Quantcast
Channel: my new plaid pants
Viewing all 13870 articles
Browse latest View live

What Happened To My Sweet Boy

$
0
0
.
They say you shouldn't speak ill of the dead (although if somebody would give me a microphone at George Bush's funeral I'd sure test that theory) -- in a similar vein you probably shouldn't speak ill of 90 year old Oscar winners either, so I've been pleading "no comment" to James Ivory's snide comments about the Call Me By Your Name sequel. Although for a man so creatively talented you'd think he'd have a little more imagination on hand? Seems to me you shouldn't cast aspersions at a man who just did the impossible and re-wired the entire way a lot of us think about the concept of "the remake" with Suspiria. But I digress! Go with god, James Ivory; we're not here to talk about him anyway. No we're here because...
.
.
... of this weekend's very exciting news that Timmy's going to star inThe French Dispatch, which is the just revealed title of Wes Anderson's next movie, which we've been hearing about for a bit now. There was a rumor for awhile it was going to be a musical but a producer dispelled that a couple of weeks ago - for now what we know is it is "a love letter to journalists set at an outpost of an American newspaper in 20th-century Paris and centers on three storylines." Oh and did we mention the other names officially attached so far are Wes regulars Bill Murray, Frances McDormand, and Tilda Swinton (!!!), plus Benicio del Toro and Jeffrey Wright. This being a Wes Anderson movie there will surely be more to come - there have been longstanding rumors about Brad Pitt and Natalie Portman, for instance. But for now I'm just praying Timmy shares scenes with Tilda, because I need this Luca-verse Cross-over if Luca's not willing to do it himself.



Five Frames From ?

Little Woman

$
0
0
.
We've been blessed eleven years with Saoirse Ronan now, from Atonement through this Friday's Mary Queen of Scots (which she's the best thing about, by the way), and it's the former I turn to for this week's "Beauty vs Beast" poll over at The Film Experience this week -- click on over to vote, aka to bide the time between now and when Greta Gerwig's Little Women comes out.
.

Which Is Hotter?

Fascists Felt Ashamed At Dancing Puppet King

$
0
0
.
If I ran the Oscars, uhh, I think it's safe to say they'd look a whole lot different than they do. For instance this year Luca Guadagnino's Suspiria would be up for a ton of little golden nudists and not just the Best Make-up prize and maybe, mayyyybe, a Best Song nomination for Thom York'e gorgeous work. (Do we think there's any chance that happens? Or will they still with Lady Gaga's treacly work for that godawful movie she's in?) Anyway at least there's a good shot Suspiria gets a Make-up nomination given how next-level their work transforming Tilda Swinton into an old man is, and so here I am to bang that drum, do a witchy red-yarn dance, and try to make it happen. On that tip here is a great little featurette showing off the work they did behind-the-scenes (beware spoilers!)...
.

.

Always Listen To John Waters

$
0
0
.
If y'all saw Andrea Arnold's masterpiece American Honey a couple of years ago then you've seen (a lot) of McCaul Lombardi. (He played the dude who couldn't stop exposing himself.) (Naturally we immediately did a great big post on him here on MNPP.) Or if you saw Patti Cake$ last year, well whaddya know McCaul was in that too. Basically dude's racked up a swell little filmography for himself real quick, and this year he took it a step further a leading man role in an indie called Sollers Point, which has him trying to reestablish his life after a drug arrest. 

The movie didn't make a lot of noise when it came out in May (you can watch it right now on Amazon Prime) but none other and no less than John Waters just made us all take a new hard look in its direction by dropping it into his annual Top 10 list for Art Forum. Said John:

"Can a heterosexual director worship his male lead on film just as much as Paul Morrissey obviously did Joe Dallesandro in Trash? Sure looks that way. McCaul Lombardi is a blazing star in this small-scale but beautiful drama about a young parolee’s struggle to reenter lower-middle-class life in Baltimore."

Oh John, bless you. John knows what's what, everybody! And a new thing I just learned: McCaul is actually from Baltimore! Maybe he's just the hometown fella to get John out of film retirement.
.

Good Morning, World

$
0
0
.
I got the competing schedules a little bit mixed up for Park Chan-wook's The Little Drummer Girl series since it was airing on UK television separately from American TV and I'd started by watching it via the former and ended, I think, via the latter - point being I'm pretty sure the show has run all of its episodes for everybody now on both sides of the pond, all the sides of the pond, but I'm not one hundred percent on that so I'll refrain from getting into spoilers here. Broadly, I thought it was good! It looked fabulous - if you like vintage lamps and concrete buildings and half-naked Alexander Skarsgard, and I do like all of those things, this thing was a goldmine. And Florence Pugh proved Lady Macbeth was no fluke. If anybody's got deeper thoughts (not hard) share in the comments!


Five Frames From ?


Wheel of Brie's Fortune

$
0
0
.
This post is not about the new Captain Marvel trailer, although I have included that down below because as long as we're here! I haven't watched it myself and am unsure whether I'll bother - I'm convinced that I'm seeing the damn movie already, I don't need to spoil any more than the first trailer did. Anyway we are here for Brie Larson though, because she's getting ready to use her Marvel downtime for good - she's about to sign on to co-star in Charlie Kaufman's next movie for Netflix! Kaufman hasn't directed anything live-action since Synecdoche New York, which just celebrated its 10th anniversary a couple of weeks ago, so this is seriously overdue. (Of course he did have the stop-motion Anomolisa in 2015, too.) 

We told you about this project way way back in January (Charlie News always moves at a glacial pace) -- it's a book adaptation, of a book called I'm Thinking of Ending Things, ad it's about a dude who takes his girlfriend home to meet his family, all while the girlfriend is considering what the title says, ending things with him. From there it swerves into some sort of thriller, I think? I don't know I haven't read it but it sounds like it goes weird, and I should probably get around to reading it now. Brie will play the girlfriend, while the boyfriend role is still apparently up for grabs. So I just googled actors that are Brie's same age (born in 1989) and you know who's my pick? Nicholas Hoult. He just proved himself wildly game for an outré stylist with Yorgos Lanthimos. Any better suggestions?
.

Quote of the Day

$
0
0
.
.
I'm not really surprised that James Ivory wasn't being quite factual when he dragged Andre Aciman into his feud with Luca Guadagnino last week, implying that he and Andre had a good laugh at Luca's expense about the idea of a CMBYN sequel. I wasn't surprised since I've read approximately ten thousand interviews with Andre, and seen him speak several times in person, and every single time he expressed some cautious but nonetheless delighted delight at the thought of diving back into Elio's story again. He was clearly smitten with Luca's film, and the whole experience (no doubt his boo sales had something to do with that) and I figured what he tweeted last night was the truth of the matter when I ever so gently tore into Ivory yesterday over his disdainful quotes. Anyway hooray, confirmation that Andre is working on the sequel! An excellent sign.


Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

$
0
0
... you can learn from:

Gheorghe: My country is dead. You can't throw
a rock in most towns without hitting an old lady
crying for her children who have gone.
I don't think that the character of Gheorghe only exists in order to make the character of Johnny (Josh O'Connor) realize what a whiny little bitch he's being about his own emotional miseries -- I think Gheorghe is much more complicated than just being a stock "person of color showing whitey the light" -- but I do appreciate those moments where he does shut Johnny up with something like the above quote. We all need to shut up our whining some of the time. Especially if there's somebody as drop-dead gorg as Alec Secareanu in a red sweater (and nothing else) sitting across from us. Live in the moment, dude! Speaking of, a happy 34 to Secareanu today...


Today's Fanboy Delusion

$
0
0
Today I'd rather be...

... porky-pigging with Andrew Garfield.

I can't remember who first reported from a festival screening that Andy spends a decent-sized chunk of David Robert Mitchell's new film Under the Silver Lake wearing just a t-shirt and socks (aka wearing what Porky Pig wears) but I've been looking forward to that being a thing ever since...
.
.
... and I am happy now to be able to report, and display, that it's the truth! Blessings upon us all this day. Andy is my new favorite cartoon pig. Hit the jump for a couple dozen gifs...

































That's all folks!
.

Like To Think That You're Immune to the Stuff

$
0
0
.
This is not a review of Beautiful Boy - I already reviewed Beautiful Boy. Right here. But now that I've seen Ben is Back, the other "my son is a drug addict" movie from this year's ongoing Oscar Season starring a young Oscar nominee from last year (replacing Timothee Chalamet here with Lucas Hedges), well now I have to say I wish I could go back and put a little more passion, a little more oomph, into my Beautiful Boy review. Because I spent a lot of Ben is Back thinking about how that earlier movie got so much of this right, so much that Ben is Back was mucking up at every turn. Ben is Back made me appreciate Beautiful Boy more.

The first half an hour or so it didn't seem like it would be that way. Ben is Back starts out well, although funny enough it does so by mirroring a scene from Beautiful Boy, with the addict son showing up to his parents house while they're out to maybe rob them in order to get drugs. But Ben is Back swivels onto its own firm footing once Ben's mother, played with ever increasing determination by Julia Roberts, shows up - the tension recedes as that smile of her expands, and we sigh. Nothing can be that bad if Julia's smiling!

The next few scenes chip chip chip away at that longtime trustworthy trope, though - everybody is working their tails off to make Julia stop smiling! It's terrorism, I tell ya. In all seriousness these first scenes are the strongest of the film - they situate all the family and their just under-the-surface tensions with a lot of grace, and Julia and Lucas has a lovely, natural chemistry opposite each other. They feel firm and believable, and that emotional base between them locks us in longer than it should as the movie goes out of its way, time and again, to be anything but firm and believable from there on.

Where Beautiful Boy got criticized for leaning hard into realism, for taking its time to slog through the repetitive cycle of relapse, Ben is Back decides, wrongly I should add, that a better course of action would be instead to become in its latter half an undercooked action-thriller involving a kidnapped dog. It's a small chase movie, people get things strapped to their undercarriages, cars are stolen, Julia barfs in the street. She screams in a cemetery and she starts snapping off cuss-laced Erin-Brockovitch-esque zingers at everybody she meets.

I suppose the film's intention is to show the disruption, the chaos, that addiction brings into normal people's lives, but its hard turn into strange caper territory just ends up reading as facile, and unbecoming toward the emotional truths it starts straining for. And when things get serious it's not really possible to take this unserious movie seriously any longer. 


Who Wore It Best?

$
0
0
.
bike trails
.
Today is the 20th anniversary of Gus Van Sant's near-identical remake of Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho, which has remained a fascination ever since -- most people scoff it off as a joke but I think Van Sant made the movies a tad bit more interesting a place with it. And I doubt what Luca Guadagnino just did with Suspiria would've been possible without it. I know some of you would be fine with that being true, but not me! What are your thoughts on the remake? Besides being thankful for the Naked Viggo, I mean...

Jack Lowden Six Times

$
0
0
.
I will surely have some things to say on Jack Lowden's character in Mary Queen of Scots when I review it later this week (it is finally releasing into a few theaters this weekend) but for now I just think we should stop and take a moment to note Jack Lowden, first and foremost, before all else. I mean we already did that (once and then twice) when Dunkirk came out, but he has a gorgeous ginger beard now and he works it really quite well in MQoS and so... noted. Right here you can read the interview alongside this photo-shoot, or you can just hit the jump for the rest of the pictures if you like...





Good Morning, World

$
0
0
.
I don't really get "excited" per se about Saturday Night Live anymore (it's been dulls-ville this year) but I'm somewhat, uh, that, excited I mean, about Jason Momoa hosting, because well the below promotional video shows me they will probably lean into why we all like to stare at Jason Momoa.
.

Five Frames From ?

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

$
0
0
... you can learn from:


Kitty: You wouldn't know love if it hit you in the face.
Millie: If that's where it hits you, you ought to know!

The great Fritz Lang was born on this day in 1890.
.

We Wish You a White Christmas

$
0
0
.
Did Krisha work for you? I know that Trey Edward Shults's low-simmering nightmare of hereditary pandemonium doesn't work for everybody, but Krisha worked for me, did it ever. And I found myself of Krisha often while I was watching Tyrel, writer-director Sebastián Silva's latest cinematic harangue. There's the same sense of invisible dread oozing from its pores - you don't know why you feel so on edge, moment to moment, but both movies make you feel as if your toes are inches over the cliff, full of needles, slipping fast.

Like he did with Nasty Baby Silva here tosses a group of ill-fitting young people on top of each other in a confined space (somehow Nasty Baby made all of Brooklyn seem claustrophobic) and watches them rub rub rub each other the wrong way, waiting for ignition. Tyler (a terrific Jason Mitchell) can't go home for Christmas, and so he goes to a secluded cabin in the woods with his friend Johnny (Christopher Abbott) to party with some of Johnny's friends. Tyler's not just the odd man out because everybody else knows each other - he's also the only black dude. And as the advertising for the film makes clear this Get Out situation is not just on the minds of us the audience, but on the minds of all the characters on-screen as well.

Because time and again, for no reason whatsoever, every character keeps bringing up race. Do they mean to? Are they trying to make him uncomfortable? Seemingly no it seems, but it slips out and slides around, covering everything, and there in lies the film's tension - how far are they going to take it? And how utterly exhausting is that tension for Tyler himself? (And should he go to a second location with Ann  Dowd? I hope we all know the answer to that one by now.)

Tyrel the film - which purposefully misspells the title character's name because that's the sort of thoughtless accident that piles up, one after another, in this movie - is relentless in situating the viewer in the headspace of anxious micro-aggression. We become one with Tyler, watching and waiting for every sneaky insinuation to fill in the blanks, and alongside him we grow perilously irritable. But for all this identification Silva allows Tyler, and Mitchell's performance, the room to press back - Tyler is a complicated unsaintly fella himself. And that cabin, right quick, is three sizes too small. Something's gonna bust. Welcome to 2018.
.
.
Tyrelopens at the IFC Theater here in NY today.
.

Pedro Pascal Three Times

Viewing all 13870 articles
Browse latest View live


Latest Images