Until the Robins Come

Rumors slithered out of my best dreams and into the real world this weekend that "World's Best Director" David Lynch is working on a new production for Netflix -- a listing for something called "Wisteria" showed up on Production Weekly's list of future projects; specifically this is meant to shoot in May in Los Angeles and will be produced by Lynch's recent, frequent producing partner Sabrina S. Sutherland (she's worked with him on everything since Inland Empire). And that is all we know about that, although there have been rumors that Lynch's been planning something for awhile. Of course this could be another one of Lynch's short films -- he's done several of them post-Twin Peaks revival, including my beloved What Did Jack Do? which got randomly dropped onto Netflix back in January (and yes January feels like ten thousand years ago, I concur). Watch this space!

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

 ... you can learn from:

Misery (1990)

Annie: Paul, do you know about the early days at the Kimberly diamond mines? Do you know what they did to the Native workers who stole diamonds? Don't worry, they didn't kill them. That would be like junking your Mercedes just because it had a broken spring. No, if they caught them, they had to make sure they could go on working, but they also had to make sure they could never run away. The operation was called hobbling.

There is your brain before the "hobbling" scene in Misery and there is your brain after the "hobbling" scene in Misery and your brain after will never forget what "hobbling" means, that's for certain, making this one of the most enduring entries of our "Life Lessons" series. Thirty years enduring as of exactly today! Misery was released on November 30th 1990, and immediately become one of the best Stephen King adaptations of them all, if you ask me. Top 5 for sure. And Kathy Bates gets all the (deserved) love, what with that Oscar and all, but can we give it up for James Caan's performance as well? Dude gave us an astonishing symphony of sweatiness in this thing. 

Miguel Ángel Silvestre Twenty-Four Times

Lemme tell you something: the weather here in New York this morning is -- and I hardly ever use this word so you know I mean it  -- grody. Uber grody. It's cold, it's raining sideways, the wind is a bitchy slap across the face like we've offended the sensibilities of a haughty Englishwoman in a comedy-of-manners. I ain't having none of it! So instead let's snuggle ourselves up to this gigantic new photoshoot of Spanish sexpot Miguel Angel Silvestre for something called Mad Men magazine -- I can't read the interview because I don't speak Spanish so if he comes out and professes his love for this website or anything similarly interesting y'all Spanish-speaking readers can let me know. Until then, the photos after the jump... 

Five Frames From ?

What movie is this?

Good Morning, World

Hi, everybody! I know it's been several days since we last spoke (unless you're on Twitter in which I case I never shut up my damn mouth not once) so in order to ease us back into the routine of things here are four more "Joel Kinnaman modeling Bjorn Borg underwear" photos, very similar to all of the "Joel Kinnaman modeling Bjorn Borg underwear" we posted over and over and over again before the break. Something comfortable for us all to slip on, start this here post-holiday full-week out easy, and such. I hope everyone had a nice, safe (emphasis on the latter) holiday, and now we will hit the jump for the remainders...

Thankful For Jake, and Vacation

As stated about an hour ago I got a jolly good surprise today with the news that I now have the rest of the work-week off from coming into the office. And when left to my own devices, aka my couch and being lazy, chances are good that I'll do just that. Will I blog a word over the next six days, between here and next Monday? I wouldn't bet good money on it. I have a pile of movies I bought on the recent Criterion sales, after all. That copy of Pasolini's The Decameron ain't gonna watch itself! But as long as we're speaking of arthouse classics, did you know ... 

... tomorrow is the 10th anniversary of Love and Other Drugs? Wow, to speak of that fairly terrible movie & Pasolini in the same breath -- might my official cineaste card be taken away? Will the ghost of Stan Brakhage appear to me on Thanksgiving Eve and slap me to death with a rolled-up copy of Cahiers du Cinéma? Stay tuned. Until then let's celebrate by staring at a dozen promotional photos of Jake Gyllenhaal (maaaaaybe at his hottest?) in Love and Other Drugs, after the jump...

Darker Phoenix

I really, really hated Joker, and I really really hated Joaquin Phoenix's awards-run of speeches, but in general I dig Joaquin and find him extremely talented -- I was thankful to be reminded of that with my recent re-watch of To Die For, how far that like goes back -- and so this news, I will celebrate this news. Joaquin is rumored to be heading up Hereditary and Midsommar director Ari Aster's next film! That is honestly just such a good pairing of director and actor that I'm verklempt, one hundred percent, at the thought. 

Even better we even have some details on the film, which we haven't had so far. It's apparently titled Beau is Afraid and it will be a "surrealist horror" (I mean... that's not exactly a shock, given Aster's stellar track-record), and then this:

"[The film] will reportedly center around an extremely anxious man named Beau who has a fraught relationship with his overbearing mother due to the absence of a father he never met. Beau then learns of the death of his mother under mysterious circumstances and upon traveling home makes an alarming discovery about his past. During his journey, he runs into various crazy supernatural threats."

The King McQueen

Every time I do a post about Steve McQueen's "Small Axe" anthology of films I have to re-link like a billion links because I have reviewed 3/5ths of the series already, and I don't feel like doing that again -- I just found out that I have a bonus day off this week, meaning the only day of office-work I have this week is today, and I have suddenly been swallowed whole by a "kid before their summer vacation" mind-set, aka I ain't getting anything done now. It's full-tilt stare-at-the-clock o'clock around here. So here's the deal -- the first part of "Small Axe" is out now over on Amazon, and this is me reminding you to watch each and every single part, starting with this one. They get released every Friday, through December 18th. All everything else that you need to know about "Small Axe" including a trailer and links to all of my reviews you can find in this post that I did last time the subject came up. Voila, done!

 

I lied -- he wears two wigs all at once https://t.co/VJrcznCL3e pic.twitter.com/9oWfMREoKT

— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) November 23, 2020

Man of the Holy Mountain

LOL the grrrrreat Alessandro Nivola shared the above image on his Instagram today from the local "Yac Donalds" restaurant in Nepal, where they shot the brand new miniseries adaptation of Black Narcissus that we've been (oh wait for it) yakking about (oh there it was) for months now, and which airs on FX this very evening! If you missed the trailer -- which allowed me the making of a life-changing gif of Mr. Nivola -- you can watch it here.  

Black Narcissus was of course famously and brilliantly turned into a masterpiece of color and torrid nunnery by the genius Michael Powell in 1947, and tells the story of a convent in the Himalayas going stir-horny. If you've never seen it see it right now, just go ahead and buy the blu-ray, you won't regret it. This new adaptation has the terrific Gemma Arterton slipping into the terrific Deborah Kerr's habit, while Alessandro's hopping onto David Farrar's iconic tiny pony for a go.

The Gyllen-Fincher Feud Strikes Again!

I'm not going to be taking a side in this because we're all adults -- well I hope we're all adults; all of the five-year-olds reading MNPP, cover your eyes! -- and adults don't have to take sides in other people's bullshit that doesn't concern them. But in a new interview with the New York Times director David Fincher (whose film Mank! is out this month) talked a little about the long-known and well-documented friction he and his Zodiac star Jake Gyllenhaal went through in the making of that fine motion picture back in 2007:

"Jake was in the unenviable position of being very young and having a lot of people vie for his attention, while working for someone who does not allow you to take a day off. I believe you have to have everything out of your peripheral vision….I don’t think he’d ever been asked to concentrate on minutiae, and I think he was very distracted. He had a lot of people whispering that Jarhead was going to be this massive movie and put him in this other league, and every weekend he was being pulled to go to the Santa Barbara film festival and the Palm Springs film festival and the fucking Catalina film festival. And when he’d show up for work, he was very scattered. 

I don’t want to make excuses for my behavior. There are definitely times when I can be confrontational if I see someone slacking. People go through rough patches all the time. I do. So I try to be compassionate about it. But. It’s: Four. Hundred. Thousand. Dollars. A day. And we might not get a chance to come back and do it again”

That all seems perfectly reasonable to me. And the end product is so good -- one of Jake's very best performances to date -- that I honestly could give a shit. I mean it was right around that time, post-Zodiac, that Jake started making decisions like, "Hey I'm gonna make a Prince of Persia movie!" so his getting maybe not the best advice and attention from those around him doesn't seem like a totally insane suggestion. 

Quote of the Day

“I distinctly remember going to see Call Me By Your Name... Timothée Chalamet just smashed it in that movie. He blew my mind, if I’m honest with you. I was so moved by it, it sort of shocked me. He is on another level and it just made me realise what a young actor, roughly the same age as me, could be capable of, the level I had to get up to. I had hardly even worked at all at that point, but I very clearly remember leaving the cinema absolutely terrified by Chalamet’s performance, because I saw how high he’d raised the bar. That was an important moment for me."

There I am just sitting here innocently reading Paul Mescal's profile in the new issue of British GQ -- and not so innocently looking at the photos of Paul Mescal in the new issue of British GQ -- when I should stumble face-first upon this quote, wherein he extols the thesp virtues of one Timmy Chalamet, Boy Wonder, in Call Me By Your Name. As if those shorts-shorts he prefers sauntering around in public weren't enough of a love letter aimed at me already! But you go on that extra mile, Paul Mescal -- you go on. 

In the chat he also talks a little about heading off to film Maggie Gyllenhaal's new movie (we told you about it here) as well as the insane social media response to his show Normal People... oh and keep your eyes peeled for the part where the writer of the piece describes Paul's legs. Those are some legs. They got everybody talking. But to get back to what matters... that photo-shoot! It could include more of his legs, but we dig it. Hit the jump for the rest...

Kingsley Ben-Adir Four Times

These shots of actor Kingsley Ben-Adir are for GQ Style -- there is one more at this link -- and follow nicely with the photos of Kingsley that we shared here on MNPP last week; it's good that we're all being familiarized with his name and face (and so on...) because once y'all see him play Malcolm X in Regina King's film One Night in Miami we're gonna want to say we knew him when. He's so good in it.

Heaven Sent

Per usual on Friday I told y'all I had some stuff to share over the weekend and then the weekend came and I fell off the face of the planet -- I get home, I lay on my floor, there's no doing. No doing nothing! Anyway only half of the two things I had to share went up, so let's share that thing now! Do you recognize the actor seen above? That would be...

... Cornel Wilde, the actor who played the schmuck who gets obliviated by Gene Tierney in the 1945 technicolor-noir masterpiece Leave Her To Heaven, which I wrote up some thoughts about over at The Film Experience on Saturday for Tierney's Centennial. I've written a'plenty about this movie over the years -- it's one of my faves -- but this might be my favorite thing I've written about it so please do go check it out. I had fun.

In case you're curious these nudie shots of Mr. Wilde are from the 1965 flick The Naked Prey, making this is 20 full years after Wilde cut a sharp figure in his high-waisted trousers in Heaven -- he kept it going on, he did. (Anybody seen The Naked Prey? It's been released on Criterion so it must be worth seeing right?) I've admitted before that I think Wilde's kind of blown off the screen by Tierney in Heaven but the more I watch that movie the more I notice how broad his shoulders are, how tiny his waist, and I stop caring so much about his performance...

Pic of the Day

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Jason Adams (@jasonaadams)

A massive, like gargantuan, shout-out to MNPP reader and classy, classy person Cameron, who reached out last week about gifting your MNPP overlord with something I've been wanting and needing and clamoring for for sixteen full years -- a copy of the "Wax Lion" from the pilot episode of Bryan Fuller's one-season wonder known as Wonderfalls. A limited run of these were made, I don't even recall the circumstances of their making anymore, but I do remember that I never got one and there's been a dented-lion shaped hole in my heart ever since. No more! I am complete!

Five Frames From ?

What movie is this?

Good Morning, World

Haha on Friday morning I blathered something about me going back and forth between the same two people all week -- Tom Mercier and Joel Kinnaman -- and here we are, keeping on keeping with the Kinnaman come Monday. Whatcha gonna do -- when Joel Kinnaman presents, you accept. (via)

Riz Ahmed Eight Times

Although I am not encouraging people to go to movie theaters right now -- under any circumstances, not anywhere! -- I will acknowledge that Riz Ahmed's film Sound of Metal is hitting them big screens of dreams tomorrow, where ever the hell those things are open, by sharing these photos of him for Esquire Singapore just because, hell, let's look at Riz. I don't plan on reviewing the film until it hits Amazon on December 4th, but...

PS Riz is really, really good in this. Like, acting-wise. It's not just his pretty, pretty, pretty face and sculpted........ everything.........

— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) October 11, 2020

... I did say that when I saw the movie a couple of weeks ago, and I still mean it. Really very good, he is. Aaaaaanyway tomorrow here at MNPP is gonna be a scattered day -- I'm not coming in to the office proper, but I do have a couple of pieces I'm working on so I will probably pop in here to share those. Don't expect tons! Not that you ever should! Hit the jump for the Riz...

Night Boat To Fassbender

Two terrific bits of Michael Fassbender news today! First -- the latest chapter of Michael's "Road to Le Mans" YouTube series, which has been documenting his race-car thing for the past few months, has arrived and Michael spends a hefty chunk of it shirtless, in a face-mask, be still all my pieces. You can watch the whole video over here (although I giffed all the good parts down below because duh) -- this is a good companion piece with the other times he has entertained us thus, seen here and here and here. 

Second bit! He's attached himself to a new project! His production company has optioned the rights to Kevin Barry's 2019 book Night Boat to Tangier -- anybody read it? Here is how Amazon describes it:

"In the dark waiting room of the ferry terminal in the sketchy Spanish port of Algeciras, two aging Irishmen -- Maurice Hearne and Charlie Redmond, longtime partners in the lucrative and dangerous enterprise of smuggling drugs -- sit at night, none too patiently. It is October 23, 2018, and they are expecting Maurice's estranged daughter, Dilly, to either arrive on a boat coming from Tangier or depart on one heading there. This nocturnal vigil will initiate an extraordinary journey back in time to excavate their shared history of violence, romance, mutual betrayals and serial exiles, rendered with the dark humor and the hardboiled Hibernian lyricism that have made Kevin Barry one of the most striking and admired fiction writers at work today."

I had to look up the word "Hibernian" -- I didn't know it! It just means Irish. There, we all learned something today. Anyway either of those "aging Irishmen" sound like a good role for our laddy Michael here; it sounds a little In-Bruges-ish right? I wanna watch Michael in his own In Bruges. Ooh maybe they could hire Colin Farrell for the other role! Although... that might be distracting. I would be distracted. Not that I won't be distracted anyway with just Michael around, but you times him by Colin Farrell and all bets are off, and by "bets" I mean "my pants." On that note let's get to the rest of those gifs, after the jump...

Chaos in the Making

Back in March of 2012 the first Hunger Games movie had come out, and by that April I was already posting about how studios were rushing to adapt every Young Adult novel in existence. One of them was Patrick Ness' trilogy of Chaos Walking books, which got no less than Mr. Charlie Kaufman attached to adapt, which got no less than yours truly to read the books immediately. And they're pretty good, I recall! (I remind you, it's been eight years.) Very weird, and seemingly un-filmable, with their noisy clouds of visible thoughts -- an idea which you can see would draw somebody like Charlie Kaufman in. Anyway that was eight years ago -- eventually Tom Holland and Daisy Ridley and...

... Mads Mikkelsen got cast and Go director Doug Liman got hired and the movie took ages to make and then it sat on a shelf for more ages and I think they reshot a bunch of it at one point and and now we have a trailer, voila. (Funny enough you can see Tom Holland's age jump around in just this footage here.) The movies, they can be weird and wily beasts towards the finish line. Anyway here's the trailer:

Once Charlie Kaufman got the kibosh and this thing got delayed and delayed I have to admit my interest waned, but we'll see when it "comes out" in January -- a January release! Always a good sign! But if nothing else it appears that Spider-twink spends a lot of the movie in a tank top, so all's not lost. On that note I made some gifs of precisely that, right on after the jump...

Five Frames From ?

What movie is this?