Drew Starkey in Our Sights

Per usual I liked last week when I said I'd update my last post before the long weekend with a link to my review of Onslaught -- one I got fully settled into my puddle of laziness there just weren't no shaking it off. But this is a net good for you because now you get to stare at that sexy bonus photo of Drew Starkey while I play catch-up -- win win and winnnn. Click here to read my thoughts on Onslaught, which are... mixed, to put it mildly. I even went to see it a second time to see if my expectations had been to high the first time, to see if I might be able to enjoy it more on its own terms as a dumb thing, and nope -- it was even less fun on a second watch. (Except for Drew, who I think walks away with the movie -- yes even more than Dan Stevens doing his own weirdo thing.) Shrug. A shame.

Good Afternoon, Drew Starkey

My mea culpa for being offline this A.M. -- I had a screening dammit! -- is sharing these photos of Drew Starkey for GQ Hype... as if I wouldn't have shared them either way. Look at our Queer boy! All wet and bothered, just the way we like him. Anyway I haven't read the full chat in GQ yet but apparently he gets real sly about it when Luca Guadagnino's possible American Psycho movie comes up -- he drops a "no comment" when asked but then he also goes and admits that he has read the script. Sneaky devil. 

I remain unsure about the entire prospect of making another version of this movie when Mary Harron's film and Christian Bale's performance therein are both perfect things, but Luca already proved me wrong once with Suspiria so I will shut my filthy mouth and I will watch whatever he does. I will admit that I can see interesting ways that a gay man's adaptation of the book would be different from a straight woman's. So it could be also great but different, in a different way? I see that possibility. Anyway I'm rambling when all you wanna do is stare at Wet Hot Drew Starkey, I get it. So hit the jump for him...

Pop That Cork Cooper Koch

A happy update to share on last week's annoying news that the cowards at Amazon had dropped Luca Guadagnino's movie Artificial, about Open A.I.'s leading piece-of-shit Sam Altman -- the wonderful folks at Neon have supposedly picked the movie up for distribution! That comes via the in-the-know Matthew Belloni on the Nazi-website (via, thx Mac) who says this will be officially announced later this week and the movie is probably going to be out before the end of this year. Huzzah! Make like the film's co-star Cooper Koch here and drink one in praise of there still being some balls in the film world. Anyway I'd actually forgotten all the people in this cast (not that it's surprising given any actor with even half a brain should want to be filmed by Luca's loving camera) -- besides star Andrew Garifled there's Cooper here, there's Anora bald-beauty Yura Borisov, there's Jason Schwartzman (who basically stole Queer from everyone not named Lesley Manville or "Drew Starkey's Nipples Through That One See-Through Shirt), there's Cooper Hoffman and Billie Lourd and Monica Barbaro and Chris O'Dowd and Zosia Mamet and Nicholas Hamilton (the cute gay who played the bully from the It remakes) and Mark fuckin' Rylance (who definitely stole Bones and All with that fucking scuzzy hair-braid of death). Fingers crossed this lands at NYFF! Cannot wait. In summation -- fuck you, Amazon. 

In Spaceships They Won't Understand

Ever since it was announced a month ago that Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross's fantastic score for Luca Guadagnino's film Queer is getting a vinyl release -- out in nine days, pre-order it right here! --  I've been nursing a hankering to re-watch the movie. (Read my review here.) And now my hanker has gotten itself goosed because the film's supporting sexpot Drew Starkey has just lined up a new killer role -- he'll be starring Deep Cuts, in the new movie from Martha Marcy May Marlene and The Nest director Sean Durkin! (Yes I ignore The Iron Claw, as it deserves.) And just as exciting -- his co-star is Cailee Spaeny, who I have loved in everything to date, but most especially Priscilla. (She's ace in the new Knives Out movie too, by theway.) 

Deep Cuts is an adaptation of a bestseller by Holly Brickley (which came out at the start of this year) that sounds a lot like it's trying to be for the Aughts what (oh let's just go with the classic example) American Graffiti was for the 1960s -- a nostalgic encapsulation of a recent time period, or as Deadline puts it "a love story about two music- obsessed twenty- somethings navigating the messy realities of ambition, belonging and adulthood over the course of an era-defining decade." I guess it was formerly supposed to star Saoirsie Ronan and Austin Butler, but no more. I find it much easier to picture Drew as an "Indie Sleaze" sex-god -- he's basically been having photos of himself taken in that drag for the past few years! See that photo above for proof. Anyway this'll be especially interesting to me since it'll be aiming to capture (at least in part) the Brooklyn music scene in the 2000s, which I very much partook in -- it's always a hoot to see a time and place you walked through turned into a rose-colored memory, and yes by "hoot" I do mean "yet another nail in my coffin."

Finally Queer in My Hands!

It's sexy boy Drew Starkey's birthday today, the fact of which knocked off a series of comments and clicks by your truly leading me to yesterday's tweet semi-announcement from Sony Music Soundtrack's socials that Trent Reznor & Atticus' Ross' criminally under-appreciated score for Luca Guadagnino's film Queer will really for real be getting a vinyl release! Huzzah! All the info we have thus far are these two cropped images -- presumably from the vinyl's sleeve -- and the small sum-total of what they said, which was "no use fighting it. QUEER vinyl news coming this week 👀" Not sure if this means it will be coming via Sony, or Milan Records (who released the Challengers score), or the Nine Inch Nails website, or A24's own shop -- it could be any or several or all of these locations! But as surely as I'll google gifs of Daniel Craig and Drew Starkey making out at least once a week I'll surely say something more about this news once we have more about this news to say. 

ETA of course five minutes after I write up this post they go and announce more news and pictures from the vinyl -- it still doesn't say where we'll be able to buy it but Sony says the Queer soundtrack is finally going on pre-sale on this Thursday, November 6th. You can see a few more photos on Instagram.  

I Quit Smoking 17 Years Ago Today

I keep doing these posts every May 5th -- marking the anniversary of when I quit smoking cigarettes back in 2008 with a constantly ballooning collection of photos and gifs of actors and the like smoking their sexy asses off -- even though, well, it's been 17 years yo! What else do I have to say about any of this? I haven't missed a cigarette since then -- that Chantix shit I took really did its job and then some. But then the fact hasn't changed that whenever I see an image like this...

... I swoon. It just looks cool. I can't help the rules. I'm not saying it's good -- people love violent action movies because people look cool killing people too. It just is what it is and I'm not out to rewire the human brain. I'm just here to lay the horn on the pleasure receptors as we all sink into the abyss. So come with me into this sexy smoky netherworld of seventeen smoke-free years after the jump...

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

 ... you can learn from:

Queer (2024)

Doctor Cotter: What are you so afraid of? Hmm? 

Door's already open. Can't close it now. 

All you can do is look away. But why would you?

I suppose to those of you who haven't seen Queer yet the above image of Lesley Manville might come as a shock, as it did to me when I saw the movie for the first time during NYFF last fall -- that is not the Lesley Manville we're used to seeing! But that's one reason to love it -- another being she is, as always, fantastic. (Her delivery of the moment quoted above gives us one of the most heart-rending moments in the film.) Anyway yes this makes two Queer posts in a row -- I just posted about how the 4K blu-ray of the film is being released in the UK in April -- but I only just noticed today is Manville's 69th birthday so we gotta wish her a happy one. Lesley Manville rules! 

Oh but wait -- another Queer-adjacent thing! Let's keep ourselves from posting three posts in a row by doubling up and using this opportunity to share the video for HAIM's new song "Relationships" which features actor Drew Starkey giving a sexy-ass wordless performance as "The Sexy Music Video Guy." You know the one. They all have to do the same thing in these videos. Be sexy, stare longingly at the singers, et cetera. He does it well!

A Queer Coming Home

As of this second the only place that has it for pre-order is Amazon UK and there very well might -- hell, it will -- change soon. But I am impatient. And so here, click here, and you can pre-order Luca Guadagnino's film Queer on 4K thanks to the fine folks at MUBI for a release on April 28th. This is the first and only physical media release news we've gotten for the film which was released by A24 here in the US -- we'll have to wait and see if they're going to give us a proper edition here in the States and if they do announce that then you can go cancel your Amazon orders like I plan to. For now, prepare in advance, I say! The UK disc is region-free so it'll play fine here if you have a 4K player. Anyway here is my review of the film, which ended up at #2 on my list of the movies of 2024. I love its weird ass more every time I watch it. 

Good Morning, World

I'll try to not post gifs from Queer every single morning from now until eternity now that the movie is available online, but I make no promises! (See also: yesterday.) Tumblr is overwhelmed with them right now and I am not a strong man. Anyway happy Hump Day!

Good Morning, Queer

Well what are you waiting for? Luca Guadagnino's phenomonal William S. Burroughs adaptation Queer is available to rent and buy ditigally today -- so go do that here! I know the reaction has been mixed towards the film but I personally am anything but -- it''s one of my top three films of 2024; indeed I haven't been able to write that list because my top three keep shifting every time I re-watch them and this one is very much in that mix. Here is my review. 

I admit it's not an easy film to warm to and its wavelength is very odd but if you're on it then baby, to the moon. If you need a "key" to unlock it, for me it reads pretty straightforward as being a film about an impossible disconnect between two people, and everything is in service of amplifying that. Anyway also this:

If I hear one more person say “a movie should work on its own, without you needing you do research to understand or appreciate it” - no maybe you should remember how to be intellectually curious like when you a kid and didn’t get a grown up reference and be delighted by new things to learn!

— Jason Adams (@jamnpp.bsky.social) January 11, 2025 at 3:12 PM

Drew Starkey Three Times

One mister Luca Guadagnino has photographed the new fashion campaign for the brand Loewe -- that's the one run by designer Jonathan Anderson aka the dude who's done the costumes for the films Challengers and Queer this year -- and part of the campaign stars one mister Drew Starkey, aka the co-lead in Queer. What a bunch of odd coincidences! Anyway you can see what I think is the full campaign (which also stars Guadangino fave Taylor Russell of Bones and All) right here -- I'm really partial to the photos of all the dresses suspended in the middle of the forest! Even if they don't have a hot piece like Drew in them, the pictures are something. That Luca fellow, he's going places. Oh and there are two videos from Drew's shoot -- see an official one here and the other behind-the-scenes one here. ETA okay so I was wrong -- this campign was shot by photographer David Sims -- it's early, I must have mis-read something, I don't know. Whatever, I'm not re-writing the entire post. Here's another photo to make up for my inexplicable blunder: 

Quote of the Day

There is a chat with director Luca Guadagnino and writer Justin Kuritzkes in Dazed magazine right now (thx Mac) about their latest colaboration Queer (the William S. Burroughs adaptation out in theaters now that I reviewed right here) and besides it containing several images from that film's set that I adore -- that one of him in a Carrie t-shirt above is going straight onto my mood board -- it's also got several bits of information I really enjoyed reading. Luca talks about why there's so much Nirvana in the film, and he also admits that Twin Peaks was an influence on it (but refuses to elaborate further). But it's the bit at the end that has nothing to do with Queer that has me the most excited -- and if you've seen my hemming and hawing then you know it's not about his possible American Psycho remake. 

No it's about An Even Bigger Splash, his long-gestating longer cut of his already divine 2015 film A Bigger Splash, which stars Tilda Swinton, Matthias Schoenaerts, Dakota Johnson, and Ralph Fiennes. Luca has been mentioning this was a thing on his mind for awhile, and bless this interviewer for getting a very brief but important update:

 "Yes, for sure. 100 per cent. We’re finalising it."

Supposedly this cut has a full seventy more minutes! I don't know whether this is a good idea or not either, but Luca always proves my doubts wrong so you'd think I'd have learned my lesson at this point. And even if it does prove to be too much of a good thing -- am I going to complain about seventy more minutes of a movie where the godline Matthias Schoenaerts runs around in itty bitty shorts looking like a fucking sculpture? I don't think so. In summation here is a new photo that dropped online this week from the set of Luca's other 2024 film Challengers, with him in a spot where so many of us would love to be -- half-straddled by Mike Faist in his tennis gear:

Good Morning, World

Whenever a movie that matters around these parts has a staggered release into the world I feel like I'm a broken megaphone, yelping the same white noise out over and over. So it goes with Luca Guadagnino's Queer, which I saw and loved months ago at NYFF (and reviewed right here) and which got a limited release last week and which is getting a slightly bigger release this weekend. I know I've posted about it a dozen times in the past dozen days but I am nothing if not a good cheerleader when I wanna be. Also a good cheerleader? Actor Drew Starkey, as seen in this brief video for British GQ (via) -- he's getting me excited anyway! And I assume there will be some photos to come from this photoshoot but for now, please enjoy this video of the shoot and a very good morning to each and every one of you:

Pic of the Day

Saw this new photo from Luca Guadagnino's film Queer going around this morning and hadn't seen it before -- well I had seen this image before obviously since I've seen the film more than once already. But I hadn't seen an official release unto you, the people, until now. And it's an image worth sharing! That is the film's stars Drew Starkey and Daniel Craig obviously -- this comes from the "controversial" last act of the film that seems to be leaving a lot of people flummuxed for some reason that remains inexplicable to me. Here is my review if you'd like to read my thoughts -- I'm sure I get into what I think "it all means" in there. Honestly Guadagnino is a filmmaker whose wavelength is so close to my own that I personally don't really get the confusion but we can't all be me, boy genius. (I do hope you get I'm being a smart-ass about myself here.) Sorry I'm just irritated I saw a critic call the movie "pretentious" last night and nothing riles me up faster than that meaningless word. Calling something pretentious translates in my ears to "I am lazy and didn't feel like engaging with something difficult." There are exceptions of course -- where there's no there there under the outwardly higher aims. But to look at Queer's  enraptured heartache and see emptiness boggles my brain too far, so I am just going with the " lazy and didn't feel like engaging with something difficult" definition in this case. All of that said Queer is getting a wider opening starting this weekend, I hear -- I guess it was just NYC and LA this past one. So go on and get! Maybe you too can find it pretentious!

What Are You Thankful For?

Alright I guess that is it until after the holiday. Hopefully I'll be sorted out health-wise and raring to go as we plow into awards season and Nosferatu-month.  If you'd like to take a moment in the comments below to tell me what you're thankful for here in this fairly scary time in the world perhaps we can shine a little light for each other in the darkness -- I personally am thankful for all of you people, and...

... for Paul Mescal's thighs. Perhaps not in that order. 

Have a great holiday, my people. And go see Queer!

Hey Everybody

Just a heads-up in case any of you worried I might be dead -- nearly! Okay not really but being sick makes me extra dramatic and I have indeed been very very sick for the past five or so days. I completely lost my voice which was a new experience for me -- one I can say with great, freshly learned confidence I really did not like experiencing. Losing your voice really fucking blows, man. It's not Covid, just some random viral hell, but I am still fairly laid up by it and at this point I am not at all sure I'll be up on my feet before the holiday hits on Thursday. We'll see. If you check back and there are new posts between now and then then you'll know, I suppose! If I don't though I do want to direct y'all to my review of Luca Guadagnino's Queer (starring the lovely Drew Starkey, seen above)  since that is out in theaters this week -- read my Queer review right here in case you missed it when it went up during NYFF. And that's all, until it isn't. Honestly typing this much semi-coherent blather exhausted me and I have to go lay down again. Be well, until the next time.

Pic of the Day

Hey look it's a new still of Drew Starkey and Daniel Craig in Luca Guadagnino's upcoming movie Queer! (Here is my review of Queer.) This photo is of particular note because that see-through green shirt that Drew is wearing is extremely hot -- make sure you click on the photo to embiggen it. The fashion in this movie is pretty extraordinary but then that's no surprise -- it's a Luca movie. Maybe since this one's a period film he'll actually snag an Oscar nomination for Costumes again? He inexplicably hasn't gotten one of those since I Am Love 15 years ago.

Quote of the Day

"... how can you show the love if not the behavior, from the way in which bodies interact, and their faces interact, and their saliva mixes? There was a huge level of commitment from these incredible actors who are basically so happy to do what they love doing — perform!"

That is Luca Guadagnino talking to Variety about filming -- what else? -- sex scenes in Queer, his William Burroughs adaptation out on November 27th starring Daniel Craig and Drew Starkey. Click on over for more thoughts on intimacy and semen from those actors -- I was just amused by Luca's exclamation at the end of that quote -- "Perform!" Click here to read my review if you haven't already -- and no I won't stop pushing it until the movie's out... on blu-ray. Let's be honest. Love these snaps of Craig included at Variety -- looking sharp, Danny boy.

Queer The Trailer Is Here, It's Queer

She's here and she's lovely! The trailer for Luca Gudagnino's Queer arrived this morning -- why do they always have to drop while I'm in the middle of my work commute? -- and you can watch it below. If this is your first time here this is Luca's adaptation of William S. Burroughs' novel starring Daniel Craig as a Burroughs stand-in during his time in Mexico and South America, swooning over a hot but semi-indifferent boy played by Drew Starkey. 

I reviewed the movie right here when it screened at NYFF earlier this month -- I was a fan. Of course I was a fan. What can I say at this point? Luca and I work on very similar wave-lengths. Here's a bit of what I said about the film:

"Queer is a bold act of kindness from one queer to another, excavating an unexpected and impossible love story out from one of our most enigmatic homosexual touchstones. It is a rare gem, haunting and strange, a romance of shivering ache and heartbreak closer to Guadagnino’s Suspiria or Bones and All than the flushed skin and peach fuzz of I Am Love and Call Me By Your Name that Luca-in-lover-mode is known for. It’s dazzling and dirty and sad, like a haunting dream we find ourselves fighting to not wake up from so as to not have to stare at the empty, featureless room that surrounds us."

The trailer kind of splits the difference between the two Lucas and I suppose that's apt -- when I saw him talk about the movie (see some video here) he insisted this was a love story, just for two people out of sync, and that's very true. 

It's weirder than that implies though, especially its last act which I love and understood in my bones but which has thrown a lot of people off. Anyway you'll see soon enough. Here's the trailer:

Queer is out on November 27th!

Pic of the Day

Happy day -- we have a new photo of Daniel Craig and Drew Starkey in Luca Guadagnino's Queer! Queer, Luca's adaptation of William S. Burroughs book, is out in 35 days -- on November 27th to be precise. And if you missed it I saw the movie at NYFF and reviewed it right here. Big fan. Huge. Cannot wait to watch it ten more times.