (a murderer, not a murderer, a cheater or not a cheater, a cold partner or a warm-hearted woman).  And that gives Ghosted enough heart to make it a good film.  Had they done more with the murder, or the mystery, or the Taiwan or the Germany or the supernatural or the lesbian, it could have been a great one.

Year:  2009
Genre:  TV series, Lesbian, Drama
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Pam Grier, Jane Lynch, Eric Mabius, Cybill Shepherd, Daniela Sea
Eye candy:  Rachel Shelley, Sarah Shahi, Rose Rollins, Alicia Leigh Willis, Clementine Ford, Jennifer Beals, Janina Gavankar, Annabella Sciorra, Karina Lombard, Kate French, Katherine Moennig, Malaya Rivera Drew,  Leisha Hailey, Laurel Holloman, Mia Kirshner, Marlee Matlin, Elizabeth Berkley, Mei Melancon, Lucy Lawless
Creator:  Ilene Chaiken
Run time:  7 hours 18 minutes
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment
Related reviews:  The L Word First Five Seasons

     I was surprised at how much I was interested in the final season of The L Word, out November 3^rd from Paramount Home Entertainment. The season opens with the deliciously hot Mia Kirshner, dead. Then the entire season is a flashback that will point the finger at her killer. Maybe.

     Normally, I watch The L Word to see which lesbians are going to get naked and have sex with each other. But this time, I was more curious about the murder, and about the crazy story lines that come to an end as the series does. It didn’t matter to me that Mia Kirshner and Katherine Moenig have sex, or that Mia Kirshner has dirty and angry and totally hot sex with Kate French, or that Elizabeth Berkley and Lucy Lawless showed up for several episodes, or that Tasha and Alice might have a three-way with Jamie.

     An aside – How do you pump up a show with flagging ratings?  Two words…interracial threeway.  OK, maybe that’s three words.  Inter-racial threeway.  Or four words.  Inter-racial three-way.  I’m not sure.  But I am sure that the moment the writers of the L Word decided that intimating there could be a lesbian threesome between the black chick, the white chick and the Asian chick, the show started to feel more tawdry than ever before.  Admittedly, I enjoyed watching this show for the naked lesbian sex.  Because…well, come on.  But the show was always a smart one and had a laudable moral centre.  Now, of course I know that people want to see Asian-on-black-on-white lesbian threesomes.  And I am assuming that including those words in this review will triple my page hits today.  But I’m not interested in that stuff.

     Okay, I was a little interested in that stuff.  Or, really interested.  And…I don’t remember who killed Jenny.

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     Lesbian Nation, a DVD out May 19th from First Run Features, is a collection of lesbian-themed short films, some better than others.  Also out today is the big highlight of the DVD, Lavender Limelight, a 57-minute behind the scenes look at lesbian film makers (and there are not a lot of them).  For a little more money, you can get all the other short films on this DVD set as well, and that’s probably worthwhile.  Both this set and Lavender Limelight can be ordered here.  Here is a look at each individual short film:

Carmelita Tropicana: Your Kunst Is Your Waffen (1994) (*******7/10): 

“Open your eyes, honey, ’cause Latinas come in all different colours!” 

     28 minutes long, this short film is about a Latina performance artist and protester who ends up in prison with a bunch of other protesting girls after a mini-riot in the East Village.  Most of the film takes place in the jail cell where four women are being held.  There are also some bizarre art sequences thrown in, which may or may not belong in the movie.  Frankly, they seem to be art-for-art’s sake.  There are also a few Spanish song-and-dance numbers, which are strangely compelling in a bonkers kind of way.  The fact that the women are lesbians seems to be incidental to the story, since they are fighting tooth and nail against racism, sexism, and all types of oppression in general.  The lesbian things just gives them another thing to be angry about.

     Even though a lot of the film appears to be contrived and silly, it still manages to be oddly inspiring and fun.  The over-acting stars are entertaining in their ham-fisted performances, and although almost all the dialogue is either angry shouting or Empoerment Shourting, it all works well enough to keep the movie fun for 28 minutes.  Any more and it would have been too much.  But 28 minutes is just right.

Jumping The Gun (1996) (******6/10):

“Your place or mine?”

     Just a few minutes long, Jumping The Gun is a welcome little addition to this DVD set.  After a one-night stand with a badass biker chick, a young woman wakes up early and while her companion sleeps, she imagines their entire relationship together by means of a typewriter, like she’s writing a short story.  It’s all over very quickly, but packs a full, lyrical story into the few minutes of screen time it has.  It’s a neat little fantasy sequence that works.

Little Women in Transit (1996) (*****5/10):

“Dad, are you ever disappointed that you never had any boys.”
“Sometimes.”

     A twelve-year-old girl sits in the middle of the back seat of a car between her two older sisters during a car trip.  She is writing in her notebook, and soon gets into a fight with her older sister about Louisa May Alcott and bras and other things.  Jennie’s sister torments her with lesbian taunts – Louisa May Alcott was a lesbian.  Jennie has three nipples, and all lesbians have three nipples.  It’s brief, about six minutes, but neat.  The father is basically one of those Peanuts adults, in the drivers seat, and the end is a bit of a shock.  But there’s nothing really compelling about the short.

Playing The Part (1995) (********8/10):

“This young man is going places.  I think I want him for my daughter.”

     Playing The Part is a 38-minute short film about a young lesbian trying to come out to her parents.  She is so conflicted about the prospect of doing so, and so frightened, that she does just about anything she can to avoid the confrontation that is sure to ensue.  She does some strange things, like trying to provoke her mother by turning her room into a pigsty.  She interviews her grandmother and father, and hides her lover from her family for quite a while.  It goes on a bit too long – by the time the actual Coming Out happens, I was pretty impatient.  I think that’s the idea here, that I feel as uncomfortable and impatient as she does, but I really did want to just fast-forward to the part where the whole thing gets resolved.

     High-society balls and a rich-girl lifestyle form the backdrop to the woman’s inner conflict – what should be a wonderful life for just about anyone else is actually oppressive for her, as the expectations of that society are keenly felt at every turn.  And, at every turn, she can’t tell her family and she runs away from the inevitable talk.  And, in the end, she doesn’t tell them at all.  I thought I would be annoyed, even angry, over such a non-ending after such a long (short) film that made me so impatient to begin with.  But I wasn’t.  As it turns out, I loved the ending.  I was happy I had been able to watch the reflective journey, and the actual confrontation itself may well have been anti-climactic.  Playing The Part really works, and shows that the journey is always more interesting than the destination.

Lavender Limelight (*********9/10):

     The full review of this terrific documentary I have done seperately, because it is being released on its own by First Run Features the same day as Lesbian Nation.  A great movie.

“I make films.”
“Why don’t you just find yourself a nice man?”

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      Lesbian Nation comes out on DVD May 19th from First Run Features.  It features five short films with a lesbian theme, and one of them is Lavender Limelight.  Clearly, Limelight is the highlight of the other DVD, but Lesbian Nation is a better pickup, just because of the extra material.  Both DVDs are available from First Run Features today, and both are fascinating.  The biggest problem I had with Lavender Limelight was that I hadn’t seen most of the movies that are talked about in the film.  Now I have to go find Go Fish, and Watermelon Woman, and a bunch of others.  Basically, I am annoyed by this movie because it cost me a lot of money.

     Another thing I found annoying is the fact that this documentary came out in 1997.  I would really like to know a little more about the progression of lesbian films and film makers since that time, in the intervening 12 years.  Maybe a little special feature or something?  Because the documentary is so compelling, and interesting, and inspirational, I wanted to know more than just what happened before 1997.  Anyway.  It doesn’t matter because what DID happen before 1997 is fascinating.

     The film interviews several lesbian film makers – Heather MacDonald (Ballot Measure 9), Rose Troche (Go Fish, The L Word), Jennie Livingston (Paris Is Burning), Monika Treut (Seduction: The Cruel Woman), Maria Maggenti (The Incredibly True Adventure of Two Girls In Love), Su Friedrich (Sink Or Swim), and Cheryl Dunye (Watermelon Woman, The Early Works of Cheryl Dunye).  Each woman offers a unique and insightful perspective on being a woman, being gay, and being a filmmaker.  For me, the most interesting thing was the film talk. 

     So many of these women are on the outside of the film world looking in, or at least existing on the fringe.  Sometimes it’s by choice, sometimes it’s simply because of the nature of their films – lesbian films are by definition going to be indie efforts, and they are the type of movie that a viewer doesn;t normally come across at the local video store.  You would need to seek them out, and this is a great place to start.  Seek it out here.  But you’re still better off with Lesbian Nation, which contains more good stuff.

Years:  2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008
Genre:  Lesbian, TV series, Drama
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Ossie Davis, Pam Grier, Sandra Bernhardt, Arianna Huffington, Jane Lynch, Melissa Rivers, Gloria Steinem, Eric Roberts, Camryn Manheim, Eric Mabius, Cybill Shepherd, Julian Sands, Kate Clinton, Elizabeth Keener, Alan Cumming, Daniela Sea
Eye candy:  Nona Hendryx, Rachel Shelley, Sarah Shahi, Rosanna Arquette, Rose Rollins, Alicia Leigh Willis, Tammy Lynn Michaels, Anne Archer, Clementine Ford, Jennifer Beals, Kelly Lynch, Janina Gavankar, Erin Daniels, Annabella Sciorra, Karina Lombard, Kate French, Katherine Moennig, Malaya Rivera Drew, Lolita Davidovich, Leisha Hailey, Laurel Holloman, Kristanna Loken, Mia Kirshner, Marlee Matlin
Creator:  Ilene Chaiken
Run time:  54 hours
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

     Paramount Home Entertainment just sent me all five DVD seasons of The L Word. Five seasons. Of hot lesbians having hot lesbian sex. And something else too. Plot maybe? Dialogue? I don’t really remember. I remember Mia Kirshner, and Jennifer Beals, and Katherine Moennig, Leisha Hailey, Karina Lombard, Marlee Matlin, Annabella Sciorra and Kristanna Loken. And all the other gorgeous women who get naked and have sex with each other. The actual story arc of the first five seasons escapes me. And I get it. This series was created to appeal to the largest possible audience. Lesbian women who like lesbians, straight women who like soap opera drama and girl talk, gay men who like TV about gay culture, and straight men who like watching naked lesbians. But I feel as though a substantial amount of potential for the series is sacrificed in favour of showing incredibly hot naked women sleeping together.

     The story arcs I would have liked to see a little more developed are those that deal with the discrimination faced by gay people. In the fifth season, which is being released October 28th by Paramount, there are a few moments that deal with this. There is a character, Tasha, who is being outed as a lesbian and being kicked out of the military. There is another character who reacts to homophobic statements made by a basketball player by outing him as a homosexual. But there is not enough of this stuff, which I find compelling. The rest of the series, and the season, involves lesbian women living in their own, seemingly exclusive, lesbian world, where there are no ugly lesbians, very few butch ones, and virtually no straight people at all. Now, I know a lot of lesbians, and they are, proportionately, about the same as the rest of the world. In that ten percent of them are hot, twenty percent are ugly, and seventy percent are somewhere in the middle.

     So to create a world of lesbians in which only the hottest of the hot is one of two things. Either it’s pandering to the heterosexual males who enjoy watching lesbian sex, or it’s just television, where only hot people get roles. Breaking this mold, at least a little, are Cybill Shepherd and Pam Grier, who are not exactly ugly, but they are in their late fifties.

     The fifth season is similar to the other four, in that there are soap opera-style relationship troubles, and a lot of hot naked women having sex. In this imaginary lesbian world, it seems that everyone is willing to have sex with just about anyone else. Which means that if you have watched the entire five seasons, you are have seen almost every character on the show hook up with almost every other character, at one point or another. Just about every fantasy men have about two women together is played out, including VIP room threesomes, “promiscuous, debauched lesbians” (in the words of Cybill Shepherd) and even prison sex. Mia Kirschner (Jenny) is still the hottest girl on the show, but now she is also the most irritating. She has written a book, and it’s being made into a movie, and Jenny is the director. She becomes self-involved, and cartoonish with her Hollywood giant ego. Every time she’s on the screen in this season, she isn’t acting so much as purposely setting out to irritate the viewers.

     And so, it all comes back to the hot chicks who get naked and sleep with each other. In this season, there are some new ones joining the cast. Elizabeth Keener, as the owner of a new lesbian bar in town, and Alicia Leigh Willis, a gorgeous actress who plays Keener’s lover. The best scenes are between Kirschner and Kate French, who plays the star actress in Jenny’s movie, including a truly bonkers oil wrestling match. There is a heated rivalry between Pam Grier’s bar and the one owned by Keener. The movie becomes a big central part of the season as well. Other than that, I can’t remember if anything else happened. There was too much lesbian sex going on.