Each Man Kills The Thing He Loves

I have been so sidetracked with Tribeca I haven't had the chance to all-hands-on-deck everyone that yesterday was the day that Rainer Wener Fassbinder's final and gayest film Querelle hit the Criterion Collection! Yes, the one with the turned-out-to-be-controversial cover that seemed to be either love it or hate it (I actually fell somewhere down the middle myself -- I will always prefer any movie's original art, but given the fact that this movie's best original art is semi-pornographic I understand the change, and I don't loathe the new art.) If you haven't already pick up a copy right here. And if you've never seen Querelle before... my god, you're in for something. The movie is so dreamy and bizarre, languorous and sexy and hyponotically strange. It is a definite mood. A definitive gay text. It's a lot of things and you need to discover them all for yourselves ASAP! I've posted about this movie one billion times previously but I have been so busy with Tribeca I haven't been able to watch my copy of the new blu yet. But hopefully, once it calms down this weekend, I will make time for the magic, the wonder....

Happy Pride From Criterion!

June is Pride Month and Criterion is hitting a home run right off the bat with their June 2024 slate of announcements -- Rainer Werner Fassbinder's final film Querelle, a surreal Jean Genet adaptation starring a sizzling hot Brad Davis that has been a real pain in the ass to get for years (out of print et cetera) is entering the collection on June 11th! We've posted a million and one times about this movie here at MNPP, it's been one of our faves since it was first introduced to us in a college class on queer cinema -- I'm a little sad they're not releasing it in 4K (just regular blu) but I will not complain! It will just be nice to replace my ancient DVD! But that's not the only gay goodness they've got in store for the month...

... as they're also dropping the Wachowski's 1996 lesbian noir masterpiece Bound! And this one IS getting the 4K treatment! If you've never seen Bound before... well don't even wait for the June 18th release date. Watch Bound tonight! You will not be disappointed. It remains my favorite Wachowski movie, and it was their first! But the hits don't stop there...

... as they've also slated Barry Jenkins seriously underappreciated 2021 masterpiece of a miniseries The Underground Railroad. I guess because the world felt like it was falling apart (not that that feeling has stopped) when this was airing it really felt like it didn't get enough attention at the time -- maybe it was also the fact that it was on Amazon Prime and lord knows the black hole that is streaming does the legacy of art no favors. But this is the best thing Jenkins has done to date and I say that as a person who felt Moonlight deserved Best Picture. Just an astonishing accomplishment, not to be missed. 

The rest of their June slate ain't no slouch -- David Lynch's 1986 masterpiece Blue Velvet is getting the 4K upgrade for one. This is probably my favorite Lynch movie? It's nigh impossible to choose given his filmography but it's the one I keep coming back to the most often anyway. And I cannot wait to see how it looks in 4K. Also getting a 4K upgrade is Terry Gilliam's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. And then there's the one movie of the June bunch I am unfamliar with -- Emilio Fernandez's 1951 film Victims of Sin, which sounds like a Mexican noir melodrama? I'm in. Once I finish watching Querelle for the 50,000th time anyway...

Going Gay All of a Sudden

I feel like me telling anyone who visits this site that there are a giant pile of queer movies on the Criterion Channel right now is pointless -- anybody coming to this site already knows this. But maybe I am incorrect -- it's not like that's uncommon! -- and so I tell you, here and now, whether you know this already or not, there is a giant pile of queer movies on the Criterion Channel right now. This link here is a good place to start (Teorema and Cruising and Poison, oh my!) but they've also got a collection of Jeffrey Friedman and Rob Epstein's films (including their wildly moving and effective doc on Harvey Milk) and a collection of Dirk Bogarde films (Fassbinder's Despair anybody?) and a collection of films directed by Mitchell Leisen (on that note I really recommend this piece on him at The Film Experience)... actually you know what, they have a page on their site for this, right here. I don't have to link to these separately. Everything from Wong Kar-wai's Happy Together to Gregg Araki's The Living End to James Bidgood's Pink Narcissus, to Maurice to BPM to Fox and His Friends and Querelle to Weekend to Mishima; really I would be living on the Criterion Channel right now if it wasn't for Tribeca happening. 

Rainer Werner Fassbinder died on this day in 1982 pic.twitter.com/UTTui1jokf

— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) June 10, 2021

Speaking of Tribeca, though -- please do stay tuned for my first sputtering bits of coverage of that Film Fest, now ongoing, which should go up online starting at some point in the next couple of days. Yes perhaps even over the weekend, even though I don't normally write on the weekends. And it's a three-day Summer Weekend for me, at that! Wild and crazy stuff! Yeah we'll see how it goes. But it'll mostly at The Film Experience and Pajiba, although I'll try to remember to link to all of it from here too. Bye!

A sailor's life for me... pic.twitter.com/JakKXH52e1

— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) June 10, 2021

Pics of the Day

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So there was a massive online sale at a movie poster shop last week and I just got in my order and this is just PART of the ridiculous amazingness I got for PENNIES I tell you PENNIES — these are THEY SHOOT HORSES DON’T THEY, LOOKING FOR MR. GOODBAR, SLUGS, POLYESTER, VERONIKA VOSS, LABYRINTH OF PASSION, MY BEAUTIFUL LAUNDRETTE, QUERELLE, THE STEPFORD WIVES, and WELCOME TO THE DOLLHOUSE #movieposter #film #theyshoothorsesdontthey #welcometothedollhouse #polyester #almodovar #labyrinthofpassion #johnwaters #lookingformrgoodbar #slugs, #fassbinder #veronikavoss #querelle #thestepfordwives

A post shared by Jason Adams (@jasonaadams) on Aug 2, 2020 at 10:18am PDT

Heads-up if you're Movie Poster Inclined -- and I have a feeling many of my readers are thus -- that the Westgate Gallery in Los Angeles has been having a massive online sale on their inventory for the past couple of weeks and, as seen above, I recommend it! I probably should have done this post last week but who the hell can remember what's happening from minute to minute anymore. Anyway seen above are ten of the fourteen posters I got for dirt cheap -- actually the Querelle poster is an outlier because I got that off of eBay but I wanted to photograph it too because, you know, Brad Davis bein' gay. Anyway those posters are for some of my favorite movies of all time and my life is richer and more luxurious now is my point. I am basically the movie nerd version of Alexis Carrington.

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Good Morning, World

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How crazy is it to think that Brad Davis would be turning 70 today if he hadn't died of AIDS way back in 1991? I don't know what sort of career he would've had if he'd survived because the "what if"'s start telescoping outwards -- if he hadn't gotten AIDS would he have gotten better work through the 1980s when he was still working? But would he have done the roles that we remember him -- Alan Parker's Midnight Express seen here and Querelle with Fassbinder, obviously -- if his career and interests had been less risky from the start? He made a lot of garbage, a lot of garbage that I've never seen, but we remember him now for those risks he did make. It all goes hand in hand. Anyway I've obviously given the infamous gay scene in Midnight Express attention before but thanks to technology (science!) I can make better gifs now than ever before so... I did exactly that, hit the jump for them...

We'll Be Saying Goodbye To Fassbinder Forever

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It's a sad day today as we mark the 37th anniversary of Rainer Werner Fassbinder's death -- he's now been dead as long as he was alive. Still the man created so much in his 37 years of life that we've hardly exhausted it all in his 37 years of death, and I doubt we ever will. Over at The Film Experience today I'm using his final film, the kaleidoscopicalllly queer Querelle, for this week's edition of "Beauty vs Beast" so click on over to vote. And after you do that I recommend you skim through our Querelle archives because hot damn we have posted a lot on this film over the years...

Great Moments In Movie Staches

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Proving anew that TCM is the best TV channel there is out of all the TV channels (at least until there's an "All Jake Gyllenhaal's Nude Scenes All The Time" network aka AJGNSATTTV, I suppose) TCM ran Rainer Werner Fassbinder's final hothouse of a film Querelle on Sunday night, meaning an insomniac grandmother in the suburbs of Spokane might've been switching between Lifetime and Rachel Ray reruns and stumbled upon Brad Davis getting plowed beside a preening Cockatoo. What a wonderful world!

Even though I've got the movie on DVD I recorded the airing because let's give TCM them numbers (I have no idea if they keep track of DVR recordings to be honest, but let's pretend they do) and watched the movie for the dozenth time last night. (See my two absolutely riveting tweets on the subject right here.) And now we're all caught up and can get to the mustaches!

I'd forgotten that a mustache is an integral plot point! It's a pointedly complicated plot about doubling but basically Querelle (Brad Davis) is sort of framing his brother Robert (Laurent Malet) for a murder he committed, so he gets his "good friend" Gil (Hanno Pöschl) to dress up like him to go and try to murder the one person who knows Querelle is guilty, Lieutenant Seblon (Franco Nero).

(Speaking of mustaches.) Of course Querelle can't be trusted and it's all a ruse but nobody cares because he's Brad Fucking Davis and they all want to put their dicks in him or vice versa, and so they all happily get murdered or commit murder or cover up murder for him. Hey, I get it!

Anyway Gil comes back from trying to kill for Querelle and Querelle sees him standing there looking just like his brother and he can't keep his hands off of him -- he finally feels love, or what he thinks of as love, in the arms of his brother's mustachioed doppelgänger. As one does.

That's the brother, in case you're having trouble keeping track. Anyway the kissing scene between Querelle and Gil mirrors perfectly with the first time Querelle sees his brother at the brothel at the start of the film -- a moment where they hold each other close while gut punching in mechanical dance-like motions - it's like West Side Story, but miraculously even gayer.

The dedication seen there in text over the shot references Fassbinder's "friendship" with El Hedi ben Salem, his lover and a frequent actor in his films (he's the leading man in Ali Fear Eats the Soul) -- Salem went to prison in 1977 for stabbing three people after he and RWF had broken up; he hung himself in his cell, but Fassbinder didn't hear of his death until the time he was making Querelle in 1982. And of course Fassbinder himself would be dead from drugs before the film came out.

All of this sadness and death hangs over Querelle like a toxic orange cloud of course, but I still maintain it's one of his funniest movies, turning the knob up on no-homo posturing to eleven, twelve, snapping the goddamned thing right off. It's a candy-colored fairy dance where everybody's in on the joke, play-acting butch extremes with their legs in the air at a moment's notice. Peel that mustache off your face, handsome, so I can say I love you and be the top I was always meant to be at last.

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

Querelle (1982)

Lysiane: Your prick has more character.

For some reason it's been really important to me to mark this here the 69th birthday (or what would have been the 69th birthday) of the actor Brad Davis. So important I put "Brad Davis' 69th Birthday" into my calendar several years ago. I didn't put his 68th birthday, I didn't put his 70th. 

But at some point I saw fit to write down that today, November 6th 2018, would have been his 69th. I wonder what I could have been thinking about at that moment? I guess we'll never know...

Anyway as you can see I seem to have stumbled upon some Querelle photographs that I've never posted before, which is really a feat given how much I have previously posted from this film, so let'e hit the jump to ogle the Genetian goodness...

Which is Hotter?

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This is kind of a crazy bit of trivia but Terrence Malick's film Days of Heaven and Alan Parker's film Midnight Express were both released on October 6th 1978, making them both 40 years old tomorrow. What a fine day at the cinema that would have been! Heaven of course stars a height-of-beauty Richard Gere (see a bunch of pictures here) while Express captures a peak Brad Davis (see many more here) -- another random factoid is that Gere turned down Midnight Express, so among the many things we have to thank Richard Gere for we have him to thank for Brad Davis making out with a guy in a prison shower.

Anyway this is about as tough a choice as I've ever forced upon us, these are two of my top fantasy fellas ever put on-screen, but we gotta do what we gotta do...

survey service

5 Off My Head: Siri Says 1978

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It's Tuesday and you know what that means - yes, that we will See You Next Tuesday, but before then let's go ahead and do what we do each week on this day (as long as we're being productive) and hit up our "Siri Says" series. If you're new here's what is happening - we ask the voice that lives inside of our telephone to give us a number between 1 and 100, and then we pick our 5 favorite movies form the year that corresponds with that number. So today she gave us the number "78" and so today we will pick our favorite movies from The Movies of 1978. And a fun time will be had by all!

I managed to come up with my five favorites from this year pretty easily - they're probably exactly what you think they would be if you've spent more than five minutes here at MNPP - but what surprised me, looking through this year's films, was how many 1978 movies I have heard good things about but never seen. So that portion of our list below is longer than normal, and I guess I have some work to do. Until then, let's see what we have here...

My 5 Favorite Movies of 1978

Eyes of Laura Mars

(dir. Irvin Kershner)

-- released on August 2nd, 1978 --

Halloween

(dir. John Carpenter)

-- released on October 27th, 1978 --

Invasion of the Body Snatchers

(dir. Phillip Kaufman)

-- released on December 22nd, 1978 --
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Dawn of the Dead

(dir. George A Romero)

-- released on September 1st, 1978 --

Midnight Express

(dir. Alan Parker)

-- released on October 6th, 1978 --

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Runners-up: The Deer Hunter (dir. Cimino), The Fury (dir. De Palma), Watership Down (dir. Martin Rosen), Heaven Can Wait (dir. Beatty), The Swarm (dir. Irwin Allen)...

... Superman (dir. Donner), The Boys From Brazil (dir. Franklin J. Schaffner), Autumn Sonata (dir. Bergman), A Wedding (dir. Altman), Moment By Moment (dir. Jane Wagner), Long Weekend (dir. Colin Eggleston), Piranha (dir. Joe Dante)

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Never Seen: An Unmarried Woman (dir. Paul Mazursky), Up In Smoke (dir. Lou Adler), California Suite (dir. Herbert Ross), Ice Castles (dir. Wrye), La Cage Aux Folles (dir. Molinaro)...

... The Driver (dir. Hill), Magic (dir. Attenborough), Killer of Sheep (dir. Charles Burnett), Death on the Nile (dir. Guillermin), Harper Valley PTA (dir. Bennett), Coming Home (dir. Hal Ashby)

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What are your favorite movies of 1978?

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Good Morning, World

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The great and terribly troubled Brad Davis would have turned 68 years old today if we hadn't lost him in 1991 to AIDS. Do you guys think he would've had much more of a career if he hadn't died? It's hard to tell how much we romanticize him for dying young and how much his career crapped out because of his bad habits - what if he got clean? Would he have gotten out of the TV Movie Dungeon he'd found himself in? He'd taken such a big risk making Querelle in 1982 - any older readers know how that was taken at the time? Anyway it still feels all these years later like there was a lot we missed out on with Brad. Click back through our Brad Davis Archives for lots and lots of previously posted stuff. And, uh, good morning! (Kind of a downbeat note to start a week on, I guess.)
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How I'll Always Remember Jeanne Moreau

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"Each man kills the thing he loves... 

each man kills the thing he loves... 

da da da,.. da da da, da da."

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RIP Jeanne.
How will you remember her?

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Who Wore It Best?

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I'm confused by my costume today #setlife #jumanji

A photo posted by Bobby (@bobby_cannavale) on Nov 28, 2016 at 4:58am PST

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Don't ask me why Bobby Cannavale is being outfitted like a Querelle extra for the new Jumanji movie of all things, but there's the proof of it. What a world. And so obviously the question begs itself...

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5 Off My Head: Siri Says 1982

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Welcome to our weekly (or whenever the hell I feel like doing it) series called "Siri Says When" -- last week when I asked Siri to pick a number between 1 and 100 she gave me 80 - today she gave me 82. And truth be told I'm kind of glad that Siri has stuck me in the early 1980s just now because this stuff is comfort food - I was a little kid and blissfully unaware that we had a horrible president, and I would like to pretend now, even if only for a few moments, that I am blissfully unaware of what a horrible president we're about to have. 

Of course now that I've gone and made my choices from the movies of 1982 they're mostly all dark adult films (save one) that would've terrified me as a kid (I mean, two Fassbinders!) so even I can't stick to my escapist principles for very long. Oh well. The heart wants what it wants and apparently what my heart wants is to churn and ache and bleed. Happy thoughts!

My 5 Favorite Movies of 1982

Querelle

(dir. Rainer Werner Fassbinder)

-- released on August 31st 1982 -- 

The Thing

(dir. John Carpenter)

-- released on June 25th 1982 -- 

Fitzcarraldo 

(dir. Werner Herzog)

-- released on October 10th 1982 -- 

Poltergeist 

(dir. Tobe Hooper)

-- released on June 4th 1982 -- 

Veronika Voss

(dir. Rainer Werner Fassbinder)

-- released on May 13th 1982 --

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Runners-up: One From the Heart (dir. Francis Ford Coppola), Tenebre (dir. Dario Argento), The Year of Living Dangerously (dir. Peter Weir), Q: The Winged Serpent (dir. Larry Cohen), Blade Runner (dir. Ridley Scott), Tootsie (dir. Sidney Pollack), Halloween III: Season of the Witch (dir. Tommy Lee Wallace)...

... Creepshow (dir. George Romero), Basket Case (dir. Frank Henenlotter), Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean  (dir. Robert Altman), Fanny & Alexander  (dir. Ingmar Bergman), Slumber Party Massacre (dir. Amy Holden Jones), E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (dir. Steven Spielberg)

Never Seen: Burden of Dreams (dir. Les Blank), Diner (dir. Barry Levinson), Liquid Sky (dir. Slava Tsukerman), Frances (dir. Graeme Clifford),  Koyaanisqatsi (dir. Godfrey Reggio)

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What are your favorite movies of 1982?
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