November 19, 2021, 12:04 pm
(Just to be clear, I have never had any "street cred.") Anyway I don't want to say that I was exactly "wrong" here since there are plenty of examples of Movie Musicals that I totally dig --
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg and
Moulin Rouge and
Hedwig and the Angry Inch, as examples -- but I will say I was absolutely not going into my screening of Lin-Manuel Miranda's new movie
Tick, Tick... Boom! with an open mind. The trailer (
see here) made my skin crawl, actually crawl right off of my body, I have no skin anymore because of that trailer. It was the epitome of the things about Musical Theater that drive me away from Musical Theater -- all that big-time sincere theater kid energy... I just can't. OR CAN I???
That's right -- WTF I loved it. WTF??? It wasn't even ten minutes in and I could feel my defenses falling me, and by the time the big Moondance Diner scene happens I was rendered utterly defenseless from its charms. I think there are several reasons for this and I get into a lot of it with
my review at Pajiba that went up today right here -- if you ignore the music the movie is a story about a Gen X Writer In NYC and very good being about all three of those things! -- but one thing I don't mention there is that
Tick Tick Boom actually did make me miss Musical Theater. It made me want to go see something on Broadway. Something big and cheesy and gaudy and listen, the pandemic has done a lot to our brains. This will probably pass. But this movie tapped into a moment, a feeling, and props to it for that. It's like, even if you don't love cake (there are people!) you can tell when somebody has made a beautiful cake, and these folks have made a beautiful cake. I appreciate the cake!
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November 22, 2021, 6:00 am
Exceedingly grateful this morning that the actor Travis Van Winkle has finally properly embraced his status as a Thirst Trap -- we deserve this in 2021, after the year and a half we've had. Thanks, Travis! See more of him in
our archives, or see even more of him right on here right after this here jump...
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November 22, 2021, 7:15 am
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November 22, 2021, 8:10 am
... you can learn from:
The Fountain(2006)
Isabel: For every shadow, no matter how
deep, is threatened by morning light.
I listen to Clint Mansell's magnificent score for
The Fountain all the time (indeed
I saw him perform it live once inside a church here in NYC and it nearly blew my head off) but I'm only just now realizing here on the film's 15th anniversary that I probably haven't sat down and watched the film itself in nearly fifteen years? I should fix that! It's a good movie for the holidays, maybe I'll watch it over Thanksgiving break and report back. What are your thoughts on
The Fountain for its 15th anniversary, if any? Fans?
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November 22, 2021, 8:50 am
I have been checking the guild screenings page for the fourth Matrix film at least twice a day for the past several weeks, just in case they've started scheduling screenings for the only 2021 movie that remains for me to see that I actually truly am dying to see -- this crawled up on me unexpectedly circa the last trailer for the film; I really didn't like the second and third Matrix films and greeted the original news of a new one with a weary shrug, but then all of a sudden nostalgia swooped in like a One-i-fied Neo and got me but good. (I blame the pandemic.)
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Anyway that film's out in exactly one month so it's got to start screening for Important People (i.e. not me) relatively soon and we'll surely start getting buzz any day now. On the PR Buzz front the One himself, Mr. Keanu Reeves, has just today popped on on the cover of December's
Esquire --
you can read the interview here. It's very long so I'm saving it for lunch myself, so I can't quote it at you. But I can give you the photo-spread!
Hit the jump for that...
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November 22, 2021, 2:40 pm
Howdy hello hi -- apologies I've been quiet for most of this day on here but I had a big review I was pounding out and you'll be thankful for that effort later. Just you wait! That said I should also give you a heads-up that tomorrow will also be an abbreviated day as I've got a pair of screenings to attend -- I'm seeing both Being the Ricardos and Licorice Pizza tomorrow, huzzah! -- and then, well then it's Thanksgiving break until the following Monday. Womp womp. Anyway I will be here tomorrow morning so this isn't all until next week, but you should just have that at the backs of your heads -- the end is nigh, I mean! But you knew that already. If there's one thing the last year's taught us, it's fucking that.
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November 23, 2021, 6:50 am
In the days before a major holiday where I'll be off-line for a few days I have learned I must curate my content so what you see on the front page, static as it remains for an extended period of time, is agreeable... and I think we can all agree that that photo of
Jonathan Majors is agreeable. I hope this is an approximation of his costume for
the WWII fighter-pilot movie he made with Glen Powell! They can lose one or two more buttons -- that's my only critique!
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November 23, 2021, 7:08 am
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November 23, 2021, 7:23 am
Though the buzz on this one has been strangely -- one might even say eerily -- quiet even though it hits theaters and Showtime tomorrow, I think that
The Humans (based on the Tony-winning play) starring Richard Jenkins, Beanie Feldstein, Amy Schumer, and Steven Yeun, is a terrific way to spend a chunk of your holiday. Especially if your family's anything like mine, where talking only makes things worse not better. Finally a movie for my specific dysfunction! I wrote up my thoughts on the film last night o
ver at The Film Experience so go and read them. Please. And thanks. I guess I have to say "thanks" two days before Thanksgiving and when talking about a Thanksgiving movie at that!
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November 23, 2021, 7:58 am
There was a brief period circa his "no homo"
Angels in America phase where I flirted with turning on Andrew Garfield -- the friction between his straightness and his camp performance of Prior in that show verged on the distasteful, I thought -- but I think he's won me back with his role as the camp-acting hetero Jonathan Larson in
Tick, Tick... Boom!, an adeal match between actor and role if ever there were one. (
Here's my surprising rave review of Lin-Manuel Miranda's film, if you missed it.) I know those are a lot of needles to thread but we live in a heavily threaded time, y'all. Anyway these new photos are for
GQ -- read the interview
here, and see the rest of the snaps
after the jump...
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November 23, 2021, 8:51 am
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Thanks to
Miguel Ángel for really capturing what I'm all about on this here Tuesday right on the lip of a near-full-week-off -- just putting the blinders on and doing what I gotta to make it to tomorrow, man. I had one of my patented insomniac nights last night where I only got a couple hours of sleep at most and am entirely running on fumes right now -- thankfully today is not asking a ton from me, because
as explained yesterday I've got two screenings and am taking off for those early. Not that "watching movies" isn't my (unpaid) vocation and I don't have to, you know, "stay awake" and "pay attention" during them. But at least I can do all of that without having to "look at real human beings" or "speak" et cetera. Anyway I head off for those in a little over an hour and unless something wildly worth the effort makes itself known between now and then this post might be it until next Monday, so I wish you all a fine holiday if you celebrate the holiday, and a nice week if you do not. Either way: Eat some shit! Be merry! And Here's a small ridiculous useless factoid about me to help get you on your way:
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November 29, 2021, 7:03 am
Hello and welcome back from your holiday break, or your not holiday break if you don't celebrate Thanksgiving because you're a foreigner or some shit. I hope you had a nice set of days whatever you spent them doing! I mean there are ends to that "whatever" -- if you spent the time murdering grandmothers or fellating Lindsay Graham my charity ends well before those places. Anyway these photos that openly gay actor Haaz Sleiman shared on
his Insta a few days ago seem a perfectly pleasant way to ease ourselves back into the work week. I still haven't seen
Eternals --
see our previous post here, which includes a whole lot of Haaz, I recommend -- but from what I have heard his role as Brian Tyree Henry's homosexual partner is pretty limited, with
a chaste smooch to sate, well, folks like me, horrible me, who've wanted Marvel to include people like me for awhile in their world. And again -- I ain't seen it yet! So I can't really speak. Yet. But I can look at these photos,
after the jump...
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November 29, 2021, 7:23 am
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November 29, 2021, 8:53 am
Since I don't want to illustrate a post with a gigantic photo of my dumb face I'll give y'all two snaps of Paul Newman to stare at, while I talk about myself -- it's not entirely random, as Paul does get a mention in my "Thankful For" list (about what got me through 2021) that went up at The Film Experience over the holiday, which you can read right here. It's a small one but when it comes to Paul Newman there are no small ones, am I right? Right.
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November 29, 2021, 9:20 am
The "it" I speak of is the dump-truck (ass) full of cash to Channing and Steven Soderbergh's houses, because the duo
have just announced a third
Magic Mike movie! To be titled
Magic Mike's Last Dance, Tatum posted a photo of the script cover on his Twitter (see down below) this morning, and I have to admit I'm not super surprised? Happy yes, obviously, but not surprised given how ripped Channing's been seen getting lately --
see here for an example. His abs were like a flare shot into the sky -- I sensed this coming! Anyway there's not a lot of info, besides Soderbergh (no doubt with tongue firmly in cheek) saying, "Mike Lane’s dream of connecting people through dance must be realized," so stay tuned. I can't imagine that we won't see some familiar faces (and you know what comes down below those faces) showing back up for the third round. Personally I'm really hoping they bring Alex Pettyfer back -- I know he was an asshole, but...
he put the "ass" in "asshole." He really did.
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November 29, 2021, 10:27 am
... you can learn from:
Jane F.: You think you're so... uhmm... uhh... JESUS! Then you go on and on and on about this and that and all this other bullshit! And all I gotta say is FUCK MAN! This situation is totally fucked! With a capital! I mean... Have you ever!... Do you like even... DO YOU? You tell your people that!
"Faris will be doing double-duty in “Summer Madness,” playing both leading roles as twins — one who is flat broke and foul-mouthed while the other is successful and elegant twin sister. Disowned by her wealthy and conniving mother, the unsuccessful twin must rally her dysfunctional family to appear picture perfect in order to win a large cash prize at her mother’s annual gala."
I need to add a rather large caveat here that this project was announced a couple of years back (don't know how I missed it) -- it was supposed to start filming right when the pandemic began, and I can't find any more info now -- but IMDb lists it as "pre-production" and they'd never lie to us right? Well I hope we get this, because I want this, dammit. Happy birthday, Anna!
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November 29, 2021, 11:20 am
Deadline is
reporting today that a new limited-series about the making of Bernardo Bertolucci's 1972 film
Last Tango in Paris is getting made -- that film, which starred Marlon Brando and Maria Schneider and was about their characters' troubling, tumultuous, and anonymous sexual relationship, has been rightly the subject of controversy for the past decade or so after Schneider revealed that Bertolucci & Brando sprang the film's infamous rape scene on her. Just the sort of thing you want writers from
Entourage to handle right? Well that's what you're getting -- funny enough Deadline doesn't mention the title
Brando, but that's what is listed on the writers' IMDb pages -- but at least it will be co-directed by
Killing Eve's Lisa Brühlmann, whose movie
Blue My mind is definitely worth seeking out (
read my review here). Anyway obviously the big conversation on this is casting -- who plays Brando, Schneider, Bertolucci?
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I haven't seen
Tango in many a moon -- it's never been a film I got pleasure from watching; it always made me feel gross, and ever since Schneider revealed what went down even more so. But it's probably due a re-visit (and hey look
the blu-ray on sale for ten bucks on Amazon today) since it's always felt like a film that will improve the older one is while watching it. There's an aspect of life experience that I think it requires; I just might have been far too young the first time I saw it. What do you guys think of
Last Tango? And who would you cast in these roles?
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November 29, 2021, 12:59 pm
It felt like it had been awhile since we've been blessed with a "Colin Farrell in short shorts" sighting when I saw these new snaps today (
via, thx Mac) so I checked the archives and indeed, it's been
since February -- odd that this only happens in the colder months, right? Then again he lives in Los Angeles, and weather there confounds me. Anyway I miss the shorts being combined with a sexy face-mask but there are, you know... things... that are making up for it. (I recommend you click each one of these photos to embiggen.) And
hit the jump for the entire bulging lot of 'em...
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November 29, 2021, 3:27 pm
I told you about this one a good while back but Netflix's gay rom-com
Single All the Way starring Michael Urie, Jennifer Coolidge, Luke Macfarlane, Kathy Najimy, and Philemon Chambers, is out this week! On Thursday! The trailer's down below. Sort of feels like we can switch back and forth between this and watching Kristen Stewart & Mackenzie Davis in
Happiest Season over on Hulu for all of our queer-tidings for the foreseeable future and be finely sated with such seasonal affections. Yule logs!
As a side-note having absolutely nothing to do with all of that (and if you made it this far through my holiday gibberish you deserve an award, really) I need to note I've got a screening in the morning (rhymes with "Vest Dyed Maury") and we won't be up and blogging until afternoon. Vest Dyed Maury is a long movie, turns out. So please, prepare yourselves. Just sleep in. It'll be okay, eventually.
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November 30, 2021, 10:32 am
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