Bursting onto the screen in a vibrancy of sound, colour and heart, H.P. Mendoza’s synth pop musical is one of the freshest, wittiest and most infectious movies of the year.

Fruit Fly is set in San Fransisco, location being important with the movie’s theme of finding our place in the world. The story’s protagonist and our passport into Mendoza’s electric world is a young, Asian American woman called Bethesda (Beth to her friends). We find her as she returns from The Philippines after a journey there to locate her birth parents, her adoptive parents having passed away.

She was only half successful, finding the grave of her father, while her mother’s whereabouts are unknown. Her fractured sense of family and search for an identity have inspired the artist to create a performance piece entitled ‘A Work In Progress,’ which she hopes to stage in her new home town.

We are quickly introduced to Beth’s new roommates at the hip artist commune she moves into: Windham is an outgoing, gay set designer; painter Karen and actress Sharon are lovers and last but not least is teen runaway Jacob who’s searching for his voice.

The movie whisks us along with some inspired electro musical numbers – particularly one called ‘We Are The Hag’ and hilarious gay cruising duet ‘We Have So Much In Common’ – as we follow Beth’s ups and downs as she gets to know her new friends, meets an admirer and attempts to stage her one-woman show. A serendipitous visit to an antiques shop with Windham also leads her to a photograph which she believes is a clue to her origins.

But Beth’s search for her mother is really just a red herring – this is soap opera of the finest order; Tales of the City meets Moulin Rouge! Mendoza – who not only acts in his movie as a gay friend to Beth, but writes and records the music too – is eminently gifted at combining song, humour, melodrama and striking visuals, all weaved into a glorious fabric which cloaks the narrative – I’d love for him to create a TV show; he has a natural instinct for entertainment and knows how to leave you wanting more.

The cast of Fruit Fly are great, top down. L.A. Renigen is a real find as Beth, bringing a sweetness and insecurity to the part, while some of the supporting characters nearly steal the show, including Beth’s deadpan landlord, Tracy, and her neurotic aunt. But the biggest supporting character is San Francisco itself and Fruit Fly feels like a love letter to the city – a toe-tapping song and dance number sings the virtues of the city’s transport system.

I thoroughly enjoyed stepping into H.P. Mendoza’s vibrant world for 90 minutes and I highly recommend you go watch Fruit Fly – you’ll be smiling for a week.

Fruit Fly is available on DVD from October.

Marcel Schlutt stars in Unfaithful

I’ve you’ve ever visited one of those user-generated, amateur porn sites I very much doubt it felt like a trip to your local art-house cinema, but director Claude Pérès has completely smashed the line between the two in new gay movie, Unfaithful.

The result is a sexually explicit, unscripted feature-length film showing Pérès meeting and getting intimate with another man – in this case gay porn actor Marcel Schlutt. Neither actor nor director know exactly what’s going to happen when the cameras start rolling and they spend the night together (although I’ve got a pretty good idea).

Respect to Claude Pérès for coming up with a way to make art, get paid AND sleep with a male model. Probably one French movie Hollywood won’t be remaking.

Trailer might be NSFW, depending on where you work, but you can watch it here…

…Jemaine Clement – one half of comedy duo The Flight of the Conchords – tells the Guardian how his latest movie Dinner for Schmucks required him to pose for “gay porn pics” in a park in Athens…

…Gay movie director Joel Schumacher (The Lost Boys, Tigerland, Phone Booth) doesn’t believe being ‘out’ in Hollywood ever hurt his career (Batman & Robin did that for him). Age appears to be no barrier either and the 71-year-old is as busy as ever, currently prepping a movie with Nicole Kidman and Nicholas Cage. Still got an eye for the guys too – his latest, Twelve, stars Gossip Girl’s Chace Crawford. Trailer below:

A pair of new trailers for gay movies coming your way in 2011 both evoke cinematic eras of the past.

Joshua Tree, 1951: A Portrait of James Dean takes us back in time to Hollywood’s golden age for the queerest look at the life of the movie icon so far. It’s directed by Matthew Mishory (Delphinium: A Childhood Portrait of Derek Jarman), who has an eye for striking imagery, so likely to be the best looking biopic of James Dean, too, especially with James Preston cast as the ambisexual actor.

Jumping ahead to the 70s is the trailer for darkly comic homo horror movie The Craving, described by director Val Castro as “American Psycho meets Sweeney Todd a la Dario Argento,” which will either get your mouth watering, or not, depending on your gay movie tastes.

It’s the story of a top chef (played by Anna Curtis) in San Francisco who leads a sinister double life. As Ronnie’s dishes become more and more celebrated, is a rising murder count in the city just pure coincidence?

With its tale of a slightly effeminate gay teen falling in love with his jock classmate, Watercolors could be an episode of Glee, sans musical numbers, but a shock twist towards the end lifts this gay movie above gentle, bittersweet melodrama.

Danny (played by Tye Olson) is an artistic school kid with a recovering alcoholic mom and a best friend called Andy (Ellie Araiza) to confide in. Fate drops new-kid-on-the-block and champion swimmer Carter (Kyle Clare) into Danny’s bedroom for one weekend while Carter’s father (and AA buddy to Danny’s mom) is out of town and this unlikely pairing grows closer as they start to see past the preconceptions they have for one another.

The friendship proves beneficial to both boys with Carter posing nude for Danny and inspiring his painting in the process, while carter gets help with his English essay in return. Danny’s best friend is sceptical about this blossoming relationship, but when Carter swaps sleeping on the floor for sleeping in Danny’s bed, their sexual feelings start to awaken.

This is really a film about relationships, not just between Danny and Carter (Olson and Clare both excellent in their roles), but also between Danny and his art teacher (played by Karen Black), who sees straight to his soul and is the kind of nurturing figure we all wish we had growing up, and between Carter and his struggling, unsupportive father.

The moments between Danny and his mom are also very honest and tender – the film has a great coming out scene. The central love affair (which alludes to Romeo and Juliet through their English Lit studies) is a compelling and unpredictable one and while their getting together might seem a tad easy at first (scenes of hand-holding in the park are far-fetched for these closeted lovers), we’re soon reminded of the harshness of growing up gay with a schoolyard beating.

The movie doesn’t always get it right: occasional bursts of arty abstraction are more confusing than anything else (in particular an indoor rain pour during their first sexual encounter) and Danny’s fun, sassy friend disappears half-way through the film.

Ultimately Watercolors is a ride worth going on and you might be surprised by the ending to this story of first love which captures some of those desperate, dangerous, exciting feelings.

Watercolors is available now on DVD in US and from 30 Aug in UK.

So, instead, here is a music video from a group resembling The (Old Age) Village People set to the soundtrack of 1980s camp extravaganza Can’t Stop The Music (notable for the dubious distinction of launching Steve Guttenberg’s career and introducing the ‘YMCA’ to a million handbag-heavy dancefloors).

(Fortunately you CAN stop the music)…

Mendoza recently spoke to SFGate.com about this project, his next project (which is already his last project) and his likely next-but-one project which may or may not be a ghost story.

Watch the trailer for Fruit Fly here. It’s due for a New York theatrical release on 24 September followed by DVD release in October.

I guess we’ll never know the politics behind this decision, but it’s fair to say that Bryan Singer, after the relative failure of Superman Returns and Valkyrie, is no longer the hot property he once was – you just have to check out his future projects on IMDB for proof of that: a Battlestar Galactica rehash and the ignominy of directing a sequel to dodgy X-Men spin-off, Wolverine.

With Matthew Vaugn and his regular writing partner Jane Goldman in charge can we expect a light dusting of homophobic jokes over X-Men: First Class? They’re using an original story by Singer as the basis for the film, but Goldman has a hand in the screenplay and this is the woman who created the fey, cross-dressing pirate played by Robert De Niro in Stardust and also revived the antique gay slur ‘whoopsie’ in the script.

Worse was to come in Kick-Ass with the running joke that the teenage superhero-wannabe was perceived to be gay because he got beaten up by two thugs (a hetero would have been able to defend himself, you see). Kick-Ass then runs with the ‘gay’ tag in order to get close to the girl. How enlightened.

So, can we look forward to some oh-so-amusing misunderstandings about the nature of Professor Xavier’s and Magneto’s relationship in the new X-Men movie? Maybe reintroduce the term ‘pansy’? Whatever the outcome, the film is at least shaping up to have the best looking cast of the year, with James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender and Nicholas Hoult attached.