Quote of the Day

"All my friends are always like, ‘What are you doing?!? Take ... a ... break.' But the roles are too good. I wouldn’t be able to deal with it if I didn’t say yes. I wouldn’t cope. I’d rather just go for it and do my best.”

When I was off-line yesterday a big chat with actress Anya Taylor-Joy popped up in the Los Angeles Times that I recommend checking out, and not only because the photos of her alongside are spectacular, clearly riffing off her upcoming role in Edgar Wright's new giallo Last Night in Soho (if you missed the trailer it's here). Anya speaks the above quote after the interviewer rattles off a list of her forthcoming projects, and if you were getting the chances she's getting you'd keep going to. She's got Soho, she's got Robert Eggers' Viking epic The Northman, she's got David O. Russell's new film and then she's got the Mad Max Fury Road prequel Furiosa which will have her playing a younger version of Charlize Theron's character! 

Oh and the big news out of this interview, and the entire reason I am doing this post -- I mean I do love Anya, but this is the shit worth sharing -- is that she's also listing Robert Eggers' long long delayed and thought-dead-by-me remake of Nosferatu as still in the works! Eggers has been talking about this since 2017, maybe even earlier -- I posted about it here at that time -- but in 2019 I saw him speak at an event for The Lighthouse and he made it sound as if Nosferatu was dead. So to speak. It sounds like there might be like in ye olde buzzard after all, and this makes me happy. I have come to be wholly convinced that Eggers could do pull off a new Nosferatu. That said everything that Anya has lined up for after Furiosa I am sticking a pin in, because we all know how that Fury Road shoot went! I mean the finished product was worth the struggle and insanity, but let's see how George Miller fares this time around -- that shoot could end up being ten years long for all we know.

Make It Huckabees Two

Y'all think I love famous people -- well wait til you get a load of the director David O. Russell. He's always been known for gathering up big casts of name actors -- he might not have had the clout with his first film Spanking the Monkey but what clout he had off of Spanking the Monkey's small success (and I remember that movie being pretty buzzy when it came out in 1994) he immediately threw into casting with his next flick, the road-trip comedy Flirting With Disaster...

... which starred Ben Stiller, Tea Leoni, Patricia Arquette, Alan Alda, Lily Tomlin, Mary Tyler Moore, George Segal, Richard Jenkins, and Josh Brolin. (Plus bonus points for Celia Weston, of course.) And his casts have only grown starrier from there, reaching probably their apex with American Hustle back in... 2013? Is that movie really seven years old? WTF.

This shot of Christian Bale on the set of the new David O. Russell movie is speaking to me in a language I don't understand pic.twitter.com/qVeHQUxtcM

— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) January 13, 2021

Anyway we might have thought that was the apex, but his new project is putting all of those movies to shame. We don't have a title, we don't know what it's about -- except it's based on "an original idea" from Russell himself -- but we just got nine new names added to the already insane cast in the past 24 hours so let's list off the people who're signing up to get berated on set by him. First we heard about Christian Bale, Margot Robbie, and John David Washington. That's already a big movie right there. Then a couple of days ago they added Rami Malek and Zoe Saldana. But then! Last night! Last night the cast added (deep breath) Robert De Niro, Mike Myers, Timothy Olyphant, Michael Shannon, Chris Rock, Anya Taylor-Joy, Andrea Riseborough, Matthias Schoenaerts, and Alessandro Nivola.

Russell has of course worked with a few of these people before -- Nivola and Bale and De Niro, of course -- but, I mean... did his casting people just come here to MNPP and start grabbing names after that? It's like that meme that says "We're gonna give the gays all that they want" but it's not "We're gonna give JA all that he wants." Olyphant, Riseborough, Shannon, Taylor-Joy and Schoenaerts in one place is literally breaking my brain. Literally. I would take a picture with my phone and show you my brain oozing out of my ears but my brain just oozed out of my ears and so I don't remember how to take pictures with my phone any longer. I am broken. Right, Andrea? 

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

Three Kings (1999)

Archie: What's the most important thing in life?
Troy: Respect.
Archie: Too dependent on other people.
Conrad: What, love?
Archie: A little Disneyland, isn't it?
Chief: God's will.
Archie: Close.
Troy: What is it then?
Archie: Necessity.
Troy: As in?
Archie: As in people do what is most
necessary to them at any given moment.

David O. Russell's Iraq War flick came out twenty years today, and I can't really say whether it stands the test of time or not or not as I haven't seen it in probably fifteen years? But I sure did like it at the time, and its themes of war profiteering seem awful smart upon reflection, and most importantly I think we can all agree that we're always blessed whenever Spike Jonze decides to act in front of the camera for us.

Have you seen Three Kings recently?

.

10 Off My Head - Siri Says 2004

.

After the long, long, long run of the New York Film Festival (though there are still a couple more reviews to come!) I'm trying to get myself back in step with the regularly scheduled blogging, and since we haven't had the time to do one of these in a few weeks I figured this would be a good step in the correct direction for that. In case you don't recall this is the series where I ask my phone to pick a number between 1 and 100 and then I choose my five favorite movies from the year that corresponds with that number. 

And well we've had a first -- this morning Siri picked the number 4. This is the first time we've had a number lower than 10 chosen, given me two choices from Cinema's History to choose from. But as badly as I'd love to choose from such hits as Nervy Nat Kisses the Bride and A Nigger in the Woodpile (yes these are real films, and no I haven't seen either of them) I'm going to go ahead and pick my favorite Movies of 2004 instead of 1904, cuz duh. And since it's such a recent year we're going to pick 10 movies instead of 5, cuz duh.

My 10 Favorite Movies of 2004

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

(dir. Michel Gondry)

-- released on March 19 2004 --

Birth

(dir. Jonathan Glazer)

-- released on October 29 2004)

Three... Extremes

 (dir. Fruit Chan, Takashi Miike, 

and Park Chan-wook)

-- released on August 20 2004 --

The Incredibles

(dir. Brad Bird)

-- released on November 5 2004 --

Shaun of the Dead

(dir. Edgar Wright)

-- released on September 24 2004 --

Enduring Love

(dir. Roger Michell)

-- released on November 26 2004 --

Bad Education

(dir. Pedro Almodovar)

 -- released on February 11 2004 --

Mean Girls

(dir. Mark Waters)

-- released on April 30 2004)

I Heart Huckabees

(dir. David O. Russell)

-- released on October 22 2004 --

Mysterious Skin

(dir. Gregg Araki)

-- released on June 24 -- 

-----------------------------------

Runners-up: Palindromes (dir. Todd Solondz), Primer (dir. Shane Carruth), Tarnation (dir.  Jonathan Caouette ), Dead Birds (dir. Alex Turner), Sideways (dir. Alexander Payne), Kill Bill 2 (dir. Quentin Tarantino), 13 Going on 30 (dir. Gary Winick)...
.

... The House of Flying Daggers (dir. Zhang Yimou), Team America: World Police (dir. Trey Parker), Dawn of the Dead (dir. Zack Snyder), Kinsey (dir. Bill Condon), Spider-man 2 (dir. Sam Raimi), Undertow (dir. David Gordon Green)

What are your favorite movies of 2004?

.

I Am Link

.

--- The Shadows Know - Last thing we'd heard about about the long-shuffled-about Crow reboot it was going to star Jack Huston in the lead (yawn) and Andrea Riseborough as the bad guy (yes!) and be directed by Colin Hardy, whose horror film The Hallow was actually pretty terrific. Hardy is still attached here a full year later but rumors are rumbling that the film will now star Jason Momoa, who recently posted a picture of himself with the director on his Instagram. (Yup, right next to all the usual shirtless pics, of course.) I can't decide if that's a good or a bad idea. Momoa's awfully bulky for the Crow, who I picture lithe.

--- Everybody's in Crisis - Woody Allen's series for Amazon now has a name, Crisis in Six Scenes, and a premiere date -- set aside the weekend of September 30th cuz that's what you'll be watching. The six-episode half-hour series stars, amongst many, Woody himself and Miley Cyrus. Now there's a duo. It's set in the "turbulent" 60s and it's about, and I quote, "a middle-class suburban family [who] is visited by a guest who turns their household completely upside down."

--- And Speaking of "I can't believe we live in an age where these people are making television shows," didja hear yesterday that David O. Russell is planning on making a series that will star Robert De Niro & Julianne Moore? Yeah, that's something. Info's sparse but Deadline says it is "a crime/cop thriller that might be set in the 1990s." No network's signed on yet but with a pedigree like that...

--- Machete Mixer - The remake of The Crazies is actually not bad, thanks to good performances by Timothy Olyphant and Joe Anderson, so the news that its director Breck Eisner has just signed on to make the new new Friday the 13th movie could be good news for that series? Of course that's if you ignore the fact that since The Crazies Eisner went on to direct Sahara and The Last Witch Hunter, which involves... a whole lot of effort, that much ignoring. But hey it's Jason Voorhees, how can you mess that up... hahaha, right.

--- The Real Horror - Yes Dario Argento gave an interview where he said he doesn't think that Luca Guadagnino should bother remaking his film Suspiria, but honestly at this point, after a couple straight decades of directing absolute garbage, I maybe kind of don't care what Dario Argento has to say? Believe me, I cherish many many films from the man. But I don't trust him or his opinions about movie-making anymore. Giallo and Dracula 3D were so bad I think he might have dementia, honestly.

--- Ridley Me This - I was just now rifling through the notes I make myself for these posts over the course of a week or so and stumbled upon this story and gasped - I'd totally forgotten that it was announced on Friday that Star Wars star Daisy Ridley had signed on to star in the movie version of the Chaos Walking books! Click here to see our previous posts on the series - we're big fans of Patrick Ness' YA trilogy. But it doesn't look like Charlie Kaufman is attached anymore, which had us pretty thrilled - instead Jamie Linden, the writer of Dear John and Money Monster, must exist in Charlie's massive shadow and given his previouslies I am not sure he can handle it. On the positive side Doug Liman is supposed to direct it, and we will always hold out hope for another Go from Doug.

--- But Speaking of screenwriter trade-offs, this one's much less questionable - Sarah Polley is no longer writing the new Little Women movie, which is sad, but you know who is writing it now? Greta effing Gerwig! I can't possibly be upset about that, no matter how much I love Sarah Polley. This is like a lateral move, equally awesome, I think. (thx Mac)

--- And Finally I haven't watched the teaser trailer for Denis Villeneuve's new film Arrival, starring Amy Adams - should I? You can watch it right below. I will obviously see this movie so I'm not sure I should bother with watching a trailer, but if I'm missing something gooseflesh-inducing maybe I will - I did hear whispers of such. A couple of images from the movie were also posted at The Film Experience, with word on who's who and what's what.
.
.

Today's Fanboy Delusion

Today I'd rather be...

... cavorting with Krasinski.

We have got a mystery project on our hands! Today JJ shares these pictures from the Malibu set of what-nobody-knows, but David O. Russell appears to be directing it and besides Wet John Krasinski there's Allison Williams, Sacha Baron Cohen, and Jack Huston (I don't recognize the two black actors) on the scene splashing about. I'm tending towards thinking it's not a feature-length something but who knows - that's quite the team. Any guesses? Til then hit the jump for fourteen more shots of Wet White Shirted Krasinski...

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

I Heart Huckabees (2004)

Caterine Vauban: The woods are hopeless. Don't waste your time, they will be destroyed. So will the marsh. It is a losing game mankind has played for more than a century. Sadness is what you are, do not deny it. The universe is a lonely place, a painful place. This is what we can share between us, period. 

Happy 63 to la myth la legend La Huppert!

.

Edgar Ramirez One Time

.

Who's planning on seeing Joy this week?

Or what about Point Break?

Dude's having a big Christmas, apprently.

(That's not the only big thing dude's having.)
(Or Bradley Cooper's having, either.)

.

And Edgar Ramirez, And Isabella Rossellini, And

.

The new trailer for David O. Russell's cinematic wet-willy for Jennifer Lawrence called Joy has been released and I am annoyed that the only people that get their names in the trailer are Jen, Robert De Niro, and Bradley Cooper -- especially since I'm pretty sure the latter is supposed to be a microscopic role. What about Edgar Ramirez, who plays JLaw's husband and is all over the trailer looking lush-lipped and lovely?

And don't even get e started on Isabella Rossellini, who looks glorious. I know this movie's supposed to be more of a star vehicle than Russell's last several but we all go to his movies for the supporting performances, come on now. Here's the trailer anyway:

.

.

The movie's out at Christmas. I don't think anybody has seen it yet, have they? I haven't loved one of his movies since I Heart Huckabees (The Fighter's very good but I don't love it) so I'm kinda defeatist towards this flick but maybe he'll swing back towards his old self. At least I'll have Edgar to stare at.

Today's Fanboy Delusion

Today I'd rather be...

... taking a meeting with Jake Gyllenhaal.

Guess who watched the long lost David O. Russell film Nailed last night? Nobody, that's who. Because it's not called Nailed anymore, it's called Accidental Love now, and it's "directed" by "Stephen Greene." So guess who watched Stephen Greene's film Accidental Love last night? This dude!

And I really expected more of a disaster. I mean it's not really good - tonally it's walking a tight-rope that's not there, like that split second after the split second the coyote walks off the cliff and hovers in the air - it's the moment when the coyote is straight up falling. Nothing comes together correctly. And it's hard to really hold it against anybody because of what a clusterfuck the shoot was and in its current state who knows what they even had to work with, or who was working with what there was to work with in order to get this franken-movie out. So really it's best to just watch it for bits, and the wonder of what could've been. 

And there are charming little bits! Maybe I was colored a bit by the touching tribute he was given during the SNL 40th anniversary special this weekend but Tracy Morgan was especially a joy to behold - the zaniness the movie was working very very hard for just comes effortlessly to him. Jessica Biel's role is a thankless mess, all over the map for a gag, but she and Jake have a sweet chemistry. And Jake is there! That's a plus no matter what. Okay so it never really amounts to a "movie" so much, and you should temper your expectations. But it's perfect for playing in the background while you're doing your taxes, is what I'm saying. I speak from experience.

Jake Gyllenhaal Is A Man, Like Other Men

.

I've had a copy of David O. Russell's Nailed - excuse me, Stephen Greene's Accidental Love - all week but I just haven't gotten a chance to watch it yet; I've been waiting six years, what's a couple extra days? It will most assuredly be viewed this weekend, no worries. Anyway since I've been behind somebody beat me to capping the Gyllenhaal shirtlessness therein, click here for it (thanks Mac) - it appears to stay contained to the caveman-ish scene we'd already seen some pictures from (click here for those), but at least now we know that James Marsden is there in his uniform too.

That helps out the fantasy some. Enriches it. Anyway if any of you have watched Accidental Love yet, lemme know what you thought. I am curious! But wait, there is other Jake news! That drug dealer movie called The Man Who made It Snow that Jake wants to make with Antoine Fuqua (we told you about it previously right here) just got picked up by The Weinsteins, so it'll presumably be Jake's next project. He just worked with Fuqua on the boxing movie Southpaw (see pictures of Jake's shredded boxer's form here and here). TMWMIS is an adaptation of a book by Max Mermelstein (that's a name and a half) about that time he turned his small cocaine business into a massive Colombian operation.

.

Jake Makes Love

.

As if I needed more to do today (I have so much to get done today, and some of it's even also Jake related, which you know if you follow me on Instagram) we've got this must-post-immediately news (via, thanks Mac) that David O. Russell's looooong-thought-lost-dead-and-gone movie Nailed is resurrected from the grave - it's got a trailer, it's got a new name, IMDb has a poster; hell it's even got a release date! (Oh and it's got James Marsden in a trooper uniform, but we're getting to that.) The movie's now called Accidental Love (yeah that's terrible) and it'll be out on VOD on February 10th, just in time for Valentines. Here's that trailer:

.

.
I fear this thing might be tragic, what with David O. Russell washing his hands clean of it, but clearly after years and years of crowing I'll be seeing it the second I can see it. Look how young Jake looks!

Given the film was actually filmed six years ago (!!!) I suppose that makes sense, but it does put into contrast how much losing that weight for Nightcrawler aged him. Anyway I said I'd speak of James Marsden in a cop uniform, and that we shall -- hit the jump for a bunch of caps of him making me wish he was pushing his breathalyzer down my throat...

I'll Take One Of Those

.

Not to take anything away from Edgar Ramirez's actual formidable acting talents, but I feel like if I was as big a star as Jennifer Lawrence is it'd be written in my contract that unto me would be delivered an album of all the most attractive men in the acting profession and I would flip through said album one night while drinking I dunno champagne and/or a box of wine (Do they make boxes of champagne? Then that.) and pick whoever the hell I fancied most and voila, hired. That's how I like to picture Edgar Ramirez just came to get the gig as her husband in David O. Russell's next movie anyway. I mean listen he was astonishing in Carlos, so clearly talent is important here. But don't take my silly little JLaw fantasy away from me. It's making me laugh and I need a laugh today.

.

Naling Down Nailed

.

It seems like every six months we get a flare-up of speculation about David O. Russell's "lost" film Nailed, which never got finished once financing collapsed - what did get filmed starred Jessica Biel as a lady who gets a nail shot into her head and then goes off on a journey of sexy self-discovery with Jake Gyllenhaal, and politics were involved or something. Also Jake in a loincloth? And James Marsden in a cop uniform? I don't know. Anyway it was the scene where the nail gets shot into her head that never got filmed and seeing as how the film kind of, you know, hinges on that moment, and also that Russell himself had long since disavowed the project, it seemed dead as a you know. 

But wait! Hark, what is this? Apparently notsomuch. Screen Daily is reporting that a company has snapped up what there is and is going to release it in the UK under the title The Politics of Love (ugh awful title) next year. Some dude put together a cut of it - I guess they found a way around the pivotal moment. Maybe they animated it South-Park-style. God I hope so, I wanna see sudden cut-outs acting out a scene in the middle of an otherwise normal movie. Anyway since we live in a global society now, if it plays in the UK, we will get it soon enough, one way or another, and I am so down with that.

.

How Many Gyllenhaals In A Gyllenhaal

.

Yeah I'm talking about that movie again. Denis Villeneuve's Enemy has been out on DVD for a couple of weeks now and it is safe to say at this halfway point in 2014 my favorite movie of the year, so far. So to set all of those factoids into stone we're doing this week's "Beauty Vs Beast" for the film over at The Film Experience. Head over there to vote! And in other Gyllen-news...

... look it's a new behind-the-scenes picture from David O. Russell's lost film Nailed! (via) Besides Jake you can see James Marsden - IN A FUCKING COP UNIFORM, NO LESS - in the background. The more little trickles of stuff we get from this movie the more I hope a deluge is possible, and we'll actually get it released. Everybody build a little Jake voodoo doll and pray to the devil or whatever it takes! I'm telling you people to sell your souls for this, alright? Alright.
.

This Post is For You, Spike Jonze

.

I guess there's more to the Oscars that I want to talk about then I expected - namely, and I can't believe this skipped my mind earlier, that the most adorable director in all of the land Spike Jonze won a statue! Hooray! Look at that look he gives the camera at the end, with the head nod - that is pure unadulterated sex, delivered straight into my bloodstream. It's making me lightheaded even now. Also making me light-headed...

... apparently Spike has an Instagram account. I can't even believe I didn't know this. And he posted that shirtless picture a couple of weeks ago asking, "Who wore it better?" Does anybody know who the other dude is? Anyway since he asked...

.

poll by twiigs.com

.

Don't let me down, people. Anyway back to the Oscars - obviously Spike made the rounds last night and there were cameras and he was kissing everybody...

... he could get his lips on so after the jump,

  a gallery of Spike Jonze being adorable at the Oscars.