The GLBT film festival continues Sunday as does the battles for best movies.
Start your day off with "Spork," perhaps one of the most fun and offbeat movies in the entire Frameline festival. Mix a little "Napoleon Dynamite" with a dash of "Mean Girls," and you know the formula of this really cute movie about a 13-year-old hermaphrodite living the white trailer park life while trying to blend into her middle school.
Add a dance contest and an extremely stereotypical cool black best friend named Toostie Roll and several other offbeat characters and you'll fall for "Spork" the same way I did. Director JB Ghuman Jr. has a promising career ahead behind the camera. Does John Waters have another protege in the works? Last year we had Joshua Grannell's "All About Evil," and now we have Ghuman's "Spork" - both likely would make Waters proud.
"Spork" plays at the Castro at 1pm on Sunday.
It's a shame that "Spork" is so good because it makes it easy to pass on the short film collection called "Coming Out," playing at the Roxie Theatre Sunday at 1:15pm.
This collection of seven short international films remind us all about when we came out. Most effective in the lot is "One on One" in which two high school basketball players decide to take to come out in a dance class. I could have seen an entire feature length film on these two charming characters - are you listening director Luis Fernando Midence?
"10,000 Hearts" is also a charming little story of a very shy boy bullied by his sister and helped from a sexy upperclassman and "Loop Planes" has a really good plot twist.
On the opposite end of the spectrum is "Change," a very effective tale of a young black man coming out as Obama is getting elected and Prop. 8 passes. This too could easily be a feature length film as it hits all the right notes. This seems to be doing well on the short film circuit so if you don't see it now, seek it out.
Sunday night ends with a true battle. The dramatic "Absent" from Argentina about a gay young man who has desires on his teacher and tries to act on them one night or Australia's "Hannah and the Hasbian" about lesbians who break up because one of them goes straight.
While "Absent" has several great scenes and the story unfolds nicely, it's a bit undercooked with too many unanswered questions so I would end my Sunday in the lighter fare of "Hannah."
What seems like a story full of melodrama, writer/director Gordon Napier has created a fresh often riotous story of a pair of women breaking up, intercut with scenes of one the first got together. Emily O'Brien-Brown as Hannah is a great physical comedian and easily get you wrapped up in her world as she comes to grips when her partner, played by Matylda Buczko, breaks up with her as she wants to be with man (and quickly labeled by Hannah as a hasbian - a former lesbian). While both women bring so much to the table and have great chemistry, the movie is stolen by Mahalia Brown as their acid-tongued, quick witted roommate.
All worthwhile actresses, it's really Napier we need to keep our eye on. Discovered on the Australian version of "Project Greenlight" about five years ago and since has written and directed for Australian TV, he finally come more into the spotlight with this fresh and fun film. Now I will seek out movies associated with the name Gordon Napier and you should too.
"Hannah" plays Sunday night at 9pm at the Roxie Theatre.
So enjoy your Sunday. More information and tickets at www.frameline.org.
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