I Am Link

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--- Life & Death & Beauty - Last night while I was actively trying not to pay attention to the foregone conclusions in politics and take a break from sweating in front of MSNBC I watched an old movie I love and did some web-surfing and over the course of the evening it seemed like a thousand incredible movie stories broke; my head was spinning! So let's get to them -- foremost some new additions to the cast of Xavier Dolan's English-language debut film The Life and Death of John F. Donovan have come and they are stellar. Natalie Portman and NICHOLAS HOULT, y'all. (I'm ignoring Thandie Newton because I don't like Thandie Newton.) I cannot wait to see Xavy train his gay eye on Nicky. And I trust he's writing the sex scene between him and Kit Harington and/or Taylor Kitsch, who're also in the film, as I type this...

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--- No Mann's Land - Last week on director Michael Mann's birthday I wished him a happy day out of one side of my mouth while slamming his movies as too "slick and masculine" out of the other, but I should've just shut my mouth and linked to this piece at The New Yorker instead, which does a much better and more thorough job dissecting why his films feel so empty, at least to Richard Brody and me. (thanks Mac)

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--- Say Yes To Yorgos - The story follows a young man that needs to take revenge, a doctor that has to make a decision, and his family that must survive. It is a psychological thriller with supernatural elements- I could've sworn I'd heard this news before but I think maybe I am mashing up old things - Dogtooth and The Lobster director Yorgos Lanthimos, (aka one of the most important voices in cinema today, full stop) is lining up another movie. It's called The Killing of a Sacred Deer and with a title like that I can already see the Criterion blu-ray sitting on my book-shelf. Anyway here's what Deadline says about it plot-wise:

"The story follows a young man that needs to take revenge, a doctor that has to make a decision, and his family that must survive. It is a psychological thriller with supernatural elements."

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Given what we've seen from the director in the past we can only assume that nothing is as straight-forward as that description sounds. In the meantime Lanthimos is also working on that 18th Queen Anne film with The Lobster's divine Olivia Colman and Rachel Weisz returning. Speaking of The Lobster I keep forgetting it hasn't even played here in the US yet (here's my glowing and I mean glowing review from last year's NYFF) -- they released a trailer the other day; it will be out on march 11th.
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---  Pansexual Nobody - Ryan Reynolds has been selling the shit out of Deadpool, which opens in a couple days, telling us about how naked he got for the big fight scene at the end the other day, but now he's gone and ruined it all by letting us know that no, the much ballyhooed "pansexual" antihero does not go the slightest bit gay in the movie. But Ryan is totally open to such a thing happening in the future, he says. Bah humbug, dude. I had good money on your mounting Colossus right there in the middle of that highway, man.
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--- Struggle Forward - Once upon a time Alexander Payne made Citizen Ruth and Election, and he was golden. And then came a steady string of worsening bull-crap, and he was not golden. His last film Nebraska had some good stuff in it (it was certainly better than his previous three) but was hampered by his worst instincts as well. While we wait to see which way Downsizing, his "social satire about shrinkage" with Matt Damon, blows, he's announced what he's working on after that -- an adaptation of "Karl Ove Knausgaard‘s sensation-causing My Struggle" as The Film Stage puts it, which is a series of books about the Norwegian author taking a road-trip across North America and following the supposed Vikings trail. Anybody read them?
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--- Light's Out - The Playlist thinks that the just announced release date of September 2nd for Derek Cianfrance's upcoming film The Light Between Oceans, starring Michael Fassbender, Alicia Vikander, and Rachel Weisz, means the studio has no faith in the movie - Labor Day weekend is usually kind of a dead-zone. My first thought was "Hooray, one fewer movie crowded into November/ December" though. I do kinda wish it was waiting a couple weeks to play at the NY Film Festival though so Fassy could be there to then marry me..

--- Greasy Hobbitses - Forbes has a nice little interview with Elijah Wood and his two partners in SpectreVision, the horror-leaning production house they run that's put out stuff like A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night and Cooties, talking about their love of the genre -- they want to get a horror movie in the Best Picture race! (Hey I love the genre too but yeah, good luck with that one, guys.) They also talk about their Sundance anti-sensation The Greasy Strangler, which grossed everyone who saw it right the fuck out.
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--- Love Waters Style - There's a lovely interview with John Waters over at Jezebel where he talks about trigger warnings (haha baiting the shit out of that site's commenters -- here's my message to them) and then he talks about romance just in time for Valentine's Day -- my favorite bit was when they asked him what his "ideal bad date" would be

"Well, I don’t have an ideal bad date, I only have ideal good dates. My ideal good date is to go out to dinner with somebody that you love and have sex afterwards and laugh! All you have to do is have sex and laugh, just not at the same time. I want to make sure you understand that because anyone who laughs while having sex is schizophrenic. Laugh after sex and not at your sex. Have good sex, laugh and go to sleep together. That’s a good Valentine’s Day. "

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