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Bravo has cast actress and trans activist Laverne Cox in a guest spot on its first scripted series, “Girlfriends’ Guide to Divorce.” Cox will play Adele Northrop, a Pulitzer-Prize winning war journalist and Lgbt activist who presents an award at a marriage equality gala. Represented by Hartig Hilepo Agency, Cox plays trans prisoner/beautician Sophia on Netflix's “Orange Is the New Black.” She's also appeared on “Bored to Death,” “Law & Order” and “Law & Order: Svu,” as well as in the independent films “Carla” and “The Exhibitionists.” Also read: ‘Ouat's’ Charles Mesure, C. Thomas Howell Join Bravo's ‘Girlfriends’ Guide to Divorce’ (Exclusive) Cox will.

By Dollie Banner

When I came of age in the eighties and nineties, cinema art houses were filled with American independent films, most of them gems. It seemed that then movie lovers could see nearly every film released. In the years since the number of independent films have grown exponentially, and I often worry that I’m bypassing, or even worse completely ignorant, of some worthwhile films that get lost in cinematic obscurity.

The Exhibitionists (2012), the second feature from director Michael Melamedoff is such a film, a compelling chamber piece about seven characters revealing their true desires over the course of two nights. At the heart of the film is fragile Regina (Pepper Binkley), who we meet nervously awaiting the arrival of her husband Walter (Richard Short), an agent provocateur filmmaker just returned from a cross-country film shoot. In tow he brings fellow crewmember Gordo (Daniel London), whose dutiful wife...

Held back on Sept. 21-29, the 5th annual Arizona Underground Film Festival was a major blow-out event of extreme underground greatness. And, to top it all off, they handed out a gaggle of awards to both feature films and shorts alike.

The big winner was the Best of Fest award that went to Michael Melamedoff’s sly drama The Exhibitionists, about a bunch of hedonists gathered on New Year’s Eve. Meanwhile, the Audience Award went to the reality TV parody Ghosts With Shit Jobs by Chris McCawley, Jim Morrison, Jim Munroe and Tate Young; and Kenton Bartlett’s torture flick Missing Pieces won the Director’s Award.

Some other winners include Spencer Parsons’ Saturday Morning Massacre for Best Horror Feature, a film that while not reviewed yet on Bad Lit: The Journal of Underground Film we’ve seen it and easily declare one of the best horror movies of the last few years.

This week’s Must Read is actually a series from Melanie Wilmink’s new blog. One of her posts totally won Bad Lit over with the introductory sentence: “Short films regularly draw the short stick when it comes to being written about.” Ain’t that the truth! So, Melanie rights this wrong with an amazingly well-thought out article/review of the “Crime Wave” shorts at the Calgary International Film Festival that digs deep into issues of cinematic authenticity. Then, she has more in-depth reviews of the “End of Days” shorts program at the fest. Finally, at least for now that I know of, she tackles the anthology film V/H/S, which has been getting lots of press, and hammers it for its overt misogyny.Wanna hear Jonas Mekas talk lovingly about his five Bolexes?The Manitoba Scene got filmmaker Deco Dawson to write an essay about his award-winning short film Keep a Modest Head,...

To celebrate their 5th anniversary, the Arizona Underground Film Festival has expanded to a whopping nine nights on Sept. 21-29 for a cinematic event the likes of Tucson has never seen before!

The shenanigans kick off with the opening night film The Legend of Kaspar Hauser, an experimental Italian feature directed by Davide Manuli and starring Vincent Gallo as the hero and the villain to a strange young boy, then end with the closing night film Jason M. Solomon’s nostalgic documentary 7 Years Underground: A 60′s Tale, which profiles the legendary Cafe Au Go Go in NYC that hosted such up-and-coming acts such as Jimi Hendrix, Frank Zappa, George Carlin, Lily Tomlin and more.

In between those two films lies a twisted carnage of movie mayhem, including Spencer Parsons’ demented homage to ’70s mystery cartoons Saturday Morning Massacre; Michael Melamedoff exploitative semi-doc The Exhibitionists; Stephen Amis’ Australian WWII sci-fi...

The 5th annual Arizona Underground Film Festival, which will run on Sept. 21-29 at various venues around Tucson, Arizona, has officially released the titles of six of the films that will be screening at this year’s event.

It’s clear from this half-dozen batch of movies that the fest will be sticking to its successful formula that has allowed it to grow by leaps and bounds since 2008. That formula consists of offering up a diverse batch of fun genre fare, controversial exploitation films, crowd-pleasing music documentaries and somewhat unclassifiable cinematic oddities.

The titles and brief descriptions are below. The full lineup will be available on Bad Lit: The Journal of Underground Film in early September.

The Legend of Kaspar Hauser, dir. Davide Manuli. In this Italian update of the Werner Herzog classic film, which was based on a true story, controversial American actor Vincent Gallo tackles the dual roles...