WATCH:  Philips Norelco’s ”I’d f*ck me” for Click & Style

As culture commentator Mark Simpson notes:

The ad is funny and memorable largely because it confronts head-on what too much advertising for men’s beauty products, particularly ones for the American market, try desperately to disavow, even as they’re exploiting them: male vanity and sensuality. The ad goes so far as to joshingly play with one of the scariest things for marketers about male narcissism: the way it can shade into male homoeroticism. An eye for male sexiness, even your own, might just turn into male sex.

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WATCH: “Where We Belong” Trailer / Kickstarter Promo

Director Wade Gasque’s film-in-progress looks at the dynamic of two gay brothers whose different personalities and life paths collide after the death of their father. The film stars Mark Strano (co-writer of the film) as the filial son and Frankie Valenti (aka gay adult film star Johnny Hazard) as the black sheep who returns to the small hometown that he fled at age eighteen. 

Compare & Contrast: ‘Maybe you shouldn’t blame an entire religion for the acts of few.’ 

(via cartoonpolitics)

GET YOURSELF BETTER KNOWLEDGED: 10 Things Men Can Do To End Violence Against Women

(via reagan-was-a-horrible-president)

WATCH: Chris Hedges - Empire of Illusion

Writer and journalist Chris Hedges’ lecture on spectacle based on his book Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle at The New School.

[via:azspot]

In this marvelous piece, journalist Chris Hedges indicts the “liberal” intellectual elite for their role in propagating a public discourse that rubber stamped the invasion of Iraq under President George W. Bush. He writes:

These apologists [among them he calls out Bill Keller, Michael Ignatieff, Nicholas Kristof, David Remnick, Fareed Zakaria, Michael Walzer, Paul Berman, Thomas Friedman,George Packer, Anne-Marie Slaughter, Kanan Makiya and the late Christopher Hitchens], however, acted not only as cheerleaders for war; in most cases they ridiculed and attempted to discredit anyone who questioned the call to invade Iraq. Kristof, in The New York Times, attacked the filmmaker Michael Moore as a conspiracy theorist and wrote that anti-war voices were only polarizing what he termed “the political cesspool.” Hitchens said that those who opposed the attack on Iraq “do not think that Saddam Hussein is a bad guy at all.” He called the typical anti-war protester a “blithering ex-flower child or ranting neo-Stalinist.” The halfhearted mea culpas by many of these courtiers a decade later always fail to mention the most pernicious and fundamental role they played in the buildup to the war—shutting down public debate. Those of us who spoke out against the war, faced with the onslaught of right-wing “patriots” and their liberal apologists, became pariahs. In my case it did not matter that I was an Arabic speaker. It did not matter that I had spent seven years in the Middle East, including months in Iraq, as a foreign correspondent. It did not matter that I knew the instrument of war. The critique that I and other opponents of war delivered, no matter how well grounded in fact and experience, turned us into objects of scorn by a liberal elite that cravenly wanted to demonstrate its own “patriotism” and “realism” about national security. The liberal class fueled a rabid, irrational hatred of all war critics. Many of us received death threats and lost our jobs, for me one at The New York Times. These liberal warmongers, 10 years later, remain both clueless about their moral bankruptcy and cloyingly sanctimonious. They have the blood of hundreds of thousands of innocents on their hands.

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WATCH: A Gay Gang Member Struggles To Hide His Sexuality in Exclusive My Brother the Devil Trailer

Egyptian Welsh filmmaker Sally El Hosaini’s debut feature film, My Brother the Devil, follows Mo, a fourteen-year-old Egyptian immigrant growing up in East London who enters the world of his older brother Rash’s gang, notions of acceptance and masculinity are questioned. While Mo struggles to maintain the courage to be a part of gang life, the trailer reveals that Rash is facing his own demons—that of his sexuality. 

My Brother the Devil won Best Cinematography at Sundance, Best European Film at Berlinale, Best Newcomer at BFI London and the Grand Jury Award at LA Outfest. My Brother the Devil stars James Floyd, Fady Elsayed, and Saïd Taghmaoui will have an upcoming North American release by 108 Media and Paladin.

via: Indiewire

Guy Davidi, the Academy Award-nominated co-director of 5 Broken Cameras, challenges us (the “global left”) to disrupt the political symbols and discourses that filter us from the truth. He writes:

Political language alone can’t advance this discussion beyond certain loops. What happens when political symbols face the test of a complex reality? Or when your relationship to a work of art, and to the world, is diminished in order to maintain a certain idealized image? The stereotypes that conservative circles cultivate are under constant criticism by the left, but who will challenge the “anti-stereotypes” the global left creates in response? We’ve been stuck in this cyclical discourse for decades, and these kind of political correct filters stifle our ability to communicate.

In this maze of constant restereotyping, everything that does not fit the political language is dismissed, so I find myself left with many questions: What is the role of the ego in political relations? What is the true function of anger and its capacity for change? Can social and political responsibility grow from guilt? How does suffering become a political currency? Can an emphasis on struggle and resistance distract us from new inventive approaches to change? 

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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-20103483

America’s cinematic products explored as an “soft power” cultural influence in China. How hypocritical Hollywood alters its products for the burgeoning middle-class Chinese consumer, while China’s censorship policies stifle film & media production, hampers cultural dissemination domestically, and harms potential cultural ambassadorship abroad.

https://video.pbs.org/video/2289501021/