Reel Gay TV co-hosts the DVD release party for the smash, Oscar-winning musical, “Dreamgirls” at the Club Arena in Hollywood. In attendance were Beth Grant, Jasmine Trias, Judy Tenuta, Pam Trotter, Ty Vincent, Damien Raven, Abigale Spencer, Q Allen Brocka, and the Upright Cabaret.

Pictures by Mike Skiff

The multi-film festival award-winning indie “Sing Now, or Forever Hold Your Peace” needs some judicial editing, as does its unusually long title. This re-thread of the classic 1983 “The Big Chill” tells of a 15-year reunion of a capella singing group from college meeting up for an upcoming wedding performance.

The many moments of good music, fun and heart-tugging sprinkled throughout this comedy (?) were written and directed and produced by “MADtv” director/supervising producer Bruce Leddy. Possibly an objective third eye besides that of the writer/director/producer would have benefited this little film, as tighter editing and/or a stronger script would have made this a real gem.

The seven college chums, now grown-up, act like they never left college. Their hi-jinks, mostly predictable, comprising most of the 94-minute film length don’t jell with the high-drama scenes of near wife beating and gunshooting.

The attractive and talented cast make the most of their respective situations as former college buds and their current girl partners. The wonderful Molly Shannon steals every scene she’s in. Chris Bowers’ sexy laid-back character is understandably very appealing to all the ladies, while being non-threatening to his macho buds. Look for a good scene, albeit short, of naked butts running into the surf.

There is a gay ‘storyline’ that seems included to make the prerequisite list of modern day traumas complete (divorce, being a loser, job insecurity, being a loser, fear of commitment, being a loser).

Fans of “MADtv” would expect more laughs to be satisfied. Fans of good films would expect better storytelling to be satisfied.

Winter Party Festival is a celebration of social and cultural events (including art, dance, music, comedy, sports and more) benefiting the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community. The week of events culminates with The Beach Party, a world-class dance party attended by over 5,400 visitors in the hottest destination in the United States – South Beach. Approximately 10,000 participants from all over the United States, Canada, Europe, South America and Australia attend the 6-day celebration.

Unless you’ve been living in a cave, you surely would have seen the billboards of the rhinestoned-unitard-clad Will Ferrell and Jon Heder in split positions promoting their new ice skating spoof-homage “Blades of Glory.”

My first impressions of the billboards? LOVE the costumes! But with Ferrell’s past skewering of movie characters, I could only imagine the number of bad jokes made at our gay community’s expense. Still I HAD to see this!

So after actually viewing this crazy comedy, I have to admit that I liked this movie. This comedy doesn’t have a single mean gay joke in it! Yayyyy!!! Just when you think the movie is going to go there, it doesn’t! Human reactions instead of homophobic ones, just the way we like them! In fact the ‘gayest’ character (nicely played by “Napoleon Dynamite’s” Heder) gets a girlfriend and actually winces at each male-to-male contact he has to make with his skating partner. Of course, if your partner is the totally chauvinistic sex addict, smelly drunk pig gloriously played by Ferrell, you’d wince too!

Take the scene where Ferrell and Heder first rehearse their partnering on ice. Ferrell is holding Heder by his waist in what is best described as an upright 69 position. Their individual priceless reactions to other’s crotches in their respective faces are completely understandable from any orientation, gay or straight.

Joining these two in this ice skating send-up, real-life married couple “Arrested Development’s” Will Arnett and “Saturday Night Live’s” Amy Poehler deliciously steal their scenes as the brother/sister team and reigning partners champions who will resort to anything to eliminate their competition. “The Office’s” Jenna Fischer provides the sweetness and morality to the movie.

The producers have not hidden the fact that the four leads have little-to-no skating abilities. In fact, they’re actually bragging about it. The flawlessly edited skating sequences are done sometimes in slow-mo, and a lot of times in close-up combinations, with the actual skating scenes executed by keenly matched stunt doubles digitally enhanced with the principles’ faces. The costumes (again!) of the skaters (by Oscar and Emmy winner Julie Weiss) are the bomb! (Heder’s peacock costume is just too, too much!) Nice touch to have actual Olympic skaters in cameos throughout the film.

You will laugh. Maybe not every minute, but enough to make it worth checking this comedy out.

Lifetime’s newest entry into the reality/game show arena, “Gay, Straight or Taken?” sets up one girl with three men, of which she has to chose the one who’s straight and available. If she chooses correctly, she wins a vacation with her straight guy. If she makes a wrong choice, the guy she picked gets the vacation with his girlfriend or boyfriend. So how good is your gaydar???

My apprehensive reaction upon hearing this premise was greatly alleviated after screening the first two episodes. Thank God, the straights didn’t get all nellie to fool the girl! As a matter of fact, my gay-dar, or guydar as Lifetime calls it, was a bit off. I did figure that the most metro-sexual guy had to be straight (although I was very surprised to see what his girlfriend looked like when the partners joined the participants at the finale of the show. They did not look like a couple).

The show presents intriguing situations for the girl to analyze her guys’ straightness and availability, including a massage, a karate lesson, firewalking, and sketching a live model, a live naked male model. I love that Lifetime provides a graphic displaying her choices as to who’s gay, straight or taken throughout the show. I think she changed her mind as much as the audience (95% gay) I was with did.

I would wager that most of the time most gay guys won’t be able to figure which contestant was family. And, you know? I think that’s a good thing!

It would have been fun to get the guys’ different responses to whom they thought their fellow contestants were G, S or T.

Looks like Lifetime (the channel for women and gay men) has another hit on its hands!