Look at This Gif

I assume that some of you might be young enough to have not experienced in real time the sex-quake that resulted from this shot of Brad Pitt in Fight Club in 1999 --  the walls of every movie theater across the land shook with the revelation of this ab-splosion! It was a glorious moment in male exploitation, lemme tell ya. Anyway David Fincher has slowly been remastering his movies in 4K as of late and now it's Fight Club's turn and I don't know about you but I definitely feel the need to re-experience this moment in cinematic history in glorious 4K -- you can pre-order the disc here. It's out on May 12th. I actually haven't re-watched Fight Club in years but it's been on a mind a whole lot what with anarchic thoughts of fucking the system up becoming an every-minute-occurance in 2026, so I look forward to this revisit. It won't just be about the abs this time. But the abs help. They're a great delivery system. 

A Complete Unknown in 350 Words or Less

As with Wicked I don't think anybody needs my thoughts on a Bob Dylan bio-pic given the fact that I have never in my life given a shit about Bob Dylan -- add on top of that the fact that I have never loved a movie by director James Mangold and we're really cooking with gas (as in flatulance). But unlike Wicked and unlike every single one of Mangold's previous movies I actually walked out of A Complete Unknown with a smile on my face and a few tears wiped from my eyes -- this is a solid, totally respectable and enjoyable movie. 

Obviously I'm one of the founders of Team Timmy so you might think me biased due to that, but honest to blog he crafts a real character here -- this movie doesn't feel exhaustingly yolked to the bio-pic conventions of "here I was born and here I died and oh I did some Forrest Gump like shit in between;" it gives us an arc, and characters, to care about. Granted the real life arc it bridges -- "Folk Music can't be Electric or the world will end, oh my gahhhhhhhh" -- is hella silly from the vantage point of now; the film, as sweet as Edward Norton's performance as Pete Seeger is, really never manages to make that line of thinking seem like anything but nonsense. So that conflict never rises above a shrug. 

But the fiery relationship triangle between Chalamet, Elle Fanning (as a semi-fictional take on a real girl that Dylan dated), and Monica Barbaro as Joan Baez (both actresses superb) is beautifully acted and surprising and truly honestly earned my heart. And the film is very good at involving us in the songwriting process -- even if I'm not a Dylan fan the movie made me appreciate his skills as a wordsmith and a world-shifting entertainer. A Complete Unknown doesn't break open the bio-pic mold but it's about as good an example of what's-to-be-expected can be. Gonna be a fine pic over the holidays for those forced to endure family time.

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

 ... you can learn from:

Fight Club (1999)

Tyler Durden: Warning -- If you are reading this then this warning is for you. Every word you read of this useless fine print is another second off your life. Don't you have other things to do? Is your life so empty that you honestly can't think of a better way to spend these moments? Or are you so impressed with authority that you give respect and credence to all that claim it? Do you read everything you're supposed to read? Do you think every thing you're supposed to think? Buy what you're told to want? Get out of your apartment. Meet a member of the opposite sex. Stop the excessive shopping and masturbation. Quit your job. Start a fight. Prove you're alive. If you don't claim your humanity you will become a statistic. You have been warned.

Happy 25 to another movie like American Psycho where all the wrong people that the movie is making fun of saw a movie that read to them the opposite of that. I don't think it's quite as clear in Fincher's hands as it was in Mary Harron's, but he's gone on with movies like The Killer last year to underline his points often enough about the show-offy fragility of masculinity that we know his heart's always been in the right place anyway. To be honest I haven't actually sat down and watched Fight Club start to finish in quite some time -- it'd be great if we got a 4K of this first but watching the way Fincher's been tinkering with the 4K release of Seven for a few years now, delaying its release over and over, I won't hold my breath. Dude is too tinkery! Stop tinkering and go make the next season of Mindhunter goddammit!

Hey Look It's a Bob Dylan Movie

Whilst I was scuttled away in an NYFF screening this morning the first trailer for A Complete Unknown, the Bob Dylan biopic starring our boy Timmy C, dropped -- I'm on the record (probably more than once) in admitting I could give a shit about Bob Dylan, so I'm not the primary audience for this. But that cast is something! Besides Tim-Tim there's Boyd Holbrook as Johnny Cash, Scoot McNairy as Woody Gurthie, Ed Norton as Pete Seeger, Monica Barbaro as Joan Baez, and Elle Fanning as "Some Girl." (I think she's playing a made-up character? No doubt to show how the great man changes as he becomes great, like usual. God I could write the script for this movie right now, feels like. Anyway this is a trailer for this movie and I am now back at my desk from my morning screening.

A Complete Unknown is out on Christmas Day. 

Thoughts, if you care?

Behold, The Folk Fuckboi

The first trailer for James Mangold's Bob Dylan bio-pic A Complete Unknown starring Timmy, yes Timmy, has arrived -- I've said this on every ocassion when this film's come up but I just do not give a flying fuck about Bob Dylan and watching this trailer yup, still do not care. That said Timothée Chalamet does fall under my jurisdiction of consideration and sure I guess he's doing a good Dylan here. Big folk fuckboi energy. It's also nice to see Elle Fanning (big Elle fan) and I didn't notice them in the trailer (okay yes my eyes sort of glazed over watching this) but Scoot McNairy and Boyd Holbrook are in the movie somewhere too. Looks like fairly routine bio-pic stuff -- Mangold is not a director that excites me either and this looks very much like his Johnny Cash movie Walk the Line, which I couldn't describe to you a single frame from now. But gawrsh the Oscars loved it and one assumes that's what everybody's hoping for here. 

A Complete Unknown is out in December.

The Answer My Friend is Blowin' in Timmy's Hair

The internet was ablaze -- ablaze I tells ya! -- with photos of TImothee Chalamet out in NYC over the weekend shooting his forthcoming and long gestating baby Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown with director James Mangold. Just google them and you can find more -- I don't care. Y'all know my feelings about Timmy and I'll see this movie but I am not in the slightest a Dylan fan and kind of resent that I'm being made to care about this movie. And now even moreso, because today they've announced a heaping pile (a piling heap?) of actors who've joined the movie's cast and there are several names of import. Mainly the ones that matter to me are Boyd Holbrook, Scoot McNairy, and Gossip Girl hottie Eli Brown...

There's no word on who anybody is playing yet so don't ask. But those three snacks aren't the only names dropped -- there's also "Dan Fogler (Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them), Will Harrison (Daisy Jones & The Six) …... P.J. Byrne (Babylon), Nick Pupo (Halt and Catch Fire), Big Bill Morganfield, Laura Kariuki, Eric Berryman (Atlanta), David Alan Basche (Egg), Joe Tippett (Monarch) and James Austin Johnson (Saturday Night Live)." Plus the previously annouced Edward Norton and Elle Fanning. Sigh. At least I'll have nice faces to look at while I suffer through more Dylan mythologizing. And Timmy's hair looks lush. It's the little things! Or in the case of Timmy's hair, the big ones.

Synecdoche By Wes

See? I told you I would pop back in here over the holiday! I didn't lie, for once. Feel free to throw confetti in my face the next time you see me. Anyway I am here, over a holiday, to direct you toward a piece I'm proud of -- for Mashable I wrote about Wes Anderson's telescopically structured Asteroid City, and how that structure helps triple underline its big beating beautiful heart, click here to read it. I really dig this movie in case that's not clear by now -- this is the second piece I wrote about it, including my Pajiba review which you can read here. I hope you've all gone to see it for yourselves by now -- the big screen really is the best way to experience Wes' methodical aesthetic minutiae -- but if you're waiting for home for whatever reason the blu-ray is on sale already, right here. But it's not out until New Years Eve so, you know, prepare to wait.

Viva Wes, Again

Although it's been out in NYC and LA for a week now Wes Anderson's latest Asteroid City is just hitting the broader markets tomorrow, and so I am just sharing my feelings on the movie today. Over at Pajiba, right here. Spoiler alert: I love the fucking movie. I'm a hard yes on Wes though, so your mileage will obviously vary -- I find it inexplicable how divisive his movies are, but then I find so much of the world inexplicable. Find joy in beautiful things, people!

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Jason Adams (@jasonaadams)

Asteroid Straight Ahead

The teaser poster for Wes Anderson's next movie Asteroid City -- as it says right there on the teaser poster! -- has arrived! So I guess we can surmise from the image there that this is going to be Wes putting his particular stamp on Southwestern U.S. culture -- the whole Route 66 roadside-motel Area 51 thing. Kind of like when Tim Burton took to the deserts for Mars Attacks, is what I am picturing. Anyway no way am I listing off every name there on the poster but it's the usual assortment of Wes actors. Excited to see Hong Chau up in there, though! Supposedly we'll get the first trailer tomorrow. And the best news of all is that it's out in June! June 16th to be exact. Mark them calendars!

The Gang Goes Gobble Gobble

There is very nearly too much out this week for me to even keep a handle on, but lemme try real quick, before I take off for the evening. I always say before a holiday that I might pop back on here to update things and then never do -- of course now that I have said I never do I probably will because there's nothing I love better than proving myself foolish. Well that's not entirely true -- I also really love being lazy. So it's a battle between those two to see which wins out!

Anyway -- lotsa movies is my point! Many of which I have already reviewed or will have reviews going up for sometime this week. But let's start with a movie that falls into neither of those categories -- Rian Johnson's Knives Out sequel Glass Onion, which I saw last night (see down at the bottom of this post for some video of Johnson and a choice friend introducing the movie) but which I have no plans to review. It's hitting some theaters this week and y'all should go, it's fun. I'm not these movies most enthusiastic fan but they're fun enough. I thought the endless cameos in this one were a little much, but I am after all joyless and dead inside so your mileage will probably vary.

Seeing Jack O’Connell’s cock at this point is like having an old friend pop by for a spot of tea

— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) October 29, 2022

Oh and another movie out this week that I have seen but don't plan on reviewing is the new Lady Chatterly's Lover with Jack O'Connell -- even though I'm not writing about it doesn't mean it's bad, though. I liked it well enough. And not just because what I tweeted above. Although, you know, that never hurts. Literally never.

As for movies that I have already reviewed that are hitting theaters this week -- most importantly there is Luca Guadagnino's cannibal romance Bones and All, obviously. Here is my review of that. I think it's awesomely good and think you should see it. It got some Indie Spirit nominations today which surprised me -- I really think the film will be too weird for awards. But good for the Spirits. (Also I might have a piece coming on this exact subject hitting some time soon as well.) And then also out this week -- although only here in NYC, I think -- is Noah Baumbach's White Noise, which I reviewed right here. It's also terrific! Greta Gerwig, baby! They dropped a trailer today, too:



As for movies that I have reviews posting later this week -- keep your eyes trained on Pajiba for my takes on the films Devotion with Jonathan Majors and Glen Powell, as well as Steven Spielberg's autobiographical fable called The Fabelmans. Maybe I will pop back in here and share those links this week when the links arrive... maybe not. It's the most exciting thing that will happen all week, this guessing game! Make sure you hold your breath! Even when you're eating mashed potatoes. Especially when eating your mashed potatoes. Happy Thanksgiving, everybody! (And don't forget to use MNPP's Amazon link to do your holiday shopping with!)

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Jason Adams (@jasonaadams)

Thom Yorke's Daily Battles

.

The only movie that's getting a gala screening at the New York Film Festival that I haven't posted about yet -- the other two are Martin Scorsese's The Irishman, posted about here, and Noah Baumbach's Marriage Story, posted about here -- is Edward Norton's Motherless Brooklyn, which is the Closing Night Film. But today's given us a marvelous excuse to fix that! A song from Motherless Brooklyn was just released, and not just any ol' song -- it's a song by my main squeeze Thom Yorke! It's called "Daily Battles" and you can listen to it right here:

.

.

Rolling Stone debuted the track along with some words from Norton about how the song came to be, read that all here. Oh and also at that link there's a cover version of that same song done by Wynton Marsalis! Something for everybody! Motherless Brooklyn is an adaptation of the Jonathan Lethem novel of the same name, which Norton transferred from the modern-day New York borough to a 1950s Noir-ish setting. They also released some pictures this week, featuring Norton and Willem Dafoe and Gugu Mbatha-Raw and Alec Baldwin Bruce Willis, and I'll share them after the jump...

Thursday's Ways Not To Die

.

"This is interesting." 

You're right, Tyler Durden. This is interesting. But it's also a bit graphic, so here's my literal Trigger Warning -- only hit the jump if you're up for some (pretend!) gun violence on this here fairly quiet Thursday afternoon...
.

5 Off My Head: The NYFF of 2019

.

No less than Pedro Almodovar himself designed that there poster for the 57th New York Film Festival (click to embiggen), which has just today announced its Main Slate of 27 movies, all of which you can check out at this link. This comes on the heels of last week's announcement that Martin Scorsese's The Irishman will be their Opening Night picture -- see my post on that here -- and that Noah Baumbach's Marriage Story will be their Centerpiece Film -- see that post here -- as well as the news that Edward Norton's Motherless Brooklyn, an adaptation of Jonathan Lethem's book that stars Norton and Alec Bladwin among others, will be the Closing Night movie. 

Anyway the Main Slate once again this year looks tremendously promising -- every year I do a list of the five movies that I'm most excited about seeing, but since there's easily more than five right now even at first glance I'm going to do this year's list with a stipulation. If the film already showed up in my list of 10 movies I'm most excited for this year, which I wrote back in June, I'm excluding it from today's list. That means you won't see Bong Joon-ho's Parasite or Pedro Almodovar's Pain & Glory or Céline Sciamma's Portrait of a Lady on Fire listed below, but believe me -- believe me! -- I wanna see those movies very very much! But NYFF offers such richness that we easy can dig a little deeper...

5 Movies I'm Looking Forward to at NYFF 2019

Martin Eden (dir. Pietro Marcello) -- Not gonna lie, this Italian psuedo-historical drama immediately grabbed my attention because it stars Luca Marinelli, who we've been keen on ever since he got cast opposite Matthias Schoenaerts in another upcoming film called The Old Guard. We're rooting for him... especially showing up at the Q&A. Anyway Martin Eden is based on a book by Jack London, and has Marinelli playing a dissatisfied writer who finds politics and love and class warfare. Perhaps not in that order!

Zombi Child (dir. Bertrand Bonello) -- How the news escaped me that the director of two of the great films of the past decade, Saint Laurent and Nocturama, has gone and directed a zombie movie set in Haiti (which NYFF labels more Tourneur than Romero which sounds plenty ace to me) makes me nuts -- this is exactly the sort of arty nutty thing I should be on and on but good!

Wasp Network (dir. Olivier Assayas) - Assayas re-teams with his Carlos star Edgar Ramirez (who could really use a great role again right about now) to make an epic political thriller about the true story of a group of Cuban defectors who became spies in Miami in the 1980s. You say Assayas, I say how high, but the cast also includes Gael Garcia Bernal and Wagner Moura and Leonardo Sbaraglia (mmm Leonardo Sbaraglia) so sign me up.

Synonyms (Dir. Nadav Lapid) -- I just mentioned this film's star Tom Mercier last week when he got himself cast in Luca Guadagnino's HBO series -- he gives by all accounts an astonishing star making performance in this film, which won the Golden Bear in Berlin earlier this year. He plays a former Israeli soldier who runs away to Paris and finds sexual liberation or something. I don't know, I reached the point where I stopped reading things so it's not spoiled for me, but people I trust a lot have made this film sound like something real special.

Bacurau (dir. Kleber Mendonça Filho and Juliano Dornelles) -- This is one that my only connection to -- I did very much like Aquarius but otherwise I'm not super familiar with the directors or any of the actors, that is -- is how NYFF is describing it, but what a description! So I'll let them speak for me here:

"A vibrant, richly diverse backcountry Brazilian town finds its sun-dappled day-to-day disturbed when its inhabitants become the targets of a group of marauding, wealthy tourists. The perpetrators of this Most Dangerous Game–esque class warfare, however, may have met their match in the fed-up, resourceful denizens of little Bacurau. Those who remember Kleber Mendonça Filho’s wonderful NYFF54 crowd-pleaser Aquarius starring Sonia Braga—who appears here in a memorable supporting role—might be surprised by the new terrain and occasional ultraviolence of his latest, codirected with his longtime production designer Juliano Dornelles. Yet this wild shape-shifter shares with that film the exhilaration of witnessing society’s forgotten and marginalized standing up for themselves by any means necessary. With references to the fearless genre works of John Carpenter, George Miller, and Sergio Leone, Bacurau, winner of the Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival, is a vividly angry power-to-the-people fable like no other. A Kino Lorber release."

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

I didn't even room for the new Kelly Reichardt movie!
If you've looked through this year's NYFF line-up 

what looks good to you? Tell us in the comments!

.

Good Morning, World

.

I hadn't seen David Fincher's film Fight Club in several years when I stumbled upon it on tv this past weekend so I watched about half of it (it's easy so easy to get caught up in it) and I realized that if you ever need someone to yell out five seconds before Brad Pitt's butt-crack makes one of its several appearances in Fight Club, I am your man. I should do riff-tracks.

Anyway we're not talking about Brad Pitt's butt-crack (for once) this morning, we're talking about Eion Bailey, who's turning 40 today! Happy birthday, Eion! Our crush on Eion established itself long after we'd seen Fight Club -- in fact thanks to the blog I have kept for 11 years now I can pin-point The Moment I Fell For Eion Bailey down to the millisecond!

The post in question is titled, "Pleased To Meet You, Eion Bailey" and it shows that I fell for him thanks to a still of him in the movie The Canyon. That movie wasn't very good, but it brought me Eion so it holds a special place if not in my heart then at least a place connected to my heart by blood vessels.

Anyway, this scene! How's about this scene? Shirtless Eion Bailey shaving his head and most importantly stopping there and keeping everything below the neck good n' furry. The first and second rules of Fight Club might be you don't talk about Fight Club but the third or fourth one is probably "something something hyper-manliness something." (God this movie is so, so, so gay.)

Anyway if you're unfamiliar with Eion click through our Eion tag, you certainly won't be by the time you scan through our seven years of gratuitous posts on the hairy boy from California. And since Eion also has a good shirtless fighting scene in this movie that I have never capped before hit the jump for all of that...

Great Moments In Movie Shelves #33

.

Hey Will Graham, I know it's in your job description 

but maybe don't be such a looky-loo?

You might end up finding things

that you're not prepared to find.

Yeah, like that.

Brett Ratner's 2002 film Red Dragon (I always feel the need to qualify that yes, this is the version of the story with Brett Ratner on it) was on TV the other night and I hadn't watched it in ages and I was amused to see that the opening several minutes are basically the entire first two seasons of Hannibal, Bryan Fuller's masterful television series, in miniature. You know, without all the horror and grandeur and awesomeness of what Bryan & Co. accomplished. There's even a reference to a Dr. Bloom! Oh and this shot rivals anything Hannibal accomplished for gayness:

.