Mitch Hewer as Maxxie on Skins

In a continued effort to bring you all that is important in the world of gay entertainment and ensure that you are being spoon-fed images of gorgeous, commoditized manflesh, we present the newly-minted AfterElton Briefs. Following the usual assortment of carefully-selected news items, interested readers can find a refreshing pic of a hot man in underwear after the jump. Yes, we're serious.

• Fans of randy British teen dramas rejoice! Skins, a beloved (and racy!) nighttime soap featuring Mitch Hewer as gay teen Maxxie, will premiere on BBC America in August.

• John Barrowman took second place as Britain's cheesiest celebrity, barely nosing out Graham Norton but losing to former EastEnders star Shane Richie. The contest was run by a cheese company who should probably put themselves on the list next year for devising such a pungent promotion.

• And speaking of Barrowman, could he be on the list of Doctor Who companions who might be killed off (if you listen to rumors) in this weekend's big finale?

• Good news: Both Neil Patrick Harris and T.R. Knight have made the Emmy nomination "short lists". No, I'm not making fun of their stature.

• Gay video retailer (and porn distributor) TLA is coming under fire for making Heath Ledger's full-frontal in I'm Not There the selling point for the DVD in their catalog. On the one hand, the pickle-shot in question is certainly news to me. On the other, a dead guy's junk is a pretty trashy way to sell a DVD.

And today's Briefs are brought to you by...

if you're headed to the video store tonight, you might want to keep these queer interest DVD's in mind.

Teeth
Teeth is the first directorial effort from out actor Mitchell Lichtenstein. The premise is ... well, read for yourself:

“High school student Dawn works hard at suppressing her budding sexuality by being the local chastity group's most active participant. Her task is made even more difficult by her bad boy stepbrother Brad's increasingly provocative behavior at home. A stranger to her own body, innocent Dawn discovers she has a toothed vagina when she becomes the object of violence. As she struggles to comprehend her anatomical uniqueness, Dawn experiences both the pitfalls and the power of being a living example of the vagina dentata myth.”

We reviewed it at the beginning of the year, and it sounds like a good choice if you like, quirky, offbeat indies.

I'm Not There
Speaking of offbeat, out director Todd Haynes has made a career out of following his own artistic vision, from the Karen Carpenter inspired barbie doll short Superstar, to the gay anthology Poison and the glam rock epic Velvet Goldmine. His biggest success came with the Douglas Sirk inspired Far From Heaven in 2002. His Bob Dylan biopic I'm Not There is released today, and features an Oscar nominated gender-bending performance from Cate Blanchett.

The Witnesses' Michel Blanc and Johan Libéreau

The Witnesses
Wild Reeds director Andre Techine releases his latest, The Witnesses (Les Témoins) today. It's about the onslaught of AIDS in the mid-80's in France, and how it affects a circle of friends. (Ed. note: As a reader points out, The Witnesses is not actually out until June 24, but is available today for pre-order from TLA. Thanks for the correction - BJ)

Bewitched: Season Six
And the sixth season of Bewitched is released today. This season saw the birth of Samantha and Durwood's son Adam, the introduction of my favorite character, the clumsy Esmerelda, played by the fabulous Alice Ghostley, and of course, appearances from gay faves Paul Lynde and Agnes Moorehead

Happy viewing!

We've been grousing that this year's Oscars are the straightest in recent memory, which may be a turnoff for some gay movie/awards show/red carpet lovers. So here are a few simple suggestions to make your Oscar viewing the Gay! Gay! Hollywood! celebration that we love and deserve.

1. Pretend all non-married nominated characters are gay

Remember back before there were gay characters on screen and audiences had to dig for gay subtext with a pickaxe and night goggles? Well, here we are again. So for the purposes of getting through the night alive, pretend that Daniel Plainview from There Will Be Blood, Michael Clayton, Anton Sigurh from No Country for Old Men, and the old guy from Into the Wild are gay.

Hey, for once not all the gay characters are psychos or and don't all have to die! Sweet...

2. Gay celebrity drinking game

Want to save on your champagne budget this year? Make a drinking game out of every time the broadcast show an out gay man. Granted, this will likely happen only once or twice during the show, depending on whether or not shut-out Hairspray director Adam Shankman could snag a ticket on eBay. So don't blink! 

Hairspray's Nikki Blonsky and Adam Shankman 

3. Rename the nominees with gayer titles

To gay up the fun, refer to the nominees by these titles throughout. (Those who forget go through the spanking machine!)

There Will Be Boy Butter

No Country for Trolled Men

Michael Clay Aiken

Queeney Todd: The Demon Hairdresser of Fleet Street

A Toned Man 

The Diving Bell and the Butt Pirate 

Get Me Away From Her 

What Ever Happened to Baby Juno? 

The Character Assassination of Jesse James by the Bossy Bottom Robert Ford 

4. Stack the deck

Watch the Oscars with as many gay people as possible, for maximum effect. Chances are it will be playing at  your local gay bar/community center/coffee shop/dungeon, so if you don't have any gays at the ready to help you make it through the broadcast, go find some new ones. Safety in numbers! 

Indeed! 

Well, the nominations for the 80th Annual Academy Awards were released just minutes ago, and they're just as violence-filled, dour, and heterosexual as everyone had predicted.

Remember the days when Capote, Brokeback Mountain, Transamerica and more gave the categories some flair? Not this year, where angry, obsessed men make up most of the noms (No Country for Old Men, There Will Be Blood, Michael Clayton, In the Valley of Elah, even Sweeney Todd) and the lone comedy is about a pregnant moppet.

At first glance there are no openly gay men up for any of the major awards, and the only role that has even a whiff of queerness to it is Cate Blanchett's gender-bending turn as Bob Dylan in Todd Haynes's I'm Not There. (Haynes, as well as Hairspray's Adam Shankman, were shut out despite delivering critically acclaimed films that were not nearly violent or depressing enough.) But hey - Norbit got a nomination!! 

Even though I saw almost all of the nominated films and enjoyed many of them, this is disappointing, and I can't imagine that the Oscar viewing parties are going to be much fun this year (if the ceremony even happens, as they are insisting it will).

I mean, how do you come up with a theme menu based on these titles?

"The Diving Bell and the Butterbeans"?

"Into the Wild Rice"?

"There Will be Blood Pudding"?

"Ratatouille"? Oh ... well, there is that...

Golden Globe winner Cate Blanchett as Bob Dylan in I'm Not There

Wow. Even we didn't think it would be THAT bad...

Yes, last night's star-challenged Golden Globes press conference was even less watchable than we had predicted, partly because of the ever-challenging presence of Billy Bush, who more than anything seemed peeved that he was missing Desperate Housewives by having to be there. Aside from lacking everything that we love about the Globes (the red carpet, the drunken acceptance speeches, the cameras catching the rictus grins of the losers when someone else's name is announced), the list of winners was also something of a fever-dream.

Marion Cotillard? Mad Men? Samantha Morton? Atonement? Really? I mean, I know this is the HFPA and they're a bit more ... you know, "European" than most American moviegoers in their tastes, but some of this year's winners almost seemed like a big raspberry to Hollywood. 

Aside from Sweeney Todd (which is of course the masterpiece of gay composer and writer Stephen Sondheim) winning Best Motion Picture Comedy or Drama (and Johnny Depp taking the acting honor for the same film) and Cate Blanchett snagging a trophy for her gender-bending performance as Bob Dylan in Todd Haynes' I'm Not There, this year's awards were as straight as the stripes on Bush's tie.

Anyway, in light of this, the hobbled People's Choice Awards from earlier this week, and other entertainment-kudos-related disappointments, we've launched the first ever Gay People's Choice Awards poll on the main page, to spice this season up a bit and make sure that every queer voice is heard. Be sure to check it out and cast your votes! 

The full list of Globules (cribbed from Variety, thanks!) is after the jump ... any thoughts?

• Neil Patrick Harris lookin' tough. (Or, at least, as tough as anyone can be expected to look in a Sesame Street muscle shirt.) And David Burtka from On the Lot looks cute as ever!
• Neil Patrick Harris (as Barney on How I Met Your Mother) looking not-so-tough when guest star Mandy Moore refers to his "enormous vagina" when she appears in the season premiere as a tattooed rocker-chick.
• Televisionista's sad, sad eulogy for the late Football Wives pilot, including some great Eddie Cibrian pics. *sniffle*

• Let's see if I can get this right: there's apparently some kind of online community set within a superhero video game called City of Heroes, and a group of gay players known as the Wig Heroes recently staged a sort of Virtual Wigstock within the game, and not even invading aliens could derail the parade of celebrity impersonators, which included "The Lady Bunny, Lady Miss Kier, Patsy and Edina, Cher, Britney, Janet, Ru Paul, Christina, Madonna, the girls from 9 to 5 (Dolly, Lilly and Jane), Rihanna, Pink, Daft Punk and of course the Spice Girls."
• The New York Post asks, "Are You a Gay Senator?" Um, not with those recycled stereotypes we ain't. Showtunes? Really? How very first-season Will & Grace.
• A new clip of Cate Blanchett as Bob Dylan in gay director Todd Haynes' increasingly fascinating upcoming film, I'm Not There.

• Soundtrack details for gay filmmaker Todd Haynes' sure-to-be-fascinating Bob Dylan biopic, I'm Not There, in which the singer/songwriter is portrayed by everyone from Heath Ledger to Cate Blanchett to one of my cats. Antony and the Johnsons covering "Knockin' on Heaven's Door"?! Sufjan Stevens on "Ring Them Bells"?!?! Somebody catch me...
• The L.A. Times has a nice article on how Neil Patrick Harris is a gay actor playing a straight role and how no one seems to mind in the least. But beware: the piece quotes some wingnut named Michael Jensen, so they're obviously not playing with a full deck!
  
• SpoilerTV caught wind of yet another gaysploitative detective show episode on its way, yet again within the Law & Order monolith.
  
• GLAAD has changed the eligibility rules for their media awards to include gay-for-gay media (the awards until now have only been awarded to mainstream media). Gay-targeted outlets will not be granted their own categories, but are invited to compete within existing categories. In other words: Sorry, The Lair. That "Best Gay Vampire Softcore Soap Opera" award isn't yours quite yet.
• I so cannot believe that no one was all over this while I was out at the end of last week, but The Advocate cover boy of the month, Ryan Reynolds, and gay filmmaker John August (whom Reynolds actually plays, in part, in their utterly bizarro new comedy The Nines) did a fascinating Q&A for the mag and also documented their trip together to Africa, where they helped build an orphanage. We already knew that Reynolds was uncommonly gay-friendly and as hot as tarmac, but he builds orphanages, too? *SWOON*