I haven't watched it yet myself but Julian Schnabel's In the Hand of Dantestarring Oscar Isaac apparently dropped onto Netflix yesterday (after premiering at tribeca, where I missed all the screenings unfortunately) -- have you watched it? Nevermind what the movie is actually about -- this is the movie which not just the above shot of Oscar comes from (a sassy underpants strut past bookshelves -- are you kidding me???) but also that insanely ridiculously gratutious set-photo that I shared a couple of weeks ago was from too; clearly Julian agrees with the entire internet that Oscar is meant for ogling. I've actually really been wanting to re-watchBefore Night Falls lately so maybe I should do a Schnabel double-feature this weekend -- I haven't seen that movie since it came out and Javier Bardem in that movie... my god. I feel like Julian is trying to tell us something at this point? (And that "something" is he is hot-cha-cha for Hispanic men, which, you know, get in line, buster.)
This week's big news that a bunch of Hong Kong classics that've never gotten proper releases here in the U.S. are going to be getting just that thanks to Shout Studios new sub-label called Hong Kong Studio Classics made me remember that that there shamefully are a great big pile of early John Woo action flicks I've never seen. So I decided to rectify that and I began my journey over the weekend by watching Woo's beloved 1992 flick Hard Boiled, which stars Chow Yun-fat and Tony Leung in a criss-crossy tale of cops acting criminal-like and vice versa, and wow wow wowee what an action masterclass! There's so much wildly over-the-top (in an entertaining way) violence in this movie that I could've chosen any of a number of scenes, but how could I resist a lightly homoerotic encounter between Tony Leung and a vibrantly-mustachioed mark in a library??? Tony Leung plus bookshelves plus bloodshed?? Are you kidding me? I'm in heaven. Hit the jump for the rest...
Ooh y'all know how hard a secret door in a library makes me! Or at least you should. Well maybe not exactly the "hard" part, that's an overshare specific to today. But I am sure I have spoken before about how much I love a secret door in a library in this extensive series now past the two-hundred mark. But maybe what you don't know is that even better than a secret door in a library is when the books then come to life and throw themselves at the person who's just come through the secret door in the library! I mean you couldn't have known that because I didn't know it myself until i saw it happen myself for the very first time in Jean Rollin's groovy 1971 weird-ass erotic-ish French horror film Shiver of the Vampirestwo nights ago.
This was my first Jean Rollin movie because I was pretty sure what was in store for me going in, and it's not entirely my cuppa -- lotsa boobies, basically. I mean boobies are fine, y'all enjoy your boobies if you have them. They're just not really a drawing point for me personally when picking out movies to watch. And Shiver of the Vampires is indeed chockfulla boobies. There's not an actress in the film who doesn't wear a sheer nightgown at some point during its runtime, and many of them wear nothing but. So anyway I hadn't rushed to watch a Jean Rollin movie. But then I saw that this one was getting the 4K fancy treatment from the smart folks at Indicator -- pre-order your copy on Amazon! And then I saw it's streaming for free on Tubi and I said fuck it, let's give it a twirl. And I'm glad I did.
I love how they're literally just throwing books at this poor dude's face at one point. Being an actor is seriously the weirdest fucking job in the world -- my hat off to any of you people who do that shit because I can't even imagine. "Today we're going to lock you in a room and throw books at your face!" I mean, really. Anyway this movie is fucking bizarre in ways I did not expect. All the boobies are out in full force, but then the grand high lesbian vampire makes her grand entrance by unfurling herself from the inside of a grandfather clock?
Sure, why not. It becomes a running joke after this -- where will she pop out from the next time she arrives -- which told me that Jean Rollin wasn't just boobies. Dude was having fun. Obviously I should see more of his movies. I know that Indicator is also puttingTwo Orphan Vampires from 1997 out on 4K at the same time as this one, so perhaps that's next? Any recommendations? Anyway this library scene goes on too long for me to make all of the gifs I wanted to make from it so here, I uploaded it to YouTube. (Sidenote: video doesn't have any sound but who cares, you don't need it.)
It's out 200th "Great Moments in Movie Shelves" post! So why not celebrate with something we all love -- namely Wes Bentley standing butt naked in front of some bookshelves in American Beauty. I know the love affair with this film has crumbled over the past two decades but I think we can all still agree that Wes Bentley could get it. Even if he wanted to ramble about the existential thrill of plastic bags or what-the-fuck-ever. That infamous plastic bag speech was actually what got this movie onto my brain this week -- I re-watched Todd Solondz' movie Storytelling a few days ago and that movie has a great joke at that speech's expense that I got a chuckle out of. Timely stuff! Anyway in summation you should re-watch Storytelling because it rules and you should hit the jump to see Wes Bentley's butt because it also rules...
Netflix dropped a trailer this morning teasing all of their 2023 slate and the only one we True Cineastes (TM) took notice of was David Fincher's The Killer starring Michael Fassbender -- even though we all just lived through Mank, even! (I kid, I kid, I thought Mank was fine.) But The Killer is more in tune with we tend to love about Fincher -- namely killin' and style and anti-hero shit. I was sold with the return of Michael Fassbender obviously, after an excruciatingly long absence off our screens, but the shot of him in the five seconds of Killer footage weilding a nail-gun in front of bookshelves seems as especially tailored to my interests as that worker's uniform is to Fassy's sleek form.
Anyway there are actually other projects of note that Netflix has coming this year -- I think ThePain Hustlers starring Emily Blunt and Chris Evans and Catherine O'Hara looks good, and while the glimpses we get of A Family Affair in the trailer are really broad and wacky-seeming (that's the one starring Nicole Kidman and Zac Efron), the movie was directed by Richard LaGravenese, who blessed the world with Living Out Loud back in the day. So, you know, let's pay attention.
(See my previous post about this movie here.) Then there is Maestro, Bradley Cooper's biopic of Leonard Bernstein (see all of my previous posts on that one here), which I'm not sold on (given I fucking hated Cooper's Star is Born and all) but which will if nothing else involve Bradley and Matt Bomer kissing and possibly more. A bright side! And speaking of gay...
... there's also Rustin, the long awaited bio-pic of gay black civil rights hero Bayard Rustin starring Colman Domingo. A story extraordinarily overdue in the telling, starring one of our current best and overdue-for-his-moment actors (openly gay to boot) -- this one should be a big deal, hopefully. We love you, Colman! Bring this baby home! (In related news there's also Shirley, a bio-pic of Shirley Chisolm starring Regina King! Score! The final title from Netflix's press release (not glimsped in the trailer) that caught my eye -- "UNTITLED WES ANDERSON / ROALD DAHL FILM" with no date except 2023. Those things fall under my interests though. Anyway here's that trailer, tell me in the comments what you're looking forward to:
No this isn't a Knives Out prequel flashing Benoit Blanc back to his younger slightly-hotter days (although I'd certainly watch that) -- this is from 2004's Layer Cake, which I re-watched earlier this week for some random reason and the second I saw this scene I was like, "Finally! Another shelves post!" It'd been awhile since I'd had the opportunity to do one of these and this movie offers one hell of a library. And not just a library but one of those fake-book doors to boot! The "Film Locations" website tells me that this library is the one inside of the Athenaeum Club in London and sure enough...
... that's one and the same location. Anybody ever seen it in real life? It's giving me the vapors, tis. I mean, is a room like this really too much to ask for? It's all I ask for. I don't need any other rooms. I can put my bed and a chamber pot in the middle and be fine. I don't cook. I will sit on my chamber pot and eat my McDonalds in the middle of this and be perfectly happy. Now that I have given you that visual, I depart. Oh and Layer Cake? Still a good movie!
Heads-up that a fascinating cult film has gotten a physical-media upgrade worthy of its weird wacky self as of today -- Synapse Films has just dropped the blu-ray for the 1976 high-school thriller Massacre at Central High, which isn't quite as lurid as its title makes it sound, while also yes being exactly that lurid.
The names you might recognize are Robert Carradine (from Revenge of the Nerds) and Andrew Stevens (from The Fury) -- it's about a high school being terrorized by a gang of elitist jock king thugs who get their comeuppance when they underestimate the new kid in town, who turns out is a fucking lunatic.
It's terrific anyway -- a definite B-movie with sex (lots of male nudity too!) and violence all ramped up to extreme levels, but also with a lot of seriousness and stuff to say about class and peer pressure besides. I was surprised by it -- it's basically proto-Heathers just without Daniel Waters' boss quotable black-humor. Any fans?
Continuing yesterday's revisit of my recent 90s thriller rewatch, I had written myself a note to call attention to the Gay Best Friend Graham's stupendous apartment full of bookshelves in Barbet Schroeder's 1992 film Single White Female and so, attention we shall pay. Not that there's much for me to say about Graham (played by long-working character actor Peter Friedman, most recently of Succession) that wasn't said by Christopher over at The Film Experience in his "Gay Best Friend" series last April -- I very much recommend you read that piece. One thing I will add about the character of Graham though is...
... one, dude has an apartment lined with bookshelves, including the ever-covetable hallway lined with bookshelves (god, I swoon). And two, my dude never turns any lights on in his apartment. It is always pitch black in there, with some moody flattering blue lighting scattered here and there, making for the perfect Morticia Addams framing. So I must ask: is Graham the perfect man? I spend half my life turning off lights in my apartment -- the darker the better. And bookshelves? Forget about it. Plus he's got a furry chest and he likes to listen in on his neighbors having sex. Hairy perv book-loving shadowy dreamboat be mine!
Over the weekend I -- and half of Film Twitter, judging by my timeline -- re-watched the four previous Scream films in preparation of this week's fifth film in the series, which is out on Friday (unfortunately only in theaters, which is pretty shitty of the studio in the middle of this omicron surge) and which I am seeing at a screening tonight. In a few hours really! I'm excited for the film, scared of going into a movie theater, it's all kinds of emotions. I did a small Twitter thread while re-watching the movies (see that here) but I set aside one bit of re-appreciation for today...
... namely the secret passageways in Scream 3 that are hidden behind a fake bookshelf! We love hidden passageways and will always stan for them -- Scream 3 is by far the worst series in the franchise so far (save its major saving grace, one Parker Posey, of course) but I do deeply love the setting of its finale, the creepy Hollywood mansion of Stab producer John Milton (played by Lance Henriksen, very clearly styled to be a meta Wes Craven).
When my favorite horror movie podcast The Gaylords of Darkness talked about the Scream franchise recently they dug into how ahead of its time the whole "Me Too" storyline of this movie was, predating the Harvey Weinstein reckoning by a full seventeen years give or take -- and this movie was produced by Harvey! It's kinda crazy they sneaked this storyline in there, and I fully buy that Wes did it on purpose, and that he made the John Milton character look like himself (and not Weinstein) on purpose. Wes' entire career is him grappling with guilt, especially in its latter half as it became more meta, injecting his own legacy, and his doubts thereabout, into the storytelling. Scream 3 might not be successful, but it is kinda fascinating.
Anyway I'm curious to see where the fifth film goes when I see it tonight -- stay tuned later this week for my review at Pajiba. For now here below is the latest trailer for the new movie, which you probably shouldn't even watch at this point. The movie's out in three days! Save yourselves!
I re-watched Anthony Minghella's The English Patient this past weekend for the first time in probably two decades -- I still love it, I still swoon at it, but I had forgotten this blasphemous scene where Juliette Binoche's character ransacks the bombed out Italian Monastery's library for old books with which to make stairs -- STAIRS!!! -- out of, and you had better believe I gasped. Lord knows I love a Juli but if I ever meet her we will have to words about her signing on to act this scene out. She should have demanded they changed it! The nerve!
Okay okay I know it's actually a plot point, or at least a plot device -- Ralph Fiennes' bedridden character asks what all the noise was, she tells him of the sin she's been committing with the books, he replies that maybe she could read to him from a book, she says those books are all crispy like him, he says well hey I have a book over there and you can read to me from that and voila, we have the story the film tells unspooled for us. Perhaps even symbolically it works -- "All of these dusty tattered forgotten stories will help us get to where we need to get!" I still hate seeing such violence. This movie needs a trigger warning.
I think this is a thing I've said here on the site before but all I want, all I truly want, is for somebody to paint me a painting of The Three Wise Men as portrayed by John Waters, Vincent Price, and Pee-wee Herman. I have the painting in my head but I also have absolutely no artistic skill whatsoever, so for now there it must remain. Anyway today I can satisfy a hint of my cravings with John Waters being this month's cover man for L'Uomo Vogue! Spectacular spectacular! I don't have the interview in English (it's in Italian here, and yes you should read the word "Italian" the way Mary Vivian Pearce pronounces it in Female Trouble -- "I couldn't possibly eat spaghetti -- do I look Eye-tally-in???") but I do have a shot of John standing in front of his bookshelves which is more porn than my body can handle in one sitting. I'm gonna be zooming in on that shot for weeks. Oh and there's some video from his apartment over here too. Lots of close-ups on his outrageous art artifacts. John's living the dream.
Here's one of those entirely random tangents that I often find myself tumbling down -- I was looking up an entirely different thing when I stubmled upon the above image of Robert Pattinson and his hotly undone suspenders in the 2012 film Bel Amiwith Uma Thurman and Kristin Scott Thomas, a film I certainly forget existed, and probably much of the rest of the world did as well. I wasn't paying much if any attention to Rob when that film came out since he was just Twilight boy then and I wasn't a Twilight person. (I still haven't seen any of them, although I'll admit I've had a curiosity to go back and educate myself in a whopper of a missing puzzle piece in my mainstream entertainment knowledge.) I think I'd only seen him in that one Harry Potter movie by 2012?
2012 was the year that began to change, however, as David Cronenberg's Cosmopolis came out in 2012 -- Cosmopolis remains one of the films I've had the most drastic turnarounds on; I hated it the first time I saw it, ended up seeing it a second time a couple weeks later, and loved it that time. It was very strange. Anyway post-that I started paying attention to him and how look where we are? We have Good Time, we have The Lighthouse, and we have obsession. Ought I go back and give Bel Ami a chance then? Thoughts? I do like the way Rob is looking in his suit, out of his suit, et cetera...
Oh you dumb, dumb man! It's just like T-Boz, Left Eye (RIP Left Eye) and Chilli told us -- don't go chasin' devil goats, people! No good can come from it. Especially -- and this should haven't have to be added, but some people just don't get it -- when you're about to stick your face inside of a threshing machine. This one's a long one because good grief I fell in love with every shot of it, so let's take the rest after the jump...
All this time that I've been excited about Dune it didn't even occur to me that there might be BOOKSHELVES!!!!!! Shelves in Space! Actually I suppose they are "Shelves on another planet" -- it's weird that I think of the surface of different planets as being "outer space" right? Anything a couple of miles up from where I'm sitting here eating french fries right now is "outer space" period as far as I'm concerned. And yes, citizens of Arrakis, that means your terrestrial bookshelves too. Sorry them's the rules! Anyway yet again some more new Dune photos have appeared today (via thx Mac, click each one to embiggen it) and I've got 'em all right after the jump...
I was excited about HBO's forthcoming series Lovecraft Country the second it was announced last May because 1) I am a huge fan of the tentacled nightmares of Lovecraftian Horror and 2) Jordan Peele was attached to produce. It was only later in 2019 that I saw The Last Black Man in San Francisco and my crush (currently stratospheric) on the actor Jonathan Majors presented itself and Lovecraft Country became more about Jonathan Majors starring in it than anything else -- I say all this to make it clear that there are things besides my crush on JM that are feeding my excitement for Lovecraft Country. There really are! Even if, at this exact moment, I'm really fucking blinded by All Things Him.
But seriously -- they put him in the t-shirt in front of bookshelves! They did that! What do they want from me??? Reasonable-mindedness? HA. HA HA HA! Ha. Don't go looking for that here. Lovecraft Country is basically my number one anticipated property at this moment, and we've now got a date to fixate upon -- HBO will premiere the series on August 16th. Oh and here's the teaser trailer:
I still haven't read Matt Ruff's original book and I might wait at this point in order to save the show's surprises for myself, but here's the gist -- it mixes 1950s race relations with the goopy squicky monsters of H.P.'s world, which is in itself a delightful if you ask me way to stick it to the worst thing about H.P. Lovecraft, namely his abhorrent racism.
He'd probably be furious about this, the fuck-face. Good! I love his monsters but he can fuck right off otherwise. Anyway also on the show: Jurnee Smollett, Courtney B. Vance, Michael Kenneth Williams, and a terrifying looking Abbey Lee, the model turned actress best known by me for both The Neon Demon and Mad Max...
I totally thought she was Elizabeth Berkley for a second, ha!
"I too quit smoking (2013) AND find this type of pictures cool. Also, PSA: if you're feeling like you want to start smoking again, just remind yourself "I do not want my body and house to stink like stale horseshit", then go drink one more glass of water to entertain your hands and lips. Congrats, btw."
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