Nightmare Circus Folks

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I double-checked to make sure I never posted these terrifying pasty goblin photos of Bradley Cooper in W Magazine last year and sure enough I was sane, and didn't -- probably both because I hated with the heat of a million suns the movie he was promoting at the time (that'd be his A Star is Born remake), and also that he looks like somebody wanted to make a sexy stage version of Powder. A lot of nos! But here we are today posting them, against better instincts of yore, because there's Bradley Cooper news that I have to talk about, and the dude hasn't been doing photo-shoots much lately -- this is what we've got.

So the news that's brought this horror back into our lives is that it looks like Brad's set to play the Tyrone Power role in Guillermo Del Toro's forthcoming re-do of the terrific 1947 swarthy-noir Nightmare Alley. (We previously posted about this project here.) You'll hear no comment on Cooper filling in for Tyrone "Closet Case" Power from me! Besides, you know, that there "no comment" comment. The story's mainly set at the seediest of carnivals, where Cooper's character is a phony mind-reader who gets in way over his head with a bad dame.

The rest of the cast that Del Toro's gathered up though, well, it's literally quite insane. This movie is also going to star Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara (who are hopefully just playing alternate timeline carny versions of Carol & Therese), Toni Collette, Richard Jenkins, Willem Dafoe, Ron Perlman and Michael Shannon. I mean can you even imagine? Anyway Del Toro says he plans on sticking closer to William Lindsay Gresham's original book, which I've never read but he says it's much darker -- the Tyrone film is pretty dark from what I recall, but lord knows there's stuff you can get away with now you couldn't get away with in 1947; GDT promises a "big R, like double R" rating. And if Michael Shannon bites the head off a live chicken it'll all -- all of life -- been worth it.
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