"Superman" (2025): You'll believe a man can queerbait

 

I don't usually review movies that are playing in theaters, but we just saw Superman (2025).  I went in with an internet full of complaints about "wokeness," so I expected a lot of LGBTQ representation.  Here's what I got:

The Wokeness: There are some nonwhite people around.  Big deal.

The Plot: The tyrannical leader of Boravia (mostly Russia, a little Israel) wants to invade neighboring Jarhanpur (mostly Palestine, a little Ukraine), and promises to make Lex Luthor  (Nicholas Hoult, left) king of half the country if he helps.  So he sells them $80 billion in arms for cheap. 

But Lex's main goal is to discredit and hopefully kill Superman (David Corenswet), because he doesn't like aliens, because he's envious of Supe's popularity, because...well, even he isn't sure. He's a movie villain, it's his job.  

Lex has a vast number of high-tech resources to help with the discrediting/murder:

1. The Engineer, who can fill your lungs with nanobots so you suffocate.

2. A prison in an unstable pocket universe, where he keeps political prisoners and people who criticized him on social media.

3. An interdimensional rift that can take down whole cities.

4. A lot of Superman clones.

5. Super-genius employees played by Terence Rosemore and Stephen Blackehart.

6. A monstrous kanju that grows to Godzilla-size and breathes fire.

Left: Blackehart's d*ck

7. The message that Jor-El and Lara sent along from Krypton. Supe always thought that they asked him to help the people of Earth, but they actually told him to rule Earth, and massacre anyone who resisted.  This is real, not fake, and when it gets into the media, people reject poor Supe.  Why do they care about the career his parents planned for him?  My parents wanted me to work in the factory.  

Supe has a number of allies this time around:

1. Food cart guy Malik Ali (Dinesh Thyagarajan), who jumps into a crater to help the injured superhero. Lex kidnaps him.

2. Krypto the Superdog.  Lex kidnaps him, too.  Spoiler alert: The dog doesn't die.

More after the break

Matt Cornett: "Bella and the Bulldogs" and "High School Musical" alum shows his d*ck . With gratuitous Buddy Keaton

Several years ago, I reviewed the Nickelodeon teencom Bella and the Bulldogs (2015-16), about a girl on the previously all-boy football team.  The premise sounded like a critique of gender polarization, acknowledging that sometimes boys like to cook and date other boys, but, at least in the episode I watched, there were no queer codes at all. Even  the obviously gay boy had a crush on a girl.

Now I'm profiling some former Nickelodeon/Disney teencom stars who informed our childhoods.  Should I go with the Bella cast member who is gay but has no adult videos online, or the one who is straight but shows us his stuff?

Buddy Keaton (née Handleson), the gay guy, played Newt Van der Rohe, a geek with an unrequited crush on the geek-hating Sophie.  Eventually she warms up to him.

I believe that the expression is "woof!," not "bark!"

Matt Cornett, the straight guy, played Zach Barnes, a player from a rival team who invited Bella to the homecoming dance, but uninvited her when his teammates disapproved (Two houses, both alike in dignity....).   After a few more "are they or aren't they?" episodes, they kiss.

Ok, Buddy with just some beefcake, or Matt with the Full Monty?

That's what I thought.

After Bella, Matt Cornett did the guest-spot circuit, playing girls' crushes (in Speechless, Game Shakers, and The Goldbergs), a girl's boyfriend (in Life in Pieces), a girl's friend (in the Middle), and for a change of pace, a bully murdered by one of his victims in Criminal Minds 

Also A-Lan in Disney's Zombies 3, which adds aliens to the already crowded world of zombies and werewolves.  He is dating the female alien A-Li.

But Matt is best known as jock-turned-thesbian E. J. Caswell in High School Musical: The Musical: The Series (2019-23).  The rationale for the clunky name: it's a tv series about high school students putting on the musical based on the movie High School Musical (which starred Zac Efron as the jock-turned-thesbian). 

In later seasons, they put on musicals based on the Disney films Beauty and the Beast, Frozen, and High School Musical 3: Senior Year.

Anxious to get to Matt's junk?  After the break.  Caution: Explicit

Billy Howle: A serious actor, crazy cute, with frequent nude scenes. Do you need anything else? With bonus Tommy Knight d*ck

I've reviewed two tv series starring British actor Billy Howle (not Howlie), and two things about him stand out:

1. He is crazy cute.  What we used to call dreamy, the sort of guy who elicits fantasies of holding hands in the moonlight rather than going downtown.

 

2. Speaking of going downtown, he is not shy about displaying his rather impressive penis on screen.

I always ask two questions in these profiles.

1. Is he gay in real life?

Billy has no social media presence, but various interviews note that he is in a long-term relationship with a lady.  He could be bisexual or gay-and-closeted, but for now we'll call him straight. 

2. Has he played any gay characters?

This one will take some research.  We'll start with his bio.  

Billy was born in Stoke-on-Trent in the Midlands, about an hour from Birmingham, son of a college professor and a "schoolteacher."  He graduated from the Bristol Old Vic Theater School in 2013.  His theatrical credits include:

The Ibsen play Ghosts (2015), which is about religion, free love, and incest, not about ghosts.  We had to read Ibsen in college.  Ugh.

Eugene O'Neill's A Long Day's Journey into Night (2016).  We had to read O'Neill, too.  Double ugh.

Hamlet (2022).  Maybe a gay subtext between the Prince and Mercutio.

Dear Octopus (2024), which is about a large, suffocating family, not an octopus.  At least it's not Ionesco.

John Osborne's Look Back in Anger (2024) about marital problems.

No significant gay content, I'm afraid, and pretentiousness as the summum bonum.  

Next, Billy's on-screen roles.  He has 21 acting credits on the IMDB.  A  mostly pretentious lot, with only one science fiction movie and not a whiff of comedy.  I'll check the projects that I've reviewed already, those listed as "known for," and those with nudity.

Already Reviewed:

The Perfect Couple (2024).  When the Maid of Honor is murdered on the night before the wedding, everyone is a suspect, including the Bride and Groom.  Billy plays the Groom's brother, who has a girlfriend. 

Under the Banner of Heaven (2022). Lapsed Mormon Allen (Billy) is accused of murdering his wife and baby, but he says that his fundamentalist family did it to punish her for wanting a career and being uppity. 

More after the break

Austin Seifert: Cycle Ninja, Gisondo double, stunt butt, man-meat. With some skateboarding and n*de photos

I was interested in Austin Seifert because he appeared in two episodes of The Righteous Gemstones as a Cycle Ninja (a gleaming metallic assassin) and six as the stunt double for Skyler Gisondo, who played Gideon Gemstone (the car chases and monster truck demolitions were all his).

Austin has 6 acting credits and 64 stunting credits on the IMDB, beginning in 2016, including episodes of The Walking Dead, The Darkest Minds, The Haunting of Hill House, El Camino, Creepshow, The Suicide Squad, Outer Banks, and Captain America: Brave New World.

In addition to Skyler Gisondo, he has doubled for Dalton Grey, Parker Sack. Matt Lintz, and Charles Aitkin, and Rohan Campbell (left).

And provided the butts for Gianni Paolo (left) and Hunter Doohan.

But when I started researching Austin, I ran into some roadblocks:

1. Virtually no biography.  All I could discover from Facebook, Instagram, the IMDB, and google searches is: he's from San Diego, where he probably attended St Augustine, a Catholic boys' school (at least his brother was a track star there). Now he lives in Marietta, Georgia, about 20 miles north of Atlanta. In a relationship, but doesn't say with who.

And in 2013 he was in high school, quite young, and being held in his buddy's arms.

2. Not many beefcake photos. A full chest shot from 2012.  

An underwater shot, showing a little of his arm and shoulder. 

A rock climbing shot.

3. But some n*de photos.  I'm wondering if they are really Austin. If he won't do a chest, why would he do a cock?

More after the break