I was nosing around the press site for Charlie Kaufman's upcoming Netflix movie I'm Thinking of Ending Things just now -- if you missed it earlier I showed y'all the poster, along with the news that we're seeing our first trailer tomorrow! -- when I stumbled upon these two photos which are new to me, what a thrill! And when I say "What a thrill" what I am really talking about is the sight of Toni Collette just below -- I don't know what good deeds I've done to deserve getting Toni Collette in a Charlie Kaufman movie at last but having survived through this much of 2020 (so far) I will accept it, gladly. Make sure you come back for the trailer tomorrow! The movie is out on September 4th! Less than a month to go!
Well it looks like The World went and took my advice and no one has told Normal People actor Paul Mescal about Pants -- Good work, World! We did it! We finally got one right! In celebration of our accomplishment -- and also in celebration of the fact that I cannot seem to form any coherent thoughts worth sharing today -- I have gathered up for us a gallery of photos of Paul and his Perfect Legs running around London in short shorts over the past few months, huzzah! (That said these don't include the most important shots of all, which I'd already posted back in May.) Hit the jump for several dozen photos that'll make this brown day blue... .
Netflix has just shared with us the first poster for Charlie Kaufman's upcoming movie I'm Thinking of Ending Things -- and yeah okay by "us" I mean "everyone on Twitter" whatever -- and the thrilling news that the first trailer for the movie will be arriving tomorrow! Read my previous posts on the film here -- it stars Jess(i)es Plemons & Buckley, plus Toni Collette and David Thewlis, and is hitting the streamer on September 4th! That's so super soon!
I don't even know if I'll be done with Charlie Kaufman's book Antkind by then, and I've been working on that for weeks and weeks. It's so great, you guys. So funny -- I only read it at night in bed and I keep waking up the boyfriend because I am laughing so hard. I limit myself to about five to ten pages a night because I want to make it last as long as I can, but I'm down to about the last hundred. I will have maybe timed it perfectly, and I'll finish the book just as the movie hits. A day without Charlie is a day not delighted.
Noted actor and speedo enthusiast Luke Evans had himself a lil' whiff of a nude scene on this past week's latest episode of The Alienist, but since it contains a spoiler I'll make sure I toss the spoiler (which actually includes the "nude" part of the "nude scene" of course) down below. Avert your eyes if you're inclined to not know what is happening this season and aren't yet caught up! I have my issues with the show here and there, like...
Literally everyone on The Alienist overenunciates their Ws to the point of mad distraction— someone should do a super cut of all the hwah hwah hwats
I don’t know when it happened but I really do love the friendship between the three leads on The Alienist — I find myself always wishing there were more scenes of them just hanging out, not babbling off murder plots and theories, just being old-timey peeps
Mixed feelings are fine -- any feelings are fine! As long as I am feeling something! Wow sorry that emotional outburst came out of nowhere. You know. 2020. Anyway the actor playing the villain this season is super entertaining and I really do like the show's leads, especially Daniel Brühl and to my surprise Luke -- I know I have posted a lot about Mr. Evans over the years but it's been more out of fascination with his personal choices than it has been about the work so much, and so to find myself really enamored with the delicate sweetness he's displaying here has really come at me out of nowhere. Good work, Luke! Those kind words out of the way now we can thankfully hit the jump for his (spoilery) butt...
Even when I was a kid this quote from Thelma Ritter's character annoyed me. (Yes I was a nerd, why do you ask?) It makes perfect sense for her character, crammed full of folksy anti-intellectual colloquialisms, but that's a strain that runs through Hitchcock that I've never cottoned to myself. It makes him a very American film-maker though! It's part of why I will always consider him, for all his Britishness, a quintessentially American storyteller. He really believed and bought into the Dream of this place. I mean who else threw the bad guys off of the Statue of Liberty or Mount Rushmore?
Anyway I'm not sure why I am going off on that tangent -- I mean okay yes clearly given the state of the world, it makes sense why I've got American anti-intellectualism on my mind. But I'm really just here to wish my favorite Hitchcock movie (not to mention my sometimes Favorite Movie of All The Movies) Rear Window a happy 66th birthday!
The movie premiered here in New York City at the no-longer-standing Rivoli Theatre at 1620 Broadway on the night of August 4th, 1954 -- the premiere was actually a benefit for the American–Korean Foundation hosted by the U.N. for some reason, I don't know. The Korean War had just ended, I guess. Anyway the film was beloved from the get-go, getting rave reviews from basically everybody, but that wasn't too weird for him circa the mid-50s, at least until he cashed in his chips with Vertigo in '58. Sandwiched as it was in the center of his three movies with Grace Kelly this was clearly a very happy time for the director.
In related news this is one of the four films getting dropped in a fancy new 4K blu-ray boxed-set next month -- "The Alfred Hitchcock Classics Collection" contains brand-new updates of Rear Window, Vertigo, Psycho and The Birds, and streets on September 8th. The most exciting content on this set is the inclusion of the "uncut" version of Psycho, which includes itty bitty bits of footage that Hitchcock had to cut in 1960 for the censors. I'm not convinced the film needs these extra snippets of prurience as I don't know if you noticed by it works just fine already! But from a historical standpoint it'll be interesting to see. Here's a video about the "uncut" version:
Listen, this is just a fact -- I was a fan of Greta Gerwig before you were. I don't care if you are Joe Swanberg, the director of Greta's first movie reading this; hell I don't care if you are Greta's mother reading this! I am her first fan, my love is longer and lovelier than yours, and she's mine! Mine dammit! That baby of hers ain't got nothin' on me! And in the spirit of that particular insanity I invite you to go read my ode to her work in Ti West's 2009 horror film The House of the Devil today, here on the occasion of her 37th birthday. Is so good! And then we will all join hands and summon whatever unholy power we must in order to get Greta back in front of the camera again. It's been too, too long.
Last week when I shared with you the very first photos from Ryan Murphy's forthcoming Ratched series, starring Sarah Paulson as the villainous electroshock-lovin' nurse from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest in her earlier pre-Jack days, I was happy save one complaint -- where the hell was Corey Stoll? Well now the trailer's here and my pissiness has been answered, with Stoll, as seen above. Phew! Also...
... I am pretty sure, after years of extensive studies in the subject of knowing every inch of the personage of Corey Stoll from bald head to big toe, that that shot could also be of him, even though we see no face there. I don't need his face to know, dammit! Maybe Corey Stoll in soaking wet boxer shorts is my religion now. (I should add here that a bird in the know has whispered in my ear that we do indeed see Corey in his boxers at some point on the show, so I could be projecting. But I don't think so. I think that's him.)
Anyway from there I suppose, oh do I ever suppose, that an MNPP dissection of this show's first trailer wouldn't be complete without me including a gif of Finn Wittrock half naked on his knees behind bars. I mean we all know where we are right now. We made our choices to end up here. It's just what fits. And Finn appears to be playing some sort of crazy psycho type on the show, which is exactly how we best like our Finn -- Dandy Forever!
As the original Jurassic Park remains "My Star Wars" I am trying to remain hopeful about the next Jurassic World movie -- even though I did not like the last two films -- and seeing the photos that Original Stars Sam Neill and Laura Dern have shared from the set, either of the latter quarantining in preparation (below) or of Alan Grant's famous lil' hat above, is admittedly helping. Has Jeff Goldblum posted anything? (Jason scurries off to check) No he has not. Maybe he'll get the shot of our Original Trio reunited shortly. That is the one that will murder me, and dead.
I'd like to officially thank the seventeen people who sent me these photos of Kit Harington working it out in public the millisecond they appeared over the weekend, and formally apologize to them and to the all the rest of you for taking my sweet time posting them. We needed to be alone together for a moment. You understand.
Seriously though my first thought -- okay okay my second thought -- looking at these pictures was, "What nice pants!" Seriously. Those are some really nice pants. Zoom in and gander. Great fabric, nice cut. But then Kit always hasnice pants. He's a connoisseur of nice pants... and also of what goes in those nice pants I'd argue.
Thanks to Mubi for sharing this shot of Robert De Niro and Harvey Keitel on the set of Martin Scorsese's 1973 film Mean Streets yesterday -- this might be a hard one for y'all to swallow but I'll just go ahead and admit it: I have never seen Mean Streets! It's true! I was going to say it's the only Scorsese film I haven't seen but then I checked and I haven't seen a few of his early ones -- this and Boxcar Berthaand Who's That Knocking At My Door. I also don't remember whether I ever saw The Color of Money, but besides those ones I've have seen all of Marty's non-doc features. I've just been saving Mean Streets for a rainy day. Of course a rainy day where I am in the mood for Mean Streets specifically, and not just Muriel's Wedding for the hundredth time. I do love Baby Bobby though, so I should jump on it -- these photos are the most I have ever been convinced...
"I met Timothée and we both agreed spontaneously that we would work together. It was not difficult to convince Timothée... I chose Timothée for several reasons. First of all, he is a phenomenal actor. He is someone that has a lot of depth, someone that is very mature for his age because Paul Atreides is an old soul in a young body, and Timothée has that. […] Also, he has features that remind me of old school Hollywood stars. He’s a real movie star. He has that insane charisma. Insane charisma. You put Timothée in front of a camera and it’s just an explosion.”
-- That's director Denis Villeneuve talking about casting Timmy in his new Dune movie via Collider (thx Mac), where they've also got quotes from him on why he chose Jason Momoa, Oscar Isaac, and Josh Brolin for their respective roles. I mean all that's swell and true and all but it's an awful lot of words when "I wanted to be surrounded by all this hot man ass" would've sufficed. Or maybe I'm projecting? Anyway that would be my reason for putting Timothée Chalamet, Oscar Isaac, Josh Brolin and Jason Momoa (not to mention Dave Bautista and Javier Bardem and Chen Chang) in my movie, and it's as good a reason as most. Better even!
"Would you look at that body language? Legs crossed towards each other. That is an unequivocal sex invite."
Aaaaanyway in related news did y'all see the photos that Jason Momoa posted on Instagram being a dirty muddy piggy-bottom? I feel as if I should share them (even if my description of them might be admittedly a bit much) so I will after the jump...
I was a big Bradley Cooper fan for a very long time -- I was both an Alias nerd and a Wet Hot American Summer devotee, after all -- and then, and then, A Star is Born happened. A truly bad movie that was so inexplicably enjoyed by so many smart (and not so smart) people that I felt like I'd fully lost my mind that Oscar season. Seriously. That movie is bad. And while Bradley's performance isn't by any stretch of the imagination the film's biggest problem -- that would be Lady Gaga's absolutely abysmal work and the film's wretched script -- it is, in the immortal words of Pete Campbell, Not Great Bob. He sells a lot of the emotional heft of the flick -- whatever little heft it does have, actually -- but that booming baritone croaking thing he is doing with his voice is so over the top cheesy and distracting. And then he proved himself an unbearable humorless schmuck all Oscar Season long, and my point is he did a real damn good job of whittling away most of my good Bradley Cooper feelings over the course of a few months. Not Good, Brad!
Anyway I'm going to have to try to get over it -- and judging by how annoyed I am still getting thinking about that entire debacle here in August of 2020 I have some work to do! -- because the future projects he's lined up as an actor are going to demand my attention, and hopefully, my enthuasiasms. Of course there's Guillermo Del Toro's remake of the Carny Noir Nightmare Alley, which has him tackling Tyrone Power's role opposite Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara and Toni Collette, and which began filming in Buffalo way back before the pandemic -- not sure where that stands now; if they finished filming before shutdown, I mean.
And now today it's been revealed that he is going to be in Paul Thomas Anderson's next movie. I told you about it last November -- it's based on PTA's own childhood growing up in the Valley in the 1970s and it's actually supposed to be a good and proper ensemble piece a la Boogie Nights or Magnolia, aka the sorts of movies he started out making, as opposed to the One (or Two) Man Armies he's been fixated on post-There Will Be Blood. (Although just so we're clear, from my perspective Paul Thomas Anderson has never made a single bad movie, period.) Anyway that lessens the weight on Bradley Cooper's shoulders, thankfully -- if this is an ensemble film my feelings won't rest entirely on his performance. If he went and ruined PTA's perfect record, hooooo boy.
Today is proving to be a very exciting day when it comes to our first looks at upcoming movies, who'd have thought it? Earlier we saw Tilda in Almodovar's new one, and now here is the first batch of photos of the truly unbelievably get-outta-here knock me over with a feather for how deep this cast runs cast of The Devil All the Time, which is hitting Netflix on September 20th. I mean...
... you've got four pictures here, pictures just of faces, each one makes me more excited than the one before it, and they don't even include names like Sebastian Stan (who replaced Chris Evans) or Haley Bennett or Eliza Scanlen or MIA FUCKIN' WASIKOWSKA. But we do see Robert Pattinson and Bill Skarsgård and Jason Clarke and Riley Keough...
... and Spider-twink Tom Holland bringing up the rear. See our previous posts over here -- the film (which was directed by Antonio Campos, director of the stellar Christine) is based on a 2012 book (I believe some of you have read it) about a serial killer in a small town or something -- honestly I'm trying not to know a lot of details, I wanna keep myself as pure and virgin-like as I can for this one. Speaking of...
Hey Tom. Anyway I guess we'll probably get a trailer for this soon since it's only six weeks away, and I'll probably spoil myself by giffing that once it's here, but for now, let's pretend I know nothing. Ha! Pretend. Rich, that. (click the pics to embiggen)
"This is a tough, tough call, but considering I still dream about whole sections of it so many years after having seen it only once, I gotta give it to 2046."
"I've only seen a handful but my favorite is still Happy Together. I've been dying to see Chungking Express for ages though and have never been able to find it. "
--- It's a big year for Wong Kar-wai as he's getting the Criterion boxed-set treatment plus a big traveling retrospective of his movies, so we're discussing what our faves are -- What's yours?
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