All Rise...

Judge Brett Cullum has a very short gay attention...um...what was I saying?

The Charge

Short is the new pink!

The Case

Fest Selects: Best Gay Shorts, Volume 1 collects eight short films from gay and lesbian film festivals held around the world. Each one of these features won some sort of award or became an official selection at a competitive juried event. They are quirky, charming, and show a lot of talent in all areas.

The films include:

After is a fantasy piece dealing with three boys all obsessing over a neighborhood jock who plays football in the neighboring yard. It all sounds innocent enough, except that it is based on imagery from a Dennis Cooper poem.

Bedfellows features another fantasy as a one night stand extends to a lifetime journey by one hopeless romantic.

Curious Thing explores the attraction of a gay guy to a straight one, or rather to a man who is not so sure of his sexuality.

Gayby looks at a gay guy and a straight girl trying to make a baby the old fashioned way, and not getting very far.

GAYSHARKTANK.COM envisions a gay chat room where gay celebrities including drag queen Coco Peru, Big Gay Sketch Show alum Michael Serrato, and Queer Eye host Jai Rodriguez, and many more all show up to cruise and abuse each other. It's fast and funny, probably the audience winner in all of these shorts.

My Name is Love delivers a deeply serious Swedish film that packs a powerful emotional punch.

Mouse's Birthday creates a lively animated music video fairy tale about a mouse, a cockroach, and a gay guy in a thong sporting a mohawk. It features RuPaul's Drag Race star Tammy Brown, and has the music of former Go-go Jane Weidlan.

Steam is one of those esoteric No Exit homages where two guys end up in a steamroom with no door so they actually have to talk to each other.

The DVD presentation simply gives you a choice to play them all or select which one you want to see from a main menu. There are no extras, and not much to really think about outside of the shorts themselves. The transfers vary in quality according to who made them. It is amazing though how much better these short films look now than they did only a few years ago thanks to digital effects and not having to use expensive film stock. It has really freed these filmmakers to make their visions a reality. The sound is mainly stereo and English, save for the Swedish entry which offers you subtitles.

All eight of these films are interesting shorts worth being seen by a gay audience. Hopefully this disc from First Run Features will give them a chance to be seen outside of the few select big cities that have gay film festivals. It's fun to see them here, and hopefully we'll get some more volumes in the series.

The Verdict

Not guilty of being too long or too convoluted.

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