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Gary Cooper, Enduring Hot

July 27, 2023, 12:54 pm
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One of my favorite celebrity coffee-table books that I own is the 2011 edition of Gary Cooper: Enduring Style, which is basically a beautiful book of photos of Gary Cooper being super hot, the end. There are words or whatever but I'm a picture person and this one's got the goods. A gorgeous book, but it's been out of print for awhile and it goes for a couple hundred dollars now (not quite enough for me to retire on dammit). But lo, behold, awesome news -- it's being reissued! Out on August 8th and selling on Amazon for a measly fifty bucks, you can pick up your copy here if "Gary Cooper being super hot" is a thing that's up your alley. Which really, really oughta be.


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Sympathy for the Sweatpants

July 27, 2023, 3:09 pm
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That photo of Joel Kinnaman rocking some gray sweatpants (swoon) is not from the movie he has out this weekend called Sympathy For the Devil -- I actually have no idea what that photo is from. (Maybe Altered Carbon?) But aren't we all glad that it's the photo I decided to sue for this post? Yeah I thought so. And now that photo will be sitting there on the top of this site for four straight days -- I do right by us all, I swear. Anyway yes indeed it's Thursday, which in Summer Terms means the start of my weekend, and I'll be off-blog until Monday. But to step back for a moment to that movie I mentioned -- Sympathy For the Devil (which sees Joel Kinnaman terrorized by Nicolas Cage and which just premiered at the Fantasia Film Festival in Montreal last weekend (while I was there, whaddya know) before hitting actual movie theaters this weekend) I have seen and Sympathy For the Devil I have reviewed... but the link's not live yet. I'll update this tomorrow when it is. I know I say that all the time but I mean it! Pinky swear or whatever. I'll also have some other Fantasia reviews going up over the next several days but I'll post those links next week when they happen. So basically watch this space! And by "this space" I mean Joel Kinnaman's gray sweatpants. I'm pretty sure they're moving...

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Good Morning, World

July 31, 2023, 6:43 am
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So who's up for a morning dip with Alexander Skarsgård?

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Five Frames From ?

July 31, 2023, 7:35 am
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Give It Up For Red Rooms

July 31, 2023, 7:57 am
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My first two reviews from the 2023 edition of the Fantasia Film Festival went up over the weekend -- the first one I already told you about, that being the Kinnman-n-Cage starring Sympathy For the Devil, which I reviewed right here. That movie also came out on demand over the weekend so maybe you watched it already and can tell me whether I should've been nicer and/or meaner to it. Please do let me know! I love that.

The other movie though, that's one I very much want you to pay attention to -- it's Quebecois serial killer thriller Red Rooms from director Pascal Plante, and I wrote it up for Mashable. It's fan-freaking-tastic -- deeply unnerving and with a killer lead performance from Juliette Gariépy, who plays a model who becomes (too, too, too) obsessed with a murder case.

I say this in my review but it's very much a modern giallo, but without being obsessed with repeating ad naseum the whole explicit "giallo" thing like a movie like The Strange Color of Your Body's Tears wherethey're trying to make it feel like a movie transported out of the 70s. Red Rooms is very much a movie of right now, and yet it's about a fashion model slash tech whiz slash murder detective! It scratches that giallo itch while adding something new and now. Also Gariépy kills it -- this is very much a movie I could see getting remade here in the U.S. (and hopefully they wouldn't water it down), and it's a role that any smart edgy actress should consider murdering her competition to get.

But don't listen to just me -- Red Rooms took home several of the top prizes at Fantasia over the weekend (even though the fest doesn't end until August 9th they already handed out their awards, I don't know) including Best Film, Best Screenplay for writer-director Plante, and Best Actress for Gariépy. I still can't get over the last act of this movie -- it's bonkers. And I can't wait to watch it again. See all the Fantasia award winners at this link, and stay tuned for several more reviews from yours truly, coming soon. 

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RIP Paul Reubens

July 31, 2023, 10:49 am
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I usually avoid doing these since I'm fairly terrible at memorializing pop-culture figures that I cared about in proper (which is to say non-selfish) ways. But I'm going to be doubly terrible at this one because I am fully and utterly devastated right now. TO say that Paul Reubens, the man behind Pee-wee Herman, was influential in creating the weirdo typing before you today, is like saying I'm made of molecules. Paul imprinted his sly little smirk onto every single one of those molecules and he sent them on their merry way, from as far back as I can remember. I was 9-years-old when the Playhouse started airing -- I've written about that show a billion times here at MNPP but I wrote a big piece on it for Mashable last fall for its 36th anniversary -- but I'd surely already seen Tim Burton's 1985 movie by then. Whichever came first the takeover was complete and immediate, and even though I didn't get it at the time I surely do now -- in Pee-wee I was seeing something so personal, so aimed straight for me and little boys and girls exactly like me. Those of us who didn't fit in, whose giddiness was a little over-the-top, who day-dreamed and dressed peculiar and found ourselves stuck in ways we couldn't comprehend at the time. Paul saved my life at a transformative moment, showing me how to stay bright and have humor and slip by the bullies even if you couldn't beat them up -- I finally got who I could be, as a person; that there were ways to survive it all and really actually get to be a person. 

And I'm crying too much right now to really do any of this justice -- I'll just add that I wrote a little thing that said some of this stuff when Pee Wee's Big Holiday came out in 2016 and somehow, I have no idea how, Paul saw it. And he sent me a lovely note saying thank you. And I think maybe I died instantaneously and everything since has been hell? It was late 2016 after all! It all makes sense! But for real he wrote that note and then he put me on his Christmas card list and he texted me every year on my birthday to wish me a happy one and to say that this was something I ever came close to comprehending would be deeply false. I have had moments where I felt like I have accomplished things in my life, where I have written something I was proud of or met someone I was a fan of and geeked out about it, but these were the greatest of all of them. I never did and will never wrap my head around the fact that, even in this tiniest of ways, Paul Reubens reached out and made me feel special. After he'd already done so very much for me already. An absolute king, my hero, a wonderful kind and funny man. I love you, Paul. 

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Quote of the Day

July 31, 2023, 1:08 pm
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"He had no knowledge of tennis going into this.
And I think he had only a vague interest in certain tennis
specificities. He was more interested in the bodies and sweat."

That's actor Mike Faist speaking on his Challengers director Luca Guadagnino to Empire magazine, and triple-underlining why Luca remains the film director that I most identify with. I know a little bit about tennis since I have played tennis and it's one of the few sports I can stomach watching, but I also would direct a sports movie completely uninterested in the sports of it and more focused on the spectacle of beautiful bodies in motion. Also of note is this bit from the same article:

"In Challengers, it’s capturing that physicality and emotion that matters most. “What Luca’s really good at is finding sensuality and desire,” says Zendaya. “There’s so much in just glances. The tension builds. Not having the release is a good thing sometimes.” All of which is to say that, the action here is largely kept to the court. “The tennis is the sex,” explains O’Connor. “Those moments are so sexy. The film is dealing with the tension before and after. The sex they’re all desperate for is on the court.”"

This is definitely their way of telling us to expect less explicit sex than the trailer (watch it here) hinted at -- a criticism that's been heaped on Luca's shoulders ever since he (rightly) panned out the window in Call Me By Your Name, a criticism I have been calling bullshit on ever since. CMBYN remains one of the most intimate and sensual movies ever made, but y'all keep crying that you didn't see get to see explicit penetration and that makes me sad. Looks like we'll get to rehash that conversation all over again here!

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Good Morning, World

August 1, 2023, 6:48 am
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This morning's post is one of the more random ones but whatever, I saw these gifs making the rounds yesterday (via) and they get the job done -- say hello to actor Brad Johnson in the 1994 TV movie Cries Unheard: The Donna Yaklich Story, which is about a cop on steroids...

... who terrorizes his wife (played by Jaclyn Smith, because of course). And in the grand tradition of that genre of cinema, the monstrous abusive cop is filmed like he is the fetish object to end all fetish objects...

... we do indeed have a very fucked up relationship to sex and violence in this country! And I include myself in that 'we" because this dude could throw my body in a trash can when he was done with me. I am part of the problem, not the solution! On that note -- good morning!


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Five Frames From ?

August 1, 2023, 7:55 am
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Quote of the Day

August 1, 2023, 8:12 am
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“I have particular things I will never see. I will never see any ‘Star Wars’ films, because I resent that I know so much about them and the characters. Why is all that in my head when I’ve never actually seen one, you know? Why do I know about R2-D2 and Darth Vader and all these things when I’ve never even seen any ‘Star Wars’ film? ... I’ve never seen ‘Gone with the Wind’ and I never will, just because I feel like it’s forced on me and it’s some kind of corny thing. ... But I watch all kinds of stuff. On a plane recently I watched ‘Cruella.’ I love the ‘Naked Gun’ movies because they’re so stupid. I’m sort of amazed by the ‘John Wick’ movies, just by how many people he can kill. I haven’t seen the ‘Twilight’ movies. ... These are very subjective, just kind of stubborn things on my part. I don’t like mass things being shoved on me, but I will go see them. Like ‘The Terminator’ is a masterpiece of cinema. It’s a big action movie, essentially. So I don’t really differentiate. ...

But I have to tell you one thing I hate — and you can just do a little test yourself: watch any recent action-oriented movie and look for any shot that’s more than three seconds long. I find that really insulting and shit filmmaking: like they have to keep it moving every three seconds. And that’s the longest they’ll leave a shot on! And then cut. One second, cut! Two seconds, cut! Three seconds, cut! Man, I get a headache. I just turn it off. I’m like, Come on, man, go to film school! Watch something! Go read a book! Look at a painting! Look at something. This is nonsense. I can’t stand that."

I just went ahead and plopped down the entirety of what director Jim Jarmusch said to Believer mag about where he stands with regards to Pop Culture because -- my god, am I Jim Jarmusch? I mean I'm not the world's biggest Jarmusch fan -- my favorite movie of his is probably everybody else's least favorite, his zombie comedy The Dead Don't Die -- but he and I as people seem to have an awful lot in common. Not that I haven't seen the Star Wars movies -- I have, and more than once -- but I one thousand percent get where he's coming from. Indeed it's a lot of what I was getting at when I wrote about Barbie last week. That movie itself is fine, it's fine, but I actively resent that it's what an artist like Greta Gerwig is forced to work with by the system, and its bonanza box-office success -- while I can recognize the good stuff (A woman dominated product breaking box office records! It's not a superhero movie!) -- just depresses me. So let people sneer at things, is my point. Snobbery is sometimes good! The democratization of culture has good things about it, but the idea that everybody has to appreciate the same things and hate the same other things is exhausting. 

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Hunter Doohan Three More Times

August 1, 2023, 9:00 am
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Three more photos from Wednesday actor Hunter Doohan's shoot for Calvin Klein have made themselves known to us (via) and I dutifully pass them along to you! See the other eight I passed along last week right here. As can be seen in the comments of that previous post -- I didn't know Mr. Doohan was a married homosexual! What a delight. Having genuine gays to root for makes the world go round. See also:


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Getcha Nutty Gay Stuff Here

August 1, 2023, 9:54 am
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With all due respect to my beloveds at the boutique physical-media label Altered Innocence I am going to use a photo of model-turned-actor Matthieu Charneau up top of this post in order to grab everybody's attention, and then down below I will post the physical media cover-art, which is nice but, you know, NOT THAT. Anyway to get to the point those wonderful people at Altered Innocence are putting out a collection of short films from Portuguese director Carlos Conceição next month, top-lined by his stunning and strange 2021 medium-sized movie (it's about fifty minutes long) called Name Above Title, which stars Mr. Charneau there as the sexiest goddamned serial killer you ever done seen. I reviewed the film briefly right here -- I really dug it, as its own little mixture of Almodovar and Bidgood and all kinds of queer influences, and the chance to finally see more of Conceição's work is very very exciting to me! Check out all of the details over at Vinegar Syndrome, where you can pre-order the set right this minute.


Also of note -- VS is dropping Martin Walz's outrageous 1996 satirical AIDS comedy Killer Condom onto 4K, which is a sentence I really really really never thought I'd write. The set seems absolutely bonkers, stuffed with seedy extras and juicy special features -- pre-order that right here, and below I will share the trailer. I loved this movie when I was in college but I haven't seen it since -- hell I kind of forgot it existed. How that happened I have no idea! This movie should really be considered unforgettable, once you've beheld it. I mean, read this sentence: "Featuring gag-inducing special effects by notorious splatter master Jörg Buttgereit (Nekromantik, Schramm) along with Academy Award-winner H. R. Giger (Alien, Species) serving as creative consultant." Good lord!

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Which is Hotter?

August 1, 2023, 11:29 am
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Two of MNPP's favorite underrated hot pieces have taken shirtless glass-door selfies and posted them to Instagram over the past week -- a weird coincidence! But one that gives us the fun opportunity to force them to duke it out via their spectacular abdominal muscles. (And tell me you wouldn't pay good money to watch that.) Above is the actor Edward Holcroft (via), best known for the Kingsman movies (check our Eddie archives here), and below...

... is Morgan Spector (via), who's married to Rebecca Hall and is everybody's main lust object on The Gilded Age, among other notable accomplishments. (Check our Morgan archives here, but really make sure you see this post in particular.) This is Morgan's second gratuitous selfie this summer (after this one hubba hubba), and we are deeply appreciative of his newfound social media thirst. Anyway, now we make them fight:

online polls

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Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

August 1, 2023, 2:11 pm
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... you can learn from:


César: We never appreciate the good moments till they're over.
Antonio: Maybe that's why they're good moments.

A happy 50th birthday to the fine (and fine) Spanish actor Eduardo Noriega today, probably best known here in the U.S. for his lead role in Guillermo Del Toro's perfect 2001 ghost story The Devil's Backbone. That is if he's not known for the movie quoted above from director Alejandro Amenábar -- who coincidentally also made a perfect ghost story in 2001 called The Others. I just don't know how well-seen Open Your Eyes is at this point here in the U.S. -- I never hear anybody talk about it anymore, even though it has gotten a blu-ray release and it is currently streaming on Prime.

Anyway it's very good and you should see it if you haven't! And if you're unaware Open Your Eyes was remade in 2001 (good grief what a convergence point that year is turning out to be for this post) as Cameron Crowe's film Vanilla Sky. And while there are things I admire about Vanilla Sky, Amenábar's film remains far superior. Anyway Noriega did a lot of great work around that time -- Amenábar's 1996 film Thesis is another one that doesn't get mentioned often enough (with The Othersgetting released on Criterion in October maybe more of Amenábar's movies will finally get good releases). And then there's the homoerotic spectacle of Eduardo and Leonardo Sbaraglia (recently seen in Pedro Almodovar's Pain and Glory)...

... in Burnt Money from 2000, which, wanna hear something nuts? I HAVE NEVER SEEN. I have posted about this movie's existence since the very beginning of this website almost twenty years ago and yet I have still never seen it! Even when images like this exist:

I have quite obviously wasted my life. 

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Good Morning, World

August 2, 2023, 6:50 am
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Elite actor Manu Rios has been kind enough to get this Hump Day off to a beautiful beginning (via) from whatever gorgeous tropical paradise he's currently flaunting his gorgeous tropical physique at. What a gentleman he is -- thanks, Manu! In related news -- when the heck are we going to get word on the U.S. release of Pedro Almodóvar's gay western Strange Way of Life starring Pedro Pascal and Ethan Hawke and this beautiful young man you see leaning shirtlessly before you? Come on, Sony Pictures Classics -- give us a date! (Watch the trailer here meanwhile.) I wouldn't be surprised at all if it plays NYFF -- Almodóvar usually likes playing NYFF. Oooh - maybe Manu will come here for it? If I'm a room with Manu, y'all...


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Five Frames From ?

August 2, 2023, 7:24 am
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Aliens, Earth Ain't Easy

August 2, 2023, 7:43 am
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Yet another review from Montreal's esteemed Fantasia Film Festival of 2023 coming your way today -- click here to read my thoughts on The Becomers, a new spin on the old "body snatchers" tale, where it's the snatchers we follow instead of the snatched! It's terrific and goopy and weird as all get out -- surprisingly the filmmaker it reminded me the most of was Todd Solondz? Anyway the movie is from Zach Clark, who gave us the lovely Little Sister back in 2016 -- you can mostly tell that The Becomers was made by the same person but it's very different, too. A bigger scope, a new genre. Anyway it's very much keeping your glowing eyes peeled for!

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Quote of the Day

August 2, 2023, 1:13 pm
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"He had a real awareness of the frame that he was going to be in, his body within that frame, and the meaning of his body in that frame. When I asked him about the dance thing, he doesn’t make big claims for him for himself in that regard. But I do think it’s informed something about the way he thinks. In a way, it could sound like it’s an outside-in process, but it’s not quite that either. It’s not quite a technical thing of, “If I look here, or move my body this way, or do this with my face,” but there’s a bit of that. There’s an awareness that’s very hard to explain. I think there’s also a whole other layer of magic which is just indefinable.

... It just said: “Tomas comes into the bedroom, he undresses, they make love.” It was the shortest scene in the whole script. It’s not the only scene that’s like this, but it was like an improvisation in the sense that we didn’t know how it would go. It was discovered in the moment, and Ira let it just play out more or less in real time. I was like, “Wow, this is going on a long time!” But then I just sort of relaxed into it, and cool, we’re just like filming this like these two people are having sex. This is the length of the sex that they’re having. That was great. It felt completely essential to the story. Not gratuitous or exploitative or anything else like that. I always think that, of course, there should be a sex scene if you’re discussing intimacy between a long-term couple. It seems to me such an important part of life. I thought it was really important, and I think Franz felt the same. We were all adults who really liked—I think loved—and trusted each other.

... It’s one of those things, there was just a really beautiful dynamic between me and Franz. I can’t speak for him, but I just loved working with him. There was a love between us of some kind that was real."

How could I not quote the entirety of Ben Whishaw talking about what it was like working with Franz Rogowski -- and specifically filming a sex scene with Franz Rogowski? This comes via a chat with the actor at Slant on the making of Ira Sachs'Passages -- read the entire thing here. I actually had no idea Rogowski had a dance background but now that I do that makes total sense, and not just because he's got the insane muscular body of a dancer. The way Rogowski moves on-screen is so specific, so notable, that this information clicks right into place.

Anyway Passages, which got an NC-17 rating because of said sex scene (and here is a good piece on that controversy), is out this week -- here is my review of the movie from Sundance. I think I'm going to go see the movie again in the theater -- it's so freaking excellent. Here is the trailer if you missed it. 


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Good Morning, World

August 3, 2023, 7:36 am
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My office computer decided to freeze and crash this morning, so I be running way behind -- so here's a photo of hot-stuff actor Isaac Cole Powell that I grabbed the other day off his Insta, one that I probably wouldn't have posted otherwise since I haven't decided if he's a good actor or just hot yet. Why that matters to me in this instance when it hardly ever does I have no idea. That's called "Chaos Theory" kiddies and my brain's got it in spades. 

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Five Frames From ?

August 3, 2023, 8:04 am
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