Good Morning, Dead Man

Hello and happy Monday -- when I posted about noted dreamy Irishman and actor Daryl McCormack being cast in Tom Ford's next movie (along with a bevy of hotties) last week I said to myself (and also Bluesky), "Hmm why don't I post more Daryl McCormack?" I think the dude caught all our eyes and other parts and then some with his star-making turn opposite Emma Thompson in Good Luck to You, Leo Grande a couple of years ago -- then when he popped up in the latest Knives Out movie Wake Up Dead Man, which as an aside just got a new trailer this very morning...

... and I really realized I best get on it. Thankfully today we've got a photoshoot of him to share and do just that -- he's in the new issue of Hero magazine (I haven't read it yet but his chat is with his WUDM co-star Cailee Spaeny) looking typically handsome as hell. As for WUDM (which yes obviously given what I just said I have seen) that is very much Josh O'Connor's movie (as much if not more than it is Daniel Craig's movie, if you can believe it) but what we get of Daryl is good. That's out in "select theaters" on Thanksgiving (yeah you know what Netflix means when they say "select theaters" by now right) and then on the streamer December 12th. And without giving away my review of it let's just say it's probably my favorite of the franchise to date. I digress! Let's show you all of them Daryl pics after the jump...

Sing Me a Song of Beautiful Men

Well here's some news tailor-made (heh see what I did there) for MNPP -- former designer turned movie director Tom Ford (now you see what I did there) has announced his next film and it's an adaptation of Anne Rice's book Cry To Heaven about 18th Century Italian Opera. None of those things are really the specific things that make this a tight fit onto our interests -- it's all about the cast, baby. Namely it will star (among others) Nicholas Hoult, George MacKay, Colin Firth, Paul Bettany, Mark Strong, Theodore Pellerin, Daryl McCormack and Aaron Taylor-Johnson. Phew! Several of those people have worked with Ford before: Hoult and Firth were both in A Single Man of course....

... sorry I can't mention that fact without posting that gif; it's written into my contract. And then Aaron Taylor-Johnson memorably wiped his ass while sitting on an outdoor toilet in everybody's favorite movie of the millenium Nocturnal Animals. Don't worry -- I am not sharing that gif. And the rest of those names will be served wonderfully by Ford's eye I have no doubt -- I especially can't wait to see how he shoots the outrageous angles of Pellerin & MacKay's faces. Oh and Daryl McCormack, who's just soooo dreeeeeeamy.

Wait what were we talking about? Oh right this is a movie. I have never read this Anne Rice book but one assumes that the big headline here is the person I have not yet named in the cast -- the singer Adele is making her acting debut in a movie about opera singers. I imagine she's the lead and all of these insanely good looking men will be circling around her? I don't know; maybe Tom will give her a light load on her first film and some of these gorgeous men will pick up the slack. Whatever. GIMME! Other names in the cast -- that kid Owen Cooper from Adolesence, Ciarán Hinds,  Thandiwe Newton, Hunter Schafer, and Lux "sister of Pedro" Pascal. This sucker's loaded up yo!

Good Morning, World

We don't give Tom Ford enough credit for casting male model Jon Kortajarenain his movie A Single Man thereby allowing me to get around my self-imposed rule of not posting exclusively male models here on the site. Jon has actually had a few acting gigs since (I love the gay episode of Tales From the Loop that he was on) but it'll forever be those dreamy cigarette smoking visuals with Colin Firth that I'll be picturing. Anyway here's Jon doing his main gig (via) with some Calvin Klein under-things on display; hit the jump for more...

Good Morning, World

A happy 37 to sweatdrop-inducing model-turned-actor and friend-of-Luke-Evans Jon Kortajarena today! I was going to say "turned 'sometime' actor" but his IMDb credits are much longer than I realized -- he's obviously able to work on Spanish-language projects too so that helps. The only acting jobs I've seen him in were that one memorable scene in Tom Ford's A Single Man and playing the gay love interest on the fabulous Amazon sci-fi series Tales From the Loop (see my post about that here) which I really hope y'all have caught up with by now. I've been thinking about a re-watch lately! Anyway a happy birthday to Jon, who's in Cannes with pink hair right now which I know because he posts on Instagram a lot. And for some reason alongside the below photo Alex Pettyfer is calling Jon his "wife's second husband" which is making me think, "Lucky wife"! Nestle me between those two and put rings on everybody.

10 Off My Head: Getting Into Jake's Pants

Happy Day 2 of Jake Week, where we're celebrating Jake Gyllenhaal's 40th birthday this upcoming Saturday with a different Top 5 list every single day. Yesterday I shared with you a list of my favorite crazy-pants performances from Mr. G that had him flailing his psycho-stick around for our enjoyment -- well today I am going a little simpler on the one hand, in that this is an ode to the outfits his personhood has slipped into and made iconic, and a little less simpler on the other because I couldn't pick just five. I had to double it. There are too many to choose from! (Sidenote: I tried to talk about actual memorable clothes here -- the time will come for a list of Jake being naked, don't worry.)

My 10 Favorite Jake Gyllenhaal Costumes

His skeleton hoodie costume in Donnie Darko

The Santa hat & thong combo from Jarhead

His blue-shirted Brokeback ensemble

His white boxing shorts in Stronger

His blue polo in Lovely & Amazing

The Mysterio Cape!

(Spider-twink included)

The tight-buttoned dress shirts in Prisoners

The buffalo-plaid in Nocturnal Animals

(Aaron Johnson included)

The business-to-casual red suspenders in Demolition

That open cream shawl he wore

 to showcase his Persia bosoms

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Runners-up: Jake in uniform in End of Watch, 

the Bubble in Bubble Boy, the 

art snobbery in Velvet Buzzsaw, the jean shorts in Okja

What are your favorite Jake costumes?

5 Off My Head: Hoult, My Hand

Thanks to Nathaniel over at The Film Experience for reminding me that it's Nicholas Hoult's 31st birthday today! And double the thanks for reminding me of that with gifs of Nicky naked in this year's True History of the Kelly Gang. We are always, always here for him in those sock garters and nothing else. Anyway as Nat said Mr. Hoult's become one of our most exciting young actors, and it ain't just because he looks like he looks  -- Pretty Nicky's got acting talent to boot. He's shown a real spark for comedy in particular. And wigs. Also wigs! And so to celebrate his day, here, a list...

My 5 Favorite Nicholas Hoult Performances

Peter, The Great

Nux, Mad Max: Fury Road

Kenny, A Single Man

R, Warm Bodies

Harley, The Favourite

Runners-up: About a Boy, Equals, Kill Your Friends,

True History of the Kelly Gang

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What are your favorite Nicky perfs?

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

A Single Man (2009)

Carlos: No one has ever picked me up 

and not wanted something.

George: I think you picked me up. 

This is kind of a serious day for me.

Carlos: Come on. What could be 

so serious for a guy like you?

George: I'm just trying to get over 

an old love I guess.

Carlos: My mother says that lovers are like buses. 

You just have to wait a little while 

and another one comes along.

A happy 35 to model turned sometime actor Jon Kortajarena today! Although his IMDb page has more acting credits than I realized he'd have I still think he models more than he acts, and why wouldn't he, with that face, that torso, that... well that everything. (See more photos of him on our Tumblr.)

But the last thing we saw from him was actually an acting thing -- he had a nice (gay again) role on an episode of Tales from the Loop, Amazon's low-fi sci-fi series I recently championed here on the site. Have you watched that yet? God I love it.

Anyway nothing I have to say about Jon's career, whether it be modeling or acting or being paparazzi'd out and about with Luke Evans for several years way back when wink wink, nothing I have to say will sum up all of my feelings quite like the video that Miguel Angel Silvestre posted today for Jon's birthday of the two of them vigorously brushing their teeth together, so I'll let it do the talking for me.

View this post on Instagram

Happy birthday to my dear friend @kortajarenajon My brother from Bilbao Felicidades teteeeee❗️❗️❗️

A post shared by Miguel Angel Silvestre (@miguelangelsilvestre) on May 19, 2020 at 1:09am PDT

Good Morning, Jake

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It's Jake Gyllenhaal's 39th birthday!

What are YOU doing to celebrate Jake today?

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Single At 10

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It's not just the 10th anniversary of Werner Herzog's movie about a man who murdered his mother with a samurai sword starring Michael Shannon -- no as that kiss gif above says better than any words I could muster it's also the 10th anniversary of Tom Ford's swooningly stylish and somber A Single Man. I'm actually a little surprised to see that this movie didn't crack my Top 20 of 2009, as I liked it at the time and have grown to like it even more over the past decade... 2009 was an extremely good year at the movies though, so I guess that's my excuse. It was probably right outside the list. Anyway I celebrated this anniversary with a thread of photos and gifs on Twitter a bit ago, if you'd like to check that out. How do you guys feel about this movie? Empty style or stylish substance?

Great Moments In Movie Shelves #165

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It happens to be Colin Firth's 58th birthday today, which is not the reason that I began reading Christopher Isherwood's book A Single Man just this very morning - that is just a coincidence. It does seem strange to me that I didn't read the book around the time Tom Ford's movie came out in 2009 - hard to believe that movie is nearly a decade old now isn't it?

Anyway like I said I just started the book this morning but on Page 16 there's a terrific little passage that somewhat made it into the movie (seen here) but it's better in the book so I'm going to transcribe it for our reading pleasure:

"The living-room is dark and low-ceilinged, with bookshelves all along the wall opposite the windows. These books have not made George nobler or better or more truly wise. It is just that he likes listening to their voices, the one or the other, according to his mood. He misuses them quite ruthlessly - despite the respectful way he has to talk about them in public - to put him to sleep, to take his mind off the hands of the clock, to relax the nagging of his pyloric spasm, to trigger the conditioned reflexes of his colon."

I hope there's less of a wait for Tom Ford's next movie than there was between this one and Nocturnal Animals - I know many (most) of you didn't like NA but I'm one of the few who did - I liked it quite a bit actually, and I think of it weirdly often. And hey that's another movie with a prominent toilet scene! I wonder if we've maybe stumbled upon a thing of Tom Ford's, y'all...

The Moment I Fell For... Andrea Riseborough

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Looking back now I see that I make no mention of Andrea Riseborough's small role in Mark Romanek's 2010 film Never Let Me Go (weird that this is the second time this movie has come up this week; I guess it's due for a re-watch) in my review of that movie, but I vividly remember her and Domhnall Gleeson striking me - these are gonna be somebodies, I thought. Riseborough had already been in Mike Leigh's Happy Go Lucky at that point, although I don't remember that film well enough to remember her in it. 

Anyway the next year Riseborough became somebody, to me anyway, in the most unlikely of places - she gave a tremendous performance as Wallis Simpson in Madonna's awful 2011 film W.E., making that morally dubious film impossible to entirely ignore as much as one might want to. And from there on every movie she appeared in was made better by her presence, and I'd go out of my way to see things for her. 

It's easy to pretend that Joseph Kosinski's Oblivion is entirely an Andrea Riseborough Film, even with Tom Cruise there running and screaming and running and screaming - by this time I was already regularly singling her out for boundless praise in my reviews - and she might have been the single thing in Birdman I wanted more of. 

But by this time last year when she was popping out of all of two minutes of Tom Ford's Nocturnal Animals, the single most joyous and boisterous thing in that dour but beautiful movie,  I was past being ready for more - I was angry. Give this woman her damned due already, Hollywood!

This past year might have been the one where that feeling of Not Enough finally got felt by enough people, I think. Her performance as Billie Jean King's hairdresser turned lovah in Battle of the Sexes was another classic from her, full of all the life and vigor that those of us who've been paying attention expect from her on screen. The romance that she and Emma Stone captured made that movie work - their every scene together was sexy and memorable...

... and once again Riseborough seemed, even to a person who's been paying attention all this time, like a totally different person. I don't know how she does it, but she surprises me every damn time. I finally got to see her in person at a Q&A for Battle of the Sexes this past year and she even surprised me in person, as herself.

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AUSTIN STOWELL & ELISABETH SHUE & ANDREA RISEBOROUGH FOR THE BATTLE OF THE SEXES Q&A -- my teenage ADVENTURE IN BABYSITTING loving self was very very excited to see Elisabeth Shue!!! #battleofthesexes #austinstowell #elisabethshue #andreariseborough #billiejeanking #film

A post shared by Jason Adams (@jasonaadams) on Sep 18, 2017 at 8:04pm PDT

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I still have no idea who this woman is after all of these years, and I cherish that. I think Battle of the Sexes might represent a turning point in her career, but then just a couple of weeks ago we got a reminder of what Andrea's capable of, of the U-turns that she still manages effortlessly, with her absolutely brutal performance in the new Black Mirror episode called "Crocodile," which is the sort of thing that makes people cross the street when they recognize the person they'd seen doing those things she does in this.

I won't go into specifics of the John Hillcoat directed episode because I know some of you have maybe not seen it yet but it's an exceedingly dark hour of TV, maybe even excessively dark, although the fact that it's female-led gives me pause on that charge because we don't usually get to see a woman behave THIS badly and Riseborough's typically go-for-broke and that is a gift, a gift to savor.

Anyway I bring all of this up because Variety put an interview with the actress up yesterday wherein they discuss the FOUR films she's premiering at Sundance this month. Here's Variety on them:

"There’s “The Death of Stalin,” a savage political satire from “Veep” creator Armando Iannucci, in which Riseborough plays Josef Stalin’s daughter. Then she stars opposite Nicolas Cage in “Mandy,” a gonzo thriller that combines romance, carnage, and supernatural creatures. Riseborough also appears in “Burden,” a drama about a man’s break with the Ku Klux Klan that also stars Forest Whitaker and Garrett Hedlund. Lastly, she headlines and co-produces “Nancy,” the story of a disturbed woman who becomes convinced she’s an elderly couple’s long-lost child."

(Sidenote: I posted a picture of Hedlund in Burden on the Tumblr earlier this week.) You can read the entire chat here. I hope one or all of these movies are good great movies and I look forward to them but no matter what I'm about 99% sure that Andrea Riseborough will be great and totally captivating in every one. It's what she does.

What's your favorite performance of hers so far?

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Aaron Taylor-Johnson Seven Times

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I can't believe I actually read the entire interview with Aaron Taylor-Johnson that goes along with this photo-shoot at Mr. Porter, but read the entire thing I surely did - even when he talked about shamans and "fresh seaweed stocks you cook in the rice with toasted sesame oil and sake" for god's sake. That's some dedication. Anyway there's a kind of great little jab at Oliver Stone in there if you wanna read it that way (which anyone who knows of Oliver Stone would) so I recommend wading through it; or you can just hit the jump for the remaining six pictures...