The Big Guy: Shit, I'd shoot you now if I didn't get off on the idea of you being hog-tied and pissed on in Guantanamo Bay. Graeme Willy: They've shut Guantanamo Bay. The Big Guy: Did they? Be honest with yourselves.
Those lines of dialogue, which got an entire cackle out of me this morning, are supposedly from the "Extended Cut" of Paul, a movie I didn't love when I saw it back in 2011 -- maybe I should watch this "Extended" version? Anybody seen it? I imagine you'd have to have loved the original version of Paul to watch an "Extended" version though, so perhaps those of you who have seen this Extended Version aren't to be trusted. Anyway my point is a happy birthday to Sigourney today and I've totally botched it. Goddamit!
The Network: At this point your planet is t he least civilized in the entire galaxy. Gary: What did he say? Andrew: He said we are a bunch of fuck ups. Gary: Hey it is our basic human right to be fuck ups. This civilization was founded on fuck ups and you know what? That makes me proud!
I'd forgotten that Ansel Elgort is actually kind of tall - we'd be eye to eye at 6'3" - until I started looking up pictures of him with his Baby Driver director Edgar Wright today in order to wish the latter a happy birthday; Edgar looks like Frodo kneeling before Cate Blanchett in every single one, ha ha. Anyway even though we were not fans of Baby Driver we're staying bullish on this Edgar Wright fellow, given his previous output - we think he's going places. (Like to an animated movie called Shadows? Why is this the first I've heard of this when this news is four years old?) But for now let's look back to previous places and judge his Cornetto Trilogy, just cuz...
Nancy Mirando: Fuck off! We're extremely proud of our achievements. We're very hardworking business-people. We do deals, and these are the deals we do. This is the tenderloin for the sophisticated restaurants. The Mexicans love the feet. I know. Go figure! We all love the face and the anus, as American as apple pie! Hot dogs. It's all edible. All edible, except the squeal.
A happy 48th birthday to the director Bong Joon-ho, who's gone from being a director I found profoundly overrated (if I had seen Memories of Murder before I saw The Host, a film I don't like, I might not have felt that way) to one of my favorites in the span of a decade.
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Bong Joon-ho Ranking:
MOTHER > SNOWPIERCER > MEMORIES OF MURDER > OKJA > THE HOST
(I somehow still haven't seen Barking Dogs Never Bite) pic.twitter.com/KyU8Dz7RYe
I feel shitty that I never reviewed Okja properly - that fell through the cracks somehow - but don't let the above ranking fool you; I love all of those movies except for The Host and ranking the top four was a little bit laborious. Okja deserves to become a Classic Kid's Film and I hope every single one of you who is a parent or every single one of you who knows someone who is a parent encourages that. F-bombs and animal slaughter along for the ride, too - the best kid's movies don't sugarcoat the real world. I mean I'd eat my own left foot before I ever became vegan but Okja articulates its case beautifully with oodles of big boisterous and bouncing heart. (Also Jake is terrific in it, so shut up, haters.)
One question, though - will it ever get a blu-ray release? Will any Netflix titles ever get released that way? I really prefer having hard copies of things. You know, for when the apocalypse comes and I need something to decapitate the zombies with.
The sight of a bloodied office dweeb is a personal favorite, from Simon Pegg in Shaun of the Dead or Danny Dyer in Severance -- it speaks deeply to my desk-bound rage-filled heart. And so I stare intently at Greg McLean's upcoming film The Belko Experiement to re-scratch this specific itch, and this new batch of character posters are doing just that. But who wears it better?
Hotel Manager: Now the fact that you will turn into an animal if you fail to fall in love with someone during your stay here is not something that should upset you or get you down. Just think, as an animal you'll have a second chance to find a companion. But, even then, you must be careful; you need to choose a companion that is a similar type of animal to you. A wolf and a penguin could never live together, nor could a camel and a hippopotamus. That would be absurd.
The way that last line is delivered is one of my favorite line deliveries of... well let's just go ahead and jump out on a limb and say "ever" and we'll revisit that assertion in the future; I have a feeling I'm on the money, though. Anyway today is the 44th birthday of the actress Olivia Colman, who has really had quite the killer couple of years - where did she come from, you guys? I mean I am looking through her IMDb credits and I see she was in Edgar Wright's Hot Fuzz in 2007...
... but before The Lobster her credits are pretty obscure to these American eyes - looks like she did tons of British TV but I'm not familiar with much of what I'm seeing. So any guesses - besides all of her obvious talent, of course - how it all came together for her? Anyway we're delighted to have her.
That picture of Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto on the Star Trek Beyond red carpet in Sydney (via, thanks Mac) is giving me some serious Petra von Kant sense-memories...
... so now I'm probably going to have to sit here for the rest of the afternoon and imagine a remake of Fassbinder's film starring Star Trek actors. I mean you just try to un-see the sight of Simon Pegg playing Irm Hermann's personal assistant character, I double and triple dare you...
My first thought upon reading this morning's news that the character of Mr. Sulu (played by John Cho in the big currently ongoing movie franchise, and played by noted homosexual George Takei in the original series) is revealed to be gay in Star Trek Beyond, this Summer's blockbuster-to-be, was to wonder if Bryan Fuller is sad that he got beaten to this, the gay Star Trek character milestone - you just know there's going to be a gay main character in his upcoming Star Trek TV show. But that was momentary - good on writer Simon Pegg for finally breaking the franchise's gay glass ceiling! Read all about it over here. Any idea who plays Sulu's partner? Please please please tell me it's Kal Penn...
--- Space Oddity - The new Bjork album is so good, you guys! I've been
listening to it non-stop all week; it's gorgeous and super super sad - I
had no idea she and Matthew Barney had broken up but once again she's
making the case for artist's needing to live hellish miserable lives for
Great Art's sake. There's a really wonderful interview with her
over at Pitchfork which you should read; she keeps breaking down and
crying in the middle of it - crying! Bjork! WTF let's go hunt down
Matthew Barney and do filthy Cremaster things to him. .
--- Sky Blonde - CBS' Supergirl has been cast and it's Melissa Benoist, who was on Glee and also played the girl that Miles Teller didn't have any damn time for in Whiplash cuz drums, yo. I remember thinking she was pretty adorable in Whiplash so best of luck to her - of course this entire project labors under the unbeatable memory of Faye Dunaway camping it up and Hart Bochner's wondrously tight jeans, but still, good luck trying.
--- Sticky Stuff - A remake of The Blob certainly seems overdue so this makes sense - the dude who directed Con Air and Lara Croft Tomb Raider and a bunch of other big explosion riddled garbage has just signed on for it. A blob movie doesn't necessarily need to be "good" though, ya know? So we'll see how it goes.
--- Spider Twink - Look out Andrew Garfield, Taron Egerton is coming up behind you (and oh what a behind) - in an interview with MTV the Kingsman star says he isn't going to play Young James Marsden for Bryan Singer (cue one lone tear trickling down Bryan Singer's cheek) (yes that cheek) but if he was going to play a superhero he's love to show off his own set of Spider-Buns. .
--- Experience This - Over at The Film Experience the Team Experience Awards for 2014
have been posted, huzzah! Lots of great great picks by the gang, which
is to be expected, since everybody over there is awesome. Lots of love
for Under the Skin, double huzzah.) As an aside, just for posterity's sake, I will mention that I did not vote this year - you can already tell that though because The Babadook didn't win everything.
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--- Pat The President - The Hollywood Reporter lists five movies that might sneak up on us at Sundance with a surprise Wowza, and amongst the lot is that movie starring Alexander Skarsgard's Mustache, and also a movie called Zipper, which is about, and I quote, "a federal prosecutor and devoted family man (Patrick Wilson) whose political future is in jeopardy thanks to his burgeoning sex addiction" and oh my god Patrick Wilson in a sex-addiction movie I am so there.
--- Get Pegged - Well this is nifty: Simon Pegg has been hired to co-write the thirdStar Trek script! Hmm I wonder, will Scotty have a lot to do this time around? I think he just might. I'd also completely missed the news that Fast & Furious director Justin Lin had been hired to direct; I can't say anything about that though since I have never seen any of his movies.
--- Dolan Dearest - The best scene in Xavier Dolan's Mommy has been released in clip-form and you can watch it over here,
although I'm not entirely sure that out of context it will work? If
you'd shown me that clip out of context I'd have probably cringed since
yikes Celine Dion. But really it works in context, I promise! Speaking
of Xav over here there's a round-up of recent interviews (of the video sort) with the hipster savant talking about Mommy and all sorts of other stuff. .
--- Up To Ten Eighty - I love this list at Fangoria of semi-forgotten (or just slipped through the cracks) horror gems that need to be released onto blu-ray - David Lynch's Mulholland Drive is hardly forgotten (hell we were just posting about it the other day for Lynch's birthday) but it did come out right in that sweet spot before blu-ray where a lot of things have stayed to wither on DVD. Still I assume once a Lynch boxed-set is made it'll be up in there. .
I hesitate to even ask this question because I know, surface-wise, Jesse Metcalfe is put together in a more coherent fashion than Simon Pegg is, so it might be tempting to answer this question in his favor, even though Pegg's Shaun is the icon by which all zombie-blood-spattered white-shirts will forever be judged. (Metcalfe is pictured earlier this week on the set of a new zombie film called Dead Rising: Watchtower, which, well with a title like that it is destined for greatness.) And yet... I feel like daring y'all. Don't let me down! .
--- White Kings - I admire the fact in theory that Joel Edgerton even tried to answer the whole "Hey dude you're super white what's the deal with you playing a fucking Egyptian?" question with regards to Ridley Scott's white-washed Moses movie. But maybe he should've just... not? Maybe it's better to give that one a "No Comment." At least his answer was basically, "I gotta get paid, man" and he didn't try to build any elaborate nonsense up. In summation, looking at this new picture of Sigourney Weaver looking fierce in Cleopatra-drag makes all my moral outrage fly right out the window anyway.
--- Best Head Ever - If I have to drive nails into my fingertips to get it done (although let's hope it doesn't come to all that) I promise you I will review the "Fassbender has a great big head" movie Frank today - I have a ton of reviews to catch up on really, and I'm gonna try to make today the day. Til then though here's a nice long chat with Frank's director Lenny Abrahamson; I've only gotten halfway through it but it's making for a good read.
--- Fight The Powers - I don't know nothing about this Powers comic by Brian Michael Bendis, but I'm probably going to have to change that now that it's being turned into a show and that show will star Sharlto Copley and Michelle Fairley FORBES. Michelle you may know from being a bad-ass on Battlestar Galactica; Sharlto you may know from being the subject of many of my public wet dreams.
--- A Good Woman - I haven't watched the trailer for A Good Marriage yet because I don't really need to; it's Joan Allen starring in an adaptation of a Stephen King story, obviously I'll see this movie. But maybe you would like to. (There's also a poster at that link; very Sleeping With the Enemy.) Anyway I was surprised to hear this movie's getting the VOD release the same day as in theaters, on October 3rd. I guess it stars old people so nobody cares?
--- Green Hamm - Jon Hamm says in GQ that he turned down the Green Lantern movie several times (stick the knife in Ryan Reynolds while he's down, Jon Hamm... okay that sentence just turned me on) and it does make you wonder what a Jon Hamm Green Lantern would've looked like. I imagine the spandex would've had to be roomier, at least in the, you know, genital area. Speaking of look at that magazine cover - they airbrushed his crotch into a black hole so nobody's staring at nothing, but now it's all I can see, I feel like I am falling, falllllliiiiiinnnnngggggggggg....
--- After Three - It seems there's some truth to the rumors that Edgar Wright's next movie will be a return to the warm safe embrace of his Cornetto buds Simon Pegg and Nick Frost after Marvel put him through the wringer - here's Simon Pegg talking about it himself.
--- Later Jake - After seeing the great trailer for skinnied-down Jake Gyllenhaal's Nightcrawler it flew up my must-have-want-now list, so the news that it's been pushed back a couple of weeks to a Halloween release is frustrating. Hopefully it'll get some play here in NYC before then. Also at that link is word that Trick r' Treat director Michael Dougherty's Krampus movie, about the legendary pagan holiday demon, is scheduled for a Thanksgiving release next year. Festive! (The picture is of Jake filming his boxing movie here in NYC yesterday - yes apparently he's been jogging in the streets. Get me to that set dammit!)
--- Michael Myers Lives - I still haven't sat down and watched Rob Zombie's second Halloween movie. I just haven't had it in me. But now comes word that the third one's being worked on, sans Zombie, but since it's being titled Halloween: The Next Chapter people are assuming it will continue on from the world he set up. So I guess I have got to finally bite that bullet.
--- Independence Day - Director Roland Emmerich seems like the type to bristle at
being called "openly gay filmmaker Roland Emmerich" but he is openly
gay, so here goes - openly gay filmmaker Roland Emmerich is finally
making a gay movie, one about Stonewall, and here's Nathaniel talking about it over
at The Film Experience. Nat interviewed him once and has some insight. I'm a little bit torn on the subject of casting -
casting an openly gay actor would be great, but I really wanna see
Jeremy Irvine make out with another guy, so...
--- Super Bad - File this under" news that I missed while I was out of
town or recuperating from being out of town" - can't believe I forgot
to mention it though... so Cabin in the Woods and Buffy writer-director Drew Goddard is indeed making the Spider-Man spin-off movie Sinister Six, about the villains of Spidey's world teaming up. How weird that his superhero world will be facing off with Joss' huh? I mean they're all Marvel but they can't mix. .
--- Jock Street - I liked the first 21 Jump Street movie well enough, but the excision of Brie Larson from the sequel, whatever the reasoning might be, is not the way to get me pumped about revisiting the world. So the only reason I'm really looking forward to the sequel is that I know Channing Tatum runs around in a football uniform in it a bunch as seen in these wonderful set pictures, and they really need to play this fact up more in the trailers, of which there is a new one. Just one quick shot isn't gonna do it, fellas.
--- Making Room - Not that Brie Larson doesn't have stuff to do! Important sounding stuff - she's just signed on to star in Room, an indie about a woman who's been held captive in a small you-guessed-it room for an extended period of time. It's based on a best-seller (which I haven't heard of) and was adapted into a script by the book's author. Anybody read it?
--- Smarty Pants - I may have heard about this before and just forgotten
but Michael Fassbender and Colin Firth are set to make a movie about the
author Thomas Wolfe and his agent (Fassy is Wolfe) to be called Genius, and Nicole Kidman - who starred with Firth in The Railway Man which is just now coming out after a long delay - has reportedly joined it. Speculation is she'll play Fassy's muse. How do I get to play Fassy's muse? I will literally do anything. (pic via)
--- Skin Walker - I'm not really surprised that Fox is making noises about giving Mystique an X-Men spin-off movie what with Jennifer Lawrence being, you know, the biggest new movie-star in the world and everything. They probably wanna keep her around and keep her happy if they can. I wasn't bowled over by her in the first movie but then I don't really think anybody was - say what yo will about Rebecca Romijn otherwise, she was ace in this role. Really though we all just want a Storm movie, sans Halle Berry (Lupita! Lupita!), why can't we have that dammit? I guess talk of a female-led superhero (villain whatever) movie is progress - asking for a black-female-led one might be insanity or something.
--- Name Starts With X - I can't believe I missed this - yesterday was the 15th anniversary of one of my very favorite movies, Doug Liman's ravin-in-Vegas flick Go. Joe Reid was on it though (he and I have bonded over our shared love for the movie many a time) and ranked the film's cast then and now. What a cast.
--- Undead Anniversary - And apparently yesterday was also the 10th anniversary of Shaun of the Dead! I am a total flop, missing everything left and right. Sorry Shaun, sorry Ed! You can spank me with your cricket bat for my sins. Well here's a list of things the movie taught us about relationships over at Film School Rejects in honor of its ten years.
--- Sparkling Wit - I don't know if you've been following the delightful
series "A Year With Kate" over at The Film Experience that Anne-Marie
has been hosting - she's watching every single Katharine Hepburn movie
over the span of fifty-two weeks - but yesterday she got around to my absolute favorite Kate flick, George Cukor's 1938 film Holiday with Cary Grant. Loove that movie so so much.
--- Put A Bird In It - Do you guys like Portlandia? I love Portlandia. So the news that Carrie Brownstein has just joined the cast of Todd Haynes' Carol - yes the Patricia Highsmith adaptation with Cate Blanchett - sounds plenty fine to me. She's playing a woman who has "an encounter" with Rooney mara's character. (Like I said yesterday I have to re-read the book, my memory's too fuzzy.) Anyway hopefully we'll get Blanchett on Portlandia as a swap here.
--- And finally yesterday I linked to THR's cover-story on the hunks of Ryan Murphy's The Normal Heart adaptation and asked you to Do Dump or Marry the main trio of Matthew Bomer, Taylor Kitsch and Mark Ruffalo - well today I see a video I missed of them chatting... specifically them chatting about Taylor Kitsch's crotch. Ding dong, we have a winner. .
--- Gyllen All - Jake's making the talk show rounds this week for Prisoners, and here he is on Kelly & Michael (typing the name of that show feels so wrong sans any Regis) where they apparently get him to say whether he sleeps in the nude or not. Anybody want to watch the clip and tell me what he says? I don't think I can sit through any Kelly & Michael, even with Jake Gyllenhaal possibly talking about being naked. Bonus: Jake's on Inside the Actor's Studio tonight!
--- DC Funnies - The creator of the comic-strip Doonesbury
is making a comedy series for Amazon (who are apparently getting in on
the Netflix type instant entertainment business) about a group of US
senators who become roommates, and Amy Sedaris and Wanda Sykes will be on it. I'm sold already.
--- Ruff Ruff - Finally a little bit o' detail on that animated dog movie that Noah Baumbauch and Greta Gerwig are both on the record as an upcoming project of theirs, much to the world's brow-arched bafflement - it's apparently an adaptation of a book from a series called Flawed Dogs by someone who goes by the name Berkeley Breathed. Mkay. It's about dog show dogs on an adventure.
---
Downed Man - Angelina Jolie hasn't had much success with the directing thing but
kudos to her for keeping on keeping on; we need more women directors,
and she's certainly got the pull to get things done. Next she's making a
WWII pic about a former Olympian turned solider who crashes in the
ocean and survives being at sea for two months, only to wash up behind
enemy lines and become a POW. Skins star Jack O'Connell (seen to the right) has already got
the lead; Garret Hedlund just joined the cast as the leader of the prisoners at the camp.
--- Red Writer - Only two weeks of Breaking Bad left (didja hear the final two eps are 75 minutes long each?) so we turn to what Walter's up to next - Bryan Cranston is going to star in a bio-pic about screenwriter Dalton Trumbo (that's a name and a half; straight out of a Raymond Carver story) who was blacklisted because he refused to cooperate with the Communist witch trials of the Fifties. He went to Mexico and churned out scripts that got made anyway, only under a different dude's name.
--- Times A Charm - An upcoming Aussie thriller called Kill Me Three Times has gathered together an interesting cast
- Simon Pegg and Theresa Palmer are enough to sell me on their own, but
it's also got Sullivan Stapleton (he was one of the brothers in Animal Kingdom, and he's in the upcoming 300 sequel, and as you can see to the left, he's hot) and also the Other Hemsworth, the one called Luke. (thanks Glenn)
--- Northern Exposure - Hey remember how there was some kind of film festival in Canada last week? Well if you haven't totally moved on you ought to check out Amir's first of two recaps of his take on the fest over at The Film Experience; everything he has to say about the Oscars drowning out everything seems gosh-darn smart to me.
--- And finally, director David Ayer last made the much better than it had any right beingEnd of Watch so we're paying attention to his next one, a WWII "trapped in a tank behind enemy lines" flick called Fury, which will star a bevy of attractive gentlemen like Brad Pitt, Logan Lerman, Shia LaBeouf, Michael Pena and Jon Bernthal. Anyway Ayer tweeted this photo of the cast yesterday, and I like it:
--- 50 Shades Of Gay - People have been getting quotes left and right from Charlie Hunnam about 50 Shades of Grey now that he's been cast in the lead, but my favorite is this one,
where he says that "I had such a baptism of fire with regards to
sexuality on camera at the beginning of my career..." Is that what we're
calling having Littlefinger up your bum these days? Trial by fire?
--- Bro Power - There's a really terrific chat with the Coen Brothers in the Times from this weekend, mostly about their upcoming folk-sploitation flick (I have no reason to call it folk-sploitation, except that word is hysterical) Inside Llewyn Davis, but also touches on how they work with each other, and how they've done so over all these years.
--- Pegg Me - This interview is a few weeks old but I only just read it yesterday and it's totally worth a look - here's HuffPo talking to Simon Pegg about the Trekkies turn on the latest Star Trek movie, as well as a wonderful story about him showing the original Star Wars movies to his daughter.
--- Human Heroes - I'm seeing ads for Marvel's Agents of SHIELD everywhere here in NYC - on the sides of buses, plastering entire subway cars; they're really going all out pushing the show. The Times talks to the folks behind the show, including Joss, and gets at where they're going to try and go with it. Have we heard anything about any of the big names showing up on it at all, ever? I want Chris Evans, dammit. (How many times have I uttered that sentence in my life?) Anyway that picture is of Brett Dalton, who I'm already prepped for major crushing upon.
--- Jungle Boogie - THR talks to Eli Roth about the making of his cannibal flickThe Green Inferno out in the python-riddled wild, which played at Toronto this weekend (I haven't read nay reviews yet, have you?), and then gets the news that they're already set to make a sequel; Eli will only be producing, while his Aftershock director Ncholas Lopez will be directing.
--- Sex and the Cannibal - Cynthia Nixon has joined the second season cast of Hannibal! She's playing an FBI agent up the totem pole investigating the fall-out from the first season, I say trying to remain vague and non-spoilery for those of you who need to catch up, and you really should do that already, I mean really.
--- Desert Queen - Naomi Watts has been replaced by her best friend Nicole Kidman in Werner Hezgog's Queen of the Desert, that Gertrude Bell bio-pic (think the female Lawrence of Arabia) that he's been talking about making for the past couple of years. It co-stars Robert Pattinson and James Franco. And Nicole Kidman crosses one more auteur name off on her Auteur Bingo card. .
--- And finally, the first trailer for True Detective is out - that's the HBO series that Jane Eyre's director Cary Fukunaga is behind that follows Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson as detectives on the trail of a killer over a long span of years.The antlers shot is some straight up Hannibal stuff, right? Anyway it looks good, watch it:
I'm irritated that I couldn't get into a preview screening of it but hey, the horror movie I've been jonesing to see for literally years now, You're Next, is out this weekend! Actually it came out last night at 10pm and I was thisclose to going but my boyfriend's out of town and horror movies without watching him jump around (he's a jumper) are just never as much fun, so I'm waiting til Sunday when he gets back. But maybe you have seen it? If you have don't fucking spoil it, I just said I haven't seen it yet, god can't you listen? But you know, feel free to give me a vague "It was good!" or "It made me clench my asshole so hard it fell off!" or whatever in the comments, if you want to. And if anybody wants to send me one of the glorious glorious posters for the movie I'd love you forever. I keep eying them on EBay but they're going for too much, or at least more than I'm willing to spend on a movie I haven't seen yet.
What else are you guys going to see this weekend? I am making good use of my half-day today and seeing Short Term 12 in about an hour (I just love Brie Larson so much and am so excited about all the attention shes getting for this). But there's also The World's End, which I've already seen and loved the hell out of and will be seeing a second time, and Wong Kar-wai's The Grandmaster, which I have also seen, and not loved the hell out of. And I have heard really excellent things about Una Noche, so I'm gonna hit that up when I can. So glad that the Summer movies are behind us and some really interesting things are finally showing up!
"I too quit smoking (2013) AND find this type of pictures cool. Also, PSA: if you're feeling like you want to start smoking again, just remind yourself "I do not want my body and house to stink like stale horseshit", then go drink one more glass of water to entertain your hands and lips. Congrats, btw."