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RIP James Bidgood

February 1, 2022, 8:05 am
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The gay pioneer photographer and filmmaker James Bidgood died yesterday at the age of 89 and we here at MNPP mourn him! He only made one movie but what a goddamned movie -- Pink Narcissus came out in 1971 after he filmed it for seven years confined to his apartment, although you'd never really guess it was all filmed inside a single apartment watching the thing, given how expansive he makes the miniature world of it. (And can this beauty be given a blu-ray release already?) The film was released anonymously because Bidgood felt his producers messed it up -- he wasn't tracked down as its maker until 2003. 

And then Taschen put out a book of his work which I very much recommend picking up if you can afford it (it's out of print and the prices have gone up just since I checked them last night). I got to see an exhibit of his work a few years ago at the Museum of Sex here in NYC, you can see some of the photos of the exhibit that I snapped at this link. Even if Bidgood's name wasn't known for a long time his work, especially Narcissus, was formative for an entire generation of queer artists. He's one of our most important (I mean, the asses alone) and should be celebrated as such!



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Just Before After Yang

February 1, 2022, 8:40 am
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When I rounded-up my Sundance coverage yesterday I mentioned that there could be more to come because there are about thirty films I saw at the festival that I haven't written about yet and might want to -- well one of the biggest titles to fall under that umbrella is Kogonada's film After Yang starring Colin Farrell, which just got a poster and a trailer this week, which I will share with you now. A24 is releasing the film simultaneously in theaters and on Showtime on March 4th and I hope I do find the time to write about it because it's a stunner...


... Kogonada directed Columbus (a romance with John Cho and the great Haley Lu Richardson) a couple of years back and that was an immediate classic but this one's probably even better? It wades into such heady territory with such grace and ease, and Colin Farrell's performance is so simple and moving... anyway this will be absolutely one of the year's best no matter how great the year turns out to be, so I recommend you seek it out come March. Here's the trailer:

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Messina Gotta Boogie, Man

February 1, 2022, 10:50 am
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This bit of movie news today is one of those two steps forward, two steps back bits that MC Skat Kat long ago warned me about -- the good part is that the Stephen King short story "The Boogeyman" (from his famed 1978 collection Night Shift) is finally moving forward as a feature film! And it will star Chris Messina! And it will also star Sophie Thatcher, aka the teenage Natalie from Yellowjackets! We like the both of them, and it's pretty crazy that this story's never gotten the film treatment. Well there is...

... that 1982 short film (which I have never seen myself and which I was surprised to see sitting there on YouTube when I looked) but that doesn't entirely count. Here is how Deadline summarizes the story:

"The original short was truly scary and dealt with a man’s visit to a psychiatrist where he recounted how his children were each killed by the title character. The story follows a teenage girl who’s still reeling from the tragic death of their mother and finds herself and her brother plagued by a sadistic presence in their house and struggle to get their grieving father to pay attention before it’s too late."

So anyway that's all good news -- the not-so-great part is that the film's going to be directed by Rob Savage, who made a fun horror movie called Host at the start of the pandemic and then made a horror movie a year after that called Dashcam that was so fucking terrible and obnoxious that it not only wiped out every inch of goodwill Host had accumulated it shifted the concept of "goodwill" into its direct inverse, obliterating all goodness and will in all of the world. (Man did I not like Dashcam!) Anyway maybe Savage learned something useful from that experience and he's not actually a negative on the project -- I promise to keep an open mind from here on out. I'd love for this creepy-ass story to get the proper big screen treatment it deserves. This cast is a good step in the good direction.



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Simu Liu One Time

February 1, 2022, 12:41 pm
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Good Morning World

February 2, 2022, 7:13 am
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And a happy 26th birthday to the actor Paul Mescal today! And no I am trying not to think about the fact that he was born when I was a Freshman in college, so don't you bring that up here please. Anyway! We all know that Paul turned in an immediate star-turn with the series Normal People, which was basically his very first gig -- the good news is I thought he was wildly charming in his small-ish role in Maggie Gyllenhaal's The Lost Daughter, and so I think NP mightn't have been a fluke! That's good news. Especially since his next big gig is The History of Sound, one I was already immediately looking forward to (to put it mildly) due to its description -- a weary WWI romance between two soldiers played by Paul and Josh O'Connor? Um, yes, yes please -- but have only gotten even more enthusiastic about given how head-over-heels I fell for the director Oliver Hermanus' film Living which just played Sundance. Here is my raving review of that lovely thing. I also adored Hermanus' previous movie Moffie, about gay soldiers in South Africa -- reviewed here. Basically I've all but decided that Hermanus is my new fave and this movie's the probable ticket to take us over the threshold, happily married, forever bliss. Or so I'm hoping! But no pressure, Paul & Co!

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Quotes of the Day

February 2, 2022, 7:55 am
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"The lustful gazes exchanged between Arthur (Harry Melling) and Teddy (the always delectable Karl Glusman, here in full leather boy cruising mode), as well as the electrifying fear-turned-titillation Suze (Andrea Riseborough) experiences (Arthur may want, but Suze wants to be Teddy), set them both on a conquest to undo the relationship they thought they wanted. In the process, Kramer sketches out a feverish queer manifesto on gender that feels both novel and familiar."

That line is from MNPP-pal Manuel Betancourt's review of Please Baby Please in Variety last week, which I am just noticing today after Karl Glusman shared the two snaps from the film's set seen here on his Instagram last night, thereby reminding me that the movie actually had its premiere at the Rotterdam Film Festival on the 26th. I had forgotten! There are only two reviews on Rotten Tomatoes and they're both very positive (here's the other) and I really need this movie inside of me already. Here is my original post on the movie (which has more snaps of Glusman in his leather-boy getup) and here's my second, which, yes, more pictures. We all know why we're here. I mean we're here for a movie that director Amanda Kramer describes as "a fucked up, queer, upside down West Side Story" obviously! But we're here first and foremost for Karl. As was Kramer. Here's another choice quote, this time from her:

"Not to embarrass Karl, but that’s what it’s like for him in real life. He has this immense beauty that leaves people agog. Harry understood that and every time he looked at him, I would get butterflies in my stomach. I was hoping he gets him! ... The thing is, I don’t have that much to say about sex. What I was thinking about was idealized love. You look at this other person and even though you are bursting inside, you know that as soon as you have sex – or as soon as I show it on screen – it won’t be as hot. But I do think that one amazing kiss is necessary."



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Five Frames From ?

February 2, 2022, 8:17 am
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The Moon Fall's Tonight!

February 2, 2022, 8:49 am
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(click to embiggen) I'm finally seeing Roland Emmerich's latest world-ender Moonfall tonight, which stars Patrick Wilson and Halle Berry as sexy scientists fighting the, uhh, moon falling. And I'm super fucking excited about it! I need a big dumb movie right about now and Moonfall looks to be filling all of those quotas -- it's big, it's dumb, and okay it might not be a "movie" per se as much as it is a collection of nonsense, but that's fine. I am fine with that. Here's the most recent trailer at this link, and the image above, excuse me the blessed image above, is Patrick modeling a watch (via), because all of you definitely noticed the watch when you were looking at that picture, haha. Moonfall is out on Friday!

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Brad Pitt Flashback

February 2, 2022, 9:09 am
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Okay so this is wildly random but not random by me -- random by somebody else for a change! I am just flowing with somebody else's go. Vanity Fair spoke with Succession actor Brian Cox this week (via) and he brought up Wolfgang Peterson's 2004 film Troy as the only time he's ever chased a role (he played "Agamemnon" in it) which led him to this perfectly-relatable digression:

“I remember at one point being agog at Brad... He’d never been in costumes like that… Brad walked on set and my jaw was down because he was so stunningly beautiful. I’m straight but I thought, ‘Wow, my God! This guy is stunning.’ What chance does one have on the screen against this beautiful, beautiful man?”

Brad Pitt in 2004 was indeed a visual force to be reckoned with. Anyway I was just going to tweet about this while linking back to the Steven Klein photoshoot that Brad did at the time for L'uomo Vogue, only... I couldn't find the shoot posted here on the site? It's got to be buried somewhere -- I refuse to believe I've actually never posted it -- but this presents the opportunity to just post it today, and that's a challenge I will ever accept. Hit the jump for the entire thing...







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By This Robber Baron's Beard

February 2, 2022, 9:56 am
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Okay so who's watching The Gilded Age? I know some of you are watching The Gilded Age. I am watching The Gilded Age and I'm not even the typical audience for such a thing -- I watched some Downton but lost interest fairly fast, and all of the Broadway legends on Gilded are mainly lost on me, given I'm not a big Broadway person. I am a big Carrie Coon & Morgan Specter person though, so Julian Fellowes got me with them, and I've found these two episodes of The Gilded Age that have aired so far perfectly acceptable escapist entertainment. Downton was never anything more than an expensive soap opera and this seems to be the same -- some of the negative reactions to this new series seem beamed in from some other planet with their expectations to me! 

Anyway this is the long way around to me linking to this chat in W Magazine with Mr. Spector there, talking about the show, talking about working with Carrie Coon, talking about being married to Rebecca Hall, et cetera et cetera. I recommend reading that, and then coming back and looking at my great big "Gratuitous Morgan Spector" post right after as the mint on your pillow. Oh and one last thing, Gilded Age needs more of the gay stuff. The lack of that was Downton's true undoing! Them's my two nickels!



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Channing Tatum Six Times

February 2, 2022, 10:27 am
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There's a big cover story interview with Channing Tatum in the new issue of Variety, you can read it here -- he talks about wigs and getting butt-ass-naked in The Lost City (he also admits he hates that they changed the title from The Lost City of D, which has also bugged me) with Sandra Bullock (I shared the trailer for that here), he talks about losing his pet dog and how that became his movie Dog out later this month, and most importantly he talks about making the third Magic Mike movie with Steven Soderbergh, which was just announced in November. Choice quote:

"This one’s going to be a full dance-icle. We’re going to swing for the fence. I’m going to dance as hard as I’ve danced in any movie other than ‘Hail, Caesar!’” he says, referring to the 2016 Coen brothers film in which he learned how to tap dance. “I want this movie to be filled with joy and fun. Everybody is like, ‘Less character, more dancing.’ So I’ve listened."

I'm one of those people -- "those people" -- who's actually liked both of the Magic Mike movies as they've been; I know a lot of people have reiterated what he's saying, that they both were more drama less tea-bagging than people were clamoring for, but I thought they worked. Still I'll come for the tea-bagging too! Of course I will. Anyway Chan's looking mighty fine right? He looks ten, fifteen, years younger? They've definitely put the Hollywood buffing machine to work on him. Hit the jump for the whole shoot...






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Don't Let Sleeping Corpses Lie at the Morgue

February 2, 2022, 11:43 am
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I've always seen Jorge Grau's 1974 zombie-classic called by its title Let Sleeping Corpses Lie, which is a fabulous title, but the film goes by several names -- including Don't Open the Window, which was Edgar Wright's inspiration for his Grindhouse trailer "Don't!" -- but Synapse Films is finally putting the movie out on blu-ray on June 7th in what looks like a splendid 4K restoration, so if they want to go by the alternate title The Living Dead At Manchester Morgue then so be it. It's certainly the most British-sounding title of the bunch and the film, despite its Spanish director, is a very British affair. 

Or so I have heard -- I have never seen it! And I'll be very happy to right that wrong with this release, as it is by all accounts a serious upgrade from existing prints. Any fans out there? I love filling in the big holes (full stop?) in my horror education. You can't pre-order the film on Amazon just yet but the link is here for when you can, and I've got the entire press release after the jump...


THE DEAD RISE LIKE NEVER BEFORE WHEN SYNAPSE FILMS BRINGS THE LIVING DEAD AT MANCHESTER MORGUE TO BLU-RAY JUNE 7TH!

“This is one of my favorite zombie films of them all; a genuinely chilling UK set horror...” – Edgar Wright. Director of Last Night in Soho, Baby Driver and Shaun of the Dead

"[A] still-startling nightmare creation that was years ahead of its time." - Mitch Davis, Fantasia Film Festival

"The transfer itself is quite the eye opener compared to the earlier Blu-rays and other transfers, with a gargantuan increase in detail throughout... As far as upgrades go, this is one of the most extreme in recent memory." - Mondo-Digital.com

With its revolutionary mix of shocking-for-its-time violence and sociopolitical themes, George A. Romero's 1968 classic Night of the Living Dead quickly proved to be enormously influential with filmmakers around the world, and few were able to match its power like Jorge Grau's The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue.  Mixing a strong environmental statement with unforgettably terrifying set pieces, Grau's film stands on its own as a horror classic, and now it's been restored to its horrifying glory on Blu-ray by Synapse Films!

A strange twist of fate brings two young travelers, George (Ray Lovelock, The Cassandra Crossing) and Edna (Christine Galbo,The House That Screamed), to a small town where an experimental agricultural machine may be bringing the dead back to life! As zombies infest the area and attack the living, a bull-headed detective (Academy Award® nominee Arthur Kennedy, Peyton Place) thinks the couple are Satanists responsible for the local killings. George and Edna have to fight for their lives, and prove their innocence, as they try to stop the impending zombie apocalypse!

The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue (aka Let Sleeping Corpses Lie and Don’t Open the Window) is a gory horror tale from Spanish director Jorge Grau and widely considered to be one of the best zombie films ever made. Beautifully restored in 4K from the original camera negative, Synapse Films presents the film on Blu-ray with the true original English theatrical mono mix and the real opening and closing credit sequences intact.

SPECIAL FEATURES INCLUDE:

• Exclusive new 4K restoration from the original 35mm camera negative

• New 5.1 English stereo surround remix made exclusively for the Synapse Films release

• Two audio commentaries featuring authors and film scholars Troy Howarth, Nathaniel Thompson and Bruce Holecheck

• Restoration of the true original English language theatrical mono mix

• Jorge Grau - Catalonia’s Cult Film King (89 mins.) – This extensive feature-length documentary explores the life and films of director Jorge Grau

• The Scene of the Crime - Giannetto De Rossi in Discussion from Manchester (16 Mins.)

• Giannetto De Rossi - Q&A at the Festival of Fantastic Films, UK (43 Mins)

• Theatrical trailer, TV spots and radio spots

• Newly translated removable English SDH subtitles

This release of THE LIVING DEAD AT MANCHESTER MORGUE is REGION FREE.

Director: Jorge Grau 

Starring: Ray Lovelock; Arthur Kennedy; Christine Galbo

Runtime: 93 minutes 

Language: English

MPAA Rating: Not Rated 

Aspect Ratio: High-Definition 1080p (1.85:1) Widescreen

Audio: DTS-HD MA 5.1 English Stereo Surround and Original English Mono

Format: Blu-ray

Region: ALL

Release Date: June 7, 2022


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Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

February 2, 2022, 12:40 pm
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... you can learn from:

Transit (2018)

Georg: A man had died. He was to register in hell. He waited in front of a large door. He waited a day, two. He waited weeks. Months. Then years. Finally a man walked past him. The man waiting addressed him: Perhaps you can help me, I'm supposed to register in hell. The other man looks him up and down, says: But sir, this here is hell.

Today we wish one of our top five favorite new working actors Mr. Franz Rogowski a happy birthday! A happy 36th birthday to be precise. And calling Franz "new" is admittedly a bit of a stretch since he's been working for a full decade, but our big time overbearing obsession with him is relatively new, having sneaked up on us over the past couple of years starting with the fantastic Christian Petzold film I quote above. (In related news Transit is begging for a rewatch; I haven't seen it since it screened NYFF back in '18.) 

Anyway I really recommend you scan back through our Franz Rogowski archives -- not just because Franz is hella sexy and I have accumulated tons of proof of such, but because you'll see said obsession really gather up everything in its path as the years pass -- I'd say alongside Jonathan Majors he's my favorite actor crush these days (if you don't count the old standbys like Jake, I mean). And his best work by my estimation is still ahead -- I mean that in the general sense because dude's only 36 and one assumes he's got tons of premiere work to gift us with if we're lucky, but also in the immediate sense that I've seen what I consider his best performance just recently, and the film isn't out yet. 

The film is called Great Freedom and Rogowski plays a gay Holocaust survivor  who is rescued from the concentration camps only to immediately be thrown into prison for being gay -- and yes if this sounds familiar that's because I have talked about the movie several times -- I shared the poster here and a teaser trailer here. There's actually a full trailer now though, so now I shall share that.


The movie is shortlisted for the International Feature prize at the Oscars this year, and it's being released here in NYC at Film Forum on March 4th, and as I say -- it's Franz Rogowski's greatest work to date. I haven't stopped thinking about it since I saw a virtual screening of it thanks to the Miami Film Festival in November and I very much recommend you figuring out when and how you'll see it yourselves, as soon as possible. Next up for Franz more gayness as he's playing Ben Whishaw's boyfriend in an Ira Sachs movie! Read my post about that here. We really don't deserve this king, but we got him!



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Good Morning, World

February 3, 2022, 4:00 am
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That there is the one and only Matthew Modine in the 1990 thriller Pacific Heights, which I rewatched over the weekend during a quite random binge I did of mostly early 90s thrillers that fit the "The [Blank] From Hell" mold -- movies like Pacific Heights (which has Michael Keaton laying the tenant from hell) and The Crush (which has Alicia Silverstone playing the teenage girl from hell), Single White Female (with Jennifer Jason Leigh playing the roommate from hell) -- you know the movies! The idea of a binge came upon me pretty randomly -- a college-friend of mine sent me a message that she'd re-watched the 1996 film Fear (starring Mark Wahlberg as the finger-blasting boyfriend from hell) and that sounded like a wonderful escape after all of the Sundance work I'd just been immersed in. A way to shut my brain off and enjoy some trash. And did I ever. 


If you click on that tweet it'll take you to a gigantic Twitter thread that I live-tweeted over the course of the binge -- I'm actually not done, I still have several movies on my list, and so that thread might well grow longer. It wouldn't surprise me a bit -- it was a seriously fun binge to binge, and I haven't even re-watched The Hand That Rocks the Cradle yet! Anyway I hope to do more than just this "Good Morning" post about this series of flicks, there's so much more meat on this particular bone to gnaw upon, but for now we'll keep it tight like Matthew Modine's torso. But if you've got recommendations for my binge-list, any faves of this type of movie that you wanna talk about, please do tell me in the comments!



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Pic of the Day

February 3, 2022, 7:08 am
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Total Film was kind enough to share with the world one new photo of Alexander Skarsgard and the Skars-muscles (that would be his band if he had a band) from Robert Eggers' forthcoming Viking epic The Northman! The full image is down below but y'all know my OCD thing about watermarks, they drive me crazy, so I also had to gift you with the above cropped watermark-less version. I shared The Northman trailer right here -- this movie is out on April 22nd -- just 78 days to go!





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Interpret This!

February 3, 2022, 7:52 am
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If you've been to Jake Gyllenhaal's IMDb page at any point over the past oh let's say five years then you've maybe noticed that he's always had like five or six projects (at least) listed as in development, in pre-production, et cetera. This leads to confusion -- I never know what he's actually going to make and what will end up sitting there, undeveloped, forever. I mean his film Rio with Luca Guadagnino was announced in 2017 and I think it might not happen now? I would love it to happen. But it feels increasingly unlikely with each passing decade. 

Anyway my point is that Jake's actually been spotted on the set of something, so we know what his next something will be (and eesh it's the least interesting of the bunch) -- he's working on Guy Ritchie's film The Interpreter right now, which I told you about back in October, a film which has a plot which worries me, geo-politically, given Guy Ritchie's never really exactly proven himself to be the most liberal guy in the world. It's about a soldier who's forced to leave Afghanistan who goes back to help out his abandoned interpreter, who's in danger for having helped the Americans. Biden got so much bullshit when he finally pulled our soldiers out over there, this film seems sprung out of that hullaballoo, and I have very little faith that Guy Ritchie of all people can tell the story with any kind of nuance. 

Anyway there's Jake on set, wearing somebody's bubbe's head-scarf -- and yes I have actually already seen people trying to make this about Taylor Swift somehow, WTF -- and if you want more photos of this (they're all pretty shitty quality though) click here. Anyway curious to see what other actors are in this since Jake's the only name we have so far.



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Five Frames From ?

February 3, 2022, 8:19 am
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Which is Hotter?

February 3, 2022, 10:47 am
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I know that most everybody bailed on the social media platform known as Tumblr ages ago -- notably when they dumped the porn -- but not me! And as far as I'm concerned Tumblr giveth and Tumblr giveth even more, even still. Case in point today I randomly stumbled upon these two delight-filled videos of 1) Jon Bernthal boxing while shirtless & mustachioed (seen above) and 2) Star Treka ctor slash Gregory-grandson Ethan Peck kickboxing in slow-motion... 

Neither might be the best quality video but did I mentioned they are delight-filled? Filled with delight, they are. I'm feeling a million years old today after two nights of restless half-assed sleep but these have given me a bit of a goose this afternoon, and maybe they will you too. But let's poll for the goosiest!

polls


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Good Morning, World

February 4, 2022, 7:18 am
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I am running a bit behind this morning because I decided on a last second impulse as I walked past the barber around the corner from my office to swerve in an get my hair cut for the first time in like four months? I'd even mentioned on Monday -- I am sure you're all riveted to this saga so you remember this -- that I was losing my mind with my hair, it was making me insane -- and so here, I can bookend this week with the saga complete. My hair is now cut. And here are two gifs of Burt Reynolds in his underwear in the 1978 film Hooper that I saw somewhere the other day to mark the occasion. I don't know. Just go with it.



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Five Frames From ?

February 4, 2022, 8:10 am
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