RIP ma Gaza, Palestine..:'(

The body of 6-month-old Palestinian baby Mohammed al-Borai lies on the ground inside a mosque before his funeral in Gaza on February 28, 2008. Al-Borai was killed after Israeli military aircraft bombed the Hamas-run Interior Ministry in Gaza city on Wednesday, hospital officials said.

Gay film festival to showcase Japanese queer cinema

Now in its 23rd year, the Torino GLBT Film Festival or "Da Sodoma a Hollywood" will be held from 17th to 25th April 2008. Organisers said it will be the third Turin festival jointly organised and administered with Italy's National Museum of Cinema.

"23 years of exploration and construction of queer imagination," they said in a press release. "With a sharp discerning eye for perceiving new developments, the festival has gone from strength to strength, becoming one of the major drivers of dialogue between the GLBT community and the public.

"Moreover, it has introduced Italian audiences to the works of established directors such as Francois Ozon, Gus Van Sant, Derek Jarman and Todd Haynes.

Last year more than 25,000 people from all over the world attended. Along with the competition sections for full-length features, shorts and documentaries, this year there will be a retrospective on Japanese queer films from the 1960s to the present.Sebastien Lifshitz and Stanley Kwan be present at the festival and honoured with retrospective tributes. Other highlights include:

* Divine, camp icon par excellence, who died in 1988 at age 43, will be remembered on the 20th anniversary of his death with an image-gift by Francesco Vezzoli and with a screening of Paul Bartel's Lust in the Dust (1985), where Divine teamed up with Tab Hunter in a triumph of kitsch.

* Jodie: An IconA special evening will be dedicated to Jodie Foster, a talented actress, now out as a lesbian icon. Pratibha Parmar's documentary Jodie: An Icon explains how she managed this in over 30 years of screen acting.

*Retrospective: j-ender: big bang love in JapanAn exciting journey into the empire of senses and signs. In collaboration with NEO(N)EIGA,

The Festival will present the first European retrospective of Japanese queer films from the 1960s to the present. The retrospective will cross borders of gender and genre as it explores the Land of the Rising Sun. The cinema offers unique perspectives for us as distant observers of a country and a culture whose complexity is revealed in the endless paradigms of self-portrayal.

Madonna and Justin Timberlake Have 4 Minutes To Save The World!!

Imagine if the planet was in chaos, that there was only 4 minutes to save the world and that the only superheroes around to help were Justin Timberlake and Madonna.
Holy like a virgin Batman, what a nightmare for man-kind! Luckily, Justin Timberlake and Madonna aren't superheroes, they are pop stars and '4 Minutes To Save The World' is only the name of their new song.
Timberlake was in London this past week working on a video for the song with Madonna so we can assume that this will be the name of the first single from her forthcoming album.
Jonas & Francois have directed the clip, they, of James Blunt and Maroon 5 fame).
Madonna's next album, reported but unconfirmed, to be called 'Licorice', will be released in April.
It will be her final album for Warner before she heads off to her new life in 360 land with Live Nation.

Madonna 4 Minutes to Save The World

SYDNEY GAY AND LESBIAN MARDI GRAS TURNS 30!

Up to 300,000 people lined Sydney's streets to watch the Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras Saturday as the largest gay pride march in the Asia Pacific region marked its 30th anniversary.
For the first time, serving military personnel were among the 10,000 costumed participants sashaying through the city's Oxford Street gay district, showing how much attitudes have changed since the first event in 1978.
That march, staged at a time when male homosexuality was still illegal in New South Wales state, was a demand for gay rights that ended with more than 50 arrests as police and protesters clashed. Since then, the Mardi Gras has become better known as a sequin-adorned extravaganza that attracts tourists from around the world and pumps millions of dollars into the city's coffers.

About 80 defence force personnel were given permission for the first time to participate, alongside a lesbian motorcycle group who call themselves "Dykes on Bikes" and a contingent of swimwear-clad gay lifesavers.