"The Holiday Exchange": Immensely wealthy A-gays look for love at Christmas. Watch with your grandmother

  

It's not even Halloween yet, but the romcoms are started.  

Darn, they all have such interchangeable titles that I forgot which one I'm reviewing. Oh, right, The Holiday Exchange, on Amazon Prime.  

The icon shows a woman torn between two men, and the blurb is about a guy going on a "holiday exchange" that he found on a gay app, so I suspect some "mistaken for gay" jokes as the guy finds the Girl of His Dreams.

Scene 1: A guy wearing an eye mask and a frilly shirt wakes up -- gay. Close-up of a photo of him and his boyfriend -- gay.  He knocks it over, drinks some booze, and shaves and applies femme moisterizer products -- gay. 

A guy texts: "Wilde, call me back," but he ignores it.  Moisturizer guy is named Wilde, like Oscar?  Gay. He's played by Taylor Frey, top photo, who also wrote the screenplay.

Knock on the door: It's femme fashion designer Chase, Colton Tran, and a woman, with ideas for his wedding outfit: "Your Mom told us that your Big Day was coming."

"Nope, you misunderstood, I'm not getting married, I'm selling my company."

"Oh, well, we have ideas for that, too."

Wilde goes annoyingly over the top complementing Fashion Designer Chase; he is an angel, a shining light, goodness personified; he has created everlasting happiness for literally thousands of people by...um...designing their clothes. 

Back story: Wilde just dumped his boyfriend, Sean.

Scene 2:  An idyllic village, over the top idyllic, Currier & Ives idyllic. 

George tells his business partner Oliver, Rick Cosnett, how they met, confesses to drinking too much, and then lays on the over-effusive praise.  

Oliver is also an angel, goodness personified, spearheading drives that raise billions for charity. He's single-handedly wiped out world hunger.  Don't introduce Oliver to Chase the Fashion Designer, or they'll cancel each other out.  

His problems: he is too busy with his day job as a divorce lawyer, his numerous charities, and taking over Dad's business when he retires to get a boyfriend. Coworker George is in favor of being single. This must be the "mistaken for gay" guy.

Wait -- they specifically state that they live in Los Angeles.  The establishing shot was a New England Currier & Ives village. What the fudge?

Out in the elegant party, Saintly Oliver talks to James, who works in his company.  They hedge around the discussion of why their last date was so awful. So Saintly Oliver and Moisturizer Wilde are both gay?  Who's going to hook up with the lady in the middle of the icon?  

No,  James "can't" get together during the holidays: he'll be seeing family, driving up the coast. Dude's not into you. 

I'm watching with subtitles, so I can't hear the accents, but these people are saying "Happy Christmas" to each other.  Could they live in Britain, but be having an elegant party in L.A.?

More after the break.

"American Sports Story": Football player turned murderer, with evangelical homophobia everywhere

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Stephen Louis Grush: from Pericles to Peter's militia, with lots of gay roles and a few dicks in between

 Stephen Louis Grush grew up in New Orleans, and graduated from Roosevelt University in Chicago with a BFA in Theater. He has over 30 credits on the IMDB, often in projects that emphasize gay subtexts, or texts.

In Catch Hell (2014), two toughs (Stephen Louis Grush, Ian Barford) kidnap a Hollywood actor (Ryan Philippe) with the intent of torturing and killing him.  They do a lot of torturing, but Junior (Stephen) also falls in love with him.

Ryan Phillippe's butt as Junior prepares to...you know.

Stephen's butt and dick, as they strugle.

In Gracepoint (2014), Stephen plays a plumber's apprentice who may be gay, accused of murdering a small boy.

More Grush after the break. Caution: explicit.

"Decline and Fall": Theology student sent down for immorality in 1930s Oxford, with Oxfordian dicks and bums

 

After Brideshead Revisited appeared on television in 1982, everyone thought that Evelyn Waugh was a gay writer, and started buying up the original novel from 1945, as well as his other novels, Decline and Fall and Vile Bodies.  Turns out that he was straight-ish, regretted the gay romances of his Oxford years, and thought of same-sex love as decadent and immoral, or at best adolescent experimentation that you give up once you are old enough for the "real love" of a woman.   So I don't expect the  2017 BBC adaption of his Decline and Fall, streaming on Amazon Prime, to have any gay characters. 

Or maybe not.  Waugh derived the title and central theme from The Decline and Fall of the West, by Otto Spengler, which theorizes that societies inevitably decline into moral decadence.  Including LGBT people.  So maybe there will be some homophobia.

Scene 1: The Bollinger Club at Scone College, Oxford -- har, har -- is trashing their common room.  Meanwhile, quiet theology student Paul Pennyfeather  (Jack Whitehall, top photo) is sitting quietly with his friend Potts (Matthew Beard, left), who wants to go to a church tomorrow and "make some rubbings."  He means rubbings of tombstones, but...har, har.  Paul refuses, whereupon the friend says "I'll make some rubbings for you."  I'll bet you will...

On his way home, Paul runs afoul of the Bollinger Club, who strip him naked and force him to run across the quad.  Although he is not responsible, he is expelled from Oxford for "moral malfeasance."  

Scene 2: Generally men sent down for moral failings become schoolmasters, and there's a position available in Llanaba, Wales, to teach English, French, German, Latin, and coach cricket.  Paul doesn't speak German, but the job agent tells him to fake it.

Scene 3: Paul arrives at Llanaba, finds his way to the school, which is actually quite ornate, and is introduced to Captain Grimes (Douglas Hodge),  just as he is disciplining a student for whistling.  The other students were whistling, too, but "it makes no difference."  He gets 100 lines, and next time a beating. 

Then the Headmaster  and his daughters, whom Paul snubs.  Not into girls, are you?  He's in charge of the fifth form (15-16 year olds), games, carpentry,  and fire drill, and he'll be giving Best-Chedwyth organ lessons.  "But I don't play the organ."  "You do now."

Scene 4: The shabby Fifth Form classroom.  Headmaster advises Paul not to mention why he was sent down, and rushes away.. The students make fun of "Good morning" and role call, lock his desk drawer, and give him trick chalk. 

Scene 5: After the first class debacle, he rushes to the common room, and meets the hard-drinking Prendergast:  "You'll hate it here.  I do.  We all do."  Then to his room to unpack his stuff and be depressed.

Cut to dinner: teachers have to eat with their students. Paul is still depressed, the students still disrespectful, the food greenish slop.  

Afterwards, Captain Grimes escorts him to the pub. They discuss the Headmaster's two daughters; Grimes is engaged to "the haybale," leaving "the male one" for Paul.

About the Fifth Formers: Don't try to teach them anything, just keep them quiet and beat them.  Grimes isn't cut out for teaching; he keeps getting sacked at private schools for "doing things," but fortunately he's a public school alumnus so he always gets another job. In Britain, "public schools" are like the private schools in America.  

During the War, he "did something" that almost resulted in a firing squad, but because he was a public school alumnus, they just transfered him to Ireland, where you can "do things" without penalty.  Same-sex acts?  But they wouldn't get you a death sentence in Britain at the time

The leering Philbrick (Stephen Graham, left) approaches and asks if either of them would fancy a woman tonight. You got any men? They refuse.  Grimes says that he doesn't really fancy women.

More after the break