Who Wore It Best?

(click to embiggen) Not perfectly identical outfits (it's not like they're wearing that mesh shirt everybody's been wearing recently) but close enough -- the fact that it's the 33rd birthday for both Joe Keery and Jack Quiad today is what really sealed the deal. See-thru shirts showing off the chest fur are always welcome after all...

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I've Made My Bed, I'll Die In It

It seems besides the point to point out that The Substance is using a sledgehammer to deliver its messages about our culture, its impossible beauty standards, and the fucking nightmare it is just trying to go through a day in 2024 without wanting to tear your own face off in the mirror. Because what else could it use? Our culture is a sledgehammer itself -- The Substance is just meeting it on its own obscene terms. Writer-director Coralie Fargeat's second feature -- following the terrific blood-soaked rape-revenge movie Revenge from 2017 -- is as subtle as a beauty queen slamming into the pavement from fifty stories up, and that is its best asset. (And typing that just now strikes me that Fargeat would be the perfect choice to finally adapt Chuck Palahniuk's book Invisible Monsters -- oh my god we need that to happen. Although it might be a little close to The Substance for it to be her next movie. Next after next, then.)

I'd often wondered how the Whatever Happened To Baby Jane? horror sub-genre of Grand Dame Guignol could be updated to our current age where a lot of people at a certain point simply don't age anymore -- they just freeze in place. Wonder no more -- Fargeat found the way, the sweet spot through where Dorian Gray meets The Swan by way of Society. The latter influence seems especially on point to me -- when Brian Yuzna's 1989 body-horror class comedy came out it never even got a proper release here in the U.S.. But now our culture has evolved -- or perhaps devolved, but this movie counts as a perk of our devolution -- to the point where one of the biggest movie stars of all time will star in a body-horror freak-out comedy that goes every ounce as hard as Society did. And it will premiere at Cannes for fuck's sake!

And its leading lady will have a gleeful audience of admirers -- me included -- shouting, "Oscar! Oscar! Oscar!" from theirs spots in the sewers. To say this is the best performance Demi Moore's ever given isn't the most demanding of claims -- she's always been more of a movie-star than an actress. Which is fine! Great! We need movie stars. Sometimes those categories overlap and movie stars are also great actors, but they don't have to for a "movie star" to be important in itself. Having the presence and glamour and inherent fascination needed to hold an audience in thrall, that's rare and beautiful and it should be celebrated.  Not always with acting awards, mind you -- box office, success, fourteen houses including one for just your dolls. These are plenty just rewards.

That said, while I won't say I'll eat my shoe if Demi Moore is nominated for an Oscar for a movie where... well everything that happens in the last act of The Substance happens... I don't anticipate that happening. She'll have to make due I think with the praise of being the cool pick -- the one too cool and too too out there for the Academy, even if the Academy has proven itself a little riskier than in the past recently. But what am I even talking about awards for? The Substance is one fuck-ton of a movie, man!

An aria of self-loathing shrieked to the rafters, The Substance might be two and a half hours long but unlike its characters this thing has no filler -- the redundancy of its ritualistic self-abuse is methodical. Fargeat wants us to really soak in this chemical peel until our own skin stings and sloughs off; until we too can step out of our former self like a rubbery pink nightgown has fallen to the floor around our feet. It demands time for the hatred that Elisabeth Sparkle (Moore) feels for herself to bake itself around us like a crust, hard and uncanny. We gotta sit in this shit and stew, man. And in exchange Fargeat makes the experience a pop-colored candy buffet of goofiness slamming up hard against the gore -- it's like spinning, starting off slowly, slowly, but by the end we're flying so fast we're dizzy, puking, elated and half-dead but never more alive.

The Substance is a movie I can see myself putting on in the background of my life for the entire rest of it. It's grotesque, obscene, hilarious, meanspirited, gorgeous, heartbreaking, exquisite. It's an M&M with a cockroach inside; a long trail of innards curled up like a golden crown. To hold its excesses aginast it is to deny the excesses of its targets. Sometimes a punch to the face is needed. And I want to marry The Substance, punches and all, if it will have me. I promise I will be good to you, movie! Punch me unto nirvana!

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

 ... you can learn from:

The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1988)

Tomas: Some people never change.

Some people are always scoundrels.

A happy 87th birthday to writer-director Philip Kaufman! I had to slap the shit out of myself so I didn't quote my favorite movie of Kaufman's, his beyond brilliant 1978 remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers -- I've talked about that movie so much before. Time for some fresh blood! That said I've only seen The Unbearable Lightness of Being one time and I think I was too young for it because it didn't really resonate -- any fans? I feel as if it should resonate given it stars Daniel Day-Lewis and Juliette Day-Binoche and Lena Day-Olin. So I clearly need to revisit. And -- here's a shocker -- I still have never seen Kaufman's 1983 astronaut classic The Right Stuff? How is that possible? That cast includes the veritable hunk parade of Dennis Quaid, Scott Glenn, Sam Shepherd, and Fred Ward! My priorities, man.

5 Off My Head: Siri Says 1987

Picking back up my "Siri Says" series after a couple of busy weeks as we plow into its final stretch of entries -- as I explained one month ago I've only got around a dozen years left out of one hundred total to write up, so maybe we'll finish this series off before the world ends even! Wouldn't that be a hoot? This series, you might or mightn't know, involves me asking my iPhone to assign me a random number between 1 and 100, and then I give you my five favorite movies from the year that corresponds. Anyway that's how I did it for the majority of these posts, but now that we're down to such minuscule options I've just written the remaining years out on slips of paper, and I pick one that way.

Which brings me to this week's selection -- we'll be choosing our favorite movies from the movies of 1987! Which, well, all of these movies are coincidentally turning 35 this year, so prepare your cake-based celebrations accordingly. And you know what else? This is the last year that I had left from the 1980s! Whenever I finish off a decade like this I collect up links to all that decade's entries, so here those are for your glance-back pleasure:

Here are my favorite movies of 1980

Here are my favorite movies of 1981 

Here are my favorite movies of 1982

Here are my favorite movies of 1983

Here are my favorite movies of 1984

Here are my favorite movies of 1985

Here are my favorite movies of 1986

Here are my favorite movies of 1988

Here are my favorite movies of 1989

Personally speaking I have a deep fondness for a lot of 1980s cinema since I saw my first movie in that decade and slowly, across its span, found myself becoming the obsessive who types before you today, but... the 1980s? Not really the greatest decade for movies when it comes down to it. I can admit that. Don't get me wrong, there are heaps of great films, as all of those links above will show you. But when I steep myself in the general sense of 80s Cinema it's a lot of big budget nonsense that dominated, while even foreign art-cinema was in a kind of strange in-between place. But hey if the 80s are your favorite movie decade please let me have it in the comments! And it's possible I'm feeling less than enthusiastic about them today after going through 1987's specific offerings, which were a little wobbly in particular. But I found some great ones! (It's a really great year for horror movies, actually.) On that note here are...

My 5 Favorite Movies of 1987

Wings of Desire

(dir. Wim Wenders)

-- released on October 19th 1987 --

Evil Dead 2: Dead By Dawn

(dir. Sam Raimi)

-- released on March 13th 1987 --

Broadcast News

(dir. James Brooks)

-- released on December 13th 1987 --

RoboCop

(dir. Paul Verhoeven)

-- released on July 17th 1987 --

Maurice

(dir. James Ivory)

-- released on September 18th 1987 --

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Runners-up: Opera (dir. Dario Argento), The Princess Bride (dir. Rob Reiner), Full Metal Jacket (dir. Stanley Kubrick), Moonstruck (dir. Norman Jewison), Raising Arizona (dir. Coens), Fatal Attraction (dir. Adrian Lyne), Adventures in Babysitting (dir. Chris Columbus), Outrageous Fortune (dir. Arthur Hiller), The Last of England (dir. Derek Jarman), House of Games (dir. David Mamet), Near Dark (dir. Bigelow), Dolls (dir. Stuart Gordon)...

... Empire of the Sun (dir. Spielberg), Prince of Darkness (dir. John Carpenter), The Stepfather (dir. Joseph Ruben), River's Edge (dir. Tim Hunter), Hellraiser (dir. Clive Barker), Predator (dir. John McTiernan), The Running Man (dir. Paul Michael Glaser), Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night 2 (dir. Bruce Pittman), Withnail & I (dir. Bruce Robinson), Street Trash (dir. James Muro)

Never seen: My Life as a Dog (dir. Lasse Holstrom), Au Revoir Les Enfants (dir. Louis Malle), Angel Heart (dir. Alan Parker), The Believers (dir. John Schlesinger), Matewan (dir. John Sayles), Making Mr. Right (dir. Susan Seidelman), Ishtar (dir. Elaine May), Who's That Girl (dir. James Foley), The Dead (dir. John Huston), September (dir. Woody Allen), The Last Emperor (dir. Bertolucci)

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What are your favorite movies of 1987?

Jack Quaid Six Times

I didn't intend for today to be nothing but staring at Scream fellas, but this new photo-shoot of actor (and son to Dennis Quaid & Meg Ryan, can't forget that) Jack Quaid showed up after I'd already posted this morning's Insta-snaps of original Scream villain Skeet Ulrich, and why not go with the theme since the new movie's out today? Not just out, but actually good! (Here is my review.) I haven't seen Jack in a ton of things (I still haven't started watching The Boys, incredibly) so I think pre-Scream my biggest exposure to him was in the 2017 meta-slasher Tragedy Girls, which is appropriate given this fresh context he finds himself in! (Any fans of Tragedy Girls? I liked it and actually thought of it a couple times while watching the new Scream, funny enough.) Anyway this Esquire shoot seen here (via) is also kinda meta-slasher in its way, hit the jump for the whole thing...

Ed Skrein Rescue Us

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So I tried to watch Midway last night and oh my god you guys that movie is actually unwatchable! Just absolute unwatchable trash -- I couldn't even finish it, and if I can't finish a movie that stars Patrick Wilson, Woody Harrelson, Luke Evans, Nick Jonas, Alexander Ludwig, Dennis Quaid, Darren Criss, Aaron Eckhart and our favorite fucked-up Nicky Hoult doppleganger Ed Skrein here all in period military uniforms then you know something has gone very very very wrong. Part of me kind of enjoys the fact that we've got our own hyper-faggy Michael Bay with Roland Emmerich -- The Gays can make Hollywood Crap too, dammit! But man this movie is one long window-shaking fart. Ugh. 

There weren't even nearly enough shots like that of Patrick Wilson from behind! What were you thinking, Emmerich??? Anyway for the forty minutes of the movie I did make it through the only thing keeping me hanging on was looking at Ed Skrein, and as I distracted myself by also googling him while the interminable movie droned on and on I realized that I have somehow never posted this photo-shoot of Ed here on the blog proper? I think it's on the Tumblr but MNPP home-base deserves these shots, especially after all the suffering I went through staring at that movie last night. Hit the jump for the rest plus a bonus one...

Lots of Privates on Display

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Grab the biggest pistol within reach and ready yourself, for the second trailer for Midway is here! Roland Emmerich, gay director of Independence Day and Stonewall, has scooped up all the hot pieces -- Luke Evans and Patrick Wilson and Darren Criss and Nick Jonas and Alexander Ludwig and Ed Skrein...

... and Aaron Eckhart and Dennis Quaid and Woody Harrelson and a ton of young actors who I don't know by name yet but who will inevitably look real gosh darn cute in their WWII uniforms -- for his recreation of the famous battle, out in theaters on November 8th. The first trailer is at this link but you probably don't need that now, since here's the bigger one:

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One thing I will add: did you catch the character posters?

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Good merciful grief pic.twitter.com/15Bg6tgl9p

— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) September 10, 2019

Fly By Ludwig

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I guess I should probably just sit on my hands for a bit - not a bad proposition, with these pictures in front of me - and wait for Roland Emmerich to finish announcing all the man-meat he's tossing in his movie grinder for his World War II picture called Midway - just a couple of hours ago I told y'all how Darren Criss was joining the cast already stuffed with the likes of Luke Evans & Patrick Wilson & Woody Harrelson & Ed Skrein & Aaron Eckhart & Dennis Quaid & Nick Jonas. And now comes word that Alexander Ludwig here...

... who is mostly known for the TV show Vikings - and you can click thru our archives on the actor right here to acquaint yourself better! - well you can lather him up and throw Alex right on top of the Midway cast and call him the cherry! (Thx Mac) At least temporarily, that is, until some fresh twink gets gathered up into Emmerich's broad embrace. Anyway like I did with Darren -- because why post one picture when you can post a dozen? -- I've got some more pictures for you after the jump...

All The Boys Go To War

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I was watching The Young Lions on TCM last night - if you're unfamiliar The Young Lions is a 1958 movie set in Tunisia during WWII that stars Marlon Brando (as a bleached out Nazi) and Montgomery Clift and Maximilian Schell, and reader, it is sexual. (See some pictures we've posted before right here.) They're all punching each other in uniforms and sweating in their bunkers - typical homoerotic military movie stuff.

Anyway I thought of that movie upon reading the news this morning that (openly gay) director Roland Emmerich has just hired Darren Criss to co-star in his upcoming WWII movie called Midway, opposite the previously announced Luke Evans and Patrick Wilson and Woody Harrelson and Ed Skrein and Aaron Eckhart and Dennis Quaid and, uhh, Nick Jonas. I can't imagine why I thought of a bunch of sweaty beautiful men in uniform. I just... did. So there's a movie to look forward to! To tide us over hit the jump for a couple more from this Esquire shoot of Darren...

Good Morning, World

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The 1986 adult thriller The Big Easy starring (a highly fuckable) Dennis Quaid and Ellen Barkin - which we used for yesterday's "Fives Frames" post, hence it being on our minds - has kind of been forgotten by time, hasn't it? I'm pretty sure I saw it at an age when I was too young to see it and then never thought about it again... until yesterday's "Five Frames" post. Perhaps Louisianans think of it more often, confronted as they no doubt are with the phrase "The Big Easy" more often than I am as a New Yorker? I mean "Big Easy" was my nickname in college, but I've settled down since then...

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

Carol (2015)

Carol: Just when you think it can't get any worse, 

you run out of cigarettes. 

It is the 69th birthday of the exceptional cinematographer Ed Lachman today, who not only shot Carol but also Far From Heaven and The Limey and Desperately Seeking Susan and Less Than Zero and Life During Wartime and Wiener-dog and the Mildred Pierce mini-series and did I say Far From Heaven yes Far From Heaven twice because Far From Heaven.

And many others. Our eyeballs owe him such a profound gratitude. He's got a few things lined up but of course it's his re-teaming with Todd Haynes we care most about - he shot Wonderstruck, Haynes' upcoming film with Julianne Moore and Michelle Williams, which will be out this year. GIVE IT TO ME.

Good Morning, World

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Anybody remember the 1993 married spy comedy Undercover Blues with Kathleen Turner and Dennis Quaid? Yeah I don't blame you if you don't -- I'd completely forgotten that it existed until I just saw that it was recently dropped onto blu-ray, for some reason. I guess the world was clamoring for the entire Herbert Ross oeuvre in crystal clear high definition? (Give me Steel Magnolias or give me death.)

Anyway I couldn't remember what the movie was so I googled it and was reminded of blah blah story whatever as well as oh yeah this was some prime Dennis Quaid time. For the record, prime Dennis Quaid time has been going on for forty years and still hasn't passed, but still. There are levels, and 1993 was a good 'un.

And a bonus -- as I went through the movie to cap these scenes of Prime Dennis, I discovered that the movie co-starred Youngish Stanley Tucci, who was always playing a greasy sleazeball type in the 90s, but with a certain furry greasy sex appeal to it, and there's an extensive scene where Tucci gets trapped in an alligator pen at the zoo (of course) and Dennis Quaid forces him to strip off his clothes (of course).

So I capped that as well (of course).

Hit the jump for the rest of it...
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Good Morning, World

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Dennis Quaid is turning 60 today and I have a feeling that if you walked up to him this afternoon and asked him to flash his abs at you they'd look pretty much exactly like they do here in 1987's Innerspace. The man likes to keep it tight. 

It's funny bringing up Innerspace a day after bringing up Major League - this was also a movie that Young Me was watching in that same period a lot for it's, um, special bonus qualities...

Once upon a time there was no internet.  We made do.

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Breaking Away With Hart Bochner

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Hart Bochner, who's turning 56 years old today, is one of those studs of yore that it's become a pain to find new ways of exploiting since their stud days are mostly behind them and the good stuff can be difficult to uncover due to the ravages of time and its oft terrible forgettableness. Now when he's remembered - and we try to keep the flame alive but it's an uphill battle - it's usually as the sexy dude-in-distress in Supergirl or as the sexy dude doing the distressing to a closeted Colin Firth in the terrific but under-seen 1988 thriller Apartment Zero, or as the coked-up prick in Die Hard.

(He has done a little acting recently, like still being totally hot just a few years ago on The Starter Wife.) Anyway the point is there are probably lots of secret little treasures exploiting him in his youth that I have yet to discover, like this here - the 1979 teenage cycling romp Breaking Away, in which Hart plays the rich kid prick who wears pink polos and is generally that wonderful 80s stereotype of, well, the rich kid prick who wears pink polos.

He's not in the movie very much but he does get to wear a red speedo while racing Dennis Quaid (himself in barely there cut-off jean shorts)...

... in one scene, so that's worth our time, no? Hit the jump for a few caps from all around the movie.