Before long I will have completed viewing over 60 screeners for movies made in 2010 that I received as a member of NY Film Critics Online. Some I have written full reviews of (“Last Train Home”); others I plan to deal with in a “consumers guide” that will include brief commentaries on some very good films (“Hereafter”) as well as some that are dreadful.
Having seen one of the most dreadful last night—“The Extra Man”—I intend to deal with it in some length since its about male prostitution after a fashion and lends itself to a comparison with "Hung", a far more successful treatment of the same subject. Kevin Kline plays Henry Harrison, either an asexual man or a repressed homosexual—it is not articulated, who has a job as a “walker”. He escorts very old women, widowers most often, to social functions in the same manner that Jerry Zipkin accompanied Nancy Reagan. While watching this mess of a film, a disappointment from the same team who made “American Splendor”, it occurred to me how it suffered in comparison to “Hung”, the HBO TV series that stars Thomas Jane as Ray Drecker, a Detroit high school baseball coach who turns to male prostitution to make ends meet. It reminded me that some of the best writing in popular culture today is done within television, and especially HBO. full: http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2011/04/19/the-extra-man-hung/ _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
