Each Man Kills The Thing He Loves

I have been so sidetracked with Tribeca I haven't had the chance to all-hands-on-deck everyone that yesterday was the day that Rainer Wener Fassbinder's final and gayest film Querelle hit the Criterion Collection! Yes, the one with the turned-out-to-be-controversial cover that seemed to be either love it or hate it (I actually fell somewhere down the middle myself -- I will always prefer any movie's original art, but given the fact that this movie's best original art is semi-pornographic I understand the change, and I don't loathe the new art.) If you haven't already pick up a copy right here. And if you've never seen Querelle before... my god, you're in for something. The movie is so dreamy and bizarre, languorous and sexy and hyponotically strange. It is a definite mood. A definitive gay text. It's a lot of things and you need to discover them all for yourselves ASAP! I've posted about this movie one billion times previously but I have been so busy with Tribeca I haven't been able to watch my copy of the new blu yet. But hopefully, once it calms down this weekend, I will make time for the magic, the wonder....

Pics of the Day

About one month ago I shared with y'all the first brief teaser trailer for Matthias Schoenaerts' turn as the gunslinger Django (previously immortalized by the handsome, to put it mildly, Franco Nero) in a series for Sky TV. I didn't have a release date then and I still don't have one now -- as far as I know it's just sometime in 2023 -- but what I do have for you (via) are eleven new photos of our Matty boy in character. Now don't get me wrong, I will be all over this show when it does come out, but (superficial moment, but what do you expect from MNPP) I do wish his hair was shorter. I never think he looks his best with long hair. Oh well -- he will surely be great in the role, since he literally is always great, and I suppose I can comfort myself with that! Hit the jump for the whole pack of pics...

Schoen, Schoen on the Range

File this one under "projects I forgot were happening whilst I was distracted by a global pandemic" -- last February I told you that our big Belgian boy Matthias Schoenaerts was going to star in a limited series remake of Django, the famed Western series that once upon a time starred the gorgeous Franco Nero. Well they went and made the damned thing! And we know have a trailer. It's not quite all as dark as that shot above but since Django peering out from under his hat is the iconic Django shot...

... I figured the compare-contrast was important. Anyway also in the series (as you'll see in the trailer) is Noomi Rapace playing the black-suited villain and good golly does she appear to be having fun. I don't immediately recognize any other actors, nor am I familiar with the creators of the series (they made the show Gomorrah though, if you're familiar) -- all's I can tell you is this is as of now set to air on Sky in the UK next year, Here's the trailer:

What do we think? I'm ride-or-die for Matty obviously.

Good Morning, World

I'm running late due to the NYC snow-storm and therefore being a little lazy with this morning's "Good Morning, World" post so we can get on with it -- that's a gif of Matthias Schoenaerts I've posted before; indeed there's a whole slew of similar ones at this link, along with video. But I'm not just bringing up Matthias for Matthias reasons (he is a reason unto himself, obviously) -- there is actually Matthias News! And I'm killing two birds. Looks like Matthias is doing a ten-episode series for Canal+ (which basically means French TV) that will be an adaptation of the Franco-Nero-starring Western series Django! Yes, the series in which...

... Franco Nero looked like that. Good grief. Anyway I don't know why "Matthias Schoenaerts playing a taciturn cowboy outlaw" never really occurred to me before, probably because I don't think about Westerns all that much, but it really is an excellent idea. Strong Silent Types are his jam. Here's what we know about this update as of now:

"Loosely based on the 1966 film of the same name by Italian director Sergio Corbucci, Django is described by the production as “a fresh new take on the Western genre with a contemporary and psychological twist.” 

It will follow Django, a gunslinger in the Wild West who is searching for his daughter who he believes escaped the murder of his family eight years ago. He comes across New Babylon, a city of outcasts she has created with her soon-to-be husband; she believes he will put the city in danger, but he is determined not to lose his daughter again. 

“It features extremely strong female characters and delivers a thought-provoking reappraisal of masculinity in the West genre,” said [director Francesca Comencini]."

Quote of the Day

"When I was 22, I came to Rome without a penny. And I was helping a photographer, and one day a friend of his who was a photographer from De Laurentiis studios asked to take close-ups of me. Those photos ended up on the desk of John Huston. He asked me to meet him in this hotel […] and he looks at me and says, ‘Now undress!’ He wanted to see my body because I was playing Abel (in the Bible) and he needed to see. He looked at me very carefully and then said I could go."

Oh what a delightful surprise for a Thursday -- the website Little White Lies has a new chat with the actor and eternally gorgeous movie legend Franco Nero up where he talks about his 60-plus year career, including that beautiful and precious nugget of information there about its auspicious beginnings, and... I didn't know you had it in you, John Huston. Nero also talks about working with Fassbinder on Querelle -- he says Rainer came up to him in a bar and told him he was going to be in his next three movies -- as well as Tarantino, I recommend checking it out sooner rather than not sooner!

Good Morning, World

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Out of nowhere I got bitten by the Franco Nero bug last night -- it just came at me, fangs and fur a'flyin'! -- and so I decided to finally, after years upon years of being a loser who hadn't seen 1968's A Quiet Place in the Country, becoming a person who had seen 1968's A Quiet Place in the Country. And reader I must inform you that this morning you are looking at a person who has now seen... half of 1968's A Quiet Place in the Country.

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I started watching it too late! Don't blame me, blame this country's rampant and repugnant misogyny for forcing Elizabeth Warren out of the race for President and onto Rachel Maddow's show for an hour long interview slash moratorium on her depressingly cancelled campaign last night. Anyway A Quiet Place in the Country, what I have seen fo far, is fucking bonkers.
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SAME, VANESSA REDGRAVE, SAME pic.twitter.com/spTAHct4vV

— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) March 6, 2020

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But I'll refrain from saying any more until I finish the film. For now I will thrust the Franco Nero bug upon you too with these gifs of him in that film plus bonus after the jump a few gifs of him even more nakeder (read: fully nuuude, in the parlance of the day) in the 1976 movie Victory March...

Good Morning, World

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A quick heads-up that one of the giallo films I've been yammering about a bunch lately -- that'd be Luigi Bazzoni's 1971 murder mystery The Fifth Cord starring Franco Nero and his magical mustache, as also seen in this week's banner right above -- is actually available to stream via Amazon! Who knew? Not me.

I first mentioned this movie in April when Arrow released their drop dead gorgeous restoration of it on blu-ray; I've since mentioned it a couple more times because it's one of the movies that the Quad Cinema here in NYC has been screening this month as part of their giallo series. I was lucky enough, and smart enough, to go see it this weekend and you know what...

... I can firmly say here on three viewings in that The Fifth Cord is among my favorite giallos of ever. It's got prime Nero, it's got gay stuff (with not one but two of my favorite Queer Creep types), it's got a terrifyingly tense scene involving a cute little boy stalked by a maniac, and it's all set to groovy period tunes from Ennio Morricone and stunningly photographed by famed DP Vittorio Storaro. The Fifth Cord is absolute boss.

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FRANCO NERO’S MUSTACHE ON THE BIG SCREEN #nowwatching #giallo #franconero #thefifthcord

A post shared by Jason Adams (@jasonaadams) on Jul 20, 2019 at 3:47pm PDT

Horror Time in the City

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Nothing's scarier than New York in July and August, when the steam sets into the pavement and the rats get that look in their eyes, so its appropriate that we've got some movie options to go along with the sensations already rotting our flesh anyway -- as I already told you about last month the Quad is screening a series of six very fine giallo films starting this very weekend, including the totally gorgeous Fifth Cord which stars that finely mustachioed fellow Franco Nero you see above. Anyway today IndieWire was nice enough to cut together a trailer for the series, you can check it out at this link! I've seen all of these movies save one and they're all a lot of groovy stylish fun. 

The other big horror reveal today is Film At Lincoln Center has announced this year's "Scary Movies" line-up, which contains several HOLY SHIT moments, including the world premiere of Ari Aster's 3-hour Director's Cut of Midsommar (theatrical cut reviewed here) -- can I get a HOLY SHIT? HOLY SHIT! Besides that they're screening the terrific looking wedding night murder game movie Ready or Not (with my Halt and Catch Fire boyfriend Mark O'Brien in attendance), a flick called The Wolf Hour that has Naomi Watts trapped in her apartment during the so-called "Summer of Sam," and Villains, which stars Bill Skarsgard & Maika Monroe as a pair of lovers on the run who come face to face with even crazier crazies played by Jeffrey Donovan & Kyra Sedgwick. Check out the whole line-up here; "Scary Movies" runs August 16th through the 21st.

Strip Nude For Your Forbidden Photos

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Glorious news for horror-loving New Yorkers who'll want to burrow inside something cool and groovy to escape the July heat -- the Quad Cinema is screening six restored giallo films from July 19th through 25th and they're some real doozies! A couple of which I have covered here at MNPP before, like just recently The Fifth Cord starring a spectacularly mustachioed Franco Nero...

... more than just a mustache ride though this film is truly gorgeous to gaze upon, having been lensed by Vittorio Storaro right in between The Conformist and Last Tango in Paris. This sucker will look absolutely smashing on a big screen. Another one they're showing is the delightfully loopy and odd The Forbidden Photos of a Lady Above Suspicion, which I posted about right here...

... it's got pleather costumes and sheer walls and scuba men and pills, so many pills. It's a ton of fun. And as if that wasn't already enough they're screening 1975's Strip Nude For Your Killer, which might be my favorite giallo title of them all, and which stars (and gratuitously exploits over and over) the gorgeous Nino Castelnuovo of The Umbrellas of Cherbourg fame...

... and yes he spends half the movie half-naked, as we previously well documented in this old post here. Look upon that gif above and tell me you don't need to see that on a big screen! If you're not in New York all three of those films have been released on blu-ray recently, which is what got me to post about them at the time; click their titles to pick up a copy. Really you ought to do that even if you do live in New York, they're all worth owning.

Those three aren't the only films they're screening though, there are three more (including a Fulci) that I've never seen,  and if you hit the jump I'll share the info on all six of the films...

Thursday's Ways Not To Die

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Before we begin I should make it clear that our eventual giallo victim Sofia here (played by Rossella Falk) is one of those vague invalids you used to get in the movies -- anyway for some unexplained reason she's confined to a wheelchair, so when she hears a noise she wants to investigate, and her dumb cat...

... pushes her wheelchair away, she's forced to crawl around. 

Hence all the crawling.

There is a lot of crawling, actually. You know how giallos like to draw this shit out. She crawls and she crawls and we wait and we wait for the inevitably gloved killer to strike...

Sofia makes it too easy for the killer, really -- if you're a vague movie invalid you really shouldn't crawl up to the edge of a staircase, ya know? 

 See?!?!

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Yes, she's dead. You can see her dead. 

But this is a giallo, so we must really really see she's dead.

And so we get...

... to see her dead from multiple gorgeously lit angles.

The Fifth Cord (1971)

I've been on a renewed giallo kick over the past couple of weeks, but I've seen so many of the big ones at this point -- I put in The Fitfh Cord not expecting greatness, only expecting...

... a lot of Franco Nero with a mustache. But The Fifth Cord delivered on both counts! It's both terrific and has a lot of Nero-stache. Ya can't go wrong. The film was lensed by famed cinematographer Vittorio Storaro -- he actually shot this right in between The Conformist and Last Tango in Paris, and it shows. 

And not just in shots of the camera zooming in 

on Franco Nero's Mustache Answering A Red Telephone either!

Here are five randomly chosen frames from the film:

I mean it's an absolute all-time stunner. Oh and the music's by Ennio Morricone too! Blessedly Arrow Films just put The Fifth Cord out onto blu-ray with a bunch of extra features, I highly recommend you check this one out if you're a fan of giallo, or of pretty things, or of Franco Nero... and obviously these things are not mutually exclusive.

Hit the jump for links to the Previous Ways Not To Die...