November 16, 2021, 3:00 pm
Alright well I'm off to see
Dune a second time -- I saw it at NYFF
and dug it and I haven't watched it on HBO Max since because I was hoping to see it on a big screen one more time, since it's so clearly a movie that demands (or at least rewards) that experience. And I also didn't want to see it at a public screening because I'm still wary of those (you know -- the pandemic or whatever). So I got me a guild screening! Even better I got me a guild screening tonight that's got Denis Villenueve & Oscar Isaac there for a Q&A! So maybe pay attention to my
Twitter and my
Instagram tonight, as I'm sure I'll post something about all that. And hey maybe Denis will whip out Oscar's cock-sock again...
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November 17, 2021, 7:01 am
Today would have been
Rock Hudson's 96th birthday and this photo of Rock circa his prime is also counting towards "Today's Mood" because I had a hell of a time climbing out of bed this morning and climbing back in right there beside him sounds to my ears like the greatest prospect that's ever been prospected. Anyway do yourself a favor and watch one of Rock's movies today, whether it be one of his charming comedies with Doris Day or my particular favorite
John Frankenheimer's 1966 freak-out Seconds...
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November 17, 2021, 7:57 am
It's promising batches and bunches of former Spider-twink villains from all of the many films, and there are theories going around that you can see shots where 1) it looks like they CG'd somebody out of a battle and this has people convinced they're covering up the Multiple Spider-man Theory (the one that says we'll get to see Tom alongside Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield) and 2) that one of the flashes of green we see might not actually be Willem Dafoe's Green Goblin but rather Jake Gyllenhaal's Mysterio. To be honest I am sold on both of these things! The former because Sony is doing a really unconvincing job denying it, and the latter because of the whole concept of the movie spelled out in the trailer -- it makes sense that one of Tom's own villains would come back as well.
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Anyway I ramble. I doubt I'm going to see
No Twink Home when it's in the theater anyway (not unless I get a press screening invite and I never get superhero movie press invites) because as I mention on a daily basis I'm still wary of public screenings. So I'll probably have everything spoiled for me before I see the movie, which actually sucks since the
Spider-twink movies are ones inside the MCU I actually care the most about and enjoy. Oh well! I won't die, probably. Knock on wood. Back to
GQ! I actually like about 75% of the clothes they have him dressed in, and how great is it that they've got Tom dressed in multiple pairs of plaid pants? I am taking this as a precisely aimed shout-out straight at my own noggin. I accept your challenge, Spider-twink. I don't know what that challenge is yet, but I'm sure we can work something out.
Hit the jump for the entire shoot...
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November 17, 2021, 8:25 am
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November 17, 2021, 9:01 am
... you can learn from:
Casino Royale (2006)
James Bond: Why is it that people who can't
take advice always insist on giving it?
It is the 15th anniversary of the film that made me start caring about James Bond movies -- Martin Campbell's Casino Royale came out on November 17th 2006 and zapped that franchise back to super-powered life via the electricity of ten thousand blue speedos all bursting like fireworks at once...
In all seriousness (and apologies to Sean Connery) but Daniel Craig is for me the best Bond, Eva Green is for me the best Bond Girl, and Mads Mikkelsen is for me my favorite Bond Villain. Casino Royale remains a rip-roaring action humdinger here a full fifteen years on. I think it's pretty much a perfect action film and a heart-swelling sexy romance to boot. Is it perfect? It might be perfect. I think it's perfect!
I do love you, Vesper Lynd! I do, I do! Every one of Craig's films that came after knew her shadow hung over every moment in the series, right up through the grand finale
No Time To Die this year whose entire plot was set off by James going to visit her tomb to say goodbye. (If you missed my review of
NTTDread that here.) And Rami Malek's simpering drip of a villain isn't worth one drop of blood from Mads' eyeball. Perfect movie.
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November 17, 2021, 10:42 am
I promise you that I will write about Jane Campion's
The Power of the Dog -- which is out in theaters today! -- at some point, as it is, of this moment, my number one film of 2021. I've seen it twice now, once at TIFF and once at NYFF, and I knew immediately it was a fave -- in the weeks since it's only grown in obsession and masterpiece-ish stature. Y'all know I stay away from the "m" word when movies are this new -- I think a vital ingredient in "masterpiece" is time -- but sometimes movies come along that feel so grand and stunning right outta the gate that you know, deep inside of your everything, your regard's only going to grow bigger and bigger with time, and this is one of those suckers for certain.
Anyway until I manage to wrangle with the film properly and get my own thoughts down I just wanted to make sure to post that you should all figure out the soonest moment you can see the movie, and so here I am doing that. Find your nearest theater here! If it's not playing in a theater near you it is hitting Netflix on december 1st, and I've seen the movie both ways -- on the big screen for NYFF and the little screen for TIFF -- and it works both ways, but I'm really really really glad I did manage to see it on a big screen because those vistas that Campion captures... man alive. So try for a big screen if at all safe and possible, my loves. And in summation...
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November 17, 2021, 12:21 pm
I have been paying far too little attention to the fact that there is a movie coming out that has Jon Bernthal simultaneously 1) with a mustache and 2) wearing tennis shorts. That movie is
King Richard, which is mainly being sold as the movie that will get Will Smith an Oscar for playing Venus and Serena Williams' father. I have very little interest in any of that, but the Jon Bernthal stuff, that cathes my attention. This new photo comes at us
via Vanity Fair today (thx Mac), where they talk to Jon about doing the film along with his ridiculously stacked schedule for the past few years -- choice bit for me was how he'd never played tennis before making this movie but got to practicing three to six (!!!) hours a day -- I hope the
King Richard blu-ray contains every single minute of that footage.
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November 17, 2021, 12:22 pm
Yeah well you're right to wince, Paul Rudd! Don't know if you guys have been paying attention but Jason Reitman's
Ghostbusters: Afterlife is out this weekend -- it purports to be a follow-up to the first two movies (forget them Lady Ghostbusters, eww girls) and drags a bunch of the original stars back (no doubt upon stacks and stacks of delicious cash). Anyway lo behold my thoughts on all of that
have just gone up over at Pajiba today. These thoughts... they are not good. Not good at all. Indeed I felt as if I needed to take a
Silkwood shower after writing them down, so vehement was my vitriol. Thankfully for Paul he's not to blame -- he does what he can with the garbage material. This one's totally on the script. Anyway even if the Sexiest Man Alive 2021 Edition isn't to blame I still needed to perk myself up Rudd-wise, and tweeting this earlier helped me, as I'm sure it will you:
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November 17, 2021, 2:11 pm
This still of Riz Ahmed in his forthcoming sic-fi-drama
Encounter got dropped a couple of weeks ago apparently but I'll be damned if I saw it -- until today, of course, and here we are. I have actually already seen
Encounter -- it played TIFF, and... it's fine? It's a riff on
Invasion of the Body Snatchers, mixed up with a post-war PTSD custody drama, and Riz is good, the two kids who play his sons are good -- there's something I couldn't quite put my finger on missing and I was seeing so many damned movies at TIFF I didn't have the time to worry about it too much since I wasn't tasked with writing about this one. (I said all of this before right after the fest while sharing
some lovely photos of Riz.) Anyway the full trailer for
Encounter got dropped today -- the film's hitting some theaters on December 3rd and then then Amazon Prime a week later on the 10th -- so I will share that with you now!
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November 17, 2021, 2:29 pm
Today I'd rather be...
... strangling the flamingo
(that's like "choking the chicken" right?)
with Billy Magnussen. (pic
via)
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November 18, 2021, 7:14 am
Apparently Paul Mescal's girlfriend -- who my old out-of-touch ass has come to learn isn't the creator of
Fleabag named Phoebe Waller-Bridge but is actually a singer of some sort named the very similar Phoebe Bridgers -- shared these photos of Paul playing shirtless with a puppy in bed a few days ago on her
Instagram. And while these are great, truly, knowing
the big gay movie we're about to get of them I'd have to loved to substituted "puppy" with "Josh O'Connor" but I guess we'll just have to be patient. I mean it's not like it's a big leap to substitute "puppy" with "Josh O'Connor" though right? The ears, the adorably dopey grin and seeming desire to please -- Josh is very puppy-like. It's part of his appeal.
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November 18, 2021, 7:44 am
Kind of flummoxed and flabbergasted when I searched the site this morning and realized I never posted the first trailer for Guillermo Del Toro's forthcoming
Nightmare Alley -- the original with Tyrone Power is a fave (it just got a Criterion release not too long ago) and the cast that Del Toro has gathered up, including Bradley Cooper and Cate Blanchett and Toni Collette and Rooney Mara and Richard Jenkins and Willem Dafoe, well, that says it. Oh and it's set in, and was filmed in, Buffalo, not far from where I grew up. Anyway I didn't write up that first trailer back in September because Nathaniel beat me to the punch over at The Film Experience -- see that
here.
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Or don't, because we have a new trailer today, and here I am writing it up. Guillermo Del Toro's Nightmare Alley is actually out pretty soon -- and yes I realize that saying December 17th is "pretty soon" is enough to send anyone with half a brain spiraling into a panic about how the fuck is it already almost Christmas and oh my god I haven't bought a fucking thing and... et cetera, et cetera. The "pretty soon" equals out to "29 days" and yeah, that's pretty soon. And here's the full trailer they're making their final case with. You decide!
If you've got any thoughts on it in the comments let me know -- I need no convincing on seeing this because of that damn cast... also I already have a screening of this scheduled even sooner than 29 days from now; I'm seeing this in two weeks! I think it looks like fun though and there are some stellar shots in there -- the one of the bloody angel in the snow (pretty sure that's Rooney, and if you've seen the original film you know what's happening here) is giving off super duper Crimson Peak energy and I am as always here for that.
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November 18, 2021, 8:11 am
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November 18, 2021, 9:20 am
Our pal Kyle Buchanan went and chatted with Jamie Dornan for the
New York Times today,
you can check it out here -- it's mostly all about Kenneth Branagh's perfectly lovely little film
Belfast, which is out in theaters now (I reviewed it
here) and which is angling for some, you know, awards. Kyle always does a good job with these things but I don't know how he even kept going after Dornan, literally thirsty for a drink of water, said "he considered making out with me 'just for the fluids.'" That's the sort of thing you get engraved on your tombstone, Kyle! I also enjoyed this passage:
"Dornan knows that because of “Fifty Shades,” his most ardent fans are women and gay men; when straight guys ask for his picture, he can still sense their skepticism. “They’re always like, ‘It’s obviously not for me, I’m a straight guy, and I have a wife’ or ‘I have a girlfriend, and she likes you, that’s why the photograph’s happening,’” he said. “What have I done, three war movies? You’d think that might help my cause out a little bit with straight men, but probably not. I think you need to be in that comic-book world to really grab their attention.”"
Straight men are so ridiculous. Dornan also talks some about his early modeling career, and whenever he does that it makes me flash back to an earlier iteration of my own day-job where I dealt with models a lot where I actually met Jamie on a casting call! Looking back I don't know how I knew who he was then though? It was probably after he did his eensy role in Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette but was that really enough that I knew his name? Good grief I am a psychopath. Anyway hit the jumpfor two more very handsome photos from the NYT...
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November 18, 2021, 10:18 am
... you can learn from:
Moonlight (2016)
Kevin: What you cry about?
Chiron: I cry so much sometimes
I feel like I'mma just turn into drops.
Kevin: Just roll out into the water, right?
Roll out into the water just like all these other
motherfuckers around here trying to drown their sorrow.
Happy 5 to the best Best Picture winner since 1992.
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November 19, 2021, 4:00 am
When I stumbled upon this photo of
The Old Guard and
Martin Eden actor Luca Marinelli last night my first thought was this is too good to be true, that it must be photoshopped -- and it turns out I was right, only not entirely. That is actually a photo of him, just the original version (
seen here) also had the actress Alba Rohrwacher in it. They were in a movie together in
The Solitude of Prime Numbers and this was a promotional image for it (and there's actually another photo
right here) -- anybody seen the film? No matter, we love Luca -- c
heck our Luca archives for lots more of him, most especially
this big gratuitous post here. I can't wait for the supposedly forthcoming
Old Guard sequel so we can see him reunited with his forever lover Marwan Kenzari -- step aside,
Eternals, they're the hottest eternal couple of all time.
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November 19, 2021, 7:11 am
Hey youse guys
GQ magazine got Spider-twink and Spider-twunk Tom Holland and Andrew Garfield to hug on the red carpet for some event or other who cares -- that happened. (pics
via) Tom looks so teensy next to Andy haha but that is a killer suit the little one's wearing -- he looks sharp af.
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November 19, 2021, 7:56 am
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November 19, 2021, 8:47 am
The second season of The Great is on Hulu now! I've only been able to watch the first two episodes of it so far but it is as ever a delight, a goddamned delight, and I recommend you all spend all weekend binging it. Nicky recommends it too! And we wanna keep Nicky happy right? Right...
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November 19, 2021, 9:05 am
Today I'd rather be...
Although he looks nothing like this in
King Richard -- that's the Mustache & Tennis Shorts Movie we were
talking about earlier this week -- I should also mention that movie is in theaters and on HBO Max today. I have not seen it, so I'll be watching it alongside y'all. Tell me what you think if you watch it!
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