Hold on to your Santa hat. John Waters is coming to town. Like a St. Nic for the adult set, the filmmaker, author and raconteur arrives with a sleigh full of nostalgic, smutty fun. It’s all done up as “A John Waters Christmas,” a touring show presented on Sunday night at The Egg (12/2, Albany NY). (See full schedule below.) “You could call it my obsession, having the right kind of Christmas,” says Waters. “But...

Spong and Stern-Wolfe In the new documentary “All The Way Through Evening,” filmmaker Rohan Spong gives a thoughtful depiction of an important group of New York composers who died of AIDS and one woman’s efforts to keep their music alive.  It’s been 20 years now since the era when Kevin Oldham, Chris DeBlasio, Robert Savage and others died, but Mimi Stern-Wolfe continues to produce concerts of their...

The filmmaker, music producer and dancer Eva Soltes has been at work on a documentary about the late Lou Harrison for at least a decade (and it probably feels even longer to her).  The long awaited debut of “Lou Harrison: A World of Music” has finally been announced for Saturday, February 26 at the National Gallery in Washington DC.  A DVD release of the film is eventually planned. The premiere of “A World...

For 33 years composer Gerald Busby has been a resident at the Chelsea Hotel in Manhattan.  That means he’s pretty much outlasted every other artist who lived there or just passed through, from his mentor Virgil Thomson to Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin, Patti Smith, Leonard Cohen, and Sid Vicious. Journalists and authors love to write about the famous hotel and Gerald is always there to give them a good interview. He’s...

Let me be honest. I “read” OUT Magazine for the pictures.  And the March issue is particularly sexy with more photos (in ads and editorial) of shirtless young men than usual.  This month’s cover boy is a gritty Ewan McGregor. But the issue actually has something worth spending a bit of time and thought on – a 22-page spread called “80 American Classics” celebrating “the spectrum of queer talent...

Look for an actor playing Mark Blitzstein in the current feature film “Me and Orson Welles.” The movie is about the final week or so of production leading up to the opening night of the Mercury Theatre’s 1937 production of Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar,” which Welles directed and for which Blitzstein wrote music. Early on in the film a playbill for “Caesar” has the clear statement “Music by Marc Blitzstein”...

Macho star of the Bourne film franchise Matt Damon will play the gay lover of Liberace in a Steven Soderbergh film slated for 2012. As previously announced, Michael Douglas has been cast as the most flamboyant pianist in history. “God bless Matt. Hey, it’s easy for me – he’s in his prime,” says Douglas to Sun Media of Canada. “I said to him, ‘Matt, I love you, man. Boy, that Bourne must really...

In the bio-pic “Wild Combination: A Portrait of Arthur Russell,” Allen Ginsberg describes Russell as a poet who sings.  I like that because it puts a finger on why I’ve never connected well with Russell’s music. Lord knows I’ve tried many times, always hoping to sink into the numerous posthumous collections of his music that have come out in recent years.  His songs and instrumentals always feel like sketches to...

His husband. Her wife. The coupling of these words may cause your tongue to stumble, but for many people in committed gay or lesbian relationships, the terms are longed-for alternatives to euphemisms like partner, companion or lover. Yet there’s far more at stake in the cause of same-sex marriage than just better terminology. Filmmaker and Troy native Jim de Seve, whose documentary “Tying the Knot” opens...