I Wanna Run To Glen Powell

The trailer for Edgar Wright's remake of The Running Man -- okay I suppose we can call it a new adaptation of Stephen King's story, whatever -- has arrived and it looks like an absolute blast. I knew I was in for something special the second we saw Glen Powell smacking his tighty-whities-clad ass two times. We kept a running tally of people who got cast in this last year and the names were wild -- Colman Domingo, Josh Brolin, Michael Cera, Katy O'Brian, Lee Pace, Karl Glusman, Sean Hayes, and William H. Macy just to name the bigger names -- but the trailer mainly focuses on Glenn, Michael, Josh and of course Colman in the greatest showman role previously made iconic by Richard Dawson. And is it just me or...

... is Colman going to get a lot of comparisons to Tramell Tillman's showstopping work in the TV series Severance? That's all I could see. But lord knows I love Colman and he seems to be having a helluva time so bring it on. Everything looks hella fun actually -- this is definitely Wright bringing that sweet sweet Scott Pilgrim energy. (And the presence of Cera obviously underlines that.)  I don't think I spotted Glusman or Pace though -- do you think one of them is that masked man with the grenade? I'll have to go back and listen to the voice. Anyway watch:  

The Running Man (2025 edition) is out on November 7th.
How the hell is this not a summer movie???

I Stand With Phoenicia

Although we've had our ups and downs over the years (I still don't love Darjeeling) I've turned into a fairly staunch Wes Anderson defender, and so it's not a massive surprise I liked his latest The Phoenician Scheme even while opinions seem to be fairly mixed -- read my review that dropped over the weekend right here. I do think it's a mid-tier Anderson but as I say in the review that still means more movie magic than 90% of what we see elsewhere. Also this somehow marks his first time working with Michael Cera and even people who are mixed on the movie are like, "Well they're gonna work together again." Our little Canadian weirdo steals the movie, he does. (Except when Riz Ahmed is on-screen because Riz Ahmed is on screen.)

You Can Run But You Can't Hide From Colman

There are moments -- not often, but more than once -- where I wonder if I might Jekyll out sometimes and sneak off under the guise of a different personality to be a casting director. Some movies just have such Me Casts that I can't imagine anyone else being responsible. Maybe I have a twin I was seperated from at birth and we're communicating telepathically? Anyway that's where I am at today with the news that Colman Domingo has now joined the cast of Edgar Wright's remake of The Running Man -- Colman being perfectly, exquisitely, cast as the evil game show host character that Richard Dawson played in Arnold Schwarzenegger's 1987 (classic as far as I'm concerned) version of the movie. How great is that casting though? Colman has got Game Show Voice and Showman Swag for dayssssss. Anyway he's joining a cast that already includes Glen Powell, Katy O'Brian (our queen from Love Lies Bleeding), Lee Pace, Josh Brolin, Michael Cera, William H. Macy, and my beloved weirdo Karl Glusman. Put this movie down my mouth please!

The Michaels Angarano & Cera Movie

Long-time MNPP fave Michael Angarano wrote and directed and starred in a movie called Sacramento that just premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival -- it co-stars Michael Cera, Kristen Stewart, and Angarano's real-life partner (and PEN15 star) Maya Erskine, and its plot perfectly fits the description of approximately one million other movies in that it is about two estranged friends at a cross-roads in their lives going on a road trip to discover yadda yadda. But even if the tropes it traffics in are old, Angarano went and made a very lovely little movie anyway -- read my review of Sacramento over at Pajiba. I love all of these actors and the movie really feels genuine and true and it is a very nice way to spend ninety minutes of your time. What more can you ask for? Michael Angarano wearing a top-hat and nothing else -- sure! But I guess he can't do that every time out. I guess! (Find somewhere to do that again in your next one, Michael.) 

Trap Me In a Car With Michael Angarano

Checking my archives I can't believe it's been two entire years since I've posted about my "Bertie" boy Michael Angarano here on the site? The last thing I posted in April of 2021 was about him getting a role in that show Minx -- that show has fully come and gone by now! And I never watched a single episode of it. For shame, me. I mean I know I tend to hate Christopher Nolan movies but the fact that he's in Oppenheimer should've gotten a mention. Well I'm posting about our boy today at least, with Deadline's word that he's written and is directing a road-trip comedy! It's called Sacramento and it will star him and Michael Cera as best friends who drive from L.A. to Sacramento and discover about themselves and their relationship the kind of things people discover on movie road trips -- their wives will be played respectively by PENI5 legend and icon Maya Erskine (aka Angarano's real life partner) and, uhh, Kristen f'ing Stewart? Okay! Imagining her and Michael Cera as a married couple has already got me giggling, so that's good news.

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

Twin Peaks: The Return (2017)

Wally Brando: My shadow is always with me. Sometimes ahead... Sometimes behind. Sometimes to the left... Sometimes to the right. Except on cloudy days, or at night.

A happy birthday to Michael Cera today!

All Creatures Great & Small & WTF

Lots of news about Sundance movies today! I just mentioned Franz Kranz's film Mass in my previous post and now here is the first poster and trailer for the animated-WTF-ery of Cryptozoo from filmmaker Dash Snow, which I also saw at the fest back in February. 

The movie I have found popping into my head the most from this past Sundance has been Dash Shaw's Cryptozoo? Just checked and last I heard it's out August 20th -- very much want to watch again! pic.twitter.com/vkE0gRzKEJ

— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) June 4, 2021

This is hitting theaters on August 20th, and here's how they're describing it (better to use their words than my own, which would involve a lot of stunned "ums" and "errs" and "ooh la las"...

"Visionary comic book writer/artist/filmmaker Dash Shaw’s vibrant, fantastical animated feature follows cryptozookeepers through a richly-drawn hallucinatory world as they struggle to capture a baku (a legendary dream-eating hybrid creature) and begin to wonder if they should display these rare beasts in the confines of a zoo, or if these mythical creatures should remain hidden and unknown. Featuring the voice talents of Lake Bell, Zoe Kazan, Michael Cera, Louisa Krause, Peter Stormare, Thomas Jay Ryan, Grace Zabriskie and Angeliki Papoulia, CRYPTOZOO is written and directed by Shaw, with Jane Samborski directing the stunning animation."

And now for that trailer:

Pics of the Day

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I planned on marking Scott Pilgrim vs the World's 10th anniversary tomorrow, which is when it is, but Edgar Wright's jumped the gun on Twitter and started posting tons of behind-the-scenes pictures from the film so I feel the need to Hook Ya Up -- check his thread right here. Scott Pilgrim was my #3 movie of 2010  (here is my review) and it's kept its ass parked right on up there across the decade since; I did my 5 favorite films of 2010 for my "Siri Says" series in 2016 and it still placed in my Top 5. I'll admit I haven't seen it in a couple of years now but I have a Sex Bob Omb poster on my bedroom wall so I still think of the movie on a semi-daily basis. It fucking rocks. Maybe I will watch it tonight! Anyway keep checking that Twitter thread of Edgar's as he's promising goodies all the way on through tomorrow; I grabbed a few of the pre-production photos that caught my eye so far and put them here after the jump...

Girls! Girls! Girls!

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Dunno if you know this but Brie Larson has a Marvel Superhero movie called Captain Marvel out this weekend and I know, I know. We already had Wonder Woman. When will this Lady Movie Madness end? Next thing you know women will be wanting to vote, or pee standing up! The nerve! Make me a sammich, mommy! My diaper is full! Et cetera et cetera. In big boy news this week's "Beauty vs Beast" is live over at The Film Experience -- we're looking back Edgar Wright's nearly-a-decade-old stills-brillz comic adaptation Scott Pilgrim vs the World and facing down two of Scott's loves. Click over to vote!

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Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

Scott Pilgrim vs the World (2010)

Envy Adams: Short answer:

Vegans are just better then everyone else. 

Even though I love ripping into animal flesh more than most anything - the cuter the animal the tastier the meat, that's what I always say! - I also love the snarky self-righteousness with which the above sentiment is delivered by Brie Larson (who celebrated her 28th birthday yesterday by probably shining her Oscar for a few hours). But here's something we can all agree on: watching Brie Larson's performance of "Black Sheep" in Scott Pilgrim will make you live longer:

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Lemon in 150 Words or Less

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I could say that I'm glad I watched Lemon for the Matzo Ball Scene scene alone (and as a branching off of that everything Shiri Appleby touches in her deliriously hyper performance as the main character's pregnant sister) but that'd be too ungenerous to the movie, which I fore-see sticking around my brain kind of like a parasite for quite awhile. If you had the patience of a sloth circle jerk you could even double-feature this one with The Greasy Strangler (just call it a Elizabeth De Razzo Night) and really fuck up your consciousness in a probably irreparable way. I say that with affection. Lemon's got the vibe of Fassbinder On Goofballs - if you slapped a laugh-track over The Merchant of Four Seasons maybe? Anyway it's often very funny and funnily off-putting all at once.
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Collect Your Business Idris Action Figure

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Now that The Dark Tower has come and gone without a chance in hell in me going anywhere near it (until it's out on blu-ray, eventually, probably maybe) I need a new Ogle Idris Elba Movie to fixate upon, and thankfully here comes the first trailer for Molly's Game with a whole bunch of Idris looking sharp in suits contained therein. I can make that work! 

Molly's Game is Aaron Sorkin's directorial debut and it technically stars Jessica Chastain (as opposed to "Idris Elba in suits" which come on, why doesn't that get top-billing) (heh, top billing) as a gambling lady of the night who talks real fast while wearing some amazing dresses and enough make-up to blot out the upcoming total eclipse.

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It is out on November 22nd.
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Which Is Hotter?

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I'm of the mind that Michael Cera was hysterically funny on the fourth episode of the new season of Twin Peaks (I know his performance has been dubbed "divisive" but I also know I am not alone in finding it a delight) but even so when my boyfriend pointed out that Michael Cera's face looked just like the infamously botched "Ecce Homo" painting after its 2012 "restoration" I couldn't see anything else. Hopefully you'll feel the same way from now on...

Today's Mood

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Today's Mood

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Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist (2009)

Caroline: I found Jesus! 

Norah: What? 

Caroline: Jesus! He's much taller in person.

A very happy birthday to Ari Graynor!

Why isn't Ari Graynor everywhere by now?

We really dropped the ball on this one, guys.

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MNPP's 15 Favorite Movies of 2013

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A blessed few of you noticed this and nagged at me last year about the great big bottomless pit that MNPP's annual awards The Golden Trousers (aka The Pantys) fell down - they actually literally fell down, since I fell on some ice and broke my arm in the spring right around the time I'd usually do them making extensive blogging next to impossible for about a month, and then time marched on and yadda yadda I never posted my awards for The Movies of 2013 at all. What a disaster.

Well now we're already behind on doing The Movies of 2014 and I'm afraid this problem's going to exacerbate itself into a gigantic weight on my face, and not the good kind, not the "Chris Evans sitting on me" kind. Just the smothering kind. So I'm just going to post my Top 12 Movies of 2013 right now and finally put 2013 behind me... just in time for mid-2015. I'm so timely! Okay let's do this. I'll even give you three runners-up, bringing us up to my Top 15: Nicole Holofcener's Enough Said, Adam Wingard's You're Next, and Asghar Farhadi's The Past.

And now our Top 12!

12. STOKER 

(Park Chan-wook)

11. CRYSTAL FAIRY AND THE MAGICAL CACTUS 

(Sebastián Silva)

10. STORIES WE TELL 

(Sarah Polley)

9. BLUE IS THE WARMEST COLOR 

(Abdellatif Kechiche) original review

8. THE BLING RING 

(Sofia Coppola) original review

7. THE ACT OF KILLING 

(Joshua Oppenheimer)

6. THE GREAT BEAUTY 

(Paolo Sorrentino) original review

5. HER 

(Spike Jonze) original review

4. 12 YEARS A SLAVE 

(Steve McQueen) original review

3. SHORT TERM 12 

(Destin Daniel Cretton) original review

2. STRANGER BY THE LAKE 

(Alain Guiraudie) original review

1. FRANCES HA 

(Noah Baumbach) original review

I haven't changed this list at all since I first wrote it up last year; I opened up the document today, scanned through it, and said to myself Yup, that looks right. It was a pretty much a given the moment I saw Frances way way way back the the New York Film Festival in the fall of 2012 that it would be my favorite movie of the year, so head-over-fucking-heels was I from first sight, and honestly my affection for it has probably quadrupled since then. A couple of these movies I should revisit (I would sit down and re-watch The Great Beauty right this second if I could)  but I stand by all of them. Anyway... that's done! Now let's try to get our 2014 Pantys done before 2017 then.

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Let's Start A Network!

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You and me and Charlie Kaufman makes three! We'll call it MNPP-TV and the only program on it will be Charlie's show called  How & Why starring Michael Cera, John Hawkes, Catherine Keener and Sally Hawkins, which just got passed on by the dopey dopes at FX. What dopes! And apparently the dopes at Netflix passed on it already, as well. Double dopes, triple dopes. Bring it to me, Charlie! I'll make you my number one priority! Well you and reruns of Magnum PI. I mean, come on...

Today's Mood

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I stayed up half the night finally finishing the second season of Orange is the New Black last night (which yeah if you wanna say anything about that show now you can, feel free!) so I'm kinda hella groggy today. Expect half-hearted quips and head-nodding, at best.

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I Can't Believe I Never Knew This Is A Thing

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Speaking of things, did you guys know that there was a book of the anthropomorphic penis drawings from Superbad that was released? How do I not own this??? I mean now I do, I just bought myself a copy, but not to have owned it before this moment makes everything I have lived before today feel as hollow and empty as the hollowest, emptiest thing - a shaft of nothingness, if you will. (Ha, shaft.) 

Anyway I stumbled upon this deliciously illicit tome thanks to this list over here of memorable cinematic full-frontals (I'll always click on one of these lists, surprising none of you) done in conjunction with the fellows that just released the doc The Final Member last week, which is about (you guessed it!) dicks and the men who love them. More specifically it's about "Sigurður ”Siggi” Hjartarson, curator of the Icelandic Phallological Museum, and his quest to complete his penis collection with a human specimen." I've been meaning to watch the movie but with Tribeca going on it's escaped me thus far.

It reminds though, did you guys see any of my pictures from the "Secret Cabinet" in the Archeological Museum of Naples when I visited Italy? It's a room where they've collected some of the more, uh, personal of art-works from the ruins of Pompeii and I don't wanna say I was like a kid in a candy store, but well....