Pic of the Day

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Hey look it's Jon Hamm in the Good Omens adaptation!

Can you believe this thing is finally being made?
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Make These Things Happen

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THE SHAPE OF WATER only made me more certain that this needs to happen pic.twitter.com/uRHErAYNQp

— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) November 30, 2017

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Seriously if I don't get a movie of Michael Shannon 

playing Boris Karloff I am gonna bite my pillow.

Are you listening, Guillermo???

And while we're at it: Hey David Fincher! THIS:

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HEY MINDHUNTER MAKE THIS HAPPEN IN SEASON TWO pic.twitter.com/NC3IF502QG

— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) November 30, 2017

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The Little Lord Armie

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I don't think I have ever seen this old picture of Armie before. It was shot by Bruce Weber for Vanity Fair anyway, not sure what year - any guesses when it was taken? (Without looking it up.) Probably post The Social Network because I can't imagine why Bruce Weber would have been photographing Armie pre The Social Network, but he looks positively baby-faced there. 

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Hey Ma My Name In Lights

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It's a red letter day for your trusty movie blogger here, folks -- I just got my very first movie trailer blurb!  Over at The Film Experience I reviewed Brian Crano's fine romantic-drama Permission at the Tribeca Film Festival this past spring - it stars Dan Stevens & Rebecca Hall as a couple who've been together since they were little things who decide to open up their relationship before making things permanent - cue Gena Gershon & Francois Arnaud (swoon), who make that future very complicated. I thought the movie was surprisingly good; so good that in my review I actually called it...

Ahhhh! Official Blurb Whore in the house! The trailer just dropped on iTunes and you should've heard the yelp I made when my name popped up in the middle of it. This is kind of the movie-critic equivalent of those scenes in movies where a band hears their song on the radio for the first time, I guess?

The trailer's only on iTunes for the time being  so you have to click over there to watch it in full (once it's on YouTube I'll post the actual trailer here in this post). The movie is out February 9th so they're clearly gunning for the Valentine's dollars and as well they should. The movie has lots of sharp insight about relationships in it, and lord knows Rebecca Hall is literally always the best. And did I mention Francois Arnaud you guys...

For real. I hope they haven't cut anything out from the cut of this movie I saw. Ahem. Anyway can you imagine the sounds that will come out of me when/if I see this trailer inside an actual movie theater??? Happy day! ETA here it is via YouTube:
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It's a Timothée Type of Day

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I don't particularly enjoy Awards Season like a lot of Movie Bloggers do - most of the time I just find myself feeling frustration at the process more than ebullience. People's individual lists are nearly always more interesting than what groupthink comes up with. And the silliness of ranking art and artists this way, winners versus losers, some crazy notion of "Best"... I remain unconvinced of its pleasures.

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Wait it's JOHN WATERS TOP TEN LIST DAY???????
Why didn't anybody tell me?
THAT IS THE ONLY LIST THAT MATTERSSSSS

— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) November 30, 2017

That said I'm not a total stick-in-the-mud and I like seeing work I like get attention and celebration because it means more people will see said work, and perhaps find said work as moving in whatever manner as I did, and so Hooray For Timmy winning Best Actor from the New York Film Critic's Circle today. I was really hoping his sunny name would get out from under the shadow of Gary Oldman's at least once or twice this season. See the whole list of winners over at The Film Experience. Then go read the new interview with him at Vulture!

Which is Hotter?

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David Lynch's Twin Peaks: The Return, aka the greatest television series of the new millennium in case you weren't aware of that, is hitting blu-ray next week just in time to stuff those stockings with icy blue nightmares - Amazon has actually got it really cheap right now so take advantage! I'm really looking forward to sitting down and watching the whole thing a second time in as close to one sitting as I can manage... and hey don't you doubt me; I watched the entirety of Rainer Werner Fassbinder's 15 and a half hour series Berlin Alexanderplatz over the course of a single weekend.  Never doubt my dedication to crazy pointless stamina tests, people. Anyway I do figure this question is past due...

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Five Frames From ?

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What movie is this?

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Good Morning, World

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"Well now, I've always believed... 

 ... that done properly... 

... armed robbery doesn't have to be... 

... a totally unpleasant experience." 

Happy 80 Ridley Scott, 

and thank you for this, always for this.

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All My Love For Elio & Oliver

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I haven't bothered to link to any of them but if you've been keeping as watchful an eye on its reception as it rolls out then you've seen that the past week and a half has been chockfull of Shit Takes on Call Me By Your Name - everything from people calling it "coy" to people screeching that calling it a "gay movie" is a misnomer... I don't even know, guys. These are crazy times we live in. 

Anyway in case you hadn't noticed I love the movie very very very much and so I wanted to counter all that nonsense with something positive. So I wrote this gigantic lumbering love-letter to the movie, which you can now read over at The Film Experience.

Let me warn you of a couple things though! It is long!  It is very long.  So maybe save it for your lunch-break. And also you maybe shouldn't read it unless you've already seen the movie, because I go full-in talking about specifics. Plot points and many quotes and full scenes fully described. You been warned.

It's something I had to do, to get out of my system, because of all those bad takes floating around, yes, but also because I have seen the movie seven times now and I have a whooole lot of things to say about it. So click on over to TFE if you care. Having gotten that big bunch of thoughts out of my system finally I might be able to ease up on the movie a little for those of you exhausted at this point... (Haha right, we'll see.)

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We're All Homo Sapiens Here

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Love Simon is the upcoming high school gay love story starring Jurassic World's Nick Robinson that we have told you about previously - see here for the original news, and then click here for a couple of the first pictures from it. Well now there's a trailer! A teaser one, they say, but it's two minutes long and that seems like a lot of tease if you ask me. I still haven't gotten a chance to read the book that it's based on (called Simon vs The Homo Sapiens Agenda) but what a delight - mainstream gay teenager love stories, ya know? Imagining having this sort of thing in the world when I was their age is kinda mind-blowing, to say the least...

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Love, Simon is out on March 16th.

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Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

Soapdish (1990)

Nurse Nan: Sudden speech, the last sign of brain fever.
She could blow at any moment!!!

Happy birthday to Cathy Moriarty today!

I was in a room with her earlier this year!

You should go watch Patti Cake$ you guys.

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Arnaud Valois One TIme

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Have you guys seen BPM yet? See BPM!

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Five Frames From ?

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What movie is this?

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Good Morning, Avengers

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Howdy, Hulky. Anyway I am sure you're already aware of it by now (I doubt MNPP is the place you come to for your Avengers news!) but hey look they released the first teaser trailer for the next Avengers, subtitled Infinity War, which is brining together everybody in the entire Marvel Universe (well except for those poor lonely Netflix folks - I wanna see Charlie Cox riding on Chris Evans shoulders dammit!) to fight a big purple popsicle with a vague Brolinesque face attached to it. Behold:

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Whaddya think? I spent the whole thing waiting for a glimpse of the Guardians and so by the time that little tag at the end happened I'd half-tuned out. Guess I'll watch it three more times then!

Andrew Garfield Nine Times

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Haven't read the interview yet but here's a new photo-shoot of Andy from the fine folks at Flaunt magazine -- you can read that interview right here if you like. They've also got a little video of the shoot right here. Or just hit the jump for eight more pictures...

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

Y Tu Mamá También (2001)

Luisa: Life is like the surf,
so give yourself away like the sea.

A happy 56 to Alfonso Cuarón today!

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Times Are New For Roman

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It's been awhile since I've so enjoyed watching Denzel Washington on screen, and for that I am thankful to Roman J. Israel Esq. at least. Truthfully I hadn't kept up with Denzel's career, even though I used to enjoy him very much, since around the time he won his Oscar for Training Day, which was not a film I enjoyed at all - since then it had started to feel like he'd gotten kind of lazy with his acting, relying on the same screaming intimidating schtick. (Honestly he'd earned some laziness by that point in his career - it's the same thing that happened to Pacino and Ford and De Niro, of course.) The trailer for Israel grabbed my attention, then - this looked like something different. Smaller, for Denzel. And when I saw it was from Dan Gilroy, who turned out Jake Gyllenhaal's maybe career best in Nightcrawler, I signed up, mediocre reviews be damned. 

Happily Denzel's not the problem with Roman J. Israel Esq - not in the slightest. He gives a fine, lived-in performance as a civil rights lawyer deflated by years upon years of Sisyphean activism that's kept him toiling in the shadows, trapped in a shitty apartment, the same routine worn as thin as his receding hairline. No, the first hint that it wasn't him that was the problem but actually the script came amid that routine - it's the sandwiches, man. We see him making the same PB&J sandwich time and again beside an entire wall of peanut butter and jelly containers and, while not film destroying in itself, it raised a red flag - it's a character affectation that's showy and rings false; you can already tell that this is a screenwriter directing, in love with that quirk, but it tells us next to nothing about the character. It's just there.

Those things get worse as the movie rambles along. Quirks and affectations of story-telling pile up, getting int he way, until the last half an hour of the movie turns truly inexplicable and lsoes sight of everything that had been making this fine character study worth watching. Gilroy really gets in his own way with this one - none of the propulsive mean-spirited sheen of Nightcrawler is here to carry Roman J towards meaning; it just becomes this sad jumble of ideas buried beneath a pile of peanut butter sandwiches, gasping for air. 

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Today's Mood

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Pics of the Day

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Congrats to the Call Me By Your Name team for their much deserved wins last night at the Gotham Awards! And congrats to Robert Pattinson for getting that much "hands on time" with Armie Hammer.

Tom Hardy Likes To Kick & Punch & Kick

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There's too much jibber jabber and not enough "Tom Hardy bouncing around at the gym" footage in this video (via) of Tom Hardy training to play the comic book character Venom in that upcoming movie, (we told you about it right here) but there's also maaaaaybe just enough of "Tom Hardy bouncing around at the gym" footage for me to post it, so here we are.

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We also posted some photos of Tom training (in a unicorn tank top!) previously, see those here. Besides Tommy boy Venom will also contain a truly special cast including Riz Ahmed, Jenny Slate, Michelle Williams, and Reid "I hope he has his beard from that season of Veep where he lost his shit buz that's his best look" Scott.

Five Frames From ?

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What movie is this?

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Good Morning, World

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I really miss Ryan Kwanten, you guys. I mean his IMDB page makes it look like he's worked pretty steadily since True Blood ended three years ago but looks to me like it's all remained mostly Down Under. I always want to make a dirty joke when I use that phrase and that urge is quadrupled when it's Ryan I'm talking about, but I'll refrain just this once, as a birthday present. Ryan is 41 today so happy birthday to him - y'all can click back through our archives for more.
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You're Gonna Have So Much Unspecial Sex

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Timothée Chalamet doesn't actually figure into the coming conversation about Lady Bird but I still feel like hey, why not feature Timmy, ya know? So there he is. Anyway today's "Beauty vs Beast" at The Film Experience is about two other characters in Lady Bird (I bet you can guess who if you think for the splittest of seconds) so click on over to make your little Lady Bird voice heard.

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Water Will Give You Life

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The Shape of Water is Guillermo Del Toro's masterpiece. I wanted to wait to see the film a second time before saying that, before pushing Pan's Labyrinth down the stairs and elbowing Cronos outta the way, but now that I have I'm more sure than ever. It does what he does better than he's ever done it before.

It is, in capital letters, a Movie Movie. It's in love with all the Movies that came before it, so it is explicitly about The Movies - Sally Hawkins' character lives above a movie theater and her best friend and neighbor (played with touching delicacy by Richard Jenkins) is an old-school movie queen, losing himself, and her along with him, in the magic of old black-and-white musicals. They tap dance the world's sadnesses away, one Shirley Temple at a time.

But more than being a Tarantino-esque reference machine (every genre there is seems to get a moment to shine in here for at least a minute or two) The Shape of Water feels like A Movie, big and broad-hearted in all the best old-fashioned ways. It is About Love - the way it can fill a room and your heart and make the walls bulge with it, fit to burst. It is, in an ugly world, just the sort of thing we need right now. I hope it takes.

Sally plays Elisa Esposito, a mute woman orphaned in the world who's nevertheless managed to find for herself a little cabal of decent folks, each one making the best of it - better together, at least. She clearly dreams for more - watching Sally Hawkins stare out a bus window you feel as if you can see every dream every person has ever dreamed passing by the rain-streaked glass.

I remember fretting to myself the first time I watched this movie through about the stereotypes Guillermo had settled upon to populate Elisa's world - Octavia Spencer playing another cleaning woman? Richard Jenkins as a musical loving homosexual with a literal limp wrist? But the movie's heart has many rooms, and when a lesser movie would cut away, stick with the lead, The Shape of Water goes pouring off after everybody in ways you don't expect it to - we follow Jenkins to work. We stand around smoking with Octavia on her lunch-break. Hell we go car-shopping with Michael Shannon's Very Bad Dude.

And soon you realize this amorphous quality, this generosity, is the whole point. Del Toro wants us to look deeper, under the thick scaly skin of stereotypes, and see these people, each and every last one, as individuals. Not Others. Everything. Even outside of its amphibious love story for the ages (and oh, how you'll swoon, seeing through Sally's eyes) this movie is a Love Story For Everyone - a call to arms, fins and webbed feet, for us all to be better bigger brighter persons. To cut through the murky deep sea, and shine.

The Shape of Water opens in New York this Friday, 

and will roll out across the country from there.

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