A few weeks back, we first mentioned the 2008 AfterElton.com Gay/Bi Short Film Contest, and since there are less than three weeks left to submit an entry, we're giving you another heads-up.

If your short film is chosen as one of the winners it will be featured on AfterElton.com and possibly on Logoonline.com. And the grand prize winner will be featured in a short promo on the Logo TV channel directing viewers to watch their film online.

The deadline for submission is November 15th, and here are the rules:

Scripted films only (no documentary)

All lengths and all genres allowed

No restriction on the number of entries per person

The winner and runner-up(s) will be announced at the end of November/early December. If you have any questions, post them in this forum thread. When you're ready to submit your film, email us at afterelton@gmail.com and we'll provide the URL for uploading the video.

Oh, and I know what you're thinking (I was thinking it, too), so I asked TPTB, and they said that naked butt shots will be frowned upon.

So go forth and create! I'm about to film my own entry; it's an original story of a couple of sheepherders who meet on a mountain and fall in love. I'm calling it The Sheepherders Who Met on a Mountain and Fell in Love.

I know it's going to be hard to top that, but I'm looking forward to seeing what all the creative people here come up with!

Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist opened over the weekend, and in addition to a killer soundtrack and sweet romance, it also featured that rarity in a straight teen oriented film...positive gay characters.

In reading Brian's review, it's obvious that the gay characters of Thom and Dev are an intergral part of the movie, and treated with as much respect as the straight characters:

It's beyond reassuring to see a teen comedy where gay panic is not even a consideration, even as a joke. These characters clearly don't see anything wrong with themselves or with their friends being gay, and they have zero patience for anyone who does (as evidenced when Norah's slimy ex-boyfriend stresses the "gay" in "gay band" and Nick doesn't take the bait).

There are no backhanded insults or talking down to anyone, or any fear that being with the gay guys is a threat to one's manhood, reputation, or own sexuality. It may seriously be the first truly "post-gay" straight romance movie.

This got us thinking about the history of mainstream teen oriented films, and how gay teen characters have either been invisible, or relegated to "barely there" status. Nowhere is this more evident than in the films of John Hughes, who was responsible for such teen classics as Sixteen Candles, Pretty in Pink, The Breakfast Club and Some Kind of Wonderful. They're all beloved, but if you scratch the surface, you'll find that gays don't exist in the Hughes teen world (I mean, c'mon, are you telling me that Duckie couldn't have been written as gay in Pretty in Pink, or Cameron in Ferris Bueller?)

It could be worse, though. If you look at how gays are treated in a teen movie like Cruel Intentions, maybe invisibility is better. The gay character in that movie, Blaine (and you know he's evil, because no good guy in any movie has ever been named Blaine) is amoral and predatory, and while it's true that other straight characters are the same way, Blaine's only role in the film is to be the evil queer who uses innocent straight guys.

However, there have been some gay characters in straight teen movies that, while still only achieving "barely there" status, have managed to ingratiate themselves and make an impression. Here are a few...

Huntley Ritter as "Les" in Bring It On

In the Kirsten Dunst cheerleader epic Bring It On, there are several guys on her squad, one of whom, named Les (Huntley Ritter) is openly gay (we know this because someone asks him "do you speak fag?" to which he responds "Fluently"). He gets more than just a throwaway line and acknowledgment, though. He also gets a chance to flirt with other guys, is smart and sincere, and the only time his gayness is a liability is when he's the brunt of lame homophobic comments from some of the jocks who resort to name calling out of frustration that Les obviously doesn't care what they think.

Larry B. Scott as "Lamar" in Revenge of the Nerds

Outrageously flamboyant, the character of Lamar Latrell (Larry B. Scott) would easily be the brunt of ridicule in a lesser movie, but in Revenge of the Nerds, he's one of the heroes. He and his fellow nerds come together and support each other, and as a family, they become the big men on campus (c'mon, you know you wanna sing it..."clap your hands everybody, and everybody clap your hands".

See more gays in teen films after the break.

With the AfterElton.com Greatest Gay Movies Poll in full swing (if you haven't voted yet, please do so!), we thought we'd take a look at the flipside, the bottom of the barrel, the worst of the worst when it comes to gay depictions on film.

Like the "best of" poll, these are not necessarily gay themed films meant for a gay audience, but rather there's something so egregious or offensive, or just plain wrong in them, that the film negatives deserve to be chopped up to be used as ukulele picks. These are films I saw once, and hope to never see again.

These selections are mine, and mine alone, so if you disagree with them (and you will), please take it out on me and not anyone else at AfterElton.com. (Well, except Brian, cause that's funny.)

Note - these films will be graded using the Cruising scale, with five being the worst.

The Choirboys 

Released in 1977, The Choirboys had an impeccable pedigree; It was adapted from Joseph Wambaugh's bestselling novel about street cops, and it was directed by Robert Aldrich, who gave us such classics as Kiss Me Deadly and What Ever Happened To Baby Jane?

Unfortunately, Wambaugh was so horrified by the result, he demanded his name be removed from the credits.

I know how he feels. In fact, I wish I could have been around when the movie was being made, so I could invest in it, then demand that my name be taken off of it.

The movie is about a bunch of drunken louts who harass people, beat up women, and eventually murder someone. Did I mention that these guys are cops, and supposed to be the heroes? It's a non-stop calvacade of racism, sexism, and homophobia.

In one infamous scene, a cop is handcuffed to a tree in the middle of a cruising park, after his pants have been removed by his police pals. A grossly stereotypical predatory queen walks by carrying a purse, and walking a pink poodle, and proceeds to smack his lips and lisp his way through a conversation with the increasingly angry cop.

If that's not bad enough, later in the film, one of the cops murders a gay park hustler, but in the film's "happy ending", the guy's cop buddies help him cover up the crime, and he gets away with it!

So how bad is The Choirboys? Let me put it this way: the most sane, reasonable character in the film is played by ... James Woods.

Cruising rating

The Rock 

One of the myriad of bad action films Nicolas Cage made immediately after winning the Oscar, 1996's The Rock would be just another forgettable "blow'd up real good" spectacle were it not for one scene that had my eyes roll completely out of their sockets, bounce down the steps, and hail a cab to Hollywood to smack the screenwriters.

In this scene, Sean Connery is getting his hair cut by a flamboyant barber (played by...Anthony Clark?) when some bad guys interrupt with guns blazing, sending the barber into a hysterically screaming, hands waving fit. They find him a few minutes later, literally cowering in a corner, sobbing uncontrollably.

So what's the point of including a scene like that? Easy, it gets laughs from the target audience, namely young, straight men. The producers know who their audience is, and they know exactly what to feed them.

Cruising Rating

See more barrel scrapings after the break.

Gay Israeli filmmaker Eytan Fox's last film, Walk on Water, was the top-grossing film of all time in Israel, so when political upheaval in that country pretty much tanked the box office changes of his latest film, The Bubble, it was a bitter blow. This year's looking a lot sweeter, though, as the film is winning awards, critical acclaim, and a distribution deal on the international and gay film festival circuits.

"The bubble" refers to the trendy urban neighborhood where Noam (Ohad Knoller), an Israeli, lives with a straight female friend, Lulu (Daniella Wircer) and a gay male friend, Yali (Alon Friedmann). He meets Ashraf (Yousef "Joe" Sweid), a Palestinian, at a checkpoint one day, and they end up falling in love. Ashraf joins the three friends in their bubble, and for a time, everyone's happy.

Of course, as the title implies, the bubble does eventually burst. This is, after all, Israel and Palestine, and like all Romeo and Juliet stories, it was never going to have a happy ending.

The Bubble picked up a $5000 prize for the HBO juried award for the best fiction feature at last week's Miami Lesbian and Gay Film Festival, as well as the prestigious International Confederation of Art Cinemas Award (CICAE) at the Berlin International Film Festival in February.

The film will show on May 17 at the Boston Lesbian and Gay Film Festival, and will begin its US theatrical release in late summer. Check out the trailer after the jump for more.

There are those who think that my job involves nothing more than watching television, interviewing my personal idols, and spending hours on YouTube. There is actually some truth to that.

In researching an article, I stumbled across a video clip uploaded to YouTube, a ten-minute montage of scenes from David Johnson's1995 film The Lavender Lens: 100 years of celluloid queers.

So of course, I watched it, to see if the wedding dance from Pandora's Box with Louise Brooks, my favorite lesbian scene from a pre-Code Hollywood movie, was included, which it was. And then I saw that the entire documentary was available to view online, uploaded by the filmmaker himself.

Who not only included code to make it embeddable, but also made it downloadable. And included, of course, a handy link to purchase the high-quality DVD if watching movies on your computer isn't your thing.

This is almost a full-length fan video, with no commentary, just music and clips. There's a lot of rare footage, some of which was in Celluloid Closet, some of which wasn't. I love free stuff to download, because, as is widely known here at AfterElton, I'm extremely shallow and materialistic. So I thought I'd give filmmaker David Johnson some love. Check out the short montage on YouTube, then tell him he's a wonderful guy.