Jena Malone, Jonathan Tucker, and Carter Smith

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.

• Gay director Carter Smith attended the premiere of his first studio film, the horror movie The Ruins, and paused on the red carpet with the film's young stars, including Jena Malone (Saved!) and Jonathan Tucker (The Deep End).

• On last night's Real World reunion special, Seattle housemate Stephen revealed that he is gay and marrying his boyfriend, Sheldon. Oh, and then his former housemates threatened to assault him, but that's just how things work on this show.

• Celebrated choreographer Matthew Bourne (he of the all-male Swan Lake) is set to debut his latest ballet, Dorian Gray, later this year. Not that there's anything gay about that.

• I'm still loving the new B-52's album. Check out the video for the first single, "Funplex", above.

• Batguano insane and gay-crazy soap Passions may be ending its nine-year run this summer (on DirectTV - what a sendoff!), but fans of the show can buy props from the show at the most Passion-ate yard sale ever this weekend in Studio City.

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

• Dance badboy Matthew Bourne (he of the all-male Swan Lake) talks about the matter-of-fact gay couple in his highly sexualized Carmen adaptation, The Car Man (recently revived): "You do mid-week matinees, you get a sea of grey hair, but they love it. They're as open to it as anyone else, they love the raunch."
• Candace Trunzo apologizes for the "not normal" gay kiss captioning in Star, and it's actually one of the more believable things I've read come from magazine.
• Baby meets bathwater, yet again: Philly school district prefers to remove all "special month" designations (like Black History Month and such) rather than deal with hubbub over Gay and Lesbian History Month. Next up: school district decides to remove all students from school rather than deal with gay and lesbian students.
• Courtney Love is glad that we gays are over the vogueing thing and have found our rock-and-roll souls, and she wants to party with us. At least, I think -- I haven't used my crazy person spelling decoder ring on it yet.
• Gay-fave Johnny Depp to play Barnabas Collins in the big-screen Dark Shadows movie?!! Why am yelling?! Oh right -- because that's AWESOME!
• Our pal scribegrrrl over at AfterEllen.com cobbled together all the gay-related bits of the much-touted Kyle XY episode from earlier in the week. It's even better than TiVo!
• Don't forget to check out this week's joint BEST.GAY.WEEK.EVER. column, in which Michael and I share roving reporter duties and bring you some dish from the TCA Conference and the Design Star premiere party (we hit the star-studded cocktail parties so you don't have to!), as well as other gay tidbits for the week. Have a great weekend!

Matthew Bournes' breakout version of Swan Lake may have debuted more than ten years ago, but that doesn't mean it isn't still thrilling audiences around the world. Bourne took the rather staid, well worn classic (set to music by Tchaikovsky) and completely reinvigorated it by casting it with all men and, most importantly, as a love story between two men. It's still a tragedy about doomed love, but Bourne managed to take make it fresh and relevant, not just with the same-sex storyline, but with his striking choreography. It was undoubtedly controversial, but Bourne cleverly showed how to take something out of the past and make it relevant to the present.

His version of Swan Lake is now in rehearsals in Melbourne and I thought it interesting to post some pics from the rehearsals.

The Prince and his lover