Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

 ... you can learn from:

Saving Face (2004)

Wil: How did you find out she was...?

Grandma: The receptionist at the Manhattan clinic 

is married to one of Grandpa's former students. 

Wil: One billion Chinese people, two degrees of separation.

Alice Wu's wonderful 2004 rom-com for the ladies who love ladies (and everybody else) has hit the Criterion Collection today! Grab a copy right here. When Joan Chen popped up in Andrew Ahn's wonderful re-imagining of The Wedding Banquet earlier this year I think many of us flashed back to this extremely underrated gem, which also saw the Twin Peaks icon playing mom to a queer woman. Great little movie that will hopefully find its rightful place in the canon of wonderful little gay movies now. We need all of the wonderful little gay movies we can get.

Hello, Criterion's August 2025 Batch

The August 2025 releases from Criterion have been announced today and this might be the most Cirterioniest batch of Criterion titles I've ever had to post about -- meaning they straight up went and made me feel like a failure at what I do by releasing a bunch of movies (save a couple) that I've never even heard of before! But that's part of the fun of Criterion -- they are very good at digging up International and Classic treasures that even self-anointed cineastes have to date missed out on. The one that grabbed me the hardest was the 2004's queer rom-com Saving Face from filmmaker Alice Wu, which co-stars Joan Chen and therefore immediately made us think of Andrew Ahn's recent queer rom-com The Wedding Banquet, which also co-starred Joan Chen. (As an aside I hope Criterion is thinking about getting some of Ahn's films into the Collection -- fancy 4K editions of Driveways or Spa Night would be wonderful!)

Next up we've got a double-feature of Edward Yang movies from the 90s with A Confucian Confusion and Mahjong, a pair of Taiwanese satires that the filmmaker dropped in between his better-known films A Brighter Summer Day and Yi-Yi (both of which I believe Criterion has already released before). I haven't seen either of these but they sound great -- any fans? And then there's Egyptian director Youssef Chahine's 1958 classic Cairo Station, which they call one of the most influential films in all of Arab cinema -- blending neo-realism and melodrama it stars director himself as a man obsessed with a woman played by Hind Rostom (aka "the Marilyn Monroe of Arabia") which leads to tragedy.

And then there's a pair of WWII-era dramas from Japanese director Kon Ichikawa with The Burmese Harp (1956) and Fires on the Plain (1959) -- I've heard people speak rapturosously of these two before but never seen either. It''s weird they're releasing these separately -- seems like a pair that could've gotten the double-feature treatment, especially with the very similar artwork. Maybe they'll eventually work their way up to a box-set of Ichikawa. 

The final pair of August drops (this is a crowded month!) is director Zeinabu Irene Davis' 1999 film Compensation which has the same actors playing two different couples of deaf African-Americans, one at the start and one at the end of the 20th Century. This sounds fascinating -- anyone seen it? Or heard of it even? Don't know how this'd completely slipped my radar, especially with all the talk of and lists about 1999 being a great year for great movies. And finally the final film is Vittoria De Sica's classic neorealist drama Shoeshine, which I mayyybe saw in film school but not since. I had an echo of a visceral reaction to the cover, as if the story is hella depressing and it left a mark on my brain that I still haven't recovered from. Hooray for the movies!

Feast On This

Having missed Spa Night when it came out in 2016 I only came around to writer-director Andrew Ahn when I saw his 2019 film Driveways at Tribeca that year. But that movie stirred something deep in me (see my review here) so I've been ecstatic to see bigger name actors running wildly toward Ahn ever since -- in 2022 with his sweet queer comedy Fire Island and now this past weekend his updated re-do of Ang Lee's The Wedding Banquet, which on paper feels blasphemous but in practice is turned into a glorious ode to queer family by Ahn. The new film stars Bowen Yang, Lily Gladstone, Kelly Marie-Tran, Han Gi-Chan (seen above, a real revelation in the swoon department), Joan Chen, and Youn Yuh-jung, and as I say in my just-dropped review of the film over at Pajiba -- everybody's great in it but it's Youn who steals the whole thing, giving a performance I immediately fell head over heels for. I love this even more than the performance in Minari that she won her Oscar for (and I loved that movie and that performance). All around another grand success for Ahn, and for the rest of us a soothing super-gay balm in trying times. A warm and funny gift of a film!

A Banquet of Beauties

Since I'm covering Sundance virtually this year there are a few choice titles I am missing out on that I'm extremely -- to put it mildly -- bummed about missing. And right up there at the tippy top is writer-director Andrew Ahn's re-working of Ang Lee's film The Wedding Banquet. I told you about this movie back in April of last year -- it stars Bowen Yang, Lily Gladstone, Kelly Marie Tran, Youn Yuh-jung, Joan Chen (Josie Packard!!!), and the stunning Han Gi-Chan seen above leaning on Bowen's shoulder but we owe ourselves a better look at him, we do:

Swoon. Anyway Ahn (one of MNPP's favorite young filmmakers who's previously gifted us with Spa Night, my beloved Driveways, and the gay rom-com Fire Island) has remodeled Lee's story for 2025 in ways I won't dive into because everyone should just watch the movie and experience it. But I'm going to trip over that exact statement now by sharing the first teaser for the movie anyway because I live in a constant state of hypocrisy. Just don't watch this thing I am posting if you don't want to know like I said you shouldn't!

Thankfully we don't have ages upon ages to wait for the film even if we're missing out on it right this minute -- it is hitting theaters on April 18th! I think we'll probably survive at least that long (fingers crossed, knock on wood, etc) so let's go add this one to all of our calendars. And you can see the poster and several more images from the film right on here after the jump...

Good Morning, World

Comedian and actor -- Fire Island holla -- Joel Kim Booster is scorching up the pages of Out magazine this month, check his interview here. He's mainly talking his Apple series Loot, a show I inexplicably don't watch -- I am sorry, Maya Rudolph, feel free to slap me silly if we ever meet. I'll get to it sometime. Any fans? Anyway it doesn't come up but Joel is featured in a doc about queer comedy called Outstanding: A Comedy Revolution which just dropped on Netflix...

... and that is a thing I have watched, and I can speak of -- it's really great! It presents a wide-ranging history of LGBTQ comedians while managing to be very funny and kinda moving along the way. I saw it during Tribeca and it's not the sort of thing I could write an entire review around (most docs stump me when it comes to writing about them at length tbh) but I was surprised how interesting I found it, and it's well worth a watch. So go check that out. And also, natch, go check out these hot new photos of Joel after the jump...

A Brand New Wedding Banquet

I sent this news story to myself two nights ago meaning to post about it but so goes my brain, forever distracted by shiny things -- anyway you have maybe heard by now but Fire Island and Driveways director Andrew Ahn (longtime MNPP fave) is remaking (sort of) Ang Lee's classic 1993 queer rom-com The Wedding Banquet! You'll understand why I say "sort of" when I share the plot, but before that -- this news comes along with a stellar name cast: Lily Gladstone, Bowen Yang, Kelly Marie Tran, Joan Chen, and Oscar winner Youn Yuh-jung! There's only one person who hasn't been cast yet and that's the hot Korean guy named Min who's at the center of everything, aka the role that was played by hot Winston Chao in Lee's movie. 

Mmm Winston. Anyway those are a lot of names of actors when the main roles in Ang Lee's original film didn't contain that many characters, which is where the "sort of" with regards to this being a remake comes in -- this version's plot has some extra complications. The plot:

"The plot revolves around Min, whose marriage proposal is rejected by his boyfriend Chris (Yang). Min then convinces his best friend Angela (Marie Tran) to marry him for his green card and offers to pay for the IVF treatment of the latter’s partner, Liz (Gladstone), in return. Although Min and Angela plan a “subtle city hall elopement,” their lives are turned upside down when the former’s grandmother arrives in Seattle to throw them an extravagant Korean wedding banquet."

I think Ahn's making smart choices here, beefing up the life of the female character with her own romance -- the fact that it's bringing legend Lily Gladstone along for the ride is just bonus. Okay it's a really really exciting bonus. Now we just wait to see who Ahn casts as Min... and might I make a suggestion: 

After Past Lives I need all the Teo Yoo I can get. That said I think he's straight (actually I have no idea) and I wouldn't be surprised if Ahn is looking for a openly queer actor. So any suggestions?

Oh Mary & Abe

I realize that, even though the play got extended here in NYC several times, the audience of human beings on this earth that have gotten to see Cole Escola's hilarious play Oh Mary! imagining the deranged relationship between Mary Todd Lincoln (Escola) and her husband Abe (Conrad Ricamora) is minute. But I saw the damn thing and loved every over-the-top hilarious second of it, so I'm gonna post about it -- specifically a fun interview with Escola and Ricamora over at Queerty today, where the pair try on silly outfits at a local thrift shop and talk about their own queer histories. Of course after this play and his sexy turn in Andrew Ahn's gay rom-com Fire Island I'm nursing a big ol' crush on Ricamora so that doesn't exactly hurt either...

Good Morning, World

(via) I could pretty clearly post a new photo of Fire Island actor Zane Phillips every single day at this point and never run out -- we are blessed people. At least in this respect. okay okay we're barely skirting World War 3 at the moment, but we got undiluted Zane beefcake so all is not lost! This man is giving me hope for humanity. Zane Phillips can save us if only we let him show us the way!!! Hit the jump for all of the photos...

Zane Phillips Six Times

This neon bleached photoshoot of Fire Island and Glamorous hunka beef slash actor Zane Phillips seems perfectly timed to the current Barbie moment -- he would've made a perfect Ken right? Maybe even a little too perfect -- there wouldn't have been any of the comic dissonance that Greta Gerwig seemed to be going for with her slightly-off castings of the role. He just really is a Ken doll, period! Anyway the costuming and lighting is giving me some hard flashbacks to my college days circa Y2K -- I saw this exact dude at every rave I went to in 1999. (This dude never saw me though, never knew I was alive, which is why I am the rage-fueled succubus who stands before you today.) Hit the jump for the photos...

And These Are Your Gay Emmys

I yelped several times reading through the winners of the Dorian TV Awards just now -- awarded by the LGBTQ+ critics guild GALECA of which I am a member, we got so much right! And then we gave some awards to Succession, but I guess we can't get everything right. Ahem. Anyway we gave two yes two prizes to Bryan Fuller's horror doc Queer For Fear (read my review of it here), which got the biggest yelp out of me. We gave it both "Best LGBTQ Doc or Doc series" as well as the more general "Best Doc or Doc Series" and dammit it deserved 'em both. We also gave several awards to Somebody Somewhere and The White Lotus AND we gave "Best TV Movie" to Andrew Ahn's Fire Island! We have good taste! Except for Succession. Hit the jump for the press release and list of winners....

Good Morning, World

Alright, Zane Phillips, alright! You have broken down my laziness and gotten yourself a tag of your very own on this here website. I can no longer fight off your advances. Take me! I'm yours. Anyway I noticed on Friday when I posted that other hot photoshoot of the Fire Island actor that I hadn't yet given him one -- this morning's photo (which was probably a part of this photoshoot previously posted that I missed at the time) has pushed me over the edge. In more ways than one. So everybody welcome Zane! Seems like he's sticking around.

Zane Phillips Eleven Times

Ahhh yes this is exactly what this dull and dreary Friday in NYC needed -- Fire Island actor Zane Phillips like a great big bestached ball of beefcake sunshine (via). Literally as I typed this the clouds have parted! I won't say the angels are singing because I don't believe in angels but if I did they are if you catch my drift. Click here to see all of our previously posted ogling of Zane, who is endlessly worth an ogle. (Maybe I should re-watch Fire Island this weekend and cheer myself up?) And hit the jump for the rest of these angelic new snaps...

Good Afternoon, Gratuitous Michael Graceffa

(Editor's Note: This was meant to be a "Good Morning" post but my office internet has been down all day. So here we are!) So who watched Welcome to Chippendales? The Hulu series that starred Kumail Nanjiani, Juliette Lewis, Annaleigh f'ing Ashford, and Murray Bartlett? (I shared the trailer here.) Naturally I did although I felt like I was always playing a lot of catch-up with it -- anyway I made it to the end right about the time it was ending so we're square. I thought it was pretty good! The story we've seen a million times before -- literally, this exact story about Somen Banerjee and these murders has been told several times before -- but they gathered a terrific group of actors who were delights in themselves, and that's before we even get to talking about the strippers themselves...

Finally catching up on #WelcometoChippendales and holy hell Quentin Plair y'all pic.twitter.com/noT3n5diZv

— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) December 22, 2022

Speaking of I really thought I'd end up doing a big post on Quentin Plair honestly, but despite the show taking full advantage when they had him around 1) his character's arc was truncated and 2) his Instagram isn't nearly self-exploitative enough. One glance at Michael "Mikey" Graceffa's online presence though (especially his Insta) -- hoo boy. He is making up for it for the entire cast!

I need to re-watch Andrew Ahn's Fire Island from last year for several reasons -- one of them being that it was an excellent movie! -- but especially now that I see Mikey here was in the cast; I don't remember him at all. There were so many hot dudes in that movie though that my eyes were crossed most of the time, trying to take it all in. I think he's mostly a Broadway person? He is clearly a dancer. I know this because I have eyes and my eyes are telling me that that is a dancer's butt. Anyway I am sure y'all might know better, what he's done stage-wise. Me all I know is what my eyes are telling me, and... yeah, they're still crossed. Good lorrrrd. Hit the jump for dozens more...

Good Morning, World

A very happy Monday morning to everyone from me and from Fire Island actor Zane Phillips here, who was kind enough to invite us into the bath with him (via) as an ad for some skin something or other -- I don't know, I went cross-eyed and could no longer read after watching this footage. I am dictating this to an assistant who I made sure to blindfold, lest they also see the footage -- this is some "end of the Raiders of the Lost Ark" type shit, where Zane's hotness is shooting through crowds and melting our collective eyeballs! If that sounds enticing, and it should (this is 100% worthy of being the last thing you ever see), then here's the video:

If you'd like to see our previous Zane-related posts, click here. We're amassing quite the collection, because thank goodness this man is gay and knows he should be exploited properly. My congratulations to anyone who's experienced this with him. Him being gay, I mean. You're the blessed now. Anyway I made gifs because that's as close as I'll ever come to it, so hit the jump for a couple dozen gifs (as well as several very fine still photos)...

Zane Phillips Fourteen Times

Fire Island actor Zane Phillips certainly caught our eye from the first moment he flashed that stache across that sweet Andrew Ahn romantic-comedy, and we've done a couple of posts on him since then -- how could we not, look at what we're working with here? So naturally we jumped on his new photo-shoot for Behind the Blinds magazine with about as much speed as we'd jump on Zane himself if he was ever standing in front of us. We mean that in the kindest, friendliest, least-threatening sense, of course. Not another restraining order, please! Anyway per usual BTB has gifted us with one million photos to share, and if they work it like usual we'll probably get one million more before they're through. Remind me to send roses to their offices some day, but for today hit the jump for all the photos...

  

Quote of the Day

"When “Living End” came out, it was so polarizing in the gay community. People would tell me, “People are getting into fist fights in bars.” On the one hand it was such a punk rock movie and the attitude of it was so kind of “fuck everybody,” and at the same time it was hot guys making out. And what the movie had to say was so alienating to them that people would get so passionate about it. And Jim Stark, the producer, he’d say to me, “You make these gay movies that gay people hate. They’re too punk rock for gay people and they hate them.” So he’s like, “If you make a straight movie, I’ll produce it and get you real money for it.” And I said, “OK, sure,” because fuck it. Why not? So that’s why “Doom Generation” has a subtitle, “A Heterosexual Movie.” So I made this heterosexual movie, but in a very punk rock bratty way, made it so gay."

Today IndieWire (in the middle of a 90s Celebration Week) got Andrew Ahn, the immensely talented director of Fire Island and Spa Night and Driveways, to interview legendary queer punk director Gregg Araki! Read it all here! I love how much Araki there has been in the air this past week. I posted some photos last week and then just yesterday I retweeted out this interview with him at i-D magazine on the subject of the 30th anniversary of The Living End. (He also says in there that he is at work on a new thing.) All of that's a net positive, but that chat with Ahn really spilled this over into true bounty. Two great tastes, together at last! Now let's get his damn movies onto blu-ray.

Gonna add this photo of Gregg Araki and John Waters to my inspiration board pic.twitter.com/82CIXBYCBp

— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) September 27, 2021

Good Morning, World

It just doesn't seem correct that I have only done one post on actor Zane Phillips in the six-ish weeks since Andrew Ahn's wonderful film Fire Island hit Hulu -- if you follow Zane on Instagram (and I assume y'all did that then if you hadn't already) then you know he's been delivering the cintent we crave way more than that one post would let on! So today on this last day of this short week for me I will catch us up some! 

Not all. Oh no, not all. There are some photos I'm leaving in the folder because there are mornings when I will need a filler and Zane, hoo baby, he'll come to the rescue just fine. It honestly feels wasteful, sharing the batch I'm about to in one go, because any single one of these photos are enough to leave our jaws on the floor for an entire day. But we'll give ourselves a big beautiful gift today because we deserve it, dammit.

I'll also do Zane a solid and mention he got an acting job in the past week -- he's going to be in a Netflix series called Glamorous that stars Kim Cattrall as former supermodel turned CEO of a beauty brand blah blah blah stuff happens read the link. It sounds like a super queer friendly show i.e. Netflix doing some clean-up with regards to recent well-documented LGBTQ misdeeds. We'll see. Anyway, Zane! There's some more Zane to stare at after the jump...

Suddenly Conrad

Earlier today -- hell just two hours ago with those gratuitous Zane Phillips photographs -- I said that I could fill up this blog with pictures of the Fire Island movie cast for months straight. Well I sure am off and running with that idea today now, here adding co-star Conrad Ricamora to the heap -- and Fire Island is definitely the kind of movie where you'd like to see the entire cast just piled up in a sexy heap. Ricamora plays one of the film's several love interests, but most importantly he stands in for the Me's of the world -- the people who just cannot with that whole Fire Island Scene. And much to the film's benefit, as much as it does ultimately make its case for that place it never exactly argues too hard with his point-of-view either. It threads the needle anyway, mostly because Andrew Ahn is a supremely gifted filmmaker who makes complicated perspectives come off easy as pie. Anyway I am saying all of that now because I didn't have room to get into it with my review of Fire Island, which you can read right here at Pajiba. Go! Read it!

Which brings me to my next point -- it's now after Memorial Day, which means I now have Summer Fridays off from my day job! Yay me! Yay three-day weekends! Which also means I (probably) won't be posting on Friday again until September. Don't you give me that look -- my brain needs the goddamned break. There is plenty of content if you scroll down, and down, and down. Just go down, dammit! (Why am I always screaming that at people?) Have a good weekend, y'all. And watch Fire Island on Hulu! And follow Conrad Ricamora on Instagram right here:

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A post shared by Conrad Ricamora (@conradricamora)

Zane Phillips Eight Times

The list of obscenely hot dudes in Andrew Ahn's film Fire Island -- hitting Hulu tomorrow! Review coming soon! Here is the trailer! -- is very long and very, very thick. How thick is it, you ask? It's so thick I could be posting about these dudes for weeks. And I might do just that! I already shared some recent super hot photos of the film's star and screenwriter Joel Kim Booster last week, but today I am feeling this dude -- his name's Zane Phillips, he plays a guy named "Dex" that catches Joel's character's eye (among other body parts), and you should obviously follow him on Instagram right here. Oh and you need to hit the jump for seven more photos... 

Joel Kim Booster Four Times

There are a few more of these photos over here alongside the interview with the comedian turned star of upcoming queer ass Hulu comedy Fire Island, which we here at MNPP are excited about because.. well 1) I saw it last night and it's terrific. Do I need to keep counting after that? The fact that I can say with actual learned knowledge that the movie is real good ought to be enough! But you should be excited because 1) I say it's terrific (I will review it with more words next week), and 2) it was directed by Andrew Ahn, the already-director of the stellar two-some Driveways and Spa Night and one of the most talented young directors we've got. Watch the trailer for Fire Island over here if you haven't yet, and mark your calendars -- the film is opening NewFest's pride-month edition next Thursday in NYC (last I heard there are still tickets for the later screening) and then it drops on Hulu the next day, June 3rd.