Boyzone's Stephen Gately

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.

• Boyzone, a UK boyband from the 90s with an out gay member (Stephen Gately, pictured above) has reemerged with a new sexier look to match their more mature audience. Nice to see that when this article mentions that all the bandmembers are now married, they include Gately, who entered into a civil partnership with his fella in 2006.

• This week's Candorville comic is tackling the overturn of the same-sex marriage ban in California. (t/y Lyle!)

• The NY Times' Dennis Lim recently wrote a nice, wistful piece on "gay punk provocateur" Derek Jarman (a documentary on the late filmmaker, Derek, is headed this way) that includes an interview with Jarman's longtime friend Tilda Swinton.

• Sir Ian McKellen, one of our biggest and brightest out gay stars, turned 69 years young on Sunday. Happy birthday, Sir!

• Prolific director, producer and actor Sidney Pollack died yesterday of cancer at age 73. He directed such classics as Tootsie, Out of Africa, and They Shoot Horses, Don't They?, and played Will Truman's father on Will & Grace.

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

Riechen Lehmkuhl at the Queer Lounge 

After a mellow opening Thursday night at the Sundance Film Festival – with opening film In Bruges – and rowdy shindig at concurrent festival Slamdance, things have sparked to life here in Park City, Utah. Celebs are appearing, much to the delight of paparazzi stalking Main Street – I walked alongside Alan Rickman, who attracted a handful of shutterbugs. Allegedly, Ang Lee was spotted drinking a Gatorade in Albertsons' supermarket. Colin Farell is all over the place. And I ran into High School Musical 2 co-star Kaycee Stroh in the Reaction swag lounge admiring Unstoppable brand "F*ck You" hats. Not that she can wear them just yet. "When I'm no longer with Disney, totally!"

Ah, swag, another "S" word that entails part of the Sundance hubbub. Being that today wasn't a heavy movie day for me – the queer films start bowing on Saturday (including Amy Redford's The Guitar, Isaac Julien's Derek, and Bruce LaBruce's Otto, or Up With Dead People) – I spent time investigating the numerous Main Street swag enclaves.

At the Revaleskin Rejuvenation Lounge I was treated to an EarTherapy consultation, during which my ears were inspected and massaged; Her Native Roots survival kits; cool organic Eco Gear, and of course Revaleskin products, which utilize uber-antioxidant-loaded coffee bean berries. At The Reaction Hospitality Lounge & In Touch Café at STEREO had some primo stuff including Triple Five Soul jackets and new Kenneth Cole scents (sales of which benefit Hope USA and Habitat for Humanity).

Meanwhile, The Queer Lounge opened its doors. And the evening ended with the Outfest Filmmaker Party at the Heineken Lounge, where Eating Out producer Michael J. Shoel told me an Eating Out 3 is in the works, to be co-written by Q. Allan Brocka and EO2 director Philip Bartell … Yes, things have just started and it only gets gayer from here!

Saturday morning kicked off with the press and industry screening of Amy Redford’s The Guitar, in which out actress Saffron Burroughs portrays a milquetoast New Yorker who, after discovering she has terminal cancer, goes credit card happy and has hot lesbian (and bisexual three-way!) sex. I found it entertaining, which seems to be the minority opinion asofar. “I thought it was dishonest,” scoffed a colleague. Well, sure. It’s fiction.

And off to the Queer Lounge for the PlanetOut Short Film Awards shindig. In fact there was a lot of lounging going on over the weekend. The Donnas performed a juicy set on Saturday night as part of the party for Isaac Julien’s Derek, a fantastic documentary/retrospective of the late Derek Jarman’s queer landmark work.

The Sundance Film Festival just announced the line-up for their big annual blow-out which launches January 17th in Park City, Utah. Alas, there isn't a whole lot of gay again this year. I checked over the listings and the only two things that popped out at me included the film adaptation of Michael Chabon's The Mysteries of Pittsburgh and the documentary Derek about director Derek Jarman who died of AIDS in 1994. UPDATE: Our cinephiliac contributor Adam Lubitow spotted UK doc Be Like Others, which is about transgender Iranian men. Also, the U.S. doc American Teen, which follows four high school students in Indiana, has been accused of offering to pay subjects to "act gay" for the film.

As I'm neither a huge fan of documentaries or Derek Jarman, it's Pittsburgh I'm most curious about. Jon Foster (pictured above) plays the bisexual Art Bechstein who falls into a love triangle with a married couple. It's been years since I've read the book, but I recollect loving it and am very interested to see how they handle the gay plot threads.

The movie also stars Mena Suvari, Sienna Miller, and, best of all, Peters Sarsgaard, whom gay fans no doubt remember from his turn in Kinsey. It does give me a bit of pause that the film is directed by Rawson Marshall Thurber who last directed Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story.

There are still some other announcements to come from Sundance and we'll keep you posted! BTW, after the jump I've included the first production diary from the shooting of the film.

A couple of weeks ago I blogged about the second episode of British Film Forever, a seven-part retrospective of British cinema that has been running on BBC2 in the UK.

The fourth episode of this series was shown on Saturday night, and once again gay-themed films were included as a prominent and integrated part of the program (although, disappointingly, lesbian themes were once again completely ignored). Subtitled ‘Corsets, Cleavage and Country Houses’, this episode took a look at British costume dramas and the various ways in which they have reflected the past.

Ismail Merchant and James Ivory’s lavish adaptations of the novels of gay author E. M. Forster, such as A Room With A View and Howards End, have proved to be some of the most popular British costume dramas. But when the Merchant-Ivory team adapted Forster’s one gay-themed novel, Maurice, for the big screen in 1987, the results weren’t quite so financially successful.

Check out a trailer for the film here: