Arts & Entertainment
GLAAD Media Awards 2018 releases nominees
Netflix raked in the highest number of nominations for TV shows
(‘Call Me By Your Name.’ Screenshot via YouTube.)
The 29th annual GLAAD Media Awards announced its 2018 nominees at the Sundance Film Festival on Friday via Trace Lysette (“Transparent”) and Wilson Cruz (“Star Trek: Discovery”).
Netflix raked in the most nominations for television with seven nominations. ABC, CBS and NBC came in at a close second with six nominations. This was also the first time the category Outstanding Kids & Family Programming was introduced which recognizes “Andi Mack,” and “Doc McStuffins,” among others, for their LGBT inclusion.
Critically-acclaimed films “Call Me By Your Name,” “Lady Bird” and “The Shape of Water” also scored nominations.
For music, Miley Cyrus, Sam Smith, Halsey and Kesha all earned nominations for Outstanding Music Artist.
Special recognition was also given to the animated short film “In a Heartbeat,” written and directed by Esteban Bravo and Beth David, as well as Jay-Z’s track “Smile,” about his mother’s coming out, from his album “4:44.”
Check out the full list of nominees below.
OUTSTANDING FILM – WIDE RELEASE
“Battle of the Sexes” (Fox Searchlight)
“Call Me by Your Name” (Sony Pictures Classics)
“Lady Bird” (A24)
“Professor Marston and the Wonder Women” (Annapurna Pictures)
“The Shape of Water” (Fox Searchlight)
OUTSTANDING FILM – LIMITED RELEASE
“BPM” (The Orchard)
“A Fantastic Woman” (Sony Pictures Classics)
“God’s Own Country” (Samuel Goldwyn Films/Orion Pictures)
“Thelma” (The Orchard)
“The Wound” (Kino Lorber)
OUTSTANDING COMEDY SERIES
“The Bold Type” (Freeform)
“Brooklyn Nine-Nine” (FOX)
“Crazy Ex-Girlfriend” (The CW)
“Modern Family” (ABC)
“One Day at a Time” (Netflix)
“One Mississippi” (Amazon)
“Superstore” (NBC)
“Survivor’s Remorse” (Starz)
“Transparent” (Amazon)
“Will & Grace” (NBC)
OUTSTANDING DRAMA SERIES
“Billions” (Showtime)
“Doubt” (CBS)
“The Handmaid’s Tale” (Hulu)
“Nashville” (CMT)
“Sense8” (Netflix)
“Shadowhunters” (Freeform)
“Star” (FOX)
“Star Trek: Discovery” (CBS All Access)
“This Is Us” (NBC)
“Wynonna Earp” (Syfy)
OUTSTANDING INDIVIDUAL EPISODE (in a series without a regular LGBTQ character)
“Chapter 8”, “Legion” (FX)
“Grace”, “Pure Genius” (CBS)
“Lady Cha Cha”, “Easy” (Netflix)
“The Missionaries”, “Room 104” (HBO)
“Thanksgiving”, “Master of None” (Netflix)
OUTSTANDING TV MOVIE OR LIMITED SERIES
“American Horror Story: Cult” (FX)
“Feud: Bette and Joan” (FX)
“Godless” (Netflix)
“Queers” (BBC America)
“When We Rise” (ABC)
OUTSTANDING KIDS & FAMILY PROGRAMMING
“Andi Mack” (Disney Channel)
“Chosen Family”, “Danger & Eggs” (Amazon)
“The Emergency Plan”, “Doc McStuffins” (Disney Channel)
“The Loud House” (Nickelodeon)
“Steven Universe” (Cartoon Network)
OUTSTANDING DOCUMENTARY
“Chavela” (Music Box Films)
“Gender Revolution: A Journey with Katie Couric” (National Geographic)
“Kiki” (Sundance Selects)
“Real Boy”- “Independent Lens” (PBS)
“This is Everything: Gigi Gorgeous” (YouTube Red)
OUTSTANDING REALITY PROGRAM
“Gaycation with Ellen Page” (Viceland)
“I Am Jazz” (TLC)
“RuPaul’s Drag Race” (VH1)
“Survivor: Game Changers” (CBS)
“The Voice” (NBC)
OUTSTANDING MUSIC ARTIST
Miley Cyrus, “Younger Now” (RCA Records)
Halsey, “Hopeless Fountain Kingdom” (Astralwerks Records)
Honey Dijon, “The Best of Both Worlds” (Classic Music Company)
Kehlani, “SweetSexySavage” (TSNMI/Atlantic Records)
Kelela, “Take Me Apart” (Warp Records)
Kesha, “Rainbow” (Kemosabe/RCA Records)
Perfume Genius, “No Shape” (Matador Records)
Sam Smith, “The Thrill of It All” (Capitol Records)
St. Vincent, “MASSEDUCTION” (Loma Vista Recordings)
Wrabel, “We Could Be Beautiful” (Epic/Sony Records)
OUTSTANDING COMIC BOOK
“America,” written by Gabby Rivera (Marvel Comics)
“The Backstagers,” written by James Tynion IV (BOOM! Studios)
“Batwoman,” written by Marguerite Bennett, James Tynion IV (DC Comics)
“Black Panther: World of Wakanda,” written by Roxane Gay, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Yona Harvey, Rembert “Browne” (Marvel Comics)
“Deadman: Dark Mansion of Forbidden Love,” written by Sarah Vaughn (DC Comics)
“Goldie Vance,” written by Hope Larson, Jackie Ball (BOOM! Studios)
“Iceman,” written by Sina Grace (Marvel Comics)
“Lumberjanes,” written by Kat Leyh, Shannon Watters (BOOM! Studios)
“Quantum Teens are Go,” written by Magdalene Visaggio (Black Mask Comics)
“The Woods,” written by James Tynion IV (BOOM! Studios)
OUTSTANDING DAILY DRAMA
“The Bold and The Beautiful” (CBS)
“Days of Our Lives” (NBC)
“The Young & the Restless” (CBS)
OUTSTANDING TALK SHOW EPISODE
“Australia Marriage Equality”, “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver” (HBO)
“Danica Roem”, “The Opposition with Jordan Klepper” (Comedy Central)
“Laila and Logan Ireland, Transgender Military Couple”, “The Ellen DeGeneres Show” (syndicated)
“Laverne Cox and Gavin Grimm”, “The View” (ABC)
“Trans Veterans React to Ban”, “The Daily Show with Trevor Noah” (Comedy Central)
OUTSTANDING TV JOURNALISM – NEWSMAGAZINE
“A Boy Named Lucas”, “20/20” (ABC)
“China Queer”, “The Naked Truth” (Fusion)
“Gay Purge?”, “Nightline” (ABC)
“The Pulse of Orlando: Terror at the Nightclub”, “Anderson Cooper 360” (CNN)
“Trans Youth”, “VICE on HBO” (HBO)
OUTSTANDING TV JOURNALISM SEGMENT
“The Abolitionists Face the Love Army” KAPP-KVEW Local News (KAPP-35/KVEW-42 [Tri Cities/Yakima, Wash.])
“DJ Zeke Thomas Goes Public”, “Good Morning America” (ABC)
“Murders Raise Alarm for Transgender Community”, “NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt” (NBC)
“Transgender Murders in Louisiana Part of Disturbing Trend”, “CBS Evening News” (CBS)
“Transgender Rights under Fire in Trump Era”, “AM Joy” (MSNBC)
OUTSTANDING NEWSPAPER ARTICLE
“Fearfully and Wonderfully Made: The Journey of a Transgender Man” by Lauren McGaughy (The Dallas Morning News)
“Lesbian College Coaches Still Face Difficult Atmosphere to Come Out” by Shannon Ryan (Chicago Tribune)
“Pulse Victims’ Families in Puerto Rico: ‘We Have to Cry Alone'” by Jennifer A. Marcial Ocasio (Orlando Sentinel)
“Revised Guidance on HIV Proves Life-Transforming” by Lenny Bernstein (The Washington Post)
“The Silent Epidemic: Black Gay Men and HIV” [series] (The Atlanta Journal-Constitution)
OUTSTANDING MAGAZINE ARTICLE
“America’s Hidden H.I.V. Epidemic” by Linda Villarosa (The New York Times Magazine)
“Beyond ‘He’ or ‘She’: The Changing Meaning of Gender and Sexuality” by Katy Steinmetz (Time)
“Forbidden Lives: The Gay Men Who Fled Chechnya’s Purge” by Masha Gessen (The New Yorker)
“Free Radical” by Nathan Heller (Vogue)
“Trans, Teen, and Homeless” by Laura Rena Murray (Rolling Stone)
OUTSTANDING MAGAZINE OVERALL COVERAGE
The Advocate
Billboard
People
Teen Vogue
Time
OUTSTANDING DIGITAL JOURNALISM ARTICLE
“The Ballad of Bobby Brooks, the First Gay Student-Body President of Texas A&M” by Lauren Larson (GQ.com)
“For Those We Lost and Those Who Survived: The Pulse Massacre One Year Later” by James Michael Nichols (HuffPost Queer Voices)
“‘I Am a Girl Now,’ Sage Smith Wrote. Then She Went Missing.” by Emma Eisenberg (Splinter)
“Meet the Transgender Student Who Fought Discrimination at His Maryland High School (and Won)” by Nico Lang (INTO)
“Why Bisexual Men Are Still Fighting to Convince Us They Exist” by Samantha Allen (Splinter)
OUTSTANDING DIGITAL JOURNALISM – MULTIMEDIA
“Former Patriots and Chiefs Tackle Ryan O’Callaghan Comes Out as Gay” by Cyd Zeigler (Outsports/SB Nation)
“Made to Model: Trans Beauty in Fashion” (LogoTV.com)
“‘This Is How We Win’: Inside Danica Roem’s Historic Victory” by Diana Tourjée (Broadly.Vice.com)
“Transgender Day of Remembrance” by Saeed Jones (AM to DM, BuzzFeed News)
“US Travel Ban Leaves LGBT Refugees in Limbo” by Nina dos Santos (CNN.com)
OUTSTANDING BLOG
Autostraddle
Gays With Kids
My Fabulous Disease
Pittsburgh Lesbian Correspondents
Transgriot
OUTSTANDING SCRIPTED TELEVISION SERIES
“Las chicas del cable” (Netflix)
“La doble vida de Estela Carrillo” (Univision)
“Ingobernable” (Netflix)
OUTSTANDING TV JOURNALISM – NEWSMAGAZINE (Spanish Language)
“Así viven los estudiantes transgénero después de que Trump anulara la ley de baños de Obama para escuela públicas” , “Primer Impacto” (Univision)
“Pulse, huellas de la masacre”, “Docufilms” (CNN en Español)
“Ser transgénero en Latinoamérica: sus experiencias y crecimiento”, “Vive la Salud” (CNN en Español)
OUTSTANDING TV JOURNALISM SEGMENT (Spanish Language)
“Comunidad LGBTQ vulnerable bajo nuevo gobierno”, “Perspectiva Nacional” (Entravision)
“Entrevista con Daniela Vega”, “Showbiz” (CNN en Español)
“Joven transgénero tiene un mensaje para las familias: ‘Acepten a sus hijos'”, “Al Punto” (Univision)
“El triunfo de una diseñadora mexicana transgénero en Nueva York”, “Noticias Telemundo” (Telemundo)
“Unidos contra la discriminación y el acoso contra la comunidad LGBT”, “Despierta América” (Univision)
OUTSTANDING DIGITAL JOURNALISM (Spanish Language)
“La compleja realidad de ser gay en América Latina” (cnnespanol.cnn.com)
“‘No aprobar el Dream Act significaría una sentencia de muerte’, jóvenes LGBT y DACA” (laopinion.com)
“Padres de familia de Dallas luchan por los derechos de su hija transgénero” (aldiadallas.com)
“Primera senadora trans aspira a impulsar medidas para sectores discriminados” (efe.com)
“Tres hermanitos para dos papás” (laopinion.com)
The LGBTQ+ Victory Fund National Champagne Brunch was held at Salamander Washington DC on Sunday, April 19. Gov. Andy Beshear (D-Ky.) was presented with the Allyship Award.
(Washington Blade photos by Michael Key)
The umbrella LGBTQ sports organization Team D.C. held its annual Night of Champions Gala at the Georgetown Marriott on Saturday, April 18. Team D.C. presented scholarships to local student athletes and presented awards to Adam Peck, Manuel Montelongo (a.k.a. Mari Con Carne), Dr. Sara Varghai, Dan Martin and the Centaur Motorcycle Club. Sean Bartel was posthumously honored with the Most Valuable Person Award.
(Washington Blade photos by Michael Key)
Television
‘Big Mistakes’ an uneven – but worthy – comedic showcase
In the years since “Schitt’s Creek” wrapped up its six season Emmy-winning run, nostalgia for it has grown deep – especially since the still painfully recent loss of its iconic leading lady, Catherine O’Hara, whose sudden passing prompted a social media wave of clips and tributes featuring her fan-favorite performance as the deliciously daft Moira Rose. Revisiting so many favorite scenes and funny moments from the show naturally reminded us of just how much we loved it, even needed it during the time it was on the air; it also reminded us of how much we miss it, and how much it feels now like something we need more than ever.
That, perhaps more than anything else, is why the arrival of “Big Mistakes” – the new Netflix series starring, co-created and co-written by Dan Levy – felt so welcome. We knew it wouldn’t be the Roses, but it seemed cut from the same cloth, and it had David Rose (or at least someone who seemed a lot like him) in the middle of a comically dysfunctional family dynamic, complete with a mother who gets involved in town politics and a catty sibling rivalry with his sister, and still nebbish-ly uncomfortable in his own gay shoes. Only this time, instead of running a charmingly pretentious boutique, he’s the pastor of the local church, and instead of a collection of kooky small town neighbors to contend with, there are gangsters.
As it turns out, it really does feel cut from the same cloth, but the design is distinctly different. Set in a fictional New Jersey suburb, it centers on Nicky (Levy) and his sister Morgan (Taylor Ortega) – he openly gay with an adoring boyfriend (Jacob Gutierrez), yet still obsessive about keeping it all invisible to his congregation, and she drudging aimlessly through life as an underpaid schoolteacher after failing to achieve her New York dreams of show biz success – who inadvertently become enmeshed in a shady underworld when a gesture for their dead grandmother’s funeral goes horribly awry.
They’re surrounded by a crew of equally compromised characters. There’s their mother Linda (Laurie Metcalf), whose campaign to become the town’s mayor only intensifies her tendency to micromanage her children’s lives; Yusuf (Boran Kuzum), the Turkish-American mini-mart operator who pulls them into the criminal conspiracy yet is himself a victim of it; Max (Jack Innanen), Morgan’s live-in boyfriend, who pushes her for a deeper commitment and is willing to go to couples’ therapy to prove it; Annette, his mother (Elizabeth Perkins), who lends her society standing toward helping Linda’s campaign against a misogynistic opponent (Darren Goldstein); and Ivan (Mark Ivanir), the seemingly ruthless crime boss who enslaves the siblings into his network but may really be just another slave himself. It’s a well-fleshed out assortment of characters that helps our own loyalties shift and adapt, generating at least a degree of empathy – if not always sympathy – that keeps everyone from coming off as a merely “black-and-white” caricature of expectations and typecasting.
To be sure, it’s an entertaining binge-watch, full of distinctive characters – all inhabiting familiar, even stereotypical roles in the narrative – who are each given a degree of validation, both in writing and performance, as the show unspools its narrative. At the same time, it makes for a fairly bleak overall view of humanity, in which it’s difficult to place our loyalties with anyone without also embracing a kind of “dog eat dog” morality in which nobody is truly innocent – but nobody is completely to blame for their sins, anyway.
In this way, it’s a show that lets us off the hook in the sense that it places the idea of ethical guilt within a framework of relative evils, as it permits us to forgive our own trespasses by accepting its “lovably” amoral characters, each of whom has their own reasons and justifications for what they do. We relate, but we can’t quite shake the notion that, if all these people hadn’t been so caught up in their own personal dramas, none of them would have ended up in the compromised morality that they’re in.
However, it’s not some bleak morality play that Levy and crew undertake; rather, it’s more an egalitarian fantasy in which even “bad” choices feel justified by inevitability. Everybody’s motivations make enough sense to us that it’s hard to judge any of the characters for making the choices – however unwise – that they do. In a system where everyone is forced to compromise themselves in order to achieve whatever dream of self-fulfillment they may have, how can anybody really blame themselves for doing what they have to do to survive?
Of course, all things considered, this is more a relatable comedy than it is a morality play. As a comedy of errors, it all works well enough on its own without imposing an ideology on it, no matter how much we may be tempted to do so. Indeed, what is ultimately more to the point is how well this pseudo-cynical exercise in the normalization of corruption – for that is what it really about, in the end – succeeds in letting us all off the hook for our compromises.
In the end, of course, maybe all that analysis is too deep a dive for a show that feels, in the end, like it’s meant to be mostly for fun. Indeed, despite its focus on being dragged into the shady side of life, the arc of its messaging seems to be less about a moralistic urge toward making the “right” choice than it is a candid recognition that all of us are compromised from the outset, often by choices we only force upon ourselves, and that’s a refreshing enough bit of honesty that we can easily get on board.
It helps that the performances are on point, especially the loony and wide-eyed fanaticism of Metcalf – surely the MVP of any project in which she is involved – and the directly focused moral malleability of Ortega; Levy, of course, is Levy – a now-familiar persona that can exist within any milieu without further justification than its own queer relatability – and, in this case, at least, that’s both the icing on the cake and substance that defines it. That’s enough to make it an essential view for fans, queer or otherwise, of his distinctive “brand,” even if he – or the show itself – doesn’t quite satisfy in the way that “Schitt’s Creek” was able to do.
Seriously, though, how could it?
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‘Big Mistakes’ an uneven – but worthy – comedic showcase
Science said stop; the Supreme Court said no
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