Eyes Wide Open (2009) rating: 7/10

The director is straight, the writer is female, and the story is about a married ultra-Orthodox Jewish father and butcher falling for a young man studying in yeshiva. (Only after reading a recent NYT article did I realize that some men are paid to just study the Torah in Israel.)

The story is that both are closeted, but the proclivities of the young man are a spreading rumor in this very conservative community.

Some social commentary in the film interview with the director is that in Israel the ultra-Orthodox are having many babies while the secular Jews are having few. In the future will Israel become more extremely conservative? This perhaps does not bode well for gays even though thankfully they do have civil marriage in Israel today.

Brotherhood (2009) rating: 7/10

The Danish neo-Nazi thugs aren't really all that violent. They don't kill anyone. They just intimidate. On gay bashings, they don't want to be found to be responsible because that would be really bad publicity and might cause an over-reaction.

The story is quite implausible on two major counts: (1) the ex-army gay guy decides to join the neo-Nazis after he denounced their motivations to their face, and (2) one of the neo-Nazis sergeants is a closeted gay guy who is actively involved in luring and bashing young gay guys (after first telling them they are beautiful). Talk about hypocritical! Or are we really to believe he is filled with self-hatred? If one is willing to suspend disbelief of these two key points, the movie can be interesting to watch.

Is it me, or are late 2000 decade gay themed movies finally unapologetic-ally explicit about sex scenes so as to be comparable to straight Hollywood sex scenes? I must say this is a welcome change.

And I didn't know that the Danish translation for f**king (the expletive, not the act) is actually "f**king". (The act seems to be a different word.) It's almost as if the Danes prefer to curse in English.

The String (2009) rating: 7/10

Good casting: Salim Kechiouche is medium height, dark and handsome playing Bilal, the love interest of a mixed French Tunisian protoganist named Malik. He basically makes the movie worthwhile. This otherwise somewhat banal coming out movie lacks huge conflicts. Bilal is an illustrator/cartoonist, and the film includes some fairly explicit drawings however.

Pedro (2008) rating: 8/10

President Clinton speaks at the intro of the film about Pedro Zamora. A reality show re-enacted, dramatized and expanded on might seem superfluous, but the movie provides a more holistic view of Pedro's life and impact. Agreeing to be on MTV's Real World, Pedro became the face of someone real who America knew was gay and HIV positive. His relationship with Sean Sasser was nominated as 'favorite love story' on MTV. I was in college in 1993 and not really having time to see the Real World, but now after viewing the 3 included episodes, I can see how it made a difference.

Some IMDB reviewers had higher expectations and down-rated the movie. I think perhaps they wished there was more footage of the charismatic Pedro himself rather than an actor playing him. In the extras, we do get to see Pedro's Real World audition tape submission.

Gay, Straight, and the Reason Why: The Science of Sexual Orientation by Simon LeVay; rating: 8/10

Taking a systematic approach of a scientist, LeVay captures all the latest findings in the area of how human (and animal) sexual orientation comes to be. In the process there are a lot of interesting lines of reasoning covered, many discounted and a few very suggestive. LeVay himself jumped into the controversy many years ago with his study of the size of INAH3 in brains of gay males being the same size as women (smaller than straight males) [Of course leading to the question of how/why?].

I believe it can be said that much remains a mystery. But if I might try to write my own summary of the current state, it might be something like this: (1) genetic studies of identical and dizygotic ("fraternal") twins show that homosexuality might be around 30-50% genetically determined, and (2) a lot of studies point to hormones in the womb contributing possibly to homosexuality. LeVay also tries to uncover possible reasons for the genetics and why it may not be selected out of the genome.

There are some interesting little tidbits in the book, such as some studies have found that the torsos of gay men are longer relative to their legs. (Someone could do a larger, more definitive online survey of jean inseams versus height.)

I guess overall, I found the information interesting and useful. I do think that all the science is just background for the political questions which may mainly not hinge on the biological mechanism behind homosexuality and its existence. Many people do not believe in science and so whether or not it occurs as a byproduct of an evolutionary purpose has no bearing on their opposition to it.

What's morally wrong with homosexuality? (2007) rating: 7/10

Video taken of John Corvino's (slightly dated 2007) talk at Wayne State University discusses reasoning people give to say that homosexuality is wrong. Of course, he debunks all of the common reasoning. Not "natural": okay, it may be relatively rare, that doesn't mean it's unnatural; some animals are gay; with the same reasoning, why isn't there a campaign against Diet Coke. Parts don't fit: yes, they do. Etc, etc. He's a little full of himself, but still funny. He does well in the Q&A also.