Some TV Stuff

Did any of you watch Charlie Cox's series Kin on AMC? I posted about it exactly once last August, and I watched exactly one episode, and then completely forgot about it. It wasn't because I thought it wasn't good -- I just forgot. Our brains have been through a lot lately, alright? And there's a lot of TV happening besides. Anyway I was reminded of Kin because apparently not everyone was as absent-minded as me and the show actually got renewed for a second season this week. So I am guessing some of you watched it! We do love Charlie, as we've made clear for a very long time, so I should probably circle back and give it another go. The show also starred Emmet Scanlan, another furry British fave of ours. That said it would appear, via some brief investigations on my part, that Charlie only took his shirt off once and it was extremely dark, so they need to do better next time around. Do better, Kin! (Sidenote: Charlie's telling EW today that we should very much expect to see him showing up in the MCU again after his surprise cameo in the last Spider-Man. Busy busy boy, just how we like it)

Some other TV news -- Jake Gyllenhaal's 2012 movie End of Watch (oh my god, how is that movie a decade old), which saw him playing a bald-headed police officer alongside a not-bald-headed Michael Peña as his partner and followed them, Found Footage style, over the course of one hellish night, is being turned into a series by FOX. David Ayer, who went on to make a truly terrible Suicide Squad movie -- sidenote: have you seen the "Release the Ayer Cut" nonsense happening all of a sudden? Good grief -- directed the film and will apparently have some writing duties at least on this series, but I think we can all safely assume that neither Gyllenhaal nor Peña will be returning for the show. I haven't seen EOW in awhile and don't remember how it ends (maybe I'll rewatch it this weekend) but I do know (spoiler alert) that it involves supernatural forces, so I'm guessing this series is going to be capitalizing on that show Evil, which is doing well right? I don't watch it but I kinda wish I did, it sounds fun.

Anyway I haven't been bringing up TV enough lately -- what are y'all watching that you like? I have been watching a ton -- I'm currently switching around between Station Eleven, The Gilded Age (I did mention that one), Somebody Somewhere, my screeners of the new season of Russian Doll and the limited series Joe vs Carole, (don't ask, I can't say anything), oh and I watch one episode of the last season of PEN15 about once a month in order to draw that amazing show out for as long as I possibly can. Station Eleven is superb by the way, if anybody's not watching that.

Pics of the Day

The first photos of John Cameron Mitchell playing the Tiger King Joe Exotic and Kate McKinnon playing his tiger rival Carole Baskin have arrived today -- this is for Joe Vs Carole, the fictionalized retelling of the Netflix pandemic-hit reality-program Tiger King, which latched onto our fast spiraling early-2020 mindsets and distracted us for a hot minute before we realized what we'd done and that we should feel properly guilty about it. 

That said! I totally watched Tiger King (the first season anyway) and these two actors being cast in these two roles is enough of a mad stroke of genius that I have clearly got to watch this new take, no matter how I feel  at this point about these real people and the whole gross spectacle of their lives. There's no me saying no to John Cameron Mitchell and Kate f'ing McKinnon! So fingers crossed that this series becomes the definitive comedic telling of this sordid tale, and we can forget about the real folks, when Joe Vs Carole premieres on Peacock on March 3rd. Here's our first teaser:

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from: 

Shortbus (2006) 

Justin Bond: These bitches sucking cock and eating ass...

then they show up at the buffet and say they're vegan.

A very happy birthday to John Cameron Mitchell today! I have to believe that y'all saw the news from earlier this week that the actor-director-Hedwig been cast to play "Joe Exotic" in the Tiger King miniseries... ever since that news broke (my brain) I have been trying to think of a way to post about it and... brain, broken. What the fuck does one even say to that headline?  It's so genius and so unexpected that it validates the entire project. I mean I love me some Kate McKinnon with all my being but she was in Bombshell, her presence doesn't immediately signal "I will move the sun and stars to get at this thing." John Cameron Mitchell playing Joe Exotic shoots a fuckin' rocket through every moon and star there is, laying a glittering path straight to paradise. I have seen the light, and it has a stringy bleached-out mullet.

Do Dump or Marry: Spies For Dumping (Or Not)

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It's too good to pass up an excuse to play our favorite party game "Do Dump or Marry" when along comes a movie with "Dump" in the title and three hot dudes in the cast, wouldn't ya say? The Spy Who Dumped Me stars Mila Kunis & Kate McKinnon as besties who accidentally get embroiled in espionage shenanigans - starring opposite them in some capacity (I haven't seen the movie so I don't know where they all fit in yet) is the trio of Hasan Minaj (actor and Daily Show correspondent and seriously under-appreciated piece) and Sam Heughan (from Outlander, see more here) and Justin Theroux (former Mr. Jennifer Aniston and wearer of sweatpants, see more here) and y'all know what to do. Don't you? Hit the comments with which one you'd Do, which one you'd Dump, and which one you'd Mary. There, now you know!

Toot Toot Hey Beep Beep

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Anybody who's seen her host SNL or was able to peel their eyes off of Joseph Gordon Levitt's biceps in Don Jon knows that Scarlett Johannsson can be a brilliant comedian. I don't often have the opportunity to work "marble columns" into a day's conversation but if I can find a way, I will, and I will always and forever be amused. Sadly it's a skill she's not been called on to use much in her Big Movie Star Career, where the dudes making the movies have more often than not preferred to make like Isaac Mizrahi and grab her by the boobs instead. 

But like that infamously awkward moment (which actually gets tweaked here with a terrific sight gag for those paying quick attention) she's taken it in stride and come out on its better side (its under-boob?) - 16 years after Ghost World she's as good as she's ever been and more popular than ever, and so she gets to headline a Big Dumb Comedy in the mold of The Hangover (a movie starring Bradley Cooper in 2009, the same year he also starred in He's Just Not That Into You opposite... wait for it... Scarlett Johannsson.) 

And as a chance to hang out with ScarJo, being goofy alongside a goofy gaggle of game gals (sorry my alliteration key got stuck for a second there), Rough Night often delivers. Its best moments are the ones where it lets slide its need for 80s-era plot mechanisms (Diamond thieves? Really?) and just allows Johannson and Ilana Glazer and Zoe Kravitz and Jillian Bell and of course the current world's greatest scene-stealer Kate McKinnon, to be free as their freaky selves can be, riffing on joyous nonsense like they do. There's one bit of physical comedy from McKinnon in particular, momentarily suffering from a high-larious bout of brain damage, that had me in my own sort of stitches.

But the plot, a melange of Very Bad Things and Weekend at Bernie's dolled up in Bachelorette party dresses, does get in the way, mostly because the multiple strands keep feeling unformed and discarded. The ideas are there but the follow-through keeps trailing off, like a drunk in a doughnut factory, leaving a string of half-gnawed crullers in their wake. Delicious for them maybe, but kind of frustrating for us to stare at for almost two hours. Finish the damn doughnut, son!

And to bring it full circle, in the bad full circle kind of way, Johannsson is sadly, and atypically, the weak link - in the immortal words of Tyra Banks I was rooting for her, we were all rooting for her, but she approaches the material tepidly, nervously, and I think it might be that inclination that keeps the film from flying off its hinges like it really needed to. Everybody else was certainly game but Scarlett keeps biting her lip and tripping over every gag, playing a straight man's idea of The Straight Man - her self-conscious performance erases much of the stakes of shaking off the serious person shackles and the night, for all its murder sex and mayhem, ultimately feels about as rough as a single Appletini too many.

The Mad Case of the Face Fuzzed Male Stripper

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If you've seen the first trailer for Rough Night, Scarlett Johansson's upcoming ensemble comedy with Kate McKinnon, Jillian Bell, Ilana Glazer and Zoë Kravitz, then you know the gist -- it's Very Bad Things plus Weekend At Bernie's multiplied by Bachelorette. A bunch of bad-acting humans being of the female kind accidentally murder a stripper and then lug his corpse around for both tomfoolery and shenanigans, perhaps not in that order. Well a new trailer dropped today and it's showing off more of the tomfoolery and the shenanigans (perhaps not in that order) but there's one quick blip that really caught my eye...

I don't think I am going blind but hey anything's possible, I do turn 40 in a couple of months and I have done a lot of drugs in my life. Anyway you tell me if I'm nuts or not -- the dude high-kickin' in that powder blue thong has his face blurred out right? That's not just a case of movement blurring things - his face is actually intentionally obscured? Here I zoomed in a little:

How strange! It's a mystery! I'm pretty sure that's not the stripper we see buy it, because that stripper's wearing jeans when he buys it, and (I've got my Sherlock cap on) he's got a pierced nipple...

(Sidenote: this whole ridiculous post was worth it just to make that gif of Jillian Bell leap-frogging on that man) Anyway Blurred Man and Stripper Man appear to have pretty different bodies, to my trained eye. So who is the Blurred Guy? And why is he blurred? Looking through the cast list my guess is that's...

... Colton Haynes (who we see in the trailer dressed as a cop) in the thong. There's no way Colton Haynes is playing a real cop. Colton Haynes is a Stripper Cop if ever there was a Stripper Cop. And that looks like Colton's body type to me. So are there multiple strippers? And why would they blur Colton Haynes' face??? Whatever the answer is at this point I clearly have spent too much time thinking about this - I'm treating this Thong Footage like it's the Zapruder film for fuck's sake; Colton Haynes' Bulge On The Grassy Knoll! So I have to stop. Here's the trailer. Y'all figure it out yourselves. 

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Rough Night is out on June 16th.

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Pic of the Day

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I mean, c'mon, how can this picture NOT make you happy? This is an epic group of people. Happy Ghostbusters Day! 👻🚫🍾 pic.twitter.com/s5kSvaRZs5

— Paul Feig (@paulfeig) June 8, 2016

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ANNIE POTTS!!!!!!!

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More Like Shirt-Busters Amirite

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Because internationally they hate women even more than we do here in the United States -- and we sure do hate women here in the United States, so that's a whole bunch! -- the international version of the new Ghostbusters movie, which stars you know, women, features a whole heckuva lot of Chris Hemsworth in it! Way more than that first US trailer did. I ain't really complaining because heck, I like to look at Chris Hemsworth, but I do feel as if this trailer might be pushing him a little hard. 

Did I just say something about "pushing Chris Hemsworth hard"? 

Ahem. Okay I gotta go now. Here's the trailer.

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And after the jump a few more Hemsworth gifs...

Ghosts With The Mosts (Ladies That is)

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The Glorious Ladies of Ghost Busting trailer is here, you guys!

Ahh! I'm so excited I could puke slime onto Kristen Wiig's face!

Aww somebody beat me to it. Anyway this scene seems to me is giving the whoopee-cushion to the scene in the original film where they meet their first ghost in the library and it scares the shit out of them, which leads me to wonder if they'll riff on other scenes in a similar fashion? What I am asking is...

... are we gonna see a sexy ghost
 go downtown on Melissa McCarthy or what?

Here's the trailer:

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And since I have other things to say about this trailer,

here is a list of The Five Most Important Shots in it!

1. SLIMER, FUCK YEAH!

2. Speaking of the ghosts though, I like the candy-colored neon look we've got going on with them, especially all of the shots in Times Square. (I just realized there has got to be a Times Scare joke in this movie, doesn't there?) (Sidenote: didn't they film this movie in Boston? I thought it was gonna be set in Boston? It is definitely obviously not, but for some reason I thought that.)

Continuing #2 though, these shots remind me of my FAVORITE episode of the animated Ghostbusters series, one I always thought they should make a movie from -- the villain was The Sandman, and he was making everybody's dreams and nightmares take corporeal form, and it RULED. These shots of a massive collection of bizarre ghosts could be straight out of that episode.

3. Is Kate McKinnon's character a lesbian? It sures seems that way. And what if Kristen Wiig's character is too? What if we have a romance between them centered in a mainstream action comedy? Ahhh! Blowing my mind, these thoughts.

4. Phew, we were getting too worked up over lady action there for a minute, here's some crisp clean Chirs Hemsworth action to satisfy our manly man needs. Refreshing!
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5. This trailer made me laugh several times (which is a very good sign, for a comedy!) but this bit with the wig / hat thing made me laugh the hardest. I am so excited to see Wiig & McKinnon play with each other.... maybe even in a lesbian way!

So what do you guys think?

Ghostbusters is out on July 15th, aka my birthday!

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