Good Morning, World

What's that? Did I call it a "good" morning? I did! And on a Monday so less. Listen I've just decided -- and yes get back to me in a year's time and we'll see how resolute I'm feeling -- that I am, in the memorable words of The Handmaid's Tale, "Nolite te Bastardes Carborundorum" aka I am not letting the bastards get me down. We've got each other and we've got Scott Speedman half-naked and I am seeing Nosferatu tonight for the moment that's enough for me, dammit. (These gifs are from a new movie called Cellar Door that Scott stars in with Jordana Brewster which you can rent right here -- has anybody watched it yet? I have not.) Anyway that's my attitude this morning. I wish you good people a good morning and fuck the rest of 'em. On that note hit the jump for a couple more gifs...

Some MaddAddam Mmommentumm

I think you'll all forgive me for using that photo of Alexander Skarsgard in Park Chan-wook's miniseries The Little Drummer Girl a few years back -- and excuse me for a moment while I go check Amazon to see if that series ever got put out onto blu-ray... oh it got a UK release, on DVD at least, I might have to buy that since that series rocks -- even though that is only tangentially related to the news I am sharing. I mean I suppose I could've posted a photo of Margaret Atwood or one of her book covers but I know what grabs your eyeballs! 

So the news is that one of the producers of The Little Drummer Girl (by the name of Mike Lesslie) has just attached himself to the long-gestating adaptation of Atwood's MaddAddam trilogy of books! We've been posting about the possibility of this series as long as we've been posting about anything on this website; we fell in love with the first book Oryx & Crake the minute it was released in 2003 and wanted a movie of that, but then several years later came the second and third books, and talk of a series for Hulu, and Darren Aronofsky was even attached for a second. It's been a journey. I mean it looks like we'll be getting a Y: The Last Man series before this, which is the other long long long delayed property I've been following. 

In case you don't know what the trilogy's about here, I will steal Deadline's plot description:

"At the center of the trilogy are the events leading up to the near destruction of mankind and civilization by a malicious bioengineered pandemic. The catalyst for it all is Crake, a brilliant and complicated young man so disturbed by the injustices of the world that he spends his young life developing a virus that will wipe out humans and replace us with a new species of hominid. The series not only looks at the events that lead up to that big moment, referred to in the books as the “waterless flood,” but also what happens after — including who and what shall inherit the earth."

Anyway Hulu's been yapping about making this for awhile, we'll see if anything happens. The annoying thing is is that Atwood was clearly ahead of her time fifteen years ago, but now by the time Hollywood gets around to it our times are catching up with her prognosticating. Pretty similar to how she put The Handmaid's Tale out in 1985 and then twenty years later the TV series felt like Current Events. On that note this article also mentioned the news that The Handmaid's Tale will have a fifth season; for some reason I thought the upcoming fourth season (premiering on April 28th!) was the show's last. But they're gonna plug on. I like the last season more than most people seemed to but I do sort of wonder if they might not be pushing their luck. Will the show still feel so vital without a Trump in the White House? 

That's the Sound of Women Talking

Flat out ashamed it's taken a full day to get around to mentioning this terribly exciting news -- I've been so buried in Jake Gyllenhaal's ass (hrm) that I haven't been able to come up for air (hrmmmm) to talk about anything else, I guess -- ahem! Sarah Polley is making a new movie! It's her first since 2012's brilliant and deeply moving Stories We Tell, if you can believe it. (And you should, since I just told you that.) And not just that (although that would be enough) -- it will star Frances McDormand! Frannie, on the other hand, we see lots of, but we're still excited every time. It's going to be an adaptation of the many-award-winning novel Women Talking from writer Miriam Toews, which is described thus via Amazon:

"One evening, eight Mennonite women climb into a hay loft to conduct a secret meeting. For the past two years, each of these women, and more than a hundred other girls in their colony, has been repeatedly violated in the night by demons coming to punish them for their sins. Now that the women have learned they were in fact drugged and attacked by a group of men from their own community, they are determined to protect themselves and their daughters from future harm. 

 While the men of the colony are off in the city, attempting to raise enough money to bail out the rapists and bring them home, these women-all illiterate, without any knowledge of the world outside their community and unable even to speak the language of the country they live in-have very little time to make a choice: Should they stay in the only world they've ever known or should they dare to escape? 

Based on real events and told through the “minutes” of the women's all-female symposium, Toews's masterful novel uses wry, politically engaged humor to relate this tale of women claiming their own power to decide."

No surprise here but Margaret Atwood -- who Polley collaborated with on her TV adaptation of Alias Grace -- is a big fan of this book, having called it a real-life story out of her Handmaid's Tale. Have any of you read it? This book was a best-seller and won "Book of the Year" from the NYT Book Review so I am sure plenty of you have read it. I have not, but it sounds like an ace fit for all these incredible and talented names involved.

Under Our Eyes

.

The fourth and I believe final season of The Handmaid's Tale was going to come out this year but Ye Olde Plague occurred and interrupted their ongoing shoot, so this week they announced that the season will be moved into 2021. One wonders, one really hopes for the best, that the show will feel in 2021 like a pointed footnote to (a pointed heel smooshing down on) this horrible Trump Era. A thing we will happily watch once the sanity of a Democratic President has been reinstalled, come January. A goodbye to grotesquerie. One hopes such a thing with every fiber of their being! (There are no words simply for how much of an understatement that statement is.) Anyway as I said they did do some shooting on the fourth season of Handmaid, and so today they dropped a trailer with some new footage to whet our appetites towards this hopefully optimistic time called 2021...

Pic of the Day

.

Twas a red letter night at the post-box when I got home from a movie screening last night and found those three beauties waiting for me -- I've been meaning to read W. Scott Poole's book on the birth of modern horror for quite some time now so that one was overdue; Charles Burns' new collection of sketches called Free Shit (drawn from his same titled zine) on the other hand was right on time. (See more pictures of the latter here.)

And then, sort of analogous to a "Three Bears" situation I guess, we have the third option -- Margaret Atwood's The Testaments came to me way too early! That book isn't out until next week but due to a big snafu on Amazon's part some customers, of which I was one, got sent the book a full seven days before its proper publication date. 

.

Not a mix-up. It was a deliberate move by Amazon, a middle finger to every other retailer playing by the rules. 😑Amazon broke an international, binding contract and shipped a strictly embargoed title a week before they were legally permitted. Check out our timeline for more.

— Avid Bookshop (@AvidBookshop) September 4, 2019

.
As you see I took my excitement over that one to Twitter, where some Independent Bookstores are rightfully expressing their outrage -- I get it and I empathize! Support your local bookstores! I spend tons of money at ones around New York, I just had Amazon gift card money from my birthday to spend and this sudden influx of books here were the delayed result of that. If it sounds like I'm making excuses... I am. I am totally afraid of librarians! I am good friends with a couple of librarians and they are intense. Don't come for me, Bibliophiles! I am one of you!

No Quiet For Me

.

As if a Call Me By Your Name sequel from Andre Aciman and a Handmaid's Tale sequel from Margaret Atwood as well as new books by John Waters (see here) and Chris Ware and Charles Burns (see here) hitting this fall weren't enough to preemptively collapse my bookshelves upon me under the strain of piled-high awesomeness, we've got another tome to toss into the Reichstag of my ever hungry heart -- Stanley Donwood, the main artist and illustrator behind all of Radiohead's album art-work, is dropping a great big fancy art book called There Will Be No Quiet which will document his process over the decades. if you've ever found yourself lost inside...

... the alienating airport landscapes of OK Computer...

... or the fiery mountains of Kid A...

... or the embryonic insistence of In Rainbows, then you've appreciated his work. Hell I have one tattoo on my body and it's something he once drew. (A variation of it is on the book's cover up top, in case you're looking for a hint.) So needless to say I'm excited, and so should you be dammit.

.

Pics of the Day

.

This is presumably a spoiler for the third season of the show but The Handmaids Tale appears to be filming on the Mall in Washington DC this afternoon -- you can see some more pictures over here. Either they're filming something or Margaret Atwood has proven too reliable a narrator once again and we've gone full extremist. After our President's fascistic press conference today it seems entirely possible! Can you find the Mike Pence in these pictures?

I probably wouldn't normally post these pictures -- even though I love the show -- but I'm actually headed to DC for the next four days myself and now I'm really hoping they're filming over the weekend so I can see some of this myself. Fingers crossed. On that tip I got some good answers from y'all when I tweeted this last week but if anybody has anything they want to add for me to check out this weekend have at it in the comments, your assistance is always appreciated...

.

Anybody have any good suggestions for things I should visit in DC when I'm there for a couple days? I've been there before, seen the big touristy things -- looking for the less traveled slash weird stuff. Def gonna hit up the Folger Shakespeare Library, for obvious reasons pic.twitter.com/1agtPAXW2u

— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) February 6, 2019

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

Cosmopolis (2012)

Elise: I like taxis. I was never good at geography, and I
learn things by asking the drivers where they come from.
Eric: They come from horror and despair.
Elise: Yes, exactly. One learns about the countries
where unrest is occurring by riding the taxis here.

(Note to self: check to see if I have done this book store scene for my "Great Moments in Shelves" series yet.) Cosmopolis is a movie that I had one of the most drastic swerves of opinion on ever - I, in the infamous words of Roger Ebert, hate hate hated it the first time I saw it, but then on a second time through I suddenly, out of nowhere, liked it quite a bit. I'm still unable to explain what changed between my first and second viewing - perhaps I was taken over by a pod person? Ha if I was taken over by a pod person I would be, like, way happier... wouldn't I? 

Oh Enemy. How I love Enemy. On that note a happy birthday to the super talented Sarah Gadon! She has made some very fine choices in her career - look no further than her last project, Sarah Polley's Alias Grace, and her next project, Xavier Dolan's The Death and Life of John F. Donovan. She has worked with the cream of the Canadian crop! Cronenberg, Polley, Dolan, Villeneuve... next stop should totally be a role on Schitt's Creek. (Another note to self: the Canadian Mafia is real.)

.

I Am Link

.

--- Steve Feels Pretty - I don't know how I really feel about this news that Steven Spielberg is remaking West Side Story - I would love to see a Spielberg musical (the musical sequence that opens the 2nd Indiana Jones, the entirety of Catch Me If You Can, all show he'll be good at it!) and he's got a script from no less than Tony Kushner, which is a pretty darn substantial get. But there are lots of musicals that haven't already been turned into masterpieces already - what about making Sunset Boulevard with Glenn Close and Jake Gyllenhaal? What about making Damn Yankees starring Jake Gyllenhaal? My point being JAKE GYLLENHAAL. Oh and in related news Spielberg is making another Indiana Jones. Crazy that that feels like an afterthought!
.

--- Sleep Cometh - I have gotten monstrously behind with my reading habits - I need to stop bringing my iPad to bed with me since it sucks up all of my attention during the time I've usually devoted to book stuffs - so I still haven't cracked open Stephen King's sequel to The Shining called Doctor Sleep even though it's been out for what now, five years? For shame. Perhaps I should now that a movie's been officially announced, and it's a good announcement too - Mike Flanagan, the director of this past year's stupendous King adaptation Gerald's Game (not to mention the perfectly respectable Before I Wake which I just reviewed the other day) is turning it into a movie. If anybody can do it right now he's the one I would bet on.
.

--- Kill The Bugs - Paul Verhoeven's brilliantly funny and action-packed Starship Troopers turned 20 this past November - would you like to know more? Then you should click on over to The Guardian where they got some stories from Verhoeven on his often misunderstood intentions with the movie (which I guess people still accuse of blind fascism today? Huh) as well as from actress Denise Richards, who admits she had to convince Paul to cut a pointless topless scene for her character, surprising no one. (Well except that she actually got them to cut it, I guess.)
.
--- Big Little Heaven - Shocked I didn't mention this hear already but perhaps you heard this week's news that murdered a million Twitter gays all at once - that Meryl Streep has joined the cast of the second season of Big Little Lies? I mean...
.

ANDREA ARNOLD DIRECTING MERYL STREEP
ANDREA ARNOLD DIRECTING MERYL STREEP
ANDREA ARNOLD DIRECTING MERYL STREEP
ANDREA ARNOLD DIRECTING MERYL STREEP
ANDREA ARNOLD DIRECTING MERYL STREEP
ANDREA ARNOLD DIRECTING MERYL STREEP

— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) January 24, 2018

.
... look no further. Yes as we've mentioned before our beloved Andrea Arnold is directing the entire second season, which was enough to immediately wash away any doubts we had about them continuing on for another year after things seemed to wrap up pretty neatly last year. Meryl's just gravy!
.

--- Gemma's Hours - Gemma Arterton remains an under-appreciated actress even after she's wowed in several things so I'm excited to hear she's going to play Virginia Woolf's socialite girlfriend in Vita and Virginia, and even more excited to see that it's Elizabeth Debicki (another actress who's always terrific but who hasn't gotten a chance to break out yet) playing Woolf. I'll just try to forget that it was supposed to be Eva Green in Arterton's role, for Arterton's's sake. Oh and if you're wondering who the hell the bearded guy is his name is Peter Ferdinando and he's playing Woolf's husband. Hello!
.

--- Let's Go Madd Together - Although I'm annoyed that Darren Aronosfky isn't involved anymore like he was back in 2014 when it was first announced I am pleased to see that there's momentum in getting Margaret Atwood's MaddAddam trilogy turned into a series again. The trilogy began in 2004 with the phenomenal Oryx & Crake (by far my favorite, a stunning thing) and then a few years later came the follow-ups The Year of the Flood and MaddAddam. Speaking of things I should read I should give these books another spin. Any fans?

--- Future Sex - Netflix is going to be very kind to those of us who like to stare at hot guys in dystopian future worlds next month - besides the apparent ass-fest that is Altered Carbon with Joel Kinnaman they're also dropping Duncan Jones' new movie Mute in February (thanks Mac) - we showed you some pictures from Mute right here; it stars Alexander Skarsgard, Justin Theroux, and Paul Rudd. I mean really.

--- Speak Clearly - There are so many aspects of moviemaking that don't get talked up enough and it's always a treat to see somebody doing a deep dive on one that I don't really understand so I was tickled by Vulture's recent chat with the dialect coach Liz Himelstein, who has worked with everybody on everything, helping all the stars nail their accents for film and television. Surprising absolutely nobody it turns out that Nicole Kidman works really really hard on her job!

--- And Finally because lord knows we haven't talked about Call Me By Your Name enough (no seriously, never enough) here are a couple of links of interest with regards to the best movie of 2017 -- first off IndieWire talked to RuPaul (who fancies himself a cinephile, and given his taste I'm inclined to agree) about his favorite films of the past year and he couldn't rave enough about CMBYN, including love for Timothee and Michael Stuhlbarg. (thx Mac) And second off CMBYN's author Andre Aciman wrote a little piece for Vanity Fair about his experience seeing his book turned into a movie - anyway he says was there when they filmed the scene around the war memorial that we were just talking about and he shares the name of the town where they filmed it (which I had not heard before) and thus inspired me to make this...
.

Here is me reenacting a scene of CALL ME BY YOUR NAME via my cursor on Google Maps #CallMeByYourName pic.twitter.com/FOsmp1JJI0

— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) January 26, 2018

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

I Shot Andy Warhol (1996)

Paul Morrissey: You call this a groovy light show. I'd rather sit and watch the clothes dryer at the Laundromat. Oh, look. It changed color. Where's a love child? They'll get a kick outta this. Only a hippie would find this even remotely interesting, but I'll tell ya. You spend one day with the hippies, and you realize how truly refreshing and unpretentious, hard core, New York degenerates are.

I really need to re-watch this movie, I haven't seen it in such a very long time. A happy birthday to director Mary Harron today! I am going out of my way to not quote Mary Harron's Masterpiece American Psycho obviously, because that's usually my go-to, but the woman has got a stellar filmography top to bottom... even if the race from the top to the bottom of it is far too brief. Did we all watch Alias Grace by now? Thoughts? And thoughts besides, "I want to bend Edward Holcroft over a barrel" I mean...

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

Go (1999)

Claire : You're making me an accessory!
Ronna : Okay Claire, that bracelet of mine
you're wearing, that's an accessory.

A happy 39th birthday to the genius Sarah Polley, fresh with the success of 2017's other great Atwood adaptation Alias Grace - one day Sarah Polley will win an Oscar, you guys. One day! Until then I'm just gonna go watch Go about ten billion more times.

The Happy Handmaid

.

Although we suddenly remembered the worst thing about Elisabeth Moss the other day, that's not going to keep us from wishing her a happy 35 - she's brought us too much acting enjoyment for that. Just call it The Beck Conundrum - put on Modern Guilt or show me that gif of Peggy walking and smoking and I have to dance myself through the thoughts of all the people's lives that Scientology has ruined. Anyway so that's what we're doing today - we're dancing ourselves over to The Film Experience where this week's "Beauty vs Beast" is tackling Moss' current zeitgeister, The Handmaid's Tale, a series that knows a little something about cult behavior.

.

Give Me the Grace To Accept

.

Today sure is trailer heavy. Today is to trailers as what Dolly Parton is to boobs. And on that ultra feminist note, the first teaser trailer for Alias Grace has arrived! Based on the book by Margaret Atwood, directed by Mary Harron, written by Sarah Polley, and starring Sarah Gadon, this thing represents one whopper of a collection of most excellent female energy. Read our previous posts here. And watch:

.

.
The six-part series premieres in Canada on September 25th (it';s a Canadian production) - it's airing thanks to Netflix here in the US but I'm not entirely sure the date's the same for us. Anyway as great as The Handmaid's Tale turned out to be Alias Grace has got an even loftier pedigree, with that director and that writer, so my hopes are even higher here. And that's without even mentioning that gorgeous Edward Holcroft is in it!

Max Minghella Three Times

.

Alright I gotta run home and catch up on The Handmaid's Tale now. And also Fargo. And also The Leftovers. Sigh. It's gotten difficult to even get anywhere near an actual movie now and then, hasn't it? And you can forget about re-watching a movie you've actually seen before. Not with this avalanche of Peak TV bearing down upon you. But hey Max showed his butt so who can feel bad for too long, right?
.

Pics of the Day

.

Alias Grace, the new Margaret Atwood adaptation (following the currently-wowing Handmaid's Tale, of course), keeps coming up in conversation these days and I keep not remembering who's starring in the dang thing, so I'm glad I've finally got photographs (via) to aid my bumbling brain now. I kept thinking Sarah Polley was starring in the thing but she's just (just?) writing and producing, while American Psycho director Mary Harron is directing. 

But acting duties have gone to Cosmopolis star Sarah Gadon as the lowliest servant girl who stands accused of murdering her boss and his main housekeeper (played by Paul Gross and Anna Paquin). There's also a role for London Spy super-hottie Edward Holcroft...

... I'm guessing he's an inspector because he's very determinedly writing in his little booklet there. I'm getting real "Rachel McAdams, Serious Journalist" vibes from that photograph. Zahary Levi also stars, although strangely IMDb has no idea who he's playing.

Then again I've never read this book so damned if I'd know anyway.  Anybody read it? So there are more pictures at this link; the show debuts in Canada in late September but it also hits Netflix sometime this Fall - hopefully there's not too much of a break between one and the other. You've already got Justin Trudeau, Canada. How much do you need???

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

The Handmaid's Tale (1990)

Aunt Lydia: In the days of evil and anarchy 

you had freedom to, now you are 

granted freedom from. Don't underrate it. 

I haven't seen this version of Margaret Atwood's book since high school at least (and that was a long time ago, my friends) but my recollection of it is it wasn't great - it's being screened here in NYC at The Quad this Sunday and Monday as part of their series on the film's composer and I'm contemplating going to give it another look-see, what with the current Hulu series kicking all kinds of ass. Have any of you seen the 1990 film lately? Today would have been the 54th birthday of its star Natasha Richardson if she hadn't died far far too young in 2009.

I Am Link

.

--- Big Man Messina - I'm all about sharing old news stories today, as long as they're about hot pieces of course - I totally missed that the oft-nude Chris Messina (who we just discovered last night is a miniature version of a person) was cast as the male lead in Sharp Objects opposite Amy Adams, which is basically Jean-Marc Vallee's Big Little Lies chick lit miniseries sequel. (I know that the term "chick lit" has fallen out of favor because it's seen as a negative but "melodrama" is also seen as a negative, by assholes, so who cares what assholes think.) Sharp Objects was written by Gone Girl author Gillian Flynn and it's about a reporter who just got out of the crazy house who has to go to her hometown to cover the murder of two young girls. Messina is a detective working on the case. He and Adams previously played lovey-dovey in that Julia Child movie, so they must've enjoyed the experience.

--- People Polley - Sarah Polley is in the middle of shooting her Margaret Atwood adaptation Alias Grace for Netflix and we don't know yet when that will be out but she's already announcing what she's doing next - she's signed on to direct a film of Zoe Whittall's 2016 book The Best Kind Of People, which is about a family whose patriarch is accused of sexual misconduct at the school he works at. Anybody read the book? It sounds like something Polley could make magic of, honestly. And I'm sure she could get any actors she wants at this point.

--- Hurrah For Handmaids - Speaking of Margaret Atwood though she's been doing the interview rounds which is always a welcome turn of events - I was riveted by this gigantic piece on her in The New Yorker; it's long but entirely worth it. And Time talked with her and the star of the upcoming Handmaid's Tale miniseries Elizabeth Moss too - you can read that right here. (thanks Mac)
.

--- Super Soldier - Josh Brolin has won the Cable sweepstakes over the likes of Michael Shannon and David Harbour, and will play the buzz-cutted future warrior in Deadpool 2 opposite the beloved beefcake honky Ryan Reynolds. So prepare yourselves for lots of wink wink insinuated sexual heat between Ryan and Josh, I guess. It won't go further than that because duh, but I am sure Ryan will have fun with that.

--- Childhood Sucks - I had totally forgotten that Let the Right One In was getting turned into a TV series by Teen Wolf creator Jeff Davis; I don't remember if I even mentioned it when it was announced. But I know I didn't mention this other news about it, which is actually six months old at this point but I can't believe I missed it - Thomas Kretschmann was cast in the role of a police inspector who's been chasing the vampire Eli around... a role that sounds a lot like Thomas' stab at Van Helsing for that crappy Dracula show, actually. What a weird thing to get typecast as. Anyway all the news about this show was about a pilot back in October so I'm not even sure it's actually a thing that is happening now.

--- And Speaking of horror shows that I forgot were happening a trailer was just released for the series of Stephen King's The Mist, which you can watch and read a little about over at The Film Experience. I wonder how they're fitting this in with the anthology King series called Castle Rock that JJ Abrams is producing for Hulu -- if there will be any big foggy monster overlap, I mean.

--- Hot Cha Cha - I've never seen the campy 1953 Joan Crawford movie called Torch Song but that didn't stop me from laughing my ass off at this take on the movie (as well as some criticism of Feud) over at Shadowplay. Specifically the bit about the movie's black-face routine, which... I mean, my god. Have any of you taken in the spectacle of this movie? I totally need to, right?

--- Peaks TV - The New York Times chatted with David Lynch about the new Twin Peaks, as much as anybody can "chat" with David Lynch - while he doesn't say anything as delightful as he did in that GQ interview I quoted a couple of weeks back he does make it clear that the new show is meant to be seen as a whole:

"Lynch himself will not answer questions pertaining to the plot of the new “Twin Peaks.” Additionally, he insists that the 18 individual installments of the series must be called parts, not episodes, offering a cogent auteur-like explanation: “This is a feature. An 18-hour feature, broken up into 18 parts.”

.

--- And Finally Finally a new trailer for the great-looking Gothic Trash My Cousin Rachel starring Rachel Weisz and Sam Claflin's Surprisingly Big Ass (which we previously discussed here) has been released and I have to say I really want to see this jazz, much to my shock and awe. I mean it's not so far out of my wheelhouse - I adore lurid Gothic Trash, with everybody sweating through their lacy things, after all - this movie just wasn't on my radar at all before the first trailer rolled around.

.

.

Offred Offered in Off Red

.

EW has got the first pictures from Hulu's upcoming adaptation of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale (which I think we all ought to read over the holiday break)  that there is the finely cast Elisabeth Moss in the leading role of Offred, preeminent baby machine of our dystopian future. If you click over you can also see a shot of Joseph Fiennes as The Commander, which I would share here but EW slathers their irritating watermarks over the top of everything, so they win, I will make you click over to them if you want it; I don't have all day to photo-shop that shit off. There are also a few quotes from Moss and the show-runner Bruce Miller (who also crated The 100 and The 4400 and Alphas and Medium I guess he has a thing for numbers and sizes) at the link so you can read those while you're over there or whatever. The show premieres in April.

.

I Am Link

.

--- Yes Sir Alex Sir - Picture this: You're a soldier and Alexander Skarsgard is your squad leader. Basically you'd do any horrible thing he told you to do if he let promised you a barracks cuddle afterwards right? Well save the barracks cuddle thing (probably) that's the plot of The Kill Team, a movie that's just been announced that's adapting the documentary of the same name. And yes this being based on a real-life doc about soldiers doing horrific things to people really dampens the sexiness quotient. It's still Alexander in uniform. It can't be totally dampened.

--- Camp California - Even though I've posted about the movie a couple of times I still haven't seen the infamous flop Moment By Moment, which tried to pass off a romance between Lily Tomlin and John Travolta, much to my chagrin. And my chagrin just got chagrinnier, because writer-director Bruce La Bruce just wrote up a terrific piece on the film as intentional camp a la Sirk, and now I cannot put it off any longer. There was a copy floating around the internet recently (the film's long been buried) so I'm on it.

--- Sex Them Bots - When I posted those pictures of James Marsden naked on Westworld the other day I asked y'all if you were watching the show and it seems like y'all are, whioch is good, it's worth watching and discussing, I think - and I like that I've seen a lot of questioning this week going on about the sexuality of the male robots, and if the show intends to gay itself at any point, because these questions plague me too. This piece at Fusion on this subject is pretty keen on the subject. I don't understand how the James Marsden Robot isn't getting fucked every second he's, you know, turned on.

--- World War Buffy - Joss Whedon has finally opened his yap about what he's working on! I'm glad to know he's working on something, anything, honestly, and not just playing Shakespeare with Amy Acker in his backyard all day long. But this, via this interview with him at Complex, sounds pretty damned exciting!

"I'm in the middle of a screenplay that I am extremely passionate about, and I am going to be extremely passionate about it again on November 9. It’s definitely a departure from the things that I’m known for. It's as dark as anything I've ever written... I just said, "OK, id, your turn." I would write scenes and be like, "Oh this is great! I shouldn’t be allowed near people." It’s a historical fiction slash horror movie about a time when the world was going insane, World War II."

--- Shrinkage For Shackleton - Many a Brit fella has played Sir Ernest Shackleton, famous Antarctic explorer, in small TV projects - fellas like Derek Jacobi and Kenneth Branagh. But somehow there's never been a big movie about the man, and that's about to change - Tom Hardy is set to play him in a movie from the writer of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. I'm sure Shackleton's adventures will be veddy cinematic and all but it's depressing to think of Tom Hardy buried under all those winter clothes. But hey it's not like we've never seen Tom Hardy roll around butt-naked in the snow before, so hope lives!

--- Save Crake - Westworld out of the way, what the heck are the dopes at HBO thinking: Darren Aronofsky says that the studio's not making his series MaddAddam, based on Margert Atwood's brilliant trilogy of books that began with Oryx & Crake. Aronofsky says he's not giving up though and he's hoping some other studio will snap up the project, and I second third and fourth that shit. Hey Netflix, you've got your next great big thing right here! One thing I didn't know about the project - the scripts were written by Joss Whedon's sister-in-law Eliza Clark. She's worked on Animal Kingdom & Extant previously. I wanna go to the Whedon house for Thanksgiving!

--- Have Patients - Did you see the picture of The English Patient stars Kristen Scott Thomas & Juliette Binoche & Ralph Fiennes at a 20th anniversary screening in Rome this past weekend? Good grief it's like all of heaven stuffed into a couple of inches - it is ravishing, ravishment, ravishillisimo, so forth. I know I was watching the Oscars before 1996 but it's Binoche's win that's my most vivid Oscar memory from youth. I was transfixed by her immediately, in her dramatic crimson velvet dress. And I never let go!

---  And Finally I hadn't heard anything about this out of Toronto but it sounds perfect for Halloween - Ruth Wilson stars in I am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House (that's a great title), which is about a young nurse who goes to an isolated house to care for an ailing horror writer (a character based on Shirley Jackson!) played by Paula "The Stepford Wives!" Prentiss, when things start going bump. I really like Ruth Wilson and I welcome the opportunity to watch her in something that's not The Affair, which i had to stop watching because I can't stand Dominic West on that show. Anyway the movie is being dropped on October 28th on Netflix, and below's the trailer. I hope it's spooky!
.
.

I Am Link

.

--- Stroking Joe - This had been a rumor for a bit, but now it's actually a rumor that has become a real and true thing! Those are so rare nowadays! Joe Manganiello is playing the villain Deathstroke in Ben Affleck's upcoming standalone Batman movie. (Which is maybe called The Batman?) Deathstroke is a super-strong assassin, or something. He wears a dumb mask. Anyway this will be Joe's second comic book villain, after playing king of the douche-brahs Flash Thompson in Sam Raimi's third Spider-man movie.

.

--- After Gravity - Alfonso Cuarón is finally making another movie! It's been three whole years since Gravity came out, so it's about damn time. This one's on a much much smaller scale, and sounds possibly autobiographical - it's a drama about a middle-class family in Mexico City in the 1970s. It'll be nice to have him back in Y tu Mama territory.
 .

--- Lucky In Love - The cast for Steven Soderbergh's triumphant return to movie directing (as if we ever believed he'd actually quit it for good) Lucky Logan is pretty incredible already (we'd just ogled Daniel Craig and Adam Driver on the set recently, but it also stars Channing Tatum ) but it just got a face we really enjoy looking at tossed into its mix - Bucky Barnes himself, Sebastian Stan!  He's playing a NASCAR driver which means lots of snug little jumpsuits, I'm sure. No word on if he'll re-use his naked gymnastics routine from The Bronze but we're sure hoping him and Tatum have a routine in mind for us.

.
--- It Takes A Cronenberg - I've missed all of the casting news on Sarah Polley's forthcoming television series adaptation of Margaret Atwood's book Alias Grace apparently, because yesterday when I clicked on an article stating that director David Cronenberg has just joined the cast (yes as an actor, which he's done before - cough Jason X cough - but not often enough) I saw a whole bunch of other names that were treated as after-thoughts but popped my eyeballs out. Besides Mr. Existenz the series will star Sarah Gadon and Anna Paquin! In my best Canadian accent - heck yeah!
 .

--- School's Out - The idea of a Heathers remake should be just terrible. I should cringe, and fuck myself with a chainsaw, at the thought of it. And yet here we are and Leslye Headland, the writer-director of my beloved Bachelorette, is making it into a TV series, and not just that but the spin on the original is actually potentially awesome:

"Set in present day, the outcasts of the past have become the new Heathers. Heather McNamara, for example, is now a black lesbian; screenwriter Jason Micallef (Butter) has written Heather Duke as a male who identifies as gender-queer whose birth name is Heath; and THR compares Heather Chandler to Martha Dumptruck from the original film."

Y'all know how much I love Queer Creeps, and it sounds like this show might just go there full-throttle. There's kind of nothing I hate more than panderingly Good Gay Representation -- I want sneering Vincent Price monsters and assholes, dammit. Go for it, Leslye! Offend all sensibilities!
.
--- And Speaking of TV remakes of beloved movies Peter Weir's stone-cold classic 1975 horror film Picnic at Hanging Rock (which was one of my five favorite movies from that year when I recently listed them) is being turned into a multi-part mini-series for Aussie TV. They say they want to follow the original book closer than Weir did - has anybody read it? I wonder if I should read it. Anyway this series doesn't have any director or writer or actor attached yet so I'm side-eyeing it more than I am Heathers.
.

--- Stick Jesus - Jeremy Davies was phenomenal on... well, everything that Jeremy Davies has been on, basically. But I was going to say that Jeremy Davies was phenomenal on Hannibal -- remember how good he was on that? So the news that he's joined the cast of Bryan Fuller's new show American Gods is good news indeed! And not just that - he's playing Jesus. No, not Lourdes Leon's father - the other Jesus. Wowza. This show is gonna be so bonkers.
 .
--- Laura's My Lady - The first trailer for Certain Women, Kelly Reichardt's new movie starring Michelle Williams, Laura Dern, and Kristen Stewart, arrived this week -- click on over to The Film Experience for their take upon it. I mean if you're gonna watch a trailer for a movie that heavy-hitting actress heavy, TFE is the place to do it. I don't even need to watch the trailer though - you saw Laura Dern, I say how high motherfucker.
.

--- Oh Silvio - The Great Beauty director Paolo Sorrentino's ten-episode series The Young Pope with Jude Law airs pretty soon in Italy (it won't air on HBO here in the US until February) but he's already set on making his next "shock the home-crowd" piece with a bio-pic about former Prime Minister and all-about cad (that's being nice) Silvio Berlusconi. The film will be titled Loro, which means "Them" in Italian. Back to The Young Pope for a second though - a trailer for that was released this week and over at The Film Experience it got the run-down, check it out.
.
--- And Finally, you have all seen the stunner A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night by now, right? I should certainly hope so - I'm actually overdue for a re-watch. (Here's my review from way forever back when.) Anyway director Ana Lily Amirpour's next movie just played Venice and people seemed pretty wowed by it - it is titled The Bad Batch, and it stars amongst others Jason Momoa...

... Jim Carrey, Keanu Reeves, Suki Waterhouse, Diego Luna, and Giovanni Ribisi, and it's a love story set during a cannibal apocalypse... which sounds like something that'd wow one! Anyway the film doesn't have a release date yet so we assume sometime in 2017, but we don't have to wait for footage - two clips have been released, including this one involving more beefcake than the eye can even begin to handle:
.
.