Don't Let It Go Away

Let's not talk about how old this makes me feel, and instead just celebrate the fact that it's the 25th anniversary of Doug Liman's masterpiece Go next year -- sidenote: it's the 25th anniversary of a humungous pile of masterpieces next year, given the famed 1999 output -- and the film's soundtrack (which is a stone-cold banger) is getting a re-release on vinyl in February! Pre-order it here. I'm hoping that the soundtrack's not the only thing from this movie that gets attention -- gimme a 4K re-release please! Perfect, perfect movie.

Today's Fanboy Delusion

Today I'd rather be...

... making Timothy Olyphant my Iron Man.

Here are two photos of the 55-year-old Timothy Olyphant at a triathlon in Malibu three days ago (via) putting each and every single one of us to shame. Shame! On me and on you! Not sure how I feel about the hair though? I guess he just wanted in on some of that Kenergy that's going around this year...

Good Morning, World

Am I nuts or has this new season of Justified been way more gratuitous than the old seasons? I didn't even post half of the Boyd Holbrook stuff I could've (just this one priceless gif here) and now they got Timothy Olyphant with his boxers falling halfway down to Jesus. Did they bring me in to direct these things and then wipe my memory or what?

Good Morning, World

Somebody tell me I can watch the new Justified episodes

without having seen any old Justified episodes, please.

Timothy Olyphant Five Times

Are fans of Timothy Olyphant called "Oly-fans"? They certainly should be. And I say that as an Oly-fan myself, so I have a say in the matter. Anyway we Oly-fans should be happy right now because Tim's got two projects on the immediate horizon -- there are new episodes of Justified coming (although here's where I admit I'm a bad Oly-fan because I never watched Justified) and, even more interesting to me, there is Steven Soderbergh's series Full Circle. It's about a botched kidnapping in current-day NYC and the investigation into it yadda yadda, here is the trailer:



The first two episodes of that premiere on max tomorrow! And then two-episodes every Wednesday for the two weeks after, making it a six-hour thing. "Miniseries" used to be the word but I guess "limited series" is where we are these days. Whatever. It's got Claire Danes and Tim and CCH Pounder and Zazie Beetz and William Sadler -- always love William Sadler! A couple episodes premiered at Tribeca but they never sent me screeners so I'll be watching it like the rest of you -- I did hear good things though. Anyway due to all of this content Timothy Olyphant was interviewed by the NYT, which you can read here. Or if you just want the pictures hit the jump...

Good Morning, World

Pretty sure I hadn't even heard of a movie called National Champions until this morning when these shots of Timothy Olyphant in a movie called National Champions presented themselves to me -- have you heard of a movie called National Champions? It's relatively new as far as I can tell, and it's streaming on Amazon and other places right now, and it's got quite the cast -- Olyphant alongside Stephan James, Alexander Ludwig, J.K. Simmons, Tim Blake Nelson, Kristin Chenoweth, Uzo Aduba, Lil Rel Howery, Jeffrey Donovan, and David Koechner. It's a football movie about players striking for fair compensation yadda yadda all I need to know is how much time is spent in the film's locker-room with James & Ludwig specifically, and I'll be there.

Make It Huckabees Two

Y'all think I love famous people -- well wait til you get a load of the director David O. Russell. He's always been known for gathering up big casts of name actors -- he might not have had the clout with his first film Spanking the Monkey but what clout he had off of Spanking the Monkey's small success (and I remember that movie being pretty buzzy when it came out in 1994) he immediately threw into casting with his next flick, the road-trip comedy Flirting With Disaster...

... which starred Ben Stiller, Tea Leoni, Patricia Arquette, Alan Alda, Lily Tomlin, Mary Tyler Moore, George Segal, Richard Jenkins, and Josh Brolin. (Plus bonus points for Celia Weston, of course.) And his casts have only grown starrier from there, reaching probably their apex with American Hustle back in... 2013? Is that movie really seven years old? WTF.

This shot of Christian Bale on the set of the new David O. Russell movie is speaking to me in a language I don't understand pic.twitter.com/qVeHQUxtcM

— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) January 13, 2021

Anyway we might have thought that was the apex, but his new project is putting all of those movies to shame. We don't have a title, we don't know what it's about -- except it's based on "an original idea" from Russell himself -- but we just got nine new names added to the already insane cast in the past 24 hours so let's list off the people who're signing up to get berated on set by him. First we heard about Christian Bale, Margot Robbie, and John David Washington. That's already a big movie right there. Then a couple of days ago they added Rami Malek and Zoe Saldana. But then! Last night! Last night the cast added (deep breath) Robert De Niro, Mike Myers, Timothy Olyphant, Michael Shannon, Chris Rock, Anya Taylor-Joy, Andrea Riseborough, Matthias Schoenaerts, and Alessandro Nivola.

Russell has of course worked with a few of these people before -- Nivola and Bale and De Niro, of course -- but, I mean... did his casting people just come here to MNPP and start grabbing names after that? It's like that meme that says "We're gonna give the gays all that they want" but it's not "We're gonna give JA all that he wants." Olyphant, Riseborough, Shannon, Taylor-Joy and Schoenaerts in one place is literally breaking my brain. Literally. I would take a picture with my phone and show you my brain oozing out of my ears but my brain just oozed out of my ears and so I don't remember how to take pictures with my phone any longer. I am broken. Right, Andrea? 

Timothy Olyphant Nine Times

Are any of you watching Fargo this season? I think I am caught up to the latest episode but I really have no concept of that or not -- I haven't been keeping track or watching the episodes at the right time; I fall off for a couple of weeks and then binge. Remember when watching a show was simple and straightforward? You sat down and watched a show and then you lived your goddamned life? Those were the days. Anyway I only bring that up because I'd love to hear your thoughts on this season, if you're watching, but I'd rather you kept them vague on specifics in case I am behind one or two episodes. But Timothy Olyphant is on the show, that much isn't vague! This shoot here (via) is a couple of years old but I checked and I never posted it so let's after the jump...

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

The Crazies (2010)

Russell: Is he dead?
David: Well if he is he won't mind waiting.

A happy 10 to this way better than it deserved to be remake of George Romero's original 1973 film from director Breck Eisner -- I should sit down and re-watch the both of them before I make this proclamation officially but I think I actually prefer the remake in this case? I said that in my review at the time and presumably I knew what I was talking about. (Although assuming that is often a stretch.) Maybe I put it to a vote?

panel management

Little Benny's Bowtie Brigade

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It took an entire minute for Lil' Benny Whishaw to show up in the just dropped trailer for the fourth season of Fargo -- one minute and thirteen seconds, to be exact! One minute and thirteen seconds of sheer panic from yours truly, wherein I worried that his role might be so insubstantial as to not merit a mention. But there he was, seventy-three seconds in, and that Whishawian calm washed right over me. Ahhh, soothing.

Not that the show is hurting for fun faces besides our Benny -- Timothy Olyphant, Uzo Aduba, Jack Huston, Jason Schwartzman, Chris Rock, oh and Jessie Buckley seems especially fun. But I'd be lyin' if I pretended I wasn't here for Ben wearing suspenders and a dangerous Depression-era grimace built for two.

As I mentioned in yesterday's post about FX shows imminent return dates Fargo's fourth season will premiere on April 19th. Here's the full trailer...

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The Other Timmy

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Wasn't it nice seeing Timothy Olyphant in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood for a minute? Want to feel that nice feeling again? Without having to resort to watching that terrible cannibal show he does on Netflix, I mean? Well ye be in luck -- he's just signed on to the already ridiculously stacked cast of the fourth season of Fargo! (thx Mac) Funny enough doesn't it feel like Timothy Olyphant would've already been on Fargo? He just feels right, like he fits in, but then Noah Hawley has a way with casting those sorts of folks. I mean, recall how he cast Ben Whishaw for the show back in July. Don't get more right than Ben Whishaw in any context.

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We'd Be Safe & Warm If We Were in L.A.

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When it was first announced that Quentin Tarantino, a director I love, was going to make a movie about the Manson killings in the summer of 1969, my first feeling was one of turbulent queasiness. It was hard to reconcile Tarantino's vibrant pop violence with the sickening reality of a real life pregnant woman being stabbed sixteen times to death. Well it turns out that Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood, the movie Quentin that made, thought so too. 

It turns out the very subject of the film, from its the fairy tale title on down, is about that space, that gap, between the real and the make-believe -- like the highways that its characters rip-roar down time and again, these folks are wandering in between. I don't think I've ever seen so many scenes set in parking spaces? The back-sides of restaurants and studios, where dingy billboards rest. The underbelly of a dreamworld, where the dreams are picked up out of the dirt, spat upon, and made shape. 

At a turning point in the film -- the place where things distinctly stop being real as a matter of fact (not that I'd argue they ever really started) -- one of the Manson Girls gives a brief speech about how TV showed them nothing but killing, and how the time has now come to kill the folks that taught them how to kill in the first place. Earlier there's a conversation about actors going method and staying in character the entire time they're on set, only answering to their fake names; Leonardo DiCaprio's leading man turned western heavy Rick Dalton is referred to his most famous character's name nearly as often as he is his given.

And of course we are watching Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt and Margot Robbie the whole time. As Al Pacino's character says early on the audience will just see the actor, the audience will just see the actor's most famous character, always. No matter what is happening. Later on DiCaprio's hilariously inserted into a Steve McQueen movie Forrest-Gump-style for one sequence... only to have Damian Lewis show up and actually play Steve McQueen inside the film we're watching. Robbie plays Sharon Tate, but when the character Sharon Tate goes to see one of the real Sharon Tate's films in the theater, we see the real Sharon Tate while Robbie sits watching her, miming Real Sharon's actions there, in the audience.

Kurt Russell, an actor who famously played a stunt-man for Tarantino a couple of years ago, here plays a stuntman, but even more than that Kurt Russell pops up to narrate the film at a couple of critical junctures. There's a nasty joke of a flashback that we're given to a character's backstory that the film inserts into the middle of a dialogue between Russell and DiCaprio, neither of whom were there for what happened -- the elusive truth of the story being told by the movie is never made explicit but it, like another scene slightly later involving a dust-up with Bruce Lee, is available for real interrogation and questioning. 

Did those moments really happen? Or are the characters imagining them? By showing them to us is the film saying, "Yes this happened," or is the film merely dreaming along with its characters about possible outcomes, possible paths? When that Mason Girl decides to kill the real people playing the fictional people who pretend showed them how to really kill, taking us all down a road that didn't but could have happened, where does the dream factory start and where does it end? We are, after all, watching a movie. None of these things happened at all! Isn't Hollywood where we go to to process the bad stuff; to manufacture deliciousness like that prominently placed box of Velveeta we see at the ranch? 

Tarantino looked at the task of making a movie about very real violence and gathered up in his arms every movie trick he's ever tricked and tickled us with to make the most entertaining treatise about the way the movies manufacture and coax us through horror that I can recollect ever having experienced. Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood is explicitly about the way the movies help -- and hurt too -- our sorting out of the world; how the cardboard stages give way to violence-riddled vistas and vice versa. There are bodies in them thar hills, but they sure are beautiful. And when the gates open, gee whiz, heaven.

Timothy Olyphant Six Times

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I wished Timothy a happy birthday a couple of weeks back and said I intended to watch Deadwood for the first time shortly -- well I haven't gotten around to it yet. I got all caught up in the trashy spectacle of Renée Zellweger's show What/If on Netflix (god it's trash but I couldn't stop watching it -- I needed a new Revenge in my life clearly) and now I'm one episode into Chernobyl and one thousand percent hooked on that unholy terror...

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One episode into #Chernobyl and I’m ready to scratch my own skin off

— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) June 3, 2019

So Deadwood's on hold for the moment. But I'm aware the Deadwood movie aired, so if y'all want to tell me whether the movie did the show good service, do so in the comments. These pictures here go along with a big ol' chat with Tim in the new issue of GQ, read that here, and then hit the jump for the rest of the photos...

Good Morning, World

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A happy 51st birthday to Timothy Olyphant today! Did you know that the entirety of Deadwood is streaming on Amazon? I only recently noticed it and put it on my To Do List -- it's been on my To Do List ever since it first aired on HBO but this easy access slides it up several notches, anyway. Especially now that it's getting a movie that will supposedly tie up the loose threads left by its cancellation. Here's the trailer for the movie in case you haven't seen ti yet. I assume I've got some fans in the house?

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5 Off My Head: New, You're Still So New

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It's the 20th anniversary of one of my favorite movies of all time today! Doug Liman's Go came out on April 9th 1999 -- aka the greatest year of movies in our lives; have you voted in the poll yet? Go often gets lumped in with the Pulp Fiction rip-offs that swamped the cinemas of the late 1990s but timeline jumps and multi-POVs aside it's so much more than that, or it's at least the very best of that. To be honest I like it more than Pulp Fiction and you can stick that in your day-glo alien sippy-cup and smoke it.

Anyway I was in college when it came out and I was doing a shit-ton of drugs at the time (hey kids don't do drugs or whatever) and this movie is my American Graffiti -- my Diner, my Grease. It captured one of the happiest times of my life and turned it into a big fun blast of cinema with a huge cast of characters played by a huge cast of up and coming or perfectly of their moment actors. Sarah Polley, Timothy Olyphant, Katie Holmes, Jay Mohr, William Fichtner, Nathan Bexton, Scott Wolf, Jane Krakowski, Taye Diggs, Breckin Mayer, James Duval, Melissa motherfuckin' McCarthy! I mean!

Oh and it's got a soundtrack for the ages...

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... I honestly get a little bit of a high just hearing that song. If you guys knew how much ecstasy I took while listening to the Go soundtrack in 1999-2000 you would weep for my brain cells, but I wouldn't trade them back for those memories I barely retain anymore thanks to all the drugs for the world.

Anyway a happy 20 to a still great film, 

and in its honor, a list!

My 5 Favorite Line Readings in Go

"How would you fuck me?"

"Look how far it got you."

"Gay men are so hot. It's tragic."

"So Zach. Would you say

you're open to new things?"

"There was this one time, you missed each other 

by like three minutes. It was SO exciting!"

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How much do you love Go?

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There's Something About 1999

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We just mentioned how The Matrix is turning 20 this weekend, which got us to look on back -- what I believe to be the very first big project that MNPP ever tackled, way back in 2006, was a look back at seven years previous: an appreciation of the films of 1999. Now I link to that but I warn you it's pretty basic -- I was just getting my footing with this whole blogging thing then. Still I'd say that was some special foresight on my part, given how we're all going nuts here in 2019 wishing the astonishing run of films from 1999...

... a happy 20th anniversary week after week. Fight Club! Go! Election! Magnolia! The Blair Witch Project! Being John Malkovich! The Sixth Sense! It's endless and astonishing stuff. We were really afraid Y2K was gonna be it -- we were getting out all the good stuff while we could!

So anyway back in 2006 I polled y'all to choose your favorite film of the year (from nine choices I designated) and y'all picked Spike Jonze's film Being John Malkovich as your fave with a hefty 22% of the vote. And hey, that was a good pick! It still looks good here in 2019. I have always had smart readers, awwww. But let's see if we feel differently in 2019. Here's the same nine films -- now vote!

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web survey

Somewhat surprisingly I haven't had to personally re-pick my favorite films of 1999 yet for our "Siri Says" series, and my favorites now would look somewhat different than it did in 2006, but we'll save that for when Siri tells me to do that. (I live to serve.) But y'all please take to the comments and tell me which 1999 films I'm a fool for forgetting for now!

We All Scream For Olyphant

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So who watches Santa Clarita Diet? Raises your stumps! I only made it halfway through the first season - even with the gutsy (puns are fun!) humor it's not for me, but I get the appeal if you happen to like it. Drew Barrymore and Timothy Olyphant are very charming people! Check our Timothy Archives for just a superficial inkling of those charms. Anyway it's odd that Tim's never worked with Quentin Tarantino before - he seems the right type, meaning you just know he could spit out that dialogue like something fierce - but it looks like that's about to change because he's in talks for QT's upcoming Charles Manson movie called Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.

Yup I still love that title, and yup I am also incredibly nervous about this movie. Tim's presence soothes me a little bit - more than Brad Pitt or Leonardo Dicaprio because been there done that with them; I really am interested in see Olyphant tackle one of Quentin's iconic creations, whatever it may be. And we have no idea what it might be, they're not saying who he's playing. Well I doubt it's Roman Polanski, at least! (A good guess might be Tex Watson maybe?) Anyway also joining the film this week - Tim Roth and Burt Reynolds and oh Margot Robbie was finally confirmed. So... this is happening. And I don't entirely know what to think. Stay tuned.

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What's the Best Video Game Movie?

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I don't know why this question struck me the other day - perhaps it was thinking about Michael Fassbender and Alicia Vikander's careers and ruminating on the mutual flops that were Assassin's Creed and her Tomb Raider reboot, or perhaps it was when I was looking at these pictures of Jake Gyllenhaal and ruminating on the flop that was Prince of Persia - but it's a question that strains against Our Age: not just which is the best Video Game Movie, but is there even a good Video Game Movie? 

I would say yes, that the first Resident Evil movie is good; terrific actually. and I also think the first Silent Hill is pretty good too.  Angelina Jolie's original Tomb Raider movie at least has some fun to it (and she punches a shark in the second one!) Unfortunately most of them turn out...

... well you know. You can see a full list of the films here 

but out of the five I deem most worthy I ask you...

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find bike trails

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Which is Hotter?

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A happy 32 to our boy Jai Courtney today! Not sure if he's celebrating on the set of his Marines Movie with Finn Wittrock that we've been keeping an eye on but I like to think of them... celebrating. (ETA they are still shooting - he posted this picture yesterday!) Anyway after he finishes Semper Fi he's supposed to make a movie called BEEF...

... which I have taken to capitalizing because obviously a movie called BEEF starring Jai needs to be capitalized. BEEF also stars Timothy Olyphant and Stranger Things' hair-do actor Joe Keery, among others, and we're looking forward to it - the plot is, according to IMDb, about "a manager of a fast food restaurant in the Midwest [who] is wanted by his bookies." Jai plays a character called "Dipper" and I am already in love. Anyway until then for today to celebrate Jai's birthday let's look backwards at all the beef we've had before...

web survey

I Am Link

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--- Down With Daddy - Multi-sexual fur-trade Nico Tortorella has signed on to play Lyle Menendez in the upcoming Lifetime movie about the Menendez brothers (in case you're too young to remember first off, fuck you for making me feel old, and secondly they killed their parents and got press because they were hot or something). Oh and last week Courtney fucking Love signed on to play the Menendez' mother. That set is going to be a hot hot mess. (thx Mac) Also it needs to be noted, as long as we're using the word "hot," that the dude playing the other brother Erik is an actor named Myko Olivier, and he was on Glee, and he is very very attractive. Sexy Killer Central...

--- Gun Nuts - It seems kind of insane to me that anyone could watch Paul Verhoeven's Robocop and not get its razor sharp satirical take on the police - same goes for the anti-war sentiment of his Starship Troopers. But what the fuck do I know - I don't seem to understand half this country (the mean, dumb half anyway). On that note here's a take arguing that Robocop is the movie of our moment, and having just re-watched the film I can only vigorously agree.

--- Here's The Beef - Thanks to our pal Jarett for calling our attention to this sizzling fresh news - Jai Courtney is starring in a movie called BEEF. It's not actually capitalized like that but I kind of feel like it oughta be, so I will type it like that every time I talk about it. BEEF. Jai's bringing the BEEF. Anyway the movie also stars Timothy Olyphant and okay I died. I died typing that. The two of them play comical scary thugs or something, it's a fast-food caper? I don't know, who cares, please please make the two of them make out. I don't ask for much!

--- Matty's Malick Made - When I posted about Matthias Schoenaerts being in a Terrence Malick movie earlier this week I didn't even realize the film was showing at Berlinale next week - Variety's got the news that the movie has just sold to a distributor, even before showing, and they have the first image from the film too. If Matthias was in the picture I'd be posting it but he's not, it's the film's main stars August Diehl and Valerie Pachner, so you can click over for it.

--- The Nose Knows - It's been a very very long time since I have seen Walt Disney's Pinnochio but I gotta fix that after reading my pal Tom Blunt's piece on the movie's weird weird weirdness - donkey black markets and bipedal kittens and all manner of fantastical oddities that only add up to more and more insanity the more you think about 'em.
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--- Woolf in Green Clothing - Eva Green is making a movie about one of Virginia Woolf's lesbian love affairs, which is a sentence that makes me wish I was a lesbian, because I'd love to get off to such a thing as that. I kind of will anyway! Playing her lady amour is Gemma Aterton, who I never really got until I saw that Neil Jordan vampire movie she was in - she was fantastic in that, so it is possible. Not that anybody can ever hold the screen opposite Eva. Somebody nominate this woman for a goddamned Oscar already!

--- Slash N Burn - There have been two big bits of Slasher Movie news this week - first off Paramount has effectively dumped Jason Voorhees in the dumpster, abruptly canceling this year's film that was about to start filming. Breck Eisner, who made the very fine Crazies remake, was just about to film the thing; no word on what happened. But in Michael Myers Land there's been an enormous development - David Gordon fucking Green has signed on to write and direct a new Halloween movie! His co-conspirator in nuttery Danny McBride is co-authoring the script. For a long time Green was trying to remake Suspiria, a task which eventually got taken over by Luca Guadagnino (who's already filmed the thing) - I guess he really wants to make his horror movie! I don't even know how to wrap my head around this one.

--- Dancing Girls - Oh but speaking of that Suspiria remake one of its actresses is Mia Goth (she played the young Charlotte Gainsbourg in Nymphomaniac) and she's currently giving interviews for A Cure For Wellness, which she also stars in, and she told BD that Luca Guadagnino isn't really "remaking" Argento's film, technically.

"People are going to be really pleasantly surprised to realize that it’s really not a remake at all. I think people are going to be really shocked. It’s a nod of the hat to Dario Argento and his version of ‘Suspiria’, but we really do take it to a completely different place"

I have absolutely no clue what she means, but I'm certainly curious. (Duh.) No word yet on when this movie's out but I am hoping for Halloween-time, although Luca might be too busy Call Me By Your Name related duties this fall.

--- Livin La Vida Refn - Nicholas Winding Refn is about to make a series for Amazon - ten episodes called Live and Die Young which is about the seedy underbelly of the Los Angeles crime-world; they say it will be a lot like his Pusher series of films, only with less Mads Mikkelsen rubbing his balls on-screen. Or at least I assume - maybe Nicholas can throw us a bone on that tip. Anyway they say three big name actors have already been offered roles, but they're not giving up names yet. Fingers sniffed crossed for a reunion!