Okay I apparently said goodbye for the weekend to y'all a split second too quickly, because as soon as I did I stumbled upon Alessandro Nivola's shirtless karate video on his Instagram and, without realizing it until I saw it, this is exxxxxxxxxactly what I needed to take me into the weekend right here. Enjoy!
I haven't even watched very much TV this week but I swear to you every time I've turned on the TV Jake Gyllenhaal and Jeff Bauman (the dude Jake is playing in Stronger) have been on whatever random show I have turned on. I mean I swear I saw Jake and Jeff giggling in the background of a Billy Eichner's big "acting" scene on AHS Cult last night. It's ridiculous! (I mean Billy Eichner's "acting" obviously.)
Anyway I am sensing through the pain beneath my eyeballs that the daily onslaught of movies movies and more movies for NYFF is starting wear me down so I'm going to try and take it easy this weekend, but I will definitely find time for Stronger at some point. I hear Jake is very good! He might even nab another Oscar nomination, although this year's Best Actor trophy really is Gary Oldman's to lose at this point right? I only semi pay attention to Oscar chatter and even I can see that juggernaut coming.
Using Luke Evans lovely mug to grab your attention about NewFest, the annual LGBT film festival here in NYC, is absolutely hilarious to me after our long sordid one-sided history with Luke and his oft noted personal life, but it's actually got heft and purpose to it (unlike my usual senseless shenanigans, I mean) -- Luke's well-received film about the creator of Wonder Woman called Professor Marston & The Wonder Women (see the trailer here) is actually screening at the Fest next month! And there will be a conversation about bisexuality with the film's director and "select cast" after the screening. Oh my if Luke is there...
Anyway NewFest announced their entire slate of films earlier this week -- you can check it out right here. There are a slew of great looking titles - we already told you they are showing God's Own Country, which we couldn't be dying harder for even if it was called Call Me By Your Name, but there's another movie that's been on the tip-top of our Want List for many a month now that is screening and that movie is Jeffrey Schwartz's doc The Fabulous Allan Carr, which we told you all about right here. Allan Carr was the legendary 70s gay super-producer who made Grease and Can't Stop the Music and burned through boys and coke and caftans like the world was on fire.
Anyway stay tuned for more coverage of NewFest here at MNPP (especially once NYFF is over) -- tickets are on sale now for members and they go on sale to the general public on Tuesday. The fest runs from October 19th through the 24th. .
Before I review movies from this year's New York Film Festival (which runs from September 27th through October 15th) for The Film Experience
I actually have to see them, and that's what I'm doing now - we're
reporting each day with a quick log of what we're watching at early
press screenings. Here is Day #1 and here is Day #2 and Day #3 is here. And today's lucky movies (yes plural, it's our first double-feature today) are...
Like most sane people I adored Tangerine, and so I was looking forward to whatever Sean Baker came up with next - then I saw the film co-stars the great Willem Dafoe and I became even more so. And then it screened in Toronto and everybody seemed to adore it, so it looks like my enthusiasm is not for naught, thank goodness. Read more about the movie and buy your tickets at NYFF's site.
Desplechin isn't actually a filmmaker I've cottoned to... although I suppose that's not quite the correct phrase because looking at his IMDb page just now it appears I have maybe never seen any of his movies! Unless I saw A Christmas Tale and immediately forgot the entire thing, which is possible. (Never underestimate my brain's ability to un-do itself.) Anyway I'm seeing this because it stars Mathieu Amalric, Marion Cotillard, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Louis Garrel, and Alba Rohrwacher, all Great Actors. Plus this makes for an Antichrist Double-feature what with Dafoe Movie and then a Gainsbourg movie right in a row. Head over here to get tickets! .
That headline is an attention grabber, for sure, but it's not even the best news from today's announcement that The Quad will be screening a slew of classics in The Third Dimension this October, because besides the silly sexy disturbing delight of Flesh For Frankenstein being on the list of titles there is among them the one movie I have wanted to see in 3D my entire life, more than any other, and that movie is...
I have honest to goodness goose-pimples about this, you guys. 10-year-old me, staring at this movie's illicit VHS cover at the local video-store, with its bloody knife poking through that lacy curtain...
... it always seemed so dangerous, ya know? Eventually my cousin and I got permission to rent scary movies from his much more lenient parents a couple years later and off we went, him ogling the boobies, me ogling the boy bits. And Part III has some good boy bits with Rick (Paul Kratka) and hand-walking Andy (Jeffrey Rogers)...
But besides the great gratuity this movie's got everything a growing freak needs from their 3D horror movie - it's got a yo-yo flying at your face, it's got an eyeball flying at your face... it has SHELLY!
Shelly in 3D!!!
I am painfully excited, y'all.
That there (click to embiggen) is the full list of films the Quad is showing - the series runs from October 13th through the 19th and they haven't announced the actual schedule on their website yet but I can't imagine that they won't be showing Friday the 13th on Friday, October 13th. MARK YOUR CALENDARS, FOLKS.
It is the 70th birthday of Stephen King and old age be damned he's this year's hot "It Boy" and in more ways than one, the movie It being the year's biggest surprise hit - I think we all expected the movie to do well, but not this well. It's raking in cash over claw. (Here is my review in case you missed it.) Anyway I'm in too much of a rush just now to go back through our archives and check to see if I've done this before (it's entirely possible) but here on his 70th let's name our five favorite movie adaptations of his stories.
Before I review movies from this year's New York Film Festival (which runs from September 27th through October 15th) for The Film Experience I actually have to see them, and that's what I'm doing now - we're reporting each day with a quick log of what we're watching at early press screenings. Here is Day #1 and here is Day #2. And today's lucky movie is...
A couple of weeks ago I shared the trailer for Thelma with you guys - click here for that. Bonus pictures of Hot Dude in movie at that link, by the way. Also there are shelves, glorious shelves - a lot of this movie appears to be set in a university library? And it's lesbian art horror? So so very excited. Our pal Chris already reviewed this movie from TIFF at The Film Experience - you can read his thoughts here. He called it "Blue is the Warmest Color by way of Carrie" so you know WHAAAAAAT.
That title speaks not of Mike Vogel's professional career, which is doing just fine - most actors would kill to be starring on a brand new series on NBC that premieres in four days. I speak of his literal blink-and-you'll-miss-him moment in Battle of the Sexes, which I rambled a bit about in my review of the film yesterday. Honestly it strikes me that I should've saved it for a separate post, because I like and long for Mike Vogel in my life, so that's what I am doing now.
I just want you guys to keep your eyes peeled for him, because you will miss him if you don't. Mike shows up when Billie Jean (Emma Stone) and her new girl "friend" Marilyn (Andrea Riseborough) go out dancing for the first time. A dude comes up and tells BJK he's a fan of hers and asks her to dance - the entire thing is shot watching the two actresses; the actor is incidental to what's happening between them. So when his face is visible for the briefest moment I was surprised to see it was Mike Vogel.
And I was even more surprised when I went looking on the movie's IMDB page and he's not listed. The only hint I have that it was indeed him is a mention of the credit on Mike's "Actor Bio" on the website for his new show The Brave, which mentions he's in the film. I should have stayed and stared at the film's credits to look for Mike - one of you guys do that for me when you see the movie this weekend, please!
Anyway this isn't that weird - actors get cut out of films all the time. Still the flash we do get of Mike is promising - he's got a 70s mustache, and as with most everything Mike Vogel has worn, he wears it really fucking well. I want to get a screen-grab of it as soon as possible since it will be our only record.
I don't watch This is Us (no not even for Milo's butt) but I keep hearing how Sterling K Brown is giving a terrific performance on it... well at the very least his shirts must be performing well, because they are somehow managing to keep all that magic contained. Strong fabric!
You know what the world needs right now? If you said "love sweet love" you're a goddamn hippie, but you're not too far out of bounds. The word "crowd-pleaser" has been lobbed at Battle of the Sexes already and lots more than once, and it's a solid call - like the best Sports Movies this one, which tells the story of tennis legend Billie Jean King's infamous 1972 match with the washed-up Bobby Riggs, is going to make the audience you're sitting with clap and cheer once that final reel rolls along.
But the movie's both better, and a little worse, than just that. On the one hand it's a really lovely love story, and my favorite scenes by far are the ones where Billie Jean (Emma Stone, truly firing on all cylinders) gets to know the hairdresser, flung out of space, who's awakened all kinds of feelings she hadn't been expecting (played a dreamy soft Andrea Riseborough, who once again proves that she will always be the best thing in any given movie while simultaneously elevating everything around her). Their chemistry is so palpable that the film introduced a mustachioed Mike Vogel to come between them and I actually really wanted him outta there! (And since it's a literally blink and you'll miss him cameo the movie clearly agreed - Vogel 's not even credited! The only clue I have that it was him is this link.)
That said with pleasing the crowds you've sometimes got to sand the edges for mass consumption (just maybe don't ask Darren Aronofsky about that specific topic this week) and so Steve Carell hamming it up tends to drag on a few seconds too long every time (although given who the real-life Bobby Riggs really was perhaps exhaustion with his antics was the only way to really play those scenes). And there are probably maybe too many characters rattling around in this thing, but who would I give up? Certainly not Sarah Silverman's cigarette-snapping Phyllis-Diller-ian hairdo on legs. And certainly not Elisabeth Shue radiating rich Californian sunshine in every frame.
And certainly not Lewis Pullman, who plays Carell's sweetly disappointed son Larry in a series of lovingly photographed yet always surprising, time after time, demonstrations of how to correctly fill out this strange era's strange snug fashions, as demonstrated perfectly above in them tennis shorts (via).
But oh wait, I do know who I could've done without. Because with sanded edges comes a spoon-fed "Magical Homo" character like the one Alan Cumming plays. And yes I know that tennis dress designer Ted Tinling was a real dude and was very much involved in the events, probably exactly as depicted - he was a close friend of BJK's and she's happy with the movie so if it rings true to her who am I to complain? It's just his final scene in the film, delivering a message of long-distance hope for the future, read on-screen to my eyes and ears, verisimilitude be damned, as forced and false - the sort of thing students of cinema future will look back upon with a cringe; an It Gets Better era Stepin Fetchit.
So the movie gets the love, the sweet love, right, but it could probably have used a little more of the hard fight ahead burned into its DNA - it ends bittersweet but I really needed just a tad bit more taste of that bitter on my tongue as I walked out the door. It was a long road ahead for Billie Jean, and as she tread first so tread we all still today.
I know I trend towards narcissism (I am a blogger after all) but I really am starting to think that Jon Bernthal took my longstanding distaste towards him (thanks to all the Ham & Cornpone he spread across The Walking Dead) as some kind of a dare -- in the past couple of months he went and got The World's Best Haircut, and now here in the trailer for his upcoming standalone Punisher series on Netflix as seen above he's gone and slathered his beefcake in blood, something we've expressed a dark taste for before. (Don't you psychoanalyze me.) Oh, Jon. I just don't know what to do with you. (I totally know what to do with him.)
. .
The Punisher doesn't have a drop-date yet
but it's supposed to hit before the end of the year.
Tom Hardy is currently hard at work training to play the big super-bad space-gunk known as Venom, and some photos of him at the gym in a delightful unicorn tank-top have made their way onto the internet (via) that need to be shared far and wide. What a delight. Oh and there's also several behind-the-scenes videos out there too of him kicking and punching and rough-housing in said unicorn tank-top - you can click here to view those.
"I feel like many of the comments against the age difference in [Call Me By Your Name] have something to do with the privilege of queer sexuality becoming 'normalized' to the point where it is totally legitimate to expect queer teenagers to be able to find other queer teenagers. I grew up closeted in a tiny conservative town--and as far as I knew, I was the only gay on the face of the earth. I didn't even meet an out queer person until some years later in college. That meant when I found someone (or someone found me), it wasn't a question of age--it was someone reassuring me that I wasn't, in fact, the only gay on the face of the earth. I haven't seen the movie, but the book captures exactly that feeling--that tactile electricity of watching the size of your world double and expand until it seems infinite. And hey--was it ideal that some of my first sexual experiences were with men older than I was? Would it have been better if I'd lived somewhere with a queer student alliance, a pride parade, a gay couple being co-elected homecoming king? Maybe, but I've had the life I had, and my experiences are just as legitimate as they would have been had I been able to come out at 13 & take another out boy to my middle school dance. "
--- When I posted about Armie Hammer's burn on James Woods I prepared myself for some shitty comments but what I got instead was a bunch of thoughtful ones, like this here one from commenter Joe K. You guys rock.
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