Today's Mood

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Woo-jin Lee (Ji-tae Yu),
Oldboy

"What I am isn't important.
WHY is important."

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Happy Birthday, GGB!

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Short-but-Hottie Gael Garcia Bernal turns 28 today. Yes, he could fit on the palm of my hand, but he'd be adorable doing it!

Right, he's also pretty talented I hear. I am so deeply ashamed that I never got to the theater to see The Science of Sleep, though, because my only exposure to his acting this year was in Babel, and as much as I hated that movie, his character personified what I hated most about the movie... so this is me forgiving him. You're forgiven, Gael! Happy bday!

Also, happy birthdays to the impressive trifecta of David Mamet, Terrence Malick, and Ridley Scott!
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In Two Places At Once!

Sorry for the relative quietude of the past 24 hours - I appear to be having some sort of brain leakage that's kept my fingers from being able to type coherent thoughts. Well, more than usual, at least.

Which bodes oh-so-well for the bit of info I'm passing along here - that I'll be guest-blogging for the next several days over at The Film Experience, while my man Nathaniel takes a pre-awards-season breather. Thankfully, saner minds will also be guest-blogging - Gabriel of ModFab and Catherine of I Am Screaming and Punching Myself - so there will be promises of coherency besides my brain-vomit. Yay!

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Eating After Midnight

There's a Joe Dante Blog-A-Thon happening today over at the Tim Lucas Video WatchBlog (found via The Horror Blog), go and check it out!

Joe Dante's best known for the two Gremlins flicks, of course, and as he should be - these two films were integral to my development process. Without the introduction of the Mogwai at that crucial stage of my youth I might never have become the horror-fetishist you know and love today. So thanks, Joe!

Dante's also responsible for the very best episode of the first season of the series Masters of Horror, entitled "Homecoming", which I spoke of briefly here.
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Bond(age)

Why Daniel Craig is the Best Bond Ever:

Okay, there were other reasons, but I'll be damned if I could remember anything but these images seared into my brain when the house lights came up.

Also from Towleroad, comes this dubious news story that Daniel Craig is insisting that Bond get a male love interest in the next film.

"Said Craig: 'Why not? I think in this day and age, fans would have accepted it. I mean, look at (British TV series) Doctor Who - that has had gay scenes in it and no one blinks an eye.'"

This is an old story - I mentioned it way back when - but always worth mentioning anew, with fawning desire but very little hope.
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Today's Mood

Barry Egan (Adam Sandler),
Punch-Drunk Love

"I'm lookin' at your face and I just wanna smash it.
I just wanna fuckin' smash it with a sledgehammer
and squeeze it. You're so pretty."

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Watch Veronica Or Die

Tonight's episode of Veronica Mars marks the last episode of the first of three story arcs this season, and by the looks of the preview, it's a spine-tingler! I cannot wait - after a bit of a bumpy start, this season's gotten just as good as the previous two, and after last week's episode blew my theory out the window, I am completely clueless as to whodunit. Just the way I like it!

All that said, I am completely infatuated with Piz, and I can't explain why. He's hardly even been on the show! But le sigh... such an endearing dork...

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Brokeback Double Dip

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That sounds like some sort of weird sex act, huh? Anyway, seems a Super Special Two-Disc Edition of everybody's favorite Jake-gets-it-in-the-pup-tent movie, Brokeback Mountain, is coming out on January 23rd. Why not in time for Christmas?

But wait! While Towleroad says of the edition, "The two-disc edition will feature never-before-seen footage as well as collectible postcards," the reviews on Amazon are much less enticing:

"Sadly the new edition has very little to offer. Being a 2-disc collector's set, so much was expected from this edition...But all its got is a new DTS track and just 2 new featurettes, including "A groundbreaking success" (which I'm sure, as the title suggests, is nothing more than the people involved, appreciating each other), Music from the mountains (obviously only about the music) and an art gallery of still images!! Other than these, all the features from the previous release will be available on the disc which barely run for 45 minutes."

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"postcards? thats the best you can do? how pathetic.

a few more featurettes... eh.
stills gallery... eh.
postcards... big fat hairy deal.

where are the 40+ minutes of DELETED SCENES?
where are the COMMENTARIES?
where are the TRAILERS?
and wheres the complete 22-track original SCORE CD???"

That second fella's my kinda crazy. Seriously, though, I guess it doesn't really sound worth another purchase just yet. I want Criterion to get their hands on this thing. They do recent releases, too, don't they? I want the X-rated outtakes, for christ's sake!
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Today's Mood

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Querelle (Brad Davis),
Querelle

This is sort of a random one
(yeah, I know, aren't they all),
but today I just wanted to look at
pictures of pretty, pretty Brad Davis.

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"It's Just So Perfect and Round..."

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Maggie totally looks like she's about
to grab her brother's ass.

And can you blame her? Really?
Incest was made for these sorts of cases.

Also, Jake and Austin were spotted together again:


They both look so over it.
Now it's my turn, Austin!

(pics from IHJM)
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Eli's Insatiable

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Seems like conjecture at this point, but I really never doubted it'd happen anyway - Cinematical (via Variety) is reporting that Hostel 3 is all but guaranteed:

"Basically, in this Variety article that focuses on film productions in Prague and the Czech Republic, a few hints are dropped that a Hostel Part 3 is almost definitely on the way -- but that it'd most likely come after Roth is finished adapting Stephen King's Cell for the Weinstein boys."

Well duh. I mean, movies don't count unless they're in trilogies any more, right?

Sorry, it's late in the day and I'm tired and this is all coming off rather hostile, when anything that keeps my man Eli Roth churning out the charnel house goodies makes me happy, and liable to post another picture of him. Mmmm Eli.

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Many Happy Returns

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One of my most favorite blogs out there, Stale Popcorn, just celebrated its slightly-belated first blog-birthday the other day, so head on over there now and wish that Aussie cine-maniac wonder Glenn all sorts of hugs and such. He's worthy.
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Nups For Ennis and Alma?

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Is Heath Ledger about to make an honest woman out of his Brokeback co-star and baby-mama Michelle Williams? From D-Listed:

"My friend Brian spotted Heath Ledger and Michelle Williams getting a marriage license this morning in Brooklyn. The couple live in the NYC borough. They have a daughter named Matilda that was born last year. The two met while filming “Brokeback Mountain.” So, expect them to get married sometime soon."

What's the Brooklyn-equivilent of "suspicious fishin' trips"? Going to the bodega for milk? Yeah, Michelle, if he doesn't come back with milk, call your lawyer!
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Yay Duhamel

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Somebody appears to have wised up and realized the only reason anyone would want to see Turistas is seeing Josh Duhamel without his shirt on, and released a bunch of stills from the film (from DH) promising just that. Man I'm torn - the trailer's pretty blah, but... mucho shirtless Duhamel... sigh...

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Today's Mood

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Dr. Dave Bowman (Keir Dullea),
2001: A Space Odyssey

"Open the pod bay doors, HAL."

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The Fountain, Part II

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Since seeing The Fountain on Saturday night, I've barely stopped thinking about it. It doesn't help that I've pretty much been listening to Clint Mansell's phenomenal soundtrack non-stop since the day before even seeing the movie - this is how a soundtrack is done right, by the way; utterly gorgeous. But even without the soundtrack reminding me, the film is chock full of images and ideas that lodge themselves firmly into your brain. A deeply personal film, one hazards to guess, for director Darren Aronofsky, the film works in archetypes, and assumes the viewer can fill in the blanks, or not; it depends upon the viewer and what they're willing to bring to the table, and that, my friends, is a refreshing change from the usual paint-by-numbers approach to filmmaking we get far too often.

So yes, we've got the main thrust of the story being about the perfect woman whose loss haunts our hero (after this and The Constant Gardener, I'm really hoping Rachel Weisz plays an unrepentant bitch next), and yes it's a story that's been played out a million times before. Yes, Weisz' character is written in the well-worn shorthand of The Perfect Gal, with big loving doe-eyes and a wicked laugh, who once ran ahead in a sexy dress and who now needs to be rescued.

But the story's not about the story, if you will, it's about wringing out a deep sensation of loss and, finally, of gratitude (how perfect to release it on Thanksgiving!). Gratitude in the sense of figuring out for one's self that those moments, those memories and, even more importantly, what we do with these memories - how we arrange them, how we choose to remember things, how we manipulate them with our imaginations to heighten the feeling of these snippets of time - it's how we arrange the mental landscape of our past that can bring us to a sense of peace, and finality, with the good things of our lives.

Of the three time lines within the film, the future represents, conversely, the memory - it is Tommy (Hugh Jackman) looking back on the things that happened in his long-ago life and working them out. The present-day represents the reality, which in the end is mutable to what the future Tommy shapes it into. And the distant past, the conquistador story, represents the imagination, which is the vehicle through which Tommy and Izzy form their story into an epic romance. Each one effects the other; time is a kaleidoscope in which our stories are ours to find meaning within.

Hugh Jackman gives the performance of his career here; there were moments when I wondered what he must've been thinking of Aronofsky for forcing him to do the things he was being forced to act out, but he went for them with gusto, and finally proved to me that he's not only Wolverine; that he is capable of delivering superb dramatic work. This may be the best male performance I've seen this year; nothing else is springing to mind that beats it, at least.

Oh, and as a bonus, go over here to The Yellow Stereo and download the track from the film's soundtrack called "Death Is The Road To Awe"; it's amazing.

And for my very brief I-just-got-back-from-the-theater reaction, see below or go here.
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The Fountain

Oh god, I loved loved LOVED The Fountain.

I went into it with pretend low expectations, meaning I'd read the reviews and knew that the general consensus had been arrived at that it was a mess - a beautiful-to-look-at, but all-over-the-place mess - and I tried to keep an air of reason about myself, but secretly I was hoping against hope that it'd be what I wanted it to be, and yup, I loved every single messy frame of it.

I'll try and write more after I let it settle some; I did just get back from the theater. This is one I'm seriously considering seeing a second time. Even if I hadn't loved it so much, and found myself deeply moved by it (i.e. I cried, numerous times.), seeing it again on a big screen still would be tempting, because the visuals alone are jaw-droppingly gorgeous. But as is, I think seeing it alone, in a theater, really close to the screen... well that just sounds like bliss.
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What I'm Looking At

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All The Trimmings

This Thanksgiving, besides the boyfriend and all the usual suspects coming to our apartment tomorrow to inject gravy directly into their veins, I'll be spending the holiday with another group of hopefully entertaining, though perhaps impenetrable, individuals. You know the types: the ones you don't see all year except the holidays, that you make stilted small talk with about what you've both been up to.

There's the formerly curmudgeonly Uncle Al, who's recently taken up Tae-Bo and "feels like a million bucks!" and then backs his Prius onto your front lawn so everyone can see how responsible he now is. Nevermind he should've been this super-man six years ago when you really needed him to be.


There's your grandfather, who sits at the end of the dinner table with an air of bloated superiority, and makes you feel guilty just by being there, just by the implication of "Why haven't you been to see me yet? Where have you been?"


There's that guy that your father knows from work, who always shows up after dinner so he can just have some booze, who's always going on and on about all the stuff he learned in a philosophy class he took twenty years ago but thinks you'll want to hear about it "... because you went to college, too! You know how it is." But you never know what the hell he's talking about and anyways it always comes back to some girl he was screwing who broke his heart.


And then there's your cousin's husband, whom you totally have a crush on and is always finding you when you're alone in some other room and staring at you with those penetrating blue eyes of his and talking so lowly you have to lean in closer and you can smell that musky, manly smell of his mixing with the sweet aroma of gin on his breath and he's smiling at you and the room seems very small and very warm, and then your stupid cousin comes in and you pretend you're really pointing at some spot on the globe your leaning against and talking about that while you catch your breath.


So I'll be spending time with all these chaps in the next few days, for better or for worse. How about you?
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The Slayer Rises

EW's got an article about next year's Buffy the Vampire Slayer psuedo-eighth-season comic series, started and then overseen by series-mastermind Joss Whedon. I am pretty much gonna quote the entire article, cuz I'm that big a geek. But EW's got more images from the comic itself if you read it over there.

The goods on the comics run:

"Whedon, 42, is running the comic as if it were a TV show; after writing the first four issues (a premise-establishing pilot), he'll oversee other scribes who will write the remaining issues (think: episodes) in what is planned to be 25-to-30-issue saga. ''We're calling it season 8,'' says Whedon, ''and we're picking up almost right after season seven left off. I don't know exactly why it or how it happened. I just thought, 'Oh, I could do that! It would be fun!' It happens to me every now and then, and causes me to commit to things I really don't have time for.'"

On where we'll find our Slayer after the TV show's finale:

"'Not so much with the freedom,'' quips Whedon. ''Not that everything is dire and angsty and season six-y, But she's dealing with the consequences of having empowered thousands of girls around the world. She may have closed the Hellmouth under Sunnydale and defeated The First. But evil? Still rampant!''

In the Buffy spin-off TV series Angel, it was established that the Slayer was living in Italy and dating. The new comic fleshes out her time abroad, ''as we want to keep everything canon and in line with the shows. But right now, she's out of the country and training a new squadron of Slayers.'' Whedon had once discussed the idea of a spin-off TV series unofficially titled Slayer School, and he says the comic will include some of those ideas. ''There will be some new slayers that you'll meet, and by the second issue, you'll find out there are different camps across the world being run by various characters that fans will know. The comic focuses a lot on this new generation of slayers — the problems they will face, and the problems they will cause.'"

Xander?

"How's Xander doing with his one eye? ''He's still got one, and if he can hold onto that one, he's golden. '' Will he be dealing with the ramifications of the death in the series finale of gal pal Anya? ''Well, yes, but not in the way you think. It is not the next day. A lot of time has passed for the fans, a lot of time has passed for me, and you can't pretend that no time has passed for the characters. We're keeping with the original mandate of the series: The audience has to identify with the characters. And time has passed. So we find them anew and have to relearn them. Buffy is in an odd place at a different part of her life. It's like we're sitting down to chat for the first time in a long while. There's a lot to catch up on.''"

And my old flame, Willow?

"'Well, what Willow is up to is not revealed right away, but she will show up. But I just got the cover of the first issue she appears,'' Whedon teases, ''and all I'll say is that it's awesome.'"

Also, Joss on where his adaptation of Wonder Woman stands at the moment:

''Everything that was hard at the beginning is still hard. I don't feel like I've nailed it yet, and I think the studio agrees. So I'm still plugging away. It's probably not as hard as I think it is, because I'm still a little fired from my TV decade. I should have taken a year off. It's now too late to realize that. But it's a big job. And besides her great origin story, there's nothing from the comics that felt right 100 percent, no iconic canon story that must be told. Batman has it made — he's got the greatest rogues gallery ever, he's got Gotham City. The Bat writes himself. With Wonder Woman, you're writing from whole cloth, but trying to make to feel like you didn't. To make to feel like it's existed for 60 years, even though you're making it up as you go along. But who she, and what the movie, is about, thematically, has never been a problem for me. But the steps along the way, it could be so easy for them to feel wrong. I won't settle. She wouldn't let me settle.''

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Bday Triptych

First off, a very happy birthday to the Original Scream Queen, not to mention the luckiest goddamned Godmother in the entire world, Jaime Lee Curtis, who turns 48 today. I agree with the Fug-Gals - she is looking mighty good these days.

Next, a very happy 66th birthday to director Terry Gilliam. "Do be careful! Don't lose any of that stuff. That's concentrated evil. One drop of that could turn you all into hermit crabs."

And lastly, but hardly leastly, co-star to my Jake in the upcoming Zodiac, object of stalker-like affections elsewhere, Mr. Mark Ruffalo turns 39 today. Let us celebrate by doing what I do best: ogling pretty pictures.


Oh, happy birthday, Scarlett, too, I guess.
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Today's Mood

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Hamlet (Kenneth Branagh),
William Shakespeare's Hamlet

"What a piece of work is man. How noble in reason.
How infinite in faculty. In form and moving how express
and admirable. In action, how like an angel.
In apprehension, how like a God.
The beauty of the world. The paragon of animals.
And yet, to me, what is this
quintessence of dust. Man delights not me. "

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The Others 2 : No Escape

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I just realized what those pics I was so amused by of Katie Holmes in her Rome prison reminded me of: the above shot from Tom's last wife's film, The Others. Perhaps Katie's next role, a sequel? Eh?
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I Am Link

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--- Comics genius Chris Ware has designed four different covers, as well as a typically labyrinthine but beautiful comic strip, for the latest issue of The New Yorker, all of which you can stare long and lovingly at here (via BoingBoing). God they're gorgeous.

--- Battlestar Galactica will be moving from its home on Friday nights to Sunday after the holiday break. Ooh, now I can do all those things I wasn't doing on Friday nights. Like... laundry.

--- Ian "The Thorpedo" Thorpe is retiring from competitive swimming. We can only hope he is not retiring from competitive speedo-wearing as well!

--- Takashi Miike's next film is gonna be a "Sushi Western", with Quentin Tarantino playing a "mystery man." Um...

--- An interview with director Tom Tykwer is at Twitch Film, in which, with regards to his upcoming film Perfume, he discusses in great length... smell.

--- Cinematical discusses all the word-vomit actress Eva Green has been having lately with regards to her upcoming films. As I mentioned yesterday, she was quoted talking about Eric Bana having a role in the His Dark Materials trilogy... which my "source" at New Line debunked for me yesterday afternoon. So now, she got my Bana-craving hopes up and they were dashed, and I hate her. Beeyatch!

--- Oh those rascals at Defamer! Leave it to them to compose this highly-amusing photo essay on Katie Holmes' last moments of freedom. I include because you've no idea how much funny I find within this picture of Katie staring out those barred windows. I mean, the below shot is just wonderful. Am I cruel? Bah, she's rich.

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RIP Robert Altman

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Oh this is sad. Robert Altman died last night. He was 81. My thoughts are with his friends and family. Altman gave us some of the greatest American films ever. He will be missed.
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Today's Mood

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Dutch (Arnold Schwartzenegger)
Predator

"Bleed, bastard!"

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Good Morning

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