And Just Like That... The Holidays

Hey everybody! Happy Christmas Eve to those who celebrate, happy weekend eve to those who don't. I realized I didn't sign off proper last night before heading home for my ten day brain freeze -- I was so ready to run home and collapse I just did that -- so here, a proper send-off. The blog will be probably very quiet between now and January 3rd. You might say not a creature is stirring? I don't know why you'd say that, it's just a thing I have heard before. Anyway I might be quiet here but I'll be found on the social medias, no doubt, especially Twitter since I am an addict -- follow me here if you don't. The rest are linked over in the right-hand column. I've got one more review that will be posted (sometime today I think) so I'll tweet about that, or maybe come back and edit this post or something. I don't know. 

 

Most importantly, if you're feeling generous this holiday season, you can donate to MNPP's dusty coffers right here. (Dusty Coffers is my drag name.) I do all of this really truly awe-inspiring work on this site that blows your minds on a daily basis (really, truly) without getting paid, if you can believe it.I know! Wild. This shit is free. So if you want to now, or want to ever, toss a penny or two my way, you can. I give you permission. Or give your money to real charities -- they need it too. My point is... oh who am I kidding, I have no point. Except I hope all of you have the greatest, loveliest next ten days doing whatever you're doing (on that note please tell me in the comments if you watch anything good!) until we can meet back here refreshed and ready to face motherfucking 2022. Peace, my loves!

Waterbeds, Pinball Wizards, and William Holden

Although Paul Thomas Anderson's Licorice Pizza has been playing on New York and Los Angeles screens for a few weeks now it's just spreading out to those other places, you know the ones -- maybe they're your places even! -- tomorrow, and so I have written up some thoughts on the movie today over at Pajiba. I dug it, as you'll see when you read the review, but I will admit here that of the three "romances" of PTA's that I name-check in the review -- meaning besides this one Phantom Thread and Punch-Drunk Love -- it's a firm number three. And if I started ranking PTA films overall it'd drop down even further. But then Mr. Anderson (holla Matrix) is a top three filmmaker for me and I don't think he's made a single bad film so let's not take these ranking things too seriously. Terrific flick!

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

A Monster Calls (2016)

Conor: Your stories never made sense to me.

The Monster: Because humans are complicated beasts. 

You believe comforting lies, while knowing full well 

the painful truth that makes those lies necessary. 

In the end, Conor, it is not important what you think. 

It is only important what you do.

Conor: So what do I do?

The Monster: What you did just now. You speak the truth.

Conor: That's all?

The Monster: You think it's easy? 

You were willing to die rather than speak it.

The wildly under-appreciated tearjerking kids masterpiece A Monster Calls came out five years ago today. Directed by J.A. Bayona -- a stepping stone in between the devastating family dramatics of his film The Impossible in 2012 and the gigantic special-effects spectacle of his Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom film in 2018 -- and scripted by Chaos Walking author Patrick Ness, who was adapting his own book (which I also highly recommend), this movie sort of disappeared into the ether when it got released in 2016 and well there was after all a lot going on in the fall of 2016, so I don't totally blame us for being a little distracted. But I hope it's gained some traction on our brains in the five years since! And if not, let's make a rediscovery of this one. It's devastatingly excellent, a fable about grief that will lift you up, slam you back down over and over until you're dizzy, and then hug you dead. It's grand!

Five Frames From ?

What movie is this?

Good Morning, World

Although I don't endorse Miguel Angel Silvestre's manscaping routine -- I would love to see him just once let that chest hair grow longer than his beard! -- I will still post his new photos off of Instagram where he's hocking an electric razor because what else do I have? It's 10am, I haven't touched my coffee yet, and it's my last day before ten blissful days off -- no subway, no work, no nuthin! Y'all will take these half naked pictures of Miguel Angel Silvestre and you will like them, dang it! (As an aside yes, I'm off after tomorrow, through the New Year. So savor every goddamned drop of nonsense today, yo.)

Say Good Night, Garfield

I was going to say my goodbyes for this Hump Day here with a couple of Jonathan Groff photos that I'd tweeted earlier (see them here), but then I saw these Andrew Garfield snaps here and, uhh, I changed my mind. I mean...

Dev Patel/Andrew Garfield period romance drama WHEN??pic.twitter.com/Gy5N9aGO1b

— Emma Lynn (@emmaspacelynn) December 22, 2021

... did y'all also see that video going around? So why not end the day the same way we started it? Andrew Garfield got us feel hella versatile. Have a good night, everybody!

Quote of the Day

"Yeah it’s a really curious genre. It’s a road movie, but it’s also like a Bonnie and Clyde romance. And they happen to be eating people. So it’s got a very thoughtful aspect to it about things that we inherit from our parents. A little bit like Call Me By Your Name, in terms of discovering you are gay, something you didn’t know about yourself. How do you deal with that?"

That is Oscar-winner and Shakespearean powerhouse Mark Rylance talking to GQ magazine about his next project, Luca Guadagnino's forthcoming film Bones and All, which will probably be out next year (I recently heard that Luca is editing it right now) and stars Timothee Chalamet and Waves actress Taylor Russell as star-crossed human-scarfing lovers on the run in the 1980s. I posted the first photo from the film right here, and a snap from the set right here, but the one up top (from the same day) I missed and it gives a definite better look at Timmy's hair-do. Electric orange, baby!

The film happily reunites Luca with his Suspiria writer David Kajganich, which I already knew, but I hadn't looked at the IMDb cast list in awhile and a ton of names are on there now -- besides Rylance there's CMBYN daddy-du-jour Michael Stuhlbarg! Chloë Sevigny (who just gave one of my immediate favorite performances of hers for Luca last year in his HBO series We Are Who We Are)! Also from WAWWA Francesca "daughter of Marty" Scorsese! And did somebody say André f'ing Holland??? Then there's director David Gordon Green??? Huh. Oh and holla...

... Suspiria (both versions) star Jessica Harper!!! Then there's young actor Jake Horowitz, who in the past year has been in the sci-fi flick The Vast of Night (seen below, reviewed here), the remake of Castle Freak (anybody seen that?), as well as Mickey Reece's nun-tastic horror flick Agnes, which screened at Tribeca this past spring and just came out on the 10th. I saw that at Tribeca but have kinda sorta forgotten the whole thing now, and should give it a re-watch. Anyway quite the cast, cannot wait, et cetera et cetera!

Procession in 150 Words or Less

Usually when we talk about Art improving the world we mean it in an abstract not-immediate sense -- this thing will help us understand humanity, and our empathy will be bigger ever after. And so seeing a film that’s actually actively improved the world by the time its final credits roll takes one aback, and makes one wonder if we’ve been doing this thing right this whole time, or if this movie is showing us a better way. Robert Greene's Procession -- which not only documents the process by which several men who were molested by priests in their childhood turn their pain into art, but is the very art itself that they create -- feels revolutionary in its empathetic substance, in its proactive betterment of the world. In the simplest terms this astonishing movie did the work, and all the blessings be upon it.

Procession is now on Netflix, watch it here.

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

Quiz Show (1994)

Dan Enright: How much do they pay 

instructors up at Columbia?

Charles Van Doren: Eighty-six dollars a week.

Dan Enright: Do you have any idea 

how much Bozo the Clown makes?

Charles Van Doren: Well... we... 

we can't all be Bozo the Clown.

A happy 59 to the king, the man, Ralph Fiennes! I was considering doing a list of my five favorite performances of his today but then realized I did just that last year! See them right here. Seeing as how Ralph's one of my favorite actors that list had several runners-up, and one of them was the above performance (as an aside, where the hell is Quiz Show on blu-ray??? Whatchu doin, Criterion?) -- anyway the fact that work like that can live outside a Top 5 only speaks to Ralph's estimable career. Looking ahead for him there's, well, The King's Man is apparently out today? I had no idea until I checked. I missed all the screenings of this so I haven't seen it, but I have seen people tweeting out that Ralph's excellent (what's new). 

Coming down the road there's The Menu, which I'm really looking forward to -- that's the probable-cannibalism thriller that has him playing a fancy chef who invites a hot young couple (played by Anya Taylor-Joy and Nicholas Hoult so yeah, hot) to his private island and, presumably, tries to gobble 'em up. I don't know, I'm just guessing by the brief plot synopsis, the title, and the fact that that sounds like a thing a Ralph Fiennes character would do. Cannot wait to see it!

Nicholas Hoult Eight Times

Nicholas Hoult's people looked at the photoshoot Nicky did for Hero magazine in 2015 and they said, "More of that please!" And for that we're thankful -- they do right by this pretty boy! That said I have a feeling these shots are cropped because Hero hasn't posted them online themselves -- these come via Nicky's Insta, and Instagram crops groupings of photos into the same sized frame even when the originals are different sizes. So maybe I'll have to update this post with the originals, but we ain't waiting! Hit the jump for them... 

Five Frames From ?

What movie is this?

Good Morning, World

Gia Coppola's film Mainstream from earlier this year has mostly been forgotten here by the end of the year, and not without cause -- it's just an okay movie, not nearly the cutting social media critique it thinks it is. But I would say that it was the spark that lit the great year that Andrew Garfield has been having -- he gave his all and then ten more people's all in Mainstream (see my April post about the trailer if you don't know what I speak of), and then he gave it all again but with a better movie on hand in Tick Tick Boom, and then, this past week, [spoiler alert]. Anyway it makes sense that the photo up top -- which was taken on the set of Mainstream (via) -- would come roaring back to life this week, where it's been making the rounds on Twitter. We're celebrating a year of Andy and this was part of that! Oh and so was the moment in Mainstream captured below (click to embiggen):

Nun-sense Incarnate!

Just in time for  all this annual religious shit, a gift! Paul Verhoeven's blaspheme-licious (TM Me) Benedetta is rentable on all your online renting services -- here is a link to Amazon where the film can be purchased for such purposes as you see fit, presumably of the eyeball sort, but who am I to judge. I reviewed the movie right here when it screened at NYFF in September, and having re-watched it last week I can tell you my opinion has not changed. I want every single one of you to be watching this over the holidays, and if you've gone home to visit relatives I want every single one of you to force your relatives to watch it. Paul Verhoeven is as ever the showman, incapable of boring for a single solitary second even as he makes caustic commentary on institutional hypocrisy of every sort. My god!

I am #NowWatching BENEDETTA again and imagine giving awards for acting this year and not saying the name Virginie fuckin’ Efira — bow down before this god damned queen pic.twitter.com/fRrlBAdbxP

— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) December 12, 2021

24 Days Until New Scream

Are your bodies prepared?

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

 ...you can learn from:

Klute (1971)

Bree: Don't feel bad about losing your virtue. 

I sort of knew you would. Everybody always does.

You ever have a movie where you can't get what everybody's swooning about for the longest time, and then you rewatch it years on and wham, it's like a freight train clobbering your heart? Klute is probably the best example of that from my year point five of pandemic watching -- I thought I didn't like it for a long time but then suddenly I fell totally in love with it on a watch a few months back. Now it seems nutty that I ever thought it wasn't for me. All those inky 70s blacks and browns, creepy pervert killers, Donald Sutherland. Jane Fonda saying "button freak." This shit was made for me! Anyway a happy 84 to Miss Fonda today.

Five Frames From ?

What movie is this?

Good Morning, World

My assumption is that this photo of Jon Bernthal was taken on the set of his forthcoming update of American Gigolo because -- and this took some real hardcore detective work on my part -- he looks exactly like he looked in that footage from the set of that show that I posted last February. From the handlebar 'stache down to those gray sweats, and every tat in between. (For those of you wondering about this look matching with your image of Richard Gere in the 1980 film, Bernthal is supposed to be playing the same character once he's getting out of prison for the death at the end of the film -- and uhh spoiler alert for a 40-year-old movie.) Anyway I don't actually know where this image came from (I got it off a random Tumblr) and I still don't have any update on when this show will air but I felt the need to share the photo for obvious reasons -- if you know where it came from original do tell! I am especially curious because it looks to me like it could be a frame taken from an Insta-story and who wouldn't want to see this moment in motion? 

Good morning!

Quote of the Day

"We have to have this physical agreement with each other, and this trust with each other – we’re gonna get a little bruised, and we’re gonna make mistakes, and that’s okay."

That's Jonathan Groff talking about doing fight-scenes with Keanu Reeves in the new Matrix movie to GQ, but taken out of context I think it's alright for us to contemplate Jonathan & Keanu talking that way toward each other about many things. Or several, anyway. I didn't think I'd read the whole GQ interview with Groff (I tend to skim) but a majority of it was spent talking about how much he likes working out now and so natch, I got sucked in. Let's hope he's got a project lined up where he gets to show off this gym-bunny phase then, since I doubt his role in the Matrix gets him out of his black suit. (I wouldn't scoff at a third season of Looking, for instance!) Hit the jump for three more GQ pictures...

Paul Bettany Ten Times

Paul Bettany is working 50-years-old pretty well, wouldn't you say? Here he is on the cover of The Rake magazine (via) looking as they say "Sharp AF" -- may we all age so well. I dunno what he's promoting here -- I guess himself! Which is fine! Hit the jump for the rest...

Five Frames From ?

What movie is this?

Good Morning, The Northman

It is a personal attack that they dropped the trailer for Robert Eggers' Viking movie The Northman (aka my most anticipated movie of literally forever) while I was commuting to work so I get to it way later than when everyone else has seen it, but I'll try not to hold a grudge. There's enough of beast-master Alexander Skarsgard tearing through the thing half-naked to calM me down. Well...

... to calm me down in one respect, whilst getting me all worked up in others. Thankfully those "others" are more beneficial to the filmmaker's bottom line. Anyway, The Northman! Starring Skarsgard, WIllem Dafoe, Cales Bang, Anya Taylor-Joy, Nicole Kidman, and motherfucking Björk! The director of The VVitch and The Lighthouse takes on the Vikings. Watch:

Wow pretty cool, right?

Same, Alex. Same!

The Northman is out on April 22nd, 2022.

Hit the jump for some stills and the poster...