Good Morning, World

Comedian and actor -- Fire Island holla -- Joel Kim Booster is scorching up the pages of Out magazine this month, check his interview here. He's mainly talking his Apple series Loot, a show I inexplicably don't watch -- I am sorry, Maya Rudolph, feel free to slap me silly if we ever meet. I'll get to it sometime. Any fans? Anyway it doesn't come up but Joel is featured in a doc about queer comedy called Outstanding: A Comedy Revolution which just dropped on Netflix...

... and that is a thing I have watched, and I can speak of -- it's really great! It presents a wide-ranging history of LGBTQ comedians while managing to be very funny and kinda moving along the way. I saw it during Tribeca and it's not the sort of thing I could write an entire review around (most docs stump me when it comes to writing about them at length tbh) but I was surprised how interesting I found it, and it's well worth a watch. So go check that out. And also, natch, go check out these hot new photos of Joel after the jump...

You Win This Round, Krasinski

There isn't a whole lot that could make me want to see a kid's movie directed by John Krasinski and starring Ryan Reynolds -- a pornographic movie, sure? But a kid's movie? Nahhh. I am of the mind that Krasinski's Quiet Place movies are politically retrograde and shoddily crafted and Ryan, bless his continued hotness, has turned himself into a brand who only churns out terrible Netflix movies. But then they went and released a trailer for their kid's movie called If -- it's about a teen girl who can see everyone's imaginary friends -- and they put Ryan in suspenders...

... and against bookshelves no less, and this is a pure and undiluted act of violence against my will, y'all. I love a man in suspenders. I've admitted this fetish before but ever since that formative photograph of shirtless Benjamin Bratt's back in suspenders appeared in my life back in the day I have had very little willpower as far as suspenders are concerned and Ryan appears to spend...

... like half of this dumb movie in a shirt and suspenders. Violence, I say! Anyway I'm not posting the trailer but you can watch it right here -- there are really good people doing (what I assume is) voice-work in this movie too. People like Maya Rudolph and Sam Rockwell and Christopher Meloni and Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Fiona f'ing Shaw! So I won't hold it against anybody if they're excited about this. I'll just be over here with these gifs feeling very unclean, is all.

Pizza Coming In Piping Hot

Big day for those of us who continue to worship the ground that writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson walks, as the poster and the trailer for his next one, somehow absurdly trollingly titled Licorice Pizza, has arrived. The movie comes out in limited release at Thanksgiving and then wide release for Christmas, and the trailer has me over the moon excited. And not just because PTA ...

... put his amazing wife in this! (That clearly doesn't hurt though.) Me and PTA have had a rocky road the past decade, I'll admit. It took awhile for The Master to grow on me (it has) and I haven't had any desire to watch Inherent Vice a second time since my first view at NYFF in 2014 (I probably should) but everything he's done since -- the Jonny Greenwood doc Junun, his Thom Yorke short film Anima, and of course Phantom Thread, which has worked up to being My Favorite Paul Thomas Anderson Film in just three short years -- reinvigorated my passion. Watch this trailer and feel yourself reinvigorated too!

Licorice Pizza (still not over this title) hits theaters November 26th. 

Quote of the Day

"... I’m a Halloween person, which is odd to me because I’m terrified of scary things. I can’t watch scary movies or even a scary movie trailer. But I love the aesthetic of Halloween more than most holidays. We’re not talking about Christmas, of course—let’s put Christmas aside. Anything that gets Halloweenified in orange and black, or has an occasional bat or ghost or monster, really does it for me. But just to be clear, I’m not interested in terror. I’m interested in a delightful monster or witch. I don’t care for jump scares. Don’t scare me or I will definitely punch you in the face."

Blessings unto us all, I needed some smiles this Friday and Interview Magazine has gifted us with one of their "25 Questions" features with Maya Rudolph! They work like this: 25 of Maya's famous pals asked her a question or two, and she answered them! It's not a terribly hard-to-grasp feature. Anyway the above quote comes in response to a question from author Sarah Cooper; other people doing the asking include half of the SNL casts over the years, Amy Sedaris, Paul Reubens, Natasha Lyonne, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Carol fuckin' Burnett -- endless proof that Maya is indeed that cool. And you'll definitely want to look for the Prince story.  

Do You Like To Laugh

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This post's title is dedicated to those poor sods who would harass people on street corners with that question -- "Do you like to laugh?" -- in order to get them inside of Comedy Clubs here in the pre-COVID Days of NYC. This pandemic's got me down enough that I sort of miss them! Anyway true story I seem to have become nightmarishly picky when it comes to Comedy. I have lots of old stand-by favorites from my more innocent, less jaded youth that I go back to time and time again -- Soapdish! Dirty Rotten Scoundrels! -- but it's not a genre I actively seek out very often anymore.

Truth be told I can be snobbish and weird about the genre. I guess I like Smart Dumb Comedy -- I don't mind a poop joke but you've got to give me something new and exciting with your poop joke. (Side-note: you oughta read MNPP pal Michael's terrific recent piece on the art of the poop joke with regards to Bridesmaids over at TFE.) I am simply incapable of sitting down and enjoying an episode of something as braying and needy as say The Big Bang Theory. It physically pains me, that sort of thing. 

Okay I need a laugh, and I need one now.
What’s your funniest movie ever made? pic.twitter.com/KPsHbsYpT6

— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) July 31, 2020

Of course this pandemic has really put that snobbishness to the test -- we need a good belly laugh, an emphatic guffaw, now and then amid these darkest of days. And so in a fit of want I tweeted out the above question last week, and in return I got a million and a half fun responses that I appreciated a whole bunch. Then naturally I just ended up re-watching Christopher Guest's Best in Show for the thousandth time...

... but I've got a Go-To Laugh List for when I need it now. And if anyone has any further suggestions please do give them in the comments. That said I forward all of this to say make it clear that I have actively been thinking a lot about my weird relationship with comedy -- how I'll almost always if I want to laugh put on a bad horror flick or something Campy like Showgirls before I'll even think to put on an actual trying-to-make-me-laugh Comedy Film -- when lo, behold, a trailer for a new Comedy Series should appear.



That's the trailer for Mapleworth Murders, which stars former SNL writer Paula Pell as a Murder She Wrote type Older Lady Sleuth, and which will feature cameos from lots of Smart Dumb Comedy Now people like Wanda Sykes, Chris Parnell, Nicole Byer, Maya Rudolph, Fred Armisen, Jack McBrayer, Annie Mumolo... I have a really good friend who's a Comedy Fiend and she loves Pell -- I think a lot of Comedy Fiends do. My only interaction with Pell was in the Netflix comedy Wine Country...

... which is a good example of a recent comedy that left me totally and thoroughly cold. Except for Pell, who was its highlight I thought. But with a cast like Wine Country had -- Amy Poehler and Maya Rudolph and Tina Fey and Rachel Dratch and Ana Gasteyer! -- I should've been in Chuckle Heaven! So I guess what I am getting at with all of this is... I am dead inside, right? I'm just dead inside. Mapleworth Murders premieres on Quibi on August 10th!

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

Phantom Thread (2017)

Alma: It's no business of ours what Mrs. Rose decides to do
with her life but she can no longer behave like this
and be dressed by the House of Woodcock!

An extraordinarily happy 65th birthday to the great character actress Harriet Sansom Harris, who played the drunken and depressed couturier disaster "Barbara Rose" in Phantom Thread and gives that great movie perhaps its greatest sequence of all. 

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We don’t talk enough as a society about the Barbara Rose sequence in Phantom Thread pic.twitter.com/CcVVlSOKr9

— Rob Plainview (@ClooneyDisciple) December 6, 2019

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Over the holidays I was lucky enough to see Phantom Thread at Metrograph on the big screen for what, a fifth or sixth time (sidenote: they are screening it again tonight!) and my love for exceeds itself with every sweep -- here's my original rave review of the movie but if anything I wasn't laudatory enough; it has become in the past two years My Favorite Paul Thomas Anderson Film bar none. I want him to continue making complicated and contradictory romances for the rest of time like this and Punch-drunk Love; it's clearly his finest area of expertise. And who can blame him with a winner like Maya Rudolph at home?
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In a really delightful happenstance of coincidence I actually walked by Harriet Sansom Harris on the street yesterday just a couple of hours before I saw PHANTOM THREAD again. I didn’t say anything because New Yorkers don’t say anything but HSH if you’re out there you rule pic.twitter.com/ADFwOzwQ9M

— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) December 22, 2019

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Harris really does rule, though. When you see HSH what role do you think of? She's been working for so long and been in so many things I think everyone will have a different answer. She always makes something miles more interesting though -- bless filmmakers who let her shine. In related news I also tweeted about Thread's other special lady just yesterday...

KRIEPS!!!!!!!!!!!!!
VICKY KRIEPS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
(First look at The Vickster & Tim Roth in Mia Hansen-Løve's upcoming Bergman Island) pic.twitter.com/h7KQXIKkYq

— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) January 7, 2020

Quote of the Day

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Oh joy, Interview Magazine got a whole slew of Amy Sedaris' famous nut-bag friends to ask her a question or two for their upcoming issue, and there are a couple of choice moments therein that almost made me cause a scene here in my office just now reading them and exploding into violent laughter. (The exchange between her and her brother David, oh my god.) People featured include John Waters, Juliette Lewis, Maya Rudolph, Cole Escola... really, just all the people that matter. All of 'em! I especially loved the exchange between her and her BFF Justin Theroux though:

JUSTIN: Dear Amy, I’m feeling a little down on myself lately. Can you give me five quick tips that will make me feel more “ladylike” overnight? Signed, Sad Sack.
AMY: 1. Put on a transparent pair of panties.
 2. Apply lipstick to your cheekbones.
 3. Remove the lice from your hair.
 4. Make sausage hair curls using real sausage.
 5. Tuck your penis between your ass cheeks.

Okay okay I mostly just wanted to give a second and a third thought to Justin Theroux tucking his penis between his ass cheeks, it's true. Click on over to read the whole thing, and to delight in the high-larious photos taken by Tina Tyrell too. The third season of her deranged crafting show At Home really can't get here soon enough.

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

Away We Go (2009)

Tom: It's all those good things you have in you. The love, the wisdom, the generosity, the selflessness, the patience. The patience! At 3 A.M. when everyone's awake because Ibrahim is sick and he can't find the bathroom and he's just puked all over Katki's bed. When you blink, when you blink! And it's 5:30 and it's time to get up again and you know you're going to be tired all day, all week, all your fucking life. And you're thinking what happened to Greece? What happened to swimming naked off the coast of Greece? And you have to be willing to make the family out of whatever you have.

I love everyone in and everything about Sam Mendes' 2009 film Away We Go, which was released 10 years ago today, but whenever I think back on the film I think of two particular things first. I think of Maggie Gyllenhaal talking about her hate for strollers -- "Why would I want to push my baby away from me???" -- and I think of every single moment that Chris Messina & Melanie Lynskey are on screen as old college friends of Burt (John Krasinski) and Verona (Maya Rudolph). Their mini-movie is a thing of grace of gorgeousness that breaks my heart and puts it back together again within however many minutes it is they're on-screen. What a gift. 

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Wine Country in 250 Words or Less

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Wine Country is one of those movies that its defenders defend by saying it's just a pleasure to get the chance to hang out with all of these fill in the blanks -- in this instance the "fill in the blanks" are some of our finest middle-aged funny ladies, many bearing an SNL pedigree. And I agree -- it is a pleasure. So much so that I spent about sixty percent of the film wishing that that was what I was watching -- can you imagine how great a documentary about Tina Fey and Amy Poehler and Maya Rudolph and Paula Pell and Ana Gasteyer and Rachel Dratch and Emily Spivey drinking wine in Napa and just hanging out would've been? 

Instead Wine Country strains towards uninvolving half-baked tensions and lukewarm insights -- I feel like you put a box of wine in the human being Maya Rudolph's lap and got her guard down and got her and Amy riffing on real life there could've been something profound and moving and sweet to come out of that. As is Wine Country postures towards that experience, but keeps ringing false with broad platitudes. I don't begrudge these comic wonders a paid-for-by-Netflix vacation by any means, and I'm more than glad to come along, but it's a little off-putting how Wine Country doesn't ever strain to reciprocate -- it's a one-sided window I ended up feeling left on the outside of, admiring the well-appointed drapes.

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It's Friday Night, I'm Gonna Get Drunk...

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Perhaps I'm just extra bad on the uptake these days but doesn't it feel like Netflix somehow manages to sneak their movies through production without us noticing until they release a trailer for an already finished thing and it's out in a month and you're like WHAT? I DON'T HAVE TO WAIT FOR THAT? That's the thrill I got when they dropped their trailer for Wine Country yesterday -- they managed to gather together SNL queens Maya Rudolph & Tina Fey & Amy Poehler (who directed) & Rachel Dratch & Ana Gasteyer, alongside Paula Pell & Emily Spivey (who wrote) and, uh, Jason Schwartzman...

... (who's looking particularly delicious with that big beard, I might add) for a comedy about some gals drinking wine in the country and I never noticed until this trailer and a date of May 10th (with some theatrical screenings starting two days earlier) were right in front of me? That's nutso! But I like this strategy -- it doesn't feel like we have to wait so long this way. We've got less a month for this and that works for me! Now watch the trailer, goddamit:

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Good Morning, World

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Here's a nice little flashback that I fell upon while doing last Friday's "Five Frames From" post - John Krasinski in Sam Mendes' way seriously super underrated 2009 film Away We Go. Talk about a movie that's held on - every time I see a woman pushing a stroller down a New York City street I think about Maggie Gyllenhaal's line about "pushing my baby away from me" and every couple of months I think about how robbed Melanie Lynskey was of an Oscar nomination for her work in this movie. (See also Maya Rudolph.) A modern classic in need of rediscovery! Here's my praise-soaked review from way back when. Any fans?

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Putting the Hip in Hipster

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That picture has everything - beards, bookshelves, a member of Radiohead, the man who put the words "That is a giant cock" in Julianne Moore's mouth. Everything! It's the perfect way to celebrate Paul Thomas Anderson's 48th birthday today - well the second most perfect way, the first most perfect way being whatever Maya Rudolph did for PTA this morning. 

And in case you're wondering what the third best way is, it is to buy yourself a ticket to the screening of the 2015 documentary called Junun that PTA directed about Jonny Greenwood there  when it screens in Brooklyn next month, which I just did! I think it's sold out already though, so if you missed it you'll have to once again live vicariously through me. Wha ah ah!

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Great Moments in Movie Shelves #127

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I don't know if Melissa McCarthy's new comedy called Life of the Party is going to be good - maybe after directing MM's two worst movies with Tammy & The Boss her husband Ben Falcone has finally sorted out the gig, or maybe not - but I do know that featuring a sex scene with a cute boy in a library in its trailer is a quick way to my heart! (See also this big gay over-share from way back.)

Hello, Cute Boy. And a quick way to stay inside of there (my heart that is, not inside the cute boy... although...) is to then have Maya Rudolph pop up and make a joke involving the mix up the word "stacks" with "slacks"...

Mostly because Maya Rudolph is awesome, but also just because I just love the word "slacks." Always have, always will. Slacks, slacks, slacks! Here's the trailer:

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Life of the Party is out on May 11th... and yeah okay as long as we're here that Cute Boy in the Stacks in named Luke Benward, he is 22 going on 23, and he's been bouncing around for a few years in things like We Were Soldiers and Dear John and lots of TV that I have never heard of (don't feel bad, Luke - there's too much TV these days to hear about half of it). Here's his Instagram! And hey why not after the jump I will share a few pics of him I scrounged up...

High School is the End of the World

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I once did a joke list of fancy-pants auteurs who should direct the fourth Jurassic Park movie (this was awhile back before Jurassic World became an actual thing) - therein I imagined what Woody Allen's version would look like, or what Werner Herzog would make of a dilophosaurus. Well if there's one thing I love almost as much as I love those damn dinos it's a Disaster Movie, and so I thought of that old list while watching the new animated thing called My Entire High School Sinking Into the Sea -- because here we have what is essentially Wes Anderson's The Poseidon Adventure.

My Entire High School wasn't directed by Anderson - it was directed by graphic-novelist Dash Shaw, who's published several books but this is his first feature-length animated film. Anyway it's not just that the leading man is voiced by Jason Schwartzman that made me feel plunked down in Anderson-Town; Shaw has clearly spent some of his days making sweet sweet love to Fantastic Mr. Fox (as have we all) and the whole lot of quirky deadpan well-spoken fools populating those films. 

That's not a negative, and Shaw carves out his own little slice of heaven there. And anyway it's beautiful and funny and surprisingly mean-spirited at times (think of the scene in Moonlight Kingdom where the cute puppy gets an arrow, I guess)... and anyway it's a Disaster Movie and I'm literally incapable of not recommending a Disaster Movie, any Disaster Movie. This one is so its own thing in its own little world that it will sit proudly beside the genre greats... or it will at least have its own spot at the Freaks Table in the High School Cafeteria of the Disaster Movie Genre. Twister and Dante's Peak are high-fiving at the Cool Kid's Table, Rollercoaster is jerking off in the bathroom, and My Entire High School Sinking Into the Sea is furiously scribbling in its spiral notebook in the corner nearest the exit.

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Y Tu Senor Cerdo Tambien

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There's no reason that one has to choose between the boys of Y Tu Mama Tambien - it's fine to love both; nobody's making us not love both! - and yet I always felt as if I had to defend preferring Diego Luna to Gael Garcia Bernal, I guess since Bernal seemed to do a better job here in the US, keeping his name out there. Gael's great, don't get me wrong. But if I was given a full-on Sophie's Choice with the two, it would be Diego that would be going home with me. 

Anyway Diego's been trying his hand at directing over the past few years, and his new movie sounds like something I very much need to see; it's called Mr. Pig and it stars Danny Glover & Maya Rudolph as a father and daughter who take a road trip trying to find a final resting place for his favorite, you guessed it, pig. There's no release date but we do have a trailer!

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Today's Mood

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I ♥ NYFF

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While I still have several movies to sort out my thoughts on from the New York Film Fest, and I promise you (as much as my promises are worth, ha) that I am going to get to at least some of them, for now we've wrapped up our coverage over at The Film Experience with a group list of things we learned from the 2014 line-up, so head over and enjoy. I love the fact that three of us took the opportunity to drool mercilessly (and nearly word for word) over Louis Garrel in Saint Laurent - he really is that sexy in it.

It's probably a good thing Louis didn't show up to the press conference because a roomful of critics might have sexually assaulted him. Anyway I didn't cover some of the movies I saw over at TFE because other people claimed them or time, maddening time, slipped away, and I really do still want to address some of them so stay tuned. I might not share any more pictures that I took of celebs there though, so check my Instagram if you missed anything. Or click this collage to embiggen! Can you name everybody?

I Am Link

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--- Nice Bad Guys - Matthew Bomer, once he finishes shakin da booty for Magic Mike 2, will head over to Ryan Gosling's new movie to play a bad guy! It's called The Nice Guys, it also stars Russell Crowe, and it's from Shane Black, who wrote and is directing. Black is of course the dude who burned a bunch of bridges back in the 80s and got a comeback thanks to Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and Iron Man 3, aka Robert Downey Jr. brought him back.
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--- Up For Chuck - Guinevere Turner, the author of the perfect perfect perfect American Psycho screenplay (she also played the wine-sloshing threesome-having society gal in the movie), is adapting the 1971 book The Family, about the events that led up to the Manson murders, for a movie to be directed by music-video director Jonas Akerlund. (Amongst other great pieces of work Akerlund made Madonna's "Ray of Light" video.) 

--- New Utopia - It is official: David Fincher's next project is going to be his HBO remake of the amazing amazing amazing British television thriller Utopia, and kind of surprisingly he says he's going to direct every single episode. He's making it next year. I am so torn on this - the original is SO GOOD, I wish they'd just air it here in the US as is because it really doesn't need changing a bit; all the actors are killer, it's gorgeously shot already, and the story is so scary and exciting and fun. I just hope he changes it a ton, is what I hope. Spin it off into your own thing, David. Then I can maybe see the point.

--- Super Week - I don't know if there are even still tickets for most of this stuff but IFC Center here in NY is doing a ton of super amazing events next week for New York Comic Con - it's called "Super Week" and on the list is stuff like Baz Luhrmann presenting a screening of Rocky Horror Picture Show; the NY premiere of the unrated Director's Cut of Nymphomaniac; Nicholas Hoult will be there with his new movie, and on and on. I probably can't do any of it myself because of continuing NYFF and actually being at Comic-Con duties, dammit.

--- Pig Person - Here's a sentence I never really expected to write: Y Tu Mama Tambien actor Diego Luna is directing a movie called Mr. Pig, which will star Danny Glover as a man traveling to Mexico, with a pig. It will co-star Maya Rudolph. First person to make a "Is Maya Playing the pig?" joke gets kicked in the nuts.

--- Her Triumph - I know that the Jesse Owens bio-pic is going to be all about, you know, Jesse Owens and sports and stuff, but hearing that they just cast Carice van Houten to play director Leni Riefenstahl in the film... well now I want this to be a Leni Riefenstahl bio-pic, sorry Jesse Owens. The film will detail the African-American athlete's travels to the Olympics in Berlin in 1936, which Riefenstahl turned into her film Olympia.

--- Vice Maker - I'm just gonna slip this link to the trailer for Paul Thomas Anderson's Inherent Vice in right here, side-stepping the fan-fare because it's great and everything but I know some people don't wanna watch it and far be it from me to ruin their day. I will say I watched the trailer even though I'm seeing the film later this week for NYFF and the trailer made me very very excited. And who is that shirtless blonde dude?

--- And Speaking of trailers the trailer for the second Avengers movie will apparently be shown in front of Chris Nolan's Interstellar. I have always planned on seeing Interstellar, I have to see Interstellar, it's too big a something to miss, even if I'm kinda over Nolan and I'm way way way over McConaughey. So this news at least gives me a little more impetus to give a shit.
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RIP Maya Angelou

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She'll be ordering pizzas for Jonathan Franzen from Heaven now.

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The Way Way Back in 100 Words

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Quick, I'm going to name six of my favorite things. And, go: Toni Collette, Allison Janney, Sam Rockwell, Steve Carell, Maya Rudolph, and Amanda Peet. Wow! Fireworks! Quick, I'm going to name one of my least favorite things. And, go: The Way Way Back is a piece of shit. An unfunny, tone-deaf, Frankenstein's Monster of cobbled together surface-level quirks, a character-free zone of punchlines screamed and nonsensical jibberish plotting that never approaches anything near actual humanity. Just flush all my favorite things right down the toilet, The Way Way Back. Just ruin everything with your stupid face I hate you.

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