Articles written by the PinkNews.co.uk 'staff writer' are authored by one or more of the PinkNews.co.uk editorial team.
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7 December 2005Joyeux Noel + War films produced through cooperation between the combatant countries have had a fairly solid track record over the years. There's the epic re-telling of the Normandy Landings, 1962's The Longest Day, a British/German/French co-production, 1970's American/Japanese take on the attack on Pearl Harbor, Tora! Tora! Tora! and the British/Japanese prisoner of war movie Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence from 1983, all of which are superb in not only their historical accuracy but also their sensitivity. -
7 December 2005Just Like Heaven + Yet another one of those films where you can just imagine the studio execs hammering out the pitch, which can't have been anything other than, "Ghost, but with the genders reversed - and it's a comedy!"Yep, whereas 1990's Ghost featured the living Demi Moore doing the whole love thing with the ghost of Patrick Swayze, helped out by a female medium, here we get the living Mark Ruffalo falling in love with the ghost of Reece Witherspoon, helped out by a male psychiatrist. And on top of that, they've chucked in the When Harry Met Sally idea (in itself pinched from Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing) that on first meeting, they hate each other -
6 December 2005New Tory leader, David Cameron must keep to his promises on gay issues 27 David Cameron, the first party leader to be born since the decriminalisation of homosexuality has been elected. He must now prove that he can change the way that the Conservative Party relates to the gay community.Earlier this year, this website endorsed David Cameron as the candidate most likely to change the Conservative Party treats gay issues and move the party away from its homophobic past. -
6 December 2005Terminally ill man and partner become first to have a gay wedding ceremony 1 A terminally ill man and his partner have become the first gay couple to become civil partners following Monday's introduction of the Civil Partnership Act.The Act normally requires a 15-day waiting period between the application for a partnership and the ceremony. However, the waiting period is scrapped if doctors say that one partner has a terminal illness and are unlikely to recover. -
3 December 2005PinkNews.co.uk Editor, released from hospital 3 Readers will be pleased to hear that the Editor of PinkNews.co.uk, Benjamin Cohen, has been released from hospital following his recent illness.Benjamin was admitted after suffering serious problems with his vision, balance and co-ordination.Doctors at Barnet General Hospital in North London have found that two lesions on the right hand side of his brain had caused his problems. -
1 December 2005Pink news will not update until Monday 5th December at the earliest 3 Due to the unexpected hospitalisation of pinknews.co.uk's editor, Benjamin Cohen (23), there will not be any updates to articles. We will update this page as soon as any information becomes available on Benjamin. -
29 November 2005Christian pastor who compared gays to paedophiles acquitted of homophobic hate crimes 11 Sweden's highest court has acquitted a Pentecostal pastor of hate crimes after he compared homosexuality to paedophilia and bestiality.He was convicted in 2004 under Sweden's hate crimes law but today, the country's Supreme Court upheld an appeals court verdict that found that the comments made by Ake Green, 64, were protected by the country's commitment to freedom of speech and religion. -
26 November 2005Elton John and David Furnish opt for private gay wedding ceremony + Sir Elton John's gay wedding to his partner David Furnish will be a private affair after he turned sown an offer worth over £6m to broadcast the occasion.The popstar and his entertainment producer partner will be one of the first couples in Britain to take advantage of the Civil Partnership Act, which will allow 'gay marriages' in all but name from the 21st December. -
24 November 2005Conservative Equality Spokeswoman explains her party’s gay rights policies 1 Earlier this week, we reported that a Labour MP (Angela Eagle) described the Eleanor Laing, Conservative spokeswoman on Equality's attitude to the Equality Bill as 'sad'.Today, Ms Laing took advantage of our policy of allowing a right of reply to all articles by asking us to reprint this letter which she hopes will make her own views on the matter clear. -
22 November 2005Gay rights officer claims he was sacked because of a sex change + Brighton and Hove council's gay rights officer was hounded out of a job because he had a sex change, a tribunal heard this week.Andy Baldwin, 34, says he was forced out of his job for the local authority after he changed his name from Andrea. He claims that he lost his £26,000-a-year job due to a "culture of prejudice and discrimination against transsexuals." -
22 November 2005The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe + When Harry Potter first burst onto the scene and all those columnists in the newspapers began churning out ream after ream of gushing praise for the wonderful originality and depth of J K Rowling's contributions to fantasy fiction and children's literature, the few dissenting voices most often brought up C S Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia as a prime example of a classic children's book series that had done it all before. So it's really only fair that Narnia finally gets a cinematic outing, and also only fair that the first Narnia film is so much more accomplished than the first in the Harry Potter movie franchise. -
16 November 2005Broken Flowers + Of late, Bill Murray seems to be making a bit of a thing out of playing middle-aged men desperately searching for some kind of meaning in their lives. There was, of course, the almost depressingly bleak and lonely Lost in Translation, then the quirky The Life Aquatic and now this. As in that last film, Broken Flowers revolves around the discovery of a son he never knew existed and the resultant confusion about the state of his life. -
16 November 2005The Legend of Zorro + It has been seven years since The Mask of Zorro catapulted its stars, Antonio Banderas and Catherine Zeta-Jones from moderate fame to stardom. Seven years is normally a very long time to wait for a sequel. There are few exceptions to the rule that more than three years equals disappointing box office and normally equally disappointing films. -
16 November 2005The Brothers Grimm + Former Monty Python animator Terry Gilliam's first film in seven years couldn't help but be much anticipated. Especially since the well-documented failure of his Don Quixote project, so painfully revealed in the superb documentary Lost in La Mancha, which brought back industry memories of his big-budget, underrated flop The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, the idea that Gilliam could ever get a project funded - let alone finished - ever again was but a vague hope for his many fans. -
16 November 2005Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang + Val Kilmer's name on a film poster is, these days, enough to drive anyone away. He's been associated with more high-profile duds than pretty much any actor currently working, be it the awful The Saint to the sprawling Alexander, has built up a reputation for being an arrogant and unpleasant person to work with, and by most accounts he hasn't managed to put in a genuinely good performance since 1993's Tombstone, where he was truly superb as the slowly dying gunslinger Doc Holliday. -
16 November 2005The Constant Gardener + Following the near Oscar success of last year's Hotel Rwanda, Hollywood returns again to the plight of modern Africa. This time it's Kenya, where British diplomat Ralph Fiennes finds his outspoken, politically active wife, played by Rachel Weisz, murdered while travelling through the lawless outer reaches of the country.Based as it is on a novel by thriller writing legend John Le Carré, a conspiracy lurks beneath the killing, made to look like the work of bandits. -
16 November 2005In Her Shoes + The chick flick is much derided as one of the most formulaic and unoriginal of genres. It is effectively a derivation of the male version, the buddy cop movie, which, like the Lethal Weapon series, normally has at least some cross-gender appeal, and is often spliced with that other much-hated genre, the romantic comedy.Chick flicks always tend to revolve around two or more women who shouldn't really be friends, who have some kind of - usually relatively minor - obstacle to overcome, and who eventually end up bonding over one or more men, be it through love or hatred. -
16 November 2005The Proposition + It's not often that you get a western these days. It's even less often that you get an Australian western.Rarer still is the attraction of an Australian western written by cult Aussie singer Nick Cave, erstwhile lead crooner in The Birthday Party and now best known as the deep-voiced head of slightly weird music troupe The Bad Seeds.Set as it is in 1880s Australia, as that vast island was just beginning to grow some kind of civilisation out of its penal colony status, this is a perfect yet original setting for an old-school western. -
16 November 2005Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire + If the title doesn't ring any bells, if you don't know which number in the series this is, there's little hope that this film will hold any interest - although if you've managed to avoid the Harry Potter phenomenon this long, either you have no interest in anything that's going on around you or you've been locked up in some far off distant land for the past few years.This particular tale is set in Harry's fourth year at Hogwart's wizard school. He should technically be 14. Not only is actor Daniel Radcliffe already 16, but he looks rather older. Does this matter? Well, it means the films are becoming ever more unlike the books. The tall, muscular Radcliffe is hardly much like the rather small and weedy Harry that Rowling seems to envisage any more. -
16 November 2005Everything Is Illuminated + Adapted from the critically acclaimed faux-autobiographical novel of the same name by Jonathan Safran Foer, this could well be the film that allows Elijah Wood to shake off the Frodo associations which, following the insane success of The Lord of the Rings movies, threatened to haunt him for the rest of his career.Following outings in both Sin City and Green Street, in which he was evidently determined to play against type, Wood here shows that he can indeed do more than merely gaze in wide-eyed terror at computer-generated beasties with a performance that is at once sensitive and quirky.
