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Jackson & Children See Billy Elliot in UK
This is Michael Jackson's first visit to the UK since he was cleared of child abuse charges.
He was treated a crowd of fans & did a dance routine on the roof of his 4x4 outside London's Powerhouse studios. Michael looked in good health in contrast to the exhausted figure who emerged from Santa Maria Court house in June. 2 of his three children - Prince Michael Jackson II, three, & Paris, seven, also attended the show. They both had their faces covered.
Jackson, arrived at the Victoria Theatre 15 minutes late for the start of Billy Elliot (Is he ever on-time for anything?) which has a storyline about a young ballet dancer's friendship with a crossdressing schoolmate.
Inside the theatre, Gary Dean, 43, from Ramsgate, Kent, sat three rows in front of Jackson during the show. He said: "We knew at the interval that he was there and there was some clapping.
Jackson is in London to record a charity song, From The Bottom Of My Heart for victims of Hurricane Katrina.
Rocky Horror Show takes the stage
Sea to Sky Entertainment brings the outrageous cult classic Rocky Horror Show to the area�s stages just in time for Halloween.
The stage version of the musical was written by Richard O�Brien, who wrote the book, screenplay, all the music and even played the role of Riff Raff in the movie. The story centres around Brad and Janet, a couple who stumble upon the weird castle of Dr. Frank-N-Furter, a crossdressing mad-scientist from the planet Transexual. The show�s director/producer, Adriane Polo, said the season was a big factor in choosing which play to stage. �It was because of the time of year,� she said. �We wanted to do something for fall. We looked at Christmas shows, and there were already shows planned, so we looked at Halloween.�
Polo said she expects the show to be popular. �It is a cult classic,� she said. �It hasn�t been done in the area for a while and it is just such a fun play to do.�
There are a couple of differences between the movie and stage production though, she warned. Those expecting to bring toast, newspapers and water guns to use in the infamous audience participation which takes place at most screenings of the movie, will be disappointed. �There is really no audience participation in the play, other than the end where they can get up and dance,� she said.
Filling in the fishnet stockings of Frank-N-Furter for the production is Richard Trann, who said he jumped at the chance to play a role from one of his favourite movies.
The Blossoming Of Maximo (Auraeus Solito)
ImagineNative screens the beguiling Philippine feature The Blossoming Of Maximo Oliveros by director Kanakan Balintagos (aka Auraeus Solito; his experimental feature Basal Banar got an honourable mention at last year's fest). The film is enjoying massive success, both at home and abroad, including being named best first fiction feature at the Montreal World Film Festival.
The film is about Maxi, an extremely femme 12-year-old boy who acts as little Suzie homemaker for his loving family, older brothers Boy and Bogs and his widower father Paco, who eke out a living in a Manila slum through petty thievery and racketeering. The lithe, sashaying Maxi unwittingly puts his family in danger when he falls in love with a straight, guileless young cop from the provinces named Victor. Soon a tough new police chief launches a brutal crackdown on illicit activity in the neighbourhood.
While, ultimately, a tragic tale of a boy torn between desire and family, the film is punctuated with humour and love. There is an unforgettable scene where Maxi and his friends reenact a Miss Universe pageant. Through dynamic visuals, Balintagos brings the neighbourhood and its memorable characters to life with energy and authenticity, which is in no doubt due to shooting it in the community where the director grew up. "I added some little details to the script of what growing up homosexual in the slums was like," says Balintagos. "(The extras) are my childhood friends and my mother's friends.... We were pretty close so when I started doing the film in the community everybody was just so cooperative. It was just like a tribe.
Based on a script by Michiko Yamamoto, the project reached Balintagos at a propitious moment. "I was disillusioned with the Philippines," says Balintagos, a member of the Palaw'an tribe. "Indigenous peoples' rights were not moving. We were in the midst of an ancestral domain claim and nothing was happening. And then suddenly this film came."
Toronto International Film Festival
The festival, which took place earlier this month, seemed gayer than ever. The two most talked about films were gay masterpieces, the heart-rending cowboy love story �Brokeback Mountain� and the dark saga about a gay writer titled �Capote.�
Festival programmers scheduled all three major queer events � the third being the re-mastered 1972 television show, �Liza with a Z� � on the same sunny afternoon. So, I went to see �Liza,� because the diva herself was present for the screening. She invited the packed festival crowd to journey back to the night she shot the show before a New York audience in 1972. By the end, the mostly male participants were in tears, and nearly ripping the chairs out of the Elgin Theater and throwing them up in the air, with shouts of �We Love You, Liza!�
In the delightful Q&A that followed, Liza revealed that the show�s director/choreographer Bob Fosse was pigeon-toed, �which is why we had to stand like that and dance like that.� Minnelli then stood up to demonstrate. �This is why I now have two busted hips and one false knee,� she quipped.
Across town, another audience was also reduced to tears by a different debut. �Brokeback Mountain� was certainly the best film at the festival. This love story between two seemingly straight cowboys is a mainstream Hollywood film. But you�ll have to wait until December to see it in the United States.
Another great film is the darker biopic �Capote.� Philip Seymour Hoffman plays the noted gay writer, Truman Capote. The film takes on the daunting task of revealing Capote as he writes the world�s first �non-fiction novel,� which became his masterpiece, �In Cold Blood.� �Capote� highlights an already well-known story. What isn�t so widely reported, however, is that the author fell in love with Perry Smith, one of the killers he was profiling for the New Yorker. Capote became obsessed with the death-row murderer and helped him get a better lawyer, which resulted in Smith�s case being appealed for four years. It also made it impossible for Capote to finish his novel, because there was no grand finale. As a result, viewers might find themselves facing the moral dilemma of caring for Perry, yet also wanting him executed.
Other films screened in Toronto recently included �Fifty Ways of Saying Fabulous,� a joyous coming-of-age story from New Zealand. �Pick Up the Mic� a documentary about gay rappers, was as gritty and hard-edged as �Fabulous� was sweet.
Less successful was the Icelandic soccer comedy, �Eleven Men Out,� about a famous Reykjavik sports figure�s coming out to very little dramatic effect. �The Masseur,� a Filipino film, made erotic massage and teenage male prostitution look as interesting as kneading dough in a pizzeria. Then there was Neil (�The Crying Game�) Jordan�s latest addition to tranny classics, �Breakfast on Pluto.� It highlights the life and hard times of an Irish crossdresser, St. Kitten, and her search for her birth mother; the character�s father was a Catholic priest (Liam Neeson).
Gemma Ward
Gemma Ward was the It girl of Paris Fashion Week, appearing on the cover and inside a special Time magazine style and design issue. The 17-year-old from Perth had a new look for the photo shoot reminiscent of the 1960s model Twiggy... plenty of kohl and artfully painted-on lashes. At the Chanel show, Ward was the last model out, striding down the runway in a camellia-adorned chiffon dress. On the final day, the Bambi-like beauty appeared for YSL and Louis Vuitton. Ward's extraordinary success at such a young age must put pressure on her family and makes one wonder what will become of her in 10 years. None of the runway models in Paris looked older than 18.
Designer John Galliano made a point about fashion and reality with models that didn't look like teenage Amazons with eating disorders. Instead, there were dwarves, very fat women, crossdressers and models with tattoos covering their bodies, all wearing Galliano creations. Not everyone was amused or touched.
The Wedding Dress Guy
Larry Star is a funny guy. He makes his friends laugh, says inappropriate things at work and loves writing. Now he's got a new book, a tongue-in-cheek but oddly poignant relationship advice book, "Bitter, Party of One ... Your Table is Ready," from the guy who should least be giving it.
His relationship advice book, "Bitter, Party of One ... Your Table is Ready," which is being sold for $17.95 by various online booksellers.
Larry Star, a 43-year-old Everett resident, is "The Wedding Dress Guy."
He's the one who tried to sell his ex-wife's wedding dress on eBay last year "hoping to get enough money for maybe a couple of Mariners tickets and some beer."
The date, April 23, 2004, probably sticks in his memory better than his old anniversary. That was the day Star decided to have a little fun with the dress he found in his attic a couple of years after his divorce.
He put it on, took some photos of himself in it and posted the dress on eBay. It started as a silly gag to get a chuckle out of his buddies, but the post went up on a Friday and the e-mails started flooding his inbox by Monday. "It wasn't calculated, not at all," Star said. "Everybody thinks I'm this marketing genius. I'm just a freakin' idiot. "I basically wanted to make my friends laugh. I put the dress on (for pictures), put the derisively funny ad copy to it and basically e-mailed my friends, saying, 'Hey, look what I did.'"
What followed was a surreal roller coaster of publicity and other odd events, including several marriage proposals from women in the United States and beyond. Star appeared on NBC's "The Today Show," cable news shows, newspapers and magazines as varied as People, the New York Daily News and Crossdressers Digest.
And for all the notoriety and millions of hits that Star's eBay listing tallied, he hasn't heard a word from his ex-wife. "I don't even know where she is," he said. Not that he's looking.
For the record, Star cross-dresses only when he's posing for pictures and making appearances in the infamous flowing white gown. It originally had been "worn once, by mistake," Star has said, but the past year and a half has sent the size 12 gown on a journey that no one saw coming. The wave of publicity and appearances has forced Star to dress up "two, three thousand times," he said. From spots on NBC's "The Today Show" to the eBay Live convention in New Orleans last year, Star has become the most famous man wearing a wedding dress since Dennis Rodman.
"I wore it in New Orleans and ... this was just crazy to me," Star said. "I'm walking down Bourbon Street with the dress, which isn't that crazy in New Orleans, but it was the eBay convention so they recognized me. "So I'm there with the cigar and people are just flocking around me, taking pictures, screaming, hooting and hollering. Men, women, everybody. You'd swear I just came out of the space shuttle, or I was one of the Beatles."
The irony is that the dress never sold because the high bidder flaked, which means that Star ultimately didn't even get the money for the Mariners tickets and beer that he was looking for.
"It's kind of like a silver lining," said Star, who wears the dress at virtually every appearance he makes. "I had a book signing in Marysville (recently), and people came just to see the dress.
I Am My Own Wife
Kevin Bergen of Folsom has played varied roles -- but none as challenging as his role of a curious playwright in the Wilma Theatre�s current production. It�s the Philadelphia premiere of a play titled "I Am My Own Wife," which in 2004 racked up four coveted awards -- a Pulitzer Prize for drama, plus the Tony for Best Play, a Drama Desk and Critics Circleaward.
"I Am My Own Wife" follows a young American playwright�s attempt to write a play about Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, a transvestite who managed to survive both Hitler�s Gestapo and the Stasi, the EastGerman secret police. Originally written by playwright Doug Wright for just one actor, the Wilma version has recast it for two actors.
The playwright was an artist-in-residence at the Wilma in 2001. During that time, he did a workshop production of "I Am My Own Wife," which went on to become a full production and win acclaim in New York.
The play, which continues through Oct. 23, is based on the real life account of Mahlsdorf, an East Berlin transvestite who managed to survive Nazi persecution and Communist Germany.
Transvestite runs for election
HARIPUR: Pervez Akhtar Tanoli, also known as Baby, is a candidate with a difference in Pakistan's district council elections today. He's a transvestite who rails against corruption and vows to help the poor. Tanoli, or Baby as he is known, is running for a seat on a council in a sub-district of Haripur, 65km northwest of the capital, Islamabad.
"The constituents are my family," Baby said in an interview yesterday. "I have nobody else. My family abandoned me because I am a transvestite."
The former wedding dancer in his mid-thirties is not a new face in local politics. He has been councillor for the town of Haripur North since 2002, winning a seat with a record number of votes. "People have voted for me to work for their benefit, not to dance at weddings," he says. "The poor have suffered at the hand of politicians, because they put the tax money which is meant for development in their own pockets. I don't do that and people know this. They know I only work for the poor."
Unlike in some Asian countries, transvestites, known as Hijra in Urdu, are not generally accepted in predominantly Muslim Pakistan. They are feared for their supposed ability to cast bad spells, or pitied as outcast. Many transvestites leave their families or are rejected and abandoned around the age of puberty. Many become dancers or drift into homosexual prostitution and begging.
Baby, whose family have shunned him, says he rejects homosexual behaviour and is a devout Muslim who prays five times a day. Dressed in a soft pink shalwar kameez, the ubiquitous Pakistani baggy shirt and trousers worn by both men and women, Baby wears earrings and a nose stud. His long black hair is held back with a light blue hair clip. Touches of makeup round the eyes and red lipstick complete the picture of an elegant woman. But it is corruption and poverty that fire him, not sexual politics.
Baby is a supporter of President Pervez Musharraf, the army chief who seized power in a bloodless coup in 1999, and says army rule is good for Pakistan. "Levels of corruption have decreased," he says. "The soldier is the guard of the nation." The military "oppose corruption, that's why they are liked," he adds.
Baby is optimistic about winning a seat in today's vote, saying many people have voiced their support. His friend, Haji Abdul Manan Tanoli, has come all the way from Karachi in Pakistan's far south to help with Baby's campaign. "He has no vested interests. He has no sons, no daughters, and no other family members. Whenever he gets money he only invests it in the poor people," his friend said.
Transvestite fights off purse snatchers
Four snatch thieves picked the wrong victim when they tried to grab the handbag of a transvestite, who yelled so loudly that nearby policemen heard the scream and eventually nabbed three of them.
�The victim put up a fierce fight and shouted for help. This drew the attention of two policemen on crime prevention rounds in the area,� said Ipoh OCPD Asst Comm Che Sab Hanafiah. The policemen then sought help from the nearby Pekan Baru police station and the police headquarters. �Nine policemen in three cars chased the perpetrators to D.R. Seenivasagam Park, about 4km from the scene of the incident, where three of the suspects were arrested,� he said, adding that the fourth man escaped on foot.
Youth director arrested for paying transvetite for sex
ALBUQUERQUE -- Police say the director of Youth Development Incorporated, a non-profit group that helps New Mexico kids, was caught paying a transvestite prostitute for a sex act. Undercover Vice Detectives say they saw Chavez pick-up a prostitute along Central Avenue at 5:30 p.m. last Thursday. Police say they followed him a few blocks and then caught him in the act.
YDI has been around for decades, providing youth services including head start programs, counseling, and learning labs. Currently the Senior Vice President, Chavez has been active in youth development programs for years.
"What might be surprising, or not surprising, is it isn't a stereo-typical person that utilizes prostitution," says APD Sgt. John Walsh. According to police, on undercover officers watched as Chavez�s gold-painted car picked up a known prostitute near Montclaire and central. Detectives followed the car into a nearby alley and made the discovery. "What they discovered is the driver of motor vehicle was being engaged in a sexual act with the individual they just picked-up," says Walsh.
Police arrested Chavez for patronizing a prostitute after they say he admitted offering $10 for the sex act. Lorenzo Lucero, a man who was dressed as a woman, was arrested for prostitution. "You can have transvestites, and many times the person that is requesting sex for money doesn't have any idea what they're getting," says Walsh.
Lucero told police Chavez had originally offered him $30 for sex, but Lucero turned it down because he claimed Chavez had paid him $30 on a previous occasion.
Transvestite, Axis, Starts Slimming Campaign in Bulgaria
Bulgaria announced the start of a national weight-loss campaign, led by popular transvestite Azis. "Let's Slim Together for Christmas" will encourage plump people to take care of their bodies prior to the excessive holiday food feasts. Their inspiration should be the eccentric music artist, who has undergone several liposuctions and still remained overweight. Azis also complained that the recovery period after slimming surgeries was extremely painful. Actually the pop-folk performer has never appeared embarrassed of his well-rounded figure. His music videos and photo sessions often show him in ornate short dresses and stockings or mini shorts and tights tops. The "Let's Slim Together" move has also been supported by film icon Anya Pencheva, musicians Iskren Petsov and Hilda
Beautiful Boxer
Director: Ekachai Uekrongtham (Thailand/ 2004)
�He fights like a man so he can become a woman,� says the tag-line of this film based on the true story of a famous transvestite kickboxer, Parinya Charoenphol, from Thailand.
Festival circuit: Five international festivals, including San Sebastian Film Festival 2004 and Los Angeles Outfest 2004.
Bounty bazaar: Five international awards including awards for Best Film at the Milan and Toronto International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival.
Breakfast on Pluto
Release Date: November 18, 2005
Starring: Cillian Murphy, Liam Neeson, Stephen Rea, Brendan Gleeson, Gavin Friday
Directed by: Neil Jordan
Director Neil Jordan (The Crying Game) revisits themes of sexual identity and Irish-English strife in this Candide-inspired story, which stars Red Eye�s Cillian Murphy (alongside countrymen Liam Neeson and Stephen Rea) as an Irish transvestite who floats his way though �70s London. The
Bottom Line: The red-hot Murphy�s performance should be worth the price of admission. (Sony Pictures Classics)
Grayson Perry
British editors just cannot get enough of contemporary artists. After Tracey Emin�s column in The Independent, The Times has now secured the weekly musings of the �transvestite potter� and Turner-Prize winner Grayson Perry. Whereas Ms Emin�s chronicled her troubled sex life and the antics of her pet cat, Perry�s first missive was philosophical. He called for a return to �slow art�, exhorting artists to desist from �churning out art like some cultural ice machine� for the benefit of greedy gallerists. His ideal is the slow-brushed Vermeer, who only ever painted 40 works in his 50-year career. Will Perry now be postponing his next show? �Grayson Perry: the charms of Lincolnshire� is set to open in 2006 at the Usher Gallery, Lincoln.
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