Teen film fest kicks off today
•The First Annual Teen Film Fest will be held at 8 p.m. today at the Arlington Heights Memorial Library, 500 N. Dunton Ave. The contest solicited entries -- no more than 10 minutes' running time -- from students finishing grades 8 through 12. Movies from five students, representing five area high schools, will be shown. I'll be in the Hendrickson Room to host a brief awards ceremony celebrating the best of the entries. Go to www.ahml.info/programs/default.asp or call (847) 392-0100.
• The way Ray Yeung's "Cut Sleeve Boys" portrays it, life as a gay Chinese man in London equates to a narcolized existence sustained by sexual cliches and stereotypes.
This shoddily photographed story begins when a computer store operator named Gavin (Mark Hampton) drops dead during a sexual encounter in a public toilet stall. As we wait to see what his will doles out, a tattooed dude named Mel (Steven Lim) tries to fend off a needy Caucasian (Gareth Rhys Davies), and a flagrant flamer named Ash (Chowee Leow) goes out with an Internet date known by the name of Master Bates.
That's the level of the humor in this torpid comic drama, unless you count Mel's comments, "Did you see the lines on Ian McKellen's face? He looks like a Venetian blind!"
The title comes from a story about an emperor who cut off the sleeve of his robe rather than wake his gay lover sleeping on it. Nobody will need a sleeve to fall asleep in this movie.
"Cut Sleeve Boys" opens today at the Century Centre Cinema, Chicago. No MPAA rating (sexual situations, language, nudity, drug use). 86 minutes. .