Cosmo Jarvis Three Times

Big day for Cosmo-stans as not only was he featured in that Warfare clip I shared earlier but we've also got news of his next project, and it's a biggun -- he's just joined the vast cast of Chris Nolan's upcoming epic take on The Odyssey (thx Mac). No idea who he's playing in it but he's got a face for skirts and he joins the already announced (the movie is actually already filming) cast of (deep breath) Matt Damon, Tom Holland, Zendaya, Anne Hathaway, Lupita Nyong’o, Robert Pattinson, John Leguizamo, Benny Safdie, Charlize Theron, Jon Bernthal, Mia Goth, Shiloh Fernandez, Himesh Patel, Elliott Page, Bill Irwin, Samantha Morton, Jesse Garcia, Will Yun Lee and Corey Hawkins. We have of course been in the Cosmo-corner ever since we first saw him opposite Florence Pugh in Lady Macbeth -- it took Shōgun for the rest of the world to catch up but that's fine because Shōgun is ace. And I know I should know better than to expect anything homosexual from Nolan but my god with this cast of actors and Ancient Greece as your setting... I mean we all know what Achilles and Patroclus were getting up to dammit!

Zac Efron is Not My Friend

.

I wouldn't say no to Zac Efron being my friend though! Anyway the trailer for We Are Your Friends, the movie that has apparently Zac Efron and Wes Bentley sharing all kinds of long lingering stares at one another, has dropped, and it's got several moments worth observing. The aforementioned lingering stares for instance - remember when Zac & Wes were seen hugging it out with all sorts of beyond-bromance bursting from their eyeballs? Yeah it's all over this.

This is the movie that hot dude from Catfish directed; no not the furry hot one, the gray-haired hot one called Max. He and Zac were also seen being half-naked and friendly on this movie's set... basically that set was the place to be for a bit, it seems.

Oh and Shiloh Fernandez is there too,
being all.... ShilohFernandezy. Here's the trailer:

.

.

And after the jump a few more caps of note...

Good Morning, World

.

It's Shiloh Fernandez's 30th birthday and so, besides just hoping that he's spending it in bed with Christopher Meloni today, I figure it's time to get these admittedly very spoilery shots from Gregg Araki's White Bird in a Blizzard outta my system, while the iron's hot. Actually thing is the iron's not hot, this movie's been out for long enough I don't feel bad sharing them - if you haven't bothered watching White Bird yet then you can just deal. Here's my review - you're not missing a ton anyway. It's okay. Eva Green is, natch, the best thing in it. Or maybe this shot below of Chris Meloni is the best thing in it, it's a toss-up...

Shiloh Fernandez Three Times

.

I was literally just thinking the other day that Shiloh Fernandez doesn't get photographed in long underwear often enough (I have very specific thoughts, this way) and wham, the Universe replied. Everything's coming up me. (See more at JJ.)

Chris Zylka Nine Times

.

Imagine my delight while reading this interview with director Gregg Araki (thanks Mac) on White Bird in a Blizzard to find a link to some never-before-seen-by-me outtakes from a 2012 photo-shoot of Kaboom's Chris Zylka! We'd posted three pictures previously from this, but the rest I'd missed. Swoon. Hit the jump for more.

White Bird in a Blizzard in 200 Words

.

Gregg Araki movies are known for being crude, lewd, sexy punk things, filled with day-glo splooge and splatter, so it's kinda weird to think of settling into one like a warm blanket in a chamomile tea commercial, but that's kinda how his latest flick, White Bird in a Blizzard, feels. Maybe it's the four years Gregg's added on since he ended the world with a Kaboom, maybe it's the more low-key and serious Mysterious-Skin-ish vibe, or maybe (probably) it's the marshmallow affectations of Shaileene Woodley, but even as White Bird details abandonment and pit-stink in equal order it feels as if it couldn't hurt a fly. 

As is with All Things Eva Green these days it does zap to life whenever she's on-screen, swanning around one frilly apron shy of a malfunctioning Paula Prentiss. And bless Gregg for still having such a keen eye for presenting masculine sleaziness in all its endless iterations, be it the weed-fried grace of a cum-guttered Shiloh Fernandez or the dream-team daddy pairing of Chris Meloni and Thomas Jane. Ultimately White Bird's too subdued to be remembered as one of Araki's bright and finest, but it's a little slice of queer home-made worth a nibble.

It Says A Lot About My Love...

.

... for Eva Green that I am starting out a post about the new trailer for Gregg Araki's movie White Bird in a Blizzard, which is stuffed with hunka hunks of burning something-or-other, with a picture of her, Eva Green, female woman, and not say...

... shirtless Shiloh Fernandez, or...

... shirtless Thomas Jane, or...

... Thomas Jane and Christopher Meloni giving each other sex eyes. It says a whole heckuva damn lot about my ginormous love for Eva Green, really. God she's all I want to watch anymore. Just give me Eva Green in every single movie, Hollywood. Here's the trailer:

.
.

This comes out on VOD at the end of September, and will apparently play some theaters about a month later. So you can see all the times Araki's camera is staring at Thomas Jane's crotch on a big screen.

Maps to the Blizzard

.

A couple of new images from movies we're all hot n' bothered for via The Playlist... first up that shot above is of the terrific wisp of a thing called Mia Wasikowska in David Cronenberg's upcoming flick Maps to the Stars. They have the most complete synopsis of what it's about that I've heard so far over there; also they seem to think it's assured the film will premiere at Cannes. It's already set to open in Italy at the end of May, before that festival is over, so it would make sense. There's still no word on a US release but I doubt we have to worry about there being one. Maps co-stars Julianne Moore, Robert Pattinson, Olivia Williams, and Sarah Gadon.

Next up they've got several new pictures from Gregg Araki's White Bird in a Blizzard, mostly of Shaileene Woodley and Eva Green, but thankfully there's that shot above of Thomas Jane giving his furry stuff some air to breathe. You can also get glimpses of Christopher Meloni, Dale Dickey and Shiloh Fernandez at that link. The film just got finally picked up for distribution so that oughta be coming later this year.

.

I Am Link

.

--- Bob And Weave - Hooray, we should be expecting to see Jake Gyllenhaal getting himself into super duper shape any day now, because he and Training Day director Antoine Fuqua are making that boxing movie this Summer! We first heard about this back in November but it's finally come together, and with the Weinsteins backing it no less - dare I dream for Jake back at the Oscars? Jake's currently filming that Everest movie in Italy with that gigantic beard (no not Taylor Swift).

--- Join The Club - David Gordon Green is teaming up with Steven Soderbergh to make a comedy series for Netflix! It's called Red Oaks and it's about the goings-on at a country club - this sounds just like that soap that David O. Russell was going to make and bailed on, actually. Anyway very cool, I am very happy with the way these folks are turning to these new platforms to give us more more more. In other DGG news here's a few new pictures and clips from his upcoming Nicolas Cage movie called Joe. That's out next month.

--- Ooh Bad - Another day, another notch in Thomas Kretchmann's bedpost of villainy - he's signed on to play one of the bad guys (Zachary Quinto's also playing a bad guy) in Agent 42, the latest attempt by Hollywood to make a movie out of the Hitman video-game. Rupert Friend is the titular fellow they're all fighting; we saw that bald shot of him a couple weeks ago and judged him for it. (He lost.) Since this one is currently filming we feel safe in assuming Kretschmann will film this before he slips into his Super Evil Nazi uniform for the Avengers sequel.

--- Glam Squad - We were all already excited about Susan Cooper, Melissa McCarthy's re-team with Bridesmaids and The Heat director Paul Feig where she's playing a spy opposite Jason Statham (lordy be that is an amazing sentence to write), and now comes word that another hot piece of British chap is jumping on-board - Jude Law will be in the movie too. Let us take this moment before we know more about the movie to pretend that Jude is playing Jason's husband. Ahh, yes.

--- Big Pussy - Y'all know I love Idris Elba, but I don't really think of him as having a regal bearing, do you? He's more rough and tumble than that. Granted I still haven't watched the Mandela movie but that struck me as an odd fit, and not just because they look nothing alike. Anyway Slash has the news that Idris will be voicing the CG version of the tiger in the upcoming live-action (well live-action like The Life of Pi was live-action) version of The Jungle Book, and they say Idris has the "regal bearing" to pull the role off. I think he can pull it off, but I don't get the regal thing.

--- Dumb Dumb - I sat through the entire video for this band I've never heard of so I could see what Bret Easton Ellis (who wrote and directed it) would do to exploit Shiloh Fernandez (Bret's at least good for exploiting pretty boys) and there was jackshit, what a waste. Do your job, Bret Easton Ellis, or get off the pot.

--- Summer Snow - Well here we go this is good news to land on a Friday - Bong Joon-ho's Snowpiercer will be released here in the US on June 27th. And we're talking about BJH's original cut - no mutilation from Harvey Scissorhands. The Playlist has a few new pictures from the movie at that link too, including Tilda's giant teeth and a couple shots where we see Ewan Bremner and Luke Pasqualino half-shirtless, so click on over. Why do I think Ewan looks sexy there? What's wrong with me?

--- Next Last - Sam Raimi and his production company have bought the rights to the post-apocalypse game The Last of Us, probably just for Sam to produce... although what the hell is he up to anyway? Yeah Oz sucked, move on - make something, man! I have heard good stuff about this game though - any fans in here?

--- Cool Rider - There's a new trailer for Locke, that movie where Tom Hardy drives a car for ninety minutes, over at The Playlist, as well as a heap of pictures - which is hysterical because they're all shots of Tom hardy sitting in a car looking worried. There's like ten shots of the same thing! I mean I love looking at Tom Hardy; Tom Hardy with a beard even more so. I'm totally going to see this movie for that. But ten still pictures seems a bit overkillish to me, maybe.

--- Life For Sale - Ben Stiller's terrible film The Secret Life of Walter Mitty has won an award - the award for Worst Product Placement of the year! Good job, Ben. I will refer y'all to my review of the movie, which was nothing but an underlining of this fact. I hated that movie so much, you guys. What a terrible waste of Kristen Wiig.

.

Do Dump or Marry - Three Dudes in a Blizzard

.

I missed these pictures of the cast of Gregg Araki's White Bird in a Blizzard at Sundance last month - I do wish Thomas Jane had been there standing beside his co-stars Christopher Meloni and Shiloh Fernandez because that's a visual I need in my life, but seeing Araki himself being all friendly with his men-folk's not too shabby either.

So let's include the director in this round! Three men stand before us. The director Gregg Araki, and the actors Christopher Meloni and Shiloh Fernandez. One you will do (a one-time schtupping session), one you will dump (a no-time nothing session), and one you will marry (a forever and ever everything). Let it rip in the comments!

Which Is Hotter?

.

The shot of Shiloh Fernandez in the first trailer for Gregg Araki's new movie White Bird in a Blizzard...

... or the shot of Thomas Jane in the first trailer for Gregg Araki's new movie White Bird in a Blizzard?

.

poll by twiigs.com

.

Christopher Meloni's bad mustache sadly disqualifies him.

Here's the trailer:

.

.

I Am Link

.

--- Bad Boy - The director of 28 Weeks Later (which I really liked) is making a series for HBO called Blanco starring Shiloh Fernandez as a dude who spins his weaselly status into criminal gold. While he's certainly pretty, I'm still not convinced that putting a lot of pressure to act on Shiloh is the best idea. We'll see. Maybe he'll surprise us.

--- Halleluiah Mogwai - This post is ten months old but I just saw it over the weekend and it's too delightful to ignore - apparently a little chapel in France was remodeled a couple of years ago, and amongst the gargoyles they put all sorts ofpop-culture monsters, like from Gremlins and Aliens. I want to go there right now.

--- Kraving Katniss - I'm going to have some words for y'all on Catching Fire later today as long as all goes to plan, but for now read what Nathaniel, an admitted Games agnostic, has to say over at The Film Experience; he makes some good points. And from the opposite end of the spectrum, here's io9 listing what they think director Francis Lawrence fixed with the series' second installment.

--- Wonder Twins - I can't believe they're only just now getting around to this but Marvel's finally officially announced that Aaron Johnson and Elizabeth Olsen are playing Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch in the second Avengers movie, which we've pretty much known forever. I suppose the deals could've fallen apart; I am glad they didn't.

--- Wizarding Seconds - Alfonso Cuarón says he'd totally be open to returning the the Harry Potter world again, and so they should keep him in mind with the new spin-off Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them thing. Ummmm I hope they are listening!

--- Midnight Runners - Take Shelter director Jeff Nichols is prepping his next movie (after this year's Mud), which we've heard a little bit about before - it's called Midnight Special, and it's about a father who takes his son on the run after they find out the son's got some kind of special (super?) powers. Michael Shannon (of course), Kristen Dunst, and Joel Edgerton are already set to star, and Adam Driver's just joined it too.
.

--- And finally the full trailer for HBO's gay drama Looking dropped over the weekend, you can watch it below. I keep waffling back and forth with my expectations for this one, but I hope I hope I hope I love it. We'll see come January.

.

.

Shiloh One Time, Plus Schaech

.

(via) Yeah Shiloh Fernandez always kind of seems like he needs a Silkwood shower, but somehow he makes it work for him. I stumbled upon this picture while reading the news that he's in the new Gregg Araki movie. He fits right in Araki's stable of boys - pretty semi-sleazy brunettes like Joseph Gordon Levitt, James Duval, and Jonathan Schaech. 

Oh and speaking of Schaech, do you guys follow him on Twitter? I don't know if he got into this insane shape for a role or what - he is in that Hercules movie with Kellan Lutz, so it was probably that - but he's been beef-caking himself out over there like crazy. Hit the jump for a bunch of pictures...

I Am Link

.

--- Selfie Love - I don't really feel like giving this its own post but I do feel as if I should at least take note of James Franco's shirtless selfie over at Instagram, since I have that responsibility, I guess. So yeah. James Franco uses his nips for attention, again. Go you, James Franco.

--- McQueen's Man - Here's a video chat with Chiwetel Ejiofor about 12 Years a Slave. I saw the film a second time on Sunday at MoMA, Chewy was supposed to be there for a Q&A but bailed, damn him. Anyway I was even more bowled over by the film this second time through. (Here's my original review.) Y'all better go see it!

--- Further Adventures - When the second Insidious movie made a bunch of money (and if you ask me, was actually pretty good while doing so) we figured the studio would want a third one even though the director of the first two, James Wan, says he's done with horror movies (for now). Sure enough the studio has set a date for Insidious: Chapter 3 - it'll be out in April of 2015. I still find it weird, horror movies not in October, even though honestly I'd love there to be a new horror movie opening 52 weeks a year. Writer Leigh Whannell is returning; I assume Patrick Wilson and Rose Byne will too. What else have they got that's this successful? And anyway we've got to see Patrick Wilson stand cluelessly in front of something scary again.

--- Murder Mystery - This probably means more to those of you who have watched Broadchurch but I have heard good things about that show and this is quite the cast - David Tennant, Breaking Bad's Anna Gunn, and Jacki Weaver have all signed on for an American remake of the show. 

--- Araki Storm - Gregg Araki's new movie White Bird in a Blizzard (love the title) is going to play at Sundance and The Playlist has the first batch of pictures. It stars Shaileene Woodley as a girl whose mother vanishes. It costars Gabby Sidibe, Chris Meloni, Eva Green, and Shiloh Fernandez - please please please Gregg Araki do not let me down you have Chris Meloni and Shiloh Fernandez in your movie - they must do it with each other.

--- Rodent Celebration - Yesterday was the 85th anniversary of the first Mickey Mouse cartoon, and over at The Film Experience Tim looks back at the mouse's legacy, along with a list of the best of the character's cartoons. I cast a weary eye towards all things Disney usually but that early stuff is indeed monumental.

.

I Am Link

.

--- Strode On - Jamie Lee Curtis might be starring in a new TV series called The Final Girls, about a group of, you guess it, final girls (a "final girl" is, in case you're unaware, the last survivor of a slasher movie; almost always a young lady) who are brought together to heal their wounds and channel their experience towards good. That description, along with it being for ABC Family, makes me worry this is actually some sort of Oprah-fied thing - hell they might not even mean "final girl" literally - all they say are the girls "survived their own personal horror stories." Hmmm. Not sure what to think. If this were actually a horror series about a group of kick-ass final girls brought together by Queen Final Girl to fight evil, then I would be exploding with happiness. We'll see.

--- Original Dame - I forgot to link to this on Monday but I wished Lauren Bacall a happy birthday the other day at The Film Experience, and since I'm only a moderate fan of hers the comments are where it's at. Lotsa love for her.
 

--- Master Man - The Playlist dropped several new pictures of the cast of 12 Years a Slave yesterday, including Fassy of course, but also a couple admirable pictures of Chiwetel Ejiofor in old-timey britches. Is that my left, or his left?
.

--- West Ward - I hated The Descendants so much (here's my review) that I'm having a really hard time working myself up any enthusiasm for Alexander Payne's new movie Nebraska with Will Forte and Bruce Dern, especially since a family road trip involving Alzheimer's doesn't really seem like the place for him to return to the biting satire that made his early films so special. Well I'll see in a few weeks when I see it at NYFF. Anyway The Film Experience is on the same page as me, as Nat dissects the just released poster. It's a nice poster.

--- Hell Bound -  I just rewatched some of the Evil Dead remake the other night; I still like it. No, it's not Sam Raimi. But it's got its own fun gross-out thing going on. (And Shiloh Fernandez is really looking good in it.) Anyway its director Fede Alvarez is going to turn the video-game Dante's Inferno (which turns Dante into a knight breaching the levels of Hell to rescue his Beatrice, natch) int a movie next. Cue the CG demons!

--- Satan's Boy - Speaking of devilry, yesterday was the latest installment of Final Girl's Film Club and they were taking a look at The Omen! We just did a Thursday's Ways Not To Die for that movie not too long ago. So anyway head on over to Final Girl to find a bunch of links for good-time Omen talk, yo.

--- And finally, here's Jake Gyllenhaal on The Daily Show last night. I have not watched it yet myself. Who's going to see Prisoners this weekend? I have to find time, but time is a seriously dwindling commodity right now and so I have no idea when.

.

.

.

Mostly Rambling, Some Reviewing

.

Pain & Gain -- You know that saying about how even a broken clock is right twice a day? I swear I never got that saying until just this second - I realized I'd been thinking of a "broken clock" as a clock that was still telling time, only the wrong time, and that's what was broken about it. And so I kept trying to picture how the rotating arms, spinning by their own logic, would somehow nevertheless sweep past the correct spot every day two times anyway. And my brain would start to hurt, since that is impossible, and then I'd think "Ehh, fuck it," and move on with my life. But I just had this eureka in the bathtub moment while thinking about how to write about Michael Bay's Pain and Gain, which I've been trying to find an in to a review for a couple of weeks now - I realized that a "broken clock" is a clock that has stopped working altogether, and its arms are fully static, and so it always says the same time - for example 3:38, when I am writing this. The broken clock always says 3:38, and so when 3:38 in the morning and 3:38 in the afternoon roll around, the broken clock is right, twice. That is to say, I still hate you, Michael Bay. I don't care if you made an entertaining movie this time! I don't care! Fuck you and the broken clock you rode in on.

The East -- Brit Marling hasn't quite stolen as much as my life away and pissed upon my soul the way that Michael Bay has, but I've generally found her, uh, not to my liking over the past couple of years as she's become An Indie Thing. And so color me surprised again that she didn't really get on my nerves a bit in The East. Indeed I found the film engrossing as a whole, although it is fairly by-the-numbers as far as thrillers go. It hits all the notes in pretty much the precise order you anticipate. But it wants to be old-fashioned, it wants to be a China Syndrome for the Occupy Wall Street set or whatever, and so it gooses its fill-in-the-blank plot with current events that a bigger budgeted movie wouldn't go near, which gets you over the bumps by knotting up genuine moral outrage, of the topical sort, inside the viewer. I can boo and hiss these bad guys just fine, thank you. And it manages to simultaneously gin up a fantasy world where Alexander Skarsgard and Shiloh Fernandez make out with each other and then cradle you naked in a pond, which is totally an acceptable use of celluloid.

Trance -- Obviously I'm playing some catch up here with titles that I haven't gotten around to reviewing - it's a good idea I do this now before the New York Film Festival starts screening next week and I become completely overwhelmed with new newer newest. That said it's been like three weeks at least since I watched Trance and here's what I remember - the sound of Rosario Dawson shaving her vagina, James McAvoy's ass, and Vincent Cassel talking from half a head. Two out of three of those things were in the trailer; the other one was, well, both unexpected and unwelcome. I am guessing you know which one I mean. Anyway sorry I can't do a better job of reviewing your movie, Danny Boyle, but you did scar my brain, so there's that.

Simon Killer - Alright listen Brady Corbet is very good in this movie I guess, and it's got a really fine askew rhythm to it that keeps you off balance and unnerved, but a lot of that gets fumbled by a camera that refuses to stop literally navel-gazing. The frame is pretty much always at gut-height, often chopping the actors heads right off in a scene - I seriously started to wonder if the entire movie were shot by little people. It was really really distracting to me. My mind started to wander off mid-film, imagining the director at a Q&A defending his decision to shoot the film like this, what he was saying with it, how meaningful it was, and then I wanted to throw a tomato or a head of lettuce at him, and I couldn't, and so I was sad and frustrated and so was SImon Killer so hooray, movie, hoo-fucking-ray.

.

You Know There's Something Wrong With You...

.

... when your first thought upon seeing this new picture from the Evil Dead remake of Shiloh Fernandez covered with blood and wildly wielding a chainsaw is one of eroticism. Seriously though. He can amputate me anytime.

.