Monday, January 25, 2016

I Am Link

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--- Go On Gerwig - It's been super duper difficult for me to rein my eyeballs in and keep them off of reviews out of Sundance of Todd Solondz' Weiner-Dog, which premiered on Friday. (We posted a picture of the film's poster here.) I've skimmed a couple and stumbled upon mind-blowing details (Nina Persson sings a song about dog poop!) but I had to stop myself. But I did read this -- The Playlist talked to Greta Gerwig, who's playing Dawn Weiner in the film, and she had nothing but praise for Solondz:

"I love watching films where it feels like it can be anything you want. It can be anything you want! I think that people get so stuck in these very narrow parameters. To have someone who says, "I don't care" and it's not weirdness for weirdness' sake, it's completely internally consistent with itself and with his vision and what he's doing and, for him, it's the clearest way to express this story and communicate this emotion. And it's beautiful that he has the ability to stick with it like that. "

She also says that her older sister, an avowed movie hater, adored Welcome to the Dollhouse and made Lil' Greta watch it tons as they grew up, which is a story I love. Oh in other Greta news she's signed Oscar nominee Saorsie Ronan to star in her directorial debut called Lady Bird. Cannot wait! Third and lastly, on a depressing note, there's a one night celebration of playwright Arthur Miller happening on Broadway tonight (thanks Mac) that will feature Greta, Jake Gyllenhaal, Bradley Cooper, Peter Sarsgaard and many many more, and I can't go because tickets were too expensive. Fuck this world!
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--- Prophet Of Doom - This is not a headline I anticipated ever seeing - Sam Raimi's next film is going to be the American remake of Jacques Audiard's brilliantly effective 2009 crime thriller A Prophet, which gifted the world with not just a brilliant film but also a brilliant leading man performance from star Tahar Rahim. I actually really think the story could be translated into something good but different a la Scorsese's take on Infernal Affairs called maybe you have heard of it The Departed. But good luck finding another Tahar Rahim! Maybe just hire Tahar Rahim? He speaks English fine.
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--- Surface Effect - I don't know whether this signifies a real change or if it's just the fetish of the moment and lazy asses will go back to the cheap easy way but I found this New Yorker piece on the current love affair with the practical special effect heartening anyway. Everyone should try to be George Miller, basically. Of course going unspoken in the piece is that horror movies led the way, as they often do in their way -- the hatred for CG blood spatter over good old-fashioned gore has been a call to arms for awhile now.
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--- And Speaking of fetishes, here's something for my biggest non-porny one - io9 shares a bunch of images from inside Neil Gaiman's library, and my god, mein gott, my gott in heaven, my words are all jumbled from the orgasming out of my eyeballs looking at it all.
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--- Volcanoes & Vulvas - This morning I thought about writing a big post on Tori Amos' album Boys For Pele when I read that it'd just celebrated its 20th anniversary, but I'll just link to this piece at Salon instead because I probably don't have time to do it justice. But I have got the most vivid memory of sitting in my first boyfriend's car in the parking lot of the mall, waiting for him to get off of work and listening to that album over and over and over again, literally for hours, and it signals to me such an important moment in my life. The album really means quite a lot to me; listening to it now transports me right back to that car, that parking lot, even though I've listened to the album more times than I could ever count.
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--- High Rollas - Here are a couple of top ten lists from good friends of MNPP -- Nathaniel posted his favorite, uh, 15 movies of 2015 over at The Film Experience, and Joe Reid posted his favorite movies and performances and so so much more over on his Tumblr, and save their inexplicable mentions of Creed all over the place (I always knew I was going to feel small and alone not liking it but it's begun to make me feel like a crazy person at this point because I DO NOT GET IT AT ALL; how can any sane person say that Stallone deserves an award for that pile he dropped?) their lists are pretty dang good.
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--- Bang Bang - This is not a drill - Matthias Schoenaerts is going to be playing a drummer! I repeat, Matthias Schoenaerts is going to be playing a drummer. His great big tree trunk arms, slamming up and down, up and down, covered with sweat... somebody catch me I am fallingggggg.... ahem. The film is called The Sound of Metal and it's written by Derek Cianfrance and it will co-star Matty's Bigger Splash co-star Dakota Johnson as the singer of the group, let me repeat, Matthias is a drummer for. Ba boom, ba boom, my heart.
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--- Too Much Magneto -  I got about halfway through this interview with Michael Fassbender talking about the next X-Men movie before I realized that dude, how are you allowed to answer all of these questions? I felt like he was giving the entire movie away while we've still got four months until it's even out. Shut your big beautiful mouth, Michael!
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4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'd like to see Schoenaerts finally do a real Hollywood movie and not just another little indie film that won't get much attention.

Petey said...

All I read from the interview was about him and Oscar Isaac:
"I’ve been a fan for quite a while now, so I was really, really excited and pleased to hear he was coming aboard ... We sort of hit it off immediately ... so yeah we just sat down and had dinner immediately and ..."

I didn't pay attention to anything else after that, as my imagination went wild after that dinner bit. ;-)

Anonymous said...

Have you seen Tahar Rahim in the movie Samba alongside Charlotte Gainsbourg and Omar Sy? He finally won me over in that (no I haven't seen A Prophet yet) thanks to his sexy window cleaner dance with which he gets an office full of women into a hormonal tizzy. He's adorable in it.

Rob K. said...

I feel you on the Creed annoyance. I haven't seen it (haven't wanted to), but I just...get it.(I feel the same way about The Martian - why won't people realize how dopey & phony & irritating it is? Am I the only one?)