Which is Hotter?

Both Orlando Bloom and James Marsden were pap-snapped having some fun in the sun over the holiday weekend -- both of them had just been at Cannes and both of them were photographed in Antibes, France, and on very similar looking rafts to boot! So it's a shame they weren't splashing around together! But no -- if they were together the photographers didn't seem to capture that. James was photographed with...

... French actor Benoit Magimel (from Michael Haneke's The Piano Teacher and many more) though! What a strange small world if you're rich, beautiful, and famous. Anyway if anybody can find proof that Marsden & Bloom were together send it my way -- I'm just going to force them to compete for our pleasure though:

online polls

That sorted I have several more photos of the both of them,

so hit the jump and I will share them...

10 Off My Head: NYFF's 60th Main Slate!

As I sit here swampy and miserable from the relentless August sun there's one bright light that's not making me shield my eyes out of exhausted horror -- the New York Film Festival has today announced their full Main Slate of movies and man oh man am I excited! And it's not just because when I think of NYFF I think of myself comfortably wearing sweaters in the autumnal cool of late September, but that don't hurt. It's also because once again this fest is offering up the auteurs I come for -- this fall is promising to be a great one for us movie-lovers and NYFF makes it a one-stop-shop every damn time. 

I'll share the full press release down below, but first I'm going to highlight the ten titles from the Main Slate that leapt right off the page at me. Please note I am not including here the four gala films, which were announced earlier this month -- those are Noah Baumbach's White Noise is the Opening Night film; Laura Poitras’s doc All the Beauty and the Bloodshed (telling the dueling tales of photographer Nan Goldin and the billionaire family Sacklers prescription drug empire) is the Centerpiece film; Closing Night goes to Elegance Bratton's film about queer soldiers called The Inspection (see my previous posts about that right here); and finally there will be a special screening of James Gray's coming-of-age drama Armageddon Time. I am going to focus on just the Main Slate titles for this list.

My Most Anticipated 10 From NYFF60's Main Slate

Decision To Leave (dir. Park Chan-wook) -- I have been posting about this movie for two full years now, ever since the first whisper of it weaved its way through rando corners the internet; I shared the first trailer right here. Sounding like a Noir only shot in vivid color it's about an inspector falling for the wife of a murdered man (played by Lust Caution's great Tang Wei). Anyway Park is a Top 5 Living Filmmaker for me so this one's The Event of the fest from where I stand. This is PCW's first movie since The Handmaiden six years back, for god's sake! I am thirsty!

The Eternal Daughter (dir. Joanna Hogg) -- I liked Hogg's Souvenir sequel better than I liked the first one, but I'm glad she's making something else this time, and a lead role for Tilda Swinton will do the trick just fine, thank you. 

Pacifiction (dir. Albert Serra) -- I'm not an expert on Serra's filmography, having still only seen Liberté, his last film, at NYFF three years back. But when i think about memorable viewing experiences at NYFF the first one that comes to mind is Liberté, which they screened for press at nine in the morning and which consists mainly of an excruciatingly drawn-out and grotesque orgy in the woods astride 17th century royal France. It stunned me in a way that was often repugnant and a week hasn't passed since where it hasn't popped into my head. (Here is my review, by the way.) Anyway this new movie stars Benoît Magimel (best known here in the US as the hockey player that Isabelle Huppert's obsessed with in The Piano Teacher) in a "gripping, atmospheric thriller" about a French bureaucrat visiting a Polynesian island that includes "a resort that caters to the prurient exoticism of foreign tourists" and yeah, this sounds like the stuff.  

Stars At Noon (dir. Claire Denis) -- I posted about this one before when it was supposed to reunite Denis with her beloved vampire boyfriend Robert Pattinson; Rob dropped out because of Bat-related responsibilities and Joe Alwyn took over the role instead. Margaret Qualley stars opposite him -- it's an erotic political thriller or something of the sort, that's set in Nicaragua? I'm picturing Denis' version of The Year of Living Dangerously, basically.

Master Gardener (dir. Paul Schrader) -- Speaking of Sigourney Weaver movies, we have ourselves a Sigourney Weaver movie! I personally consider Paul Schrader more hit-and-miss than most critics and film fans seem to but there's no denying he's a writer and a director with a vision and a voice and it feels like it's been ages since Sigourney had a real proper leading role with one of those. That said I don't know if she is a leading role actually -- she plays the owner of a fancy estate garden which is kept up by Joel Edgerton's character, and he's one of Schrader's patented "dude with a troubled past come back to haunt him" types. But let's hope Schrader feels like reminding us what Siggy's capable of!

R.M.N. (dir. Cristian Mungiu) -- Anyone who's seen 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days knows that Mungiu is obviously a great director, but I'm in this one for the plot, which is about a rural Transylvanian butcher whose wife goes mute after witnessing something horrible in the woods. I don't think it's going to be quite as horror-themed as that sounds, but it's the closest one in NYFF's line-up to horror! 

Showing Up (dir. Kelly Reichardt) -- Kelly Reichardt has never made a not great movie, full stop. And this is his first movie since her greatest movie First Cow came out in 2019. Not only that it reunites her with her favorite star actress Michelle Williams! There is no "no" here. Michelle's playing a sculptor in Portland; Hong Chao her landlord. Plot-wise it all sounds lighter than usual, but it will inevitably crack open out hearts and smash them into a million billion pieces because that's what these women do.

Scarlet (dir. Pietro Marcello) -- Per usual most of my reasons for seeing these movies are based on "I like the director's past work" and Marcello's last movie was the great great great Martin Eden -- consider me sold. And this is a French fable co-starring Louis Garrel! Consider me double!

TÁR (dir. Todd Field) -- Field hasn't made a movie since Little Children in 2006, which is totally and entirely inexplicable. But I suppose he only made one movie before that, the indelible In the Bedroom in 2001, so we don't know him well enough to know what's explicable really. All those two movies show is he's a director who should be directing more movies. This one is a big return though, starring Cate Blanchett as an orchestra conductor who loses her shit.

Triangle of Sadness (dir. Ruben Östlund) -- I shared the trailer for this movie just a few hours ago! Watch it here! Harris Dickinson is a male model on Woody Harrelson's super-yacht, cue depraved social commentary. I'm a big Östlund fan and this one seems as tailored to my specifications as The Square was a few years back.

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The New York Film Fest runs this year from September 30th to October 16th, and you can expect lots of coverage from your truly here and on other websites, as I have been doing for something like a full decade now? I should go check and see which NYFF was my first press-accredited one. I've been going since I moved to NYC twenty-plus years ago of course, but I think I've only been official press for about a decade? Anyway it's my hometown beloved, and I can't wait. Now you may hit the jump for the full press release with the full Main Slate...

And Now We Go France-ward

Every year here in New York the finest sign that Spring is imminent for me has been the finding of myself awash in delicious French Movies, thanks to FLC's annual "Rendez-vous with French Cinema" series. But this year, thanks to our ongoing situation, cough cough, that delight goes national -- the series, running March 4th through 14th, is virtual and anybody from the lobster-pots of Maine to the scorpion-stingers of SoCal and everywhere in between, purple mountains majesty, can participate. 

I ran through some highlights from the 2021 edition last week, zooming in on two big handfuls of crush-worthy actors that're showing up in this year's batch of movies, in case you missed that, but today comes two new important news items -- one, tickets are now on sale! Buy them right here! And two, FLC has dropped us a trailer to get us in the mood. Ooh la la, oui oui et cetera. (I really should learn French.)

French Boys & The Movies That Love Them

The line-up for one of my favorite yearly fests has arrived today -- the "Rendez-Vous With French Cinema" festival at Film at Lincoln Center arrives for ten straight days of Gallic bliss in March, the 4th through the 14th, and it's an astonishingly sexy line-up of 18 movies this year (not that we'd expect any less from the French), starting from the top down with the legendary sexpot Emmanuelle Béart as the fest's Guest of Honor. For one they'll be screening Francois Ozon's sweaty and super-gay Summer of 85 (which I reviewed for NewFest last fall right here), which just got nominated for a heap of César awards (aka France's Oscars). But more than ever I felt like looking through this year's line-up there's an absolutely stunning French actor in every single one, so let's pick our picks, that way!

Vincent Lacoste in Faithful -- Lacoste first popped onto our radar with Christophe Honore's heartbreaking 2018 romance Sorry Angel, which has already become one of our all-time favorite gay films at this point. And Faithful has him (and his mustache!) starring opposite another fave, Phantom Thread star Vicky Krieps! He plays an imprisoned Communist revolutionary in the 1950s; she's his wife who refuses to abandon him. 

Rabah Naït Oufella in Ibrahim -- Oufella caught our eye thanks to two totally terrific movies, Bertrand Bonello's "teens take over a shopping mall" movie Nocturama and the cannibal flick Raw -- see a nice little gallery of him right here. In Ibrahim he plays the bad-influence best-friend to the titular character (played by Abdel Bendaher, above right), a teenager trying to do good; Rabah drags him into an ill-planned robbery attempt. It played Cannes last year.

Arnaud Valois in Lifelines and Spring Blossom -- The BPM beauty has a pair of features at the fest this year; his role in Lifelines;(which is about a woman obsessed with a found diary) is described as "an intriguing supporting role" but Blossom sounds Valois-centric, with him romancing actress / director Suzanne Lindon.

Niels Schneider in Love Affair -- Niels is best known for being the doe-eyed love-interest in a couple of Xavier Dolan movies back in the day, but he's worked plenty since then -- he was just in the ace Sibyl last year. And he's nominated for Best Actor at the Césars for this movie here -- it's also nominated for Best Film, Best Director, and all the other acting categories, so I think it's one to pay attention to! It's about cousin lovers!

Pierre Niney in Lovers -- The endearingly gawky Niney was delivered unto these shores via Ozon's 2016 film Frantz and immediately became a fave -- this one's a noir-tinged love triangle also starring the terrific Stacy Martin (from Nymphomaniac and Vox Lux) and...

... our boy Benoît  Magimel from The Piano Teacher! Yes this one's a two-fer -- two hot French actors for the price of one. Plus it's a thriller -- obviously this one is high on my Must Watch Immediately list. Although I will surely be let down and the two guys will fight over the girl with nary a whiff of sexual tension between the two of them, sigh. Tis my cruel fate.

Grégoire Ludig in Mandibles -- Previously seen by me rocking one hell of a stache in Quentin Dupieux's super fun 2018 flick Keep an Eye Out! (which I reviewed out of this exact same fest in 2019 right here) this movie has Ludig re-teaming with confirmed nutter Dupieux for a movie about two doofus low-lifes who find a scooter-sized housefly in the trunk of their stolen car, and train it to do crime. I don't think I've disliked a Dupieux flick yet? I am so on his wacky wavelength and this one is apparently one of his best.

Vincent Dedienne in Margaux Hartmann -- I actually don't think I know Dedienne from anything previous (nothing jumps off his IMDb page) but a quick google set me to attention; this is the flick that the fest's Guest of Honor Emmanuelle Béart stars in, and has her playing an older woman who's grieving her dead husband who goes back to school and makes new friends, with sexy results. I feel like you could add "with sexy results" to the description of any French film -- "Two low-lifes discover a gigantic housefly... with sexy results." Okay maybe not every French film. Anyway Dedienne is hella cute right?

Jérémie Renier in Slalom -- I have already posted about this movie! The shots of our beloved Renier doing his thing in this film (and by "his thing" I mean "getting naked" of course) made their way onto the internet back in October of last year, and obviously, just as we would with Jérémie, we jumped right on it. This movie has the legendary Belgian slash blond sexpot playing the creepy ski coach to a teen girl... and yes, "with sexy results" applies, although obviously that comes with several dozen asterisks given the subject matter.

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Phew! What a bunch, huh? "Rendez-Vous with French Cinema" runs on FLC's virtual platform from March 4th through 14th; tickets go on sale on February 19th (or earlier on Feb. 12th for FLC Members). You should have little fear that you won't hear more from me on this series, as I love covering it every year, so stay tuned. I'll throw their whole press release, with word on every single one of the films screening, right here after the jump...

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

The Piano Teacher (2001)

Walter: Just then I was under your window and I was jerking off. That's what you want, huh? You want to... is that it? You're a witch, a pervert! You want to give everyone your illness, don't you? Not me!

I don't really know what the "lesson" is that we're "learning" about "life" from this patch of dialogue since one thing I already knew about myself before writing this down was that I liked to think about Benoît Magimel jerking off underneath my window - perhaps this is a lesson for you, though? Perhaps you didn't know that you wanted this, and I have brought the fruit of this resplendent new wisdom to your life? You're welcome, then! And a happy 44th birthday to Benoît today. See lots more of him in the archives.

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Good Morning, World

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I know that Benoît Magimel has has a semi-esteemed career in France but I can't see him without thinking of Isabelle Huppert and The Piano Teacher, so I've decided that this scene of him molesting a man in the shower from a TV series called Marseille is just his Piano Teacher character living his post-Huppert fucked up life.

Nobody's the same once Huppert gets her hands on ya! Anyway does anybody know who the other actor is here? I tried looking through the show's cast list but I got really bored of that after about five seconds. Y'all help.
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Today is Benoît's 43rd birthday so we wish him a happy one, trolling public shower bathrooms or whatever it is he feels like doing. And it's a shame he's not in Haneke / Huppert's upcoming reunion, no? He looks like he could use a Happy End.
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Good Morning, Benoît

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A happy 42nd birthday to French actor Benoît Magimel today - you might know him as the hockey-playing object of obsession for Isabelle Huppert in Michel Haneke's The Piano Teacher, or if you actually watch French movies you probably know him from one or ten of a billion other movies. Anyway it was Piano that done us in on him. You can see lots of previously posted proof right here.

I Saw The Hairs Of Your Sex

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It's is Huppert's birthday today and I hope where ever she is she's getting everything she wants in whatever way she wants it, because she is Huppert and she deserves it, dammit. According to IMDB she's actually filming Paul Verhoeven's rape-revenge thriller right now, which is a project every fiber of my being is aching for, so that's a present for all of us. And if you head over to The Film Experience today's edition of "Beauty vs Beast" is tackling Michael Haneke's The Piano Teacher, in which she gives one of the greatest performances ever put on screen, opposite Benoit Magimel, who looks gorgeous getting tormented (and other things) by her.

Do Dump or Marry - Un Gallic Triptych

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Of the several movies coming out this weekend which I just wrote up over at Celebrity Beehive, it's the late-to-our-shores 2010 French film Little White Lies that's got me the most hot and bothered and that's because of its director and its cast. Its director is Guillaume Canet, who we gave good gratutity to back in April; he is Marion Cotillard's lover (it's perfectly acceptable to use that word without giggling because they are French) and did plenty of acting on his own... I mean obviously he did, with that face.

Meanwhile in front of the camera Guillaume wrangled two of our favorite French fellows, recent Best Actor winner slash big-time object du crush Jean Dujardin...

 ... and Benoît Magimel, who we've been angling for ever since Isabelle Huppert told him to sit on her face in The Piano Teacher.

Bonus points - I do believe that Benoît's character is of the homo persuasion in LWL.

By most accounts the movie is not that great but really with a cast this pretty, do you entirely care? Sometimes just staring at pretty people is plenty. Often times. Anyway now you should tell me in the comments who you'd do who you'd dump and who you'd marry.
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Good Morning, World

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I really hope now that Jean Dujardin is Mr. Fancy Pants with an Oscar and global adoration and Scorsese movies and a 40th birthday hitting him today that he doesn't move away from all the great goofy gratuities he's got in his past, that would be a sincere shame. The sincerest! But for now, there's enough back catalog for us to dip into when we need to, for such circumstances, thankfully.

These shots are from the 2010 movie Little White Lies, which we posted about before right here when it was Benoit Magimel's birthday back in May - it was directed by Guillaume Canet, himself a gratuity recipient, but it's supposedly not that great of a movie. Anyway I'm really caring less and less about that the more I see. (ETA All of this preceding paragraph is a lie - these are from a 2010 movie called The Clink of Ice, I have learned - thanks anon!)

Hit the jump for video and a bunch more caps 

of Jean looking bearded, brawny and fine.

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

The Piano Teacher (2001)

Erika: Schubert's dynamics range from scream to whisper

not loud to soft. Anarchy hardly seems your forte.

Why not stick to Clementi? Schubert was quite ugly.

Did you know? With your looks, nothing can ever hurt you.

Yeah no kidding, Erika. Look like that and you get to make babies with Juliette Binoche! Speaking of, a happy 38th birthday to Benoît Magimel! Here are a couple shirtless pictures of him I found from a 2010 movie called Little White Lies...

... that co-stars Jean Dujardin and Gilles Lellouche - aka those two who were having hot swarthy gay sex in that other movie - and was directed by Guillaume Canet, who we recently devoted a nice big gratuitous post to. That must have been a hot set to be on, for god's sake! Anybody seen it?

Good Morning, Birthday Gubler & JD

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A happy 31st bday to Matthew Gray Gubler today
(see more of him here).

And while I'm at it, a very very happy day to long-time reader J.D. of Valley Dreamin' fame, who's turning 18 today. I can't believe you're 18, J.D.! I spent so many years feeling uncomfortable by your underage self ogling MNPP's man-pics that I don't really know what to do now that you're all legal and shit. Oh know. Here are some paparazzi pictures of Benoit Magimel getting a foot-job. Pretend that's your foot, sir! And have a happy birthday!

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Good Morning, Gratuitous Benoît Magimel

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(from Les voleurs)

Yesterday I was reading the as-always-splendid Kim Morgan's piece on Michael Haneke's The Piano Teacher - speaking of splendid - when I was reminded of Mr. Magimel, so so pretty therein as Isabelle Huppert's object d'obsession.


And from there I realized he's never gotten the gratuitous treatment. In my defense, other than Haneke's film and La haine I've never seen anything else of his work. Although that's not much of a defense, I probably should've seen something else of his work by now, he's been around since he was a kid. Oh well. Woe unto the world until this is righted! The no gratuitousness thing, that is. Which is righted. Now. No more woe, then!

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And these last several pics of Benoit hanging out with Romain Duris and Clément Sibony are press pics for 1998's Déjà mort, which I think I might have to see now, with haste.
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