All My Pretty Precioussses

I think I'm hardly alone in stating the cold hard dead truth that the three Hobbit movies kinda sorta broke my desire to watch Tolkein's Middle-Earth on the big screen anymore -- I couldn't even tell you anything that happened in them at this point; they went right in one eye and out the other. That said I started watching the Prime series, I think just because it landed in a lull in my schedule, and there's been some fun stuff in it. I will give it this -- it looks very expensive. (And given that Bezos shelled out like a billion dollars for the rights I should fucking hope so.) 

Anyway I wasn't really feeling much enthusiasm about Andy Serkis slipping into Peter Jackson's director's chair to make Lord of the Rings; The Hunt For Gollum, yet another big-screen adventure -- this one about the period in the story where Gollum (who else) had already found the ring but before Bilbo got to him and snatched away his Preciousssss -- even as names like Sir Ian and Elijah Wood and Lee Pace started circling a return to the franchise. To get to my belabored point, made even more belabored by the photo up top giving my game away, they've now announced that dreamboat Jamie Dornan will be replacing Viggo Mortensen as "Strider" aka the name his character went by before he embraced his princely panatloons and became the Aragorn we all came to know and love in the original trilogy. 

God this is so much nerd shit I am barfing right now! I need to go chop some wood or something stat. Anyway gorgeous Jamie is always a yes. I don't even care. I will now be watching this damn movie. And that's before we even get to the other two names that just got cast in it -- the queen herself Kate Winslet will apparently be the film's female lead, playing a character named "Marigol" (this site theorizes that she's Smeagol's grandmother), while our beautiful blond boy Leo Woodall will be playing a cohort of Strider's named Halvard. Does this mean this movie will have a lot of Jamie Dornan and Leo Woodall running around together, all bearded and dirty and huddling beside fires for warmth??? Because that's the movie I'm writing in my head, you best damn believe it. 

Catching Up With Matty

Those of us who worship at the altar of Matthias Schoenaerts are not fed well -- he hasn't been in anything since The Regime with Kate Winslet aired ten and a half lifetimes ago (otherwise known as uhh one year ago) and that's the way it's been for awhile -- one project a year, here and there, sporadically. We cannot surive this way, Matthias! Thanksfully there was some news on the Matty front this morning though -- he's signed in to star in a movie called Le Cowboy which has the super original storyline of a criminal roped into doing "one last job" that involves kidnapping a girl but then the two bond... yeah, we've seen this movie a thousand times before. Whatever. I'll watch him put his spin on it! The writer-director is Shane Atkinson whose film LaRoy Texas starring Steve Zahn and John Magaro played Tribeca last year and left not a huge impression on me, but I remember some people digging it. 

Anyway that spot of new news made me realize that if we're lucky we might be coming to an end on the Schoenaerts drought -- I had completely forgotten for one that he is playing the bad guy in the Supergirl movie that DC hired I Tonya director Craig Gillespie to direct and which has apparently already been filmed. And he's also somehow in The Old Guard 2 even though (spoiler) he died in the first one, and we just got the first image from that movie last week. (See below.) So that must be coming out soon, I guess.

First look at THE OLD GUARD sequel! (And here's to hoping everybody's favorite ancient crime-fighting homosexuals Marwan Kenzari & Luca Marinelli have added Henry Golding into their mix)

[image or embed]

— Jason Adams (@jamnpp.bsky.social) April 23, 2025 at 12:50 PM

And then of course there's The Way of the Wind, Terrence Malick's now many years in the making movie about Jesus (yes, Christ) that has Matthias playing the disciple Peter.  We first posted about that movie getting started SIX YEARS AGO. With Malick though who knows -- he could take another six years. The names in that stacked cast are endless -- Mark Rylance, John Rhys-Davies, Joseph Fiennes, Ben Kingsley, FRANZ ROGOWSKI, Eileen Atkins, Aidan Turner, Mathieu Kassovitz. Also since it's Malick half of those people could end up on the cutting room floor -- it could be three hours of Mark Rylance spinning in a field for all we know. 

ETA an hour after posting this Netflix unloaded some more images from The Old Guard 2 including one very much confirming Matthias' presence therein, and another one of eternal boyfriends Luca Marinelli & Marwan Kenzari, and far be it from me not to add them to this post!

The Old Guard 2 is out on July 2nd.

Oh and here's the trailer too since we're here:

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

 ... you can learn from:

Heavenly Creatures (1994)

Juliet: All the best people have bad chests 

and bone diseases. It's all frightfully romantic.

A happy 30 to Peter Jackson's masterpiece!

Maybe they could announce a 4K release today?

Seeing as how the movie doesn't even have a blu-ray.

Happy 51, Patrick Wilson

There is something just right about Patrick Wilson being born on the third of July -- for as long as he's been acting he's been the suburban dream of the American Suburban Dad, for good or evil -- whether it be fighting demons in the Insidious and Conjuring movies or surreptitiously slamming Kate Winslet against the downstairs dryer in Little Children. The latter role was his breakout and with good reason -- something tells me clandestine affairs across the country found some sweaty inspiration from it, even if the movie was, you, know, a bit of a downer (when it wasn't being hot as hell). Anyway thinking about that role always makes me then think about the spin he did on a similar thing five years later in Diablo Cody's viciously funny Young Adult -- those two characters are basically the yin and yang of Suburban Dad-ness. Which brings us to today's birthday poll for the beautiful and talented fella...

online polls

All Hail King Matty

I actually kept my word for once this past weekend -- in case you weren't sure my word is shit and you should believe maybe about 0.001% of what I say -- and watched the first two (now three) episodes of The Regime, the Max series starring Kate Winslet and Matthias Schoenaerts and Andrea Riseborough that I said on Friday that I wanted to get around to watching. Imagine that! Wonders do not not ever stop ceasing or whatever. Anyway I'm enjoying it so far -- on Saturday when I got to the end of the second episode and realized that was all they had dropped so far I was upset to discover there wasn't more; I'd thought it was one of those whole series binge drops. I could've and would've watched the whole thing.

Alas. Anyway I'm not buying the complaints I've seen about the satire of it not being funny enough -- first off that voice Winslet's rocking is enough for ten comdies. But we already have a Veep and a Death of Stalin and that's clearly what those complaining people want from the show. People get very upset when they're not sure how to react to something! But I think it's doing something stranger and more particular tonally than that. I like when I can't nail down a show so easily and The Regime seems to me to be currently hovering in a sweet spot so far between satire and seriousness that keeps surprising me and feels all its own. We'll see anyway -- we are only three episodes in.

That said as you can see here the most important thing of all is that Matthias is doing press for the show! So we're getting new photos of him! Like these ones for Numero Netherlands magazine! There's also a chat -- read it here. Here is a choice bit from the chat, not about The Regime but about what Matty has lined up next:

"There is a movie we shot four years ago with the great Terrence Malick — it’s a project he’s been working on for more than thirty years now, and he’s been editing four years. I’m very curious to see what film comes out of that very intimate process he’s been going through for so long. Hopefully it will come out this year. Then, of course, we have ‘The Old Guard 2’, which is a sequel to the first one since it was very well received. It came out two years ago on Netflix. And then there’s other few future projects on the table that I still have to read, and a few that I had already committed myself to, but they haven’t been announced yet, so I always keep that in silence."

Do we know wtf he's talking about re: the Malick movie? Something he's been working on for 30 years? I'm also surprised to see him mention the sequel to The Old Guard given [spoiler] that his character was killed in the first movie. But please yes bring him back -- I daren't dream they might. Everything's coming up Matty! Including funny enough the photoshoot for this magazine, which I've got the entire lot of after the jump...

Matthias Schoenaerts Three Times

It's really quite ridiculous that I haven't watched any of The Regime yet on Max -- it's the A Little Chaos reunion that everybody's been waiting for! Have any of you actually ever seen A Little Chaos? The 2014 movie -- holy shit, where are all the 10-year-anniversary pieces on A Little Chaos -- about romantically entangled French landscape artists that Alan Rickman directed right before he died? I won't go so far as saying that the movie killed Alan Rickman, because it's not actually a bad movie. It's a fine movie that is vandalized by the terrible wig that they plopped down on Matthias Schoenaerts' head. 

Anyway Matthias has now re-teamed with his romantically-entangled rival landscape-artist Kate Winslet in The Regime and it's ridiculous that I haven't watched any of The Regime, is my point. It really seems like the kind of thing that will be right up my alley. Have any of you watched it? I will definitely get on that this weekend. All of that said it's basically the weekend now, so I probably won't post anything else today. So y'all have a good one! Weekend, I mean. Oh and go see Love Lies Bleeding (here is my review) now that it's in wide release! What a fucking movie that is. I mean it's no A Little Chaos but what is? (pics via)

Prince Matthias Can Storm My Castle

I don't know how any Matthias Schoenaerts project ever slips by me -- I tend to be on top of him, although never in the way I wanna be. But one that reunites him with his Little Chaos co-star Kate Winslet and also stars Martha Plimpton and Andrea Riseborough???

Me missing word on this is straight up psychotic! It's called The Regime and it's a limited-series for HBO from director Stephen Frears described as telling "the story of one year within the walls of the palace of a modern European regime as it begins to unravel.” Here's the teaser released today:

It's got a real Death of Stalin vibe, right? Or is it just Riseborough who's making me think that? Anyway Kate Winslet is fabulous at dark-comedy so it's good to see her doing something that will give her room there to play, and Matthias with this buzzcut? Consider me sitting erect already! But I'd better take a pill because this isn't being released until 2024 -- WTF? Why they torment me like this?

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

 ... you can learn from:

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)

Mary: Adults are, like, this mess of sadness and phobias.

This masterpiece was released 19 years ago this Sunday!

Try not to turn to dust realizing it's almost 20 - too late for me.

I am dust, typing this out with my dust fingers.
Well here's this gif to cheer us up:

Na Na Na Na'vi I'm Living Without You

It took me about an hour into Avatar: The Way of Water to feel the question, "Why the hell am I watching another Avatar movie again?" had been answered. It wasn't like some plot switch was flipped where the story or the characters suddenly became complex -- like the first film, Cameron is more than happy to just glide along with all of the ol' War and Westerns cliches and tropes. It's not really an answer I can pin down to words. (Like the script and its dialogue, hardy har.) No it's more of a feeling -- or perhaps the lack of one. A gleeful numbness. I suppose it just took that first hour for me to stop caring about any of those things and to find myself once again submerged under the spectacular weight of James Cameron's limitless visual imagination. I'll admit upfront I was a sucker for the first movie in 2009; I went to see it three times in the theater because goddamn what an exhilarating ride it was, once that same sensory-overload took over.

Avatar: The Way of Water does it again. Its last two hours fully beat me into giddy dumb submission. Cameron remains the finest director of action scenes alive -- nobody but nobody can cut together a sequence like he can that will have you truly feeling the wind in your hair... or I suppose in this case the water. This sequel feels like Avatar times Titanic times T2 plus a dusting of The Abyss on top for good measure. He wrings immersive beauty over and over and over again from sheer ridiculousness -- nothing about this should work, but we fully doubt James Cameron at our own folly. 

I don't feel much need to drown us in plot descriptions, because who cares? Some time has passed, Jake Sully's a dad and Neytiri's his big blue mama bear, and so we've got a raft of kids to get to know -- don't ask me to distinguish them all beyond "Teen Bad Boy" and "The Littlest One" yet, save most importantly the one called Kiri, inexplicably resurrecting Sigourney Weaver into the franchise (her character died and was like turned into a tree in the original right? Don't make me look that up please). Kiri is a waifish teenage horse-girl who dreamily stares into space and starts to discover hidden powers, and Kiri is a delight. One of the twenty Avatar sequels needs to be The Kiri Movie, I demand it. Avatar: Kiri O'Clock or whatever. Cameron makes the moolah, he can name the damn thing. As long as he makes the damn thing.

Point being Avatar: The Way of Water makes even the best MCU movies look like chin dribble. Cameron is so relentlessly efficiently skilled at the busting of blockbusters at this point that I don't know why anybody would even fuss to argue. Do I want other things in my cinema, of course. Will this come anywhere near my favorite film list of the year, of course not. But goddamn it's ruthlessly epic and entertaining and a staggering behemoth of big screen wizardry to behold. So get over yourselves and just behold the thing. Forget four quadrant filmmaking -- this sucker's fifteen wide. It's speaking immersive gibberish to the whales, so blow baby blow.

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

A Little Chaos (2014)

André Le Notre: What if no one person is to blame? 

And what use is blame? It is enough to have that 

happen to you. It is enough to recover from it. That 

is as much as we may ask of ourselves. That is enough.

It's surprisingly difficult to find good quotes from Matthias Schoenaerts characters in films because, as anybody who's seen Matthias Schoenaerts in a film might recognize, he tends towards characters that are, let's say, un-talky. Alan Rickman's 2014 film, which had him playing against type as a romance-cover-ready designer-of-royal-gardens who dukes it out with Kate Winslet's designer-of-same first among the plants and then among the sheets, actually calls on him to be a little bit chattier, and so it was a simple enough feat looking to this movie for today's "Lesson" in honor of Matthias' 44th birthday, which is today. Happy day, Matthias! 

Don't believe I ever reviewed this movie and that's probably because my recollection is I didn't love it, but looking back now I'd love to watch it again and give it another try. The thought of Matty and Kate talking quietly in period costumes among beautiful flowers feels like a simple pleasurable happening we didn't properly appreciate quite enough at the time. Seems it'd make a fine afternoon double-feature with his swoony Gabriel Oak in the stellar remake of Far From the Madding Crowd, anyway.

Good Morning, World

When Mare of Easttown ended on Sunday night -- and as an aside I'd love to hear what y'all thought of that show! I loved it, while acknowledging that plot-wise it sometimes leaned too hard on conventions, but I didn't really care because the performances were all so deeply moving -- I decided to finally start watching the 2013 run of Broadchurch, a British small-town whodunit starring Olivia Colman (and our new favorite big-eared gay-boy Jonathan Bailey, seen in these gifs) that I saw a lot of people compare Mare to. Well I started it on Monday (it's on Netflix)  and... I already have just one episode left? Which is to say it's scratching my itch and then some. 

I'll hold off on casting a final judgement until I've finished the first run of episodes -- and I've heard the second season isn't nearly as good? -- but if I thought Olivia Colman was incapable of delivering a performance that rang anything but astonishingly, painfully true in every single movement and facial expression (and I did think that) I only think it doubly so far. This is going to sound frightfully like Roman Castavet describing Guy Woodhouse's performance in Rosemary's Baby, I know that going in, but she does this... not an "involuntary reach" exactly, as Roman puts it, but in the scene where the boy's body is discovered on the beach in the first episode and the mother comes down and freaks out, Colman presses her hands on her forehead in one of the most genuine expressions of overwhelming dismay I have ever seen an actor put on-screen. I don't think I've ever seen anyone do that precise movement before? And watching her do it I was like, "That is what I do in those moments." She's just so goddamned good you guys. We did her right, giving her an Oscar. Also...

Has anybody seen BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE, the 2008 series about Simon Doonan's childhood starring Olivia Colman as his mum? I can't fathom I didn't know about this until right now, which makes me worry about its quality... but OH MY GOD THIS PHOTO pic.twitter.com/asTtv0V3dc

— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) June 2, 2021

... did y'all know that? Why didn't I know that? I have got to find that show, Anyway back to Broadchurch I was locked in from there on and have flown through it over the past couple of nights and will presumably finish it tonight. If I've got fans in the house please share your love, although I do ask y'all refrain from spoilers since like I said, one episode left. For now here's more of our big-eared gay-boy Jonathan Bailey flashing some meaty bum, after the jump...

Corn in the U.S.A.

I always hesitate to write about how my worst fear in the world is suffocation, because I have this image in my head of some Jigsaw motherfucker out here on the wilds of the internet noting that down in their torture spiral-notebook for when they inevitably decide to kidnap and torture me. I mean, that's the only way this blogging thing can end right? Well I've said it enough times now that I might as well just say it again...

Watching a movie right now that’s giving me flashbacks to the horrific twist in The Dressmaker and having a miniature panic attack all over again (that cute fashion romance had no right containing that trauma within it NO RIGHT) pic.twitter.com/BPROAYDvZD

— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) April 21, 2021

... movies scenes where characters are suffocated by [fill in the blank] traumatize me every fucking time. Always works. And it was with that headspace that I went into Silo, out today, a movie about a young dude working on a farm who gets stuck in a corn quicksand. This movie isn't explicitly a horror film -- it's more like an elongated countryfied episode of one of those Fireman TV programs that all the Boomers love. But I spent a lot of it covering my eyes and having a miniature panic attack all the same, because these situations make me a big ol' baby. Here's the trailer:

If you'd like to see Silo it's in theaters and streaming right now -- you can find out where on both counts on the movie's website. I'll add that the film has Jim Parrack from True Blood in a small role and gosh I missed him! Where has he been keeping himself anyway?

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

The Devil's Own Country

The news that Josh O'Connor is going to star in the next movie from his God's Own Country director Francis Lee doesn't feel like news at all -- not just because it seems inevitable, given how publicly and vociferously the two have expressed a deep affection for one another ever since that 2017 film, but because I could have sworn I had actually heard tell of this project, and Josh's participation in it, before. But a quick scan came up with no post so let's just say it now, possibly again, because it bears saying once or twice or twenty-two times -- Francis Lee's next film is going to be a horror movie, an adaptation of a book, that will star Josh O'Connor. What book? We don't know. But all of this, with a little more information, is referenced in a passage from a recent interview with Mr. Lee in Esquire magazine:

"Also on the table was Lee’s laptop and a copy of the novel he has almost finished adapting for his third film, about which I am sworn to secrecy. (It’s a horror movie with strong elements of “class and queerness”, about a sad young man alone in an epic wilderness; Josh O’Connor will star.)"

Class and queerness? In this economy? In all seriousness a Sad Gay Boy Horror Movie involving these two is entirely my heroin, so inject it, inject it deep into me, baby. All that said the interview with Lee at Esquire is worth your time, that news aside -- it gives a terrific window into a very closed-off and, by Kate Winslet's loving summation, "odd" man. I think he's one of the best new filmmakers we've got, and that soon people will also appreciate Ammonite for its brilliance, because I think it's stark-raving brilliant. It'll be one of those movies that people will revisit once they've got more of a handle on his way of telling stories, once he's told more stories, and be like, "Oh right, that's actually amazing." That's what I say anyway! God I love Ammonite. In case you missed my review it's right here. 

And Show a Further Sea

Mary Anning (Kate Winslet) spends her days fastidiously whittling down blocks of earth and stone to reveal the gorgeous curlicues of ancient life trapped within. Cephalopods and Nautilus, the spines and underbellies of once-upon soft-things long ago turned to glass -- here is a source of wonder. Mystery and past. The first sounds we hear in Francis Lee's Ammonite are of wetness -- in this case it's some floor-boards being scrubbed clean -- but we'll return again and again to the shore and its sounds, to the place where water does its own work of polishing old rough things down to a perfect glittering sheen. There's a hard beauty waiting for those willing to do some painstaking and intensive, focused work.

That's as much about the movie as anything, and it's the perfect setting and occupation for Lee's glorious introvert's love story -- his second glorious introvert's love story, it should be said. There might not be another filmmaker working today who understands better what it's like to find something wet and warm and terrifyingly invasive suddenly maneuvering its way deep down into the heart of a person who wasn't much looking for that particular invasion -- tremendous rock formations have been split to ruin by such weathering, and Lee sees the danger, the earthquake, of romance for us shy folk as crisp as science. 

For Mary Anning it's the arrival nee intrusion of the high-class Charlotte (Saoirse Ronan), a delicate and winsome thing you might see folded and dried in a book between two pages -- her hair, lightly golden, tumbles about her like holiday ornamentation. Charlotte feels decorative -- a shift of lace on an armchair -- while Mary is elbow grease and washing her armpits at the kitchen table. And yet in each other's company they uncover common ground -- before you know it Charlotte's hems are muck heavy and brown, and the beach-shells Mary's glued to a cheap mirror for tourist tuppence are announcing themselves as something, something worth hanging on a wall instead. Beauty begins insisting upon itself once you have a reason to actually look for it. Fuck, it's everywhere.

Mary and Charlotte become each other's reasons, slowly and insidious, but Lee isn't okay with resting on those laurels, as nice as that sun might feel finally in our bones -- falling in love might make us want to be better people but it doesn't automatically do that work for us. Mary, trapped for so long under her thin scrim of brine, can't just upend her chosen life of solitude and splash off to the big city, and she might not even want to. There is being afraid of love on the one hand but there's also just who we are on the other -- the weather might wash us down to something pretty that could be hung up in a museum but the original mass, our buried substance, still has weight and matter and worth in itself. 

Ammonite, like God's Own Country before it, knows deeply of the turbulent tug of the waves inside an introvert's heart -- the endless struggle to crack open our shells without killing ourselves in the process. We want and need to be known, but our personalities are stone set against it -- it takes time and it takes patience, uncovering those beautiful, buried things. But my god, when you do, watch out.

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

God's Own Country (2017)

Gheorghe: My country is dead. 

You can't throw a rock in most towns 

without hitting an old lady crying

for her children who have gone.

I am sure one of you will know what I am talking about and can correct me as to the specifics, but I want to write this out without googling those exact specifics because the way our memories twist things are usually more interesting than the flat realities of them. So anyway way back in the day during its first few seasons I used to watch American's Next Top Model, and there was this one model contestant one year who was from some very poor Eastern European country and as she listened to the spoiled princesses around her whine about nonsense she cut them off and in her thick Dracula-tinged accent said, and I quote (or perhaps paraphrase), "In other people's country there is war." 

Is that actually what that girl said? I don't know. But that is what has become a catchphrase in my household all the same -- my boyfriend and I use it to amusingly stop the other's bullshit in its tracks. And to bring this back to the start that phrase, "In other people's country there is war," is what popped into my head as I read that quote above from Gheorghe in God's Own Country just now. Same vibe!

Anyway! There are two reasons I am bringing up Francis Lee's film God's Own Country today -- one is that today is the birthday of the actor Alec Secareanu who so memorably played Gheorghe in that film, winning our hearts for a lifetime. He's turning 36! We adore him. Put him in everything, world! (Me included.)

The second reason I am bringing up God's Own Country is Francis Lee's second movie is out online this very day! Ammonite, a lesbian romance starring Kate Winslet and Saoirse Ronan, is now online -- you can rent it in many places, including right over here on Amazon. I have every intention of having a full Ammonite review up before today is over so stay tuned for that, but for now let me just say I adore the film way more than the general consensus that seems to be forming, and also birthday boy Alec Secareanu is actually in it! He plays a doctor, and he looks REAL GOOD you guys. 

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

 ... you can learn from:

Sense and Sensibility (1995)

Elinor: Marianne, you must change. You will catch a cold. 

Marianne: What care I for colds when there is such a man. 

Elinor: You will care very much when your nose swells up. 

Marianne: You are right. Help me, Elinor.

A very happy 66th birthday to the great Ang Lee today!

13 Rats of Halloween #2

Today's second chapter of our festive "13 Rats of Halloween" series (see yesterday's introduction here) is not from a Horror Film -- these aren't all going to be from Horror Films, since Rats are creepy enough on their own, whenever and where ever they show. This post this morning though will definitely be of the less antagonistic sort, because we're taking a look at the poor drowning rats on the great ship Titanic. James Cameron's Titanic, that is. As the ship is going down and our heroes Jack Dawson (Leonardo Dicaprio) and Rose Dewitt Bukater (Kate Winslet) are trying to, you know, survive that shit, what do they realize? Follow the rats! The rats will lead them to safety. And they do. (Well, you know... mostly. RIP Jack.)

Cameron actually aligns Jack with rats on a couple of occasions over the film -- when he's having his fancy tuxedo dinner with the rich people up top Rose's mom (the gloriously terrifying Frances Fisher) cuts him down in front of everybody, asking how steerage is treating people, and he replies, "Hardly any rats." And later on as Rose is fighting with her hideous fiancé Cal (Billy Zane in full twirling mustache mode) Cal asks her where she's going, "To be a whore to a gutter rat?" And Kate gets to reply with this rightfully beloved line:

Oh my god you guys, Rose Dewitt Bukater is such an icon. And much like the gutter rats Jack is a survivor, and he turns Rose into one -- we all need a little more rat in us, I'd say. Anyway if you'd like a little etymological history lesson today I recommend checking out this history of the idiom "rats fleeing a sinking ship" -- it's interesting! It goes back over four hundred years, although it's early uses weren't in reference to ships, but rather houses -- apparently rats will leave a house early when they sense that the structure isn't sound. They have a preternatural sense of it. Who knew?

What's New NewFest

During my day off yesterday NewFest 2020 went and dropped their full line-up for this year's mostly virtual fest, so today I play catch up! If you've heard all of this already, well you can go to hell. This is for the rest of us. (Not really, I love you!) (Unless you want to go to hell, in which case have at it. I prefer a cooler climate personally.) Anyway NewFest runs this year from October 16th through 27th and we already knew the big Opening Night film was Francis Lee's Ammonite -- see that post here -- so we'll focus in on some smaller but no less exciting stuff! But first, their trailer:

As you see there... hella gay. Right? So gay! I mean I know that's the idea but why they gotta rub all that gay in our faces? I mean when they could be rubbing the gay in our other places, obviously. Don't give my face all the attention, NewFest! That reminds me -- one year ago at NewFest I turned around to talk to my boyfriend at an after-party for one of their screenings and my boyfriend had literally been replaced by Chris Evans. No seriously -- that happened. If only I'd known then what I knew now! By which I mean Chris Evans definitively has a penis and I was about to be locked inside my apartment for eight months. 

Sorry I am really getting off track here. NewFest! We love NewFest! You can see their entire line-up on their website, I'm not gonna go through the whole thing because per usual they have an extensive line-up covering all the queer bases. But the titles that leapt right out at me are Alan Ball's Uncle Frank...

... which I've already posted about previously because it stars Paul Bettany and we love Paul Bettany, especially when he's not under all of that Vision make-up and wearing a mustache. That one is screening at the Queens Drive-in, what a thrill, outdoors and shit. And another one that leapt out at me was...

... Francois Ozon's Summer of 85, aka another one I've posted about before. Several times actually, as I tend to love Ozon films and this one looks like he took a lot of inspiration from Call Me By Your Name. See my previous posts, including its trailer, at this link. Oh and they're also showing Monsoon...

... aka The "Henry Golding plays gay" movie, previously posted about here -- this is from the writer-director of the lovely Lilting with Ben Whishaw. And I've already seen Monsoon and I'll have more to say about that closer to... not right now. Monsoon is getting a release in early November. Of course those are just some big titles -- there are loads more, including some fascinating looking docs (NewFest always has killer docs), one about Keith Haring and one about Truman Capote & Tennessee Williams, among many many others. Again check them at NewFest's website -- tickets are on sale right now!