A Head Full of Harbour

I didn't pay a ton of attention to the whole "David Harbour is sex addict" thing that came out recently thanks to his ex Lily Allen writing an album about him being shitty because that sort of gossip always feels invasive and shitty in itself to me -- I am not their friend, I don't need to be involved in their dirty laundry. When fans get all worked up about somebody cheating on their partner, if everybody involved are adults, I just don't think it's my business. Anyway that whole mess seemed like it fell into that camp so I didn't pay attention to it, so if I missed a legitimate reason that David Harbour got canceled feel free to yell at me. All I allowed myself to take from it is a few images of David Harbour being a freak and I was happy with those. Because hot. 

Anyway none of that is why we're here -- we're here because Mr. Harbour has booked a new movie which sounds hella rad on paper. It's an adaptation of Paul Tremblay's book A Head Full of Ghosts and it will co-star scream queen Rebecca Hall and it will be directed by Veronika Franz and Severin Fial, the filmmakers behind the original Goodnight Mommy and The Lodge, both of which rock. Anybody read the book? I have not but it's about the parents of a teen girl whose descent into schizophrenia is documented by an exploitative reality show, and the aftermath fifteen years later of that. I don't know who's playing who (if Harbour and Hall are the parents or if they play people in the flash-forward portion) but that sounds like a killer on-point concept for a movie, and I generally trust Rebecca Hall's instincts when it comes to horror -- she has done very well for herself in the genre. 

On that note: anybody watching The Beauty? I am and I was sort of enjoying it at first but I find myself increasingly annoyed by the idea that there could be a hotter version of Rebecca Hall that's not Rebecca Hall. I call bullshit! Also Ashton Kutcher sucks and annoys me, and I find the entire Anthony Ramos / Jeremy Pope storyline increasingly dumb as well. I like all the hot naked guys though (hello Isaac Cole Powell rolling around naked and wet on top of Evan Peters) so obviously I'll keep watching.

My Bed's On Fire, I'm a Real Live Wire

The first posters for Ryan Murphy's Monster: The Ed Gein Story (dropping October 3rd) starring Charlie Hunnam as the original real-life inspiration for Norman Bates and Leatherface have arrived and sure enough -- we're getting Sexy Ed Gein. It's like that joke about there being a "Slutty [fill in the blank]" Halloween costume for college girls looking to sexify up everything under the sun -- a Slutty Hamburglar, a Slutty Office Stapler. Ryan Murphy will make us feel uncomfortably horned up for every maniac who ever lived. And so two years after Evan Peters gave us funny feelings about Jeffrey Dahmer, here's Ed Gein's slutty little biceps. And listen... I'm just gonna quit while I'm ahead. Meaning before I have said anything incriminating. I am not about to get canceled today. Bye!

Good Morning, World

I'm sure I've posted gifs of this scene from American Horror Story before -- the one where Evan Peters jerks off in the shower for the benefit of Billy Eichner -- but it's Evan's birthday today and also I am running terribly behind due to subway issues this morning, so why not revisit? Evan, who's a big fancy awards winner now thanks to Mayor of Easttown and Dahmer gets to be reminded of the things he had to do to get there, we all get to stare at his O-face, and I get to crap out a quick post and move on. Everybody wins! Ish. Happy birthday, Evan!

Good Morning, World

Watching the Dahmer series with Evan Peters on Netflix (which I finally finished over the weekend) made me want to re-watch My Friend Dahmer sometime soon as well, which starred Teen Beat bad-boy Ross Lynch seen here -- both MFD and the excellent Dahmer movie starring Jeremy Renner are currently streaming on Amazon; along with Rya Murphy's show and the Netflix doc about Jeff that premiered this week one could really just have themselves a gay cannibal binge if one wanted to. On that note, happy Monday morning, everybody! I have another NYFF press screening (Sarah Polley's new movie!) so I won't be in until this afternoon. Make due with Ross butt until then.

Dyllón Burnside One Time

Annoyed!! Not at Dyllón -- never at Dyllón -- but at the fact that I didn't know until five minutes ago that the dreamiest of the Pose actors is in Dahmer, Ryan Murphy's true-crime gay-cannibal serial-killer limited-series starring Evan Peters that hit Netflix... this very same day? Meaning today. I don't know how this show is already out, but out it is! Dyllón is not listed on the show's IMDb page at all, but they released...

... a character poster with him on it today so I guess that means he's on the dang thing. Anyway that's one more reason I'll be checking this out as soon as I can (which means due to unforeseen circumstances, i.e. my boyfriend being out of town for work, "this weekend) -- I have avoided all reviews but if you've seen it all or are just starting it feel free to give me vague, very vague, reactions here in the comments. Here's a new trailer they dropped as well:

We've Come To Ruin Your Dinner

The trailer for Ryan Murphy's limited series Dahmer is here ( I know that technically it's got some long convoluted name also involving the word "Monster" because Ryan Murphy cannot help himself but this show will be called Dahmer from now on -- unless the internet decides it's simply Monster instead -- because I'm not typing out that whole damn thing) -- this show premiere on Netflix in just five days apparently, on the 21st? WTF? They really gotta do better work dumping their content into the world.  Anyway as seen above this series stars the note-perfect casting of Evan Peters (who else) alongside the great Niecy Nash as a concerned neighbor and the great Richard Jenkins as Dahmer's father (has anybody read Dahmer's father's book? It's good and worth it!), and here's the trailer:

What do we think? Guess we'll know in five damn days!

Pic of the Day

Via BD comes our first look at Evan Peters playing Jeffrey Dahmer in Ryan Murphy's limited series about the infamous gay cannibal serial killer -- I guess they have changed the title of it from Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story to simply Dahmer. As I said when he was first cast last March Evan Peters makes super sense for this role -- it felt preordained, especially given Murphy's involvement. The show was only shepherded by Murphy though -- otherwise it seems as if it's being run by Ian Brennan, the writer behind Scream Queens and Ratched. And all of the directors currently listed -- Paris Barclay, Carl Franklin, and Pose showrunner Janet Mock -- are people of color, which seems important because the show supposedly focuses on Dahmer's victims, who were mainly young men of color, instead of the serial killer himself. Still looking through the cast list right now the thing that really jumps out is that the show has actor (and friend-of-MNPP) Dominic Burgess cast as the serial killer John Wayne Gacy, as well as an actor named Shane Kerwin playing the O.G. Ed Gein??? What oh what is this show gonna be? This is reminding me of the perhaps overly exploitative serial-killer gatherings that happened on American Horror Story -- indeed the great John Carroll Lynch played Gacy on that:

Good Morning, World

The actor seen here, photographed for Da Man Magazine, is named Conor Donnally (if I had to guess I'd guess, uhh, he might be of Irish descent) and he's on the TV program called The Sex Lives of College Girls. I have for some reason heard of this show, but I have never seen it (have you?) and until this photoshoot popped up on my Instagram feed this morning I had never heard of Mr. Donnolly. My first thought was that he looked a little like Evan Peters...

... so I wasn't all that surprised that Ryan Murphy had already had his hands on Conor; he was apparently in several episodes of American Horror Story: 1984?I watched that but literally all I remember is Gus Kenworthy thrusting in short shorts so you got me. Anyway these photos, with the semi-mullet and stache and cut-off sleeves of them, are really reminding me of the small town loser dudes my dad was friends with when I was little, the ones I only realized in retrospect I was crushing on as a baby gayling, and so this shoot's giving me some feels. See it all after the jump...

Good Morning, World

 

A happy 35 to Evan Peters today! Sure he might be a serious award-winning actor in HBO prestige productions now, but we'll never forget the time he had blue hair and jerked off for Billy Eichner in American Horror Story. There are actually a lot --  A LOT -- of things that Evan Peters did on American Horror Story that we will never, not ever, forget. (I recommend digging back through our Evan Peters archives and you'll see most of them.) Anyway people always say that the "Cult" season of AHS was a real nadir but it gave us these gifs, so, I rest my case, your honor.

I Am Link

I haven't done a link round-up like this for ages! They always end up taking way more energy than they ought to -- I mean the whole idea is to present news in bite-sized portions, but I can never keep myself from rambling. You know me. But also I don't know if, due to the pandemic, we've had a period quite so thick with movie news as  the last several days has been -- aww, nature is healing! (Wear a mask.) Let's get to it.

-- Two Big Ds -- The actor who calls himself Brad Pitt has just joined the cast of Lost City of D, which already has Sandra Bullock and Channing Tatum attached. I thought I'd posted about this movie when it was first announced but the archives say no -- anyway it sounds like a broad re-do of Romancing the Stone; Bullock is playing a romance novelist, Tatum is playing the Fabio-type model for her book covers, and the two of them get dragged into a romance and also a kidnapping adventure in the jungle while on one of her book tours. DH says Pitt's role is a cameo, one he did in exchange for Sandy doing a cameo in his forthcoming action-thriller Bullet Train. 

--- Take A Bite Outta -- Even though the news is only a couple of weeks old I'd already forgotten that Evan Peters was going to play Jeffrey Dahmer in an upcoming Ryan-Murphy-produced miniseries, so it's good to have this interview with him in Variety remind me. (thx Mac) He briefly talks about prepping for the part, alongside mostly speaking about his Kate Winslet detective series Mare of Easttown, which is out this weekend. I don't know where that series came from, it really snuck up on me. I only heard about it for the first time like a week ago and now it's here!

--- Leftover Man -- If that Justin Theroux shirtless cover-shoot for Esquire magazine that I shared yesterday wasn't enough for your Theroux-thirst then you can head over to Interview Magazine, where he's also chatted up alongside some fine beard photography -- he's got that Mosquito Coast TV program hitting on Apple soon (already?) and that's what all of the press is for. That said this chat is a good reminder that he is a naturally very funny individual, hotness aside. 

--- Real Thick And Juicy -- I am sure you've all been happily following along with all the talk of Chris Meloni's ass ever since he (and it) popped back up on SVU a couple of weeks ago, but if you missed it Meloni has been milking his ass for all it's worth (god, phrasing) -- EW rounded up some of the fun, bouncy chatter. Jump on it and bounce, baby! (thx Mac)

--- Bad Fish -- I've become sort of a stealth fan of the Danish actor Pilou Asbæk in a few things over the past several years -- Lucy, Ghost in the Shell (in which he had a Lot of Look, seen to the left), Overlord, and of course his welcomed snarky turn on Game of Thrones last few seasons, which really needed the snark, so I'm happy to hear he's just been cast in the Aquaman sequel in an unspecified role. It will probably be a villain, since he's European. This is known as the Mads Mikkelsen rule.  

--- And Finally I was happy to read yesterday that the actor Fabien Frankel had landed a big role in the Dorne-centered Game of Thrones spin-off prequel called House of the Dragon; as seen below Frankel really grabbed my attention opposite Tahar Rahim in the Netflix series The Serpent, which I've mentioned here on the site oh once or twenty times.

Also -- hello Fabien Frankel, please be in lots of things after this, Fabien Frankel pic.twitter.com/GQ5UXiJjzb

— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) January 4, 2021

Cannibals Are So Hot Right Now

First up, the big news (although I wouldn't exactly call this a surprise) -- Evan Peters is going to play Jeffrey Dahmer in producer Ryan Murphy's new Netflix miniseries, which is aiming to tell the story from Dahmer's victims perspectives. Famously Dahmer's victims were mostly young gay men of color, and the police couldn't give a shit about young gay men of color, so Dahmer was allowed to kill for a really long time. To that end Janet Mock, the writer of Murphy's Pose, will be writing and directing a lot of the series.

It's hard not to have an, uhh, complicated reaction to the news that Ryan Murphy is producing a Netflix miniseries about Jeffrey Dahmer's queer cannibal killing spree in the 70s and 80s no matter what though, given how wildly variant quality remains a concept in Ryan Murphy projects -- could this possibly be another high-water mark like his Assassination of Gianni Versace series? Since it doesn't involve that show's writer Tom Rob Smith (a personal fave, who only worked with Murphy that one time) I am thinking probably not.

But focusing in on the victims is the right thing to do; I mean we've already had two entirely solid films about Dahmer with the Jeremy Renner film in 2002 and My Friend Dahmer in 2017 with Ross Lynch and that's a good batting average, given how shitty serial-killer-movies tend to be most of the time. And Peters, even though a choice so obvious it could be seen from outer space, is good casting. He's proven more than capable over past seasons of American Horror Story of being genuinely scary. And then there's the rest of the cast!

Dahmer's parents will be played by Penelope Ann Miller (now there's a welcome comeback) and Richard Jenkins -- Jenkins in particular is a knee-shakingly good choice, as Dahmer's father is an extremely complicated role, through Dahmer's life and after it. You should read his book A Father's Story if you haven't, it's fascinating. And Jenkins is a wonderful actor of course; this could be a great role for him. But they're not all -- also in the cast is my Claws queen Niecy Nash! She's playing Dahmer's legendary next-door neighbor, who called the police time and time again on Jeff, only to be routinely ignored -- Deadline is saying her role's the female lead of the show. Nash of course worked with Murphy on Scream Queens, and was recently seen to great dramatic effect on the miniseries When They See Us about the Central Park Five.

Evan Peters Nine Times

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Our boy Even Peters has a couple of fun moments in Dark Phoenix playing Quicksilver again -- his footloose superpowers are integral to the movie's early-on space-bound action sequence -- but if you're an Evan Peters fan and you're buying a ticket for him I recommend you reconsider your motives. There are reasons to see the movie...

... and I went into some of them in my piece on the movie yesterday. But Evan, as much fun as he always has with the role, ain't one of 'em. But we do get to enjoy this colorfully patterned new photo-shoot that he has just done for Esquire Singapore (via, thx Mac) at least, so the movie did do something for Evan Peters Fans after all. Hit the jump for the rest...

It's a Little Bit Funny, This Feeling Inside

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Just in time for Gay Pride Month comes the latest entry in the gayest of superhero franchises -- Dark Phoenix is yet another X-Men movie about the queer power of embracing your differences, but together, united freaks fighting as one fucked-up family. The film, for all of its action and spectacle (and there is plenty), is more laser focused in than you expect from these behemoths, though -- in some ways its more akin to the standalone butch-bitch Wolverine movies, just focusing on Jean Grey (Sophie Turner) this time around. We start with her past and work up through her present, trauma stacking upon trauma until they reach the stars, give 'em a slap.

Out there in outer space is where Jean Grey meets her dark fate, a burst of possibly sentient star-flame that cracks her open and worms its way into all her faults as she does what she does, save everybody's asses yet again. (I can't help but feel like I saw this all somewhere before...?) Buried memories spring forth like firework displays, and before you know it her sublimated rage is pouring from her fingers like sparklers and the girl, the girl can't help it.

She's got a lot of similarly scarred folks around her who want to help, with their do-gooder intentions, but unfortunately as has happened with so many of us the wrong sexy person is there at just the wrong sexy moment, filling them holes and  influencing us in all the wrong ways -- who hasn't gone off the deep end for a few weeks cuz a hot piece at the bar with a crude tattoo situated in an unspeakable place gave us the fuck eye? 

In Jean's case the come-hitherer is an alien albino woman (Jessica Chastain) who's chased the tail of that extraterrestrial gas through the solar system and wants a piece of its va-va-voom for her own, and for Jean it's if not lust exactly it's a fundamental commiseration -- a loneliness and anger that compliments, even though in her heart of hearts Jean knows better; even if that twink with the sexy glasses can't stop giving her the puppy dog lips. Jean doesn't want to be a good girl for a minute, and unfortunately for the world and that good boy at home this new lean of hers has some most dire consequences.

And so the ladies hit the road together, making bedrooms burst into celestial visions and Jean flaming into cosmic Georgia O'Keeffe paintings every chance she gets. Petals on a wet black bough, indeed. It's some queer shit, my friends -- as much verbal play as the simple love story between two beasts and a blue shape-shifter gets this movie is a bit of a lesbian hot-house; unfolding ribbons of raw red rooms upon rooms. The secret caverns we whisper our deepest and darkest thoughts into echoing them back unto us as explosions. Excuse me. X-splosions.

Charles Melton Six Times

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Before watching Captain Marvel last week Riverdale star Charles Melton popped up in a trailer (some rom-com called The Sun is Also a Star, you can watch that trailer here) and now here he is a few days later in a photo-shoot slash interview with GQ -- I guess he's having a moment! About time -- we've been on-board that train since he swanned around in his underpants on American Horror Story: Hotel. Pays to listen to MNPP, y'all. Hit the jump for the rest of his GQ shoot (which includes book-shelves, huzzah)...

The Power of Fassy Compels You

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Until recently I'd thought that Bryan Singer had directed the forthcoming Dark Phoenix movie, and I was gearing myself up for all the fun that those press rounds were gonna represent -- but no Dark Phoenix is the directorial debut of writer and producer Simon Kinberg. (And wow, imagine making your directorial debut with a 265 million dollar budget -- what a world.) But I imagine folks like Nicholas Hoult and Evan Peters, who've worked with Singer a few times, will probably still get asked, so prep your answers, boys! (Speaking of Sir Ian finally got on the record about that.) Anyway we're not here for Bryan Singer we're here for the new trailer for Dark Phoenix, which was not I repeat not directed by Bryan Singer. And it sure is nice to see Michael Fassbender acting!

Or at least standing around with an angry face while the CG things surrounding him are filled in later, anyway. But we should cherish these moments because dude hasn't acted a single minute since this thing was filmed and as far as we can tell might not do it again, either. (Please prove us wrong, Fassy. We'd love to be wrong.) Here's the trailer:

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Dark Phoenix is out on June 7th.
What do we think of the trailer?

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Three Outta Four Ponies Ain't Bad

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Four actors just got cast in a new movie called Snow Ponies -- written by actor turned writer-director Pat Healy, it's about a group of "seven hardened men who travel across a vicious landscape to deliver a mysterious package" so I guess we'll hear the other three names at some point -- and three of the actors named I was excited about, and the fourth I was... the exact opposite of excited about. But I suppose we'll suffer through for the others. The exciting three are Jon Bernthal and Evan Peters and lil' Charlie Plummer. The fourth actor is Josh Gad, who just utterly exhausts me. But hey once upon a time Jon Bernthal's twangy posturing on The Walking Dead drove me up the wall, so perhaps Gad can... no, I doubt it. I doubt it, Josh Gad. Sorry.

But anyway it's the presence of Plummer that really enthralls me - from King Jack back in 2015 through this year's excellent Lean on Pete and the just recently reviewed horror flick The Clovehitch Killer Charlie Plummer has turned into one of my favorite young actors. I'm just about at the "I'll watch him in anything" point. (ETA it was just announced that Charlie also just got cast in a Hulu series adaptation of Josh Green's book Looking For Alaska.) I love Evan Peters too - he just hasn't been able to transfer his small-screen energy (something like this scene, perhaps) onto the big screen yet, but maybe this'll give him the chance.

Evan Peters Seven Times

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If you ask me Evan Peters should always and only be photographed like he's in one of those especially porny Calvin Klein campaigns from the 1990s, the ones that got all the flack for looking like sleaze (see here), so this photo-shoot for Icon Magazine (via, thx Mac) is sitting well with me. Anyway what are we all thinking about this so-called Apocalypse season of American Horror Story so far? I wanna hear your thoughts in the comments please, as I am yet undecided. Help me! And hit the jump for the rest of this shoot...

The Thingamajig Is Nigh

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I had no idea that American Horror Story was back next week - I mean I've been scurrying away from the subway posters of red-skinned devil-babies for weeks but I figured it'd be closer to Halloween. That said it's only seven weeks until Halloween, and so I am a fool, and here we are - American Horror Story: Apocalypse, as it's called, premieres on September 12th. And we have a trailer! And it is full...

... of young men being abused in their underwear.

Did David DeCoteau direct this season or what?

Can somebody tell me who that actor is? My first thought was that they used that CG de-aging software on Kyle Chandler, but I think it's an actual human person given how much he's in the trailer and I don't recognize him. I'm sure that's just me being an old person. On that note, trailer:

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I mean they had me at Kathy Bates whipping 

Evan Peters but how are you guys feeling?

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American Movie Review

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Have I become too hard of a cynic in my middle-age? I fear so - signs and symbols keep slapping me to and fro. Take for instance American Animals, the college heist movie out this weekend starring Evan Peters and Barry Keoghan as wannabe bad-asses a la Tarantino but a bit too John Hughes to make it quite there. I watched American Animals with perhaps too much of a side-eye because I didn't believe jack-shit I was watching. 

I don't mean the actors were bad at selling the circumstances (they were fine) or that the directing was weak (it was fine) or anything like that - I mean I went into the film knowing nothing about the true-life story the film's based on and the harder the movie worked at reminding me of its "This is Based on a True Story" bonafides I kept watching it through Fargo-tinted "True Story" glasses. Like uh huh true story sure get a load of these guys nudge nudge. Sure there's a place called Transylvania University. (Whoops there is.) And sure a bunch of kids tried to rob the library of great big bird books. (Whoops they did.)

I spent so much misplaced mental energy watching the film thinking myself clever for poking holes in its fabrications, energy that actually ultimately proved me dumb as a box of hair, that I even convinced myself that the real-life criminals who are interviewed throughout the film were actors themselves - the film plays like an ongoing series of reenactments as these real folks lay out what happened, or what happened as they remember it anyway, and I thought I'd unlocked its secret key and that the movie was doubling down on its fakery. I was actually utterly convinced by the film's midpoint that Spencer Reinhard, the real-life person that Barry Keoghan's playing and who we see on screen, was being played by Barry's Dunkirk co-star Fionn Whitehead!

Whoops... it wasn't. All this makes it a hard film for me to really review because it turns out I watched a movie that this movie was not. I only realized I'd burrowed my brain into the wrong end of the basement when the rug wasn't pulled out by the film's credits - that I'd gone and made the film more byzantine than it ended up being. Since so much of the movie is explicitly about people deluding themselves into being people they aren't, talking about just that, I'd figured hey, what a trick!

What a trick that wasn't. And so... what a review this isn't? Lesson learned, then - don't rob fancy libraries, especially ones staffed by Ann Dowd (I mean for god's sake) and don't out-think movies before they've thought through their thoughts themselves. American Animals might ultimately be half-thought-through but it's not my job to then go and have an over-compensating fit thinking it all the way around the world and back for them. That's no good for nobody.
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Feed The Animals

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I already posted the teaser trailer for American Animals - the true-crime comic-thriller starring Evan Peters and Barry Keoghan and Ann Dowd and Udo Keir among others - the other week (right here) but I'm running off to a screening of the exact movie right this second and coincidentally they just happened to release another trailer with other footage... so what the hey here ya go enjoy this, picture me seeing all the in between bits, and see ya tomorrow...

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American Animals is out on June 1st!

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