Okay, I'm Drunk

I'll probably regret this tomorrow, but I'm in a weirdly - I never am this gleeful - super-duper-fantastic mood right now, as I sit here waiting for the boyfriend to make and eat his dinner so we can go out somewhere, and so I sit here and drink a couple Jack & gingers and make idiotic posts... anyway, point - have to rein myself in! - here are a couple YouTube videos from SNL that have got me cracking up right now. Classic. I wish I were roommates with Maya Rudolph, Amy Poehler... Kristin Wiig, Amy Sedaris... I could keep listing names of female comedians I wish I were roommates with but it's about to turn into some sort of estrogen commune so I'll stop and post the videos.

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Remembering A Better Time

... when bracelets were snappers, hairstyles were hairsprayed or askew flat-top a la Bobby B, and pants were Hammer... also, when I was too young to know that loving Paula Abdul was wrong... before it was really wrong to think that. Am I rambling? I'm slightly drunk. Love early Fridays! Here's another Friday video - guess I'm in the mood today - this one of the greatest song ever written and the greatest video ever filmed. Really I'm just in the mood for this song and forcing y'all to be to. Or not. Stop staring at me!

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And yes, before anyone asks - I do know every last word to this song - inlcuding ALL of MC Skat Kat's rhymez - and I can do the Roger Rabbit while singing it. Represent!
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Friday Afternoon Video

So this is from all the way back in May, but somehow I missed it. It's M. Ward performing the song "Chinese Translation" on Conan with My Morning Jacket frontman Jim James, Kelly Hogan, and Neko effin' Case. I've expressed my Neko-obsession before but I'm also a fan of M. Ward, so I can't wait to get home and... um, actually listen to this video I'm posting right now. Yes, I haven't even listened to it yet. But it's gotta be good, right?

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You can also download the mp3 right here.

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The Summer Action Stud

Recent MNPP-fixation Timothy Olyphant, quoted back in May by this article at EW's Popwatch blog calling in to Indie 103.1 FM where he apparently does the sports report (!), from the set of his next movie Hitman which was filming in Bulgaria:

"I got a day off today. You know what they say here in Bulgaria, right? The only thing worse than working in Bulgaria is a day off in Bulgaria."

Funny, but really I'm quoting this article because its true purpose is in asking a terribly difficult question: who's the Summer '07 Action Hunk? Is it Olyphant, which Popwatch blogger Mandi Bierly is arguing, or is it Josh Duhamel?

This is totally what Meryl Streep felt like in that Sophie movie, right?

I'll give Bierly that, personality-wise, Olyphant would probably be a billion times more fun to hang out with. I mean... Duhamel dates Fergie, which subtracts like 95% of the worth his ass gets across. So I too am gonna have to take up membership in Team Olyphant.

Kissing that ass goodbye, though, is a painful reconciliation to make. Thankfully Olyphant's not too shabby a skeleton to hold onto either; I can cry my tears on those shoulders, for sure.

So who's your Summer '07 Action Hunk? Olyphant, Duhamel? ... LeBeouf? Willis?
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I Am Friday's Brief Link

Another (supposedly) Summer-Half-Friday here at the office, so posting will be cutting out round 2ish... if the fog I'm in even gets me that far. But here's some news that caught my eye this morn...

--- Wish I'd posted this last night, before it made the rounds and is now everywhere - Cameron Diaz is gonna star in Richard Kelly's next film, called The Box. It's an adaptation of a Richard Matheson short story - does this make Matheson "hot" right now? With this and I Am Legend, I mean? Cam's a fine choice, I guess (I haven't read the story), I usually end up liking her despite myself, but mostly in that maybe she's a big enough star to actually get a movie by Richard Kelly freaking released. The Rock and Sarah Michelle Gellar apparently aren't, I spit angrily.

--- More Andy Roddick at Wimbledon pics, in even bigger forms, over at JJ! Yay!

--- Spoiled - The first review of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix slipped online over at The London Times Online, breaking the embargo as well as JK Rowling's gold-plated heart. Word's mixed, supposedly, but I ain't reading it.

--- Hairy Beast - The first photo of Benicio Del Toro on-set of The Wolfman re-do is over at BD (and to the left there) and he looks appropriately hirsute, as well as inappropriately hysterical.
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You Know You're A Gay Geek When...

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... you wake up early in the morning in the middle of a dream in which you and your boyfriend are sitting in a Perkins Family Restaurant watching Joss Whedon in a dress performing as Edith Piaf.

I don't think I even know an Edith Piaf song! It's just all that press for that movie, La Vie En Rose, and I was thinking about the Buffy Musical yesterday and I didn't take Tylenol PM last night - I have a bit of a terrible addiction - which always leaves my subconscious free to roam to places like putting Joss Whedon in a dress and having him perform Piaf in a Perkins. Sigh.
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Today's Mood

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Charlie McGee (Drew Barrymore),
Firestarter

"Go to Hell!!!"

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So Tell Me -

Is this what Jake sees when he gets up in the morning?

Sorry... again with the "I can't help myself." But I can't.

Anyhoo, anyone seen any of this John From Cincinnati show Mr. Nichols is starring in? I've heard a lot of mixed things, but I feel some weird need to know more about Jake's other half. Like, I need to make sure he's good enough for my boy. As "friends" of course... they're just "friends"!

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Thursdays Ways Not To Die

I missed this series two weeks ago - vacation! - and last week - theft! - and it's sorta half-assed this week, but I promise we'll be back up to speed by next week with Thursday's parade of unhinged gruesomeness. Why will things be better next week, you ask? Cuz I'll finally have my own gosh-dang computer, that's why! Yippee! Anyway, without further ado... here's another way nobody in their right mind would like to perish...

Final Destination 3 (2006)

For more of this series, click here.
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Pics of the Day

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Andy Roddick at Wimbledon.
You'll def. want to click that 2nd pic
to make it bigger...
Damn.

(source)
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Argh

Good mother-humping grief. From BD:

"Production company Vertigo Entertainment (The Invasion, The Strangers, Addicted,The Ring, The Grudge, The Echo) has inked a first-look television deal with Lionsgate to develop and produce scripted programming for broadcast and cable, according to the Hollywood Reporter. Vertigo will be making its first foray into scripted television with The Bates Motel, a re-imagining of Psycho that's being developed with Universal Media Studios."

I... I... sigh.

So it's a TV show they're talking about here, which... throws me off, actually. If it were a film remake, I'd... well, I wouldn't be posting right now, I'd be on my way to the airport and ordering mustard gas online. And yes, I am aware that Gus Van Sant already did a remake, but... well, I don't think about that. Except sometimes when I remember that Vince Vaughn was once really cute and Viggo took his pants off:


But otherwise, no.

But a TV show... I don't know. I don't know what to think. Twin Peaks comes to mind - if they went that route, something really weird for television, then maybe. Or, alternately, it could be like Friday the 13th: The Series... a show I watched religiously as a teen but is hardly the dustbin-of-history anything associated with Pyscho deserves to be tossed into.
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Duhamel In Clothes

Proving once again that, while I prefer him bare-assed (link NSFW, obviously) Josh Duhamel always looks smashing in a suit as well. And especially when Fergie's nowhere to be seen.

Man I hope he's in this probable crap-fest a lot so my ten bucks feels justified.

(pics from JJ)
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Today's Mood

A very happy birthday to the wonderful Kathy Bates today:

Dolores Claiborne (Kathy Bates),
Dolores Claiborne

"Now you listen to me,
Mr. Grand High Poobah of Upper Buttcrack,
I'm just about half-past give a shit
with your fun and games. "

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Eastern Promises Trailer

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Ooh, the trailer for David Cronenberg's new flick, Eastern Promises, is online, over at Yahoo!. It stars Naomi Watts, Viggo Mortensen, and Vincent Cassel, and comes out on September 14th.

I took a few screencaps... and may've focused a lil' extra on the moments where Vincent and Viggo were together... but can ya blame me? One thing I notice: Viggo's hair is fuh-reeking me out. Watching this trailer without sound, though, I have NO CLUE what the hell the movie's about still. Sigh. Anybody wanna fill me in on what happens sound-wise within?

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Quote of the Day

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Have Eli Roth's fears come to fruition already? Has Hostel: Part II's (relative) box-office damnation killed the R-rated horror movie? Will I stop asking rhetorical questions I myself find idiotic? Will Brittany Snow, Actress Extraordinaire, and star of the Prom Night remake please say what she has to say about her movie and make me stop? From Cinematical:

"It's just taking the same name as Prom Night the original, but it's a different script. It's actually more in the vein of Fear, with Reese Witherspoon and Mark Wahlberg.... It's more of a thriller. There's no blood, guts or gore."

Yay, more in the vein of Fear! Does that mean somebody's getting fingered while riding on a rollercoaster? Will a dog's decpitated head will be slipped through its doggie-door? Seriously, Fear is awesome for those moments - and for Alyssa Milano's CLASSIC camp performance - alone, but this is Prom Night! I want schlock, and I want a ten-minute dance sequence that has nothing to do with the plot slapped in the middle. I don't want Fear 2: More Fear, But the Bloodless Sort, and with Terrible Actors in Rented Tuxes. I mean, wasn't this the plot of a recent episode of One Tree Hill? Gah.
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I Am Link

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--- The Dead & The Toaster - EW.com's got an extended version of their interview (a shorter version is in their current issue) with Battlestar Galactica stars Katee Sackhoff (Starbuck) and Michael Hogan (Col. Tigh) up. In it Hogan lets slip the tiniest of tidbits on the first episode of the 4th season. Don't expect much, or even a suprise really, but it's something!

--- One Pissed-off Mama - I really like the poster for Neil Jordan's The Brave One, starring Jodie Foster, and I'm not even sure why. Maybe I just like yellow? Anyway, anyone else think this movie gonna be a homerun? I really want it to be.

--- Consider my Tivo set - MNPP still loves him, so when Eli Roth is the featured filmmaker on Steven Spielberg's filmmaking reality show On The Lot on July 3rd, in which the contestants will be making horror movies (found via The Horror Blog), I'll be watching. [Insert naysayer's comments here about Roth's ability to judge horror; la la la, I cannot hear you naysayers!]

--- Evening not-so Delight - Nat got to see the star-studded Evening and says it's a mess. From Zoom In:

"At first you can’t believe that so much talent has been gathered for one movie. But by the end of this awkward deathbed reverie you can’t believe your eyes or ears that this is what they’ve done with that abundance."

--- At his own blog, Nat lists the ten greatest performances in Paul Thomas Anderson movies. Fairly certain he didn't do it in reference to my post about PTA's birthday yesterday so I'll just take it as karmic. Anyway, LOVE the Mary-Lynn Rajskub love, and totally agree with his numero uno choice. Can't be beat.

--- Playing catch-up - Glenn at Stale Popcorn does mini-reviews of a heap of movies he's seen lately, including Rosemary's Baby, Zodiac, and Naked Lunch. I ought to do these sorts of posts sometimes; there are so many movies I watch that I never speak of on here.

--- Stares and glares and who cares, oh my - you know, I'd feel a lot better about The Invasion's chances of not totally sucking - even despite the delays, the director squabbling, and early insanely negative reviews - if they'd just release a single still that was, I dunno, scary. All this "oh-my-god face" on characters staring out of frame doesn't do much to instill hope. Here's a bunch more of the same - but new! - here.
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Pic of the Day

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Is this an alien from James Cameron's
loooooong-awaited Avatar?
JoBlo seems to think so.
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I Promise I'll Shut Up... Soon

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So I couldn't help myself; after buying Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon yesterday I went home, started watching the extras, and then got sucked in and watched the entire movie again. And again I must pull out my wobbly soapbox and cry to you, the masses, WATCH THIS MOVIE.

I was even watching it with an eye on the level of violence or gore for those of you who don't like that sort of thing and realized, this time around, that the film is stupid-light when it comes to any of that; there's hardly any blood spilled, really. A large portion of the violence happens either off-screen or without blood. There's just one moment that flaunts this assertion, but it's more silly than disturbing.

And what struck me this time, and I'd somehow forgotten since watching it last time, is that the film is more a comedy than a horror film, and a very very funny one at that. Of course, it's comedy that aims directly for my slasher-movie-loving, post-modern-horror-paper-writing heart, but it's hardly something that only someone who's studied Carol Clover would get.

I might even argue that the claim made on the back of the DVD's box - I'm blanking on who said it and I don't have the DVD on me right now - that BtM is more clever than Scream is true. I do love Scream, and I have to watch it again - it's been years - before I feel comfortable saying that for reals, but there is something so smart about the way this film insinuates itself into reality at the same time it creates a reality in which Fred, Jay, and Mike are real people, and then flits back and forth between film and video and horror and comedy and it makes for something that constantly keeps you off balance so it earns that final thirty minutes where the tone shifts pretty radically in one direction.

I was wowed anew by how really really wonderful Nathan Baesel is here - there are a lot of ads on the DVD for the other slasher-movie-throwback coming out this year, Hatchet, in which they claim that Hatchet's villain Victor Crowley (that is the perfect name) is the new slasher-killer to add to the pantheon, but I would add Leslie Vernon a thousand times to that elite short-list before Crowley. There's a scene in BtM, after the film has switched from mostly-behind-the-scenes video-footage into filmstock when we see Baesel's face in killing-mode after having his mask pushed off, and everything we've come to see in Leslie before this moment - all that humor, that sense of fun - is wiped utterly away from his face, and his expression is far scarier than the mask covering it up. It's one of several moments that I find really, truly scary in the film.

I don't want to oversell the film as super-scary though; it does have some really unsettling pieces, made even moreso by Baesel's acting, but more than being straight-up horror its just a load of fun and really smart in the way it plays with the conventions. If you're even a casual horror-movie watcher I could see you enjoying the heck outta this movie. Give it a chance! And no, nobody's paying me to say this. I just LOVE this movie.
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Today's Mood

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Sister Alma (Bibi Andersson),
Persona

"Is it really important not to lie, to speak
so that everything rings true? Can one live without lying
and quibbling and making excuses? Isn't it better to be lazy
and lax and deceitful? Perhaps you even improve
by staying as you are."

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Lodger Re-do

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In a nice change of pace, it's a remake that doesn't infuriate me! Hitchcock's The Lodger is often called his first true film, but he'd done directing before, though mostly it was second-unit shooting and title card design and various other film-related tasks - this is really just the first film of his that feels like a Hitchcock film; but The Lodger's only really interesting for that fact and to see that even at this very early stage he was obsessed with the-innocent-accused and confinement and all his other oft-commented-upon obsessions, and also for a single shot through a clear floor of a man upstairs tromping back and forth, rocking a chandelier.

Anyway, remaking The Lodger doesn't especially bother me... but it does seem silly, since the story's about as basic as they come and it's an obvious grab at name recognition instead of some dire need for an especially amazing plot.

This news if offical now; it'd been rumored way back last August, when I said basically the exact thing that I just spent ten minutes typing up now. Sigh.
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Make Like A Spartan

I almost don't want to tell anyone about this so I can narrow down my own chances of winning, but since it's not exactly a secret and there are links for it all over the web already I suppose the one or two souls who hear about it from me first won't exactly tip the scales much less in my favor. If you head over to JoinThe300.com, you can register to win a trip to ComiCon in San Diego - I went a couple years ago and that shit is Straight-Up Geek Heaven - and a visit to the set of Watchmen, Zack Snyder's take on Alan Moore's classic graphic novel. You know, just you and Patrick Wilson standing around at the coffee cart humping like jack-rabbits making small talk, no big whoop.

Anyway, head over to the site, register, and then jump through some hoops to raise 300 points for yourself to qualify. Two people are chosen to go to ComiCon from that, then given some sort of job to complete while at ComiCon (Panty Raid!), and whomever wins in this final Battle of San Diego gets a ticket to the Watchmen set. All in the name of Zach Snyder's previous ode to Greek Man-Flesh, 300, which will be coming out on DVD on July 31st. And then it could be you as the meat in a Thomas Jane / Jason Patric sandwich!

Anyway, as 300's DVD release date gets closer I'll surely post on it again, because I am far too weak in the knees to resist every last opportunity to post pictures of Gerard Butler in his Sexy-Leather-Depends.
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Kreacher Featured

This is David Yates, director of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (as well as the next one too) answering what character it was author JK Rowling advised he might not want to exclude when narrowing the book down to script-length because this character might be important to the seventh and final Potter book, The Deathly Hallows. From MTV Movies Blog:

"It was Kreacher, actually... We took Kreacher out, and Jo said, ‘Listen guys, you don’t have to put Kreacher back, but I’m just telling you, if you want to kind of keep a thread going for six and seven, you might want Kreacher to come back.’ She basically told us Kreacher plays a role in Seven, in a sense. She hinted. We thought about it for five seconds, and he came back."

For y'all who don't know who Kreacher is, he's the house-elf (pictured above) that takes care of Harry's uncle Sirius Black's - played in the films by Gary Oldman - estate, much to his own chagrin. Kreacher is a pretty big part of the fifth book and, basically, a royal pain in Harry's arse.

And I guess now we know he's important to the final book, too. Not that that's suprising, knowing what we do about a certain unopenable locket and the term "horcrux".... yes, this is a terribly geeky post. Sigh.
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Cumming On Boreanaz

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God, sorry for that title, I couldn't resist. Anyway, Alan Cumming is the last person I ever expected ever having to thank for anything, but... well... the phrase "a scantily clad David Boreanaz" does it. So thanks, Alan! From Page Six:

"ALAN Cumming may love his new flick, Suffering Man's Charity - but not too many others did at its premiere at the Core Club. Some scenes in the dark comedy - about a "failed composer turned music teacher with a weakness for impoverished young men" - were too much for the crowd. During a gruesome torture scene involving a scantily clad David Boreanaz and a whip, several people left and a woman fainted. Cumming - who adapted, directed, produced and stars in the movie - was unfazed and partied with Paper magazine execs afterward."

So maybe the whole torturing-with-a-whip angle to this will prove it all to be less than sexy, but for now I'll keep with my gratitude, until Cumming inevitably ends up grossing me out once again.
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More Timothy Olyphant Bang For Ya Buck

I was gonna just add these pics to the last post and call it a bonus but, what the heck, it makes me happy enough for a post all its own. They're of Timmy getting his gay on in The Broken Hearts Club:

It's been a very long time since the one time I watched this movie - anybody know who it is he's kissing? I can't remember and Timmy's a total camera-hog in these shots. Not that I'm complaining. No sirree.

ETA Thanks to too-cool-for-school kristi for in the comments pin-pointing Andrew Keegan as the one attached to Timmy's lips in these shots. Known from here on out as "Lucky A-hole" Keegan.
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