PLAYING KETCHUP. WITH Hollywood FLIXX. MISSED IN L.A. Behind The Candelabra was viewed in Budapest on August 20, 2013. At long last, the Liberace Story, starring Mike Douglas as Lee-Berace and a bleached blonde Matt Damon as his younger lover, with Debbie Reynolds as Liberace's mother, also Rob Lowe as a sleazy pretty-boy dietary and beauty adviser looking too young to believe. A lush-plush Weinstein production that was surprisingly good. Viewed at the Pushkin Mozi in Budapest in a nice intimate 77 seat theater. This is the best work Douglas has done since Wall Street - kind of an amazing comeback for an actor who was on the ropes both career-wise and physically with cancer only two years ago. Douglas is spot-on as Liberace all the way and Damon is a sufficiently convincing bi-sexual lover. -- 180% removed from his usual Action Hero screen persona. The film was probably rejected by many people who just couldn't see ordinarily macho heroes like Douglas and Damon on screen as gay lovers, but director Sonderbergh makes the most of this counter to expectation casting. Damon also played a non action character in Sonderbergh's last film about fragging ...so it looks like Matt is now trying to be accepted as an actor, not just a star. There is plenty in this pic for the gay audience to chew on but aside from that this is a slam-bang biopic of one of the most flamboyant and popular entertainers of the mid XX century -- now perhaps largely forgotten because sexual gaieté has become so mundane that many may have forgotten how outrageous it was was for a figure so much in the public eye as Liberace was to flaunt it back then. Today this would be a story about gay marriage -- back then the issues were much more complicated.The pic only deals with the late career of this amazing showman from 1977 to 1985 when he died of AIDS. A newspaper headline announcing the early death of macho actor Rock Hudson Is seen momentarily to underline the fact that LIberace's demise from AIDS marked a turning point in public perception of this plague - especially in the entertainment world.Douglas is simply excellent -- arguably his best film ever!--but I would attribute Damon's success in portraying a gay to Sonderbergh's direction. The whole picture has class, while it could easily have been a cheap portrayal of a screaming drag queen catering to the Gay&Les crowd, which it most certainly is not! Some of the nude in bed scenes, man to man kissing scenes and the discussions between the actors of who gets to do whom and why in masculine love making may make some male viewers cringe, but this is one of the many things that makes this picture so true to life -- too true in fact for it to have been the box office smash it should have been. Also, the reconstruction of Liberace's on stage performances in Vegas with some amazing keyboard pyrotechnics is alone "worth the price of admission" and Douglas shines in all of these scenes -- to the point where you forget that this is the actor Mike Douglas! Bottom Line: One of then best pictures of the year, and Mike Douglas deserves the Best Actor Oscar without a doubt. If he doesn't get it somebody ought to eat their shoe ...

This uncompromising backstage dramatisation of the turbulent relationship between celebrity pianist Liberace and his much younger lover Scott Thorson was a compelling watch. As I watched it, it took a little time for me to get over the sight of Michael Douglas and Matt Damon, two celebrated uber-masculine action heroes playing such camp characters plus their over-familiarity as stars if anything detracts from identification with their parts here but the fact that both absolutely throw themselves into their roles saw them convince me in the end.Liberace in real-life conducted himself as a family favourite, particularly with his female audience, playing popular piano pieces in cabaret and projecting a debonair if very camp image, on and off-stage, owning the inevitable L.A. mansion, with a grand piano in every room, innumerable fancy cars and of course his elaborate rhinestone-heavy stage costumes. Behind this facade however was a ruthless businessman, determined to preserve his self-image (woe betide the publication which levelled charges of homosexuality at him), in addition a controlling and sexually voracious individual who attended male-only brothels, watched hard-core gay porn and groomed young male wannabes into becoming his latest playmate. Douglas is excellent at portraying his character's at the same time compelling but repellant nature, flaunting his squeaky-clean image in public while living a life of decadent sleaze after hours.Into his orbit comes a young blonde bisexual country boy called Scott Thorson who very soon supersedes Liberace's then live-in boyfriend, attracted by the older man's charm, riches and power until too late he realises that he's being made over in his lover-employer's image and developing a drug addiction in the process. The power struggle between the two is fascinating to watch even if it is of course heavily slanted in Liberace's favour. The question here really is did Liberace corrupt and waste a young innocent's life or was Thorson a willing participant in the gravy train, happy to go along with it from the start.Director Siderburgh I think tends to the former viewpoint, although it's clear that Thorson is no angel himself. On the other hand, Liberace too is no one-dimensional character and it is the older man who calls up the younger as he nears his end from AIDS, fondly remembering their earlier happy times.I like this ambivalence, allowing the viewer to come to their own judgement on this particular lifestyle of the rich and famous. No corner is cut in exhibiting the pianist's excessive lifestyle although I was grateful that the love scenes between the two, although not ignored, was toned down somewhat for easier consumption. The acting is excellent, especially by the two big-name leads while Rob Lowe steals his scenes with a centre- parting like the Red Sea as a creepy plastic surgeon.I'm not surprised this film received so many Emmy plaudits and commend the director and cast for taking on a tricky subject and delivering such compelling viewing.

Let's get the good bits out there first. I thought Matt Damon and Michael Douglas were both very good in their roles, Douglas especially going against type. That was impressive. It was well filmed, and the sets were every bit as striking as you'd expect given the subject matter.But despite all the glitz of what I was looking at, the overall was rather drab and workaday. At first I was thinking that was perhaps a reflection on the fact that the rich and famous also live fundamentally normal lives, the same stories played out in terms of relationships and human weaknesses, so the mundane nature of their experience can't really be hidden by the shiny baubles and jewellery, but in the end I feel that there was something else missing from this.A bit like Liberace himself perhaps, this is a film that depends more on style than substance. 'It looks fabulous, so maybe no-one will notice how thin and meagre the rest of the work is' appears to be the underlying ethos for the film, and that's disappointing given the personnel involved.I can't quite get my head round why that is. It could be that the source material is not the full picture given how one sided the account really is (I only found that out after seeing it and that struck me as a possible issue straight away.) Perhaps the fact that it was supported by HBO rather than a more experienced film studio gives it a more televisual, functional feel than might have been achieved elsewhere, but I don't really know why that should be the case, other than the fact that I don't watch any TV any more, partly because it leaves me feeling like what I watch lacks something vital, similar to the way this film makes me feel.I was looking forward to the film, and am glad I've seen it now, but it didn't live up to my expectations.

When this movie first premiered on the HBO channel I watched it not knowing what it was going to be about. As soon as I saw Liberace I thought maybe it will be about how good a pianist he was....I was in for a shock when they showed his relationship with Scott thorson. I had know of Liberace as he played my favorite rendition of the Tchaikovsky concerto in b flat minor but other than that I hadn't bothered to search his history. Throughout the movie it would keep you appealed to all the glamor and grandeur with the struggles and cheating. Throughout the story it progresses from the late 70's to the mid 80's and the story ends with Liberaces "controversial" death from the AIDs virus. The ending, to me, is one of the best final scenes in a movie. I won't spoil it you'll just have to go see for yourself. I still watch the film every now and then just to look and at the shiny crystals and such.