It's the last day of Inside Out, and this afternoon, the gay and lesbian film fest presented a pretty exciting Q&A session with director Laurie Lynd. Lynd directed, among other things, gay-friendly fare like the film version of Torontoist-fave Daniel MacIvor's House as well as episodes of Queer As Folk, Degrassi: The Next Generation and Noah's Arc. But it was his latest project that brought him to the immediate attention of Inside Out. Lynd directed the upcoming film Breakfast With Scot, which is that "gay Maple Leafs movie" you may have been hearing so much about. The afternoon began, however, with a screening of two of Lynd's earlier short films, RSVP and The Fairy Who Didn't Want to be a Fairy. The former is a sad short about a man grieving for his partner who has died of AIDS and the latter is a musical fantasy with Holly Cole about (literally) a fairy who decides that he wants to have his wings surgically removed. Both star Daniel MacIvor, at his loveable, charming best. Torontoist gives him a hug!

As Breakfast With Scot is not yet completed, Inside Out screened about 20 minutes of footage from the film, which gave viewers a good taste of what it was all about. The somewhat controversial picture is about a gay couple who wind up having to take care of a young, effeminate boy. The film has caused a bit of a stir in the press after The Star broke the story that the Toronto Maple Leafs allowed the use of their name and logo in the film. Canadian actor Tom Cavanagh (TV's Ed) plays a sports commentator and former Maple Leaf who must remain closeted at work, despite the fact that he is married to his lawyer, played by Ben Shenkman (who's played gay before as Louis Ironson in the HBO mini-series of Tony Kushner's Angels in America). When the two accidentally wind up with custody of Shenkman's nephew-in-law, the couple are surprised to discover that the boy, Scot, is way swishier than either of them. According to Lynd, the NHL has been tremendously non-judgmental in regards to the film's subject matter, worrying more about a scene in which Cavanagh's character is mean to a child than that he is a gay married man. When rumours of the film first surfaced, it was accused of attempting to be the next Brokeback; in actuality, nothing could be further from the case. Instead of a mostly-phobic narrative about a doomed gay love told in a maudlin, apolitical and arguably not even gay-positive tone, this is a family movie (rated PG!) featuring an established, married, confident gay couple who become forced to confront their own gender-prejudices and opinions on child sexuality. Recently, much has been made (at least in the gay-blogosphere) of Mark Indelicato's character on Ugly Betty as Betty's sissy nephew Justin, and Lynd said he was worried at first that the TV show had stolen his thunder (a consummate sissy, Scot enjoys figure-skating, makeup and pretending to be a cheerleader). Hopefully, there's room for more than one pre-pubescent sexually ambiguous character in North American media, especially one featured in this funny, cute and endearing film. Torontoist certainly hopes it finds the audience (and the TIFF screening!) it totally deserves.

There's still time to catch one of the last film's of this year's fest. Congratulate yourself if you scored tickets to the sold out screening of Itty Bitty Titty Committee tonight at the Bader at 7:30, the festival's closing gala. If you didn't, there are still tickets available for Tan Lines, a low-budget Australian film about surfers in love. Sounds hot!

Previously: New Movie to Promote Leaf Pride, Inside Out Continues, Inside Out Update, The Picture of Dorian's Gay, Don't Dream It, Film It, Inside Out is Back!

MacIvorist: MacIvor Even You Mom Can Enjoy, Daniel MacIvor Rocks the House, Rockin' Remounts Resound Rapturously, Torontoist Love/Hate 2006: The Stage, MacIvor Spearheads Buddies' Wave One

Photo by gardinergirl from the Torontoist Flickr Pool.

Only three days left in the 17th Annual Inside Out Gay and Lesbian Film and Video Festival! Last night, Eleven Men Out screened at the Bader; an Icelandic comedy with a reasonably original premise: a soccer player named Ottar being interviewed by a reporter in the locker room after a game while the rest of his team is changing decides, for the benefit of appearing on the magazine's cover, to come out of the closet at that exact moment. As a result, he is thrown off the team and becomes the pariah of his family, including an alkie former-Miss Iceland ex-wife, a biggoted soccer-exec father, a video-store managing brother with a penchant for shemale pornography and a moody tweenage son who would rather play Counter-Strike than have a conversation with his father.

Since his former teammates will no longer associate with him, Ottar joins an amateur team known for having a few gay members. Ottar's presence raises the profile of the team, and soon a bunch of gay soccer players start joining the team, which changes its name to Pride United and eventually winds up having to play a match against Ottar's former team. What follows is something akin to the British "village versus the world" comedy—The Full Monty, Saving Grace, Local Hero, Calendar Girls, Waking Ned Devine, The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill But Came Down a Mountain, et. al. - but with a few key differences. For one, unlike the big tease that was The Full Monty, you actually see some penises. But the film also greatly differs in tone - the Icelandic sense of humour is very dry and sometimes very dark, and sequences range from deadpan hilarity to confusing blandness. The film is ultimately flawed, but charming and its Icelandic leads are uniformly easy on the eyes.

Coming up at Inside Out tonight: Straight to Bed at 7:30 at the Bader sound interesting—a collection of short films all focused on the gay male fascination with hunky straight guys. There's also Dead Boyz Don't Scream at 9:45, appropriately a part of the fest's "Guilty Pleasures" screenings, this one's a campy horror movie starring Playgirl centrefolds. On the pornier side of things, there's One Night Stand for girls (the ROM at 9:45) and Bulldog in the Whitehouse for boys (Cinecycle at 10:00). One Night Stand (already sold out!) films a bunch of "dykes and genderqueers" as they have lots of sex and (of course) talk about their erotic fantasies. Bulldog in the Whitehouse is a super-budget re-imagining of the Bush administration as a bunch of over-sexed homos and features explicit sex. It's also supposedly yet another adaptation of Dangerous Liasons. Torontoist got a screener of this one, and we have to admit we preferred this version. Still, it does bring a new meaning to the "Fuck Bush!" mantra.

Previously: Inside Out Update; The Picture of Dorian's Gay; Don't Dream It, Film It; Inside Out is Back!

When theatre "It Boy" Daniel MacIvor wrote Marion Bridge, a play which is finally getting its Toronto premiere after being performed out East, in New York City and being adapted into a film, he figured it would never be performed in the city. A big contrast to his edgy one-man shows, Marion Bridge is a family drama about three sisters reconnecting at their mother's deathbed that MacIvor supposedly wrote because he wanted to do something his mom would be able to enjoy. The play was supposed to be a rural drama meant for a rural audience, but The Company Theatre, lead by Artistic Director Allan Hawco, decided that if it was good enough for NYC, it was good enough for Toronto and got MacIvor to direct their production of his play.

Agnes, a struggling actor and alcoholic, returns from Toronto to her family home in Nova Scotia where she is reunited with her sister Theresa, a nun, and Louise, a recently-religious, butch potential crypto-lesbian who is obsessed with soap operas and talk shows. The three women try to deal with the business of their dying mother, while also taking on visiting their deadbeat dad, tracking down Agnes' daughter that she gave up for adoption many years before and maybe even getting Louise a girlfriend (assuming she's even actually queer). The cast is uniformly strong, particularly Sarah Dodd who plays the stern yet loving Theresa.

This is only the second play for The Company Theatre, whose inaugural production was last fall's Whistling in the Dark. "Whistling in the Dark was very masculine, very testosterone-filled," says Hawco, "whereas Marion Bridge is all women. We knew they would make a good pairing." Hawco and MacIvor have been friends for a long time; in fact, Hawco claims that MacIvor was the first actor he ever saw on stage. At the age of 3, he attended a touring production of Hansel and Gretel in which a very young MacIvor played Hansel. So, why is MacIvor's work is so popular, especially right now as he has just finished his Da Da Kamera remounts at Buddies and has a new work premiering in Tarragon's next season? "I find that his work opens my mind to a new way of thinking about something," says Hawco. "His understanding of the human condition is informative; it gives you information about how you live your life."

As a play, Marion Bridge certainly lacks the bite of MacIvor's solo work. The characters are deftly realised and the dialogue charming and realistic, but the plot never allows things to get too scary, or for the stakes to get too high. This is a show that plays it safe, but has a lot of heart. There are some truly hilarious moments, but don't go expecting the kinds of narrative sucker-punches delivered in Here Lies Henry or Monster. It may not be cutting-edge, but this is still a solid production and a solid play. And yes, your mom would probably love it.

The 17th Annual Inside Out Gay and Lesbian Film and Video Festival Continues! Last night, the festival presented its centrepiece gala screening at the Isabelle Bader Theatre of King and Clown (reviewed by Torontoist at last year's TIFF), a movie about a Korean monarch who falls in love with his cross-dressing jester that also happens to be the top-grossing Korean film of all time (OK, so at least it was until this happened).

Meanwhile, across the road at the ROM's theatre, another film was being shown as a part of this year's fest's East Asian Focus: The Chinese Botanist's Daughters. An achingly beautiful and highly erotic love story filmed in a gorgeous 2.35 : 1 aspect ratio, this film tells the story of Ming, a half-Chinese, half-Russian orphan who goes to study under a master botanist for a period of six weeks. She is immediately beguiled by the strict and obnoxious professor's daughter An, a beautiful young woman generally photographed covered in a thin film of sweat as a result of hanging around steamy greenhouses all day. The attraction is mutual, and the two begin a reltionship. Things get complicated when An's brother Tan, a dumb jock in the military, comes home and the professor decides Ming would make a good wife for him. The film is not entirely unproblematic - all of the men in the film are eventually reduced to violent psychopaths and, without giving too much away, the story does not depart too drastically from the time-honoured tradition of ensuring gay love stories end tragically, historically likely though it might be.

Your best bet for the fest tonight may be Outrageous! playing at the Bader at 9:30 tonight, a 1977 Canadian classic about a gay hairdresser and his roommate who is determined to have a baby and keep out of mental institutions, which was lauded at Berlin and Cannes in its day. Tomorrow, there's Wrestling With Angels, a documentary about playwright Tony Kushner we caught at the Jewish Film Festival last year playing at the Bader at 5:15, the sold-out Hogtown Homos at the ROM at 9:45 and at the same time at the Bader, a very interesting-sounding film called Eleven Men Out about an Icelandic gay soccer player who comes out to a journalist in the middle of his team's changeroom.

Let's face it: film festivals in this city are a dime a dozen. And while it's so totally awesome that as a result we get to see movies in the theatres other folks have a hard time tracking down at all and get to wander around Cumberland in September looking for Ashton and Demi, it can be a little overwhelming trying to keep up with the veritable cornucopia of fests in town. Should you check out ImagineNATIVE or After Dark? TJIF or Hot Docs? Reel Asian or Sprockets? There are lots of potential deciding factors, but if you want to base your decision on who's gonna have the most memorable after-parties, you might want to consider Inside Out, which opens tonight.

The 17th annual gay and lesbian film festival kicks things off this year with Duncan Roy's The Picture of Dorian Gray, a modern adaptation something along the lines of Will Self's 2002 novel in which the homoerotic subtext becomes simply text. The film stars 7th Heaven dreamboat David Gallagher as the titular immoral immortal. Torontoist was able to snag an advance screener of the film and, to be honest, it's a bit of a dud. Sure, it's filmed in a stylishly budget way and there is a bit of an illicit thrill in being able to watch the former child star get evil (and get his freak on), but as far as genuine audience enjoyment goes, this might be one for the "friends and family only" file. The after-party will probably be a better time. But, don't despair! There are ten more days of Inside Out left and Torontoist is going to be there, telling you which screenings are sweet and which are skippable.