Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

Boxing Helena (1993)

Dr. Nick Cavanaugh: If you were a 

real woman,  you'd lie to me about our sex.

A very happy birthday to director Jennifer Lynch today -- I have recently been in mourning for the many many years that I went without this perfectly accursed (complimentary) movie in my life, having only seen it for the first time in 2022. I did get to see it on the big screen in 2024 though (I love living in this city!) and it fully cemented itself as one of my favorite pieces of deranged cinema. I can't even pretend it's just for reasons of camp that I love this movie anymore -- I just love it with my full body and soul. And that's me talking with all of my limbs still attached! But seriously -- if you've never seen Bill Paxton's performance in this movie, you have not lived. Same goes for Julian Sands in the tiniest running shorts ever put on-screen. Same goes for limbless Sherilyn Fenn sipping sweet tea through a straw. Oh my god I have to watch it again right now. Thank you, Jennifer Lynch! 

Good Morning, World

After a couple of days of dreary rain it's a beautiful spring day here in NYC so I'm feeling this sunny photoshoot of Lewis Pullman for GQ that dropped this morning -- and that's before we even get to whether I'm feeling Lewis Pullman or not. (So to speak. Obviously. Unfortunately.) I will say this post graduates him onto the sidebar, as we've now done enough posts for him to have his own tag -- but truth be told I feel like I still haven't seen him in a ton. He was memorable in the Top Gun sequel in a cast of many. He's got a great ass. (What -- these are important matters!) And he certainly left an impression dancing around in itty bitty black briefs in that movie Skincare last year too. I still haven't seen Thunderbolts but I hear he's good in it? Otherwise... 

Lewis Pullman loves a photobooth!

[image or embed]

— Jason Adams (@jamnpp.bsky.social) May 6, 2025 at 2:27 PM

... I am a fan of his photobooth fetish. He's certainly already in his short career left more of an impression on me than his father ever did -- I know some people love him but I can't think of a Bill Pullman performance I ever connected to. Him and Patricia Arquette are far and away my least favorite David Lynch pair of protagonists in Lost Highway, and that's about as big a strike one can have against themselves. What else is there -- the President in Independence Day? The sleeping guy in While You Were Sleeping?  The fact that people ever confused Pullman with the electric wattage of Bill Paxton -- WTF. Aaaaanyway we're not here to talk about Lewis' daddy, nepo-whatever aside -- I haven't seen Lewis in enough, so I'm still making up my mind. He's cute and I don't hold the terrible Salem's Lot re-do against him. He's in the plus column right now. Any thoughts on Lewis from you, my peanut gallery? Either way hit the jump for the rest of this sunny morning photoshoot...

The Forever Alien / Aliens Debate

As I mentioned last evening yes I have seen the new Alien movie and yes you will hear my thoughts on it soon enough -- but before we get there I have a question, an utterly impossible question. I cannot answer this question myself, because whenever I try my body litterally splits itself in half and my innnards and skin sacks flop to the floor, halved. Nobody wants that. So I ask you people out there in the great beyond...

online polls

I'm no great fan of Ridley Scott nowadays, but I concede that he earned his rep as a master filmmaker once upon a time with his first few films and Alien is I think his crown jewel -- it's a perfect horror film with the series' greatest cast of characters. That said James Cameron's sequel is every inch as good to my eye, just scratching a very different kick-ass action movie itch. Anyway these two movies and the Giger-fueled nightmare worlds they built are the reason why this franchise will always rank among my favorites, and I am entirely incapacitated when asked to choose. So I am making you choose. And feel free to make your case in the comments.

People who defend Ridley Scott as still being a good filmmaker are... just not right

— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) August 14, 2024

On a related note I re-watched Prometheus and half of Alien: Covenant last night and lord what slop they are. Beautiful looking slop, but good grief Ridley can't string together a coherent experience anymore. I do love staring at the utterly gorgeous cast of Prometheus though, and the scene where the snake thing kills Rafe Spall & Sean Harris is absolutely top tier horror.

Abigail in 250 Words or Less

I don't watch movie trailers anymore and I especially don't watch horror movie trailers anymore, and yet I somehow still knew going into Abigail precisely one thing -- I knew that it is about a tween ballerina vampire. I can't imagine anyone going into this movie and not knowing at least that much. I suppose there are people recovering from comas as I type this, and perhaps the first thing they will do is stumble into a movie theather and just happen to walk into an Abigail screening -- anything is possible! And to them, I say enjoy!

For the rest of us however the exxxtremely drawn out first act of this movie is some seriously unwise plotting -- the revelation of tween ballerina vampire Abigail's tween-ballerina-vampirishness is teased for far, far, far too long, to the point of exasperation. And that milling-about languor mars the film's final act as well, when the film drops about four reasonable endings in a row. In short this movie should be half an hour shorter and it would be more fun. Because when it's fun, it's fun. Great fun. Game cast (Alisha Weir kills it), top-notch gore, and who doesn't love a dilapidated mansion full of dubious strangers plotline? Also lots of sly references to vampire movies of old like Fright Night and Near Dark for the nerds like me. There is a pretty perfect hour twirling smackdab in the middle of this movie, unfortunately smothered by one too many ruffles.

Thinking about him (what's new) pic.twitter.com/lpPMlw5iMK

— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) April 18, 2024

The Extra S Is For Extra Suckage

As I've made clear here on this site for as long as this site has been site-ing we're Twister-heads here -- huge fans, love Jan De Bont's 1996 disaster flick, flaws and flying cows and all -- and so the only thing that I paid any attention to with regards to the Football Thing that happened yesterday was the trailer for the sequel Twisters that got dropped. And...weirdly... it only sort of grabbed me? Glen Powell in a wet white t-shirt grabbed me. But so many of the shots in the trailer were recreations of shots from the original that this looks really remake-y to me? Just with a bunch of young pretty things replacing the slumming character actors in the original. The thing giving me hope is Minari director Lee Isaac Chung directed it so hopefully he knocks it out of the park. It's a difficult needle to thread -- the movie needs to be dumb but fun, not take itself too seriously but give us at least passable characters who don't get totally devoured by the relentless weather. Whatever -- I'm such a disaster movie nerd I'll be all over it the second a press screening is announced; I just wasn't blown away (hardy har) by this trailer. Something felt missing. Maybe I'm just really hoping they can pull out a surprise Helen Hunt appearance. Anyway -- your thoughts? 

Twisters hits theaters July 19th.

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

 ... you can learn from:

A Simple Plan (1998)

Hank: When I was still just a kid, I remember my father telling me what he thought that it took for a man to be happy. Simple things, really. A wife he loves, a decent job, friends and neighbors who like and respect him. And for a while there, without hardly even realizing it, I had all that. I was a happy man.

Happy 25 to Sam Raimi's masterpiece.

(How the hell is this movie not on blu-ray yet?)

Anthony Ramos Would Like To Get Blown Too

In the Heights star Anthony Ramos -- who was kind enough to share some vacation photos on his Instagram last week, see more here -- has joined the cast of Twisters, says Deadline! I told you about this sequel to Jan de Bont's 1996 disaster classic Twister last week when it was announced Glen Powell and Daisy Edgar-Jones were going to star in it (and I made several of you very angry by daring to compare Glen to Bill Paxton lol but I stand by it -- I only called them comparative! I certainly don't think Glen has proven himself to be a legend like ol' Bill, I just think they have a similar energy.) Anyway there's really no more information than that, but since this allowed me to re-highlight those shirtless Antony photos from last week I said sure, let's post it. Weirdly I was walking in my neighborhood of Washington Heights yesterday and saw that there was still a gigantic In the Heights promotional banner hanging off a parking garage down the street from me -- y'all gotta let go, dudes. 

The Time For After Hours Is Upon Us!

One of the most awaited slash demanded Criterion titles of all time has finally been announced! Martin Scorsese's 1985 downtown NYC masterpiece After Hours is hitting 4K and blu-ray on July 11th! Just in time for my birthday -- huzzah! You can check out the list of special features at the link but it's the usual parade of awesomeness. Sometimes I think this is my favorite Scorsese movie? It's the one I've watched the most, even more than The Age of Innocence (the other one in the running for my favorite). It's so my perfect vision of my home -- take from that what you will, if you've seen the film. Those of us who love this nightmare hellhole love it with fierce devotion and nobody got it better than Marty. 

The other movies hitting Criterion in July are gonna have a hard time competing with that, but let's try to hype them up to -- Carl Franklin's 1992 small-town race thriller One False Move starring Bill Paxton is an ace little flick and that's making its debut on 4K blu-ray on July 25th. I only caught this a year or so ago when Criterion had it on their Channel and was shocked I'd never even heard of it before then. Then there's a big boxed-set of five Western films from director Budd Boetticher and starring one Mr. Randolph Scott. Sounds like the perfect Dad Gift for next year's holiday season. (Who doesn't love sneaking a closeted homosexual into their Dad's stash?)

And then rounding out the month there is Cheryl Dunye's fabulous 1996 lesbian classic The Watermelon Woman, and a 4K upgrade of Gordard's Breathless, all's so you can stare at this gorgeousness...

... as crisp as f'ing possible. G'bless you, Criterion!

Blowing Glen Powell...

... is what a tornado is going to be doing! Or several. It's gonna be a real gale-force gang-bang up in here because our boy Glen is going to star in Twisters! Plural! The sequel to Twister, dontcha know. Him and Daisy Edgar-Jones, says Deadline (thx Mac). The original Twister hit in 1996 starring Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt of course, alongside a bunch of cyclone-bait like Cary Elwes and never-not-funny-that-he's-in-this Phillip Seymour Hoffman. I'm a massive fan of Twister, I've watched it a gazillion times, and I'm one thousand percent down for a new one -- hell I wish we got new disaster movies in movie theaters every single week. Seeing this will make me sad about the loss of Bill Paxton all over again (RIP king!) but Glen is a good modern-day equivalent. Will Helen Hunt cameo? She could be the Lois Smith equivalent this time around. I wonder if these characters will have connections to the original movie or just be new rando storm hunters. I can't imagine they won't strain for the thinnest of connections before the funnels start a'funnelin'. 

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

Twister (1996)

Melissa: When you used to tell me that you chase tornadoes,

deep down I thought it was just a metaphor.

That's one of my favorite lines in Jan de Bont's classic disaster movie Twister (which is turning 25 today!) because it's an acknowledgment that this movie is a place where metaphors go to die. This is a movie about tornados, man -- that's it! Welcome to the Suck Zone!

And it's been enough, for me at least, for 25 years -- I will always get sucked into Twister (heh) if I stumble on it on TV, and every thought I have in the world just drifts drifts drifts right out of my head. I certainly don't need all of my cinema to be escapist but there is a place for it, and Twister's place is in the pantheon of dumb fun.

Baby Bill's Blue Movie

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If you're into Bill Paxton -- and who isn't into Bill Paxton, may that amazing man who visited the set of Call Me By Your Name and also gave dozens of wonderful performances rest in peace -- then I feel like I need to give a heads-up that his super obscure debut film Taking Tiger Mountain, shot when he was nineteen years old, has just gotten dropped onto ultra-fancy remastered blu-ray and uhh how do I put this lightly...

... there's basically explicit nudity and pornographic sex involved. I can't really say more on it myself, having not seen the film yet, but Mondo here gives a good overview of the film's history and it sounds fairly fascinating. And I wish I could post more photos from it but the ones I've seen are très risqué! He dove right into the movies head first, that Bill. Anybody seen this flick? Consider me curious...

Timothée Chalamet Three Times

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I already posted the first shot from this shoot for Vogue over on the Tumblr the other day - click right here for it - but these other three are worth sharing, I wager. Even if the clothes might be a little goofy. I can't with turtlenecks under open dress shirts, you guys. I CAN'T. (click to embiggen; thx Mac)

ETA Oh and there's also this news -- the official track-list for the Call Me By Your Name soundtrack has been released:

Hallelujah Junction - 1st movement - - John Adams

M.A.Y. in the Backyard - Ryuichi Sakamoto

J'adore Venise - Loredana Bertè

Paris latino - Bandolero

Sonatine bureaucratique - Frank Glazer

Zion hört die Wächter singen - Alessio Bax

Lady Lady Lady - Giorgio Moroder & Joe Esposito

Une barque sur l'océan from Miroirs - Andre Laplante

Futile Devices (Doveman Remix) - Sufjan Stevens

Germination - Ryuichi Sakamoto

Words - F.R. David

È la vita - Marco Armani

Mystery of Love - Sufjan Stevens

Radio Varsavia - Franco Battiato

Love My Way - The Psychedelic Furs

Le jardin féerique from Ma mère l'Oye - Valeria Szervánszky & Ronald Cavaye

Visions of Gideon - Sufjan Stevens

It's still not showing up on the US version of Amazon but it's on the UK version right here - they have a release date of November 17th, which is much later than we'd heard before. When I posted it before I linked to this website, which still says they're releasing it on October 27th. Anyway I will keep y'all abreast of news on that! ETA It's available for pre-order on Amazon US now right here - they have a date of November 3rd.

ETA Oh wait I should also share this. The other day we were wondering what the actor Bill Paxton's connection to CMBYN was, since he was photographed on set before he passed away and the film is dedicated to him -- well now we got our answer via the film's producer Peter Spears:
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Many of you have asked about Bill Paxton’s connection to Call Me By Your Name. Please see my response below. Thank you. pic.twitter.com/kUOSHUtnXX

— Peter Spears (@pjspears) October 19, 2017

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Armie & Edgar & Friends

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It would be utterly captivating if I could find some elaborate excuse for why I am posting that picture this morning but alas I seem to be having some sort of allergy attack and am simply using them to buy myself time. But it's like we always say - who the hell needs a reason for anything? Okay okay here's a bonus: here's a picture of the very first table read for Call Me By Your Name with Luca and producer Peter Spears and several important members of the cast:

Spears shared the photo on his Twitter, which is full of goodies from the set if you're so inclined (I know you're so inclined or else you probably would've stopped reading MNPP a couple of weeks ago) -- here's another good one:

I was so distracted by Armie's short-shorts that it took me awhile to notice that was Bill Paxton second-from-left there - has anyone been able to find out what Paxton's connection to the movie was? The movie is dedicated to him at the very end, but googling around I haven't been able to figure out what his connection was before he passed away. My guess is producer, but IMDb doesn't list him.

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Good Morning, Bill

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Aww I miss Bill Paxton, you guys. He would've turned 62 today if he hadn't passed back in February due to complications during heart surgery. It's a shame that The Circle was such a piece of shit -- will that be the last film of his released in theaters? I noticed the other day that the movie called Mean Dreams is available online now - and have they run through all of his episodes of the Training Day show? So I think that's it. It's okay, Bill - you left a wonderful  body of work behind. And when I go see the new Alien movie Friday your panicked voice will echo across the whole thing. "Game over, man!!!"

Good Morning, World

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We take Bill Paxton for granted, you guys. I've seen a lot of Bill lately thanks to "Alien Day" and the 20th anniversary of Twister and while he works steadily and probably always will I feel like he deserves more from us. More credit. There was a brief window of time with Big Love where he was getting it, I guess...

... but I just want more for Bill Paxton. It's his 61st birthday today and he's not gonna be around forever, you guys. Let's all agree to be better to Bill. He's a treasure. A national goddamned treasure. (I mean, for the homoeroticsm of Near Dark alone!) 

Anyway these pictures are from a 1995 movie called Frank & Jesse about the James Boys (Bill played Frank and Rob Lowe, who you'll see below, played Jesse) - hit the jump or the rest...

Good Morning, World

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You know what's in desperate need of a re-watch? Weird Science. And not just because Bill Paxton struts around half naked in it a lot (although that surely is a plus). I loved this movie when I was a kid, I remember it playing on HBO all the time; I'm pretty sure I haven't seen it since I was like 10, which in case you don't know was quite some time ago - I wonder how it will play to my more mature (ha!) sensibilities now. Yeah, Bill Paxton taking off his towel will probably still be the highlight.

There was so much strange homoeroticism back in the teen flicks of the Eighties, wasn't there? It was all very gay panicky - I guess it was maybe something to do with gayness really starting to seep into the mainstream consciousness? Men were just starting to see themselves as sexualized objects too - at least on a large scale level, with the advertising turning its eyes towards their pecs and thighs finally.

What the hell am I even rambling about? It's too early for this. Anyway hello! I will be back up and running all day today, no movies premieres to go to or anything. 

One last thing though - I always confuse Weird Science with this movie or TV show (it might've been on Amazing Stories or something like that, maybe?) from the same period where this kid invents this paste that he spreads on a picture of a hot girl in a magazine and it makes the girl in the magazine come to life. I think the episode ends with too much paste getting put on something and that something coming to life, only enormous? My memory is vague. Anybody have any idea what I'm talking about?

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Good Morning, World

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A happy 57th birthday to Bill Paxton!

Now I Want It Now

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Steven Soderbergh's next movie Haywire - with Michael Fassbender, Ewan McGregor, Channing Tatum, Michael Douglas, Bill Paxton, Michael Angarano, and Antonio Banderas, all opposite mixed martial-artist Gina Carano - was supposed to come out in January but it's just switched distributors and isn't coming out until April or March of 2011 now. Boo. But I can wait. I can be patient. Wait, what's that?

"... we should be ready for some marketing material to arrive soon. We're told that the excellent designer Neil Kellerhouse, who created posters for "The Girlfriend Experience," "The Social Network" and a number of DVD covers for The Criterion Collection, has created a poster for "Haywire" which should be coming soon. Also, Soderbergh is planning to put six minutes of the film on YouTube in which the film's star and ... Carano will apparently "destroy" one of her male co-stars. We can't wait."

Okay I take it back I can't wait for any of this gimme. Gimme!
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Unnecessary Remake #I Have Lost Count

Kathryn Bigelow's Near Dark is 20 years old this year. How does Hollywood celebrate its anniversary? By announcing a remake, of course! From BD:

"Bloody-Disgusting has been scooped that Samuel Bayer will in fact helm Rogue Pictures' Near Dark remake for Platinum Dunes. Bayer directed music videos for The Smashing Pumpkins, Metallica, Green Day, Garbage and many others. Matt Venne wrote the screenplay that follows a young man who reluctantly joins a travelling "family" of evil vampires, when the girl he'd tried to seduce is part of that group. This will be the next film from Platinum Dunes, which is headed by Brad Fuller and Andrew Form."

Samuel Bayer is from Syracuse, but I'm not giving him any home-field benefit-of-the-doubt. Judging him totally superficially, by his picture on IMDb, he's seen and modeled himself after Lance Henriksen in the original Near Dark (click on the image to the left to embiggen & compare), so I'm guessing he's a fan. So why? Why remake one of the greatest Vampire films ever made? Is money worth your soul??? Bah, what a question.

Who could ever hope to match the genius of Bill Paxton's performance as Severen? Or the hotness of young Adrian Pasdar? Nobody, that's who.

The only chance this has for redemption is this: they use the image-capture process soon to be seen in Beowulf to get Jake Gyllenhaal play every single part. The thought of Jake licking the blood off of his own twin's lip is worth ten bucks, easy. Yeah, I'm cheap. But it's the right thing to do!
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Next Tuesday's Mood

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Because of my week-long picnic in Haight-Ashbury (no need to ask; yes, I will have flowers in my hair), I'm very sadly not gonna be around to actively participate on June 12th when Nat at The Film Experience holds his Action Heroine Blog-a-Thon.

But in the spirit of celebrating the Brawny Ladies of War (I heart acronyms) a little early, I thought I'd highlight the Other Action Heroine in Jimmy Cameron's tender ode to the yearnings of the heart skull-fucking face-hugger-filled bitch-bomb of an action flick, Aliens.

In my humble opinion, The Greatest Action Heroine of All-Time is in Aliens, in the form of Sigourney Weaver's Ripley of course, but because Cameron loves the ladies he makes room for another, even harder-assed (more on that brave comment in a sec) chick in the form of Private Vasquez, played to the butch-hilt by Jenette Goldstein.

Pvt. Vasquez (Jenette Goldstein),
Aliens

"Anytime, anywhere, man!"

(As a sidenote, the last time Nat held a blog-a-thon, that Vampire one, I ruminated on Bill Paxton in Near Dark... and Aliens is of course a weird companion piece to Near Dark, with Paxton and Goldstein playing characters in both films, in the askew universe populated by off-screen collaborators Cameron and Kathryn Bigelow. If I do something on Michael Beihn at the next blog-a-thon, whatever it may be, then we'll know I have a problem.)

Anyway, that's right, I said it: Private Vasquez is more of a hard-ass than Ellen "I define the words 'hard-ass'" Ripley. But this hard-ass-osity is, of course, the reason for Vasquez' ultimate downfall: because what is Aliens about if not... everybody now... "Mommy." The film's final confrontation, between Ripley and the Queen Alien ("Get away from her, you bitch") is like watching two lionesses tearing out chunks of each other's necks in front of their respective babies; it's a primal scream of Protective Motherhood.

To bring that back to Vasquez, can you picture her taking on the role of nurturing mother figure to lil' Newt? Vasquez' biceps would strangle to life out of that little girl. Ripley's able to mix the motherly with the tough, the soft and the hard, but Vasquez, in the grand tradition of the uber-butch, perhaps (though from what I remember never explicitly stated to be) lesbian women in cinema, is another one of the guys. I mean, she's bar-none the toughest one of the guys, for sure, and she goes out gallantly, temporarily stopping the alien onslaught by sacrificing herself. But yes, she must indeed be sacrificed within this tradition so the ever-so-slightly more feminine, mother-capable Ripley version of femaleness can come out the victor. Only later would Cameron make the "Mother" figure scary-tough, with Sarah Connor in T2. Ripley, for all her toughness, doesn't pick up the "scary" reins til after Vasquez is out of the picture.

Nonetheless, even if Vasquez never wins Mother of the Year honors, she's locked and loaded and she will rip a hole through your motherfuckin' chest if need be, and that's pretty nifty too.
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