Every week, the GLAAD Wrap brings you LGBTQ-related entertainment news highlights, fresh stuff to watch out for, and fun diversions to help you kick off the weekend!

1) The first trailer has been released for festival favorite A Fantastic Woman, which tells the story of Marina, a transgender woman whose lover passes away and how she then interacts with his family. Marina is portrayed by Chilean breakout transgender actress Daniela Vega, who is already getting Oscar buzz, along with the film itself which won two prizes at the Berlin International Film Festival. A Fantastic Woman will be released in the U.S. later this year by Sony Pictures Classics. You can watch the trailer below.

2) A continuation of the popular web series of the same name, the feature film Carmilla released its first trailer over the weekend. The film will continue the love story between “normal girl” Laura and former vampire Carmilla. Taking place five years after the conclusion of the web series, Carmilla will follow the couple as they enlist their old friends to save humanity once again. The film will be released on demand on October 26^th, and you can watch the trailer below.

3) A trailer and released date has been announced for Mudbound, an upcoming film from out director Dee Rees. Rees’ former films Pariah and Bessie both received GLAAD Media Awards. Mudbound centers on two families, one black and one white, in post WWII Mississippi. The film received rave reviews from Sundance, and its purchase by Netflix was one of the biggest deals in the festival’s history. Mudbound will be released on Netflix and in select theaters on Friday, November 17^th.

4) The first trailer has been released for the upcoming documentary on bisexual, renowned singer Lady Gaga. The Netflix doc, Gaga: Five Foot Two, takes a look behind the curtain of the singer’s album release and playing the Super Bowl half time show. It will be released on Netflix on Friday, September 22^nd. A trailer has also been released for Thelma, the Norwegian lesbian thriller that has recently been selected to be the country’s foreign language pick for the Oscars. The film follows Fellow, a young student who finds herself falling for her schoolmate Anja, while also uncovering eerie supernatural abilities.

5) Saturday Church, a queer coming of age musical drama, has been acquired by Samuel Goldwyn films for North American distribution. The film follows queer outsider Ulysses (Luca Kain) who finds solace in the “Saturday Church Program” for LGBTQ youth. The film will be releaed in January 2018. In other film news, out actor and activist George Takei will executive produce a film adaptation of Jamie Ford’s bestselling novel Hotel on the Corner Bitter and Sweet, a love story set against the back drop of Japanese internment camps.

6) In television news, a trailer has been released for Netflix’s upcoming reboot of The Magic School Bus. Like its predecessor, The Magic School Bus Rides Again will feature the voice of out actress Lily Tomlin as Ms. Frizzle, but will also introduce the new Ms. Frizzle voiced by out SNL star Kate McKinnon. Ryan Murphy will be executive producing a Netflix series Ratched, a prequel to One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, starring Sarah Paulson as Nurse Ratchet. Andrew Rannells has been cast in upcoming Wall Street comedy Ball Street, which was greenlit for a pilot by Showtime. ABC has given a put pilot order to Spirited, a comedy starring Laverne Cox as a fake psychic who finds out she can actually communicate with the dead. 

7) Queer musician St. Vincent announced the release date of her highly anticipated next album MASSEDUCTION. The album will release on October 13^th, shortly after her Fear the Future tour kicks off on October 7^th. In addition to the album announcement, the singer also released a new single “Los Ageless” which is available for streaming and purchase now.

8) “Fantasy,” the first single of George Micheal’s to be released after the singer passed away last Christmas, was released on Thursday. The single is a reworking of one of the Michael’s B-sides, and is available to stream and download now. Out singer Sam Smith released a single on Friday, “Too Good at Goodbyes” which will be featured on his long anticipated second studio album, which has no release date as of now. Zayn Malik also released a new single and music video on Thursday, “Dusk Till Dawn“, which features out singer Sia’s vocals.

9) Logo, VH1 and MTV have teamed up to create the digital long form video Made to Model: Trans Beauty in Fashion. The video brings together transgender models of today with their predecessors, and features conversations with models during a photoshoot. The talent includes Lauren Foster, Crimsona Kaiser, Tracey “Africa” Norman, Geena Rocero, Carmen Carrera and more. You can watch the video below and hear these models tell their story.

10) Indie Lens Storycast, a series under the PBS banner, will be launching on YouTube on September 12^th. They will launch four docuseries under the label this fall including The F Word and Pops which both contain LGBTQ stories. The F Word, premiering on September 14^th, follows a queer Bay Area couple who want to become foster parents. Pops, starting October 26^th, follows three storylines of African Americans from different socio-economic backgrounds, including a gay couple, whose adoptive son is heading into his teenage years. Indie Lens Storycast launches this week, and stay tuned for their content this fall.

11) The line-up has been announced for the 2017 New Yorker Festival to be held October 6-8 in New York. Events this year include conversations with Chelsea Manning, Ryan Murphy, and Nathan Lane. Tickets and event info can be found here. In other Nathan Lane related news, the acclaimed West End revival of Angels in America is coming to Broadway for an 18 week run starting February 23^rd. The play, starring Lane and Andrew Garfield, will be the first Broadway revival of Tony Kushner’s epic since the original staging.

12) Hopefully coming soon to a bookseller near you is The Bi-ble, an anthology of personal narratives and essays about bisexuality. This group of essays and stories will explore the realities of bisexuality beyond the stereotypes and erasure that so often face the bi+ community. Right now, the team behind the book are gathering funds to distribute The Bi-ble as widely as possible, and more information is available here on how to help.

NEW YORK – GLAAD, the world’s largest LGBTQ media advocacy organization, and the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest LGBTQ civil rights organization, today called on Stanford University and responsible media outlets to expose dangerous and flawed research that could cause harm to LGBTQ people around the world. A professor affiliated with Stanford University has published a research study that resulted in several media outlets wrongfully suggesting that artificial intelligence (AI) can be used to detect sexual orientation. Further, GLAAD and HRC today urged all media who either covered the study or plan to in future coverage to include the myriad flaws in the study’s methodology — including that it made inaccurate assumptions, categorically left out any non-white subjects, has not been peer reviewed, and many other issues enumerated below.

“Technology cannot identify someone’s sexual orientation. What their technology can recognize is a pattern that found a small subset of out white gay and lesbian people on dating sites who look similar. Those two findings should not be conflated,” said Jim Halloran, GLAAD’s Chief Digital Officer. “This research isn’t science or news, but it’s a description of beauty standards on dating sites that ignores huge segments of the LGBTQ community, including people of color, transgender people, older individuals, and other LGBTQ people who don’t want to post photos on dating sites.”

Halloran continued, “At a time where minority groups are being targeted, these reckless findings could serve as weapon to harm both heterosexuals who are inaccurately outed, as well as gay and lesbian people who are in situations where coming out is dangerous.”

HRC Director of Public Education and Research Ashland Johnson, said, “This is dangerously bad information that will likely be taken out of context, is based on flawed assumptions, and threatens the safety and privacy of LGBTQ and non-LGBTQ people alike. Imagine for a moment the potential consequences if this flawed research were used to support a brutal regime’s efforts to identify and/or persecute people they believed to be gay. Stanford should distance itself from such junk science rather than lending its name and credibility to research that is dangerously flawed and leaves the world — and this case, millions of people’s lives — worse and less safe than before.”

GLAAD and HRC called attention to the following points included in the research:

• The study did not look at any non-white individuals.
• The study did not independently verify crucial information including age and sexual orientation, and took at face value information appearing online.
• The study was not peer reviewed.
• The study assumed there was no difference between sexual orientation and sexual activity, which is incorrect.
• The study assumed there were only two sexual orientations — gay and straight — and does not address bisexual individuals.
• The study only looked at out gay men and women who are white, of a certain age, and are on dating sites. It is not surprising that gay people (out, white, similar age) who choose to go on dating sites post photos of themselves with similar expressions and hairstyles (one of the characteristics according to the study).
• The research states: “Outside the lab, the accuracy rate would be much lower” (the lab = certain dating sites) and is 10 points less accurate for women.
• The study claims to detect gay men from the pool of photos on the dating sites with 81% accuracy. Even if this were true given the aforementioned flaws, it still means that heterosexual men could therefore be identified as gay nearly 20% of the time.
• The study reviewed superficial characteristics in the photos of out gay men and women on dating sites such as weight, hairstyle and facial expression.

Stanford University and the researchers hosted a call with GLAAD and HRC several months ago in which we raised these myriad concerns and warned against overinflating the results or the significance of them. There was no follow-up after the concerns were shared and none of these flaws have been addressed.

Based on this information, media headlines that claim AI can tell if someone is gay by looking one photo of your face are factually inaccurate.

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About GLAAD: GLAAD rewrites the script for LGBTQ acceptance. As a dynamic media force, GLAAD tackles tough issues to shape the narrative and provoke dialogue that leads to cultural change. GLAAD protects all that has been accomplished and creates a world where everyone can live the life they love. For more information, please visit www.glaad.org or connect with GLAAD on Facebook and Twitter.

The Human Rights Campaign is America’s largest civil rights organization working to achieve lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer equality. HRC envisions a world where LGBTQ people are embraced as full members of society at home, at work and in every community.