Great Moments In Movie Staches

Edgar Wright's not-great re-do of The Running Man has made me want to revisit some of the many trashy Schwarzenegger movies that I adored as a kid, and from there it doesn't take long for me to start thinking about Carl Weathers in Predator. Glen Powell wishes!

Lee Pace Twelve Times

I don't know why I thought this morning's "Glen Powell's Butt" post would be the end of my Running Man posting this week since I offered up my brief opinion on the movie therein -- are you telling me the world doesn't move on once I've laid down my decree? Harumph! But I'll allow a sleazy photoshoot of Lee Pace -- I grant this permission to exist! It's for Bustle magazine and I haven't read the interview yet but if it's anything like the photos...

... then we're in for a real treat. (The above photo is cropped until I can find a better version without type all over it -- you know me and my OCD!) Anyway apparently Lee talks a lot about his wicked side coming out when he plays villains and uhh yeah I guess that's the idea. I was catively annoyed at how they had his face covered up like 90% (is that a spoiler? Yes he eventually takes the mask off) in The Running Man -- as good as the shape of him looks in his fetish gear in the movie we still want that face. Otherwise I start suspecting there's a stunt-man doing everything while Lee's off sipping chamomile in his trailer. Anyway instead of just talking about wanting to look at Lee let's do it! Hit the jump for this really very sexy photoshoot...

Good Morning, World

Yesterday I shared with you a couple of shots from the set of Edgar Wright's The Running Man where Glen Powell was seen running (heh) around in just a skimpy towel -- well I didn't think they'd give up these goods so quickly but in a set video on the film's Instagram account they show the moment where the towel drops and yup, it's just as meaty and delicious as I remembered it being.

For the record I'm not reviewing this movie so all I'll say is it's not great unfortunately -- as a big fan of the original movie who's also aware that it's not a great movie either, a proper re-working really could've been something. This movie's a big mess tonally, and the third act is absolutely butchered to the point where I had no idea what was even happening. It's really too bad. We deserve a nasty black-hearted satire about a game-show host ruining the world dammit! Haven't we earned that much in 2025 dammit? Anyway at least all of the supporting actors are having fun (Colman especially) -- and this isn't meant as any slight to Glen who obviously I enjoy looking at, but it's just a bad move to waste Katy O'Brian the way she's wasted here. You see her on-screen and you just want to follow her off on her story immediately. Alas. Here's that full video:

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Pics of the Day

Two very important photos from the set of Edgar Wright's The Running Man were dropped online (via) -- having seen the film last evening let me just say that the towel sequence highlighted in the film's trailers are highlighted for good reason. Highlight reel (not to mention spank bank) material! Anyway if you haven't given me your opinion on yesterday's THR throuple poll click here and do that! (And click the images to embiggen a bunch!)

Do Dump or Marry: The Running Men

I'm not being show-offy when I tell you that I'm leaving the MNPP HQ desk early this evening so I can run off (get it) to see Edgar Wright's The Running Man remake (now you do) -- I am merely stating a fact, a statement of truth. This is just what is going to happen. I know how crushed this makes you many Schwarzenegger-heads and I apologize. Y'all can see it Friday! If we make it to Friday. Who knows. We all might be performing in life-or-death game shows by then the way things are going. But until then let's play a life-or-death game of our own by "Do Dump or Marry"ing the three hunks at the heart of Wright's re-do who stunned on the red carpet premiere as seen in these photos -- that'd be Colman Domingo, Lee Pace, Lee Pace's Mustache, and Glen Powell. Now [in my best Richard Dawson voice]  RUN... to the comments and choose! (pics via)

I Wanna Run To Glen Powell

The trailer for Edgar Wright's remake of The Running Man -- okay I suppose we can call it a new adaptation of Stephen King's story, whatever -- has arrived and it looks like an absolute blast. I knew I was in for something special the second we saw Glen Powell smacking his tighty-whities-clad ass two times. We kept a running tally of people who got cast in this last year and the names were wild -- Colman Domingo, Josh Brolin, Michael Cera, Katy O'Brian, Lee Pace, Karl Glusman, Sean Hayes, and William H. Macy just to name the bigger names -- but the trailer mainly focuses on Glenn, Michael, Josh and of course Colman in the greatest showman role previously made iconic by Richard Dawson. And is it just me or...

... is Colman going to get a lot of comparisons to Tramell Tillman's showstopping work in the TV series Severance? That's all I could see. But lord knows I love Colman and he seems to be having a helluva time so bring it on. Everything looks hella fun actually -- this is definitely Wright bringing that sweet sweet Scott Pilgrim energy. (And the presence of Cera obviously underlines that.)  I don't think I spotted Glusman or Pace though -- do you think one of them is that masked man with the grenade? I'll have to go back and listen to the voice. Anyway watch:  

The Running Man (2025 edition) is out on November 7th.
How the hell is this not a summer movie???

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

 ... you can learn from:

Sightseers (2012) 

Carol: You didn't let him see you do 

number twos, did you Tina?

Tina: Never!

Carol: Mystery, Tina, is a woman's sanctuary.

A happy birthday to the brilliant and funny Alice Lowe -- her performances in Edgar Wright's Hot Fuzz and in Ben Wheatley's Sightseers were what initially endeared her to me but then when I saw her second directorial effort Prevenge was when I really fell in love -- in a weird coincidence I finally watched her latest movie Timestalker this past weekend after sitting on it for months and  laughed my fool ass off; you can rent it right here. I'll share the trailer below. She is a delight! Love her.

You Can Run But You Can't Hide From Colman

There are moments -- not often, but more than once -- where I wonder if I might Jekyll out sometimes and sneak off under the guise of a different personality to be a casting director. Some movies just have such Me Casts that I can't imagine anyone else being responsible. Maybe I have a twin I was seperated from at birth and we're communicating telepathically? Anyway that's where I am at today with the news that Colman Domingo has now joined the cast of Edgar Wright's remake of The Running Man -- Colman being perfectly, exquisitely, cast as the evil game show host character that Richard Dawson played in Arnold Schwarzenegger's 1987 (classic as far as I'm concerned) version of the movie. How great is that casting though? Colman has got Game Show Voice and Showman Swag for dayssssss. Anyway he's joining a cast that already includes Glen Powell, Katy O'Brian (our queen from Love Lies Bleeding), Lee Pace, Josh Brolin, Michael Cera, William H. Macy, and my beloved weirdo Karl Glusman. Put this movie down my mouth please!

Keep Running Up That Pace

Enough things coming up Lee Pace (what a phrase) these past couple of days that a Lee Pace post was demanded of me! Firstly his 2006 film The Fall from the director Tarsem has gotten a re-release in theaters  this weekend which has been wonderful news for people like me who have loved that movie since day one and the rest of you who were dummies who didn't see it but now have the chance to. It's also on Mubi but I recommend going to the theater and taking this beauty in on the big screen -- click here for wheres and whens of that -- as I did last night! And it ruled. I hadn't seen the film in quite some time but it rocked my world all over again. On that same note there is a terrific chat with Pace over at The Playlist today reflecting on making the movie so read that! And now we begin our countdown until Mubi drops the 4K disc of the film -- really hoping it lands before the holidays. 

But wait! This is not all of the Lee Pace news fit to print! Yesterday it was announced that he's joining the cast of The Running Man re-do from director Edgar Wright! I just posted about this movie earlier this week because it already gained a hot ass cast with Glen Powell and Karl Glusman and Josh Brolin set to star in it -- now with Lee it's a veritable smorgasborg of beefcake set to slip into those skintight bodysuits. Good work, Edgar Wright -- now just be gayer than usual about it, please. All of that said hey look it's a photoshoot (via) of Lee I've never posted! Let's do that! Hit the jump for that...

Run This Way, Man

I am not sure that the Arnold Schwarzenegger classic The Running Man needs a remake -- and I am being unironically serious, as I genuinely love that movie -- but if it is going to happen I suppose having Edgar Wright direct it and having Glen Powell and our boy Karl Glusman star in it isn't so bad a way to go. The latter was announced today via Deadline which reminded me that I somehow don't believe I have posted about this project before even though it's been ticking some boxes all along -- I mean also in the cast is Love Lies Bleeding queen Katy O'Brien! Anyway I guess I can see how an update on the movie would work and Wright know how to shoot kinetic nonsense like a pro -- plus Glen Powell might be a perfect leading man for him, and for this prokect specifically, since he's as funny as he is studly. Wright will surely go at this with a lighter touch than the doom-minded original did. All I know is they better put Glen and Karl in those same kind of skin-tight jumpsuits that Arnold wore in the original dammit. Or we rebel!

Don't Let Sleeping Corpses Lie at the Morgue

I've always seen Jorge Grau's 1974 zombie-classic called by its title Let Sleeping Corpses Lie, which is a fabulous title, but the film goes by several names -- including Don't Open the Window, which was Edgar Wright's inspiration for his Grindhouse trailer "Don't!" -- but Synapse Films is finally putting the movie out on blu-ray on June 7th in what looks like a splendid 4K restoration, so if they want to go by the alternate title The Living Dead At Manchester Morgue then so be it. It's certainly the most British-sounding title of the bunch and the film, despite its Spanish director, is a very British affair. 

Or so I have heard -- I have never seen it! And I'll be very happy to right that wrong with this release, as it is by all accounts a serious upgrade from existing prints. Any fans out there? I love filling in the big holes (full stop?) in my horror education. You can't pre-order the film on Amazon just yet but the link is here for when you can, and I've got the entire press release after the jump...

Good Morning, Gratuitous Callum Turner II

It's usually a pretty good sign that I should post about somebody if that somebody's name shows up in more than one totally-unconnected place in a twenty-four hour span, and yesterday actor Callum Turner's name showed up in two places within about a half-an-hour span -- no needs to bait me so hard, Callum! (Wait, what am I saying?) First instance: I read this new interview with Cary Fukunaga & Edgar Wright in Interview Magazine and Fukunaga mentioned he's been hard at work on a new project, so I googled -- the new project is a fictionalized WWII miniseries called Masters of the Air whose cast is chockablock with pasty pretty boys like Callum and Austin Butler and Barry Keoghan (okay I might be the only person who calls Keoghan a "pretty boy" but I stand by that) and so on. This movie's been shooting for awhile now -- here is a photo that Fukunaga took of Callum and co-star Fionn O'Shea:

(Sometimes I wonder about Cary, y'all...) And the second instance was the news that Callum has been cast in the leading role in George Clooney's new movie (speaking of "straight" men I wonder about), which is a 1930s Olympian rower flick (mmhmm see what I mean) called The Boys in the Boat... now I personally think Clooney's a pretty lousy director. But if you saw his Catch-22 miniseries (the best thing Clooney's done, by the way) starring Christopher Abbott and Rafi Gavron and Austin Stowell and a parade of hot young fellas parading about in the tiniest shorts you ever done seen, well, then Clooney turning his "straight eye" on the Olympian rowing team of 1936, pictured here...

... well who cares if it's any good? It will be watchable whatever happens quality-wise, the same way that White Squall remains watchable all these many years on. Anyway these seem like big "gets" for Callum, who's been nipping on the edges of stardom for several years now -- I posted this site's first "Gratuitous Callum Turner" post in 2018 (right here) and since then he's hopped into the Fantastic Beasts cast and co-starred in the most recent Emma movie. Maybe 2022 will be his year. His whole look, which I would call Josh O'Connor adjacent, is fairly popular right now. (I mean it's always been popular with me but pop culture seems to be digging it, I mean.) So let's look! Hit the jump for a couple dozen photos I've never posted before (and a few I have)...  

It's Safe and Calm If You Sing Along

"And so it goes, and so it goes. And the book says, 'We may be through with the past, but the past ain't through with us.'" 

That line from Paul Thomas Anderson's Magnolia might as well be stitched into the seams of Anya Taylor-Joy's jazzy pink mini frock in Edgar Wright's terrific new time-hopping horror flick Last Night in Soho, out this week, so succinct is it at getting to the point. Anderson was concerned with the way past traumas bubble in in the present place, frothing up and over until they become nonsense storms of amphibians spilling out of the sky, and Wright's doing the same, only instead of frogs it's muddle-faced walls of rape-ghosts careening down every ye olde alley in London-town -- same gist, different gist-er.

Is there even room for Ghost Stories in Modern Living anymore? Is there space, I mean, and time enough -- we move awfully fast and if there's one thing ghosts shouldn't it's exactly that. An art-filmmaker like Apichatpong Weerasethakul can take his time, time, time, time, and make us go cross-eyed until we think we're seeing specters with a slab of blessed Slow Cinema like Memoria, but mainstream movies don't have that luxury. And so proper Ghost Stories seem, to my eye, a little sidelined by popular culture these days -- ones that get it pretty right, like say Crimson Peak or The Turning, seem to get elbowed out of the conversation; shrugged at, at first. They take time to insinuate themselves, stick their spider-legs under our skins and cling snug to bone senses -- and by the time they're in there most people are onto the tenth next thing, never noticing. 

And so the very act of looking back, remembrance and memory, comes cooked in. Cults sprout up around these flicks down the road, and I think Last Night in Soho, a fine time, will suffer the same prolonged, eventually appreciated by some, fate. The tension of time is too baked right into it, plot-speaking -- it's the longing for past and the poison of that longing that's all swirling around in Eloise (Thomasin Mackenzie) nee Ellie's great big blinking eyes bathed in neon for the first, unto eternal, time. We first meet her swathed ankle to throat in newspapers for god's sake, those dead things where trees go to line birdcages -- later she looks even further unto history on reams of microfiche, an old-timey festishist's exposition panacea. The past ain't through with Ellie and it ain't through with us either; a glance over a shoulder turns even the best among us to table salt, sprinkled lightly.

Last Night in Soho, like the other mainstream ghost stories I just named, is admittedly too busy for its own good -- echoing the here and now there's no time for breathing, and Wright throws too much at us, just like Guillermo did as well. Costumes and sets, leagues of ghosties and double-crosses galore. But buried beneath the mountains of style and beautiful people both this and Crimson Peak, which I think would make for the perfect double-bill, are pretty straightforward stories down in their punctured spilling sad broken hearts. The past raining down on us, splitting open the skies with waves of what refuses to be forgotten, an echo of a heart beating through the walls that demands it be heard, be understood, in the present. In times where we seem incapable of standing still and listening it seems to take a barrage, an assault on the senses, and I do believe that Last Night in Soho, imperfect unwieldy, still set mine long-term to tingle. We've got a new ghost in the rafters, guys, and it looks great in sheets.

Mike Mills Deserves Everything

If I were mentally stable enough to focus on "what movies are coming out this year" (which would require me to define "this year" aka a daunting task) Mike Mills' C'Mon C'Mon would be right near the tippy-top, alongside Dune and Last Night in Soho and Benedetta. I'll be seeing three of those four at NYFF in a few weeks -- guess I am going to have to wait for Soho until closer to its release date, boo) -- but today our first glimpse at Mills' film arrived and if you click on over to The Film Experience you can watch it. Because I posted it there. I hesitate to say I talked about the trailer though; I just sort of rambled. Like I'm doing right now! Life is amazing.

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.

They'll Continue Singing It Forever Just Because

At some point in The Sparks Brothers, Edgar Wright's recent documentary on the art-pop band Sparks, one of the brothers that make up the band talks about the importance of repetition in their songwriting. They like to lyricize an entire song with one phrase, one phrase repeated over and over, but sung slightly different each time so its meaning shifts ever so slightly. Change the emphasis inside the sentence "We love each other so much" just a hint and a grand declaration can become an ironic half-thought, a sinister accusation. 

And that's the well their score for Leos Carax' sixth film Annette -- recent opener for the Cannes Film Festival, now in theaters, hitting Amazon this weekend -- returns to time and again and again and again... and again again. Indeed nearly every song seems predicated on the idea. Or maybe that's just the way it felt to me by its end -- either way at a certain point Brechtian echoes trail off, leaving blank emptiness in their wake, and I fear Annette, for all its blowsy Carax-fueled cinematic abandon, might suffer the same fate. It's a lot of sound and fury, in other words. Actually in the same words. Over and over, and again again.

Admission of dire un-hipness I had never even heard of Sparks until Edgar Wright told me that I needed to, and at Sundance his two-and-a-half hour doc, bubbling with giddiness, sure convinced me I'd been missing out -- I went straight to Apple Music and I downloaded all of their music immediately, coasting in on the doc's effervescent charms and the mad wild weirdness of those legendary brothers. But the spell, I have to say, kinda wore off, and fast at it -- within a couple of months I was swiping their tracks off every playlist, as that same repetitive nature of their songwriting began to eat away at itself; a poisonous stomach-ache hangover, an acid bath for my ears. Novelty wore thin and I became actively annoyed by the sound of them! Egads, outta my head!

To the new film's credit it's only the opening scene of Annette where the exact "sound" of the Sparks themselves becomes an issue, since it has the brothers marching and singing alongside all of the film's actors (and hey there Mr. Carax himself) to introduce our big handed tale of woe -- its forward camera march is reminiscent of the standout accordion scene in Carax's masterpiece Holy Motors actually. And from there on the duties of being incessantly repetitive are handed to some admittedly talented thesps, foremost being Adam Driver & Marion Cotillard as our dangerously romantic couple -- these two, they have some luck for awhile with it. 

But I've said on numerous occasions that I can only stomach musical movies as far as I dig their soundtracks, and the Sparks music eating away at the heart of Annette went the same road as my whisper-brief affair with the band themselves -- an iota of them goes a long long way, but Annette insists on going longer.

Visually Carax remains a trip, a touch of light fantastic, a treat -- he finds such weird ways to render mundane material that you can't help but sizzle here and there in your seat from the Sheer Audacity TM on display. But about film's mid-point, as Adam Driver's performance grew bigger and more exhausting as if he could outrun his every sentence, I began to get lost in the Whys of it all. The story boiled down to its core is standard Star in Born claptrap, goosed up with ever bigger waves of ham and extravagance -- eventually I just wanted the ride to end. I wanted off the whirlygig. I wanted these white people to please stop screaming at me.

There are a lot of things about Annette to appreciate, in theory. It's not sanded down for its abrasiveness -- it's dark and glum and mean and horny and relentlessly idiosyncratic. It will be a lot of people's cuppa. You do admire the chutzpah while wiping it off your face. But I just couldn't find a heart to it anywhere -- a belly to sink my hand into for firm grip. It was shock and awe and marionette drone sight gags, a giggle or ten, and a lot of operatic wailing in the place of words or meaning. Sometimes saying the same thing over and over just makes the thing lose all meaning, a word on a page that's turned into scribbles, a hieroglyphical dissonance half-resembling a thing you once remembered, back in the before-times, whenever the hell they was, when they was, whenever.

O What Music Adam Driver's Torso Makes

Holy Motors maniac I mean director Leos Carax's highly anticipated musical movie Annette, starring Adam Driver and Marion Cotillard and the music of the band called Sparks -- recently enthusiastically profiled by the filmmaker Edgar Wright in a documentary of their own; massive year for Sparks fans! -- is out in theaters on Friday, and they've just dropped the final trailer which you can see below. 

I have already seen this movie but I'm saving my review (which quite unlike me I have already written) for a bit, because the movie's out on demand on Amazon Prime on August 20th and I'd rather encourage y'all to see it that way -- in the middle of a damn pandemic -- than to go to the theaters, quite frankly. Now a wise person might here note that I had no such qualms about reviewing The Green Knight, a film I adored, and this wise person might then wonder if this means my like for Annette is less than... as I said, that would be a wise person. But we'll get into that later this month! Whether Adam Driver likes it or not!

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

Leave No Trace (2018)

Tom: What if the kids at school think I'm strange 

cuz of the way we were living?

Will: How important are their judgments?

A very happy 21st birthday to Thomasin McKenzie today! This Debra Granik movie definitely marks the moment I fell for her -- I imagine it's the moment most of us fell for her, if you saw it -- but it's kind of nuts to look at how many projects of note that she's stacked up in the past three years since this brought her to our attention. Why she was in M. Night Shyamalan's film Old just this weekend (read my review here) and she was very good in it in a difficult part; before that there were small roles in The King and True History of the Kelly Gang and of course the biggie, Jojo Rabbit.  

What's your favorite from her so far? The next year holds some good or at least exciting stuff -- she's in Jane Campion's new film The Power of the Dog, and I've already seen The Justice of Bunny King thanks to Tribeca (and I reviewed it too, right here) and she is wonderful in that, but it's Edgar Wright's giallo-riff Last Night in Soho with her playing opposite Anya Taylor-Joy that I'm obviously the most looking forward to; the trailer can be viewed right here. That's out on October 22nd! The happiest of happy birthdays to her and please keep the hits coming, Thomasin!

Last Night and Every Night Until

When Anya Taylor-Joy hosted the season finale of SNL this past weekend -- and she was funny right? I thought she did a terrific job; she is just a natural star -- they previewed a preview, by giving us a couple flashes from the trailer for Edgar Wright's forthcoming giallo-ish flick Last Night in Soho (aka probably my most anticipated movie of the next year, give or take a Dune) and telling us, "Hey wait don't shoot yer load yet, the entire trailer isn't dropping until Tuesday." Well get yer loads prepped y'all, it's Tuesday and the trailer's here, and is it ever load-worthy...

We've been waiting for Wright to make a giallo ever since he goofed the genre with his short film Don't! in the middle of the Tarantino/Rodriguez sandwich that was 2007's Grindhouse double-feature -- I can say now, with all these many years behind us, that I'm thankful he didn't turn that (admittedly very funny) one-trick-pony into a feature and waited for a full-bodied film story to present itself, because this looks absolutely stunning. 

This is out on October 22nd, finally giving us a Halloween movie worthy of the holiday -- I have a sudden Suspiria (both versions) sense surrounding me -- there's nothing I want more than this. I can't even write coherently about it. I'm giddy. Giddy! Giddy with gimme! Gimme right now! How are y'all feeling?

Adam Driver Scores Big

Yikes it's taken me all day to get to this -- been working on a piece elsewhere, I have -- and I'm sure you and you and you and the next one have already watched the trailer for Annette, Leos Carax's long-awaited Holy-Motors-follow-up musical starring Adam Driver and Marion Cotillard... but I'm posting it anyway, dammit. I don't want to be talking about this movie in the future -- and I will inevitably be talking about this damn movie in the future! -- and not have a trailer to link back to, timeliness be damned. Oh and did I mention the music is by Sparks? I can't feign coolness on the subject of Sparks -- I only found out about them thanks to Edgar Wright's excellent forthcoming doc which screened at Sundance. But now I consider myself a fan, so better late than cool, or however that saying goes. 

Also announced is that this film is what's opening Cannes this year -- that's happening on July 6th and Amazon (who owns the movie) says it'll then premiere for the rest o' us in "Late Summer" in both theaters and on streaming. So there, a thing to look forward to. Holy Motors (which I reviewed here) was my second favorite film of 2012 (after Moonrise Kingdom) and to say I'm looking forward to this would be an understatement. (Also I can't believe it's been nine years!) Lots of gorgeous crazy visuals in that trailer anyway! Of course I only giffed the Sexy Adam Driver moments though cuz duh.