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jonathanlynch's review
funny
informative
lighthearted
reflective
medium-paced
2.5
At times, questionable. Other times, surprisingly profound observations. I have no idea how to rate this so I'm copping out and meeting somewhere in the middle! It was interesting to learn about old movies I normally would have never encountered before.
jsjammersmith's review against another edition
5.0
At some point between Nancy Reagan's butthole and the implication of a man in underwear grabbing his crotch, I knew that I had to own this book.
Boyd McDonald explores sexuality of homosexual men, by observing his own observations of men and women in film. These essays then can either be read as a collection of the queer gaze in cinema, or else a myriad of film reviews that are at times scathing and others that are downright pornographic. But what doesn't change throughout the collection is that Boyd McDonald consistently left me laughing, cracking up actually. When he describes Ronald Reagan's legs as the "proof of heterosexuality" or when he begs the reader to question who got to "smell the tights" of an actor following the end of his performance the reader is hopefully someone like me who will laugh at what can only be described a glorious bitchiness.
This collection let's the reader step back into a world of film review that is largely ignored for the more traditional "critical" sense, and they are able to see men who were watching films because they wanted to fuck, or didn't want to, a particular male actor because of his tights, because of loin cloth, because of his lipstick, because of his legs, or because of his obvious girth. McDonald's writing does not contribute much to a more traditional model of film criticism, but it does open the reader up to a world of male sexuality that existed the history of a film which has a charm all to it's own.
If nothing else, these collections are a lovely reminder that the word "butt-hole" really needs to make a comeback in film reviews.
Boyd McDonald explores sexuality of homosexual men, by observing his own observations of men and women in film. These essays then can either be read as a collection of the queer gaze in cinema, or else a myriad of film reviews that are at times scathing and others that are downright pornographic. But what doesn't change throughout the collection is that Boyd McDonald consistently left me laughing, cracking up actually. When he describes Ronald Reagan's legs as the "proof of heterosexuality" or when he begs the reader to question who got to "smell the tights" of an actor following the end of his performance the reader is hopefully someone like me who will laugh at what can only be described a glorious bitchiness.
This collection let's the reader step back into a world of film review that is largely ignored for the more traditional "critical" sense, and they are able to see men who were watching films because they wanted to fuck, or didn't want to, a particular male actor because of his tights, because of loin cloth, because of his lipstick, because of his legs, or because of his obvious girth. McDonald's writing does not contribute much to a more traditional model of film criticism, but it does open the reader up to a world of male sexuality that existed the history of a film which has a charm all to it's own.
If nothing else, these collections are a lovely reminder that the word "butt-hole" really needs to make a comeback in film reviews.
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