Andrew Scott Six Times

Happy day, Andrew Scott new photoshoot! Here is our All of Us Strangers and Ripley fella for Netflix's Queue magazine -- clearly given the source this is mainly for Ripley press, given he's currently nominated for an Emmy for it. (At least the Emmys knew what's what, unlike the Oscars with Strangers -- bastards.) Anyway not that I haven't spent the last 12 months or so on an Andy high but I did just see the recorded version of his performance in Noel Coward's play Present Laughter this past weekend as well, in which he was tremendous, and so my high is even higher right now -- hell, highest even. So these photos are hittin' the spot. Yes, that spot. The spot. So y'all hit the jump and hit your spots maybe too...

Andrew Scott Six Times

Andy is looking anything but raggedy (listen, I told you I am tired, that's the extent of my cleverness today) in these looks for Emmy magazine (via)! So now that you've had some time (i.e. a weekend) have any of you watched any of Ripley on Netflix? I got a couple of comments on my previous post but since it was more about staring at Andrew's ass I don't blame anyone for being knocked dumb. But tell me your thoughts now, if you've watched it. And hit the jump for the rest of the pics...

Good Morning, World

I told you yesterday a few of my thoughts on Ripley, the Patricia Highsmith adaptation starring Andrew Scott that just dropped on Netflix, right here (along with a few nice new photos of Mr. Scott for Interview Magazine). I also went slightly deeper on my appreciation for the series on Twitter and I will share that thread below (click on the tweet to see the entire thing). But right now all I wanna do is stare at Andrew Scott's bum! Ain't nothing wrong with that. Especially on a Friday morning -- this is one of the fineest ways to greet the weekend that are available to us, as human beings. So hit the jump for the bum and Happy Friday...

I figured some people would complain about #Ripley not being sexy and as a connoisseur of all things sexy I don't entirely disagree, but I also think its sexless sociopathy is kind of its entire point? And makes perfect sense? And is unsettling as fuck? pic.twitter.com/m8XmhG8J9S

— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) April 4, 2024

Andrew Scott Five Times

Ripley is finally out today -- go watch it on Netflix the first chance you get! It's really terrific, I thought. I speak of the new Patricia Highsmith adaptation starring Andrew Scott here as Tom Ripley, her perennial grifter, the same one showcased so wonderfully in Anthony Minghella's 1999 film The Talented Mr. Ripley. Here is the trailer. It salso stars Dakota Fanning and Johnny Flynn (from Emma) in the Gwyneth & Jude roles repsectively, although it's unfair to compare it to that movie because they're going for something very different emotionally. It's the same story as TTMR (I don't believe it dives into any of the other books; I know people were wondering) but it has a very different feel. And I think both versions work. Anyway with that out Andrew is featured in Interview Magazine today and besides this sexy photoshoot (SHELVES!) his chat is with the one and only Oscar-winning queen Olivia Colman! I usually post these links and then go read the articles but I couldn't stop myself from reading Andrew & Olivia chatting the second I saw it was a thing and it's a delight. So read that and hit the jump for the photos...

Ripley Be Ripley-ing

The first full trailer for Ripley, Netflix's limited series starring Andrew Scott as Patricia Highsmith's infamous homosexual charlatan Tom Ripley, has arrived this morning along with some new photos -- also starring Dakota Fanning and Johnny Flynn in the Gwyneth & Jude roles the series drops on the streamer on April 4th, which is a mere month away! Watch:

And after the jump a few more pictures...

What's In The Box, Dakota

Dakota Fanning just turned 30 last week and it looks like it might be an important year for her professionally -- she is of course co-starring opposite Andrew Scott in the series Ripley (yes in the Gywneth role) that's out on Netflix on April 3rd. But yesterday some more cool news broke -- she's leading the new horror movie from Bryan Bertino, director of The Strangers and The Dark and the Wicked! (The Dark and the Wicked is so underrated.) The movie is called Vicious (excellent title, shocked it hasn't been a horror movie before) and here is how it is described (it sounds a lot like Richard Kelly's The Box to me):

"The plot follows a young woman who must spend the night fighting for her existence as she slips down a disturbing rabbit hole contained inside a mysterious gift from a late-night visitor."

Pics of the Day

Vanity Fair has these our first official look at Andrew Scott in the forthcoming Ripley series, based on Patricia Highsmith's infamous character (most famously portrayed by Matt Damon in The Talented Mr. Ripley, or perhaps Alain Delon in Purple Noon). I guess the show is in black-and-white? Huh. Other info gained -- it's an eight parter and it will premiere on Netflix some time in 2024. The series also stars Johnny Flynn and Dakota Fanning -- see our previous posts on it here including some fun beach shots of Mr. Scott. I think post-All of Us Strangers this series is definitely getting an attention bump!

Andrew Scott Five Times

Unless this is your first visit to these here Plaid Pants then I can't imagine you can't imagine what the sound that leaked out of me sounded like upon me reading that Interview Magazine had gotten Ben Whishaw to chat with Andrew Scott for their new issue, even while it defies description. It was somehow both high-pitched and guttural all at once -- the new Tilda Swinton film Memoria is all about Tilda's quest to define a sound she may have dreamed, and I am about to go on my own quest just to describe this sound.

Anyway the interview between these two gay actor icons is exactly as wonderful as you'd expect -- you know when a conversation starts by praising the goddess Emily Mortimer you're in for a treat! Then Ben Whishaw immediately brings up "Eros" -- bless ya Ben -- and they're off. The Ripley series (which we just saw Andrew rocking a speedo for on the set) comes up as well and they speak highly of Patricia Highsmith and I couldn't love them more. Go check it and see the rest of the photos after the jump...

Pic of the Day

Hello! That's a photo of Andrew Scott playing Tom Ripley opposite Dakota Fanning playing the character of Marge in Showtime's Ripley series, filming right now in Italy (via) -- I told you about this series here. Previously these roles were played by Matt Damon and Gwyneth Paltrow in the 1999 masterpiece The Talented Mr. Ripley, of course, which leads me to this question...

polls

Also in the cast of Ripley is Emma actor Johnny Flynn playing Jude Law's forever-role of Dickie, and we wish him the best of luck with that... I mean I liked him in Emma but this is a big ask. On that note The Daily Mail, where these photos are from, lists the below photo as Dakota "frolicking with a few friends" but do we think that's actually a shot of Johnny below? I cannot tell. 

Good Morning, World

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Director Autumn de Wilde's new adaptation of Emma starring Anya Taylor-Joy, thanks to the plague, has been shuffled off onto this here internet for rental already; I might not have loved it -- I reviewed it here -- but I did walk out of it convinced that the actor Johnny Flynn seen here (who plays Mr. Knightley) might just end up being...

... an excellent choice to play Dickie Greenleaf opposite Andrew Scott in the new Talented Mr. Ripley that's getting made, and honestly that was my main concern. (Besides what they did with Clueless I've never been a huge fan of Jane Austen in general.) No, Johnny might not be Jude Law, but he's got a certain something.

And no I didn't specifically mean his butt, but his butt doesn't hurt. Anyway besides leaving this version of Emma with a confidence in Flynn's, um, abilities, I also left it with an inflammation in my Downton-adjacent fetish for the sight of a gentleman and his valet being intimate with one another, so let's hit the jump for the rest of this blessed scene...
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Johnny Flynn Seven Times

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A few weeks back Johnny Flynn here got cast as "Dickie" (aka the Jude Law part) in the new adaptation of Patricia Highsmith's The Talented Mr. Ripley (opposite Andrew Scott playing Ripley) and I admitted I didn't know Mr. Flynn from Adam. Well now I do know him a little better than that, since I've seen the new adaptation of Jane Austen's Emma starring Anya Taylor-Joy out this weekend. And...

... he's not bad. Not bad at all. Sure no he's not "Jude Law in 1999" or anything, but he's got a certain something, an easy charisma, and there's a tinge of cruelty to it too which will do well by Dickie, I think. I'm open to his interpretation at this point, is my point. More on Emma later this week but for now  hit the jump for a couple more of these new photos...

Johnny Flynn Nine Times

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Well I guess the powers that be weren't keen on my suggestion that I, legendary trained actor of the stage and screen, take on the role of "Dickie" in  Ripley, the new Showtime take on Patricia Highsmith's The Talented Mr. Ripley opposite Andrew Scott, who got cast as Ripley way back in September. This is of course the role that made Jude Law famous in Anthony Minghella's 1999 film... although one might reasonably argue that Jude Law's Face Etc made Jude Law famous, role be damned. 

Anyway they have instead hired this guy here who goes by the name of Johnny Flynn for the role. His name's been around a bunch as of late -- he's in the Emma re-do coming out next month, and he is playing David Bowie in a movie called Stardust. That said he's actually been bouncing around for awhile, including hey look a little role in Olivier Assayas' wonderful Clouds of Sils Maria...

He's got a great, interesting look -- I love a good facial scar -- but it's a different direction to take the character than Jude Law in his prime was. If any of you have seen Flynn in things -- and he's also a musician I guess so perhaps you know his music? -- maybe you can let us know if he's got the, you know, It Factor that the role demands. Jude, besides that stunning beauty, did bring a necessary cruelness to it -- Dickie just needs to be infuriatingly unobtainable. We need to want to rip the world apart along with Ripley for being denied him. That said I won't deny you Mr. Flynn right now, as I've got a few more photos after the jump...

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

Purple Noon (1960)

Philippe: That's why you took my bank statements?
Tom: Exactly.
Philippe: So you kill me and you're rich?
Tom: Don't miss a trick, do you?
Philippe: It seems awfully complicated.
You'd be caught immediately.
Tom: No necessarily. I might not look it,
but I've got lots of imagination.

Oh I don't think anybody's ever truly doubted that you've got a lot of imagination, Alain Delon. A happy 84 to the actor slash legend today! For some reason when I googled for a photo from the above film a page full of photos of Alain on a sexy sailing excursion in 1968 with Brigitte Bardot and the legendary yachtsman Eric Tabarly (looking seriously strapping in a skimpy bathing suit) popped up, and they seem worth sharing, hit the jump to be transported...

The Talented Mr Scott

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Listen, I have not only known who he is but I have loved Andrew Scott ever since he played Moriarty on Sherlock. But he doesn't seem to have any problem with being called "Hot Priest" thanks to all this Fleabag recognition (he seems more annoyed by "openly gay") and I think it's an adorable moniker, and so I say call him "Hot Priest" if you wanna call him "Hot Priest." I mean maybe don't call him "Hot Priest" two years from now, but Fleabag Fever is still a thing, it just won all the Emmys, so we're allowed. (This is in response to all sort of people on Twitter being pissy about calling him that, by the way. Just don't such miserable scolds, I says.) Anyway...

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I VOLUNTEER TO PLAY HOT PRIEST'S DICKIE

— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) September 25, 2019

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... the point is that the openly gay Andrew Scott aka Hot Priest has just signed on to play Tom Ripley in a Showtime adaptation of Patricia Highsmith's Ripley books -- specifically of The Talented Mr Ripley, it seems -- and I say bring that the heck on. I love Minghella's film as much as the next guy but if they can make a new West Side Story with racially appropriate actors then we can get a Tom Ripley who's actually had a dick in his mouth. Now y'all do some dream casting in the comments! Who should play Dickie, and Marge, and Dickie, and Freddie, and Dickie...

A Good Time To Be Murdered

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When I first read this news I thought it said that Luca Guadagnino was directing this but he's not, so know that up front -- Luca Guadagnino is producing this! "This" being a new film titled Born To Be Murdered, which will star a top-heavy cast of up-n-comers including John David Washington, Alicia Vikander, Boyd Holbrook and Vicky Krieps (yay Vicky Krieps!) and be directed by Ferdinando Cito Filomarino. 

Filomarino directed the 2015 film Antonia about the poet Antonia Pozzi (Pozzi is actually name-checked in Call Me By Your Name; she's the author of the book of poetry that Elio gives to Marzia) but possibly more notably Filomarino is Guadagnino's partner (Guadagnino called him his "sentimental partner" in an interview, which is one way to get around "lover" I guess).

So basically Luca got his boyfriend a bunch of movie stars for his new movie -- I am not judging; good for everybody involved! I'd like everyone involved with Call Me By Your Name (as well as Suspiria -- Filomarino was Assistant Director on that) to make all of the movies from now on. I'd be fine with that! Basically everybody from CMBYN is working on Born To Be Murdered -- Sayombhu Mukdeeprom is doing the cinematography, Ryuichi Sakamoto is doing the composing, and the great Walter Fasano is editing. And I guess this puts together a piece of why Luca shot that sexy-ass Zegna commercial starring Boyd Holbrook recently.

Anyway Born To Be Murdered "is set in Athens and the Epirus region of Greece, where a vacationing couple, played by Washington and Vikander, fall trap to a violent conspiracy with tragic consequences." I'm picturing something like Oscar Isaac and Kristen Dunst in the Patricia Highsmith vacation-porn thriller The Two Faces of January, where you get beautiful people in beautiful costumes behaving badly in eye-wateringly gorgeous scenery. Bought my ticket already!
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Three From Tribeca

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I totally forgot to give y'all a heads-up that I'll be mostly off-line today -- a last batch of Tribeca screenings, ya know -- but if you head over to The Film Experience I've got a few reviews from the Fest going live. First up there's A Kind of Murder, starring Patrick Wilson and Jessica Biel in an adaptation of a Patricia Highsmith book called The Blunderer. Second up...

... there's the Persona-like thriller Always Shine, starring the great Mackenzie Davis (who just won Best Actress at the Fest for her performance here) and Caitlin FitzGerald as a pair of actress-friends on a weekend trip together.

Both of those reviews can be read right here. 

And then thirdly click here to hear my thoughts on Hunt for the Wilderpeople, the darling new movie from New Zealand director Taika Waititi, whose vampire-comedy What We Do in the Shadows was a bit of a hit last year, and who is set to dive into no less than the Marvel Universe next when he directs the third Thor movie. Wilderpeople stars Sam Neill as a Bush grouch stuck with a saucy little foster son, and it is sweet and funny stuff.

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Today's Mood

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Give Me Your Best Grace Kelly

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I haven't been able to stop thinking about yesterday's news that Phillip Pullman's brilliant book series His Dark Materials is getting rebooted by the BBC for a miniseries - if you've never read the books now's your chance! I mean, every day has been your chance, but this offers yet another one! No judgment! (I am judging you until you read them.) Anyway our pal Nathaniel mentioned the news over at TFE today and pointed out an excellent point:

"Good luck besting Nicole Kidman's Miss Coulter."

When I read the books eons ago even then I knew that the only person right for the villainous Mrs. Coulter was Nicole Kidman -- it was one of those perfect preordained bits of casting that thankfully worked out. And considering this today I realized we've currently got yet another example of such an occurrence -- nobody but nobody but Cate Blanchett was right for the role of Carol Aird in an adaptation of Patricia Highsmith's story The Price of Salt, and thankfully the fates aligned and made is thus. (Here's my review of Todd Haynes' Carol.) But since we always feel the need to put everything into competition with everything else, we must ask...

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Carol And Everything After

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In case you missed one of my scattered links to my reviews from the New York Film Festival as they went up over the course of the thirteen hundred and eleven weeks the festival went on for (it really felt that long by the end) Nathaniel went and gathered up all of our coverage for The Film Experience here in this post, so click on over and find links to my thoughts on Steve Jobs, The Lobster, and many more, plus what Nat & Manuel had to say on many many more. 

Now I'm playing catch-up - there were several movies I saw at NYFF that I didn't review, mostly because somebody else did. But, in the everlasting ever-wise words of Jerri Blank, I got something to say! So here let's attempt to get out quick-ish thoughts on six of them.

Brooklyn -- Calling something "old fashioned" doesn't in and of itself make for goodness, for baked apple pie feelings. There are lots of "old fashioned" things like Ku Klux Klan rallies and Jane Wyman that are the exact opposite of delicious pie. But thankfully John Crowley's Brooklyn is whipped cream sliding down a berry cobbler; it's the solid construction of 501 jeans. It's well-made and warm with lovely performances; timeless, out of time, instantly. It's like laying your head on your grandmother's lap and listening to her favorite stories as she strokes your hair, presuming you had a nice grandmother who wasn't anything like Jane Wyman. (Damn you, Jane Wyman!)

Son of Saul -- Basically Children of Men dropped into the Holocaust in the place of a fake future dystopia, with all of the horror that swap implies then amped up to eleven. There's no awe-inspiring pig balloon drifting in the distant sky here to make us wonder at an outside story, another world - just muck and bodies and more bodies, screams and the echoes of screams, under a thick cloak of encamped claustrophobia (the camera is practically strapped to the main character's scalp) -- it's the sort of verisimilitude that will wake you in cold sweats. And somehow, even as it marches you up into the face of true atrocity, it's so dynamically told that you not only can't look away, you don't want to; you're too emotionally invested in the simple act of kindness at its center. This is what critics say things like "a remarkable achievement" for.

The Walk -- Fairly relentless garbage movie. Listen there is a lightness and a sunny optimism to what Robert Zemeckis does that I wouldn't give up for all the world; we have enough Chris Nolans, thank you very much. But this movie is filled with so many bizarre choices, many of which have already been dissected at this point - the constant scenes of "But wait I have to practice my English, let us speak in English now" to get us out of subtitles, even though Joseph Gordon-Levitt's French was so much less distracting than his French-accented English; the insane "Hey there I'm just sittin' here on the Statue of Liberty" book-ends; all the goddamned juggling...

But all of that stuff I anticipated (well sort of - who could've seen the prancing on the Statue of Liberty schtick coming) since I wasn't that big a fan of Man On Wire either as the real Petit is just a relentlessly annoying human being in the real world; Roberto Benigni on a string. So what was most fatal of all from my perspective (which by value of being "my" perspective I get might not be "your" perspective) was that I was never all that traumatized by the titular walk itself, heralded by many (most) as the film's great achievement. Granted I'm not afraid of heights in the slightest, but I'm certainly capable of awe, and The Walk was a short trip to nowhere, tripping over itself the whole way.

The Martian -- Popcorn, good solid popcorn, and mostly intelligent enough to take two steps to the left and scurry out of its own machine-propelled and predestined way. Ridley Scott's being relentlessly unpretentious here - after the gasping verbal provocations of The Counselor (which I found totally fascinating, by the way) and smothering the Bible in poisoned pixels with Exodus: Gods and Kings (even that title exhausts me) throwing Matt Damon in the dirt and playing disco over it was just about doing a little dance for a hot minute, and it feels good. It feels good for too long though - I think half an hour could've easily been cut, and the news that Scott has a thirty-minute longer cut of the film that he means to release fills me with Martian ennui.

Mountains May Depart -- Zhao Tao, Zhao Tao, Zhao Tao! I just wanna sing Zhao's name, I wanna stand in a field and do a dance beside her in the snow. Depart covers maybe twenty-five years of this woman's small circle of family and acquaintances (the circle expands and contracts like stones in the seasons) but as good as most every piece is you keep wanting to find your way back to Zhao, and the film wisely respects your feelings and does. And there she is again, being great, giving the sort of gently astonishing performance that should make Meryl Streep feel like a lazy ham.

Carol -- It's funny, the first time through with Todd Haynes' Carol I didn't cry at all. If you've been reading anything I've had to say for any period of time longer than say five minutes then you probably know what an easy mark I am, tear-wise - I will literally cry at the drop of a hat. Like, what did that hat do to deserve all this violence? Why, why, whyyyy? Oh my god did I mention the hats in Carol? The hats and the scarves, the scarves! The golf-lady outfit that Sarah Paulson wears that matches the chair she's sitting in so perfectly I'm convinced her character brought the chair with her, tossed in the back of her sedan, everywhere. 

Point being the second time I watched Carol all I did was cry. I cried over the scarves and the love-seats, the brooches and Rooney's pinned-up bob, the way Cate Blanchett unfolds her body like angel's wings. The film, which folds and unfolds upon itself, rewards repeat viewing with luxurious feelings, the feelings of luxury - the soft leather palm of a glove sitting on a counter and the reflection of devastating first love snot glimmering in a train window. All of it, as glorious as glorious could possibly stand to be without breaking, reassembling, and ascending unto Heaven itself, leaving us blind and sobbing and blind in its wake.

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