Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

 ... you can learn from:

Peeping Tom (1960)

Mrs. Stephens: I don't trust a man
who walks quietly.

Helen: He's shy.

Mrs. Stephens: His footsteps aren't.
They're stealthy.

Born 85 years ago today was the great Anna Massey, who ought to sit on her own Horror Icon Throne thanks to leading lady roles in both Michael Powell's masterpiece Peeping Tom and Alfred Hitchcock's Frenzy twelve years later. I have struggled my whole damn life with that latter film -- with how mean-spirited and ugly it is. And the target of much of Hitch's ugliness therein is Massey's character of "Babs," who Hitch showcases from start to terrible-finish as shrill and pushy...

... right up until he's snapping her corpse's fingers and throwing it off the back of a potato truck. For too long I projected that distaste onto Massey herself as an actor, but I've come to love her as I've matured into a (slightly) more thoughtful person. She was very good at her job! Anyway besides those two bonafide and complicated classics she's got a really fun role in the 1973 anthology horror flick The Vault of Horror...

... and in 2004 she was apparently in Brad Anderson's The Machinist, otherwise known as the movie where Christian Bale starved himself to near-death -- now that is a movie that is in dire need of revisiting by yours truly. (It is streaming on Prime right now.) I remember liking it at the time but I haven't seen it since and part of me feels like there might be reason for it to have aged well. I think most people were so rightly horrified by Bale's transformation that they couldn't look at it for too long -- hell I just googled some pictures and had to turn my face away. Anybody seen that one lately?

Netflix Is Coming For Your Kids This October

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Netflix has released the first disorienting poster (above) and the first image (below) from Vincenzo Natali's forthcoming horror flick In the Tall Grass, which is adapted from a short story by Stephen King and his son Joe Hill. And they're also letting us know the movie will hit Netflix on October 4th -- that's only 21 damn days from now, holy crap! And we've been posting about this one forever -- well since 2015 anyway, which is "forever" now. The film is about two little kids who get lured into a field by the sound of a crying boy, which turns out to be a trap of some sort. I never read the story, but somebody in this will be played by Patrick Wilson so I'm there.

Netflix is doing us all a big scary favor this holiday season though -- they're releasing a brand new horror flick every single week in October! They're calling it "Netflix and Chills" and ITTG is just the first thing on the menu -- October 11th will bring us Fractured with Sam Worthington and Lily Rabe as parents who take their injured daughter to an emergency room that turns into a nightmare. Most excitingly Fractured was directed by Brad Anderson, the great director of Session 9 and The Machinist.

Then October 18th brings us Eli, the latest scare flick from Citadel and Sinister 2 director Ciarán Foy starring Max Martini and Kelly Reilly as the parents of a dying child who put their faith in a doctor (played by Lili Taylor) with an experimental program that leads to, well, happenings. And finally come October 25th we get Rattlesnake, which stars the always welcome Carmen Egojo as a mother whose kid is bitten by that thing in the title and who's then forced to make a deal with the devil (not sure if that's literal or not!) to save her. Anyway here's a trailer for the whole shebang which gives us first glimpses of every one of those titles:

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Kinda funny how every one of those is about putting kids 

in danger, right? Not really "funny ha ha," though. Just... funny.

I Am Link

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--- Spider Bites - That there is the first picture of Tom Hardy in Venom, his upcoming Spider-man spin-off movie - clearly this is before he turns into a gaping mawed black goo person. In related news the rumor's a'swirl that Spider-twink himself Tom Holland will make an appearance in the film, which kind of clears up the question (if the rumor's a'true) whether this movie will be set in the same universe as the Avengers et al. And speaking of Spider-twink we just found out that Timothee Chalamet read for the role once! He could have been our Spider-twink! He told the story while accepting an award this past week. Oh well guess he'll just have to deal with unanimous critical adoration instead, poor thing. (thx Mac)

--- Capitán Fantastic - Chile's foreign-film submission for the Oscars A Fantastic Woman got a wee release here in NYC last fall but it's going to get a real release in February and I haven't written a review yet but it is a (dare I say) fantastic movie, I am dying to see it a second time, and you should all seek it out the minute it's available for seeking. Vanity Fair talked to the film's director and the film's star the absolutely terrific and hypnotic Daniela Vega, click on over to read that. 

--- Gemini People - Back in October I had a momentary freak-out on Twitter wondering where the hell Ang Lee had gotten himself to, so this week's news of casting for his next movie has really perked up that several month old sore spot. The movie is called Gemini Man and it will star Will Smith in dual roles - he'll play an over-the-hill assassin and his 25 year younger clone, and the two will be trying to kill each other. It sounds like this is another chance for Ang to futz around with fancy technology - I'm guessing the twinning stuff won't look like an episode of The Patty Duke Show! - but I will allow it because of the supporting cast Ang is lining up, which so far includes Clive Owen and the goddess Mary Elizabeth Winstead. MEW beat out both Tatiana Maslany and Elizabeth Debicki for the role, and honestly with choices like that how does one even begin to choose?

--- Jason's Dead - There was a rumor going around last week that Blumhouse was going to reboot the Friday the 13th series (yes we hear this same rumor every six months or so) but BD beat the stuffing out of it this time with a What's What on the rights issues for the series, which are currently in the middle of a big lawsuit. Anyway if you need your Voorhees Fix you could go watch a 40 minute doc on YouTube about the dude who played Jason in Part III (aka the best one) which BD explains all about right here.

--- Tis A Video - Vulture's Kyle Buchanan got his greedy mitts on the gold star of Call Me By Your Name coverage, interviewing the elusive Sufjan Stevens about the heart-rending and gorgeous songs he created for the film, and about his meeting with Luca Guadagnino (the coat story is priceless - and you can see the follow-up to it on Twitter too), and oh yeah finding out that Sufjan's seen the film FOUR TIMES now. Keep trying, Suffy - you'll never catch up! In related news our pal Chris tackled the CMBYN soundtrack in his weekly column at The Film Experience this past week.

--- Show Men - At first the thought of Hugh Jackman and Zac Efron starring in a movie together was an appealing thing to me but I realized after the first trailer that The Greatest Showman was definitely not going to be My Thing. Getting me to enthuse about a musical is oft a tricky path anyway. That said Nathaneil at The Film Experience makes an excellent case today, on the basis of the film's secret box office success, we really should be seeing more musicals, and I don't disagree with him.
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I'm no Musical Nut but there are so many stars I'd love to see star in one (cough these two cough) and so @nathanielr's case for MORE MORE MORE MUSICALS here makes sense to even me https://t.co/GWQHSt8OQZ pic.twitter.com/sbgX5lNYDT

— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) January 17, 2018

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--- Lost Boy - I am really very overly anxious for Brad Anderson, the director of the tremendous Session 9 some oh seventeen years ago, to properly follow that movie up - he's made good stuff like Transsiberian and The Machinist, but nothing quite as magic as that 2001 movie. Anyway he's never stopped working this whole time, and here comes another chance - he's made a movie called Beirut, which was written by Tony "Michael Clayton" Gilroy, and which stars Jon Hamm and Rosamund Pike. That's a good pair of stars! Let's hope he has something for them. That movie is out in April.

--- Where's My Freak - I am surprised to read that Ben Wheatley has supposedly not filmed Freak Shift, his movie with Armie Hammer and Alicia Vikander, yet; I thought they had that in the can? But that's what DH says as they share word that Wheatley's currently in L.A. shooting a super-quick (just eleven  days) secret project titled (at least according to the clapperboard that Wheatley posted on his Instagram) Colin You Anus. (LOL.) No word on what the hell it is but given how mind-bending his A Field in England was, which he also shot on a shoestring in just a dozen days, I'm hopeful here! Oh and in Also Armie Hammer News a couple of pictures of him in his upcoming film Final Portrait are right here. Armie is also playing a homosexual in this! This is out in March.

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--- And Finally I could've sworn I had shared one of the foreign-language trailers for Francois Ozon's upcoming movie Double Lover, which has been out in his home of France for awhile now, but a quick scan through the archives tells me otherwise - we have shared a couple of lovely nudie photographs of Jérémie Renier in the movie (including this shot of Jérémie Renier kissing Jérémie Renier, ooh la la) but no trailer. Which is fine, turns out, because now we have an english-language trailer to watch. The movie is out here in the US on Valentine's Day! Watch:

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In Service of Skarsgard

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Tell me that Alexander Skarsgard and Peter Dinklage have signed on to make a "Renaissance action movie" called The Dwarf and sure, I might side-eye you for a hot second, but I'll still pencil it down for future consumption. For sure. But then you go and tell me that the film will be directed by the wholly underrated Brad Anderson, he who made Session 9 and Transsiberian and The Machinist, and I'll scratch out that pencil and I will re-write it in permanent marker, I will! (pic via) Here's how the movie's described (thx Mac): 

"Dinklage will play a fearless man who proves his mettle and earns the trust of a prince after he conquers an all-time wrestling champion in a contest. Once he has jockeyed for position next to the seat of power, the dwarf pledges his undying loyalty and resorts to assassinations and subterfuge in his merciless quest to protect his new master."

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Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

Session 9 (2001)

Henry: Madness is just overactive curiosity. 

I hadn't even realized that Brad Anderson's phenomenal little horror gem here  had never been released onto blu-ray, until just now reading the news that it is finally being released onto blu-ray! It'll be out in August (which will mark the film's 15th anniversary). This also makes me realize I haven't watched this movie in quite some time, and I gotta right that. It's so, so good. Funny how much of the film I can immediately conjure up in my mind's eye - this is one that doesn't let go. The scene with Josh Lucas in the basement! Ahh!

I Am Link

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--- Hot Broads - You might not know this about me since I've literally never mentioned it here at the blog but I'm a gigantic Broad City fan - just love 'em! Love them girls to death, I do. So the news that they're teaming up with Bridesmaids (and the Lady Ghostbusters movie) director Paul Feig to make a movie (for now he's only set to produce it) is being met with some big wahoos round here. What's funny is just last night I randomly asked my boyfriend if he thought Ilana & Abbi would ever do a project without the other one, which led to a whole terrifying conversation about one of them playing the tilted-head listening girlfriend of Jessica Alba in a rom-com. Horror! In related news, here's an interview with the gals in Paper that I haven't gotten around to reading yet.

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--- Super Forever - Going back and watching the earlier Marvel movies (for the first time or the tenth) was of course a big to-do with this week's release of the second Avengers film - over at The Film Experience Nathaniel did that 11 film marathon some theaters were holding which is just psychosis if you ask me - nut balls! - but it makes for good reading. And my pal Sean went back and saw the several Marvel hero movies he'd missed and wrote up some quick smart thoughts at his site on each. In related news, the next Avengers, subtitled Infinity War (it will be in two parts, too), is filming entirely in IMAX. I am super into that.
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--- White Panther - Martin Freeman has elbowed his way to the front of the King of the Geeks pack by landing a role in the Marvel universe - he's going to play "some sort of interrogator" in the next Captain America movie, which Latino Review is speculating means he's playing this expert on the country of Wakanda, which means he'll probably also show up in a Black Panther movie. If none of that makes any sense to you, I wish I was you, seriously, I am jealous of your brain's freedom from this nonsense. You probably remember actual things from your actual life!

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--- And Still Speaking of Marvel, Joss Whedon quit Twitter and it caused way way too many think-pieces - the most interesting tidbits were from the parties directly involved - here's Joss explaining to BuzzFeed why he quit after people speculated it was The Feminist's Fault (somehow it's always Their Fault, funny how that works) and here's Mark Ruffalo defending Joss' feminism bonafides, which I agree with - it's horseshit that this needs to be said. Take a torn up page from Sinead and start fighting the real enemies, people. So much energy wasted on so much bullshit.

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--- Off The Clift - I keep forgetting that Ira Sachs is making a Montgomery Clift biopic starring Matthew Bomer, and how I keep forgetting that it beyond the beyond me, it should always be right there at the front of my brain. Anyway it seems like it's slow going with the project so it's not my fault - there's just not much to report yet. But Ira Sachs posted a picture of Matty doing research in a library! Matt wearing glasses surrounded by books... uhh excuse me, I need a minu... uhhh... nevermind that was quick. (thanks Mac)

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--- The Bae In Beirut - Frat-boy abuser Jon Hamm has signed on to star in a movie called High Wire Act, which was written by Tony Gilroy (writer of a bunch of the Bourne movies and director of the great Michael Clayton) and to be directed by Brad Anderson (director of the great Session 9 and The Machinist). It's a thriller set in Beirut in the 1980s about a diplomat trying to rescue the dude who was responsible for the death of his family. Sounds morally complicated and super fun!
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--- Total Resistance - Wow this is quite the cast: a WWII assassination drama called HHHH just lined up Jason Clarke, Rosamund Pike, Mia Wasikowska, Jack O'Connell, and Jack Reynor to star. O'Connell and Reynor (and I can't believe they're making a movie together; I still kind of get them confused) are playing soldiers sent to kill the Nazi (played by Clarke) who came up with the "Final Solution." In others words, that's a character it will be easy to not like! Half of Clarke's work is done for him already. Pike is Clarke's wife, who introduced him to the Nazi ideology, and Wasikowska's a member of the Polish resistance. What about that title though? HHHH? I don't know about that.

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--- Holy Rollers - A couple of actors have joined the cast of Preacher, AMC's "holy man against desert devils" comic adaptation starring Dominic Cooper - Jamie Anne Allman from The Killing and Derek Wilson from Rectify will play husband and wife Civil War reenactors whose relationship of spousal abuse sucks Dominic in. Did I just say "suck Dominic in"? I did. Wait what? I don't know.
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We Three Films Of Disorient Argh

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Blue Jasmine -- Yeah it's basically A Streetcar Named Madoff, but did you ever expect a Woody Allen movie to vibrate on the same wavelength as Requiem For a Dream? That's the note it - specifically Cate Blanchett's shaky, devastating performance - left on my palette in the end, and I liked it. There's a frisson at work that's more interesting than anything Woody's done in awhile, even if I don't think it coheres on a fundamental level like say something more basic and assured like Vicki Christina Barcelona did - Cate's performance is something all its own, splitting the seams of what might have been something entirely else, in somebody else's hands. That's not to say she's the whole of everything - I'm a little bit sad that Sally Hawkins isn't going to get the credit she deserves for balancing this stormy ship as well as she does with a performance that's matching Blanchett's while existing in that whole other movie as well. She's dancing backwards in high heels, while Cate just levels the world.

The Grandmaster -- As is often the case with Wong Kar-wai's movies I feel like there's a whole universe that he's riffing on that exists just a smidge outside of my grasp - think 2046, a puzzle that only comes into semi-clarity if you're a diehard Wong fanatic. Here it's the Ip Man mythology that's leaving me in the dust, of which all I know is the briefest of basics. Oh we get the life-story here, at least its basics - how this singular man wrapped a cultural expression of balletic violence around his pinkie and turned it upon the world - but its all done up in the pretty pretty packages of eye-popping set-pieces that feel as if they'd have meant a little bit more to me if I felt the weight of Ip Man as a Cultural Force more than my most basic recognition allows. I marvel at the movement, the color, and the planes of Tony and Ziyi's faces, while still managing to feel just a little bit left out. The train just keeps leaving the station.

The Call -- A perfectly ridiculous thriller for ninety-seven percent of its run-time - that is to say, perfectly ridiculously enjoyable, in the way you can get wrapped up in this kind of mindless trash and have a lot of fun with it. It was probably a total hoot to see this in the theater, and be the sort of person who yells curse words at the people acting stupid on-screen. It's mostly relentless enough that you can set aside all of your qualms and just toss yourself into the situation - director Brad Anderson knows his way around a quickening of your heart rate. But what an infuriatingly moronic and offensive ending it has, as stressed-out and split-ended as Halle's Sideshow Bob hair-do, going twenty-five thousand steps too far and flushing all of my dumb fun down the drain in the process.

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I Am Link

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--- Jumping Johnson - Somebody took pictures of Aaron Johnson on the set of Godzilla wearing a full-body jumpsuit and they didn't get one good shot of his ass! What is this world coming too? I'll have to do some scouring of the web see if maybe there are other shots out there, this is unacceptable. You can see Bryan Cranston at the link too, though.

--- Ne'er Do Welles - Everybody run to Amazon right quick (or you know your local bookstore, if you live somewhere where that still exists) and snap up a copy of the new book about Orson Welles called My Lunches With Orson: Conversations Between Henry Jaglom and Orson Welles, it sounds amazing based off of this pair of quotes from it in which he talks about Katharine Hepburn and Grace Kelly being big whores (and the former being delighted with herself for it) and how he hated Woody Allen. Apparently Jaglom recorded their lunches and voila now they're in book form.

---  No High - Ryan Reynolds is never going to be Highlander - he just dropped out of the reboot. What the hell is up with him these days anyway? Seems like he took the Green Lantern thing hard. That RIPD movie looks godawful too. Anyway can you believe I've never seen the original Highlander movie? I oughta do that some time, I guess.

--- Rogue Skippers - Jude Law and Scoot McNairy are teaming up for an underwater adventure movie called Black Sea, about searching for sunken loot with a submarine - I love that Law's character's described as "a rogue skipper." I wanna be a rogue skipper!

--- Mo Poe - Brad Anderson is a director I love that I've been having a rough time with lately - I couldn't even go see his last movie that 911-operator-thriller The Call with Halle Berry because ugh no. But it was sort of a hit, I think? Anyway he's lining up his next film and it actually sounds promising this time, hooray! It's an adaptation of an Edgar Allen Poe story called Eliza Graves. His cast is full of maybe-maybe-notsomuch's like Jim Sturgess and Kate Beckinsale though, so we'll have to see.

--- Back Seat Driver - Patrick Wilson and Chris Pine are starring in Joe Carnahan's Stretch, about a down-on-his-luck limo driver (Wilson) chauffeuring a billionaire (Pine) around the criminal underworld, or whatever. Model turned "actress" Brooklyn Decker, who gets to sleep with Andy Roddick in real life, has just joined the cast, inevitably there to break up the Pine-Wilson sexual tension, damn her.

--- Zods & Ends - In my review of Man of Steel yesterday I took issue with the ending for not (just) being out of character but specifically for being lazy - they didn't earn it. Well The Playlist has a couple quotes from David Goyer, the screenwriter, and yup, it sounds just as lazy as I figured it was. He sounds so proud of what he came up with, too! It's gross. They also round up their "Best & Worst" of the movie but I think they give Nolan too much credit and Snyder too much blame, personally.

--- Future Bum - And if you're not at all sick of superheroes yet, be glad about that and hold on to it, otherwise you'll go insane - for example, two more Amazing Spider-Man movies have been announced and given release dates already, even though the second film isn't out until next year. I guess Andrew Garfield can go ahead and buy that villa, but he better keep doing his squats, too.

--- And finally, Greta Gerwig on Letterman last night. (thx Mac)
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I Am Link

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--- Henry of Steel - DH rounds up some quotes and pics from recent articles regarding Man of Steel, including Snyder and Cavill going on the defense, tone-wise, saying it might be dark but it's not dark-dark, or whatever. The pictures are where it's at - Henry Cavill in a soaking wet wife-beater and a full-on shot of the suit, front-wards? Yes please!
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--- Fiction Friends - The BBC catches up with Skyfall screenwriter John Logan, whose got a new play premiering in London called Peter and Alice, which is about the real-life meeting between the real-life inspirations for Alice and Wonderland and Peter Pan, starring Skyfall actors Judi Dench and Ben Whishaw. Sounds like a probable eventual movie to me, doesn't it? (thx Gus!)

--- Goody Lange - The third season of American Horror Story will be subtitled Coven, underscoring the promises of witchiness to come. I know it's going to be about New Orleans for the most part, and I know it's for "American" there in the title, but I'm keeping my hopes up that they'll be riffing on Suspiria-esque gialli anyway, just because I have to believe, I have to.

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--- Bloody Claws - It's such a simple thing, coating Hugh Jackman's Wolverine claws with blood, but it makes them seem about a thousand times realer than they usually do, doesn't it?

--- Stomp This - As a tease it's a doozy - the new image from Guillermo Del Toro's Pacific Rim gives us foot-print in the sand. Is it a giant Jesus? Stay tuned.

--- Toon Terrors - Over at Stale Popcorn Glenn's looking ahead at the very sorry looking state of animated movies in 2013 - I'm with him on the character design in The Croods; it's straight up uncanny valley. They freak me out. No like.
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--- Boffo Berry - If you're curious about this weekend's box office check it out over at The Film Experience - Nat's take is always my favorite take because of his weekly illustrations. He takes on Halle Berry this time - hopefully the success of her movie will lead o better things for its director Brad Anderson, we love him.

--- Super Friends - Also over at Nat's last week I heralded the re-arrival of Daniel Cudmore into the new X-Men movie - he played Colossus in the second and third X films, and he is a hot piece extraordinaire. (Check out the comments if you want to see somebody throw a bizarre anti-sex hissy fit about my post, too.) Relatedly, AICN tells us who two other new faces will be playing - I don't know of this Booboo person, seen to the right, I guess he was in the Twilight movies, but I approve.

--- Marshmallow Surprise - Hitfix caught up with Veronica Mars creator Rob Thomas on the experience of watching his Kickstarter campaign explode last week, and they talk about where things stand, budget-wise - whether he'll be getting help from Warner Brothers or not, that kind of thing. Sounds like there could be a behind-the-scenes doc, too!

--- And finally, there's a new Game of Thrones trailer! This can't get here quick enough.

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Mo Franco, Mo Problems

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It's here! At least in New York, and I think Los Angeles, that is. If it wasn't obvious from that mess of a picture above I speak of Harmony Korine's Spring Breakers, which is out today in limited release. I'm hoping to see it at some point but with Pam Grier every day and then Xavier Dolan's Laurence Anyways on Sunday I might not have time until next week. What are you guys gonna see? I wrote up all of the movies out today over at Celebrity Beehive, go read that, and then come tell me what you are seeing. Because I said so.

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I Am Link

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--- Turing's Tale - Benedict Cumberbatch is going to play Alan Turing, the mathematician turned code-breaker in WWII who should have been hailed as a war hero but instead got arrested for being gay, and was chemically castrated by the government. Two years later he killed himself with cyanide. So, you know, a happy story! Definitely one that's overdue being told, though.

 

--- Stripper Seconds - Matthew McConaughey says that he thinks a Magic Mike sequel is still in the works, but it might be a little while since Channing Tatum's taking off some time what with his wife being pregnant.Why do I feel like this movie won't happen? Please guys, prove me wrong.

--- Dead Wood - Looks as if Guillermo Del Toro's stop-motion Pinocchio is dead as a boy-donkey - the co-director tweeted that it doesn't seem to be the right time for the dark take on the material that they wanted to go for. It's always the right time for that, dumb Hollywood execs.

--- A Rim For Rian - Speaking of Del Toro, there are a couple new pictures from Pacific Rim over here, most enticingly of Charlie Hunnam in his weird tight cod-pieced robot outfit. I approve! So does director Rian Johnson, who says the movie will make us all pee our collective pants.

--- Hello Copter - Nifty movie nugget of the day - here's Stanley Kubrick's camera operator for The Shining talking about that shot at the start of the movie where you see the shadow of the helicopter, which has become a thing thanks to the weird spazzes who spazz over Kubrick so thoroughly.

--- Devil's Return - When The House of the Devil came out, star Jocelin Donahue sort of got ignored since we were all so busy falling in love with Greta Gerwig, but I thought she was great too, so I'm happy to hear she's joined the cast of the second Insidious movie - she's playing the young version of Barbara Hershey's character, so I guess we're getting some backstory.
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--- Hero's Lady - Revenge star Emily VanCamp has won the lead chick role in the Captain America sequel - because she isn't fortunate enough in real life to get to mash her face on Josh Bowman, now she gets to push herself up on Chris Evans as Cappy. Damn you, woman! Seriously though, I like her, so this will be nifty.
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--- This Is Crappy - That's it, I give the fuck up on Judd Apatow (as a director, at least - he can keep on producing stuff like Girls) - he wants to make a third film in his increasingly unbearable Knocked Up / This is 40 series, which would follow the daughters, aka his own two daughters, some years later. UGH times a million. He is so far up his own ass he doesn't even know it. I will not be seeing that movie.

--- Rock Chicks - Toni Collette and Broadway sensation Nina Arianda are starring in a comedy about a rock journalist (Collette) who is chasing down her musician ex-boyfriend (played by Thomas Haden Church) for a story. Arianda plays Toni's bff.

--- There For Brad - I've been so busy hating the trailer for The Call (that Halle Berry is a 911 operator movie) that I've totally missed the fact that it's directed by the super talented Brad Anderson - he made Session 9 and The Machinist. Ugh, it looks awful, and the trailer is the entire movie, but now I'll have to see it on DVD at least.

ETA Oh and you must read this lovely little piece on the movies of Wes Anderson from the writer Michael Chabon. It's wise to Wes and what makes him so tremendously special.

I Am Link

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--- Big Bald Bad Brad - There's a rumor going around that Bradley Cooper (otherwise known as BCoop) will be cameo-ing as Lex Luther in Zach Snyder's Man of Steel. From Gene Hackman to this, eh?

--- Speaking Of Brads - Brad Pitt's big zombie movie World War Z, based off of the solid book by Max Brooks, might turn out to be an entire trilogy, he says. I guess all those babies ain't paying for themselves.

--- Hot Nobbs - I wasn't planning on seeing Albert Nobbs any time soon - as I said yesterday, I have more pressing movies on my mind (so much more pressing that I forgot to even list Nobbs as I'd forgotten it existed). But I happened upon a screener randomly so whatever, right? I had to see if Joe Reid was right. God was he ever - it's odd to see something so simultaneously bizarre and boring, but Nobbs manages it. I don't even have anything to add, Joe said it all, read it at that link. Oh I will add this, I suppose:

--- Eleven Best - Nat's been plowing through his best of 2011 stuff at The Film Experience, and you can see his Top 10 Movies of the year right here. Of the movies I have seen that made his list, they are all fine choices. I'm dying to see A Separation. For the record, it's going to be a good long while before we here at MNPP get to the Pantys since I still have so much to see, plus time needs to cooperate.

--- X Marks The Spot - Glenn knows posters, so go read his best and worst posters of 2011 list at Stale Popcorn. His top two worst were decided the day they were released and cracked the world in half with their unbelievable awfulness.

--- Face Off - Because every single bugget of information I hear on Alfonso Cuarón next movie Gravity only serves to jolt me alive with insane amounts of anticipation for it, here's a tidbit via Slash - Sandra Bullock and George Clooney were shots without any make-up on, much to Sandy's horror.

--- Brad Number 3 - The Machinist and Session 9 director (and personal pet project, we love him) Brad Anderson has replaced Joel Schumacher on a movie called The Hive, which is described as a slasher slash thriller involving a 911 call-center and a girl being stalked by a killer.

--- Gooble Gobble - The ever spectacular Stacie Ponder posted a bunch of her awesome stick figure art-work at Final Girl, and I must share that I am the extremely proud owner of that beautiful card for Tod Browning's Freaks. Well my boyfriend is, but whatever, it's mine all mine!

--- Fincher's Fire - Before seeing David Fincher's movie I didn't totally expect to be so upset about the news that Sony appears to be hesitating on green-lighting the sequel The Girl Who Played With Fire due to less than thrilling box office, mostly because I hated the second Swedish film I guess? I don't know, I didn't really care before if Fincher made a second one. But now I've seen and very much enjoyed the first one, and am dismayed. I need more Rooney Mara's Lisbeth, not to mention more of Daniel Craig little black underpants dammit!

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Concrete For Christian

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Did anybody see those paparazzi pictures of Christian Bale at the airport the other day? Save some feathery hair, which he did just get off a plane so that can be forgiven, he almost seemed like his old attractive self, didn't he? He's been doing so much losing and gaining and losing and gaining weight for the past decade, and he's had so much questionable scruff for so long, I'd almost forgotten how good he could look. I mean, no I didn't, there's a permanent place, a very large place, inside my brain where Patrick Bateman lives. I'll never forget that. But Bale as a human being, I'd nearly given up on.

So that aside, here's some cool news! Bale is reuniting with his Machinist director, the very talented and very underrated Brad Anderson, for a movie called Concrete Island. The details via BD:

"Scott Kosar (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Crazies, Amityville Horror, The Machinist) will pen the screenplay that's described as a twisted adaptation of "Robinson Crusoe," where the story's protagonist, Robert Maitland, a wealthy architect, finds himself stranded in a manmade 'island' (a section of fenced-off wasteland in the middle of a motorway intersection) between the Westway and M4 Motorway in West London, forced to survive on only what is in his crashed Jaguar and what he is able to find."

I like the idea - walking around this giant city I live in I'm always thinking that the horror of isolating people in extremely crowded areas is an untapped reservoir. To find ways to put help so close and yet entirely out of reach of your protagonist is a great way to stir up audience anxiety.

So do you think they'll starve Christian down for this? How long is he gonna be trapped there? Long enough to fuck up his prettiness some more, no doubt.

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I Am Link

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--- Red Snappers - I watched about fifteen minutes of the Scream Awards last night and it happened to be the fifteen minutes where they showed the teaser trailer for Piranha 3DD, which you can watch here. Let me rephrase that - it happened to be the fifteen minutes where they showed the utterly ridiculously teaser trailer for Piranha 3DD. As if we'd want it any other way. I can't believe they're swiping the "machine gun leg" bit from Grindhouse! It's shameless, it's terrible, and I love it. Sad that the movie's now moved to an undisclosed date next year, though. Just release it this weekend, dammit!

--- And speaking of the Scream Awards, our pal Jarett hit the red carpet for the show and asked some stars what their favorite scary movies are and what their favorite Halloween costumes were, and got some great replies!

--- The Iceman Go-eth - James Franco's dropped one of his billion point five projects, this one being The Iceman, in which he would have played mafia contract killer Richard Kuklinski, who apparently killed over a hundred people. All i wanna know is, when does his blowjob movie come out? That's what I want. The blowjob one.

--- Bring It On, Brad - BD is right when they say it's nuts how little movie work we get out of director Brad Anderson - he does TV all the time (most notably a lot of episodes of Fringe), but he's only made six features in the past fourteen years. For such a talented genre film-maker, that's positively Malick-ish. More! We want more! Anyway he does have a couple projects lined up - he's currently filming Jack, with Sam Jackson and Liev Schreiber, and BD reports today that he's putting together a super secret horror project called Unsound, about which we know nothing, hence me saying it was "super secret."

--- Pulling Out Polanski - I only head over to Sunset Gun about once a month because Kim Morgan doesn't update it that often, so I'm always linking to things weeks after they've been posted, but they're always worth it. Especially when she talks about Roman Polanski, which she does often, when she does anything.

--- Matty Matters - If I want to take a moment to insert that picture of Matthew Bomer here and pretend there's more to the link where it came from than just a couple more pictures in the same vein, I think you'll forgive me. I mean, look at that picture. He terrifies me he's so pretty.

--- Staring At Charlize - It's always a celebration when we hear Charlize Theron's making another movie, because we just love her. She's picked up the remake to a Dutch thriller involving dead twin ghosts called Two Eyes Staring which showed at Fantastic Fest earlier this year. Yay for dead twin ghosts!

--- A Trip To The Alps - I won't be watching it - I wanna go into this movie as cold as possible - but Slash has the new trailer for Yorgos Lanthimos follow-up to Dogtooth called Alps, and also word that the movie's been picked up for American distribution sometime early next year. I want this shit bad.

--- Singleted Out - Channing Tatum has joined the cast of Moneyball director Bennett Miller's next movie, Foxcatcher, which already has Steve Carrell set to play convicted murderer, schizophrenic, and heir to the Du Pont fortune John du Pont. Tatum will be playing an Olympic champion wrestler who got shot and killed by him. No motive was apparently ever sussed out for the crime. Anyway, singlet please.

--- Loki Madness - It's everybody's favorite comic book character actor ever, much to Chris Evans' annoyance, Tom Hiddleston! Hooray! io9 sat down with Loki at Comic Con and got him to talk about The Avengers a bunch.

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Noriega's Last Stand

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When Arnold Schwarzenegger finished governating and began threatening to return to movie-making, I never anticipated having to give a shit. But then so much happened to prove me a fool! Like he hooked up with I Saw the Devil director Kim Jee-Woon for a thriller called The Last Stand that basically sounds like "High Noon with drugs," and then they cast Rodrigo Santoro, and then they cast Zach Gilford, and now they've cast Eduardo Noriega, and here I am on my third post about this movie!

I like Eduardo a lot, you might know him from Guillermo Del Toro's The Devil's Backbone, or Brad Anderson's Transsiberian, or Alejandro Amenábar's Open Your Eyes playing the part Tom Cruise fucked up in the remake Vanilla Sky. Or maybe you know him from the muy caliente Spanish thriller Burnt Money where he and co-star Leonardo Sbaraglia memorably can't keep their hands off each other.

Good god, this scene. Here's it in motion:

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Hottest scene ever. Anyway naturally now that I've thought about it I'll be holding out unnatural hopes for this to be recreated in this new film with Noriega and Rodrigo Santoro, and nothing less with sate my appetite! Okay Zach Gilford will do as an alternative. But that's it!

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I Am Link

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--- Devil's Vanishing - AICN has had a couple of interviews with MNPP-approved directors this week - here they chat with Ji-Woon Kim, the director of the upcoming excellent thriller I Saw the Devil (along with the film's pretty-boy star Byung-hun Lee, who got his own gratuitous post a lil' while back, and is seen flexing his impressive abs there to the right) and here they chat with Brad Anderson, whose Vanishing on 7th Street is out now.

--- Da Bane - Tom Hardy chatted a bit about his role in the next Batman movie on a UK talk-show and DH has got the clip.

--- Speaking of Bat Men - Rutger Hauer is going to play Van Helsing in Dario Argento's upcoming 3D Dracula movie.

--- The Dahmed - Arbo tells us about a very low budget take on Jeffrey Dahmer from 1993 called Jeffrey Dahmer: The Secret Life, that sounds like a curious beast.

--- The Rezzies - Joe Reid has begun his awardage for all things 2010 over at Low Resolution - so far we've seen his 30 favorite movie moments and his five favorite movie trailers. You know you're in good hands when equal loving's given to Michael Fassbender's ass-crack and the exquisite comic art of Rabbit Hole.

--- Big Boy - Hey look, you can already tell Hugh Jackman's beefing up for Wolverine duties just by looking at him, and then looking more, and then some more.

--- Boo You - Man I wish I had an iPhone so I could play this Paranormal Activity game, which uses the area you're in via Google Maps to surround you with hellholes and ghosts. Awesome!

--- The Look At Me Generation - That's a phrase Kim Morgan uses while taking a new look at Taxi Driver via it's 4K restoration over at Sunset Gun. And there's a shot from the film that she posts that's so astonishing I can hardly stand it. Future banner alert! I need to rewatch this movie.

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