"A Haunting in Venice": A locked room mystery in a decaying palazzo, with some cute guys, some butts and dicks, and a drag queen

A Haunting in Venice (2023), on Hulu, is supposedly based on Agatha Christie's 1969 novel The Halloween Party, but the only connections are some character names, a Halloween party, and Hercule Poirot (Kenneth Branagh), the retired Belgian detective who uses his "little gray brain cells" to solve intricate murders.

Scene 1: Establishing shots of Venice, 1947, still recovering from the deprivation and death of World War II.  Gondoliers, nuns, soldiers crosing the Ponte dei Conzafelzi. people with their ration coupons picking up bread. 

 Poirot inspects his garden, then receives his pastries and eggs.  As a crowd of potential clients rush him. "Please, Poirot!"  His bodyguard, Vitale (Riccardo Scamarcio, top photo and below) decks an especially persistent one (Amir El-Masry), then throws him off the bridge.

While Poirot is at breakfast, Bodyguard Vitale announces a lady visitor, and presents an apple.  Poirot knows exactly who it is: his old friend and apple lover Agatha Christie...um, I mean Ariadne Oliver, the world's most popular mystery writer, with 27 out of her last 30 books bestsellers.  The last three were duds, so she needs something new, fresh, and exciting.  How about Joyce Reynolds, the famous psychic? Oliver can't figure out her tricks, so could Poirot use his little grey brain cells?  She'll be at a Halloween party tonight.

Scene 2: It's an orphans' Halloween party at the gloomy, labyrinthine  Palazzo de Lagrime de Giovani (the Tears of Youth).

First, a magic lantern show about how this very palazzo was once an orphanage, but when the plague came, the children were locked inside to die of starvation.  They still haunt the place, and want to get revenge on doctors and nurses.  

Next it's time for games and snacks, and we meet more characters.  A creepy young boy would rather read than join the others.  He checks on his Dad (Jamie Dornan, left), who is having an anxiety attack, and suggests that they leave.  No, they promised Rowena.

Rowena is the Hitchcockian blond movie star who owns the house.  Her Daughter Alicia  jumped from an upper window several years ago, and drowned.   She has been moping around ever since, but thought that hosting a children's party would lift her spirits. It hasn't.

Important detail: She's broke.  She wants to sell the palazzo, but because it's rundown and haunted, no one will buy it at any price.

Scene 3: The The party is over, and all of the (living) children except for Creepy Young Boy (Jude Hill) have gone home.  The  psychic arrives wearing a robe and Japanese noh mask, accompanied by her robotic assistant, Desdemona.

The Psychic doesn't like the negative energy in the house, the many unhappy ghosts of children, and she is aware that Poirot has been asked to discredit her.

"If ghosts exist, that means that there's a God, and I've seen too much evil in this world to believe in Him."

 The seance will be held in the Daughter Alicia's horrible, dark, mouldy room.  No one has been in there since she died, except the Housekeeper, to clean.  

Back story: Alicia was engaged, but he dumped her, so she returned to the palazzo to stay with her Mom, Rowena.  But she  started hearing the voices of the ghost children.  They drove her mad, and finally she jumped off the balcony into the canal.  

The seance guests arrive.  Creepy Young Boy: "The ghosts say you're a fake." 

Back story: His Dad was Alicia's doctor (uh-oh, the ghosts hate doctors.  He's doomed!)

More after the break

Aidan Micho: Unexpected beefcake in "Minimum Wage" leads to comedian brothers, a pizza place upstate, bondage, and a 12-incher

 

Minimum Wage (2026) just dropped on Netflix, a mockumentary about quirky teenage employees at a pizza place in central New York.  The surprisingly hunky Randall Park plays company CEO, who drops in to inform the the workers that he's planning to shut down their branch for under-performance, but changes his mind when they help restore his joie de vivre.  

 I was surprised that teenagers working part-time minimum wage jobs love the pizza place so much that they are devastated by the threat of closure.  Couldn't they get new jobs elsewhere?  And why doesn't the title have something t to do with pizza, to go along with premise: "Money doesn't buy happiness, but it buys pizza, which is almost the same thing."  Agreed.

No gay characters are immediately obvious; there are several mentions of girlfriends or the desire for girlfriends in the first episode.  But some of the guys are cute, such as Tommy Armstrong as an indie musician, and there's a shot of unexpected beefcake.

I love it when guys take their shirts off for no reason but to give viewers something to gawk at.

Here it was Aidan (Aidan Micho), pranked by his coworkers into thinking that if you spend ten minutes in the freezer, your penis will grow two inches. When he asks "How long?", they just make numbers up.  That's mean -- and dangerous -- but the reference to Aidan's penis is a plus.  And no one said he had to be shirtless.

1. Is the character Aiden gay?  

He wears a bracelet and an ostentatious ring, and sometimes flashes a limp wrist. When the drama club visits, Aidan becomes defensive about his knowledge of classic musicals: "It's not weird."  Does he mean "It doesn't make me gay?"

He tries to find some male strippers for the female manager's birthday party, and approaches two EMT guys outside a club. "Fun, an EMT theme!  How much do you guys cost?"  "Free, depending on your insurance." 

"Great, my friend is gonna die.  Come to 605 Water Street in ten minutes."  

When he worries about losing his hair, he notes that both of his dads have full heads of hair. "My surrogate mother must be bald!"  Har-har.

They're not going to make a guy with gay dads gay himself. 

Oh, well, at least he takes off his shirt again when they buy a hot tub, and cuddles with Hyde Healy, left.

Sorry Hyde, you're short, but not attractive enough for a profile.

But Aidan? 

Question #2: Has Aidan played any gay characters elsewhere?

Filmmaker and comedian Aidan Micho has 120,000 followers on Instagram and 51,000  on Tiktok, with 1.1 million likes. He and his brother Ryan have 616,000 Youtube subscribers for their comedy shorts.

They grew up in Baldwin, New York --- upstate, about a 20 minute drive from Syracuse - graduated from high school in 2019 and 2021, and attended Syracuse University.

Most of Aidan's on-screen roles have ben walk ons:

Banana Split (2018), about two girls chasing the same boy.  Dylan Sprouse appears.Aidan plays Locker Student.

Left: Dylan's dick, in case you haven't seen it lately.

Miguel Wants to Fight (2023): Miguel (Tyler Dean Flores) is moving to the big city, where he'll have to fight, so he asks his three friends to help him prepare.  Aidan plays a Bully's Friend.

Prom Dates (2024): Two girls break up with their romantic partners just before the big prom.  Now they need new dates in a hurry!  I seem to recall hearing that one of girls is a lesbian. Aidan plays "Cargo Shorts Bro"

More after the break

Sam Sherpa-Moore: Sherpa actor fights a watermelon, flirts with Doctor Who, shows his d*ck. With Joel Fry's butt and Callum's cock.

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Aidan Close: Draco Malfoy's son strips down for his senior thesis, plays an incel and a Civil War soldier, wears a butterfly dress

 

What is Aidan Close wearing?  A Kermit the Frog outfit that's too big, and sliding off him?

Don't you hate it when butterflies eat the back of your dress?

He wore the butterfly dress for the gala performance of  Harry Potter and the Cursed Child on Broadway, where he plays Scorpius Malfoy, Draco Malfoy's son.  Emmet Smith, right, plays Albus Potter, Harry's son.

Adrian:  "I'm so happy the Sorting Hat brought us together."  

Question #1: Are they dating?

Probably not.  Neither post many off-stage photos together. 

Question #2: Are they dating in the play?

A review says that their relationship is "intimate, sweet, and safe," but is it a friendship or a romance?

They are just good buddies in the original two-part, multiple-hour play, which sends the two Hogwarts boys on a time-travel adventure: Each gets a girlfriend. It's Harry Potter, you can't say the g-word or the t-word.

But in the paired-down, 3 1/2 hour version more often produced, the girls are platonic pals, and the relationship becomes more or less gay-coded, depending on the director's staging.  

Left: A hug.  They may be a different Albus and Scorpious.  

Left: Anthony Boyle, a previous Albus Potter, nude in The House of Guiness.

Question #3: Any gay characters?

His theatrical credits include:

Much Ado About Nothing.  There's more or less gay subtext.

Incels and Other Myths, performed at the New York Theater Festival (2023): A teenage boy (Aidan) into online gaming gets pulled into the misogynistic incel subculture. 

More after the break