Good Morning, Xavier Samuel

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Looking out my office window at the snow coming down right this very second, can you blame me for considering running on the beach with a bare-assed Xavier Samuel? Granted the snow's hardly an essential part of the equation - contemplating a bare-assed Xavier Samuel's a stock in trade on its own, really - but the snow adds that slight tinge of impossible longing for the sweet sun on your nethers that makes it all the more powerful.

These two shots up top are from a 2008 film called Newcastle - I know, you'd think I'd have grabbed something for this post on the occasion of Mr. Samuel's 30th birthday - happy birthday (suit), Xavvy! - from his most recent film Adore, which I spent part of Sunday live-tweeting the high hilarity of (example tweet here)...

... but oh,we're gonna do that 

a little bit too, don't you worry. 

I meant what I said on Twitter - I really don't get why Xavier isn't getting big roles here in the US, he is immensely fine to look at, he's got a killer voice, and he's not a terrible actor at all. He can actually be very good. Let's hope that David Ayer gives him something to do in that WWII tank movie called Fury with Brad Pitt.

As for Adore itself, well you might or may notice that that my live-tweeting dropped off with the film's second half - it takes itself dreadfully serious, which is what made it awesomely entertaining camp at first when things are really happening. The seriousness kind of dooms it by the second half though because it doesn't really go anywhere - if Paul Verhoeven were making this thing he'd have known that murder was called for at the mid-point. Director Anne Fontaine was not trying to make a Paul Verhoeven film though, so the whole thing suffers with dreary feelings.

Still, there's plenty to look at! And the first hour is, against the movie's own best wishes, extraordinarily funny.
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